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www.aeonmagazine.com

Editors

Marti McKenna

Bridget McKenna

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AEon Four is copyright © 2005, Scorpius Digital Publishing, all rights reserved. Individual columns, articles, and stories are copyright © the authors. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, by any means electronic or mechanical, without prior permission of the publisher, with the exception of brief passages quoted in reviews.

ISBN: 1-931305-83-8

Cover art by Marti McKenna

Scorpius Digital Publishing

202 North 39th Street

Seattle, WA 98103

www.scorpiusdigital.com

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Stories

The Game of Leaf and Smile.... Lawrence M. Schoen

Blood Pith Crux.... Kelly Hale

A Game of Cards.... Carrie Richerson

The Tinker's Child.... M. Thomas

The Knife Birds.... Kij Johnson

Copper Angels.... Joseph P. Haines

End of Day.... Laura Anne Gilman

Nonfiction

Here There Be Spiders.... Dr. Rob Furey

Language and Music in the City of the Trees: An Interview With Bruce Boston.... Michael Lohr

Poetry

Puppet People.... Bruce Boston

Knife People.... Bruce Boston

Sun People.... Bruce Boston

Departments

Signals.... Kristine Kathryn Rusch

AEternum.... The AEon Editors

Our Authors

Our Advertisers

The Future--AEon Five

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Four

Lately, the mainstream has returned to the plotted story. More than that, it's added sf and fantasy elements. The New Yorker has recently published Stephen King. It has also published writers like Kevin Brockmeier whose "A Brief History of the Dead" would have been equally at home in Aeon, Asimov's, or Realms of Fantasy. Brockmeier isn't the only one. Other mainstream writers have turned to the fantastic. From Michael Chabon to Mary Doria Russell, mainstream writers are currently using sf tropes to great success.

So why aren't mainstream readers of Chabon and Russell moving to sf novels while waiting for their favorites to come out with something new? Because they believe sf is an inferior literature.

Let me just give you one example: Recently, The Oregonian newspaper--one of the major publications in the Pacific Northwest--published an review about a mainstream novel on a future filled with clones, a review that included this sentiment: unlike the sci-fi stories you find on the paperback shelves, this novel actually has excellent writing, three-dimensional characters, and a theme.

Huh?

Sf has all those things. Just pick up Connie Willis or Walter Jon Williams or Mike Resnick. We've had those things for fifty years or more--and hey, mainstream literature, we kept our plots, too.

But, y'know, I'm beginning to think that the mainstream readers' unwillingness to read the sf genre isn't their fault. I think it's ours.

We've built a nice tidy little enclave here, and while we like it and occasionally notice when others dabble in our genre (maybe even approve when someone does something especially nice), mostly we turn up our noses and sniff. We don't let newcomers in. We encourage the misperceptions.

When I started teaching writing to established writers, I found out that most writers never read outside their preferred genre. They started reading sf as a kid and never tried romance. Or they started reading mystery and never tried fantasy. Or they learned about "literature" in college, and abandoned their favorite horror novels.

Over the years, they absorbed stereotypes about the genres they didn't read. I make the students read mainstream stories (The Best American Short Stories), mystery stories (either Otto Penzler's Best American or Ed Gorman's World's Finest), fantasy stories (usually the Datlow/Link/Grant), romance stories (often a Nora Roberts et. al. antho [this year Moon Shadows]) and of course, sf (always Dozois's Year's Best).

I always ask the students what volume they like the most, the least, and which one surprised them. Usually the volume they liked the most was something other than their old favorite, and the volume they liked the least was a brand new genre. However, the volume that surprised them every time was the one from the genre they never read, the one they had preconceptions about. The sf readers were surprised that mysteries often (usually!) lacked a puzzle; the mystery readers were surprised that romance has more than sex and swooning; the romance readers were surprised that fantasy has characters.

Well, mainstream readers have preconceptions about sf (listed above) which, if they thought about it, they'd abandon in a minute. After all, Lost is sf--and people love it. They love Star Wars, also sf, and tons of video games, most of which are sf. But they hate to read the genre.

Because we don't let them in.

We write books that "answer" novels written forty years ago, novels no longer in print. Often you can't understand an answer novel without having read the novel it's answering.

We say our "best" new writers are people whose prose is incomprehensible to someone who hasn't been reading sf for thirty years. Much as I love Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross, they're unreadable to the average non-sf book buyer. That's not their fault. It's ours for using them as a starting place for new readers. Doctorow, Stross and others like them have their place in sf, just like the mystery writers (James Crumley comes to mind) who work better for the long-term mystery reader. But mystery readers never share Crumley with the first-time mystery reader. They start the newcomer on Sara Paretsky or Janet Evanovich, writers who are--yes, I'm sorry to say it--fun to read.

Sf's book editors often reject novels because the main idea "has been done before." If that were a criteria for fiction, there would be no mystery or romance genres. A love story with a happy ending--why, it's been done before! An innocent man murdered--why, it's been done before!

Our in-genre book reviewers praise novels that "do something new" and diss books that have action/adventure--a once-important part of sf literature, now difficult to find outside of sf movies.

The mainstream is stealing from us, using the old tropes that the guardians at the sf gate have denied many of sf writers (by refusing to publish books with those tropes) because, those guardians say, James Blish (or Algis Budrys or Fred Pohl) already did that in 1955. The romance people steal from us (try Nora Roberts' JD Robb books) and so do the mystery people (pick up Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Hitchcock's sometime. They have at least one fantastic or sf story per issue. Or just look at my stories "The Silence" and "ProtectVision" [available on Fictionwise.com] which were first published in EQMM to see my point).

Are our books filled with shallow characters, and bad writing? No. But often, a reader needs a key to the genre to enter our little enclave. Mainstream literature used to be like that by eschewing plots and mimicking Raymond Carver. They learned the errors of their ways. Now they're publishing Stephen King (and giving him National Book Awards), praising Suzanne Clarke for her creativity in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell, and celebrating Michael Chabon even though he wrote a draft of Spider-Man 2's screenplay.

Mainstream literature has unlocked their doors and tossed away the keys. It still has a way to go, but it's getting better, more interesting and more accessible to the casual reader. Sf literature on the other hand, seems to be locking its door tighter and tighter.

We should remember that our best writers aren't necessarily the ones with the best ideas, but the ones who make us enjoy each and every word; the ones who don't always show us a new landscape but give us great reads--reads we can share with people who haven't read James Blish, people who think sf is Star Wars.

Because, y'know, the good sf encompasses all of it. From Kevin Brockmeier and J.D. Robb to Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross. We should have something for every taste, not just something for that narrow window of readers who're In The Know.

Maybe then the cross-genre thefts will be acknowledged. Reviewers will say things like "If you like Kevin Brockmeier, try Brian Stableford; Or, if you like Mary Doria Russell, try Kathy Tyers."

Maybe then literature will become all of a piece.

Or maybe I'm imagining an impossible future world.

Maybe I'm making things up.

Like an sf writer does.

Like a mainstream writer does.

Y'know. The way all fiction writers do.

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Four

We discovered soon after our launch last year that our name creates a certain degree of confusion among some of our potential readers and contributors. Not just how to pronounce "Aeon" (EEon, just as if we'd spelled it the modern way), but the subtitle we thought would be so explanatory when we chose it has also been guilty of generating misunderstanding. Some potential readers and contributors have told us they thought the "Speculative Fiction" part meant we only publish science fiction.

The term "Speculative Fiction" has been around for a while; we wouldn't dare to hazard how long, as a term to encompass science fiction, fantasy, and related fiction. The way we see it, the nature of a story is speculative if it deals with things that either can never be true (in terms of what we generally believe about the universe we live in) or might possibly be true at some time in the future, but are not now, and also things such as ghosts and other paranormal elements that some believe in and some do not. Some have defined science fiction as the part of this literature that deals with the possibly possible, and fantasy with the totally impossible. But is faster-than-light travel--that old staple of hard and semi-tumescent science fiction--really possible for human beings? To some die-hards any story with such a premise is automatically fantasy, or at the very least takes place in an alternate universe. Others are of the opinion that if that's the only "fantastic" element it can be quietly ignored in the interests of telling a story.

Does the presence of unicorns make a story a fantasy? Who doesn't think, on reflection, that something that looks very much like a unicorn could be a reality in a very few years? It would probably have no opinion about your sexual history, but forehead horns and glowing fauna have already been done. We're not ignoring horror, by the way, but consider it to reside in the same neighborhood as fantasy, on streets the literary intelligentsia like even less to walk.

Let's leave scientific arguments for genres aside, because the fact is we don't really care. There. We said it. The literature your Aeon editors grew up on (albeit in different generations) is speculative across a wide spectrum of specularity and speculaciousness, and it is surely no coincidence that that's what we like to publish, too. We do like science fiction to be based on science we can believe in for the length of the story, and we like fantasy that's as well-grounded in its own universe as the best science fiction. We like human tales, something at which both science fiction and fantasy--at their best--achieve as well as or better than any more socially-acceptable form of literature.

Nor do we believe that "speculative fiction" is any sort of apologetic ruse to avoid saying "the sf word." We don't believe that when Harlan Ellison said "I write speculative fiction" he was trying to weasel out of the truth. Harlan knows what he writes, and he knows how deeply his stories go into whatever genres, how widely they spread out across them, and how little the labels matter in the end. What he was getting at, we believe, is what we're getting at: If you read and write fiction that asks "What if...?" you're playing on our block. And to that we say welcome to the neighborhood.

This issue we've welcomed quite a few writers to the AEon block. In order of their appearance in the magazine, our Aeon Four authors are: Lawrence M. Schoen, who weaves a Hallowe'en tale of human puppets and wagering demons in "The Game of Leaf and Smile." Kelly Hale, who tells a story that might be about Calypso--or might not--in "Blood Pith Crux." Carrie Richerson, who'll take you to a celestially-high-stakes poker game on the Mississippi in "A Game of Cards." M. Thomas, who'll introduce you to the rainy world of a strange mechanical boy in "The Tinker's Child." Kij Johnson, who lets you listen in on a long-ago conversation about death in "The Knife Birds." Joseph Paul Haines, who creates a disturbingly familiar near-future and a little girl who lives there in "Copper Angels." Laura Anne Gilman, who'll propel you into a nightmare world of mutants and survivors in "End of Day."

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The Game of Leaf and Smile

Lawrence M. Schoen

There's a holly tree just past the driveway where I live; a honking big holly tree. I'd walked out to the car one fine day and happened to glance up as a single leaf fell from the tree. I put out my hand, caught the leaf on my palm, and that little bit of green stabbed into my flesh and drew blood. Time froze. Okay, not really, but it did slow down a bit, and the entire scene locked into place for me. Seemingly random events are actually purposive, even if we cannot fathom the source that inflicts them on us. I don't like not being able to fathom, so I invented an explanation and wrote it down.

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JUST AFTER TWILIGHT, in the first full seconds of the evening of the autumnal equinox, in the city mortals call Philadelphia, a demon invoked a random act. The demon was named Kejstvil, a recently anointed Lord of Pain, the self-styled Friend of Fallen Foliage, and the autumn tourney champion of the past one hundred ninety-seven consecutive years. The random action involved a surge along a neural pathway in a motorist's foot, just as he began to move it from accelerator to brake. The foot twitched. The brake went untouched. The driver's car struck and killed a child playing in the street. Time froze.

In that instant the air filled with dust, scattered motes of perception and far-seeing sent by every major demon, and many lesser ones too, bearing witness to the start of this year's tourney. Silently they looked on as Kejstvil's minions caught the boy's soul, clutched it fast with claws of smoky anguish, and stretched it wide for their master's inspection. As befit a defending champion, the Pain Lord took corporeal form first, assuming the aspect of autumn leaves. He swept in close, a swirl of gold and red and brown.

His challenger rippled into existence on the other side of the young soul, man-shaped and shadowy, head devoid of ears or eyes or mouth, and with just the hint of a ridge where a nose might otherwise be expected relative to the chin. Lord Zhole, eldest of the Lords of Disease, had been roused from self-imposed retirement by the ill luck of a demonic lottery. Demon law required an autumnal contest, and if no one would volunteer to face the reigning champion, then all of demonkind drew lots. Not even the eldest of the Lords of Disease could pass, and so Zhole found himself there now. Together with Kejstvil he examined the soul of the newly dead child, peeling away the fading memories of its recent life.

"You need not have killed this mortal to mark our game's setting," said Zhole, his tone heavy with contempt.

Kejstvil chuckled, a throaty rustling sound, freshly incarnated with the new season. "Screw him," he said. "It's been a long time since any of you older relics got tagged for the challenge. I wanted a sacrifice to commemorate the event. Have your eons made you squeamish? Forget the kid. You'd be better off focusing on the playing field. This single street, both sides, for the length of this one block, defines our game. Name your tools, Zhole; then I'll do the same."

Lord Zhole felt no offense at Kejstvil's lack of respect. "I will sow what I hope to reap," he replied. "Smiles will be my instrument and the measure of my success."

"You are as unimaginative as you are old," said Kejstvil, snorting. "Looking at you now it's hard to believe all the stories I've heard of the fearsome Zhole, Lord of Disease. Can you even recall the last plague you unleashed? Can you trace the last arc of contagion you painted across the mortal landscape? No, probably not. You putter away in your own demesne, growing smiles like some imbecilic gardener with affect vegetables."

Zhole merely shrugged, a slight lift of his chin. "There can be no shadow without light. Perhaps after you've sourced a millennia of anguish and suffering you'll appreciate its opposite as I have learned to." He paused, then added, "or perhaps not. As for the smiles, I gather them, rather than grow them. Think of it as my retirement, planned back when you were still an imp. It amuses me to store the energies I harvested so long ago in expressions of mortal delight. But I wouldn't expect you to understand, let alone appreciate the practice. You spend too much time emulating the disaffected and nihilistic mortal youths you so enjoy tormenting."

Vibrations of amusement chimed around them from the audience of perceptual dust. It was clear even to Kejstvil that they hoped he might finally lose the tourney.

"Spare me the lecture of your superior sensibilities," said Kejstvil. "You're a dabbler, nothing more. But I'll respect the gesture and counter your pathetic smiles with the tokens of my own hobby, the crisp and colorful leaves of the season."

Zhole gazed up and down the tree-lined suburban street, noting the heavy colors of autumn on every branch. Already he had been played for a fool; Kejstvil had selected the game site to ensure himself a sizable advantage. Protocol required some form of counter gesture. Zhole summoned a ripe expression from his garden, transporting it through the darkness and nonspace of his manifested form. It rose to the surface of his face, a flicker of amusement, visible at last. He wore a self-satisfied grin he had captured centuries before during a wedding feast as an aged nomadic chieftain saw his only daughter well matched to his chosen successor. Zhole plucked the merriment from his dark face and flung it at the still squirming soul. Surprised giggles of ethereal sound rippled where it hit and stuck.

Kejstvil's minions skittered back, releasing their ephemeral grasps. The soul darted free, rising into the sky. Unmarked by any demon's sigil, the energies of its limited life experiences dissipated unclaimed. The Gatherer of Smiles watched the soul vanish, having learned all he needed from it. Once again the air rippled with their audience's chuckle.

"Let us discuss the prize," said Zhole. "If I recall aright, the winner may apply his sigil to a single mortal, mark it without the usual investment of energies, and then reap the full value of its life experiences upon death."

"Oh, surely you can give me more sport than that," said Kejstvil. "I tire of the same trophy, year after year. I had in mind something more personal instead."

Zhole nodded, unsurprised. Kejstvil's side wagers were well known. They had brought much ruin to his previous opponents, and much power to him, not least of which his recent elevation to the position of a Lord of Pain. "I'm listening," he said. "Tell me what you have in mind."

"If I win, for every hour lived by each of the game's pieces after the tourney's end, you'll hand over a similar conversion of your energies."

Had he a mouth, Zhole might have gasped. The potential loss of such a wager could completely extinguish a lesser demon's existence. Against him it might well mean the loss of his entire garden, and worse, force him to emerge from retirement to once again sustain himself. And yet, if he won...

"And if I win, for every moment of delight or joy, every instant of happiness experienced by each of the game's pieces for the rest of their lives, you will surrender up equivalent energies of your own, even to the point of your dissolution."

Kejstvil froze. So great was his surprise at the counter wager that the leaves comprising his body lost their cohesion and blew apart. Zhole watched with satisfaction as the Lordling of Pain floundered to regain control. A moment passed. Kejstvil found his composure, and built himself anew from the scattered leaves.

"Big talk and a big bet," said Kejstvil after resuming his form. "Just how many pieces do you plan to choose?"

Zhole shrugged. "You will learn that upon the night of our gaming, if you accept the wager. But be advised to come with sufficient energies to spare."

"I think you're bluffing," said Kejstvil, "and I'm going to call that bluff."

Zhole summoned a contemplative pout with just the faintest hint of an ironic lift at the edges of the mouth and let it rise to the surface of his face. "Then we are agreed," he said through wry lips.

"Better start planning your strategy. You've got this one street for the length of this single block. Halloween is a mere five weeks away. From twilight to midnight, this is going to be our game board. Choose your pieces with care." He gestured and a flurry of leaves swept over the body of the dead child that lay between them. "Make sure each of them have touched this kid in some way."

Zhole nodded his dark head. "That is the way of such tourneys."

Kejstvil's figure of leaves blew apart, but reformed a moment later. "One more thing. Do me a small favor."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, pick young pieces for our game."

"And why is that?" asked Zhole.

Kejstvil's rasping laughter scratched rents in the night air. "Because I plan to crush you, Lord Zhole. And the younger the pieces, the more years they'll have left for me to siphon away your energies. When our contest ends, your garden will be nothing more than a memory. You've gotten soft. What kind of demon lord retires and putters in a garden? Better you had faded to oblivion. Your defeat will remind all our cousins of this. Their day, and yours, is long past."

A warm gust blew, and Kejstvil was gone. Moments later the far-seeing motes of all demonkind faded as well; the air's dust was only dust.

Hoarding his smiles, Zhole faded into the darkness. Time unfroze. Sound burst forth once more, the screams of onlookers, the squeal of brakes, the dull wet thud of a body coming to rest some forty feet from where it had stood poised to catch a football moments before. The game of Leaf and Smile had begun.

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Time is mutable to demonkind. Zhole slowed his demesne then prepared and planned for decades over the next few weeks. Most of his realm existed in darkness, acres of rich damp earth that never knew the blight of daylight. Row after row of human mouths smiled at the tops of woody green stalks, like the happy heads of expressive flowers. Each was a recreation from some point in the life experiences of a mortal he had marked and claimed during his long career as a Lord of Disease. Each contained the energies inherent in that experience, the portion of existence left behind after the soul had passed on. Such essence of life, pure and sustaining was the only thing of real interest to demonkind.

As time trickled forward Zhole harvested dozens of expressions of joy from his garden, and expended their energies in gaudiomancy. His scrying revealed glimpses and snippets of the lives and destinies of all the mortals who would cross the game site on the appointed night. It was possible that Kejstvil performed similar preparations, developing counter strategies at every turn. And Kejstvil was a seasoned player, having won most of his past victories through elaborate and complex play involving dozens--sometimes hundreds!--of mortal game pieces. Normally, the laws that governed all demons restricted each of them from marking no more than one mortal in any year. Tourneys, however, were the exception. The stakes of this wager were high indeed, representing many times the normal return from a mortal's life experiences. Zhole knew all too well that even a single game piece could mean the end of his garden.

