Fantasy Magazine. Issue 11, February Table of Contents

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2 Fantasy Magazine Issue 11, February 2008 Table of Contents Cockatrice Girl Meets Statue Boy by Willow Fagan (fiction) When We Were Stardust by Rebecca Epstein (fiction) Début-de-siècle by Jonathan Wood (fiction) The Fable of Cinnamon and Bitter by Trent Walters (fiction) Author Spotlight: Rebecca Epstein About the Editor 2008 Fantasy Magazine

3 Cockatrice Girl Meets Statue Boy Willow Fagan Having been born in vinegar and conceived by a viper, cockatrice girl knew how to hurt people. The fact that statue boy was immune to her signature trick was no great obstacle. She had a dozen poisons in her snake eyes, a hundred conversational traps hidden beneath her skirt, between her long chicken legs. None of these were as reliable as transforming someone to stone, of course. Statue boy s invulnerability made cockatrice girl want to hurt him even more. She stayed up much too late, chewing her claws as she drew diagrams of stonecrushing machines and plotted stratagems. Oh, how she loathed him. But there was something else about statue boy, something which made cockatrice girl want to cuddle with him, to gaze into his calm grey eyes. These urges, as unexpected as watermelons in the dead of winter, were more dangerous than stone which could move and speak and see. So, as much as she wanted to hurt him, cockatrice girl instead decided to avoid statue boy, to keep to her familiar paths and haunts.

4 *** Cockatrice girl had met statue boy on one of her spontaneous middle-of-the-night jaunts. Sometimes she needed to be in motion, fast, to feel wave after wave of night wind caressing her cheeks. To be someplace completely new, where the people had not yet learned to guard themselves against her poison, her sly tongue, with their preemptive silences or impenetrable politeness. On this particular night, she drove west out of the Valley, over the tridge, past the Grove of Heads and unto a wide plateau. In the untrustworthy glow of her headlights, the ground appeared to be featureless, a grey repetition. The roads in this place were all perpendicular, they formed a grid, but cockatrice girl could see no reason for any of the crossings. Back home, in the Valley, the roads were serpentine or strangely angled. She could remember the quirks of those roads, savor the unfolding of each path s unique squiggle. Here, she became hopelessly lost. ***

5 Once she realized how lost she was, she resolved to simply drive in a straight line until she reached somewhere, some edge. This proved to be impossible. Straight lines were anathema to her, child of a viper that she was. After ten minutes, she began to sweat uncontrollably and soon the wheel slipped in her hands, forcing her to turn. Finally, her eyes almost a blur, she came across an all-night diner, its sign glowing colorful against the grey. Statue boy was her waiter. Then, his stone skin had been nothing more than a curiosity, an interesting tidbit to relate to her sisters later. After a restorative meal of poached eggs and strong coffee, cockatrice girl asked him for directions. (She intended to humiliate him in some small way later to balance out his knowledge of her imperfection, his help.) He sat across from her, drawing a map on a napkin. But when he looked up, his eyes caught hers and held them for a full minute. His eyes were grey and stone, but there was such movement in them the slow, relentless crawl of mountains across centuries and continents, the steady dance of the sea on a calm day, the stately procession of clouds across the sky. She had always thought of stone as completely motionless, she had stilled many lives by turning them into stone, and yet these eyes.

6 Stone dripped, she had heard, in slow motion metered out in decades. The thought, his eyes, were abhorrent to her, and yet she could not stop looking. She was intoxicated. Paralyzed. Infuriated. He returned her gaze as intently. What did he see in her eyes? Your eyes are beautiful, he said, at last releasing her, They re green like waterfalls, like snakes curling and uncurling with new skin, like the grass unraveling. My eyes are poisonous, she hissed, and I will devour you with them. Let me suck the poison out of you with kisses. She threw her plate at him but it shattered harmlessly. Statue boy stood up and bowed to her. I have seen you. I will not forget. And neither will you. Cockatrice girl leapt up, bruising both shins against the table. She hurled her glass! her fork! her knife! her spoon! the salt shaker! at his retreating back. None of them made a dent. She grabbed the table and began to lift it. A loud cough brought cockatrice girl back to her senses. The fat woman at the next table was staring at her, horrified. She let go of the table. What she should have done was feigned boredom; and that should have been easy, effortless, a response as conditioned as a knee jerk. The map that statue boy had drawn for her lay there

7 still, audaciously white, the black lines dividing it into teeth, a mocking grin. Her fingers, her sharpened claws, longed to shred the napkin into meaningless pieces but she needed the map to find her way home. *** She did not tell her sisters about him, after all. Her sisters were older than she, and had been born human. The shattering of their mother, the bizarre violence of cockatrice girl s birth, had hardened both of them into kindred spirits. Beatrice, the eldest, had refused to cut or comb her hair until it tangled into a solid mass around her, a permanent veil. Flannery, the wilder of the two, had locked herself into freezer after freezer. Now, her skin was as pale and as cold as ice, and her breath white clouds even in the summer. Instead, cockatrice girl asked her sisters what they thought the most dangerous thing in the world was, and how one could defend oneself against it. Eyes, Beatrice said. Stab them out. Even yours. But, cockatrice girl pointed out, you haven t gouged your own eyes out. No one s perfect.

8 I think that the most dangerous thing in the word, Flannery said, the deadliest, scariest, most treacherous thing I ve ever heard of... is a butterfly. And the only way to be safe is to move every three months, so that you always live in winter. Couldn t you just live in the arctic? cockatrice girl asked, irritated. She could never tell how seriously Flannery meant anything. The cold seemed to have addled her brains. Oh, no. No, no, no, no. The arctic butterfly is the worst of them all, spring s spy in the fortress of ice, like a dagger of melting. What if, cockatrice girl said, the danger is a person? Other people, Beatrice said. Goes without saying. They re the most dangerous thing. You shouldn t live in your house, Flannery added. You should live in ours. Her two sisters lived in a cave beneath the abandoned school, and amused themselves by playing ghosts for the terrified, delighted children who snuck in at night. Cockatrice girl had neighbors, which horrified her sisters, although in her neighborhood the yards were all immense. We make all the people we need, Flannery always said. She spent hours at a time illustrating imaginary companions with intricate frost.

9 But cockatrice girl needed people to turn into statues, people who would believe her lies, people to betray. Paradoxically, the least human of the three sisters was the most social. What if, cockatrice girl said, the most dangerous thing is inside of you somewhere? *** The next time cockatrice girl encountered statue boy, he was working at her favorite coffee shop, the Bitch s Brew. The Bitch s Brew was a riotgrrl coffee shop slash zine distro slash neo-pagan shrine. She found the politics and the spirituality insipid. But she adored the atmosphere, loved to look at the girls with their bright metal piercings, to marvel at how they were simultaneously scars, souvenirs of pain, and weapons. Her own skin was impenetrable. When cockatrice girl saw his unmistakable grey flesh behind the counter she once again flew into an uncharacteristic rage. She launched herself at him, as if she believed her chicken legs gave her the ability to fly. Precarious, perched on the counter, she grabbed his head. His skin was astonishingly warm. She could not force

10 him to move, could not smash his head down into the glass. Cassandra, he said, the trembling in his voice as much a surprise as his warmth had been, please don t. She had thought him completely solid, an exoskeleton without organs. I can hurt you. She pressed her claws against his scalp, to see if it would have any effect. Liquid, like wet concrete, oozed out. Statue boy grimaced. Yes. Please don t. But I can t move you against your will. She released the pressure from her claws, but kept her fingers on his head, arrayed like the spokes of a crown. And you can t stop me from moving. I know. For a moment, she could not recall what she was doing here. Cassandra? Please don t leave me. On top of the counter, her vantage point on the world was different. She sensed something important on the horizon, and scoured the corners of the room for its approach. Could it be the danger, could it be the defense against it? Before she could see anything, a door slammed shut. Cockatrice girl! Get the fuck down from there now! It was Shannon, the owner.

11 *** I m sorry, but I m going to have to ask you not to come back for a while. Shannon stood, much calmer now, arms crossed, her back firm against the back door of the Bitch s Brew. Cockatrice girl did not have friends, but Shannon was a fond acquaintance, a woman she respected for her grit, her skill in the art of dueling tongues. I can t believe you hired a man, cockatrice girl hissed. What about smashing the patriarchy? Shannon rolled her eyes. Don t be so second wave. Men aren t the enemy. Plus, it s an interesting question: is statue boy a man? He wasn t raised by humans so he hasn t had the years of patriarchal conditioning, which is what really matters, not the shape of your genitalia. Clearly, Shannon longed to discuss the implications for feminist theory. Cockatrice girl tuned out her ramblings. She wanted to say, I ve turned many men into stone, and you never wanted to analyze that. So, like I said, he s a feminist. He came unto me the first night we met. How feminist is that? Shannon grinned. He told me about meeting you.

