Trying not to cry, Rose gave the woman first one piece of celery and then the others. Then she asked, ‘is this the rich neighbourhood?’
‘No, no, no,’ the woman laughed, ‘but if you’re planning to go there I can give you something that might help you.’ She ran her fingers through her hair and took out a red feather. ‘If you need to reach something and cannot, then wave this feather.’ Rose couldn’t imagine how a feather could help her reach anything, but she didn’t want to sound rude so she put the feather in her bag.
Since it was evening and Rose knew that gangs sometimes ran through the streets after dark she thought she’d better find a place to sleep. She saw a pile of wooden crates in front of a store and lay down behind them, sadly thinking that she’d better save her four bananas for the next day.
The next morning the sound of opening and closing car doors woke her up and she stretched painfully. The gold streets had hurt her back even more than the silver ones the night before. With a look at her bananas, now completely black, she got to her feet and walked back to the underground.
All day she rode on the train, past underground store windows showing clothes that would tear in a day, and bright flimsy furniture, and strange machines with rows of black buttons. The air became very sweet, but thick, as if someone had sprayed the tunnels with perfume. Finally, Rose decided she couldn’t breathe and had to get out.
She came up onto a street made all of diamond, and buildings so high she couldn’t see anything at all in the windows, only flashes of colours. The people glided a few inches above the ground, while the cars moved so gently on their white tyres they looked like swimmers floating in a pool.
Rose was about to ask for directions to the mayor’s office when she saw an old woman cowering before manicured dogs and rainbow dyed cats whose rich owners had let them roam the street. Rose whistled so high she herself couldn’t hear it, but the animals all ran away, thinking their owners had called them for dinner.
‘Thank you so much,’ the woman said, dusting off her long black dress. Her black hair trailed the ground behind her. ‘Do you suppose you could give me something to eat?’
Biting back her tears Rose held out the four bananas. The woman laughed and said, ‘One is more than enough for me. You eat the others.’ Rose had to stop herself shoving all three bananas into her mouth at once. She was glad she did, for each one tasted like a different food, from chicken to strawberries. She looked up, amazed.
‘Now,’ said the woman, ‘I suppose you want the mayor’s house.’ Her mouth open, Rose nodded yes. The woman told her to look for a street so bright she had to cover her eyes to walk on it. Then she said, ‘If you ever find the road too crowded blow on this.’ She ran her fingers through her hair and took out a black whistle shaped like a pigeon.
The girl said, ‘Thank you,’ though she didn’t think people would get out of the street just for a whistle.
When the woman had gone Rose looked around at the diamond street. I’d break my back sleeping here, she thought, and decided to look for the mayor’s house that evening. Up and down the streets she hobbled, now and then running out of the way of dark-windowed cars, or lines of children dressed all in money and holding hands as they ran screaming through the street.
At one point she saw a great glow of light and thought she must have found the mayor’s house, but when she came close she saw only an empty road where bright balls of light on platinum poles shone on giant fountains spouting liquid gold into the air. Rose shook her head and walked on.
Several times she asked people for the mayor’s house, but no one seemed to hear or see her. As night came, Rose thought that at least the rich neighbourhood wouldn’t get too cold; they probably heated the streets. But instead of warm air, a blast of cold came up from the diamond pavement. The people in the rich neighbourhood chilled the streets so they could use the personal heaters built into their clothes.
For the first time Rose thought she would give up. It was all so strange, how could she ever think the mayor would even listen to her? About to look for a subway entrance she saw a flash of light a few blocks away and began to walk towards it. When she came close the light became so bright she automatically covered her eyes, only to find she could see just as well as before. Scared now that she’d actually found the way, she slid forward close to the buildings.
The light came from a small star, which the mayor’s staff had captured and set in a lead cage high above the street. A party was going on, with people dressed in all sorts of costumes. Some looked like birds with beaks instead of noses, and giant feathered wings growing out of their backs; others had become lizards, their heads covered in green scales. In the middle, on a huge chair of black stone, sat the mayor, looking very small in a white fur robe. Long curved fingernails hooked over the ends of his chair. All around him advisors floated in the air on glittery cushions.