It's possible that Kejstvil's charge was accurate, that indeed Zhole had grown soft. Certainly surrounding himself with expressions of mortal pleasure and delight had affected his judgment. He knew this, even as he recognized it as the backlash of an eternity of engineering grief and sorrow and that there was nothing he could do about it so late in life. Ultimately, Zhole settled upon a strategy and strolled his garden for what might be the final time, then allowed time to rush forward to the appointed hour and left to give challenge.

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As the sun dipped toward the horizon along the tree-shaded block of row homes Zhole and Kejstvil met again, appearing much as they had before. They settled upon the roof at one corner of their game board, a red and white striped storefront still selling flavored water ice late into the unnaturally warm autumn. A haze of demonic motes surrounded them, mute spectators to the tourney.

"You came," said the lordling. "I thought you might panic and simply forfeit the default prize."

"I would not deprive you of a contest," replied Zhole. "Moreover, I have every intention of defeating you."

Clouds gathered overhead. The wind picked up, plucking leaves from the trees along both sides of the street. Zhole extended his perception and detected an expenditure of energies as Kejstvil applied his will upon the weather.

"How many pieces are you going to field?" asked Kejstvil. "Ten? Fifty? A hundred? I have plenty of leaves to go around."

"I would not burden you with the expense of marking so many souls if you won. That would be unkind. I have selected only three pieces," said Zhole, "but as you requested, they are all young."

"Three?" said Kejstvil. "All this effort for only three? Even if they're young it hardly seems worth it."

"You are welcome to concede now," said Zhole, drawing forth a minor grin and flicking it at the younger demon from the tip of one shadowy finger.

Kejstvil wiped it away with a rustle. "Spare me your attempts at wit, Zhole. Let's be clear on the terms. Every touch of every leaf by a game piece is a point for me."

"Agreed. And each second of every smile and smirk, every expression of joy or delight, happiness or mirth, pleasure or rapture experienced by each and every game piece is a point for me."

"Fine. Go ahead and choose your pieces. The sooner we get started, the sooner I win."

"Don't be naïve," said Zhole. "You know I have long since chosen. They will arrive in their turn. We have until midnight." His flattened silhouette expanded into three dimensions, giving him the appearance of a man in a shadowy coat. "Come, assume a more mortal aspect and let me buy you a water ice while we wait."

The Lord of Pain neither altered form nor replied.

The evening deepened. One by one, mortals appeared at each door, setting out and lighting flames within a host of caricature pumpkins. Leaves fluttered from the trees, and gathered in piles upon the sidewalks. A light wind occasionally stirred them into broad but shallow barricades, easier to wade through than evade. Several vans and a dark limousine parked in front of one house. A small pantheon of gorgeous young mortals emerged from the limo. A bevy of sycophants and professional flacks escorted them up the walkway and through the door. The vans disgorged a film crew and a small host of other workers. Most proceeded directly into the house, but a few lingered. With brooms and rakes and blowers they swept the walkway clean, stuffing the debris into plastic leaf bags that they tossed into one of the vans before driving off. The limo soon departed as well and the street was quiet once more.

On the roof, Zhole savored a cherry water ice through the wide smile of a 12th century Mayan priest. At last the street began to fill with wandering bands of costumed children hurrying from door to door with pillowcases and grocery bags. A station wagon with simulated wood paneling rounded the corner and parked in the space previously occupied by the limo. A quartet of squealing prepubescent girls tumbled out from the backseat. One had a black band of cloth binding her eyes. She clung to her cohorts for support and guidance. Two adults emerged from the front seats and ushered the girls up the walkway toward the door.

"Our first piece has arrived," said Zhole.

"Which one?"

"The little one dressed to look like a wanton celebrity," said Zhole.

"That could be any of them."

Zhole exchanged his expression for one of pained amusement, the barest of smiles, while noting Kejstvil's effort to appear unannoyed. "Your pardon. I refer to the barely costumed girl in the blindfold."

"Where are they going? I don't see any trick-or-treat sacks."

"Nor will you. But I assure you; all of my game pieces observe a theme. This one is going to a party."

The camera crew had appeared, hustling quickly from the door to film the girls' arrival. The blindfolded child had her hands out in front, questing blindly. Her friends' squeals grew louder and then doubled in volume again as a well-endowed blonde woman in tight pink clothes appeared in the doorway.

"You gain no points from that squealing, Zhole."

"Nor you from the clean swept walkway."

Zhole reached inward and through to his garden. He pulled a teenager's vacuous smile onto his face. "My first game piece has won a contest; she just doesn't know it yet. She thinks this is a simple Halloween party, one with a theme involving her favorite singer, her idol no less. In fact, she is the grand prize winner in a record promotion. The prize is indeed a party, but one with her idol as the host. But wait, see? They're removing her blindfold now."

Her companions pulled the black cloth free, gasping in wonder and amazement themselves. The game piece had kept up a steady stream of questions to her friends since exiting the car, but her words turned to incoherent screams of astonished rapture as she beheld the blonde singer in the doorway. Video cameras and boom mikes captured it all for posterity and cable television.

"Can you feel her adoration and love?" asked Zhole. "Who would have thought a pop star could inspire such pure and simple joy? Thank you for suggesting I choose youthful pieces. They are so passionate in their delights. Ah, but look, they've already gone inside to pursue their private party. Tell me, Kejstvil, did you earn any score with that piece?"

The Lord of Pain rustled with displeasure. "How's she related to the kid I sacrificed? There's got be some connection or the piece is invalid and all points acquired are void."

"Two days before you killed him, she bumped into the boy in line at a local fast-food restaurant. He called her a 'clumsy turd.' I don't believe she remembered the incident when her mother asked her if she knew the dead child later that week. She's a nice girl, but rather vapid, even for a young mortal."

Kejstvil rumbled, "Choose your next piece, damn you. The game's not over yet."

"In time," said Zhole. "I have selected all my pieces, but they each arrive according to their own plans. Are you sure you wouldn't care for a water ice?"

"Keep your damn sugary treats. I just want to know your remaining choices!"

Zhole pasted an enigmatic smile upon his face and merely waited. Half an hour passed. Children came and went along the street, door to door. "There," said Zhole, gesturing with a sweep of one shadowy arm. "That boy, the pirate captain. He sat behind your sacrificed child when they were both in kindergarten. He is my second piece."

Kejstvil nodded smugly. "He's dragging his feet. He's already scored me a hundred points just from the time since you named him."

The boy pirate proceeded from house to house, one of half a dozen children. His buccaneers included two clowns, a cowboy, a ballerina, and a cartoon super heroine. At each door they chanted and squealed, demanding tribute and acts of degradation, upon pain of eggs and toilet paper villainy. "Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat." Chocolates and other prepackaged confections followed, and the pirate captain game piece racked up points of Halloween delight for the Gatherer of Smiles. The group of children shuffled through piles of leaves, laughing and giggling, exclaiming over their swag. With his every dragged and crunching footfall, the pirate wiped out Zhole's lead and added to Kejstvil's tally. The Lord of Pain chuckled.

"Wait and see," said Zhole. "It is the child's birthday, and the last house belongs to his grandfather."

"What are you trying to pull?" said Kejstvil. "You picked a piece born today?"

"As is my right. You chose the location. I merely worked with the materials you left to me. Ah, but look, the pirate and his crew have reached the grandparent's home. And what is this? Could it be? Oh my yes, a party. Imagine that, a birthday party. And a surprise at that. Have you ever seen such bliss on the face of a seven-year-old before? Can you see it clearly from where you sit? Here, it looks like this." Zhole again searched through his garden. He drew forth a smile of inexpressible delight and wore it upon his dark face.

"Another party? You think you're going to win with this kind of shit? The kid kicked his way through thousands of leaves. My score is still higher than yours, with a comfortable margin."

"True enough, but they've gone inside for their party. The door has closed and there will be no more leaves for our young pirate tonight. Only presents and cake and party games."

"So what?" said Kejstvil, "little boys tire early. An hour from now, two at the most, and he'll crash into his bed. You won't get any more points from him then."

"Did I mention the puppy?" said the Gatherer of Smiles.

"Puppy?"

"A perfectly adorable creature, beyond merely cute. A gift from the grandfather. Gaze through the walls of the house and you can see the pirate opening a large, holed box even now. Can you hear him agog with pleasure and delight? What boy doesn't love a puppy?"

"Fine. Let the kid have his dog. He'll be asleep soon enough."

"To be sure, snug in a bed with a squirming puppy in his arms, licking his face, inducing dreams of summer frolics and other romps ahead. My game piece need not be awake to experience joy. Every moment of blissful slumber will add to my total."

"Enough of your bullshit! Choose another piece. You claimed three. Choose."

"We must wait again. The final piece is not due to arrive for an hour or more."

"Another party guest?" said Kejstvil. "Is that your strategy, to keep all your pieces indoors?"

Zhole shrugged. "The scoring begins the moment they enter the game board," he said. "Whether they choose to roam the street's leaf-filled gutters or seek their amusements within one structure or another is not up to me."

They waited. Zhole gazed within the houses at his first two pieces. The boy had been put to bed. His tummy bulged with birthday cake. The golden-furred puppy lay in his arms. In the other home, the star-struck girl danced and laughed and was photographed as she thrilled to the presence of the blonde pop star. Zhole's score climbed higher. If his luck only held a while longer, the upstart lordling's winning streak would finally end.

"Our third piece has arrived," said Zhole as a red convertible swept onto the tree-lined street, screeching to an abrupt stop midway down the block. The wind picked up suddenly, sending leaves down upon the couple in the open car.

"Which one?" demanded Kejstvil. "The guy or the girl?"

"The young woman is our third and final piece," said Zhole. "In past years, your sacrifice knew her as his baby-sitter. But tonight she is here in another role, a festive party-goer with her boyfriend." The couple walked hand in hand toward a ranch style house, laughing at the leaves skirling around their feet.

Zhole felt the other-dimensional crackle of expended energies as Kejstvil applied his will to the wind again. "Are you so desperate to win that you resort to weather tricks?"

"When you lock the pieces up in houses, what other choice do I have?"

Zhole laughed. "Lock them up? Hardly. They come and go as their situations warrant. It is two hours till midnight. The boy is snug in his bed as he should be. The girl all but worn out and overwhelmed at her own party. You asked I pick them young. You are not so naive to expect me to select feral children who roam the streets. And this last one, well, she is old enough to come and go as she pleases. And it pleases her to be at a party with her boyfriend."

Kejstvil howled his frustration. "You're making a mockery of this contest." An answering quaver rippled in the air around them.

"I wonder," said Zhole, "if you are half so gracious when you win. Why don't you simply concede the game now? It will spare you the pain and embarrassment of the final scoring."

Kejstvil started to sputter, but in an instant his fury ebbed away. "Hold on, what is she doing?"

Zhole peered into the house at his third piece. "Ingesting a recreational drug," he replied. "Mortals call it 'Ecstasy.' Quite appropriate to the circumstance, don't you think."

Kejstvil watched quietly a while and then laughed. "You've lost now. You've just been too clever for your own good. Your game piece got to her party too fashionably late."

"Perhaps. What does it matter?"

"Check out the pleasure beyond just the game piece. See the other partiers? See how they've paired off, already caught up in their games, screwing here and there throughout the house?"

Zhole watched, his face blank. His collection had no frowns. "Again, what of it?"

"Your girl's looking for action, but all the rooms are occupied. See? Even now they're heading through the house, out the back way to the yard."

It was so. Zhole watched as his final game piece pulled her boy friend into the empty yard, dancing around him like a nymph, luring him with kisses and caresses. Willing and eager, he followed.

"What do I care where they have their frolic? On a sofa or on the lawn, so long as she derives some pleasure from it my point total only grows."

"You should care," said Kejstvil. "The grass is damp, but look, there's a bower of dry leaves conveniently close by."

Leaves aplenty lay throughout the yard. Someone had actually done some raking earlier in the day and several piles awaited bagging. Kejstvil's winds moved them together. The pair of mortals danced in the moonlight, tugging at one another's clothes in the warm autumn night.

Helpless, Zhole watched his naked game piece yelp as her toes touched the wet grass. Her boy friend scampered to her side, lifted her in his arms, and laughingly carried her deeper into the yard. He laid her down upon the bed of leaves. Young love and psychotropics did the rest and soon the two were writhing in passion.

"Very shrewd, Zhole. A trio of parties. Pop stars and puppies and sexual pleasures. I didn't think you had it in you. But you've outsmarted yourself with this last one. How many of my leaves do you imagine touch her at this instant? How many touch her again with every wriggle and thrust? Far more than her smiles."

"It will be close," said Zhole, his face dark as ever, and without expression.

"Yes," said Kejstvil, "too close. But the luck's turned my way. If it holds, maybe when they finish their rutting she'll simply fall asleep. I'm hoping for a restless sleep, full of tossing and turning and devoid of any pleasant dreams, at least till midnight."

* * * *

* * * *

Midnight arrived and the game ended. The demons began their tally, rolling back and reviewing time, again and again until they were agreed on the score.

"Damn close," said the Lord of Pain with undisguised glee. "A difference of only seventeen points. But it's a clear victory by the terms of the game."

Zhole nodded. "You have won," he said simply. "I will pay you your winnings as they accrue, day by day, as long as the three games pieces live."

"Too bad you only had three pieces," said Kejstvil. "The payment won't cripple you like I'd hoped. At least I'll keep you away from your idiotic garden for a few decades."

"I fear you are in for a disappointment. That span is far too great."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I told you that I selected my pieces along a theme," said Zhole.

"Yes, yes, a theme of indoor parties, very clever of you, but not clever enough."

Zhole shook his dark head. "That was not my theme."

"Not your theme? What then?"

"Imminent death," he said. "Had you forgotten that I am the eldest of the Lords of Disease? I chose my pieces accordingly. All three will die before the coming of Spring."

"I don't understand," said Kejstvil.

"Are you really so blind? Did you not think to look? My little empty-headed pop star fan was not so empty-headed. She possesses an undiagnosed brain tumor. I expect she will lapse into a coma within a few weeks and be dead by the winter solstice."

Kejstvil sputtered. "You can't cheat me like that. One piece, perhaps, but not all three. What about the boy?"

Zhole shrugged. "The second piece, my pirate captain, suffers from leukemia. His last months will be spent teaching his new dog old tricks."

"And the third? The baby-sitter?"

"A bit of irony there as well, Kejstvil. She has given her heart to her beau. But while her love is strong, her heart has a flaw, a defect within one chamber wall. It worsens silently day by day until ultimately it will simply burst. I suspect she'll be dead within a week."

"You did this," said Kejstvil. "You afflicted the pieces before the game even began!"

"Not at all. I merely worked within the parameters you established. Why else do you think I chose only three? All the rest upon this block are healthy. Only these few are soon to die."

"Nothing? You are telling me I can claim nothing from this contest?" For miles around the leaves on every tree trembled with Kejstvil's rage.

"Oh no, I would not say 'nothing,'" said Zhole. "You can expect payment from me for the remaining weeks each game piece lives. I would never welsh on a bet."

"Weeks?! I expended more energy than that manipulating the winds this past night."

"A good point. Then too, even before you can claim your prize, you'll first have to expend the required energies to mark their souls with your sigil," said Zhole. "I suppose your win will come as something of a loss then. But, you still retain your title. Undefeated now for one hundred ninety-eight years. Surely that must count for something? Surely the other Demon Lords won't hold the net loss against you in future tourneys. Why, you don't suppose they'll remember my strategy the next time one steps forward to issue a chal--?"

With a wordless shriek the Lord of Pain vanished in a swirl of dying leaves. An echo of softly laughing dust motes followed him from the mortal plane. Zhole lingered a moment, alone on the roof, and cast his perceptions to each of the three houses in turn. Kejstvil had fled the playing field without marking the game pieces, voiding any claim on them.

With the delicate touch honed by millennia of practice, undimmed by inactivity, Lord Zhole reached out and altered each of the sleeping mortals who had served in the game. From time beyond reckoning disease had been his domain. Of late, he applied his subtle mastery of biology solely to maintain his garden. Now he used the same skills to deftly repair the deadly imperfections in each game piece. Not a one of them stirred in their sleep. And with Kejstvil departed, those same tourney rules granted him the right to mark the pieces with his sigil. In the morning they would awake to full and healthy lives, which would more than repay his costs in the tourney.

Zhole withdrew his perceptions and powers and gazed once more upon the darkened street. In his memory the mortals appeared again; he could almost hear the squeals of laughter, see the expressions of raw delight. Zhole felt a strange reverberation of it within himself. It was such a pity that Kejstvil couldn't appreciate the irony of it all. The Lord of Disease prepared to return to his own realm, and paused, surprised at the broad smile he felt stretching across his face. He reached up and touched its edges in wonder. It had not come from his garden.

* * * *

* * * *

* * * *

* * * *

Blood Pith Crux

Kelly Hale

The inspiration for this story is embarrassing, tawdry, and kind of pathetic. Thus, me cleverly draping it in universal themes of loneliness and isolation, using characters from myth who insist they bear only a passing resemblence to their namesakes. The result is very pretty, though. I think.

* * * *

* * * *

I LICKED THE SALT OF OCEANS from his skin. Tongue and flesh. I remember that. I think I remember that. He tasted of home--a home I knew the name of once. World remembered. World gone. Sketched into the sand and washed away by morning.

My hair is so long now. I can scarcely tell where it ends and the seaweed begins.

But this is not the story of Calypso. Not really.

* * * *

* * * *

Washed upon the shore is a man, his body rocking in the surf. The waves are the hands of Nereids. They pull him to safety now, but if he doesn't wake soon, they will drag him into the sea again.

A woman watches from the top of the dunes. She comes to the beach every day to see what has fallen from the sky, what the oceans have cast upon her shore. She's seen the bodies of many creatures, some of them men, swollen with water, very dead. Sometimes the sea washes them away; other times it takes an age for their bones to be picked clean by the crabs and gulls. But this man is different for the simple fact that he isn't dead. And that is something she doesn't want to think about, both hope and the fear of hoping, for if this living man has been washed upon her shore then--

Hope is a curse. A trick. Still, she goes down to the beach and drags the man back to the warmth of her cave. Pours fresh water between his lips.

He coughs then swallows a little of it. His swollen eyelids break open, ripping out some of his lashes as he blinks. He forces words out and over a thick tongue. He says, "Thank you."

She had expected questions. The questions anyone would have asked. "Where am I? What happened? How did I get here?" Questions she would have answered with soothing assurances that he need not worry about where he is or why, or who she is or why. He doesn't ask the questions he should.

"The fire feels good," he says. "It's a good fire." Then he shudders, and she leans across, tucking the blanket round him again. He reaches out to touch her hair as it falls across him. Rubs it between his thumb and forefinger. Is it real or am I touching seaweed? Is this a dream I'm dreaming on my way to death? She knows the feeling. She's been there herself. Only there was no one's hair to touch.