12 What?! What did he tell you? Oh, no. I know better than to tell you something which ll piss you off. *** A letter from statue boy containing his words, silent ambassadors, arrived at her very doorstep. It was a love poem. She burnt it immediately. But she couldn t bring herself to throw the ashes away. They sat in a small urn, like the remains of something neither alive nor dead. For the first few weeks, each Friday, another envelope would arrive, bearing the name Cassandra in statue boy s steady, blocky handwriting. (Her name was not Cassandra; the only name she had, needed, or desired was cockatrice girl, vixen of the Valley, mother of a thousand stillborn statues.) The intervals between the letters grew smaller; two a week, three a week, one every day. Cockatrice girl imagined that the tempo would continue to accelerate until an avalanche of white letters poured out of her mailbox. This did not happen. Each time she found a new one, a delicious anger would fill her. She piled up the unopened envelopes in a box in front of the urn. Though statue boy had somehow managed to invade

13 both her coffee shop and her home, the rest of the familiar landscape of her life was still safe. However, she now found it boring. Hanging out with the vampires, the black-market plastic surgeons, and the professional brides, she discovered that the verbal repartee had become a stale dance of the same three steps, over and over. Even standing beneath the tridge with her sisters to gossip and watch the suicides fall had lost its thrill. She spent more and more time in her sprawling garden of statues, despite the fact that sitting there, in the rows and rows of frozen grey figures, she kept imagining motion at the edges of her vision. One day while she stood in her garden, her heart beat faster and faster, until it was leaping from beat to beat, from fear to hope, from hope to fear. She expected it to reach a crescendo, for her very heart to fly out of her chest, up into the air, and unfold into some miraculous new shape, like origami with organs. All that happened though was that she got lightheaded and had to repair inside for some snakescale tea and a biscuit. Things could not go on like this. So cockatrice girl threw a party. She invited everyone she knew, Shannon and the Bitch s Brew girls, the exiles hiding out in the castle next door, those few of her ex s who were still mobile, her sisters, the museum curators who paid her

14 gobs of cash under the table, her rivals, enemies, and colleagues, the floating mask she wanted to kiss, her specially trained pedicurist. Everyone. Even the good fairy with her ridiculous pink wings. Even statue boy. She dusted off all the statues, aired out the secret passages. Beatrice hung bones from ribbons and covered every available surface with candles, while Flannery sang to herself and snuck into the walk-in freezer. Cockatrice girl dismantled all the traps, except for the ones protecting her bedroom. She brought down the skullcups from the attic. At the Crossroads Market, she bought the most extravagant carnivorous plants she could find and an assortment of exotic grey fruit from the far North to make Stone Punch. For the punch bowl, she fed an enormous seashell to a boa constrictor, and then petrified the snake. Most importantly, she bought a vial containing the distilled essence of one hundred years of rain. *** Cockatrice girl stood on her staircase, which curved like a neck twisted out of shape by desire, and surveyed the party. Beatrice, of course, sat in a corner by herself, unapproachable even in this gathering of freaks,

15 improbables, and predators, cut off from the world by her own unmanageable hair. Surprisingly, Flannery appeared to be engaged in a friendly, animated conversation with a boy whose balloon head floated several feet above his collar. A cluster of vampires attempted to drain a leathercovered man into the punchbowl. In the courtyard, the good fairy and a few of the more wide-eyed Bitch s Brew girls had attempted, mostly unsuccessfully, to start some kind of circular, flowing game involving glowing orbs of light and pastel-colored scarves. The party seemed to be going well, although cockatrice girl did not care much either way. She was looking for a certain type of person; she needed to make sure the liquid in the vial worked. She spotted a used heart salesman named Victor, who considered himself to be wily. She sauntered over to him. Well, hello, Victor said, his smile widening. Victor, cockatrice girl traced the edge of his glass with one long, arched finger, have I ever told you that you look like a perfect devil in that suit? I feel like a fox in the fox house, Victor replied, So many villains! If only we were united by some visionary leader. Think of the scams we could pull, the epic deceptions. Now, now, Victor, cockatrice girl waggled her

16 finger in front of his face. At the same time, with the slightest flick of her other wrist, she poured a drop from the vial into his glass. Be good. With that, she walked away. Before she had gotten far, Victor cried out, My bones! They re melting. Cockatrice girl turned around. He was a puddle of flesh on the floor. *** Drifting through the party, cockatrice girl saw a woman with the strangest haircut she had ever seen; most of her hair hung long, behind her head, like a cape, but parts of it were short and spiky, and there were several floppy mohawks running diagonally across her scalp. The woman sobbed inconsolably, and cockatrice girl paused to watch. The punk barber responsible stood there, still holding the scissors, shifting his weight from foot to foot. Chill out, he said. It ll grow back. Not the same! the woman wailed. It won t ever be the same. The punk barber implored cockatrice girl with his eyes, and the woman took notice of her. Sister! the woman cried, and it was Beatrice, her

17 sister, whose face cockatrice girl did not remember, could not look at now. Don t you recognize me? You cut your hair? I didn t! He did. Never asked me. Just started chopping away. A lawnmower. Cockatrice girl could think of nothing to say. Seeing Beatrice s face, she realized now, was like seeing her sister s privates, as if some foolish child had pulled down her pants as a cruel prank. Her sister s face was impossibly pale, surprisingly expressive, causing cockatrice girl to wonder if Beatrice had been smiling and winking and crying behind her hair all these years, like a play performed with the curtain still drawn. Beatrice s face was as vulnerable and soft as any person s naked face, without make-up or mask. Cockatrice girl felt something rising in her throat, something she had to fight to keep down, she did not know if it were a laugh or a rising tide of vomit. Instead of finding out, she walked away. *** She waited for statue boy to approach her. He did so a little after midnight.

18 Good evening Cassandra, he said cheerfully, setting his glass on the table beside her. He wore a tuxedo. Though it grated her, she didn t bother to correct him about her name. Oh. I didn t realize you had come. In fact, she had been watching him all night, a snake eying a hawk. Are your enjoying your party? Why she let her drink slip out of her hands. The glass landed in the carpet, askew but not spilling. Let me get that for you, he offered, as she had known he would. Oh, you don t have He handed the glass back to her. Thank you. What did you put in my drink? he asked. Put in your drink? I saw you. Remember? Well, since you don t trust me, why don t you take my drink? You rescued it, after all. Nice try. Cockatrice girl grinned. You re good, she said, and walked away. She poured her drink down the toilet. ***

19 Cockatrice girl spotted Flannery, still talking to the boy with a floating balloon head. She stood behind a wide-leaved potted plant to eavesdrop. I dream about it, the balloon headed boy said, the buildings shrinking to doll houses, the people becoming ants, tiny and harmless, the Valley itself no more than a crack in the sidewalk. And it would be so cold up there, above the clouds, Flannery said, shivering with delight. And if we reached the moon, it would be cold all the time, it would be an Eden of winter. And there would be so little gravity. Would you I mean, I hope this doesn t offend you, but what if we rented a hot air balloon? I would love the balloon headed boy cut himself off. But wouldn t the heat be unbearable for you? I could pack ice, Flannery said gallantly, suitcases and suitcases full of ice. *** Statue boy found her again, later. Won t you tell me if you re enjoying your party? he said.

20 I m having a blast, she said, a smash, an absolute crash. Your smile seems frozen, statue boy said. Part of me has been frozen, cockatrice girl replied, astonished at herself, for as long as I can remember. That s how I can turn people to stone. I wasn t a person turned to stone. I m a statue who s come to life. But how is that possible? Magic. Cockatrice girl snorted. That s like saying, how did humans land on the moon? Technology. She understood her outburst now. Some deeper, wiser part of her, some ancient reptile within her brain, had realized that the only way to beat statue boy was to pretend to play his game, to act as if she loved him. She would walk, hand in hand with him, deep into the tender temple of his heart. And then she would tear her way out with her claws. Let me show you something, he said. Of course, she said. Take me by the hand. Not yet. ***

21 As they walked and chatted, cockatrice girl was surprised by how easy it was to pretend. She had assumed that she would have to fight, breath by breath, to mask her rage, but she found that her laughs were genuine. Though statue boy did not reveal the mechanism of his transformation, he did tell her about the days following. He described the painful process of teaching himself to move, the humiliation of birdshit in the eye, the doubletakes and rude questions she knew so well. His narrative, while honest to the dark, did not neglect the lighter moments. Once, he told her, he met a blind man who, after exploring statue boy s face with his fingers, had exclaimed, Great Sir, tell me what noble deed made you revered in the Valley! For there is a statue of you in Three Feathers Park. And how he, laughing, confessed that he was the statue, come to life. Statue boy made his learning to walk into a humorous epic. He rhapsodized about the joys of swimming, the feeling of the river flowing against his stone skin, his limbs gliding through the water, he and the river in a dance of motion. When they passed through the entrance of the maze, cockatrice girl smiled smugly to herself. Statue boy caught this, and said, Don t be so sure. Her mood soured. As they got nearer and nearer to the center of the maze, and statue boy evaded the spikes, the arrows, and

22 the crocodiles, she grew more and more anxious. Her replies became shorter and more vague. How could he know this maze? They were mere turns from the center. Cockatrice girl thought she would faint. She wanted to scream, she wanted to rip off this pleasant mask and turn the world to stone. But statue boy was stone and he could still move, and he was moving, his hand towards hers. It will be okay, he said, I promise. I m living proof. She stopped walking, stood perfectly still. She had never been this far into the maze, she did not know how to move here, with a living statue holding her hand. She put on a wide smile, a wink and a weapon hidden in its corners. I want to touch you, she said, pulling his hand towards her breast. I want to feel your smooth stone. I want to discover how anatomically correct you are. Statue boy pulled his hand away, sighed. Cassandra... I may be stone, but I m not a fool. The only person you re outwitting is yourself. He left her there, in the maze, which she had built but which not even she had been able to solve. She began to cry, to take random turns. Somehow, through the haze of her tears, she found her way out.

