Tesseracts Nine: New Canadian Speculative Fiction

by Nalo Hopkinson

  Scott’s first unpleasant experience at work: some power-tripping asshole intent on embarrassing his girlfriend by yelling at him. Scott’s co-workers urge him to spit in the guy’s cheeseburger, but he declines. Maybe he had a bad day. Maybe he’s intentionally alienating his date. Maybe he’s a jerk and always will be. Whichever is true, retaliation is not worth the trouble.

  People puzzle Scott. Everyone wants to be the hero of their own story, but there’s not enough room for them all, so they fester from bitter self-righteousness. Like that rude customer. If a simple misunderstanding angers him, Scott doubts that he has ever been truly happy.

  Scott punches out after his shift, mentally and physically exhausted. He almost runs down the Western-and-Decaf woman — Libby — in his haste to leave the diner.

  — Sorry, he mumbles.

  Her head cocks to one side — a habit he noticed the last time they’d met — and she looks bemused. He pushes past without giving her a chance to acknowledge him. One of his co-workers, a cute redhead who’s far too old for him, says that Libby plays bass in a band. That explains why she looks familiar to him. But it doesn’t explain why he seems familiar to her.

  Scott takes the long way home for the third time that week. He hopes to see the pale woman again but her window’s curtains are drawn. She hasn’t checked out yet, though. The hotel manager said as much under the influence of a twenty-dollar bill. The knowledge that she’s still there is worth a night’s tips.

  Susie the bag lady greets him in her usual crazed, cryptic way as he enters his neighbourhood.

  — Why don’t you ever speak? What are you thinking? I never know what you’re thinking.

  Her questions eerily resemble his mom’s many tirades.

  — Isn’t there anything in your head?

  Scott stops. His mom had screamed something like that the night he left home for the city. He turns around.

  — I’m thinking, he says, that I’ve just found out my father’s dead and I don’t care. I don’t feel a fucking thing.

  As he speaks, he realizes that he hasn’t felt anything but detachment for a long time. Only fear when he saw the slate-eyed man, and awe in the pale woman’s presence. Otherwise, in spite of discovering his father’s death, there is no epiphany, no disappointment nor sadness, not even the flaccid sensation of an anti-climax.

  Susie reveals a row of stained, chipped teeth and bobs her head up and down.

  — Very good, very good. Spare some change?

  Scott reaches into his pockets and finds a handful of dimes and nickels.

  — Here you go, he says. Have a good evening.

  He leaves her to count her bounty and continues down the street. His steps falter; he doesn’t want to go home, doesn’t want to call it a day just yet. Nothing waits for him in his gloomy little apartment. The very freedom and independence he coveted while living under his mom’s roof, yet now that he has it, he finds it lonely.

  It’s all a matter of choice. The dilapidated bay-and-gable house he calls home appears around the corner. Scott chooses to walk past it and keep walking.

  There is a certain empowerment in having options. Scott, however, feels little but apathy as he retraces his steps to the hotel. Since he has found his father, so to speak, he has no reason to be in the city other than it is simply another choice he has made. He wonders if his father made the same choice — moving to Toronto to leave a woman. He wonders if, like his father, he will run from women until he dies. Because now that he has seen the pale woman no one else can compare.

  He hopes to see her or the slate-eyed man, hoping that their presence will stir some long-forgotten emotion in him. Wrath, envy, lust — any of the seven deadly sins inherent to teenagers will do. The pale woman’s curtains are still drawn, but the lights are on. If he squints hard enough, he can picture her silhouette standing behind the heavy brown fabric, watching over him like a guardian angel.

  Across the street, Scott sits on top of a Globe and Mail box that has seen better days and ignores the bleary-eyed curiosity of a neighbouring panhandler. He crosses his arms and waits for her to reveal herself like the deus ex machina of the Greek tragedies he learned in school. Someone who will descend from the heavens at the last minute and save him. That’s all he asks for.

  But Scott remembers that not everyone can be the hero of their own story. He hops off the newspaper box, tosses the last of his spare change to the panhandler, and walks away.

  Nick finds the door ajar, and as he enters the room, the lone anguished word of greeting falls from his own mouth.

  — Grace?

  She is gone. The only evidence of her existence is the shallow indentation in the bed’s threadbare covers. She did not even leave her scent behind; she smelled like shampoo and medicine before the change and occasionally the sterile fragrance lingers.

  He places the baby’s bottle on the nightstand and slips back into the night.

  The winking array of lights tells Scott that he’s approaching Yonge Street.

  To the north: dollar stores, Thai and Japanese restaurants, adult novelty shops, and strip joints. Tourists and panhandlers claim the sidewalk. Scott tires of the sensory assault and turns east onto Gerrard. All tourist trappings are left behind and the city returns to its wild roots: mom-and-pop enterprises, and narrow houses with iron-fenced, overgrown gardens and eroded brick façades disguised by peeling layers of paint.

  Scott wanders past Parliament Street toward the winding offramp of the Don Valley Parkway. The residential neighbourhood suddenly gives way to Riverdale Park. Scott watches leashless dogs scamper through the park for a few minutes and then finds what he is looking for.