* * * *

* * * *

"Do you remember your name?" he asks. Not the question I expect. He never asks the expected questions. If he'd asked, "What is your name?" I would have no answer. I am Myself and Me. The only names I need on this island with no one to answer to. But I can't answer this question either. Do I remember my name? I could remember it. But no good would come of that. And now I ask questions of myself I haven't asked in ages. I feel my eyes screw up and maybe a tear will slip through. I turn my head away.

"May I call you Calypso?" he asks. "She was also beautiful and she lived on a wave-ringed island much like this." I'm beautiful then. Only because he's looking at me. "Oh, but that would make me Ulysses, I'm afraid."

I ask, "Who is that?" He tells me some of the story. A great hero. A wanderer. Ulysses rescued by Calypso after losing his ship and all his crew. How Ulysses and Calypso lived together on her island in bliss for a time.

"It ends badly then." I laugh. The laugh doesn't come out the way I hope.

"She was better off without him." His eyelids flutter down and shut me out for a time.

I tend him. He recovers. Seems in no hurry to leave. And his love, when it comes, is out of obligation, duty, good form. He thinks he owes me comfort in kind. I know this. I'm not a fool.

It happens like this. I have handed him the bowl brimming with our supper, fat shrimp and lotus blossoms. He takes it and sets it aside. Looks at me. I don't like it. I have no such tender regard for myself as I see in his eyes. It's not mercy, the way he looks at me. I start to rise. He catches my hand, and there I am, caught.

"Do you know what a body memory is?" he asks. "When you remember something in your blood, your pith, the very crux of you?"

I know it. Of course I know it. Why else am I?

"I know you in here." He jabs at his solar plexus. Then smiles, wistful, melancholy, and taps his temple. "But not in here."

"I don't think I ever set eyes on you before I rescued you." I put subtle stress on the word 'rescued' and I'm ashamed of it. But it is his cue. He leans into me, kisses me--there, just at the edge of my mouth, then our lips together, and our tongues and teeth. My thighs open to his not so humble sacrifice.

The night comes and goes, and comes again. He turns me over and over, and around and around, loving me from every direction possible, until I feel myself floating weightless in the womb of night, and there is no endless prison, Time, no forever that can outlast his love, no terrible thing I have forgotten, nothing but friction, saliva, sweat, mucous, and fire.

One morning I find him building a raft on the beach.

* * * *

* * * *

The man is singing. He is naked, brown from the sun, hair streaked with gold, eyes as blue as the sky. The song he sings is wild and gusty. Even an ugly man would seem beautiful using all his muscles like that, building something full of promise that will get him nowhere.

He sees the woman standing at the top of the dunes, watching him. There is a corona of light behind her. She eclipses the sun. He can't make out her face and so can't read her expression. In this she is like a goddess--that naked, unknowable Divine.

"You take the breath from me, Calypso," he says. She says nothing, just stares. He is suddenly uncomfortable, too vulnerable in his nudity. He turns and gestures to the raft. "What do you think?" Silence. "I know it doesn't look very seaworthy at the moment, but it will be. We'll have to take enough water for eight or nine days. But if I'm as clever a sailor as I think, we should reach the Rock in less than that and then my ship will come."

"I thought your ship was lost," she says.

"No," he laughs. "My ship is eternal. It is I who am lost."

"I saved you."

"Yes. I can't thank you enough, apparently." Not bitter yet. But he will be--in a week, a month, another few years. He looks upon his handiwork. "I'm trying to return the favor."

"Are you unhappy here?"

"No. But if I stay I will become a fat hedonist, eating figs from your hand all day, and drunk on your body all night. You would soon grow bored with me."

She is walking down from the dunes, bare feet sinking in the white sand. He can see her face now and turns his own away in shame, for she has seen the truth of who will be bored with whom. He explains, justifies. "I can't stay here. I have friends who will be worried."

The woman has no friends, no people left. Once she commanded vast armies. They marched a long road built from the bones of their enemies. But at the end of the road they found only a mirror.

She doesn't tell him this. Her memories are secrets in the blood, the pith, the crux. She says, "I can never leave. This island is my prison."

"Who dares imprison the mighty Calypso?" It is only half a joke. His body is tensed for war, the battle stance of a smiter of infidels, righter of wrongs and liberator of the oppressed. Naked as he is, it's almost ridiculous.

"Does it matter?" she says.

* * * *

* * * *

Two days he works on the raft, and at night, such hunger. I feed him oysters and tamarinds. I sleep and dream of storms, strange storms without wind or rain. Without sound, though I feel the roll and clatter of thunder. I awaken to his, "hush, hush now," and his arms around me, rocking me like a baby--comforting at first, but then I'm angry, as if he is the cause of my exile and has returned only to remind me of it. Outside, rain starts to fall, and farther out upon the sea, the wind churns up a hurricane. My grief and my anger distract him long enough to mean the difference between escape and another month with me.

* * * *

* * * *

Twice Ulysses builds his raft and twice the wind and rain destroy it. He returns to her half drowned, ripped and splintered, pitched and torn. He does not blame her for the first storm, but after the second storm, he knows, and in the calm that often follows storms, with mists rising from the ground and glittering droplets on the leaves, a storm begins to gather in him.

* * * *

* * * *

"Let me go. If you won't come with me, then let me go."

"I don't control the weather!" Even as I say it, I realize it isn't the truth. But I can't control how I feel.

"Come with me!"

"If I leave I will die."

"Why? How do you know? Have you even tried?"

I may have tried long ago. I don't remember. Besides, the warder has no need to escape.

He looks past me, watching the gulls swoop and dive. "If I stay here I will die."

* * * *

* * * *

His love is no longer love so much as a fierce and desperate tunneling to freedom through her body. He hurts her and she lets him. And after, remorse. And after remorse comes hate.

Ulysses makes camp on the beach, and begins to build again, working through the days and nights without rest, eating his catch raw from the ocean, taking nothing from the hand of fair Calypso, not even water. Sometimes she watches him from atop the dunes, and sometimes he glances her direction. The hollow place that she filled with him begins to empty out again, bled off, swallowed by the sand, washed out with the tide.

He will leave, even if he dies in the trying.

The third raft is finished. It's better than the other two. Stronger. And when the final rope is bound and knotted and coated with pitch, he sits beside it, one hand on the raft, the other shading his eyes as the ocean swallows the sun. He is waiting for the storm.

* * * *

* * * *

I pick up a handful of sand, let it slip between the bars of my fingers. Someday, when I am sand, a woman will sit on the dunes, watching a man leaving her, and she will pour me through her fingers like this.

He looks over his shoulder at me, a hard look. A somber invitation. A glowering challenge.

* * * *

* * * *

"Go," she says and gets slowly to her feet. White sand clings to her body in mottled patches.

"Come with me," he cries. "I will show you wonders!"

She shows him her true face. "I have tortured more wonders than you will ever see, Ulysses. This is my prison. I am its only guard. And here I will keep myself until I have been punished long enough."

"Even the gods do not judge as harshly as we judge ourselves. How will you know when your sentence is up? How can you know?"

"I will know," she says, "when you return to me."

* * * *

* * * *

In the blood. Tongue and flesh. I can still taste him. Salty, bitter, sweet. Bound hand and foot, mouth and eye, face turned forever to the sea.

My hair is so long now. A winding sheet for dead things washed ashore.

* * * *

* * * *

* * * *

* * * *

* * * *

* * * *

Puppet People

Bruce Boston

If puppet people were the world we would lie there helplessly.

With no one to pull our strings or give us voices, mute and wooden we would endure the centuries.

As dust gathered on us in Gothic heaps, we might dream of taking on life.

Not with the jerk and pull of marionettes but the fluid grace of humans.

Most of the time we would not dream.

If puppet people were the world we would wait and pray for a clever god to appear.

* * * *

* * * *

* * * *

* * * *

* * * *

* * * *

A Game of Cards

Carrie Richerson

* * * *

* * * *

FOR THOSE UNFAMILIAR WITH DOGS, it might be difficult to imagine how much of the personality of those intelligent animals resides in their ears--until they hold in their hands a smooth canine skull, shorn of those semaphores of mood, temperament, and interest.

I keep the skull of Anubis upon my mantelpiece, where it tells me of the past, the future, and the far distant present. An invaluable seer. Yet without the twitch, the prick, the swivel, the laying-back of its ears, I have difficulty interpreting what it tells me in its dry, husky growl.

* * * *

* * * *

I saw him this evening, my enemy, my nemesis: on the gangway, boarding the sternwheeler Fidel, bound for New Orleans from St. Louis. At least, I think it was he. He had affected the fashion of a riverboat gambler: tight black breeches and jacket, a snowy ruffled shirt, shiny black boots with ridiculously pointed toes, and a flat-brimmed black hat with a narrow silver band. Somewhere on his person he would have concealed a derringer. It was all so overdone.

He looked up, caught my eye, and smiled. Of course, when I fought my way through the onrushing crowd, he had disappeared. I was sure it was he, however. Even if his appearance had not been designed to goad me (and he could be sure I would understand the reference), the way the cards leaped in their wrappings in the pocket above my heart would have declared his presence. It is a good sign that I have spotted him so early in the voyage. So early in the game.

Unless the obviousness of the character was a diversion. Unless he was really the stoop-shouldered man leaning on a cane, hobbling along to the left of the young rake. Or the generously fleshed matron sweeping along behind him. And whichever passenger he had disguised himself as this time, he would know that I knew he was laughing as he watched me watch his proxy.

I ground my teeth in rage. But he is aboard, of that I am sure. The cards know their master, and they never lie.

* * * *

* * * *

I deal out the cards on the bed in my stateroom. Clubs and spades, black on black on black, in a spiral pattern. So he was the young dandy.

But then I remember the matron wore widow's black. And the elderly gentleman carried a black valise. Even the mincing, blonde maiden in her pink, flounced dress carried a cage containing a small, black bird. I must bide my time until I am sure of my target.

* * * *

* * * *

Still abroad in the world, still destroying and creating. For has he not created me: his shadow, his reflection, his image? His blood, and his sworn enemy.

He is my father and I am yet his son. Once, so long ago implacable Time has hazed the events in even my memory, I was his beloved heir and I looked up to him as everything I aspired to be: a wise judge, a compassionate ruler, a loving father. Builder, seer, provider. I adored him.

I even saved his life. When an ancient foe attacked and murdered him, and cruelly mutilated his body, I tracked down and slew the enemy, then scoured the earth for the scattered parts of my father's body. With the help of my mother's magicks, I restored his life, his honor, his throne. My exploits on his behalf are the stuff of legend, even now.

So what went wrong between us? How did we come to this place of fury and longing? In the same way fathers and sons have always found to hate one another: I coveted his power; he mistrusted my ambition.

Why could it not be enough that in his new life he should hold sway over the endless ranks of the dead? Why must he continue to claim this earth as his kingdom also? What about me? What about my birthright? He could not die, he could not even grow old, and he would not step aside.

Eventually our squabbles broke into open warfare, and my mother, fickle witch! changed allegiance so many times that soon the only thing my father and I had in common was our hatred of her. For a hundred generations we warred, until our own soldiers and subjects rebelled. Until our followers stopped following us into folly. Until the very land we fought over was destroyed. Where once were fertile valleys and nourishing streams, fields of wheat and barley stretching to the horizon, forests of cedar and fir to shelter the people and provide timbers for their ships--are now only eroded fissures, scoured rocks, hills of sand, and the endless, howling wind.

And still we strive against one another whenever we meet in our diaspora throughout this wide world. Are we not a model family for these modern times? Even for us, there is no turning back the pointing finger of Time, no return to that lost era of harmony and trust. I will mourn for my father when I have killed him. And I will miss him when I take his place.

* * * *

* * * *

The lamp hangs too low over the card table: it casts a glow like yellow cream over the cards and the hands of the players, but the faces are half-shadowed and the eyes shy and feral. A porter, dressed in crisp whites that pick up an unfortunate green tinge in the light reflected from the baize, takes murmured orders and silently places drinks at elbows. I order a whiskey, neat; the florid businessman orders the same with ice and soda. The gambler smiles with too many teeth and orders a brandy; he tips the porter lavishly when the snifter arrives. The matron frowns at the liquor and at the mogul's cigar and shakes her head primly when the porter asks her order. The maid has something green and sticky-looking in a tiny glass.

The businessman deals. A clubfooted jack winks up at me, a slow, sultry communication. He is joined by a shy nine, a hearty eight, and a pair of yeoman sevens. The cabin is small and the air close and still, heavy with the aromas of alcohol, tobacco, and sweat. To my right, the mogul unbuttons his waistcoat, calls for the bet, and puffs aggressively on his cigar. Smoke tendrils coil upward and knot under the lamp. I read their complex patterns to learn what cards are abroad.

In the matron's hand, a pair of queens lean their heads together to whisper and giggle about the king's "little problem." The king flushes and averts his gaze angrily. The florid businessman holds a full house of the number of the Beast and the caliber of a bullet; four of the cards are red. Somewhere aboard, blood will be spilled tonight.

The patterns of light and smoke tell me nothing, of course, about the cards in the gambler's hand. He can shield that information from me. But my jack knows where his brothers roam, and two of his kin are in the dandy's grasp. I am not fool enough to draw to an inside straight this early in the evening; when the betting comes round to me, I fold without regret. The night is yet young and my reserves are ample.

I am troubled, however, that the maiden's hand is opaque to me. Her eyes meet mine and she smiles shyly, but something else lives behind them. Something cannier, more sinister. Do I have more than one enemy at this table?

The matron plays for an hour and retires in tight-lipped annoyance when she has lost to her limit. The businessman stays longer, and should not have: he loses badly and leaves in blustery confusion at his bad fortune. Until this point the gambler and I have managed to control the hands almost evenly, winning here and losing there to each other and, occasionally, to the maiden--but always driving the other two out of the game. I have seen the realization slowly dawn in my opponent's eyes that there is a third will at this table that contests us both. The maid smiles and laughs over her wins and protests it must be "luck," that she has no skill at cards--but we are not fooled.

Now the three of us sit alone, and look hard at one another. The maid reaches for the cards in the middle of the table, and there is nothing amateurish about the way she shuffles and flips them in suddenly knowing hands. "Gentlemen--shall we play?" What looks out of her eyes now is neither shy nor silly, but very old.

I am overmatched, and flee. When next I see the dandy, he wears a humbled and grim air. And a glint of fear in his eyes as he meets mine across the dining table. The cards in my pocket stir uneasily, and my dinner whiskey is bitter on the tongue.

* * * *

* * * *

After dinner I walk slowly around the deck and stop near the bow. A waxing moon turns the water that curls from the prow to a silvered splash. The wide river has a dull gray sheen in this light, like pewter: so unlike the brown, sluggish, silty flood of the daytime. The banks are mere shadows, too far away to guess at details, but before sunset we passed a section of red-clay bluffs crowned with pines and scrubby brush, falling to marshy coves thick with tall, cane-like reeds that reminded me of papyrus. Now the muskiness of swamp and rotted wood comes clearly across the water.

Above the chug and gurgle of the wheel churning through the water, I hear an owl hooting in the distance, a nightjar's rising cry, and a repetitive trill I don't recognize. On the other side of the bow, a linesman tosses a weighted, knotted rope into the water, pulls it up, and chants out the depth, over and over. The numbers vary dramatically, even over a short stretch of the river. The pilot is steering us slowly mid-channel tonight, lest even our shallow draft go aground on one of the many, ever-shifting sandbars.

So powerfully this wide, brown, fertile flood reminds me of the river beside which I grew up: half a world apart, yet they might be twins, save that one flows north and this other south. Each the mother of her people, life-giver, life-taker, regulator of planting, growth, harvest. River of souls.

Later my father finds me leaning on the railing, watching the curling foam in the moonlight and listening to the calls of the linesman. He offers me a cigar, and we smoke in silence for a time.

"We have a problem that I do not think either of us can face alone," he says at last. It is carefully phrased, but it is still an admission that he is not supreme here. I never thought to hear him say it, and I marvel.

"The enemy of my enemy ... is still my enemy," I observe. "I should stand back and let her gobble you down."

"What pleasure would you take in letting her do what is your deepest desire?" he asks with genuine curiosity. When I nod in acknowledgement of his point, he continues, "If you ally with her, you are a fool who deserves his fate. I will be only an appetizer to her, to whet her palate before she takes you. And do not try to deny she has the power--to defeat each of us individually."

Again I nod at the accuracy of his analysis. I take the cigar from my lips and contemplate its glowing end. It could have been poisoned, and so he would have been rid of me--but there are rules to our game.

"I hate you with every fiber of my being. You know that," I say to him. "But it is my hate, and my fight. I need no allies to contest with you, and I will brook no interference from another. This ... intruder ... is powerful and dangerous, but she needs to be taught a lesson."

He extends his hand. "A partnership between us then, until our common enemy is vanquished."

I take the hand. His grip is firm and steady, but there is a hint of fear in his sweat, still.

* * * *

* * * *

In my cabin after dinner, I inventory my stakes. First the coins, poured out of their bag in a clattering stream onto the bunk where I sit cross-legged. Most are silver, some bronze, a few verdigrised copper. Some are so old they only approximate roundness. All bear the signs of much handling, the faces of long-dead conquerors rubbed to indistinguishable humps in the metal.

The ingots of gold are next. In contrast to the coins, these bear designs as clean-edged as though they had been stamped into the soft metal yesterday: sheaves of barley, pomegranates, the all-seeing Eye of heaven, and my favorite: the falcon's wing. My fingers trace the intaglios fondly, then I wrap each thin rectangle in a fold of my handkerchief to keep them from clinking together in my pocket.

Lastly, I check over the jewels. Not the showy crystals for me--I carry the semi-precious gems that are easier to spend and wager: carnelian and malachite, lapis and moonstone, onyx and opal. I slip the small handful back into its leather pouch and nestle the pouch in a hidden pocket inside my waistcoat.

From another pocket I take my watch. I cradle it in my palm and listen to the precise, mechanical tick, letting it soothe me for a minute before I flip open the cover and check the time. Inside the lid I carry a small portrait of my mother. She looks young and vulnerable in this picture--not the scheming harridan I knew later. I gaze at the likeness for long moments, lost in memories of a wondrous childhood under her protection and tutelage. Those days are long past. Now my own strength and what she taught me must sustain me.

I check myself in the smoky glass on the cabin wall. Every hair in place, watch chain draped just so, suit immaculate. My eyes betray no sense of my tension. Something will end tonight, something else begin.

I leave without locking my cabin. Let the game begin.

* * * *

* * * *

Just the three of us tonight: maiden, gambler, and me. No porter, no drinks. No witnesses. By common consent, my father and I push the cards toward the maid when she asks who wishes to deal.

Her hands look small, but her fingers move deftly over and around the cards. As she shuffles, the gambler and I place our antes in the center of the table. His is a golden florin with a profile I recognize as one of the Medicis. I answer with a wafer of gold stamped with the sickle moon.

The cards flutter and hiss in the maiden's hands. On the second shuffle I seem to hear a faint stutter in their rhythm. Between one breath and the next I slow myself. The hissing becomes ticking. Slower. The cards tap distinctly against one another. Slower still, and slower. Yes, now I can hear the irregularity in the slapping pasteboards, see the tiny movements with which our dealer stacks the deck.