23 *** The next day, of course, another envelope from him arrived. She stared at the white rectangle. Such a commonplace object, such a dangerous object and yet she could not turn it to stone. She could not poison it, could not flatter it, trick it, weave elaborate lies to it, or in any way stab in it the back with her tongue. She had the same options available to everyone: she could burn it, hide it in a box, or open it. Cockatrice girl was tired of burning, tired of waiting for someone, even herself, to open a lid, a door, a window, tired of waiting for the entrance of air and light. She opened the envelope. Willow Fagan is in the middle of moving from Ann Arbor, Michigan to somewhere in the San Francisco Bay Area. Other than escaping from the icy clutches of winter, he enjoys singing, reading the Tarot, and staying up too late having passionate conversations. He s never been to a riotgrrl coffee shop slash zine distro slash neo-pagan shrine, but he would love to someday.this story, which was selected as an Honourable Mention in the 2006 ChiZine Short Story Contest, is his first fiction publication.

24 When We Were Stardust Rebecca Epstein We make a picnic in the sparse woods beyond the park, the four of us, with our baskets of breads and pâtés, waxed apples and a jug of sparkling cider. My husband Abe keeps close behind me. Keith and Janelle are our neighbors in a cul-de-sac. We have the assurance that by the time our picnic is finished it will be dark, and we will trip back in our middle-aged clumsiness to our cars over anthills and tree roots. As we walk in the sunset beneath the weeping willows we murmur small things to each other, and it is not what we say that matters; it is the sweet and soft volume, the cadence like our footsteps. This evening is a relief and a pleasure. We pass the baskets from hand to hand, and we look for a good spot to settle and lay the woolen picnic blanket down. I am glad to be taking a break from the lab. I have buried myself in there lately, among the hot lamps and observation boxes. But the hamsters can observe themselves for an evening. I am tired of hard science. We come into a clearing, if you could call it that we

25 are not so much in a woods as a grassy field punctuated by a great number of trees. We stop and toe the grass. Lucy, how is this spot? asks Abe, and everyone looks at me. Well, it s fine, I say. Are there bugs in the grass? In a past life, I imagine Abe was a king. He ruled over his African tribe with a passion that I can still see in his eyes now, as he vacuums the stairs, or comforts me with his large hands. He had skin so dark it shone in the sun. He wore a beaded headpiece. He had fingernails that grew and grew. A neighboring tribe encroached upon my husband s tribe, and they were greater in number, with sharper, heavier spears, slingshots that hoisted boulders, and deep growls that shook the savannah. They came in the night. What did they want? Even Abe, the king, didn t know. It was unfair. They went to battle, and before my husband was brought down in his prime by a spear hurled at his heart, he saw his tribe reduced to the bewildered children, the women (who were raped), and the old men, who huddled against trees and only half-wished they were strong enough to fight. The four of us grab the corners of the blanket and pull until it is taut against the grass. It is quiet here, and there is the smell of flowers. The dark makes me nervous. If

26 there weren t so many trees we could see straight across the sound to the damaged New York City skyline. Janelle, who is tall and slim and honey blonde, was probably an Aztec in the 1500s. I can see it in the way she holds herself, in her narrow, straight back, the plush of her lips, her prescience about the weather. She, rather, he grew cacao beans and cotton. He squatted in the sun and sifted his fingers through the damp dirt. It was like silk in his hands. Janelle is quick to fury and so was he. When his children became sick with dark red spots on their bodies and skin hot enough to boil a river, he threw jars and plates around the hut, the objects making whipping noises in the air and spilling liquid on the floor. There were shards of clay in the corners as his children died. And soon he and his wife were stricken with smallpox too. They lay on straw pallets on the floor, whisking their hands through the air across their fields of vision, watching the light divide and merge around their fingers. I think about what it would be like to watch my own children die and I wonder if Janelle carries that pain with her, from life to life: if she will never outrun it. Each life is another layer of bark on the tree; we gather our joys and traumas around us like skins and reach nearer toward the heavens. Maybe there are dozens and dozens for each person. Time goes back forever, and

27 I m beginning to think we were always here, in a human body, in a mammoth body, in a single cell, in stardust. We open the baskets and set out plates of food. The bread is crusty and the fruit is sweet. We pour the cider into paper cups. My hand comes into contact with Janelle s and I feel a little bit of lust for her fierce Aztec self, and then I pull back. I look at Keith across the picnic blanket and I see a peasant wife in The Middle Ages in England. She scrubbed, and she cooked, and she gathered crops in the endless fields, and she tended to the children, of which there were too many. When she could, she sent her children out to be apprenticed by anyone who would take them: the shoemaker, the doctor, or the shipbuilder. Once she had a baby who wouldn t stop crying, who had a bluish tinge to its lips, and she carried the baby into town and left it in the gutter, and the filthy water that ran through carried it away to someplace else. Perhaps Keith tries to make up for it in this life. After all, he is a pediatrician. Abe says, Are we doing okay, here? I lay my head on his shoulder. We clink paper cups together in a toast to the sky. It is dark through the tiara of shifting leaves and branches above us. Did I tell you what happened at school today?

28 Janelle says. She is a math teacher at the high school, where my two oldest children go. She laughs and takes a sip of cider. There was a fight between two of the kids, I think they re sophomores. A boy in the Persian tough-guy crowd and a white boy, one of the Latin club geeks. A geek got into a fight? asks Abe. Janelle brushes her free hand through her hair. It was surreal. They were in the hall just outside my classroom in fourth period, the Persian one looking ready to whip out his brass knuckles, and the nerdy boy bouncing on the balls of his feet, his jeans tucked into his socks What were they fighting about? I ask. There s this girl named Sylvia and all the boys want her. She s got the looks. The pouty lips, the long hair. She s not extremely bright but she works hard. She s always in my office hours. She s blameless. I imagine myself in high school, as we all are, picturing where we would have fit into this scenario, in that past life. The handsome dark-skinned macho, the weak nerd, the beautiful girl, or an onlooker pressed against the lockers. And so, somehow, this girl had taken a liking to the nerd. In the dark, one of us gasps, and then we all laugh. They d been making out in the stairwells during class. You know, getting a bathroom pass and smooching for

29 those few minutes they had. I cannot imagine such a scenario. I don t believe you, says Keith. Why would the beautiful girl choose the nerd? I did, didn t I? Janelle says, and Keith laughs and smacks her. I m not sure why, she says. I think he bought her a puppy. Anyway he had pledged his love to her, and from what I gathered, she had done the same. Where does the other boy come in? Abe asks. Well, says Janelle, and shifts her legs on the blanket. This other boy had picked Sylvia out to be his. I don t know exactly how that works, but there you go. He was popular, she was beautiful, and he took offense when he found out what was going on between her and the geek. It is now officially dark, and we can only see silhouettes of each other. We pass the pâtés and plastic knives to spread them with, onto the bread and crackers. And that s about it. They got into it, right there in the hallway. They were circling each other like gang members about to pull out knives. The geek was hopping on his toes, he was so mad. So what happened? Abe asks. Who won the fight? Well the Persian boy did, obviously, says Janelle.

30 Actually it wasn t much of a fight. This was the best part. The nerd took a swing at the macho boy, who dodged it very well, and the nerd swung all the way around. A full one-eighty! His fist slammed into the lockers so hard the halls rang. I can see it. It is every high school scene to ever occur. I decide that Janelle was an orator in a past life. He broke his fist, I think, all the fingers and whatever other bones are in the hand, and he doubled over in the hallway, screaming. He was crying like a baby. The other boy ran. What did he expect? I ask. This is what happens to you. Exactly, Janelle says. We got the school nurse up there right away, and she took one look at his purple paw and shipped him off to the emergency room. But still... What? I ask. I can hear Janelle shift on her blanket. I realize that it does not make sense, this picnic in the dark. I just feel awful, she says. It s my job to protect these kids from each other. But I was afraid to be in the middle of it and get hurt myself. It s not your job to protect them! Keith says. It s your job to teach them math. Beyond that, what happens to them happens to them. We are quiet for a few

31 moments. Unbelievable, says Abe, finally. And what did Sylvia decide to do? Did she stick with her man? Oh, says Janelle. I don t know. In another life, Abe might have been a slave in Louisiana. It was early in the nineteenth century. He would have been a woman slave. She was the daughter of two slaves who had been shipped over to America from Nigeria, and she had nine siblings and half siblings, although she hardly ever saw or thought about them. And she didn t think about meals, which were always broth and bread, or sex, which would have required far more energy than she had after a day in the fields, or love, because who can love when they are filled with such a pure despair, such a powerful helplessness? That s not true, either; she felt all of those things, all of the time. Hunger and lust and love. She lived a long life, bearing four children who were sent off to other plantations. When she was old enough that her joints swelled and creaked, she was relegated to the household chores. She died in a slave bed in the slave house, with the master looking on and wanting to pat her tired head and her old feet, but standing back and waiting, instead. In this life I am living now I was raped in the dark in the parking lot outside the hamster lab. In the following

32 weeks I thought about my three children, who were already in their teens Janelle s students, Sylvia s peers and this new child who had nothing to do with them. I thought about my dear vasectomized husband who was willing to go along with whatever I chose. I was sick all day every day, staying close to the bathroom lest I vomit on the rug, but this was not morning sickness. This was a twisting, aching dilemma that gripped at my guts and pushed my food back up my throat. I aborted her four days ago. In another life the baby in my womb was my wife and we scaled mountains together. We climbed the Alps, calling out to each other through the snow and thin air. And in another life my baby and I were twin boys in a shtetl in Poland. We swam the river and buried dead birds in the dirt beneath the rockrose bushes. When the Nazis came we were too busy chasing each other in the cornfield to hear our mother calling. I let out a cry and lay my head down on the picnic blanket. Cups of cider spill. What is it, Keith asks. I feel hands rubbing at my back. My husband gathers me up into his arms. She had it done the other day, he tells them. There is a hush. Why are we here in the night? These three people are the ones who met me in the emergency room after the police brought me in, and who