For a time Rose stayed against the wall, afraid to move. Finally she told herself she could starve just standing there. Trying not to limp, she marched forward and said, ‘Excuse me.’
No one paid any attention. And no wonder. Suspended from a helicopter above her, a band played on peculiar horns and boxes. ‘Excuse me,’ Rose said louder, then shouted, the way she’d learned to shout in the poor neighbourhood when animals from outside the city attacked the children.
Everything stopped. The music sputtered out, the lizards stopped snatching at the birds who stopped dropping jewelled ‘eggs’ on the lizards’ heads. Two policemen ran forward. Masks like smooth mirrors covered their heads so that the rich people would only see themselves if they happened to glance at a policeman. They grabbed Rose’s arms, but before they could handcuff her the mayor boomed (his voice came through a microphone grafted onto his tongue), ‘Who are you? What do you want? Did you come to join the party?’
Everyone laughed. Even in the rich neighbourhood, they knew, you had to wait years for an invitation to the mayor’s party.
‘No, sir,’ said Rose. ‘I came to ask for help for the poor neighbourhood. Nobody has any money to buy food and people have to leave their arms and legs at the grocery store just to get anything. Can you help us?’
The laughter became a roar. People shouted ways the mayor could help the poor neighbourhood. Someone suggested canning the ragged child and sending her back as charity dinners. The mayor held up his hand and everyone became silent. ‘We could possibly help you,’ he said. ‘But first you will have to prove yourself. Will you do that?’
Confused, Rose said yes. She didn’t know what he meant. She wondered if she needed a welfare slip or some other identification.
‘Good,’ the mayor said. ‘We’ve got a small problem here and maybe you could help us solve it.’ He waved a hand and a picture appeared in the air in front of Rose. She saw a narrow metal stick about a foot long with a black knob at one end and a white knob at the other. The mayor told Rose that the stick symbolised the mayor’s power, but the witches had stolen it.
‘Why don’t you send the police to get it back?’ Rose asked.
Again the mayor had to put up his hand to stop the laughter. He told the girl that the witches had taken the stick to their embassy near the United Nations, where diplomatic immunity kept the police from following them.
‘I have to go to the witches’ embassy?’ Rose asked. ‘I don’t even know where it is. How will I find it?’ But the mayor paid no attention to her. The music started and the birds and lizards went back to chasing each other.
Rose was walking away when a bird woman flapped down in front of her. ‘Shall I tell you the way to the witches’ embassy?’
‘Yes,’ Rose said, ‘Please.’
The woman bent over laughing. Rose thought she would just fly away again, but no, in between giggles she told the girl exactly how to find the witches. Then she wobbled away on her wingtips, laughing so hard she bumped into buildings whenever she tried to fly.
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With her subway token Rose arrived at the embassy in only a few minutes. The iron door was so tall she couldn’t even reach the bell, so she walked around looking for a servants’ entrance. Shouts came from an open window. She crept forward.
Wearing nothing but brown oily mud all over their bodies, the witches were dancing before a weak fire. The whole embassy house smelled of damp moss. Rose was about to slip away when she noticed a charred wooden table near the window, and on top of it the mayor’s stick.
She was about to climb over the sill, grab the stick and run, when she noticed little alarm wires strung across the bottom of the window. Carefully she reached in above the wires towards the table. No use. The stick lay a good six inches out of reach.
An image of the woman in red came to her. ‘If you need to reach something and cannot, then wave this feather.’ Though she still couldn’t see how the feather could help her, especially with something so heavy, she fluttered it towards the table.
The red-haired woman appeared behind the witches, who nevertheless seemed not to notice her. ‘I am the East Wind,’ she said and Rose saw that her weakness had vanished and her face shone as bright as her hair waving behind her. ‘Because you helped me and gave me your food when you had so little I will give you what you want.’ She blew on the table and a gust of wind carried the stick over the wires into Rose’s hands.