The maiden finishes her clever task and pushes the deck toward my father for the courtesy cut. As expected, he only taps the top card. But in my heightened awareness I see the ripple of power that slides through the cards and undoes what the dealer has carefully arranged. I am sure the maiden is aware of it, too. The cards are truly random now. I take another breath and return myself to this world's time. The gambler is smiling, and I watch impassively as the maiden deals out the hands.

We play, and the hours pass. We skirmish, fence, plot. Even though I know my father will back me, or I him, when the time is right to make a move, the time does not ripen. It seems that I have sat here for an eternity, will sit here, dealing, betting, folding, losing, for all eternity. But slowly and surely, the maiden is winning the majority of the hands. It may take all night, but it is clear that eventually the maiden will win all, and the gambler and I will fall under her power.

The air in the cabin is stifling. The figures sitting at the table with me waver as though seen through water, or the air above furnace-hot sands. Is that my father who sits across from me, or a dandified gambler, or an ancient and implacable judge? Is this a maiden who deals me cards, or a smiling mother whose tender breasts are swollen with milk for her beloved child? A wizened crone, or a desiccated and malefic corpse? And what do they see when they look at me: a pretender, an heir, a loved son, or a yellow-eyed warrior?

I pick up my hand. King of spades, queen of clubs, jack of hearts, ten of diamonds, nine of clubs. A frail straight, hardly a hand to bet all that I have on, but the time has come to stop being conservative. Even as long ago I thrust all my armies into one fatal assault, now I push all my winnings to the center of the table, empty my pockets and pouches of coins, gold, and jewels, and dare my opponents to see my bet.

My father grins and matches me. The maid bares her tiny, pointed teeth and whispers, "I will eat you," then pushes her hoard to the center.

My father looks at me with a steady gaze, and suddenly I see the cards in his hand as if through his eyes, and I know what to do. In a blink it is done, and I am sure even the maid could not detect it. I spread my now-worthless hand on the table for all to see: queen of clubs, jack of hearts, ten of diamonds, nine of clubs, three of spades.

The maiden laughs, a keening gone shrill and brittle, and lays down a full house: three queens of majestic and malevolent power, attended by two humbled jack-knights. The faces of the jacks are lowered, but they are attired as my father and me. She stands, as tall as the sky now and wreathed in the power of night; I see her true face and tremble.

She raises her hand to unleash her lightnings against us, but my father says softly, "A moment, please," and in the silence he lays his cards down one at a time: three kings, an ace--her face grows still--and the last card, the one I sent him from my hand, the king of spades. It wears my father's face.

In my mind's eye I see the skull of Anubis. Its empty eye sockets glow a fiery red, there is blood on its fangs, and an eerie howling, like the wind between the stars, issues from its gaping jaws. Enraged, the Queen of Night begins to pronounce her curse, until I leap across the table and seize her throat in my jaws.

She writhes like a huge python in my grip, wrapping me about with coils that crush the air from my lungs, but I do not release her. As a tawny desert lion she rakes me with claws, but I clamp my teeth deeper into her flesh. She is a slip of a maid again and she batters me with her fists until I grab her wrists and pinion them. The bones crack in my grip, but she cannot scream, for I have crushed her windpipe. Gradually her struggles grow weaker. Finally she is still, and I shake her limp body until I am sure she is dead, before I release my grip on her throat.

I sit back on my haunches on the table. There is no sound but my hoarse gasping and the drip of blood from my chin. Across the room, my father watches me warily.

I climb off the table and stand swaying, every muscle aching. I stretch out a hand to the body, but it bursts into greenish flame. I bury my face in my hands and sink to the floor, sobbing.

My father lifts me and holds me against his shoulder as I cry. "Shhh, my son. All is, as it ever was and will be," he murmurs. He takes the lace-trimmed handkerchief from his breast pocket and cleans the blood and tears from my cheeks. The handkerchief smells of sandalwood and pomegranate. I had forgotten the strength of his arms, how safe I feel within their circle.

At last I am cried out. Of my mother's body, nothing is left but a small pile of ash and the odor of scorched felt. Father scoops a handful of ash into his handkerchief and folds it closed with care.

Without speaking, we walk out onto the promenade together. The sky is beginning to lighten. I hear a splash, and see a long, reptilian shape swimming with powerful strokes of its tail alongside the ship. Father unfolds the handkerchief, stirs the ash, blood, and tears with his finger, and breathes over the mixture. Now his hand is filled with seeds; within each one I can see pulsing the green of life, a silver swirl of moonlight, the golden disk of the sun, and a fat chocolate-colored drop of silt-rich water.

Father lifts his hand to the breeze and the seeds float away, some lifting into the sky, some drifting toward the banks on either side of the wide river. I wonder what marvels will sprout from these small containers of possibility. I wonder what grace of fertility the magic of my mother Isis will bring to this new land.

When I turn back to my father, the sharp black eyes and curved beak of the ibis greet me. He touches my cheek lightly in farewell, then unfurls his snowy wings and springs into the air. I run up the stairs to the topmost deck. Three times Osiris circles the steamboat, then he flies away to the west. Against my heart, the cards in their wrappings feel strangely warm.

I lean over the railing and shout to the dark shadow in the water, "Nothing for you today, Sobek!" The slap of a massive tail and a toothy grin answer me before he turns and swims away. Our brother wears a different snout in this New World, but his heart is still the fiercest of us all.

Before and behind, the great brown river of life stretches like a highway from birth to death. My heart is as light as a feather in Ma'at's scale. Raising my arms to the east, I lift my voice in song, as I, Horus, greet my brother Aten at the dawn of a new day.

* * * *

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* * * *

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* * * *

* * * *

Illustration by Jason Wiggin

The Tinker's Child

M. Thomas

There are fifteen months to a year in Ulmagon, and during twelve of them it rains torrentially. Strange golemny is used in attempt to soothe the grief of madness and loss during this time of near unending rain. All too often, these undependable constructs are only able to delay grief for a while, and buried secrets rise even as the bodies of the dead are sunk in the gulf.

* * * *

* * * *

EPHAN BUILT A METAL THING in the shape of a boy. In its head was a small, dried seed, which the golemnist Pinoy put there to bring it to life. Sometimes, when the metal thing turned its head too quickly, the seed rattled around in its skull. It had a small furnace inside its chest, which Ephan taught it to keep stoked with coals. By this it was able to move from room to room in the house, and to speak in a voice that crackled with the unsteady enunciations of fire.

Ephan called it Olaz. It kept him company when he was home, rested in a dark corner of the kitchen at night, did small chores, and fed the cat.

"It is the cat's birthday," Olaz said one day. "The cat will not eat its cake."

Ephan looked up from his tinkering on an especially troublesome cauldron. "I've asked you not to bother me when I'm working. And leave the cat alone if it doesn't want to be played with."

Olaz blinked. Its eyeballs were two old bullets, and the thin sheaves of lids clattered when they rose and fell, a sound that still unnerved Ephan.

"I'm sorry, Ephan, I forgot you said that," Olaz said. "Perhaps it is because the seed in my head does not grow. I forget easily."

"No matter." Ephan returned to his work. "But you must obey me. Do as I say. Make yourself quiet."

"Like your son, Ephan?" Olaz said.

"Yes." Ephan bent his head over his workbench. "Like that."

Olaz was not allowed to venture outside. He rusted easily in Ulmagon, especially during the twelve month rains of Omestas, and it was imperative to keep the house dry. Yet two days after his complaint about the cat, Olaz came to Ephan and held out his hand.

"I am rusted, Ephan," he said. Indeed, a small orange growth had begun around the carefully constructed joints of his fingers. Ephan retrieved a scouring cloth from his workshop and spent an hour going deep into each juncture; rubbing away the smallest bit of discoloration until he was satisfied Olaz was safe.

"Thank you Ephan," Olaz said.

"You're welcome," Ephan replied. "But where could the rust have come from?"

"I dusted the upstairs bedroom today," Olaz said. "Perhaps there is a leak in the roof, and I did not notice. Maybe it is because the seed in my head does not grow that I don't notice these things."

"It's all right," Ephan told him. "The seed will grow in its own time."

"What do you think it will be, when it is grown?" Olaz asked.

Ephan shrugged. "It will be what it will be."

"I would like it to be a cat," Olaz said. "A cat that will eat its cake."

"Seeds don't turn into cats," Ephan said. "They turn into vines and flowers. When the rains end, I will take you outside and show you. I forget you have never been outside."

"Yes, I ha--" Olaz began, but the fire in his furnace stuttered, and his eyes clattered open and shut for a moment. "I would like to see that," he said finally.

Later that evening Ephan climbed the stairs to the single upstairs attic room to look for leaks. Olaz had done a good job. All the toys were free of dust and mold. The small table and chair with the red and blue trim were arranged the way they always had been, and the merrily patched quilt on the small bed was tucked neatly in at the corners. The pillow from the bed had been burned. The room was silent, and Ephan wondered if, after many years, the toys would make grooves in their shelves simply by the weight of their inactivity. There were no leaks in the roof.

When he came down, he wondered out loud, "Where has the cat got to?"

Olaz, kneeling at the hearth to scoop hot coals into his chest, said, "The cat would not eat its birthday cake."

"So you say," Ephan replied. "Perhaps it has gone away for a few days, to see if it could escape getting older for a while." He made himself smile. Olaz didn't reply.

* * * *

* * * *

In younger days, Ephan traveled far and wide with his tinkering, not minding the smell of occasional mold in his blankets. Inland from rainy Ulmagon there was a city where it never rained at all, where they often had trouble getting enough water. Of the two, Ephan always thought he would prefer a place with too much water.

As the problem with Olaz's rust continued, he briefly considered moving to the city where there was no rain. But his household, humble as it was, held too much for him to leave it just then. Perhaps in a year or two, when he had forgotten more. He bore the idea until he could bear it no longer, then resigned himself to the now daily attentions required by Olaz.

"Where has that cat gone?" he wondered out loud each day.

"The cat would not eat its cake," Olaz reminded him.

"I heard you," Ephan snapped. Then he sighed. "Perhaps he has gone and gotten himself a family somewhere."

"Somewhere outside, where there is rain," Olaz said.

Ephan sat by the fire missing the cat, which would usually come to sit on his lap and purr. Later, he heard Olaz in the upstairs bedroom, dusting. He heard the scrape of the small chair as it was moved across the floor. Ephan was seized with a sudden rage, and he rushed to the foot of the stairs.

"Olaz!" he said. "I've told you not to move things in that room."

He heard the chair sliding back across the floor. Moments later, Olaz came down.

"You must obey me," Ephan said. "Always, just like I told you."

"I will, Ephan," Olaz said. "I forgot. Perhaps it is the seed in my head. It does not grow, and I forget easily."

* * * *

* * * *

Each night Ephan worked at the rust on Olaz's body, scraping and scrubbing away the fungus of orange growth around the armpits, the neck, the ears, the clever eyelids, the joints of the fingers. He went at the tiniest crevices with a small pick, chiseling away at the insidious rust while Olaz sat patiently, without speaking, until he was finished.

"Thank you Ephan," Olaz would say. "Perhaps when the seed in my head has grown, I will be able to do these things for myself."

Ephan, exhausted, would only nod, then draw himself to his tired feet and search the smallest crevices of the house, the wooden eaves and shadowed corners, looking for the source of the leaks that were causing Olaz's affliction. He found nothing.

"If the seed in my head were grown, perhaps I could help you," Olaz said. His eyelids click-clacked.

"Enough about the seed," Ephan said. "Enough. Stop talking about it now."

In the ninth month it rained so hard that Ephan could barely travel his route. This was the month children began to fuss all day, despondent at the lack of sun. Mothers sometimes hung themselves in despair, leaving fathers to cut them down from the attic eaves, alone. The women's coffins were floated down the streets in the gutters to be taken out on trawlers, the bodies wrapped with heavy chains and sunk in the gulf. They could not be buried. The rain swelled the ground and spat them back up in bloated pieces.

During this time of year, the golemnist Pinoy did a brisk trade in sugar women and cotton kittens with sweet-meat brains--temporary creatures to keep the small ones quiet while fathers grieved. Ephan had not had the money for such a construct, so he built Olaz himself from his cast-off pots and metal remnants, and traded his services to Pinoy for the dried seed.

"Have you heard?" the dowager Kend said to Ephan one day as he repaired a bent door hinge for her.

"There's some thing of Pinoy's walking around the neighborhood, peeking in windows," she went on. "If I were wealthy enough, I would move to the right bank of the city where the high, white houses are, and keep well away from those undependable magics of his."

"Pinoy has made good things for many people," Ephan said. "Things they needed."

"Things they thought they wanted, you mean," she said with a sniff. "But you know it makes me nervous, that strange golemny of his, those button-brains and salt women he makes. They never come out quite right, those things. Never quite right in the head."

During this month, on Olaz's first birthday, rivers of water pushed against Ephan as he climbed the streets to the far, white, wealthy houses on hills to deliver their pots and repaired metal things. Rain battered at him as he returned home early, unable to traverse a flooded intersection and feeling as if the rain had gotten into his joints and weighed him down.

When he entered the house he called for Olaz, but there was no answer. In the kitchen he put his tools down on the table, and noticed a rank smell. Thinking a rat had died in the walls as they sometimes did, he searched until he found a place where a few stones had come loose from around the hearth. He pulled them out, and behind them was a dark space. He bent over to study the cavity and found the cat.

Olaz had suffocated it by forcing the cake down its throat. Its neck was distended, its body limp and beginning to molder with the wet of the rain that crept into everything. Ephan pulled it out of the hiding place and wrapped it in a towel. When he turned around Olaz was standing in the kitchen, dripping. The outer door stood open, and beyond it rain slashed up the day.

"Where have you been?" Ephan demanded.

"I have been outside, to see the seeds that have grown into vines and flowers," Olaz said. "And to look for the cat."

"The cat is here," Ephan said. "It's dead. You killed it."

"I do not think that is our cat," Olaz said. "It does not move. Our cat was disobedient. It would not eat its cake. I went to look for our cat. I have been looking for days. I have rusted."

"This is our cat," Ephan said. "The cat doesn't change just because it is dead."

Olaz went to the hearth for coals. His were almost burned out. He opened the small grate over his stomach, and scooped live coals in from the fire. Some of the water still dripping off him made them steam and hiss.

"I'm sorry, Ephan. I did not know. Perhaps because the seed in my head--"

"Enough about the seed!" Ephan said. "I told you to leave the cat alone if it didn't want to eat its cake. And I told you not to go outside. You remember that, don't you?"

When Olaz didn't answer, Ephan took him by the shoulder, spinning him around so that red cinders flew across the room and put themselves out in the puddles of Olaz's footsteps.

"You were supposed to care for him. You were supposed to be useful." Ephan's fingers began to ache from clenching Olaz's metal shoulder.

"But he would not obey," Olaz said. "I only wanted him to obey, to do what he was supposed to. The way you say to, Ephan. But he cried and cried, so I made him quiet like your son, so that you would not be bothered when you were busy in your workshop."

Fire took root in Ephan's chest, and made him hot all over. He took Olaz by the hand and flung him across the room, and it felt good to see the metal hand pull free of its socket and skitter under the table. He hoped, for one fleeting moment, that it might cause pain: through that he might be relieved of the fire in his chest that choked him when he was angry, through that he might pick up the pieces of what he had done and make it all right again. If Olaz cried out, Ephan would know he had learned his lesson, and then he could stop.

Olaz crashed against the far wall in a heap but he did not cry out for pity nor comfort, which did not assuage the fire in Ephan's chest. He picked up a hammer from his tools on the table, bending over Olaz to look into his bullet eyes.

"You must obey me," he said.

"I try, Ephan," Olaz replied. "But the seed--"

Ephan brought the hammer down on Olaz's right leg. "Learn your lesson!" he cried, and brought the hammer down again.

"Learn your lesson! Learn your lesson!"

The hammer smashed down again and again on Olaz's legs with a great crack, bending them in a screech of metal until they jutted crazily sideways. Olaz did not protest.

The hammer smashed into Olaz's torso, bending the grill on the small furnace until it sprang open. The coals inside glowed orange and gray with ash. Ephan stood back, panting.

Again the smell of burning down came sharp as pins in Ephan's nose. Olaz blinked, his lids clattering shut and open, shut and open, and Ephan remembered that sound from behind his back, when he'd been bent over the bed, his fists clenched in the pulpy down of the pillow.

Click, clack. Clatter, clack.

There was a small body on the bed, the pillow over its face, and then a small wooden box bobbing along on the current in the gutter. Olaz, afterward, saying, "Why do they take your son away now, Ephan, when you have just taught him to be quiet and still?"

Ephan stopped, and the fire in his body went out, doused by an icy chill. The hammer fell from his hand, clattering on the floor. For a long moment the house was still, with only the sound of rain on the roof and the fire in the hearth, two strangely similar dry, hissing crackles.

Olaz raised his arm, the one that had no hand, then dropped it again. "Ephan, I am broken," he said. "The seed in my head does not grow. I am sorry, Ephan. Perhaps you should make something more useful of me." He blinked. Clatter-clack.

"It's my fault, Olaz," Ephan said finally. "I should have made something more useful of you from the beginning."

He took Olaz by one arm, dragging him across the floor and out into the yard with a great clatter of metal. He could not bear to think of sinking Olaz in the gulf. He opened the door on the small furnace in Olaz's chest, and let the hard rain put out the coals. Olaz sighed with the steam rising up. His eyes click-clacked shut.

Ephan left him in the garden. Throughout the remaining three months, Olaz was pounded by the punishing rains until he became a misshapen clump of orange and brown waste where the shape of a boy had been. When the rains ended the seed that had been in his head sprouted, but its small green pods tasted like rust.

* * * *

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* * * *

Here there be spiders

Arachnids were among the first creatures to heave themselves out of the sea to dry land 400 million years ago. Sun-baked and windblown with scattered patches of primitive plants, that alien landscape lay open to the new lords of the Earth. Ancient arachnids found themselves free to take over a world full of empty niches. The largest of these animals included an armor-plated giant ten feet long and three wide, whose only remaining legacy is a set of fossilized footprints in the Karoo, South Africa. But these monsters were the end of the line for colossal arthropods when other organisms, better adapted to the fledgling dry-land ecosystem, out-competed them. Spiders are still with us of course. Today, there are about 36,000 identified species of spiders, with unknown numbers of new species in tropical areas.

Spiders live on all continents save Antarctica, including mid-ocean islands. They are excellent colonizers and usually reach remote areas with ease due to a remarkable ability to fly without wings. Young spiders, or spiderlings, travel passively on wind currents hanging from long silk threads. Spider babies have been collected in airplane trolling nets several miles above the surface of the Earth. And spiders have long been noted as the first immigrants to newly formed volcanic islands.

Spider silk is the hallmark of the group and they use it for a variety of tools: bolos, throw nets, trip wires, ballooning lines, storage wrap and traps, and lines of communication that conduct both chemical and vibratory signals. In addition to producing silk, they lay eggs--many eggs. They are entirely predatory, even to the point of cannibalism. And spiders are fiercely territorial. Evolution has favored the basic spider strategies for hundreds of millions of years, allowing these relatively small creatures to survive long-term climate swings and shifting continents, comet impacts and 160 million years of giant reptiles.