  The valley.

  Back in January, during that fateful one-way bus trip to Toronto, the snow-laden ravine unfolded before him along the highway like the plot of a novel. At the time it struck him as the last oasis in an urban wasteland.

  It’s nature, Toronto-style: paved asphalt trails, fences of fluorescent orange vinyl mesh, unused train tracks on the far side of the Don River. The river itself is muddy, opaque, stagnant from weeks without rain. The air reeks of car exhaust and mildew. A Toronto Parks and Recreation sign claims that the ravine is home to herons, foxes, and red-winged blackbirds, but the only indication of life is the drone of cars streaking past on the highway.

  Aside from the occasional garbage can, there is little evidence of human maintenance. Vegetation is wild, chaotic, despite or because of the salt and oil runoff from the highway. Dead branches litter the ground, and the thicket grows high to claim its fallen comrades. Scott’s sneakers pad silently on the asphalt. There could be murderers and perverts hiding behind the tangled brush and contorted trees, but Scott doesn’t care. As a tall white male in faded T-shirt and ripped jeans, he likely commands as much fear as they do.

  The black, skeletal span of the Prince Edward Viaduct looms ahead. A deserted scaffold snarls one of its arches and a subway train rumbles across the bridge, like thunder. Scott decides that it’s as good a place as any to stop.

  He steps off the path and onto the muddy banks of the Don, through tall weeds he cannot name. He takes off his shoes and socks and dips a foot into the river. The water is as cool as the summer night.

  — I was watching you, too.

  Her voice is as soft as a shadow. Scott looks up and finds himself lost in the pale woman’s embrace. Although he can’t see her face as she closes her mouth around his throat, he knows she is smiling.

  The last thing he sees is the slate-eyed man leaping down from the Viaduct, screaming her name.

  What is it about a name — a single, solitary word, not even as long as a gasp of breath, shorter than a sudden heartbeat — that can change the polarity of the world?

  — Grace…

  Libby staggers and clings to a parking meter as the cry pierces her e
ars. Passers-by glance furtively at her but bustle past. They only hear the sounds of Toronto on a Friday night: the dull buzz of traffic, the ping and rattle of a streetcar, the mumbled litany of a schizophrenic vagrant. Libby hears love, death, and loss intertwined on top of all these sounds, an aria worthy of a Wagnerian opera.

  Her head snaps back as she hears something else.

  If a body falls into a river, and there is no one around to hear it — no one human, that is — does it make a sound?

  It does.

  — Grace…

  The name tears out of Nick’s throat.

  — Grace, don’t, he’s a kid—

  He tries to pull her away. Her answering strength sends him sprawling on the ground.

  — Grace…

  She drinks greedily from the boy’s neck. Nick climbs to his feet and stares. The boy’s head is tilted back in rapture; Nick’s victims always react with fear. His eyes widen as he recognizes the kid who had seen him feed the other night.

  He attempts to pry Grace and the boy apart again — and succeeds. Grace stumbles away, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. The boy falls backward and into the forgiving embrace of the river.

  To Nick’s surprise, the boy starts to laugh.

  — Grace…

  Libby doubles over and clamps her hands over her ears, but the sound creeps through the cracks between her fingers, the sound of the city turning itself inside out, the sound of destruction and creation, revelation and redemption. She hears it as keenly as if someone is scraping their fingernails across a chalkboard.

  She knows who has fallen into the river.

  — Scott…

  Libby breaks into a run.

  — Grace…

  Falling. Scott is falling, hard and fast, into bliss, into wonder. He barely notices the blood trickling from his broken skin or the man who pulls the pale woman from his neck.

  Falling fast and free, free from detachment, free at last. Scott hears a sound and recognizes his own laughter.

  Libby freezes as she hears something she has only heard once before, in a deserted alley while she, Garth and Meg were packing up after a gig: a human heartbeat, steady but faint, and possessing none of Garth and Meg’s unpredictable vigor. She had thought it belonged to someone far away, but then a woman had slipped out from behind a dumpster, wiping at her lipstick. The ghostly heartbeat had been hers.

  This time there are two such heartbeats. Libby peers through the brush. A man and woman stand on the banks of the Don River, their pulses as gentle as a sigh. The man wears a mud-splattered trenchcoat, and the woman’s arms and feet are bare. The man pulls off his coat and drapes it around the woman. His face is haggard with exhaustion.

  — It’s my fault, he says. Everything’s my fault. I wanted you to live, but not like this.

  — I know, she says. You should have let me die. But you didn’t.

  She kisses the man on the cheek. The man shudders, and Libby hears the whisper of a great weight rising from his shoulders.

  — It’s all right, she says. The boy’s not dead. Only changed.

  The woman smiles and takes the man’s hand.

  — I guess there’s nothing we can do for him, he says.

  — We don’t have to, she says. He can do it for himself now.

  — Grace—

  — I know, Nick. Let’s go home.

  They walk away, hand in hand, a pair of young lovers on a pleasure stroll through the ravine. Libby creeps down the path and finds Scott floating in the river, his arms outstretched, frayed ribbons of blood trailing from the left side of his neck. He is still laughing.