The girl ran off with all the speed she’d learned running away from trouble in the poor neighbourhood. Before she could go half a block, however, the stick cried out, ‘Mistresses! This little one is stealing me.’
In an instance the witches were after her, shrieking and waving their arms as they ran, leaving drops of mud behind them. Soon, however, Rose reached the subway where her token let her inside while the witches who hadn’t brought any money, let alone tokens, could only stand on the other side of the gate and scream at her.
Rose could hardly sit she was so excited. The subway clacked along, and only the silly weeping of the stick in her bag kept her from jumping up and down. She imagined her mother’s face when she came home in the mayor’s car piled so high with money and food.
At the stop for the mayor’s house, Rose stepped off the train swinging her bag. There, lined up across the exit, stood the witches. They waved their muddy arms and sang peculiar words in warbly high-pitched voices. The stick called, ‘Mistresses, you found me.’
Rose looked over her shoulder at the subway. She could run back, but suppose they were waiting for her in the tunnel? And she still had to get to the mayor. Suddenly she remembered the old woman saying that the token could get her off the subway as well as on. She grabbed it from her bag and held it up.
The woman in yellow appeared before her. ‘I am the South Wind,’ she said, ‘and because you helped me I will help you.’ Gently she blew on Rose and a wind as soft as an old bed carried the girl over the heads of the witches and right out of the subway to the street.
As fast as she could she ran to the mayor’s house. But as soon as she turned the corner to the street with the captured star she stopped and clutched her bag against her chest. The mayor was waiting for her, wrapped in a head to toe cylinder of bulletproof glass, while behind him, filling the whole street, stood a giant squad of police. Their mirrored heads bounced the starlight back to the sky. ‘Give me the witches’ stick,’ the mayor said.
‘The witches? You said—’
‘Idiot child. That stick contains the magic of the witches’ grandmothers.’ He then began to rave about smashing the witches’ house and putting them to work in the power stations underneath the rich neighbourhood. Rose tried to back away. ‘Arrest her,’ the mayor said.
What had the old woman in black said? ‘If you ever find the road too crowded, blow on this.’ Rose grabbed the pigeon whistle and blew as hard as she could.
The woman appeared, her hair wider than the whole wave of police. ‘I am the North Wind,’ she told the girl, and might have said more but the squad was advancing. The North Wind threw out her arms and instead of a gust of air a huge flock of black pigeons flew from her dress to pick up the mayor and all the police. Ferociously beating their wings the pigeons carried them straight over the wall into the Bronx, where they were captured by burglars and never heard from again.
‘Thank you,’ Rose said, but the old woman was gone. With a sigh Rose took out the witches’ stick. ‘I’m sorry,’ she told it. ‘I just wanted to help the poor neighbourhood.’
‘May I go home now?’ the stick asked sarcastically. Before the girl could answer the stick sprang out of her hands and flew end over end through the air, back to the witches’ embassy.
Rose found herself limping along the riverside, wondering what she would tell her mother and her sisters. Why didn’t I help the West Wind? she thought to herself. Maybe she could’ve done something for me.
A woman all in silver appeared on the water. Her silver hair tumbled behind her into the river. ‘I do not need to test you to know your goodness,’ she said. She blew on the river and a large wave rose up to drench the surprised girl.
But when Rose shook the water off she found that every drop had become a jewel. Red, blue, purple and green, stones of all shapes and colours, sapphires in the shape of butterflies, opals with sleeping faces embedded in the centre, they all covered Rose’s feet up to her ankles. She didn’t stop to look at them. With both hands she scooped them up into her basket, and then her shoes. Hurry, she told herself. She knew that no matter how many police you got rid of there were always more. And wouldn’t the rich people insist the jewels belonged to them?