Aside from silk use, territoriality is probably the best known characteristic of spider behavior. Your typical orb-weaving spider sits alone in the center of its web, waiting for prey to become entangled in the strands. And the key word is alone. If another spider of the same species were to approach, the risk is a bloody face-off between individuals vying for the same resource. The combatants would have to weigh the value of usurping the web and web site for their own use, against the possibility of losing a limb or worse. In general these aggressive interactions are avoided; most spiders spend the largest parts of their lives alone.

The drive to steer clear of each other ends as females become receptive to male advances. Female spiders remain in their webs while the males abandon their own to wander, looking for females ready to make their final molt and thus become sexually receptive adults.

Adult spiders are sexually dimorphic, sometimes strikingly so, with males several times smaller than females. A female approaching maturity may find herself surrounded by several relatively tiny males waiting on the fringes of her web. Once she is ready, males move onto her web, plucking specific rhythms on the threads to announce themselves. Their approach may then include a complicated courtship dance. Those making errors in their approach will be attacked and driven away, perhaps eaten.

Every time a female accumulates enough energy, she will produce a clutch of eggs, sometimes hundreds at a time. She then encases the eggs in a silk cocoon. The cocoon protects the eggs and developing spiderlings over harsh periods, such as winter in temperate areas and dry seasons in tropical climates.

There in the confined shadows of a spider's cocoon, hundreds of eggs lay clumped. Once the spiderlings begin hatching they will remain clustered within the cocoon. Spiderlings remain entangled with each other as they go through the first several molts of their development. With their yolks gone, they fall on each other for food, consuming their brothers and sisters to ensure their own survival until their final emergence from the cocoon. Those eaten sacrifice themselves for a share in the future reproductive success of their brothers and sisters. Because, don't forget, evolution cares only about how many copies of your genes you leave behind, so nieces and nephews count too. It's a gamble, and it doesn't always work out given the intense enmity between growing spiders. Many times the sibling to which a spider has been sacrificed is eaten in turn by yet another.

The vast majority of spiders do not remain together long. Soon after hatching from their cocoons, most spiders disperse to their solitary lives of territoriality and cannibalism. Males and females, related or not, avoid each other or fight over resources. The territorial imperative is so strong a mother might even eat her own children after they reach a certain age.

Not all spiders follow a web-based lifestyle. You might not notice many spiders that don't create obvious web structures. If they are not building orbs in our window frames or filling dark corners in our basements with tangled cobwebs, we tend to overlook their abundance. Spiders also dig tunnels and live under rocks and logs. They run through sunlit gardens hunting down their prey like tiny tigers. Hundreds of wolf spiders hunt through fields at night. If you have a flashlight braced against your forehead to get the right angle of light in relation to your eyes, you will see green eyes glittering all over the grass. Go pull your flashlight from the kitchen drawer tonight. Try it. You'll see. Spiders are everywhere.

So what can spiders do for the science fiction writer? Since most spiders are almost entirely solitary they may not be the best example on which to model intelligent social organisms. The constant threat of cannibalism might detour political discourse or religious ceremonies; even those annual family gatherings could get a little risky.

But as you design your worlds you will need solitary predators with traits akin to those developed over hundreds of millions of years of spider evolution. If you do model your alien life on spiders, there will be certain restrictions that go with their hunting strategies. As they wait in ambush by a pile of rocks. As they drop traps from shadowed overhangs. As they prowl at night, their eyes aglow in your rover's headlamps. Your hunters will remain alone, scattered through the environment, and very, very dangerous. Of course, you need not restrict yourself to the same evolutionary outcomes as found here on the home world. Even on Earth spiders have learned to overcome some of their most aggressive traits when the need arises. Your aliens can, too. Then again, if intelligent aliens have arisen from spider stock, that could explain why it's so damn quiet out there.

Even given the robust strategies of spider behavior and all of its evolutionary stability over aeons, nature can surprise us. Nature abhors a vacuum, and spiders have filled an empty niche. From cannibalism to cooperation seems an untenable road. But these animals have managed.

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Somewhere in an equatorial West African rainforest, a spider scrambles through the underbrush. She rushes, evaluating her surroundings, laying a silk dragline behind her as she hurries. Above her somewhere is a spider city strung between branches, held tight with cables, perhaps 10,000 spiders strong. She must find it. At some level she may know the danger she's in. She is a social spider and so dependent on her nest-mates that if she doesn't find a colony soon she will almost certainly be dead. It's not just that spiders like her live together; it's that they cannot live apart.

Of the above mentioned 36,000 known species of spiders in the world, only about fifteen can be called truly social. Across an adaptive landscape of precarious peaks and stable valleys, spider species evolve to best fit local environmental conditions within the constraints of spider biology. Amidst territoriality and cannibalism, social spiders have figuratively tumbled into an elevated level of tolerance that permits their unique communal lifestyle.

The social spiders live in colonies of associated nests containing up to thousands of individuals. Most of the working individuals in these colonies are adult females at a seven to one ratio with males. There are no queen or worker spiders in these colonies, no hierarchy or caste system as in social insects. Instead they build egalitarian communes of primarily female spiders maintaining one another's webbing, catching each other's prey, and raising each other's offspring.

Cooperating permits the spiders to exploit resources that would otherwise be unavailable to animals of their size. Maintaining a large, robust web requires colossal effort beyond what a single spider can accomplish. Spiders that build webbing together coordinate in running down and capturing insects much larger than any one spider subdue. Spiderlings from separate cocoons will aggregate and mixed cohorts can solicit feeding from any adult female in the colony.

Whatever it is that prompts the evolutionary leap to sociality in the spiders there is evidence that it is both easily achieved and difficult to maintain. There are 106 distinct taxonomic families of spiders and sociality has risen in only four of them. The rest of the spiders exhibit typical territoriality. Because sociality has evolved on four separate occasions, we might assume that some preadaptation that favors social behavior is likely. The fact that there are relatively few social species among spiders suggests that this lifestyle is fragile, and tends not to last once attained.

One peculiarity of these animals remains the mystery of colony foundation. We don't know how spiders leave established colonies for new sites. Social spiders away from webs are highly vulnerable to predators and so groups tend to remain in their nests for generations. Skewed sex ratios and inbreeding may elevate the genetic relatedness between colony members to three quarters or even greater levels. While the high degrees of relatedness will promote group cooperation, it will also reduce genetic variation and consequently increase colony vulnerability to adverse changes in the environment.

While working in West Africa I worked with a spectacular colony the size of a two car garage. This particular colony consisted of a single nest and I estimated 10,000 spiders lived within. The colony persisted for two years and then was gone without a trace.

When healthy, a colony is a group of nests connected by silk threads, web ways of communication traffic between nests. Each individual nest consists of thick webbing perforated by numerous tunnels or retreats where spiders can go in case of danger. There are broad flat sheets of web below vertical scaffolding; the vertical threads knock flying insects down to the sheet where they are captured by cooperative spider hunting groups.

Spider colonies provide specialized homes to several symbiotic, parasitic and predatory organisms in a complicated community. The thick nest webbing is home to several and disparate other types of organisms. The humid interior houses ants, millipedes and potato bugs--entire communities unto themselves of interacting organisms exploiting the webbing interior. Other spiders live among the strands of silk, kleptoparasitic spiders build tiny webs to steal prey and highly camouflaged jumping spiders capture and eat the social spiders themselves. Tree vipers use the nests as refugia, there is even a species of bat that uses cavities in the thick webbing for roosting sites. More mature colonies will have even more complicated communities in residence.

So social spiders provide the exception to the rule of spider sociobiology, and often it's the exceptions that provide the most insight, or in our case as writers, the most fodder for idea generation. Spider societies exhibit female-skewed sex ratios, a casteless society, indiscriminate brood care, and a very low survival rate for solitary spiders that somehow might find themselves separated from the nest. Intense inbreeding has driven individual relatedness to extremes. Taken together or in part, these traits are profoundly different from our own experience as social mammals.

The possibilities for creating an alien society are obvious. All the writer needs to do is throw intelligence in the mix and see what comes out the other end. The experiment has been done by humans, although small scale communes and large scale attempts at global communism both pale before spider efficiency. Perhaps the driving intelligence of your species resides not with the individual, but is an emergent property of collective action. Smaller groups would have to protect themselves from falling below a viable threshold, while larger groups would restrict themselves from overshooting to sizes of diminishing return.

However you decide to approach it, spiders provide fertile grounds for developing your ideas. Anything that evokes the loathing and fear, or the interest and curiosity of a spider can tap right into our deep iconography, and generate stories that provoke readers. And after all, that is what we want most.

Back under the full canopy of the rainforest, shadows blanket understory vegetation. The forest floor is covered with the detritus of a constant rain of leaves, branches, and fruits falling from above. And our spider is still scrambling for colony safety before some of the more adept tropical hunters find her: centipedes, scorpions or the ubiquitous foraging ants. The great spider city hangs above, anchored to branches and strung with cables. Whether or not she finds it, and the chances are against her, may be a measure of how lucky or resourceful she is. And therein lies a plot.

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* * * *

The Knife Birds

Kij Johnson

In 1999, I attended Flight of the Mind, a writers' workshop for women, held at a former Benedictine retreat on a mountain river in Oregon. For the first time in my writing career I was in a workshop where people wrote longhand and read aloud to one another. Our instructor was Ursula LeGuin; I was leaving the workshop and going almost immediately to Lawrence, Kansas, where I would assist another workshop, this one led by James Gunn. I thought a lot that summer about what we were hoping for, we who come to learn from sages and wisewomen--and what it is we offer in exchange.

"The Knife Birds" was originally published in Tales for the Long Rains (Scorpius Digital, 2001)

* * * *

* * * *

"TELL ME SOMETHING NEW," the youth said to Homer: "something all my own."

There was always a youth. They were not always the same youth, but they changed so often that it hardly seemed worthwhile learning their names. There was always someone in love with words, eager to be moved, with a bright passionate voice and hungry ears. Poets attract youths as lilacs do bees: Homer knew this, and did not take the boy's enthusiasm personally, however tender their nights might be.

The blind poet leaned on the youth, grateful for the strength of his arm. His bones hurt now, an ache that never eased; he coughed in the mornings and tasted what the youth said showed as blood when he spat. He could ignore the pressure of wonders awaited until he sat again.

The youth threaded them past clustered voices and the absorptive silences of plastered walls, past the sighs of dogs sleeping in the dusty streets, past the sharp smells of wine and urine, spilled and baking in the sun.

"You want something new?" Homer asked. "There is nothing new."

Youth does not believe that--that nothing is new except newness, which is itself an ancient thing. "No, really!" Fingers nipped at the skin of the poet's hand where it lay on the boy's arm. It was a great liberty between so young a man and so great a poet, but this is the pollen that draws the bees: the sense of touching (and teasing) greatness. "That song," he said, "about Odysseus when he's coming home after the war--that's full of wonders, things I'd never heard of: sirens and harpies and things."

"They are not new." Homer thought of a woman so charming that men became pigs in her presence, and drifted like dead leaves around her skirts. He thought of lovers (or foes perhaps) as hard and proud as rocks, who separated only to clash again, their angry hunger (or hungry anger) destroying those who hoped to pass unnoticed. He sighed. "You may not have met them, but they are as old as the gods. Older."

The youth's hand tightened, but he only said, "We are here in the agora." Homer knew that: he smelled vegetables and hanging sheep and sweat; he heard voices hawking oil and silk, and laughter. "Shall we sit on the steps to Athena's temple? I'll bring you wine, and you can be comfortable."

Homer allowed himself to be seated on hot dirty stone, and after a time, felt rough pottery pressed against his fingers until he took the cup. The wine was cool, new-drawn from its underground amphora; it tasted sweet, and smelled like balsam and earth.

"Now," the youth said. "Something new. Something no one has ever heard before."

"But--" Homer began; then giving up suddenly (for the lilacs gain as much from their alliance as the bees; it is worth offering something sweet from time to time). "I will tell you of the knife birds."

The knife birds," the boy repeated, as if memorizing the words.

Homer gathered his thoughts. "They are tall birds, long-legged as herons, though their bodies are smaller. The feathers of the males are black but filled with subtle color; they gleam like certain butterflies or the backs of crows. The females are black also, but a dusty black like the robes of a widow who has walked a long way. Male or female, each bears three marks on its brow between its bright eyes: three red marks that trail off, as if placed by the fingertips of a dying child.

"And their beaks are red, as well." Red as this wine, Homer almost said, but he could not see the wine to be sure it was the right color.

"Red," the youth murmured. Homer wondered if he were a memorist, if these cast-off words of his were draining down into some well in the youth's mind, to be saved until a dry time. "Why are they called knife birds? Their blood-red beaks?"

"Of course not. Their beaks are much darker than that, like wine. They are narrow as knives, but they are not named for that, no." He drank the sour-sweet wine, thinking desperately. Poets do not like to be told what they meant. "The knife birds gather in the places of knives--on the fields of battle and on the roofs of women who scream in fatal labor--but always the day before the battle or the child's (or mother's) death. In this they are omens; watching them, one can predict: here will be an ambush tomorrow, or: the Phycippes woman will deliver at last, but it will not be fortunate.

"The knife birds gather, and when enough have come together (and this may be one or a thousand thousand), they speak with voices that scrape like bronze on stone. The birds recite all the words that have ever been spoken by the ones who will die the next day: the first simple words that fell from lips still wet with mothers' milk; the rattling prattles of children new in their speaking; smooth words, sweet as honeyed wine, used to court or betray; words barking angry or howling their grief.

"For a baby who will die in its birth, there is a single bird, and only the quick murmuring of the infant's silent lips moving, and then vigil till the death. When a person is old, or has spoken much--or when many will die--the birds gather in their thousands, and each takes a voice or a part of a voice. The air fills with words--pleading, laughing, remembering, pragmatic. The knife birds sing through the night, and the lives of those who will die creep forward, word by word.

"It is not fair to fear the knife birds--they sing as they are made. But we cannot help this. A tormented husband runs from his hut and throws rocks, his curses louder than the sobs of his wife, who hears her death scraping like metal on bone. The first arrow of the war speeds not forward but up, into the cloud of birds; a man has heard his own words, from a long-forgotten argument with his wife over new-spun wool. Some men march onto the field with wax driven deep in their ears, afraid to hear words that might be theirs.

"The knife birds cannot be killed so long as they recite. Still singing, they flutter aside from the spears that hurl their way. The words march on. Bronze clears leather; a midwife's voice quickens with sharp concern. Blood flows; there are screams. The last words are sung in the instant of death: man or woman and bird cry out as one."

"Now the knife birds are free. If allowed to, they leave, their words complete."

Silence. The youth shifted. "Thank you." He did not sound thankful.

"You have something to say?" The poet rolled his neck and drank the last of his wine, dregs bitter as willow bark.

"There was no story," the youth said.

"You did not ask for a story. You asked for something new, and stories are no newer than anything else. Would you have liked it better if I had begun by saying, 'In the third year of his travels, Odysseus came to an island, and he was brought to the king, and the king told him this tale'? And ended it, 'And Odysseus went his way, puzzled by the wonder of it'?"

"No," the youth said, and Homer thought, he's biting his lip now. "But--what you told me wasn't really new, either, was it? Maybe it's not in your other poems, but--the knife birds, they're just vultures, vultures before the fact. You've taken vultures and crossed them with parrots and made them scavenge memories."

"Yes. No." The air seemed cooler now; perhaps a shadow from some great structure had moved, to lie across his face. "'New' is not everything, child, as you will see when you yourself are not so new."

"Then why do you tell anything at all?" the youth said in a voice that might have been sullen, or merely thoughtful.

Homer felt the shadows flutter like wings as he stood and stretched, heard the cries of birds over the clatter and rumble of the agora. "Someday I will die," Homer said; "I would like to leave them something to say."

* * * *

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* * * *

Knife People

Bruce Boston

If knife people were the world, we would all be called "Mack."

It would be:

"Mack, slice this."

"Sever that, Mack!"

"Mack, did you make this puncture?"

If knife people were the world it would be full of holes and torn curtains, green harvests and bloodied walls.

When you are sharp you have to cut.

* * * *

* * * *

* * * *

* * * *

Copper Angels

Joseph Paul Haines

The worst pains are the ones we never intend to inflict. Yet when we draw lines in the sand, when we insist on taking a stand somewhere and making that stand permanent, we can't really help but hurt someone in the process. Even those closest to us--for reasons we'd have never expected, nor believed possible--are at risk. This story grew out of watching it happen, over and over again. A little pavement on the road to hell.

* * * *

* * * *

1.

THE DEKE LADY WAS NICE. She had pretty hair like Mommy's, only not as bright. Mommy's hair shined like it had a little bit of the sun in it. Well, it used to. Mommy didn't wash her hair as much anymore. Not after that time she fell down.

I didn't know what to do, and I was sad that Mommy got scared by the Dekes, but they tell us at school that if something isn't right you have to tell a Deke about it. Sometimes they were scary; all dressed up in all that plasticy stuff they wear and a big black sunglass that comes down from their helmets so you can't see their eyes. But this lady wasn't like that. She wore a long black dress and I could see my reflection in her shoes. She smelled like nice soap.

"Is Mommy going to be okay?" I asked her.

She smiled at me and put her fingers together, like a church steeple. There was a desk in her office, but she didn't sit behind it to talk to me. She sat in a chair right next to me and stroked my hair. It felt nice. "Your Mommy is going to be fine, Mary. They're both going to be fine."

"Where's Daddy?" I asked. He wasn't home when the Dekes came.

"Your Daddy is in the next room. We're talking to him about your Mommy now." She picked up a tape player from her desk and pushed a button. "Do you mind if I ask you some questions?" she asked.

I shook my head. I had to explain, after all.

"You're a good girl, Mary," she said. I wasn't afraid at all. She had a picture of Jesus on her wall and other than the desk the office reminded me of Daddy's office at home. "How old are you, Mary?"

"I'm almost seven. But I'm in the third grade already." I knew I shouldn't brag, but I had to tell the whole truth to a Deke. "Mommy says sometimes being too smart isn't the best thing, but God made me smart so that I could learn to be a better person."

"I'm sure that's just what He did, honey. And you know what?" she asked.

I shook my head no.

"It worked," she said.

I smiled at her. She was really nice.

"So why did you call us?" she asked.

It got real quiet all of a sudden. I could hear the hum of the tape recorder. "I was afraid the man from under the ground was going to stop the angel from coming," I told her. "Daddy wasn't home, so I called the Dekes--" I covered my mouth when I realized what I said, but the words were already out. "I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't mean to..."

The Deke lady just smiled at me. "It's okay honey," she said, and she rubbed my arm. Her hands were so soft. "I've heard it before. Don't worry about that now. Why don't you start from the beginning, okay?"

"Okay," I said.

So I told her about the time Mommy fell down.

* * * *

* * * *

2.

"...Barthomew, Thomas, Matthew, James, Simon, Labbaeus and ... um..."

"Judas," Mommy said.

I never had been good at history, but Mommy always helped me whenever we had the chance. On the day she fell down, we were going over schoolwork while we rode into town for Mommy's meeting with Daddy's boss. She looked real pretty that day. She had on a new skirt that Daddy said was too short for her, but I thought it looked good. Her hair was bright and shiny blonde in the warm sunshine, like Jesus' hair, and she had it braided around her head like a queen's crown.

We were in the new electric car, so we didn't have to shout or anything to hear each other.

"I always forget Judas!" I said.