33 stayed with me all of that dark night and all of the next day and in shifts for the week after, running a bath and reminding me to eat. In another lifetime, in the years before I was raped, I can t remember if we were friends or neighbors. In the moment that my baby was removed from me I felt a strange visceral pain that I was sure I recognized. Then I remembered with a tidal wave all the lives I d lived before this one. I had never thought of such a thing before. All the times I had lost her. In the Alps, in the shtetl, in the streets of Paris, in the early settlement of Australia. And before that too. When we were stardust we traveled together through space, watching over the universe. I bury my face in Abe s warm shirt. I can feel his thundering, tribal heartbeat against my temple. He is and always will be a good man, even if he is not her. I wonder why it must be that I lose what I need, again and again. Is this what happens to us all? The four of us are speechless and cold in the dark, and we wait for me to stop crying. Rebecca Epstein is twenty-six years old, blonde, then brunette, then blonde again. Then brunette. She grew up in New York and is now getting her fiction MFA in Tucson, Arizona a very dry, very warm, very languid sort

34 of place. She lives with one parrot, one female dog who lifts her leg to pee, and one male dog who does not. She also has this old guy with enormous wings who hangs out in the chicken coop in her backyard, and sometimes she throws rocks at him. Rebecca has been published in The Sycamore Review and Arts & Letters, won the 2006 Silent Voices Short Story Award, the University of Arizona s Beverly Rogers Fellowship, and this year is nominated by her MFA program for the Best New American Voices award.

35 Début-de-siècle Jonathan Wood Do you know what we should do? Vine-creeper-curls of smoke unfurl from Siegfried s nostrils. They spread across the space between us and into my eyes and nose. I cough, hacking, water-blurred vision, everything swimming in front of me, uncertain. Siegfried s question, however, is rhetorical. He shakes out his newspaper and turns it so Ernst and I can see it. He points to a column of dense ink on the front page. The words, Artist found dead, perched at its top. We should find this man. As your first port of call, I would suggest the morgue. Ernst, dark-haired, thick moustache well waxed, beard cropped short, eyebrows poised like vultures, leans back out of Siegfried s cloud of acrid, herbal smoke. Leather creaks beneath him. He looks amused, replete despite his narrow frame. Ha! The noise is like a gunshot from deep in Siegfried s barrel chest. Smoke billows from him. He claps a hand onto Ernst s shoulders. Ernst rolls his eyes but remains as jovial as he is likely to ever become. Then,

36 abruptly, Siegfried s demeanor changes. He leans forward, shaggy dark mane of hair hunched around his shoulders. This is the third time, he says. Three men: two artists, one composer, all Jewish, all dead. The killer carves a symbol into their chests. It is the work of one man. We should find him. Why? My voice slips from between my lips, my mind is elsewhere, still fogged by the previous night s excesses. I shield my eyes from the daylight that leaks in through the café s open windows. Outside, pedestrians and carriages look flat on Vienna s streets, like paper cutouts in a child s play. We sit apart critics; players in our own distinct play. Why? Siegfried is outraged, almost on his feet. The impetus of forward motion! Imagine if we do nothing. Every artist spread upon the floor, some madman s symbol emblazoned upon them. His art ending theirs. Every musician s music halted at the command of his knife-bladed baton. Every philosopher He carries on in this vein for quite some time. Ernst catches my eye and yawns elaborately. Siegfried pretends not to notice. Enough, Ernst says finally. We understand. Why always this need for excess? This is the very thing that ruins your artwork. Demonstrate a little self-restraint for

37 once. I am sorry, Siegfried says, and he is not, that I cannot bring myself to censor myself at the behest of some bloated overlord. Gentlemen I insert. But the differences have been brewing between them for too long. That I can exercise enough competence at my job to meet an editor s requirements is a guarantee of my success. That you cannot recognize it as such is just another indication of your doomed future in this city. I have no time for this fool s errand of yours. He drains the last of his coffee, black and bitter, its scent biting through the stench of Siegfried s cigarette. He pushes out of the booth and towards the two dimensional figures of the world outside. Siegfried harrumphs and snorts at his retreating back then turns to me. He will calm down, I say. I do not care what he does. As will you. Forget him. Siegfried exhales more smoke. Now let us discuss the capturing of this villain. I wave my hand weakly. I have my commission, I say, apologetically. I have my own deadlines too, and my progress is still

38 slow. This is a generous description. For four weeks the blank canvas has regarded me with a baleful blind eye. It taunts me without words, mocks me without expression. It is the void into which I pour my creativity. The flesh husk that remains grimaces at Siegfried: an attempt at a smile. So be it, my friend. Siegfried sags momentarily then puffs back up again. Still, I will not be to blame when they find your corpse on the street floor. You will not find it, I say. How so sure? Siegfried, thrusts forward, chin pointing accusatorily. Unless you are the murderer? You forget, friend, I am not Jewish. *** The sun is stark, everything thrown into startling contrast, black shadow on bleached white. Men and women promenade at respectful distances. They are neatly starched and pressed, turned out for display. They move in straight lines, as if on tracks. I weave between them, momentarily falling into step behind one man and then spinning off onto another s path. Not a single eye turns towards me, my paint-stained suit, my disarrayed

39 hair, my creased skin. Their disdain is noticeable in the absence of their gaze. The bank looms before me, encrusted with age. An architectural abomination, imitations of pastiches piled upon each other. I only wish I could call it an aberration but it is typical. Instead it is Olbrich s Secession building and its ilk that are in the minority, tender flowers clinging desperately to life in this weed-choked city. The bank s doors do not welcome me, but I push through anyway. The cavernous interior space arches up and away from me. Several stout city guards survey with a certain amount of suspicion but none of them accost me. A young woman asks if she can help me, though her tone makes it clear she believes me far beyond any help she can offer. I inform her that I know the route to my father s office quite well enough and she backs away. I feel her distrustful eyes linger on my back. I knock on the door and sepulchral paternal tones invite me inside. He sits stooped over his desk, overshadowed by his chair, framed by bookshelves and ledgers, the backdrop white light painted on the glass of his windows silhouetting him. Herman, please enter. He cannot even attempt familiarity these days. You are keeping well I trust. I suffice for the present. Lines of familial

40 connection seep from him and arrest me, mold me, fix me, push me. I battle these invisible manipulations, becoming a caricature of myself. It is his power over me. That is good to hear. He nods curtly. We sit in silence. And you? I ask after a while. Well. Yes, well. Another peck of his head. And mother? Well. I believe. His mouth twitches a smile in response to my evoked petulance. I scan his desk. Where is mother s daguerreotype? He pauses fractionally too long. It fell, he says, cracked. She will be sitting for a new one. Then, deciding that we have paid enough lip services to social contracts, he asks, To what do I owe the pleasure of your company, Herman? You are absent from us so often these days. I need supplies, I lie. Supplies? A minimal movement of a single eyebrow. Pigments, brushes, certain oils. My hands wave, dismissive. For the commission? Of course. How much do you need?

41 I name a sum as large as I dare, and he acquiesces without a word. He dips his pen and scratches out a check. He prepares to sign it but hesitates. How goes the painting, Herman? My lip curls. Well. Herr Bohm is eagerly anticipating his first viewing. Herr Bohm the tourist of the new, the indulgent merchant, condescending to patronize me after my father s long years of massaging his fortune. As long as he is willing to overcome your generation s preconceptions and embrace the new, he will not be disappointed. I am sure he will be happy with it. The head bows back to the check, and the final pen flourish is made. He holds it out to me and I reach to take it but he will not let go. His eyes survey me, my clothes, my crumpled form. I know you don t think much of me, Herman, he says, voice suddenly low and thick. That is the prerogative of youth. But don t be too hasty to reject my generation entirely. We have made mistakes, yes, but we have some wisdom as well. I hope you see that. He releases the check and I snatch it, unable to slow my fingers. You are quite alright, aren t you? he asks as I move to the door. There has been news in the papers of a

42 killer. I manage something close to a laugh. Do not worry about me, father. Why, indeed, this killer should fear me. Siegfried and I intend to catch him. I posture bravado, feeling foolish, lying so. You shall do no such thing. His voice snaps, his beard quivering. If you ever have the misfortune to learn anything more of that man than you read in the newspaper you shall proceed immediately to the police. Do you understand me? I laugh again. This is my power over him. There is a rap at his door and I take it as my cue to leave. Flinging the door wide, I reveal a beautiful woman tightly wrapped in her clothing. She clutches a stack of musty folders to her chest. She gives my father a curious glance as I walk away. It is only as I reach the end of the corridor that I hear their laughter trickling after me. *** There is no path forward. All that lies behind me culminates in this: this nothing, this empty space devoid of paths. My paint brush hovers unable to draw its own way. How long have I stood like this, posed, trapped in