  Libby extends her hand to him. Scott lets her help him out of the river, unsurprised by her appearance.

  — Thanks, he says.

  — No problem.

  — The city feels different now.

  Libby slings her jacket over his wet shoulders. The buzzing has left her ears, replaced by Scott’s silent pulse and the glorious song of the reborn city.

  — That’s because it’s yours.

  A subway train rumbles above and behind them, like thunder.

  Jerusalem, Athens, Alexandria, Vienna and London.

  New York, Toronto.

  Unreal.

  From Fugue Phantasmagorical

  by Anthony MacDonald and Jason Mehmel

  Setting Sail

  Hermes Trismegistus, Artist.

  The boat takes to the open sea, rocking in the waves, flowing with the current, moving with the wind.

  As he ties each rope he smiles, lashing an idea to the deck, delighting in the mere work of sailing. He turns his face to the spray from the bow, each wave crashing with a first-time ecstasy for him. His eyes are full of all the places he’ll go, his starry eyes are bedazzled before he even steps on board. He’s here out of love, loving every moment, loving the fact of being here, falling as hard and fast as hormonal youngsters in Verona.

  He’s signed on the boat to travel, visiting wherever the trade winds take him. He’s excited about the merchandise, hoping that no-one’s ever seen what he’s got in the cargo hold.

  Every port is new, every marketplace a new trade. He does not yet have the sell-smarts, he does not know what reception he’ll find for the product. This is where some are content to sail forever, never visiting a port. Others are quickly dissuaded when a harsh opinion of their merchandise shatters their sales pitch, wrecks their confidence at getting out on the trading lanes.

  Still others adapt, learn, and begin to understand it as not an adventure, but a trade. They may yet dream of their merchandise in every port, but are content with what they’ve found. They may find a market niche, those whom they already know are interested in their product. They are happy to live on this. And they do not expect rich trade any longer, though they may still wish to join those barons who seem to have such power in the bazaar.

  Some, some are lucky enough to catch that first wind that blows, to find someone who’ll buy into their work. Most accomplished sailors, traders, will tell you though, that it will come with work, and not fortune. Rookie sailors learn this slowly, and at first every act is filled with desire and passion. Every emotion is plumbed for motivation, for fear of wasting potential. Every feeling is fuel for the next penstroke. They eventually learn to sail with skill, not solely relying on passionate tides.

  Sometimes a hostile flag is raised on the horizon, ideas become battle-salvage. Cannon-shot of critique, poisoned pens filling the air. The sailors defend their dreams with a strong fervour. Some broadsides come only as warning, other boats keeping those they pass away from dangerous territory.

  There are some who delight in terrorising the others who ply their trade on the sea, either out of a jealousy of their own inability to find customers, or solely out of intended domination, to lessen the amount of competition. Most, inside their private moments, even if they may not actually attack thus, may have wanted to sink a rival as they pass by.

  The smell of the sea air is intoxicating, and for some, it is a discovery of new creation, better than anything else. It is that moment for some sailors, where standing on the bowsprit, they know they are exactly where they should be, doing exactly what they should be doing. Others can become drunk with this feeling, and promoted too quickly, these gain an arrogance of command, a belief in their own infallibility. These people no longer respecting the sea before them, and this attitude is likely to leave their boat wracked upon the shoals, or floundering off course, having long since been distanced from the trade routes, lost to all other vessels on the sea.

  Others are not made for the life, and search years for a new occupation. Some must contend with the fact that they were more in love with the idea of sailing than they are with being tossed by the wave, and bitten by the wind, letting their hands be t
orn by rope.

  Sometimes, though, that sailor stays on board. Tenacity on his grip at the rudder. He holds to the main, becomes a man of experience, and more comfortable with the constant trade, the constant travel.

  It is then that he begins to explore deeper, further than ever before. Then he sees in the distance a great mass approaching, enveloping the horizon. A continent of content before him. When he travels where only the dedicated travel.

  Carnaval Perpetuel

  by Sandra Kasturi

  1. Before

  The paths that lead to the ball are many:

  they are often lined with the forgotten ashes of scullery maids

  who have gone on to better things than picking lentils out of the hearth.

  While wanting a ball is not wanting a prince

  the two seem to go hand in hand,

  a kind of logarithmic function of desire and fulfillment.

  And so, scullery maid or princess,

  we, each and every one, arrive at the ball

  bedecked in feathers and fury.

  2. Masque

  We are given only two hands to use in the dance,

  one always caught in the clutch of another,

  and the second hand ticking

  gently in front of the eyes:

  spread fingers creating spyholes of flesh.

  Had the fairy godmother thought to give the gift

  of a third hand, instead of, say,

  shoes never worn enough to be worth the price,

  think how different the story might have been.

  3. Midnight

  Herr Drosselmeier, godfather,

  maker of time-pieces

  and other ticky-toys,

  we stand and bow to you.

  You always knew,

  in the way that godfathers know such things,

  that the Prince is always the hardest nut to crack,

  no matter how many hands are given to the task.

  As for you, Carabosse,

  keeper of clocks,