Mommy smiled at me and her eyes were blue, so I knew she was happy. Whenever Mommy gets mad, her eyes turn bright green. "Most people wish they could," she said. It was a grown-up joke, so I didn't get it, but I laughed anyway. Since daddy got his promotion, we could afford a tutor, but Mommy said she liked helping me herself. Daddy kept trying to get her to hire a saved-maid, too, but Mommy said she didn't want some harlot running around her house.

We pulled up next to a restaurant just before you cross the bridge into town, where they make the cheesy-bread. Anyway, Mommy told me to wait in the car 'cause she was only going to be a minute or two. Mr. Alpheus had left his ring at our house the last time he was over for dinner 'cause he took it off when he washed his hands and forgot to put it back on. He called Mommy that morning and asked if she could bring it over to him where he was having lunch.

Mommy leaned over and gave me a kiss on the cheek, then went inside.

She was in there for a long time, but I stayed put, like I was supposed to. Mommy left the keys in the car so I could listen to the radio if I wanted, but I just watched all the people driving by instead. I started to get dizzy from moving my head back and forth and trying to see people's faces as they sped by, so I stared at the angels on the bridge for a while. I always liked those angels. They're so shiny, like an old republic penny when it's brand new. I figured that's what they made them out of anyway. Bunches of old republic pennies. They weren't much good for anything else, anymore. Why not make angels out of them?

I was trying to figure out how many pennies it took to make each one when I heard the car door open. Mommy climbed into her seat.

Her hair hung down onto her shoulders, but bunches of it were still tangled from where she had her braids in. Her knees were all scraped up and bright red, like when you skin yourself but not enough to bleed? And her shirt was torn.

I got real scared. Mommy's eyes were bright green and she had tears in them.

"What happened, Mommy?" I asked.

Mommy looked at me like she hadn't known I was there. She tried to smile, but it didn't stay on her face very long. "I just fell down," she said. But her voice was funny, like she had a cold or something. "Fell down real hard."

I went to hug her, 'cause I know when I fall down the best thing in the world is a hug, but Mommy jerked away from me. Her lips opened a little bit, like she was surprised, but then she started crying harder and hugged me for a long time.

"It's okay," I said. "We'll go home and put band-aids on it and you'll be all better, okay?"

She just kept hugging me. After a long time, I started wondering if the people passing by could see us and what they thought. Mommy was a much bigger cry-baby about falling down than I was, that's for sure.

A long time later, Mommy let go and started the car. We drove straight home. She didn't talk to me any more that day.

* * * *

* * * *

3.

The Deke lady crossed her arms. "What happened when you got home?" she asked. Her lips got real small while she waited for me to answer.

"Nothing, really," I said. It's wasn't exactly the whole truth but I couldn't figure out how to explain it very well. Mommy just started acting strange, is all.

"Well ... did she help you with any more of your homework that day?"

I shook my head. The lady Deke smiled at me and pointed to the tape recorder. "No," I said, pointing my mouth toward the microphone. "She just went home and then took a bath."

The Deke lady tilted her head and squinted her eyes together. "Really? She didn't do anything else?"

I didn't understand why Mommy did what she did that day, but I got the idea that I'd better tell the Deke anyway.

* * * *

* * * *

4.

Well, Mommy came right home and took a bath. She told me to go play upstairs for a little while and her voice sounded like it probably wasn't a good idea to tell her that I really didn't want to. I didn't have anything I really wanted to play with, but I went upstairs anyway and drew in my notebook for a while.

I couldn't stop thinking about the shiny angels on the bridge, so I started drawing angels. I must have drawn eight or nine angels with swords in their hands like you always see, but after a while that got old so I started drawing them bringing new babies down from heaven.

Each one I drew kept getting better and better, but I knew I had to use the colored pencils if I was going to get it right. Mommy always talked about how maybe one day I'd get a baby brother, so I started drawing them real carefully. I thought if I drew then angel perfect with a little blue bundle in his arms, and then drew Mommy and Daddy and me down on earth waiting for him ... It's silly, I know. But I drew it perfect anyway. Daddy always told me how happy Mommy was all the time when I was a baby. If God sent Mommy another baby, she could be twice as happy. To tell the truth though, I really wanted a little brother. I love playing with Mommy, but sometimes I wish I had a brother to play with when Mommy had to do grown-up things. I held the picture in my hands and prayed. Not for me, but for Mommy and then, at just that moment, the sun came out from behind the clouds and shined in through my bedroom window.

I carefully tore the page from my notebook and took it downstairs to show Mommy. I got down the first three stairs and was just about to call for Mommy when I saw her crouched down beside the fireplace.

It was the middle of the day, and it was hot out too, but Mommy was building a fire. I couldn't figure out why she would want to do that, but I didn't want to upset her, so I just watched.

She just got the fire going good and that's when she started acting really strange. She pulled a bundle of clothes out from under her bathrobe and threw them on top of the fire. I tip-toed down the steps until I could see past her shoulder.

It was her new dress and blouse she'd just bought. The one Daddy didn't like.

I wanted to ask her like a hundred questions, but I couldn't figure out which one to ask first, so I just went back upstairs.

I hung my picture above the pillows on my bed.

Mommy could see it later. When she felt better.

* * * *

* * * *

5.

"How long did she continue to act like that?" the Deke lady asked me. She was leaning in close again. She smiled as she talked, but it looked like she didn't really want to be smiling.

"Well, she got mad at me later but she was better after Daddy came home."

The Deke lady tilted her head. "She got mad at you?" she asked. "Why?"

I didn't want to talk about it, but I didn't have much choice.

* * * *

* * * *

6.

Mommy put on one of her nice Sunday dresses after she finished making the fire. She called me down from upstairs when lunch was ready. Usually she makes me a hot lunch on the days that Daddy's at work and I don't have school--I'm in a special class and only go to school three days a week--but that day I remember she just made me two pieces of toast and poured me a glass of orange juice. I kept waiting for her to pull macaroni and cheese out of the oven or to open a can of ravioli or something, but she just stood over me and said, "Eat."

She looked really mad so I didn't question her. I'm not supposed to question her anyway. That's what improper little boys and girls do, so I try not to do that. Mommy crossed her arms and it looked for a minute like she was going to start crying, but she just turned around and left me alone in the kitchen. She never does that. Even if she doesn't eat with me she always sits down at the table and talks to me while I have lunch.

I figured she was just mad because she ruined her new clothes when she fell down and had to burn them. It sure would have made me mad. I figured I'd just better leave her alone for a little bit.

I said grace and then finished both pieces of toast pretty quick but I was still hungry so I got up and opened the 'fridge to see if there was something in there that I knew how to make for myself. I had just decided to have one of Mommy's yummy yogurts and was reaching for it when I heard Mommy yell something bad. I'd tell you what she said, but I'm not allowed to say words like that.

I ran back over to the table without the yogurt and sat down with my back straight like I'm supposed to. I heard her run down the stairs and before I knew it she came into the kitchen. She was crying, but it was angry crying. Her face was really red and she kept taking short breaths through her nose. She slammed down my picture of the angel on the table. She yelled, "What's this?"

I didn't know what I'd done wrong, so I just shrugged my shoulders.

"You want a baby brother?" She asked. "Is that it?"

I shrugged my shoulders again. Mommy stared at me for a long time. I just kept my eyes on the plate full of bread crumbs. I didn't want to make her any more mad on accident. Finally, she picked up the picture and started tearing it into little pieces.

I couldn't believe she was doing that. It was so mean and Mommy was never mean, except when I did something really bad, but this wasn't bad so I didn't understand why she was so upset. It felt like someone had just hit me in the tummy. I thought for sure that Mommy didn't love me any more.

When she finished tearing up my picture she stared right into my eyes and said, "Don't make wishes for things you don't understand."

Then she threw the pieces of paper into the garbage under the sink. "You just sit here at the table until I tell you to get up again."

I sat there for at least an hour until I finally had to pee so bad that I couldn't wait any longer. I was scared to ask her if I could get up, but I knew she'd be even madder if I peed my pants at the table.

"When you're done," Mommy called to me from the other room, "go upstairs and play. I'm still upset with you."

So I did. I grabbed the pieces of my picture from the trash can and stuffed them in my pockets.

* * * *

* * * *

7.

"Why did you do that?" the Deke lady asked me. "Your mother just tore up your picture. She obviously didn't want it around. Weren't you afraid you'd get into trouble?"

"Yeah, kind of." I said. "But I thought that maybe this was one of those times that Mommy was just in a bad mood and would say she was sorry after she got over being mad." That didn't happen too often, but sometimes it did. It was the only thing I could think of that made sense. I really didn't do anything wrong.

"Sometimes parents do that, honey," the Deke lady said. "It's not easy to be a Mommy sometimes."

"Yeah."

"But you say she got better when your father came home?"

"Uh-huh."

"What happened?"

"Well," I said. "She was just, you know, happy. But it was weird, too."

"How so?"

I tried to figure out the best way to explain it. "Well, it was like she was really happy, you know? Like it was Christmas or Easter or something."

The Deke lady crossed her arms and tilted her head to the side. "She burned her new clothes, yelled at you for drawing an angel, and then she was happy again when your father came home?"

"Uh-huh," I said. "She really loves Daddy. Daddy's a very important person, did you know that? He works for the Ministry of Prevention and he--"

"I know who your father is, sweetie. Let's get back to your mother."

"Okay."

"Did she stay happy?"

I shook my head, then remembered the tape recorder. "No, she didn't."

* * * *

* * * *

8.

She was fine until Malachai, Daddy's driver, showed up to take him to work. As soon as he left, Mommy went into the living room and called Elizabeth, her friend from next door. "Come over," Mommy said. "It's important." And then she started crying again. She hung up the phone and saw me standing there.

She didn't smile at all. "Upstairs until I tell you to come down," she said. I must have sulked because Mommy yelled, "Now!"

I ran up the stairs as fast as I could and slammed my bedroom door behind me. I waited for Mommy to come up and scold me for that, but after five minutes or so hiding under my covers I figured that she wasn't coming.

I reached under my mattress and pulled out the pieces of my drawing. I had some scotch tape with my school stuff, so I got that out and started to tape my picture back together.

I did a good job, too. It was almost perfect. In one or two spots you could see the rough part of the paper, where it had been torn, but it wasn't too bad at all. I slid the picture back under my mattress and I was trying to figure out what to do next when I heard the doorbell ring.

I tip-toed over to my door and opened it a crack.

Mommy was at the front door and I heard her talking to someone. It was Elizabeth. "Hi, honey, you sounded like ... oh God, what happened?"

Mommy was crying again. In between sobs she said, "In the den."

I waited a couple of minutes before I went downstairs.

* * * *

* * * *

9.

"You weren't afraid that you'd get in trouble?" the Deke lady asked.

I shook my head. "It didn't matter if I did," I said. "Mommy was sad and I didn't know why. I thought that if I could figure out even a little bit, then maybe I could help. I always made Mommy happy before, so I figured that I just didn't know what was wrong but if I did..."

The Deke lady nodded and folded her hands in her lap. "I'm sorry, go on," she said.

* * * *

* * * *

10.

When I got down outside the door to the den, I heard Mommy crying some more. The door was open a bit, so I made sure that I stayed to the left side, so I wouldn't be seen. I peeked into the den and saw Elizabeth hugging Mommy.

She was stroking Mommy's hair and going, "Shh. Shh. It'll be okay, honey. It'll be okay."

Mommy was shaking her head. "And how is that?" she asked. "Tell me, how is it ever going to be okay again?"

They were quiet for a long time after that. Finally, Elizabeth said, "Alpheus, huh?" And then she called him some names I'm not allowed to say.

Mommy nodded.

"Now I understand why you did what you did. He's untouchable."

Mr. Alpheus always shook Daddy's hand and mussed my hair when he came over, so it didn't really make sense, but adults are strange sometimes.

"I may need you to do something for me," Mommy said.

Elizabeth pulled away from her then. She looked a little scared, actually. She mumbled for a minute and I couldn't understand what she said, but then I heard her say, "I don't really know what I could--"

Mommy interrupted her. She looked really mad again. "Don't play games with me, Elizabeth," she said. "Just understand that I may need you."

Elizabeth was chewing on her lower lip, but she didn't say anything back. She just nodded and squeezed her eyes shut real tight, then hugged Mommy again. After a while she said, "Let's cross that bridge when we come to it."

They talked a little bit more, but most of it I didn't understand. I think Mommy really hurt herself when she fell down, though.

She said something about being ripped.

* * * *

* * * *

11.

The Deke lady leaned forward in her chair. "Honey, this is very important," she said. "Okay?"

I nodded my head. I was a little afraid at how serious she looked.

"Do you know Elizabeth's last name? Where she lives?"

I told her. "But sometimes I think she lives someplace under the ground," I said.

The Deke lady tilted her head to the side. "You said that before, about the man you were afraid of. What do you mean she lives under the ground?"

"I heard Mommy and her talk about it the next time she came over."

"Okay," she said. "Take your time and tell me the rest."

* * * *

* * * *

12.

I still didn't understand what was wrong with Mommy. She acted happy whenever Daddy was around, but as soon as he'd leave she'd start getting strange again. Like once, when we were sitting in church, the preacher started telling the story about Jesus on the cross, when he doubted God, and I looked over at Mommy and there were tears in her eyes.

It's a sad story, but Mommy's heard it lots before so I couldn't figure out why she was crying over it now. When service was over, Mommy made Daddy hurry up and take us home.

It made Daddy a little mad 'cause he and Mommy normally stay around and shake hands with lots of people there afterwards, but Mommy didn't talk to anyone and she actually pulled away from one lady when she went to shake Mommy's hand.

When Mommy got home she threw up. Daddy stopped being mad when he realized she was sick, so everything was okay again. She got sick a lot, but most of the time it was when Daddy wasn't home. She'd be really white in the morning, like when your stomach feels like it's full of butterflies or something?

But Daddy didn't seem to notice too much, or if he did, he didn't say anything. Besides, Mommy was happy whenever Daddy was around so I didn't want to say anything that might change that.

About a month after the last time Elizabeth came over, Mommy called her again. I heard Mommy yell at her on the phone, but I couldn't make out what she was saying.

I got sent to my room again, but I snuck down after Elizabeth got there. They didn't say anything to each other when Mommy opened the door. Elizabeth just came inside and the two of them went right to the den.

When I got close enough to hear them, Elizabeth was talking. "No, I can't."

Then, Mommy got real close to Elizabeth and whispered, but it wasn't like she was trying to tell her a secret or anything. It was scary. "Elizabeth," she said. "I know you can do this. I know that you know people. You're my friend and you're mostly harmless so I've ignored it. But if you don't do this for me, there'll be Dekes coming through your door before you get home."

Elizabeth stepped away from Mommy and crossed her arms. After a second, her head dipped and she started to shake a bit. "No one from the underground is going to touch this," she said. "Your husband is too powerful. It'll smell like a trap."

"Convince them," Mommy said. "And get me and Mary new traveling papers, just in case. You know I've got the money. I've loaned you enough in the past."

Elizabeth nodded. "Someone will be here tomorrow morning," she said. "Have the money ready. They'll bring your papers. You have pictures?"

Mommy nodded and handed Elizabeth an envelope. "There's twenty grand in there. There'll be twenty more tomorrow. It's more than the going rate. And Elizabeth?" Mommy said. "Don't even think about running. If someone isn't here tomorrow morning, my husband finds out about you. You can't get far enough away by then."

Elizabeth just stared at Mommy, then said, "When did you get so cold, anyway?"

Mommy didn't even move. "The minute that man put this thing in me," she said. "I want it out, understand?"

Elizabeth nodded, then turned to leave. I ran back to the stairs and up into my room.

* * * *

* * * *

13.

The Deke lady looked up as a young man opened the door to the office. He had on a very nice suit, but not near as nice as the ones Daddy has. "Yes, Crawford?" she said.

The man glanced down at the floor for a minute, then said, "I'm sorry to interrupt Deacon, but I thought you'd like to know that we picked up Ms. Bartlow at the Alabama border crossing ... Elizabeth Bartlow? She was traveling under a false identity."

The Deke lady smiled, but her lips were real tight, you know? She said, "Thank you Crawford. Anything else?"

He shook his head and then left. He closed the door real soft.

"I'm sorry, honey," the Deke lady said. "Now tell me what happened this morning, and it's real important that you try hard to remember exactly what was said."

* * * *

* * * *

14.

Mommy got real upset this morning when I reminded her that school was cancelled today due to a teacher's conference. She knew about it for weeks, but sometimes she forgot to check the schedule. She was acting really weird, though. She tried to get Daddy to take me to work with him. She said she needed a day by herself.

But Daddy told Mommy that she knew he couldn't take me to work with him and Mommy giggled a bit and said, "Of course. I was just being silly. I thought I might do some shopping or something this morning."

And that really confused me, you know? 'cause I knew Mommy had someone coming over this morning to take the bad thing out of her. I felt a whole lot better, that's for sure. At least now I knew why Mommy had been so upset lately.

That happened all the time in the bible. Like when Jesus cast the evil spirits out of that man? Mommy just had something bad inside her and a good man was going to come over and take it out and Mommy would be okay again.

But then Mommy got really weird after Daddy left for work. She made me a huge breakfast. Eggs and bacon and pancakes and potatoes and milk. I ate as much as I could. I even made myself a little sick trying to clean my plate, but I couldn't finish everything. But instead of Mommy getting mad at me like she would sometimes when I didn't finish my meal, she just took the plate away and then walked me up to my room.

"Now listen and listen good," she said. "Do not come downstairs until I tell you to. Even if you get hungry or thirsty or anything, do you understand?"

I nodded. "Did I do something wrong?" I asked.

She shook her head, and it looked like she was going to start crying again. "Just don't come downstairs."

I nodded my head and Mommy closed my bedroom door as she left.

And I meant to keep my promise, too. I don't know why I didn't. I really don't. Mommy was going to be okay again and everything was going to be like it was but for some reason I just couldn't stop worrying. What if the man hurt her when he was trying to take the bad thing out of her? What if he hurt her and then left and I couldn't come downstairs to help her because I'd promised not to?

So when I heard the doorbell ring, I made up my mind. I'd stand at the top of the stairs and listen. That way, I could hear if Mommy needed my help and called for me but I wouldn't be breaking my promise not to go downstairs. I knew that it was fibbing a little bit, but I just hoped that God would understand that it was because I loved my Mommy so much.

I didn't see the man come in the front door, but I heard his voice easy. He had a very deep voice, and it was scratchy, you know? After the front door closed I heard the man say, "Do you have the envelope?"

It was quiet for a minute, and then the man said, "I just want you to know that I'm only doing this because you were ... well, you know. If this were under any other circumstances, I'd leave you to your fate. Your husband has hurt enough of my friends in the past that I still had to think twice about coming over here."

Mommy said, "I understand, and I'm sorry about your friends."

"Ma'am," the man said. "You'll forgive me if I don't believe that. We're standing here in this grand house and you've got two expensive cars and your husband travels to work every day in a chauffeur-driven limo and I really think that the only reason you'd even talk to someone like me is because of what's in it for you."

Mommy cleared her throat. "I see," she said. "Well then, you've made yourself perfectly clear. Is there anything else?"

It was quiet for what seemed like a long time, but it was probably only ten seconds or so. Then, the man said, really mean like, "I want to hear you say it."