43 stasis? The future. That is my commission. To paint the muse of what is to come. Herr Bohm s offer and curse, given to me with an insidious smile and the promise of a sum only made believable by the salon I sat in. I could not refuse. I shall not receive my fee. There is a pounding at my door and it shakes me from my frozen pose. The paintbrush clatters to the floor. I go to see who it is at this late hour. Siegfried stands there, flushed, his fist raised to once more assault my door. Herman! Friend! Sir! And then, with a wink, Gentile! Come in. I step aside to allow him entry. In? But there is no time! He pulls me back toward the threshold. No, it is you who must come out. And quickly, my good man. Whatever for? I feign bemused reluctance but his certainty is infectious. He raises a theatrical arm and booms, Fraulein Cortez. Who? Get your coat, Herman. I shall explain upon the way. Purely for a sense of decorum, to demonstrate to

44 Siegfried that he cannot simply barge in and presume to disrupt my evening I begin to prepare some delaying tactics, but the cast them aside. Why deny the impulse? Why give in to outdated social contracts? Is it not the spirit of the secession to find new ways? I gather my coat while Siegfried obtains us a coach driver. Seated in the back, Siegfried lights one of his potent cigarettes and passes another to me. I light it and feel the smoke swirling down and down inside of me, filling me, inflating me. I am a paper lantern aflame in the night, a spark of brightness in the city lights, floating and bobbing in the shadows. The city floods past us, whorls of society men, society women. I float on the river of their bodies, Siegfried s spirit blowing me where it will. Fraulein Cortez is a miraculous woman, rumored to be of Romany extraction. His voice is a syncopated beat, a skittering trumpet against the groundswell strings of the city. She knows things forbidden to mortal men. Smoke moves in and out of me. She can contact spirits from beyond the grave. The trumpet glistens in the city lights, beckoning me ever on, drawing me with it. We will speak to the spirit of the murdered artist while it still lingers on this plane, and he shall identify his

45 killer. All shall be success and we shall be free of this stalking shadow. A triumphant fanfare. A blaze of fire. I say. I say! Siegfried calling from the carriage to a man in the streets. A new instrument, a dischordia, an oboe playing against the trumpet. Its face is familiar. Ernst! A familiar name. What are you doing here? Search... for... I cannot answer. The trumpet and oboe sing their songs. The carriage carries us further on and then I am descending. Or the world ascends... The orchestra hushes and walls raise around me. A room, a cavern, candles and strangers in a circle. The conjuror: majestic, tallow-skinned, her frame swallowed by reams of golden fabric. She sings her own song, unfamiliar chords and rhythms, a new song that denies Vienna. And now the smoke breathes me in and out and in and beyond. Time passes, walls crumbles, glass cracks, falls, splinters swallowed by the tide of weeds and grass, trees rising even as wood rots, the endeavor of this city rejected in one vast uprising. And as the city falls, the music swells, the conjuror woman s unearthly tones swelling,

46 erupting, a mad pipe tune whistling between the ruined avenues. And here comes the piper, Siegfried, his goat legs tapping to his own tune, his prodigious circumcised phallus exposed to the unbound elements. The populace follows, naked and howling their lust and violence, their ecstasy of the flesh. A madness, a release, a rejection, everything hidden beneath the shutters of this city brought out into the light. My father and the woman who stood at his door are naked and thrusting in a fountain that pumps wine six feet into the air. My mother, with a single sword blow, opens them both from brow to breast. A few stand against Siegfried and his inevitable march. Ernst is among them. They come at him, reigning down blows, but a blast from his pipes opens them, and their organs bloom from their chests. Flowers erupt where their blood touches the ground. *** The present, the now, comes back to me with the flicker of sunlight though my studio windows. For a moment I am gripped by the conviction that I spent the night painting, but then I look up and see the blank canvas standing watchful over me.

47 Unable to bear its gaze, I stumble back to the café. The city bewilders me: its choreographed citizenry, its stage-set architecture, the coquettish whispers from its unseen wings. I try to hold an image of Fraulein Cortex in my mind but she sputters in and out of my memory, everything blurred and false. Damn Siegfried s drugs. Maybe I should ask her to pose, to be Bohm s muse. Siegfried is waiting in the cool shadows of the café. I am sitting opposite him before I see that his face is contorted by bruises. My God, man, what happened? He regards me balefully from behind his black mane. You don t remember. God, you were far gone. Guilt suddenly grips me. I did this? Siegfried snorts. No, it was that fool, Ernst. But why? I cannot comprehend the reason. Because he is a close-minded philistine. This is a little strong, but I can forgive Siegfried, considering his state. What could have provoked him? I wonder aloud. I do not wish to speak of it. But I should go. Siegfried stands. I have an opening tonight and the gallery owner has more enthusiasm than

48 sense. I should ensure that he has not made a mess of things. And with that, he stalks away. *** I seek out Ernst at the offices of his newspaper. They are small and reek of ink, trapped on the upper stories of an unattractive edifice. Still, it gives Ernst and his colleagues a fine view of the city that they criticize attacking with bombast its outmoded bureaucracy and its poorly hidden depravities. I find my friend sitting at his typewriter, talking heatedly with the German, Rudolf Kraus, their art critic. A tremor of nausea shakes me but Ernst has already seen me with his one good eye. The other eye is almost closed behind a purple-yellow clot of swollen skin. I shake my head. What did you two do to each other? Ernst glances quickly at Rudolf. I do not wish to speak of it. Rudolf smiles. I shall leave you two alone. But, Ernst you will be there, tonight? Most certainly. Excellent. Many of the city s most powerful men

49 agree with our vision. You will make good friends. Unity is the only answer. Rudolf smiles again and claps me on the shoulder. And you, Herman, I can only repeat what I wrote about your paintings last month. Quite extraordinary. I... I begin, but he is already walking away. You should foster his support, Ernst says, nodding at the German s retreating back. His star is rising and his opinions reach many an ear. I shake my head. The work he saw was derivative at best. I am a mockery to the secessionist movement. He was being polite. Nonsense. He is not polite, he is honest. It is one of the Germans more admirable qualities. I hold up a hand. Enough. I do not wish to speak about painting. I wish to speak about you and Siegfried. I am as reluctant to speak of it as you are to speak of your art. But what happened? Did you provoke him? He you? I do not wish to discuss it. He pushes a hand through his oiled hair and regards his typewriter. However, if you are willing to speak of other things then I have an interview to go to, and I would appreciate the company along the way.

50 Glad for the distraction from my malevolent canvas, I agree. We descend to the street and, with his angular arms uncharacteristically exuberant, he tells me of the politician with whom he is to speak. He is very forward-thinking. He sees the future and it is Germany. We Austrians must abandon our thoughts of independence. The Hapsburg empire collapses and our nation is flailing out, obeying only its basest impulses. We are unable to carry ourselves in a fit manner and that will be our downfall. United with Germany, with the Kaiser s guiding hand, we shall not only survive but flourish. This spiel is a familiar one, its ethos spreading through the city like an infection. I nod and smile at the appropriate points. After all, I do not know the answer. Perhaps he is right. Still, I will not be dissuaded from my course and after I judge sufficient time has passed I ask again, What led you and Siegfried to blows last night? I have told you, I do not wish to speak of it. Why were you even at Fraulein Cortez s last night? Do you not remember? Siegfried s drugs will be the end of you. It was certainly not my idea to attend the séance. I was on my way to the Opera when Siegfried hailed me from your carriage. He was conciliatory and I

51 thought perhaps we could repair the breach in our friendship so I accompanied you. I wish I had not, for at the gypsy s den, he proceeded to cross all boundaries of taste and decorum. That is as much as I shall say. What did he do? Ernst stops walking and takes hold of my shoulders. Listen to me, Herman. Those people, gypsies, Jews like Siegfried, they shall drag you down. Avoid them. Abandon them But, I laugh, Ernst, you are yourself a Jew. I am no longer. He looks at me defiantly. I am no longer Austrian. I am a German, whole and pure. I consider you one too. I laugh but see he is serious. It is the way of the future, he tells me and leaves. *** In the following days I see little of either of my friends. I read Rudolf s review of Siegfried s exhibition. It is scathing and cruel. I seek my friend at the café, but he is absent from his usual seat. I travel back to my canvas and stare its unblemished surface. I still think of asking Fraulein Cortez to sit for me, but I do not know how to go

52 about contacting her. Siegfried was the one who knew the way to her. Every time I think to try him at his home guilt overtakes me and I return to stare at my canvas. So, I travel back and forth, from studio to café, trapped in a familiar route, achieving nothing. Finally, after a week s absence, Siegfried is back. Where have you been? I ask him. Reading! He thrusts a book at me, something to do with interpreting dreams. It is phenomenal. The author lays the psyche bare. He exposes our masks for what they are. It has changed me. You seem in remarkably good spirits, I say. I feared you were wallowing in despair after Rudolf s review. That fool? Siegfried bellows laughter. He is too busy defining rules for our art, trying to delineate and ensnare it. Our art is evolution, it is change, he cannot contain it and what he cannot contain he despises. His disapproval is arbitrary and meaningless. You took it well then. I smile. He denies his own id. And then, off my confused expression, he again thrusts the book at me and says, You must read this! Alright, I will. I will. I take the book. Now. Please, you must tell me, where can I find Fraulein

