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