Then Mommy said, "I don't want to have this baby."

* * * *

* * * *

15.

The Deke lady took my hands. "Now you're absolutely certain that's what she said?

I nodded my head up and down real hard. "Yeah, 'cause I got real scared then. I knew that the under ground man was going to try and stop the angel from bringing my baby brother down. I just couldn't figure out why Mommy was going to let him do it!"

"So you went into your Mommy and Daddy's room and called us?"

"Uh-huh. I was going to call Daddy but I couldn't remember his phone number at work. I just wanted to make sure that someone came and stopped the under ground man before he stopped the angel. Mommy was sick. She didn't know what she was doing. She wouldn't have let him into the house if she were well, I know that."

The Deke lady looked at me for a moment and then smiled. "You did the right thing, Mary. We got there in time. Your little brother is going to be just fine." She reached over and switched off the tape recorder.

"Is Mommy going to be okay? She's not in trouble, is she?"

The Deke lady stared at me for a while. ldquo;That's between her and God, sweetheart."

I was so glad to hear her say that. I knew that God would understand.

A few minutes later, another lady came into the office. She had on a long black dress, too, but she was older and her hair was tied back in a bun.

"This is Mrs. Overton, Mary. She's with child support services. You're going to stay at her home for a little bit while your Mommy gets better, okay?"

I nodded my head. Mrs. Overton took my hand and helped me out of my seat.

"Hold on a second," the Deke lady said. She stepped behind her desk, opened a drawer and pulled out a shiny Deke badge. "Here you go, Mary. You did a wonderful thing today. I hereby proclaim you an honorary Deacon."

I took the badge from her. She was such a nice lady. I know I shouldn't have, but I dropped Mrs. Overton's hand and then gave the Deke lady a hug.

She hugged me back.

* * * *

* * * *

16.

Mrs. Overton had a car waiting outside the Deke station. I looked back over my shoulder at the sign on the building.

MINISTRY OF PREVENTION

EVANGELICAL FELLOWSHIP OF ATLANTA

CHILD PROTECTION DIVISION

There was also a statue of the holy mother holding the baby Jesus in her arms. An angel sat in the air above them, protecting them with his sword. It made me smile.

At the bottom of the statue were the words:

FOR THOSE WE COULDN'T SAVE.

MAY GOD GRANT MERCY UPON THEIR SOULS.

I climbed into the back of the car with Mrs. Overton. I looked at the badge the Deke lady gave me and pinned it to the front of my shirt.

Everything was going to be okay now. Soon, my brother and Daddy and Mommy and me would all be together again, and Mommy would be well. I knew that because the Deke lady told me so, and because I knew that Jesus would make sure of it.

God would understand.

He always understood.

* * * *

* * * *

* * * *

* * * *

* * * *

* * * *

End of Day

Laura Anne Gilman

"End of Day" was born of a single line, a single voice coming out of the darkness, and the smell of smoke burning in the distance. The characters are some of the most disturbing I've ever written, and yet also some of the most endearing in their own way. It's a cautionary tale, but perhaps not in the way that seems at first obvious ... This was also the story that inspired the entire "Dragon Virus" series, including "Dragons" and "In the Aftermath of Something Happening."

* * * *

* * * *

WHEN WE FOUND THE BODY stuck up on the signpost, we figured for sure the howlers were back. I mean, who else would leave all that meat there to burn?

Jody wanted to leave him there. Once howlers have their paws on meat, who knows what's gotten into it? But you don't waste. No profit to it. So while Roo and Nance stood guard, I got to shimmy up and unhook our corpse. All the joys my Changes have brought, slinging a dead weight over my shoulder ain't one of them. And the flies kept getting into my nose and mouth.

Landing hard, I dropped the corpse on the ground. Flat white face stared back at me. I hadn't noted that before. He was white. Pure white. The dark hair had me fooled, I guess. Like a signpost: dumb bunny here.

"Howlers caught him wandering," Jody guessed, standing behind my shoulder and watching like the corpse was gonna get up and dance. I shrugged, cracking my fingers back into human-normal shape. Joints would hurt like hell, next time a storm blew up, but it was nice to be useful. Jody couldn't have done that. Not Nance either. Roo could do anything it wanted, but it never did want. Couldn't figure out why the Olders kept it around, except it was a cruel hunter, and we always needed the meat.

I toed the body, trying to decide if it would be worth stripping it. Roo rummaged, poking, prodding. Checked pockets, just in case, but wasn't nothing there. The cloth looked flimsy, like something a townie would wear. Which scanned--that white, dumb bunny, corpse was a townie. Had been. Was meat, now. Roo gave a claws-up, meant the flesh scented clean. I gave it a fade. Nothing more boring than meat once it's been found.

Nance came back with her Stick, and we slung the corpse wrist and ankle. Roo hefted it, muscles flexing under the burden. Stronger than sin, that was Roo. You never wanted it mad at you. Not that it ever even snarled at me. We're both Changed, and Change makes strange bedfellows, the Olders say.

They mean it kind. I don't care. I'm useful, and useful gets fed first.

* * * *

* * * *

Back home, the corpse was dropped in the kitchen for Leah to deal with. I don't want to know where it goes. Meat is meat, but some things you better just call stew. Anyway, we had to make our report.

Drew was in the office when we got there, waiting for the news. He's the oldest Older in our House. I think he's my parent, 'cause he never quite looks me in the eye. The ones who've got kids are like that, like it's all their fault.

Well, it is. But what can you do?

Nance tells it like it was, and Drew nods thoughtful like, moving markers on the map he's got tacked against the far wall. They track howlers, townies, anybody comes into range. I don't know what good they think it's gonna do, someone decides to oust us. Home's twenty-three bodies, counting Annie who's old, and the baby Simon. Twenty-three won't do shit a howler party come a knocking. But I don't think about that. I follow Nance, and she's the brains for all of us. Us four: me, Roo, Nance and Jody. I don't always like 'em, but I love 'em. You know what I mean? Two other hunter-packs in Home, but none like us. And none of 'em Changed.

Drew scoots us, and we scatter, leaving him nodding over his notes and stroking that pointy chin of his. My hand goes to my chain in reflex. Yeah. Looks better on me.

* * * *

* * * *

Hallway's dimmed, cause it's daylight. Jody's for sleeping. Nance slams that down; Nance thinks like Olders, sometimes, that there's time and place and a not-time and place. Sleeping in daylight's a not-time. Roo's got its own ideas, you can tell, but don't volunteer them, same as always. Roo don't lead, don't follow. Just happens to be where everyone else is.

After check-in, I'm supposed to go for schooling. None of the other of the three: Nance and Jody're done with it, nobody tells Roo what do to. But they've hopes I'll learn something. Don't see the point, much. Townies read, townies die. The Olders say otherwise we're just howlers. Me, I see howlers livin'. What's the point? But it makes the Olders happy, so I sit for a couple hours: turn pages, sound out words. Look at the pictures of what was. Go couple-three days south, you see what was, too. Old stuff, gone now. Buildings, way bigger than Home, way bigger than towns, even the biggest towns. Blew 'em to bits, in the aftermath. People were gone, why not? Must've been fun.

I'm not supposed to think like that. Those're howler-thoughts.

I don't want to go for schooling today. So when the pack goes left, I tag along. Whatever's better than sitting alone. Nance's striding, tall-like, Jody bumping on walls, hopping up and down, getting in Roo's way. Jody's the dumb one.

"What you got?"

Jody, poking too close to Roo's space. I though for sure Roo'd slap him into tomorrow, but no. It just grins, broken teeth jangling like scares a lot of folk. That means it's pleased about something, which is what should scare folk. Roo pleases about weird shit.

Nance puts herself between the two, blocking my view. I juggle around Roo's long arms, trying for better position in the narrow hallway. Roo shakes its head. "Not here. The playroom."

The playroom's what we call downbelow the kitchen. Dark and cool, it had a dirt floor once, 'fore Roo piled rugs and rugs down there. Now it's cozy. Padded, too, so when we take to roughing, nobody gets more than a little slammed up. We troop down, one at a time sliding the ladder, and take usual slots. Roo pulls my tail when I land, so I follow it over to the side.

Its voice was the first thing I ever remember hearing, but you never do get used to its breath. "Stay tight, pretty ears. This is gonna get fun."

I hate it when Roo says shit like that. Means blood most times, and guess who cleans up. Short list, and only me on it.

"Show," Jody demanded, digging his heels in like he was Older giving a scolding. On him, all scrawn and skin, it looked dumb-butt. But Roo gives over, holding out one claw and unfolding it like it's got an ache somewhere. But nobody starts, cause what Roo's showing us is worth some air.

It's little, way wee, Doonie would say. And gold and glowly, like a sip of the whiskey Mata gives us when we get cold on duty, only alive like a flame.

Only it can't be a flame, 'cause Roo's holding it steady and even its hand isn't that rough tough. Mine is, when I figure it to be, but Roo's not like me.

Well, actually, nobody's like me. That's the Change for ya.

"What is it?" Nance comes in close, careful of Roo's claws on account of them being sharp sharp, but way closer than most get.

"Found it. On the meat."

"You took salvage?" Nance drew back, real peevy. Salvage is supposed to go to all. Second rule, after Meat's Shared.

But Roo shook its head, the flickeriness catching sharp edges on its face, dancing off the thin skin that always looks like the blood's gonna burst out from under some day. "It won't go. See?" And it turned its hand upside down and sure's daybreak, the flickering whateveritwas stayed put, dancing upside down like it was safehome.

"Is it hot?"

"A little," Roo answered Jody, more kindly I ever heard before from its mouth. "Not burn-hot, though."

"What does it do?"

Roo shrugged. "Looks nice. Feels nice. Was in the meat's hand, when I hefted it, came off into mine. Won't cut loose."

"Dangerous maybe?" I didn't think so, but Nance should've asked that and she was too busy making pretty-eyes at it.

"No," Roo said, sharp.

"Just asking..." I was going to back away, but my feet didn't want to move. Matter of fact, they wanted to get closer.

"Not Tech." It wasn't a question Jody was askin'. Didn't look anything like Tech. We get what Tech is drummed into dumb heads first off, before we ever make hunter-pack, before they let us go prowl. Tech makes folk scardey. Tech caused the Change. Only townies used tech, and it got them deadbunny killed.

"Nope," Roo said too cheerfully. It wasn't much on cheerful, especially not to Jody, and this was making me creep.

"So what then?" Nance got the thinking look means she's making a plan. Roo cradled the flickering gold-fire, holding it close like it's whispering in its ear. I look close, wish I hadn't. There're things in the flame, things that oughtn't be there. Spikey-edged circles and green shimmers and things that smell townie, smell old and bad and like nothing we shoulda brought in here. Like somebody dying-sick. Looked wrong, smelled wrong, was wrong wrong wrong.

"Can I hold it?" Jody, bouncing on Nance's shoulder till she swatted him back. Roo cuddled the flame like it's never cuddled nothing, and prickly chills started walking up my spine like bad winds out of the wasteland.

"Don't touch it," I said, but wasn't nobody listening. Feet finally started walking back, and so I guess was outta range when Roo broke loose. Didn't know what, maybe Nance shoved it or it just took spiteful the way it does sometimes, but faster'n even I thought a Changed could move Roo flipped its hand again, tossin' the flickery-thing at Nance. It hung on his hand, still, but parts went flying, sparks like splutter-candles Doonie lights sometimes. Nance got back but not fast enough. I seen meat get eaten, when the Howlers came by. This wasn't that pretty.

Jody went whacked, tried to get it off Nance, only it spread to him too, chewing up flesh like flame shouldn't. No burnin', just blood and sizzle-dissolving smelling and flickering and glowing brighter and brighter until the room was filled with darkness 'cause my eyes were closed and I was down on the floor being one with the carpets there until a weight feel on my shoulder.

"Niyaaaaaa!" And I tried batting it away only it wasn't it was just Roo, teeth glinting in the real-dark now.

"Come on, pretty ears. Time to get moving."

It moved back up the ladder. There was something kindamaybe moving in the corner. I couldn't look. I didn't want to look.

Of course I looked.

The only sound that rose was me splattering my insides over what was left of life.

* * * *

* * * *

Roo was telling later like it wasn't its fault. Was stuff as was supposed to be. The glowy thing told it what to do. Whispering-like, only not. Whispering in the blood, in bones. Deadbunny brought it, but we was meant to have it. Drawn down from Old stuff, it was, made from the Bad Day. Livestuff. Changed, like us. Glow-thing told it so, Roo was claiming. I wasn't hearing it. It--Roo--says it did what was needed to do. Nance and Jody, they wasn't like us, not halfway. Even less so the Olders. Changed gotta change, them was slowing us down.

The glowy thing ate Roo's brain, was my thinking. Didn't say so much: me not bein' the stupid one. But we went through the House like shadows; Roo moving, me just following, the glowy thing slamming and eating and the screaming just went on and on and on...

Maybe I am the stupid one. Shoulda known the meat was bad news. Shoulda known, shoulda seen. When Roo was pleased I shoulda run.

And then I'd be alive, and Roo'd be alive, only not together, and the others, they'd still be dead.

Roo's sayin', was them as made us. Them and their stupid Old ways. Made us and didn't have the balls to die. Never knew it was so bitter, all those years. Roo's voice was the first I ever remember hearing. Roo's hand was the one as slapped me when I was dumb. Never be sorry, it'd say. Never regret. Sorry's for townies; regret's for the dead. Don't you be a townie, and don't you be dead.

Meat is meat.

* * * *

* * * *

I hear them, up in the winter night. The dead. All dead. We watch the howlers movin' by. Slipstream out of sight, eat what we find. Roo's happy. This is what it thinks Changed life should be; away from the ones who made us, livin' in the world they can't take.

I hear them, sighin' and fryin' all over again. And when Roo's busy I slip down and watch what's left of the House. Maybe Drew--what's left if anything's left if the old god-book was right he's all gone elsewhere-better now--knows I'm nearby.

Maybe he's even caring.

Never be sorry. Never regret. Never forgive.

Never forget.

* * * *

* * * *

* * * *

* * * *

* * * *

* * * *

Sun People

Bruce Boston

If sun people were the world we would move within the flames, little more than flames ourselves.

We would sport third degree tans and take on Mediterranean habits.

As our cruise slowly meandered to its final destination through a shallow sea, we would ask the boy to shift the umbrellas and fetch another round of drinks.

Gin Rickeys, Singapore Slings, vodka martinis on the rocks,

Cuba Libres and a Medoc from '93.

Would he remember all this in his charming and boyish way?

Exactly where would we be headed?

Would the orchestra keep time?

If sun people were the world we would move within the flames, little more than flames ourselves.

We would always be in transit, becalmed between the fire and our equatorial needs.

* * * *

* * * *

* * * *

* * * *

I've known Bruce Boston for a number of years now and have had the pleasure to publish his poems in a number of projects. He is a prolific poet and story writer, so much so that at times I am staggered by the sheer volume as well as quality of his works. He is the author of forty books and chapbooks. His writing has appeared in almost every major speculative fiction magazine out there, including Asimov's SF, Amazing Stories, Realms of Fantasy and Weird Tales. He has also appeared in Year's Best Fantasy & Horror, the Nebula Awards Showcase, and has received a number of awards, most notably the Pushcart Prize, the Bram Stoker Award, and the Asimov's Readers' Choice Award. He also earned the Grand Master Award of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, which for us speculative poets is a pretty big deal. He lives in Ocala, Florida, City of Trees, with his wife, writer-artist Marge Simon.

Bruce was kind enough to take time out of his busy schedule to sit down and answer a few of my inane questions beneath the towering oak, pine, and magnolia of his modest arboreal retreat.

* * * *

* * * *

ML: Firstly Bruce, how did you start writing speculative poetry? Do you remember the first market that you sold to? Do you know how many languages your work has been translated into?

BB: German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, and Spanish are the ones I'm aware of. My novelette "After Magic" appeared in German translation (Der flëusternde Spiegel, The Whispering Mirror, Knaur, 1985) before it appeared in English. The rest are due either to foreign reprints of genre anthologies, or instances where an individual foreign editor saw the poem or story in English and asked to translate it. There have also been a few rip-offs, both Greek and German translations done without my permission.

With regard to speculative poetry, I was writing it for a decade before I had a name for it or knew there were publications specializing in it. Throughout my twenties my fiction and poetry were appearing in literary magazines, where most of the poetry was contemporary and self-referential. My poems, in contrast, were often fantastical, based more on imagination than direct personal experience. They were sometimes viewed askance by mainstream poets, generating comments such as "Where is the poet?" I had also published a few stories in professional SF/speculative magazines, but I rarely saw poetry there. When it did appear it was always rhymed and usually trivial.

In 1978 I found a market report for The Anthology of Speculative Poetry, edited by Robert Frazier, and submitted four or five poems. Bob gave my submissions a very warm welcome, accepting all of them as I recall. He subsequently told me about the Science Fiction Poetry Association (SFPA), which had recently been founded by SF novelist Suzette Haden Elgin. SFPA made me aware of numerous genre markets that were specializing in the kind of poetry I was writing. More importantly, it put me in touch with a community of speculative poets who had a similar esthetic to mine.

ML: What is your primary inspiration to write? Where do you find the writing Muse, and is there a difference in what motivates you fiction-wise and poetry-wise?

BB: Same inspiration for fiction and poetry. Many of my stories begin as poems that exceed the forms and boundaries of poetry in the course of writing. Some are hybrids, such as "Revenge of the Dead Wizard" or "The Star Drifter Grounded," which have appeared as both poems and stories.

A Muse is a complex and intimate phenomenon, probably different for every writer. Without anthropomorphizing the concept, I would dub language as my primary Muse: its rhythms and music, the richness in its subtleties and allusions, all the diverse ways in which it can communicate, including its confusions and contradictions. Many of my poems and stories are inspired by a specific sentence or phrase that reverberates within my mind. The follow-through to a completed work is an extrapolation from that initial sound and its content.

ML: I interviewed a writer once who admitted to being tripped up on hashish while driving and swears up and down that he saw Jesus Christ standing on the hood of his car. Have you ever had a spiritual or otherworldly epiphany or vision that was a Muse for one of your poems or stories?

BB: Not one related to a specific poem or story, but many of my experiences with psychedelic drugs in the 1960s could be characterized as spiritual epiphanies. They changed my view of the self and the world in profound ways that have influenced all of my writing since. Most simply, they made me aware of my emotions and senses as well as my intellect, less alienated in my individual consciousness, and more aware of how that consciousness was inextricably linked to all that I perceived.

ML: Your poem "The Slums of Atlantis" published in The Pedestal Magazine in 2003 is one of my all-time favorite poems of yours. What was the motivation for such a sociopolitical piece of verse?

BB: The take-off for the poem (also the title) came from dark poet G. Sutton Breiding, not from a line in one of his poems but from an eclectic list he had compiled, which I believe he titled "Some of My Favorite Things." The idea of slums in the ideal city of Atlantis seemed too compelling to leave at that, and I extended the idea with my own vision of what such slums would be like, and what life there would be for their denizens. Whatever contemporary sociopolitical connotations the poem embodies are a result of the imaginative vision inspired by the phrase. I did not set out to write a political poem, though I agree the content is there.