53 Cortez? Siegfried gives me an odd stare. The gypsy, the spirit woman, I explain, more urgent now. Do you not read? Siegfried asks me. Are you utterly divorced from events in this city? What? I ask him. She died two days ago. Murdered by our man. No! I am dumbstruck, mouth agape and silent. My hope, my glimmer of direction cut loose and sent astray. The light in the paper lantern is snuffed as it floats away towards the oblivion of the canvas void. Yes! Siegfried reaches into a pocket and produces a battered piece of paper torn from a newspaper s column. He reads, was found in her chamber, the killer s familiar sigil a broken cross carved into her chest. We must stop him. I say, still aghast at this disaster. There is truth in our dreams. Siegfried taps the book that I have placed on the table in front of me. I have read about how the natives of the New World smoke certain drugs and go on quests in their dreams, searching for answers to the questions of the mundane world. We too must quest, must find this killer. And who more likely to be found in the dream world than someone who was

54 powerful in life in the ways of the spiritual? We will quest for Fraulein Cortez herself! He continues like this. I nod and smile, after all I do not know how to proceed. Perhaps he is right. *** I am of the smoke and in the smoke and it is in me. We float, languid, in and out of our lungs, encompassing the room, then sucked back in, encompassing the building then back, the city, then back. I am in streets, cobbles, buildings, the architecture spread out before me, the city center rotting and collapsing even as the edges strive outwards, until the weight of the city is too much for the earth to take and it cracks and crumbles and buildings and citizenry tumble pell-mell, hell for leather, down, down, down, into smoke and fire. I am the smoke, above and below, I see it all, know it all. I see the new alignment of the streets as they fall to earth, the regimented criss-cross lines arranged in the pattern of a broken cross, a pinwheel that obliterates landscape, trampling hills, filling valleys in its insistence of being. The people collapse into tidy rows and are immediately commanded to their feet, the voice sharp, quick,

55 demanding. No-one dares disobey. People move as one, processing to the city center, from which the voice emanates. The smoke follows, fascinated. It sees its mother and father, hand in hand, marching. Its mother acts out a smile as the woman from the bank marches alongside its father. The marching becomes faster and faster, carrying the citizenry towards Ernst, for of course it is Ernst, at the city center, shrieking his orders. Stretched out before him is Siegfried, prostrate and bound, so only his face and his cloven hooves show. Then Ernst plunges a knife deep into Siegfried s chest, tearing skin, and muscle, and bone, scratching that pinwheel cross irrevocably into him. And Siegfried screams, and he screams, and he screams. *** There is the smell of meat and the buzz of a fly a small insistency in my ears, a nagging wrong-ness that drags me back out of the abyss and up into the city real. My body is thick and useless, a flopping flesh marionette. My eyes are crusted shut. My flailing hand finally picks them open. I am in my studio again. Seigfried s book is in my hand. Across from me lies Siegfried.

56 Siegfried covered in flies. Then I smell the meat stench again and gag. How long have I lain here? How long? The floor around him is slick with blood. It is on the walls. His chest is opened. I reel back and the flies take to the air. Amid the mass of bone I see the familiar pinwheel cross carved into his flesh. As I flee the room I notice that not a drop of blood has stained my canvas. *** Ernst is not at work. I tear through the city, through looming façades and carriage crowds. I must know. It could not have been him. And yet, perhaps there is truth in dreams. Could I have seen... I couldn t have seen. Dreams occlude and obfuscate smoke and candlelight, paper lanterns winking in the night with a knowing nod to the masquerade. I cannot be right. But I must know. My fist pounds at his door. He answers, bewildered at my insistency. Taut faced, unsure whether to spit invective at my poor manners, or to be concerned. Where were you? I grab him by his lapels, shake him. He pushes me from him.

57 Calm yourself! I have guests. Where were you?! When? What is all the about? He adopts bemusement. Last night. It s Siegfried. I told you last time we spoke, he waves a dismissive hand, be done with him. I cannot help you if you tie yourself to him and his depravities. You will all sink. He is dead. I search his face for pity or guilt. There is only my flat reflection in his eyes. That is unfortunate, he says after a pause, but nothing surprising. It is no great loss to the art world. You saw Rudolf s last review. Is that all you can say? My breath is ragged, my nerves as frayed as my fingernails. It is one less Jew in the world. You are a Jew! Tendons stand out on my neck. Spittle stains his immaculate collar. Ernst flushes. He grabs me, pushes me back with shocking strength. His face is inches from mine, livid. He speaks in the voice of my dreams. Never call me that again! There is a noise from down the hall. We both turn. There is a man in a doorway and it takes me a moment to

58 recognize my patron, Herr Bohm. He holds a book in one hand. Is there something the matter? he asks. Then he spies me, Herman? Ernst releases me. Herr Bohm. I nod. It is nothing, Ernst says. We are friends. I have not seen Herman in quite a while. I was a little... exuberant in our greeting. Herr Bohm remains impressively impassive at this claim. Will you be joining us too, Herman? he asks. No, I say. Well, I m sure I shall see you soon, Herman. I am looking forward to seeing my painting. Of course, I grimace a smile. It is proceeding very well. That is excellent to hear. Ernst is already half way down the hall, away from me, turning towards Her Bohm. He sees the book in my patron s hand and asks, Where did you find that? On your shelves, Ernst. They withdraw and I only glimpse the cover of the book but my blood runs cold. It shows a large stainedglass window. The main motif in the glass is a cross, broken to resemble a pinwheel.

59 *** The detective who takes my statement is a small, impassive man, who dispatches his men to various locations with the indifference of a general drawing battle lines on a map. Some go to my studio to claim Siegfried s body, others to speak with Ernst, others to check the validity of my claims. I sit, small and desolate in the office, wrapped in the smell of paper and cigars. I have followed my father s advice and sought out the police. After all, I could see no other way forwards. Perhaps he was right. *** I sit alone in the café. My coffee is as cold as the seats beside me. Siegfried is dead, his memory scrubbed clear from my studio walls. Ernst is in jail and awaiting his trial. There has not been a murder since his arrest a week ago, and that seems evidence enough for the journalists. I have had no dreams. My canvas is blank. Eventually the hour forces me to leave the café. I wander the streets, fingering the cigarette in my pocket. It

60 is the last memento of Siegfried that I have. I found it trapped between two floorboards, missed by the police. The streets are as pristine as ever. Formal crowds move from theatre to opera house, voices kept at a respectful murmur. Horse hooves resound primly on the flagstones. But behind the shattered windows red lights burn low and dull, and no one can tell what they do not see. The irrepressible urge can only be held back so long. It must uncoil, unfurl, reveal itself, like a breath of smoke on the night s air. I pass a store upon the window of which someone has painted in red, Do not buy from the Christ-killers. I should talk to Ernst. I should explain and give him the opportunity to do so. A madness in this city has gripped him. Maybe he knows what it holds for our future. Instead, I light the cigarette. I walk where the city takes me, listening to its music swell, a formal waltz, strict tempo, conservative. Everyone steps in time to the rhythm. On their faces is a mixture of dedication and fear. They dress in black and white and red. When someone stumbles from the rhythm the others descend, an impenetrable mass, obscuring the offender, then they step away as one and the offender is again back in step, his or her face a little paler, his or her

61 movements a little twitch-twitch-jerk-jerk falling, the rhythm driving them on. As the darkness thickens on the city the people carry candles so they can still observe each other closely, but one by one the candles die and all is night. Then the piper plays his tune and now all the joy is gone from Siegfried s dance. His blood and his happiness have flowed from him. Around me the dance steps falter and the waltz and the pipes battle, but in the darkness the conductor can no longer command his troops. The pipe music swells, its song bludgeoning through blackness and the footsteps falter, then become a cacophony, a riot, everything blurred, undistinguished, feared. Breathing hard and close in my ear. A scream. A gurgle. Warm wetness on my skin. And I am dancing too. How can I not dance? We all dance even though we long for sleep. When the light comes, the streets are slick and red and we dance the conductor s waltz through the gore, careful to keep time. *** With the morning comes sobriety and the news: Ernst is dead. I wake in bushes and stumble out of a small park,

62 picking leaves and brambles from my hair. As I make my disheveled way back to the café, I hear two men speaking of it. A waitress confirms the story he was found in his cell, his chest defiled in the now familiar style, the word Jew scrawled on the wall in blood. The police have taken an official position of embarrassment. My last scraps of certainty desert me. If not Ernst then... And it was I, I who brought this to pass, who brought Ernst to the killer s attention. For once Ernst s name had been in the papers then, of course, so was his religion. The Jewish Jew killer how the society men and women loved a hypocrisy that was not their own. I did this. I did this... Realization like the first brush stroke on a canvas. Who was alone with Siegfried the night he died? And not even I can account for my whereabouts last night. Last night when I planned to visit Ernst. I am not a Jew. I am not a gypsy. I did this... *** The small detective looks at me. Slowly he extracts a

63 cigar, cuts it, lights it, and blows smoke at me. Where, sir, he asks, do you get the gall? Pardon me? I am not familiar with police technique but I suspect more outrage at my crimes that this polite disdain. You come here a week ago and claim testimonial evidence that your friend is a murderer. It turns out you are lying. Now you come to me again, with an even more preposterous lie this one rife with descriptions of your abuse of drugs and you expect me to swallow it whole. I repeat, sir, where do you get the gall? I splutter. I should arrest you for your flagrant self-centered disrespect but I fear it would only waste more of my precious time. Remove yourself before I lose my temper and give the sound thrashing you so desperately need. I can only obey. *** The streets. The streets again. Always on the streets moving somewhere but only ever arriving at the same destination. Do any of these roads leave this damn city? Is there a path that does not turn back upon itself? And if

64 not, where can I find the knowledge to build my own? I cannot even paint myself an answer. I see a group of young men, somber-faced throwing stones at a shop selling kosher food. I see my father and his bank girl walking parallel down either side of the street, eyes fixed on each other. I see nothing else. Am I the killer? If so, can I be stopped? And if not, who can find him? In a city so adept at hiding things from itself he can run loose indefinitely, only stepping forward when he chooses. A perpetual fear. Darkness embraces the city and still my footsteps fall, hollow, echoing, chasing each other, all sense of direction given up for lost. I cannot even find my way back to the blank canvas. The echo of my footsteps is not quite an echo. It does not ring true. I turn around. A figure of shadow stalking me. I turn back to my path and quicken my pace. My false echo quickens too. Somewhere, someone shouts, Jew lover! The city starts to slip past me. My feet move faster and faster, so does my pursuer. The city flows, changing but never ending: shops to mansions to shops to houses to hovels to the shells of factories, but never ending. The moon rises and never falls.