So full of jewels she could hardly run, Rose waddled to the subway entrance. Only when she got there did she notice that the streets had lost their diamond paving. All around her the rich people stumbled or fell on the lumpy grey concrete. Some of them had begun to cry or to crawl on all fours, feeling the ground like blind people at the edge of a cliff. One woman had taken off all her clothes, her furs and silks and laces, and was spreading them all about the ground to hide its ugliness.
Fascinated, Rose took a step back towards the street. She wondered if anything had happened to the star imprisoned in its cage above the mayor’s house. But then she remembered how her mother had limped when the grocer had gotten her foot all twisted. She ran downstairs to use her magic token for the last time.
Though the train was crowded Rose found a seat in the corner where she could bend over her treasures to hide them from any suspicious eyes. What does a tax collector look like? she wondered.
As the rusty wheels of the train shrieked through the gold neighbourhood and then the silver one, Rose wondered if she’d ever see the old ladies again. She sighed happily. It didn’t matter. She was going home, back to her mother and her sisters and all her friends in the poor neighbourhood.
Rachel Pollack is the author of thirty-six books of fiction and non-fiction, including the novels Unquenchable Fire, winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, Godmother Night, winner of the World Fantasy Award, and Temporary Agency, short-listed for the Nebula Award. She is also a poet, translator, comic book writer, and artist. Her non-fiction work includes 78 Degrees Of Wisdom, described as ‘the Bible of tarot card readers.’ Her work has been translated into fourteen languages. Rachel has taught and lectured all over the world, including Europe, China, Australia, and New Zealand. She lives in the Hudson Valley of New York.
The King’s Poet • John Matthews
The King’s Poet
John Matthews
I have learned to love God only slowly and with difficulty.
Like many youngest sons I was destined for the monastery almost from birth. The fact that I grew up somewhat sickly, and that I was therefore not, like my brothers, fit material for a warrior, ensured that my father felt no regret for his decision. And perhaps I also felt little regret, beyond a natural sorrow at exchanging the familiar noises and smells of home for the stran
ge, cold environment of the monastery, where it lay, a humble scattering of huts, in the shelter of a small valley between green hills.
The Brothers were kind enough, in their rough way, but I was still boy enough to feel constraint at being shut away from the world, made to work all day in the fields, milk the scrawny cow, and spend long hours on my knees in the tiny wattle and daub chapel amid the poor huts where the little community lived out its life.
Yet, as I have since found to be the case with many things, there is little to which the heart and mind may not grow accustomed, given time. Not that the first years were not hard and difficult. I was twelve when I entered the monastery, and I continued to live there for three years, during which time I proved a surprisingly apt pupil. I learned to read and write – though never well enough to work on the great Book that was being slowly illuminated, page by glowing page, in the scriptorium. And I learned something of the properties of healing contained in certain plants.
But I was not content. Something in me longed for the freedom of the hills, for the cool winds that blew from the mountains to the North. Nor did I find the harsh dictums by which I was forced to live always palatable. And so, one day, I decided to run away.
There was nothing dramatic about the decision. It simply came to me that I no longer wanted to be there. Nor was it difficult. I truly believe that no one would have stopped me had I simply laid down my hoe in the midst of the fields and walked away. Yet I felt constrained, perhaps by some boyish desire for adventure, to leave at night, telling no one, having saved a few fragments of barley-cake from my meagre diet for a few days before.
I had no idea where I was going, but my steps lead me West, then North, until the mountains were before me. I made my way deeper into their shadow, following a stream that lead into a little sheltered valley among ancient rocks. At some point the weather, which had been fair, turned first cold, then wet. There was no shelter. I walked on, head down, soaked and shivering, as night fell. I am sure I would have died on the mountain that night had I not stumbled in the darkness. I fell, saw stars, and felt sick and light-headed when I tried to stand. Then I saw, through the rain, a gleam of firelight away to my left, and somehow staggered towards it.
The Jo Fletcher Books Anthology Page 22