ML: One of the best first lines I've ever read was, "If you spend any time observing the human race, you will begin to believe that the only way heaven could have any occupants at all is through sloppy bookkeeping." It was written by David Turrill, in his novel An Apology For Autumn (Toby Press). What is your favorite first line from a novel or poem, either your own or someone else's?

BB: When dealing with fiction at the level of craft, opening lines are supposed to serve as hooks to draw the reader in by posing an unanswered question or making a provocative statement. One of the best hooks I can recall is from Joe Haldeman's 1995 Hugo Award short story, "None So Blind"--"It all started when Cletus Jefferson asked himself, Why aren't all blind people geniuses?" Though I'm also partial to the opening of my own 1995 story "Curse of the Simulacrum's Wife," which begins in the opposite way a news article is supposed to begin: "She doesn't know how they have done it or why they have done it or when the vile deed was committed, but she knows they have done it nonetheless."

With regard to novels, I'd have to go with Dickens' "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." (too long a sentence to quote in its entirety here) from A Tale of Two Cities, though I think I'm choosing it in large part because it is echoed so cleverly by Alfred Bester in the opening of The Stars My Destination, one of my favorite SF novels.

ML: Within the science fiction genre, whose work first influenced you to write?

BB: I wanted to become a writer before I discovered science fiction. My earliest leanings in that direction I would credit to Robert Louis Stevenson, Walter Farley (the Black Stallion novels), and Classics Illustrated Comics. When I was around nine or ten I discovered science fiction and fantasy, along with an entire rush of authors that lured me further in the direction of writing and toward speculative work: Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein, Robert E. Howard, A. Merritt, followed later by Bester, Vance, Silverberg, and Ellison. I realized that the fiction I found the most compelling and entertaining not only reflected the particulars of objective reality but the imaginative possibilities inherent in that reality.

ML: What writer from the non-genre popular or mainstream writing world do you find the most fascinating?

BB: This one is easy: Vladimir Nabokov. The particulars of his peripatetic life--from Russia, to England, to Germany, to France, to the United States--are fascinating enough, but the fact that he wrote brilliantly in Russian, French, and English is what fascinates me more. Though not a master of languages in the sense that James Joyce was, Nabokov's mastery, at least to me, translated itself more completely into the creation of subtle, perceptive, and entertaining fictions, where the language often sings like the best poetry for pages at a time.

ML: A few years ago you wrote an excellent mainstream novel, Stained Glass Rain (Ocean View, 1993, Wildside, 2003). What was your motivation for writing such a novel? Also, what was your motivation for your most recent poetry collection Etiquette with Your Robot Wife (Talisman, 2005)?

BB: Stained Glass Rain is a bildungsroman, a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age novel set in the drug culture of the late 1960s. Although the book is essentially mainstream, some reviewers, such as Paul DiFilippo at Asimov's, have characterized it as science fiction or fantasy because of its overall flavor and content, which embodies magical and speculative elements. At this last date--the first draft of the book was completed in the mid-1970s--it's hard to remember the exact motivation that drew me into its creation, though it certainly became an obsession once I was involved, the fictions on the page often supplanting the realities of my daily life. I can speak to the literary influences on the novel, which were primarily Kerouac, Joyce, Vonnegut, James Baldwin, and Leonard Cohen.

Etiquette with Your Robot Wife stands at the opposite extreme from a serious mainstream novel. The pieces included were written strictly for laughs. Although they were published originally as poems, they are really no more than humorous lists, akin to the kind of top ten lists you hear on TV or see in magazines, only based in sf/f/h.

ML: Will anyone step up and replace Hunter S. Thompson as the preeminent gonzo journalist? I heard that before he died he completed work on a book entitled, Jesus Freaks and the Hijacking of the 2004 Election, but that the manuscript has since disappeared.

BB: Thompson made his reputation in a far different era and social milieu than exists today. It was a time when youth was in rebellion against what they perceived as the hypocrisies and absurdities of the ruling generation and society as a whole. Portraying such foibles with great energy, panache, and humor was Thompson's stock in trade. His early work met with such success that he soon came to be viewed as one of the prime icons of irreverence. This larger-than-life characterization, along with his considerable writing talents, carried the rest of his career. There are no doubt other writers who can deliver the perceptive irreverence of Thompson and do it with gonzo humor and style, though given the current social atmosphere, I doubt that any will achieve his prominence.

ML: What impact has 9/11 had on speculative fiction and poetry?

BB: I'm not sure it has had much impact at all. Whereas most people were surprised and outraged by 9/11, speculative literature had envisioned such a catastrophic event long before it happened. Take the religious and ideological differences in the world, stir in the extreme economic disparities, add a good measure of the destructive possibilities of an advanced technology, and it doesn't take much imagination to realize that such a scenario or something similar seemed inevitable. Though I was far from the first to deal with this subject, my 1985 poem "The Berserker Enters a Plea on the Death of Greater Los Angeles" speaks of "backpack megatons" and portrays a catastrophe on American soil far more extreme than 9/11.

ML: The cultural mindset of America seemingly has become more conservative. What effect has this had on speculative writing? Will speculative writing spark a rebel yell of new cutting edge literature or will it succumb to the temptation of remaining on the safe, oddball fringe of social intercourse?

BB: In terms of what is being read in recent years, there seems to be a shift away from science fiction and toward fantasy. Although fantasy literature can also be cutting edge and embody radical or innovative social viewpoints, the kind of fantasy (and sf) that seems most popular today involves a retreat into a world far removed from our own, where good and evil are clearly defined, and a noble heart and a just cause will carry the day, even in the face of the darkest magic and the most sinister machinations. Fantasy and SF are primarily literatures of entertainment. That's why people read them. Although they may to some extent serve as social barometers, there is no reason to expect that they will be harbingers of revolution, either literary or social.

ML: Pop culture question alert: I recently saw Dr. Phil, Oprah's messianic Prophet of Pop Culture psychology, on TV telling people that if your husband spends too much time on the computer that he is most likely addicted to Internet porn. He said this as a sweeping generality. I took major offense to this statement. Being a person that no doubt spends a lot of time on the computer writing poetry, fiction, doing research and answering emails what is your opinion of Dr. Phil's statement?

BB: Dr. Phil is absolutely right. I agree with everything Dr. Phil says.

Seriously, I've never watched the man, so I have no definite opinion about his ascension to the role of guru of contemporary morals and human behavior, though it does seem like a role that would crush anyone short of a saint or megalomaniac.

Dr. Phil's advice to individuals in particular circumstances may be sound, but whenever such opinions are extended to general statements about a large and diverse population, they invariably lose their validity. Since it is instinctual for men to enjoy looking at women, essential for the survival of the human species, I'm sure there are many men lacking other interests who become addicted to Internet porn. Probably some women, too. These are the same people who would seek out pornography in one form or another without the Internet. At the same time, the Internet has all kind of other addictions to offer. There are also those who are addicted to gambling online, playing chess, chat rooms, political discussions, sending out Spam, and even some who are hooked on writing fiction and poetry and publishing it online. The Internet offers individuals more opportunities to explore their interests, and consequently, more of a chance to become obsessive about them. It's just one more joy and complication of life in the 21st century.

ML: One thing that bothers me is that my two-year old son's first full spoken sentence was not "I love mommy" or "I love daddy" it was "Dr. Phil is on TV." Hell, I think I'd have rather had him quote Marilyn Manson song lyrics, in fact I know I would.

BB: Manson would certainly give him a more speculative background. What I'd suggest is to turn off Dr. Phil, play some Beatles records and show him A Hard Day's Night. Then move on gradually to Mahler's Ninth and the films of Bergman and Fellini. You could even throw in some Orson Welles or Joseph Campbell for contrast.

ML: I have read that the British science fiction magazine Interzone has been credited with helping change the sociopolitical landscape of Great Britain in the late 80s and early 90s. Do you think there ever could be or has been a time in America when a science fiction magazine had an impact on the American cultural and political climate, or are we too large and fragmented a society?

BB: I've never heard this, but without specific evidence to back up the claim, I suspect it is wishful thinking. Though Interzone is an excellent magazine, I don't believe its circulation has ever been large enough to influence an entire nation. Same holds true for the circulation of speculative literature in the United States. Even the most successful genre magazines have circulations less than 50,000. Science fiction novels are considered successful if they sell in the tens of thousands. I believe the US population is approaching three hundred million. When you are reaching less than one percent of the populace, it's an extreme conceit to believe you can have a profound social or political impact.

ML: When discussing the current state of science fiction literature, British novelist Charles Stross recently stated that "Politics is currently largely taboo in American SF. The current shape of American SF is determined by the cultural zeitgeist; Bleakness is the new optimism. Writers living in the USA today just don't seem enthusiastic about the near future." Do you agree?

BB: As Michael Moore has pointed out, the mass media--whether by intention or merely as a byproduct of its nature--portrays a reality that leaves individuals frightened about one thing or another, specific or general. Will the terrorists strike in my town? Will my son or daughter get AIDS? Will global warming destroy the planet? Is my new car really safe? Such fears translate readily into a generalized feeling of uncertainty and even despair--if one thing doesn't get us, something else will--about the future.

However, dystopian predictions are hardly new to science fiction--Brave New World, 1984, Stand on Zanzibar--and I'm not sure there has ever been a period in SF literature where authors exhibited a general sense of well-being and optimism about the future. Nor has there ever been a political consensus that has prevailed throughout the field, even in the heyday of John Campbell.

ML: Are there certain types of music or certain performers that you find inspirational from a writing perspective? I happen to find Bruce Dickinson's solo work and Iron Maiden's music to be motivational. I also find the music of Loreena McKennitt to be inspiring.

BB: Since I view language as a kind of music, I generally opt for silence or white noise when I'm writing. If I do listen to music, I prefer the kind that is not intrusive: ambient, New Age, smooth jazz. Some of my recent favorites include the ambient music of Brian Eno and David Kucharz.

ML: I must agree with you that your poetry/fiction collection, The Complete Accursed Wives, may very well be your best collection ever. What was your inspiration for this curious collection?

BB: Actually, I believe I said this was my most popular collection. Reviewing the book for SciFi.com Mary Turzillo stated: "Boston has the gift of making his poetry appealing to people who generally aren't fond of poetry." I think that's an accurate assessment of this particular collection. The "accursed wives" poems and stories portray the travails of the wives of archetypal figures from SF/F/H, and in the process attempt to reflect some of the dysfunctional aspects of contemporary male-female relationships. This is a subject almost everyone can relate to. Most of the poems were first published in Asimov's SF, and a number of others in magazines such as Weird Tales, SF Age, and Talebones, publications aimed at fiction readers, not readers of poetry. What I consider my best collections are Masque of Dreams (Wildside, 2001) for fiction, and Sensuous Debris (Dark Regions, 1995) and Pitchblende (Dark Regions/Talisman, 2003) for poetry.

ML: Tell me about you most recent projects. What do you have coming down the pipeline?

My collection of very short fictions, Flashing the Dark, is forthcoming from Sam's Dot Publishing in early 2006. There should be a trade paper edition of Masque of Dreams out in the near future from Prime/Wildside. I'm also compiling a long poetry collection, though it is still in flux and I've yet to seek a publisher. I'm formally retiring this year in terms of collecting Social Security. I hope and suspect this will give me more time to spend with my writing, and I think that will probably lead to writing more fiction and less poetry, though it's always hard to predict where my interests and the music of language will carry me. I may decide to try to write the Great American Science Fiction Novel. On the other hand, I may just succumb to the Florida heat and humidity, kick back beneath the trees, and reread my favorite books along with all those I've been planning to read for years.

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For further information on Bruce Boston go to his website at hometown.aol.com/bruboston/ or just Google his name and read the massive collection of online works that are available. Many of these are available as ebooks at Fictionwise: www.fictionwise.com/eBooks/BruceBostoneBooks.htm. Also, his excellent chapbook, Alchemical Texts, can be found on my website at: www.simnet.is/osko/writer/bruce.htm--ML

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Our Authors

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Bruce Boston ("Puppet People", "Knife People", "Sun People") is the author of forty books and chapbooks, including the novel Stained Glass Rain and the best-of fiction collection Masque of Dreams. His poetry has received a record seven Rhysling Awards, a record five Asimov's Readers' Choice Awards, the Bram Stoker Award, and the first Grand Master Award of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. He lives in Ocala, Florida, City of Trees, with his wife, writer-artist Marge Simon ("Yours or Mine," Aeon Two).

Visit Bruce's website at hometown.aol.com/bruboston

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Dr. Rob Furey ("Space Invaders", Aeon Three) returns to our pages with the first installment of Parallax, our new science column. Rob worked on his PhD in Gabon, West Africa, on social spiders. He has returned to his study site several times for his own research, with students and once as a forest guide for a natural history film crew from the UK. He has faced down cobras, retreated from army ants and slept on open wooden platforms in African swamps. Later he went to French Amazonia to work on another social spider species. Not only did he spend time with the spiders, but he watched a gunfight between gold prospectors and French army troops while he ate a meal of roasted tapir. Since then Rob has returned to the tropics several times, usually with students. He spent time as a student himself attending Clarion West. He has published a couple of stories in anthologies since then in addition to articles for dusty tomes on arcane spider behavior. He is currently part of the charter faculty at Harrisburg University, the first new private university in Pennsylvania in over 100 years.

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Photo by Peter R. Liverakos

Laura Anne Gilman ("End of Day") took the first plunge into murky writing waters in 1994, when she submitted her first story to a professional market. An almost immediate sale to Amazing Stories made her think that this writing gig thing was easy. She didn't make another fiction sale for more than a year, which taught her humility and patience. And the fine art of perseverance.

Another sale did eventually follow, and then another, and another, until she was at the point where the move to full-time writer seemed logical. Since that first sale, she has written or cowritten four media tie-in novels before beginning her contemporary fantasy series (Staying Dead, Curse the Dark, and the forthcoming Bring it On) for Luna Books.

Her short fiction has been published in the magazines Realms of Fantasy, Oceans of the Mind, and ChiZine: Treatments of Light and Shade in Words, and the anthologies Did You Say Chicks?, Powers of Detection, and Murder by Magic, among many others.

Laura can be found online at www.sff.net/people/lauraanne.gilman

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Joseph P. Haines ("Copper Angels") has at one time been a police officer, a restaurant manager, a professional bodyguard and a title officer. Discovering he was no good at any of the above, he fell from grace into a life of fiction and hasn't even considered seeking redemption. He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his beautiful wife Catherine, and Gryffyn, the notorious feline Schattenjaeger.

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Kelly Hale ("Blood Pith Crux") is the author of Erasing Sherlock, recently accepted for publication, and one co-authored novel, Grimm Reality with Simon Bucher-Jones, published October 2001 by BBCWW. Her play, Mogo Mansion, enjoyed a limited, mildly successful run in Seattle several years ago.

The publication of "Blood Pith Crux" is the the culmination of twenty-five years of having nothing to fall back on. Parental advice be damned.

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Kij Johnson ("The Knife Birds") is the author of The Fox Woman (Tor, 2000), Fudoki (Tor, 2003), Short fiction collection Tales for the Long Rains (Scorpius, 2001),and over twenty short stories sold to major science fiction magazines. Her short story, "Fox Magic," won the Sturgeon Award for best short story of 1993, and she was also the winner of the 2001 IAFA-Crawford Award for best new fantasist. She is currently at work on the third book of her Heian trilogy.

Find Kij on the Web at www.sff.net/people/kij-johnson/

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Carrie Richerson ("A Game of Cards") has appeared in such magazines as Fantasy & Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, Amazing Stories, Pulphouse, Noctulpa, Rosebud, and in numerous anthologies. A collection of her short fiction, Something Rich and Strange, is published by Scorpius. She lives in Austin, Texas, where her writing is supervised by Jeep the Blue-Eyed Wonderdog and four insouciant cats.

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Kristine Kathryn Rusch's novels (science fiction, fantasy, mystery/crime, and romance) have been published in 14 countries in 13 different languages. She is the only person in the history of the science fiction field to have won Hugo awards for both editing and fiction. Her short work has been reprinted in six Year's Best collections. She has also been the recipient of the John W. Campbell Award, the Herodotus Award for Best Historical Mystery Novel, the Ellery Queen Reader's Choice Award, the Science Fiction Age Reader's Choice Award, and the Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Award, and been nominated for the Locus, Nebula, and Sturgeon awards, and the Asimov's Reader's Choice Award.

From 1991-1996 Kris was the editor of the prestigious Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Before that, she and Dean Wesley Smith started and ran Pulphouse Publishing, a science fiction and mystery press in Eugene, Oregon. She lives and works on the Oregon Coast.

Visit Kris's website at www.kristinekathrynrusch.com/

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Lawrence M. Schoen ("The Game of Leaf and Smile") holds a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology, spent ten years as a college professor, and currently works as the research director for a series of mental health and addiction treatment facilities. He's also one of the world's foremost authorities on the Klingon language. He lives in a small suburb just outside of Philadelphia.

Lawrence's fiction has appeard in Analog, Absolute Magnitude, Artemis, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, All Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories,and many other places.

Visit Lawrence's website at www.klingonguy.com/

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M. Thomas ("The Tinker's Child") is an author and high school teacher. Her work has appeared in Abyss & Apex, Strange Horizons, and Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, among other publications. She is a managing editor at Lenox Avenue e-zine.

Visit M. Thomas's website at www.found-things.com

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Our Advertisers

Aliens and AIs, by Lawrence M. Schoen

Crow Street Press

Curse the Dark, by Laura Anne Gilman

Electric Story

Fairwood Press/Darkwood

Fudoki, and The Fox Woman, by Kij Johnson

New Albion Press

The Paint in my Blood, by Alan M Clark

Per Aspera Press

The Retrieval Artists series, by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Scorpius Digital Publishing

Something Rich and Strange, by Carrie Richerson

Talebones Magazine

Wheatland Press/Polyphony

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Our next issue will mark one year of publishing AEon, and we hope it's the first of many. Three authors will make welcome return appearances in Aeon Five:

Howard V. Hendrix ("The Self-Healing Sky," AEon Two) will tell you about the day Kurt Goedel took his U.S. citizenship exam--with a little help from his friends--and uncovered something disturbing and prescient, in "Waiting for Citizen Goedel."

Jay Lake ("A Mythic Fear of the Sea," AEon One, and "You Will Go On," AEon Three) will wrap your body, heart, and soul in "Green."

Three very very short stories of three fascinating realities will unfold in a flash, in "Appeal," "The Visitors on the Fourth," and "Adrift on the Mare Commutatio," all by Dana William Paxson ("The Buddha Lectures on Cosmology," AEon Two).

Even more excellent writers are making their first AEon appearance in AEon Five:

Mark Bourne will let you in on the secret history of King Kong in "The Nature of the Beast."

Craig English will show you a Pacific Northwest transformed by "Tribes."

You'll fly with Justin Stanchfield to the days just following World War I on "Gypsy Wings."

Renee Stern will take you inside the warm heart of a far-travelling jinniyeh in "Fire and Ice."

AEon Five will also feature poety: "Asha," by Jaime Lee Moyer, and "Corvus Nation," by Scott E. Green. In addition there'll be another great "Parallax" science column by Dr. Rob Furey, and the fifth thought-provoking "Signals" column by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

It's a future we're looking forward to, and we hope you'll join us there.

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