65 My pursuer is gaining ground. I am not the killer. I am just a fool with no future. Yet the urge to survive, born and bred through the generations, from cavemen slaving in the dirt, to me, indolent and refined, will not sit quiet. It pushes me on, takes me to one of those great, crumbling edifices of industry and I climb through a broken window into darkness. My pursuer is quick behind me and I hear his feet and his breath as I dash through moonlit space, crashing headlong over boxes and obstacles. I am bleeding and ragged, his feet on my heels. Through a door and into blackness pure and unknowable. The door swings shut behind me, but I know that he is here with me. I make a dash one way, my feet thundering on the concrete floor. I hit something unforeseen and crash downwards. It is easy for him to hear me, follow me, swift in the wake of my noise. I feel his hands on me, the stirring air of his knife slash. Somehow I break his hold and fumble away in the darkness. All is silent. Then I dash forwards again and the scene repeats except it is harder this time to break his grip. He is growing stronger, more confident. His blade opens up my arm.

66 Then, again, I am free and alone in the pitch black, on all fours. I listen for him and cannot hear him, but I know he is moving around, searching for me. Each time I plunge forwards, heedless, I am in danger, but if I stay here in stasis my discovery is inevitable. I cannot afford either choice. Instead, I stay on my knees, slowly creeping forward, one hand stretched out, feeling for obstacles before I meet them. *** A canvas standing on an easel in a studio. The artist is nowhere in sight. It shows a single hand reaching out into darkness, fumbling, pursued, fearful, but always with the glimmer of hope that there is an exit. Jonathan Wood is an Englishman in New York. He lives on Long Island with his family and keeps 80 monkeys chained to typewriters in his garage. He passes their work off as his own, selling it to places like Behind the Wainscot, Fantasy Magazine, Farrago s Wainscot, and Electric Velocipede.

67 The Fable of Cinnamon and Bitter Trent Walters Tomi Two-Hearts killed Cinnamon Bear, his wife, with his far-sightedness or, perhaps, the lack of. Barely a man, Tomi Two-Hearts had married Cinnamon Bear for her intoxicating scent of spice, for her name for she was born under the sign of the bear and for her tender heart that gave Tomi his appellation. Cinnamon Bear said she gave him her heart because his love had sweetened hers and because of his hair a lustrous, raven black. Or that was what he remembered she had said. Maybe the accretion of dust had clouded his memory. Dust has a funny way of making one s hearts overly nostalgic. Who knows what true memory looks like? But back then, a young man eager to brave the world, he had never thought of his ever needing to remember her. Because of his far-sight, Tomi Two-Hearts had to keep things beyond arm s length. When the tribe called upon him in times of war, Tomi would stand from the tallest poplar and peer into the enemy camp to see what signs they scratched in the dust. His skills were highly

68 prized in the village. But in times of peace, his skills weren t often called upon even if they undoubtedly kept him peering into the distance for signs of future trouble: Only from a nearby hilltop could he see rabbits or deer nibbling at the family s lettuce leaves, could he see hungry wolves salivating or a bear prowling at the edge of camp, could he regard the beauty of his wife gardening. Only by the aid of his two boys, could Tomi whittle a new bow and a quiver of arrows, string it, notch an arrow inside, and bring down a doe enough meat for the four of them in the weeks to come. Cinnamon Bear was myopic. This led to worry and fear that the garden had been consumed overnight by other deer. Only when Tomi Two-Hearts brought her the carcass inside the tent, could she sense that food was near at hand. Her fears dissipated as she diligently cooked the flank on a frying pan sizzling with a pad of goat butter, tanned the hide, and cured the rest. But her powers of myopia were as much prized in the village: often she would be called upon to pluck slivers felt but unseen, to thread the smallest eyes of bone needles. Only when her boys brought her into the garden, could she weed, hoe, and harvest the corn, carrots and lettuce leaves. Tomi often guided Cinnamon by shouting from the hilltop though often he left her alone, preferring to explore the

69 surrounding wood or go fishing with his boys, casting long into the wide lake. After one of these fishing expeditions, Tomi Two- Hearts returned to find his wife missing. He climbed the hilltop, but she was nowhere to be seen. He shouted, he screamed but received no reply. He and his boys waited. For days. For weeks. For months. Crops rotted on their stalks and fell to the earth. Half-cured meat and halftanned hides filled the camp with their stink. Cinnamon Bear did not return. *** Wise men say we cannot know what might have been. Things may have ended here, and this story would not be, for men do not listen to the misery of others except to unravel their own. Tomi s sons could have blamed their father, and Tomi would have conceded. He ought to have set and baited more bear traps than he had, ought to have kept watch day and night, ought to have ranged far and wide for potential adversaries. He wished the blame were something impossible though he knew where the true fault lay. He tried not to think about it, but it came: She had left her heart in his chest, and he could have left her

70 something of his to carry inside. Besides, blame so tardy would have resulted in the boys being carted off to an aunt and uncle who did not care for them, and in the man wandering blindly under darkening skies. But the boys did not blame. They only asked how they might find their mother. Tomi said his hands were tied in mourning. His vigor had been whittled to that of the grayhaired tottering and helpless. The boys thought something surely could be done now. They believed in their father. They would help. Tomi stood slowly, raised the tent flap, and entered the fields. Tomi crawled on his hands and knees to feel for her tracks as sometimes he hunted deer. Through days of rain and blustery winds, Tomi groped among the faint telltale tracks for the delicate print of his wife. Each time he found another, he pressed his nose into the earth and inhaled every particle of spice that remained. And he wept. Eventually, he unraveled the scene: A six-hundred-pound bear with ivory tusks that scraped the dirt had been watching camp. It had sauntered nonchalantly through camp, somehow aware of when to be where often hiding under Tomi s nose. Why had not the boys spoken up? Perhaps the young boys had thought the bear a friend of the family. Tomi s fingers

71 probed the dust (how often did Tomi pray to have Cinnamon s spirit bestow her powers of myopia upon him so that the story might unfold faster? As often as the stars were silent). By the front door, the bear s haunches had left tracks in the damp earth of the early morning probably Cinnamon s last but they moved downwind when Tomi left to go fishing. It circled around back when the boys left, running to catch up. Then it followed practically beside Cinnamon, close enough that Cinnamon might have seen the bear if not smelled and heard. Of course, with her vision, running would have been out of the question. So the bear had carried her away. Without struggle. Her tracks ended abruptly as if she had climbed upon the bear s back. Tomi opened a hemp sack, gathered his fishing rod and dried meats and fruits, and tracked the bear into the winter season. His boys trailed behind, picking winterberries along the way and helping Tomi fish in streams or spot rabbits. The boys shivered as the days shortened and the nights stretched. The stars looked especially hard and cold. Tomi wrapped his boys in his arms and close to his chest as a human fire against the frosty sting of night. At last, they smelled the bear. Tomi had kept its

72 familiar pungency in his mind, waiting to smell it spilled into the still air. They trailed it to its source: a den in the side of a hill. Tomi slipped quietly through the hole and his two boys fed him quivers. It was difficult to see the darkened and vague shapes in the cave. His eyes blurred, unable to focus as his water had chosen that moment to flow, but the stark, white bones assembled by the bear s side were unequivocal. In his haste, Tomi dropped a quiver against a granite rock, waking the bear. But the next three quivers, however, found their notch in the bow and hit their mark, one between the eyes of the charging bear that collided into Tomi with a grunt that sounded much like Your fault, but Tomi knew that bears don t talk except in fables. Aside from a broken rib and the loss of the woman that had once been a part of him, Tomi was unhurt. He had the boys pull the bear carcass out of the den and roast the meat. They feasted and danced between meals for six days and six nights, without rest, until they consumed the bear that had consumed their love. When they had completed their task, they crawled into the bear s den to sleep away the winter inside the bear fur, beside the bones. His belly was full, but his mind was empty and drained. As Tomi s eyelids slid down, he wondered if he were prematurely aging and if he might

73 ever be normal again. In the spring, Tomi awoke, famished and cold. The fur, his boys, and the bones of both the bear and Cinnamon had disappeared. His second heart stopped, afraid he had lost everything he had ever loved. He felt around the rocks of the den for his bow and quivers. Stepping out into the sun, his eyes fell upon a small cabin made of ivory tusk and fur. The cabin had not been there last winter. He cocked a quiver into the bow to begin another journey he wasn t sure he had the energy to complete, feeling the creak of his own bones. He sniffed. The air outside the cabin smelled of broth. Perhaps his boys had entered to trade their winter clothes for a bowl of chicken and rice. He could almost taste it himself. Tomi held the bow at the ready and kicked the door in. His surprise made him lower the bow. The interior was a mansion, with a depth he hadn t fathomed: two separate stairs wound up, two wound down. Behind these, a hall split off: one darkened, the other shifted with light. A silver-haired old lady slammed the door shut behind him. On a cord about her hips, a pair of somethings he couldn t make out, so dark and so close, bounced against her thigh. It s cold out, she said. Are you so daft to leave a door open in this weather?

74 Tomi raised the bow. Where are my boys? They are eating vegetable soup in the kitchen, Mr. Daft. Come. Why don t you have some yourself? He lowered the bow, and his belly urged him to pursue. In the kitchen the boys happily slurped the remains of their soup. A third steaming bowl awaited him. His two hearts told him two things: this was good, and this was bad. He told himself it was because he had never been in a kitchen and went to stand in the furthest corner by the warm stove to better survey the scene. The old lady plucked a silver strand of her hair and approached. Tomi tried to ignore the blurry sheen of silver and observe. His boys. Something was different about them, and something grotesque about the old lady. The old lady neared. The bow grew heavy in his arm. He had not killed a defenseless human before, and never a lady. His eyes grew wide. Their makers. He turned upon the lady, and she laughed. Don t look so worried and surprised. They re right here. On my hip. They d rightly exchanged them for a bowl of soup. If you give me yours, you ll have a bowl everyday, the rest of your life. Aren t I generous? Before he could swing the bow, she leaped and bound him in silver.

75 *** She sometimes fed him vegetable soup, but after awhile the taste grew stale and bitter so that he couldn t eat another bite. Instead, he fed himself on spicy bear tears of cinnamon. They consumed his insides by night and streaked him to sleep by day. The old lady handed him a broom to sweep his living quarters, but mostly he just stared outside at his boys playing blind man s bluff in the mud, without their makers. She hung them from a cord on a nail in her room, and once he had tried to steal them back by lifting them off with the broom, but he got caught trying to give them back to his sons who wouldn t accept them, anyway. They must be too young to understand, he thought. He sighed deeply. He should clean up, but one of the hearts in his chest had ceased beating so that lifting the broom with his hands behind him fatigued the remaining heart. Sometimes, he thought about the rare occasions when he had left his maker inside Cinnamon, where no one could see, as he went fishing and as she hoed. Nobody but they knew the bond between them taut as a bow, stretching miles. He couldn t help but think that if he had left his within her when the bear came prowling, maybe

76 the bear would have sniffed and gone home. But the crazy, old woman woke him in the middle of those nights, plucked a silver strand to replace the old, grew a black hair in the silver s stead, and demanded his maker as trophy something that he could not abide by, no matter how weak the bear tears made him. Frustrated, she flourished a knife to take that which he would not give. He turned so she would never extract that which frustrated. In their struggle they made lovehate so exhausting in his weakened state that Tomi passed out until the next night s lovehate, and then the next night s awake only long enough to see her leave him invigorated... But she returned the next night, equally frustrated, equally incapable of satisfaction. Aside from the bear tears, the salt and sweat of her bitter almond skin milk was all that nourished him. Inflamed, he sought to brutalize her, but the more brutal he got, the more she demanded until his supply no longer matched her demand. And the nights ran like a pad of sour goat butter down a hot frying pan and sizzled into the oblivion of a cooking fire.

77 *** One night he awoke. The woman had not yet come. He rolled off the bed and looked in the mirror. His long hair once lustrous and black as a raven s had turned gray, his skin wrinkled and frosty like dried winterberries smothered in the ice of sloughed skin. He kept his hands behind his back out of habit but, when he instinctively tucked his gray hair behind an ear, he discovered the silver bonds had turned black and easily snapped. A momentary elation flooded him free! but drained immediately when he recognized the old face staring back. What could that face do now? What had that face done in its life that it could look back on with pride? Then the old woman came in, shocked. She was no longer old but young and supple. In the reflection of her doe eyes, Tomi s hair shone silver. He plucked out one of his gray hairs and bound her. Already, he felt invigorated. A black hair grew out where the gray had been. He had enough silver to bind her for more than a thousand nights to come. He could do unto her as she had done unto him. He could regain lost youth... Shouts outside stopped his final approach. The shouts of men. He went to the window. His boys.

78 His boys in the bodies of lean men. Their muscles flexed and rolled like running water under their skin as they played their never-ending blind man s bluff. He looked back at the woman who was frightened but seething and ready for him, seated at the bed. Yes, she had cared for them and himself in her way. All very fine specimens. She chivied after him like a little dog, yapping at his heels. Where are you going? You can t leave this unfinished. I have done much wrong in my life, he said, and many men are more right than I, but we would never be finished. In her room, he unhooked the cord off the nail and went to look for his sons and the old fishing rod he hoped was still inside the bear s den. Someday, he would name his boys for their imminent brave deeds. And nights, he promised himself, he would dream of a different sort of life, this time closer to the source of his Cinnamon Bear s intoxicating scent where, by her side, he would cure bear meat and tan its hide for the long winters ahead. Trent Walters stories have appeared in the Golden Age SF anthology (with Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter), Lady Churchill s Rosebud Wristlet, Electric Velocipede, and others. He has works forthcoming in Full Unit

79 Hookup, Grendelsong, Raven Electrick and the anthologies Legends of the Mountain State, Triangulation, and Visual Journeys. Morpo Press just released his poetry chapbook, Learning the Ropes. With Geoff Ryman he will guest-edit an issue of Interzone.

80 Author Spotlight: Rebecca Epstein K. Tempest Bradford If not yourself, who would you be? 1995 Rebecca, so I could give up all that neuropsychology stuff and start writing at a much earlier age. Or Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I want to be the one who introduced the world to the most kickass genre. Your favorite painters and composers/musical artists? Painter: Roberto Matta. In addition to being born on 11/11/11, his paintings are amazing. Light streams from them. They are very sexual, but in a latent way. Only a sexual person would even notice it. Ahem. Musical Artist: Emily Haines, and her band, Metric. Peppy, punky, husky goodness. Your favorite historical era?

81 I hate history. So boring. My favorite era is the distant future. Not the near future, with its flying cars and teleportation, but the distant future, a hundred thousand years from now, when we have evolved into stalks of carbon: telepathic, almost-bodiless creatures that get energy from the sun and are in a constant state of orgasm. What natural talent would you like to have that you don t? Singing. I used to be a dancer, and sometimes I signed up for the school plays. But dancers couldn t just be dancers. They had to be characters, or be part of the chorus. I lip-synced, longing to be the lead character. If I could go back to 1995 me (this is Fantasy Magazine, after all), then I would also be able to sing. Where do you get your ideas from? Truth? I stalk people. I follow people down sidewalks and I stand in line at Starbucks. I sit alone in movie theaters. I watch old family movies. My stories begin with characters, and my characters begin with the people I notice. Take my father, for

82 instance: when I was a kid, he had a case full of vitamins from which he selected about two dozen to swallow every morning. And not with water or juice. Always, and I mean always, with hot coffee. One time I stepped off the sidewalk and into a pothole and fell into the street gripping my sprained ankle and clenching my teeth in shock. A woman stood over me, watching. Are you okay? she asked. I think I broke my ankle, I groaned. Okay, she replied, and when I looked up again, she was gone. Who was she, and why did she walk away? Perhaps it was the pain, but I had thoughts of a secret organization of injury documenters. I m still working on that one. When I wake up in the mornings, before I go to pee or do anything, I stumble to the computer and, half asleep, type nonstop for ten minutes with my eyes closed. I dream a little, and it goes right onto the page. Often I write about the people I ve seen (er, stalked). Then I open my eyes, read it over, and go to take a shower. In the shower, the ideas come together into characters. This is the fun part. I own soap crayons, and I write my ideas onto the shower walls. I write in shapes When We Were Stardust is in the shape of the NYC skyline. Other stories are in shapes like a birdcage, a spiral, etc. I m the only one who can see it, but I trace the stories out with my soap crayons. You

83 should see my bathroom. Lots of brightly colored nonsense, there. Tell me a little aboutwhen We Were Stardust. What was the first image or phrase or impetus that made you sit down and spin it out? Strangely enough, When We Were Stardust was not born from stalking or shower musings. I was listening to a song called The Maid Needs a Maid by Emily Haines, and she sang the line, You ll put on the fire, draw the bath and remind me to eat and the words tethered themselves to me. I imagined a thin, enfeebled woman so devastated by something big and slightly outside of the scene that she required the care of a man. The story spun itself out from there. Why the particulars of the story came to be, especially the reincarnation elements, I don t know. The joy is in the not knowing. Can I have your autograph? Sorry, I don t give autographs.

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85 About the Editors Cat Rambo lives, writes, and teaches by the shores of an eagle-haunted lake in the Pacific Northwest. Her 200+ fiction publications include stories in Asimov s, Clarkesworld Magazine, and Tor.com. Her short story, Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain, from her story collection Near + Far (Hydra House Books), was a 2012 Nebula nominee. Her editorship of Fantasy Magazine earned her a World Fantasy Award nomination in For more about her, as well as links to her fiction and information about her popular online writing classes, see Sean Wallace is the founder, publisher, and managing editor of Prime Books. In his spare time he has edited or co-edited a number of projects, including two magazines, Clarkesworld Magazine and Fantasy Magazine, and a number of anthologies, including Best New Fantasy, Japanese Dreams, The Mammoth Book of Steampunk, People of the Book, Robots: Recent A.I., and War & Space: Recent Combat. He lives in Germantown, MD, with his wife, Jennifer, and their twin daughters, Cordelia and Natalie.