The Third Bear

by Jeff VanderMeer

  - Told to one ofMarco Polo's men by a merchant selling green cloth in a Mumbai marketplace

  SYCOPHANT

  The young man who sat down beside the writer Baryut Aquelus in a Tashkent coffeehouse wore a black blazer over a green T-shirt and blue jeans. He had sallow skin, an open, round face, and thick eyebrows. His mouth was fleshy, as if he'd suffered a split lip.

  The writer thought he recognized the type. The first words confirmed it. "Are you - ? Are you really - ?" The rasp of a mouth-breather, along with the stain and smell of betel nut.

  "Yes."

  He no longer bothered to smile or straighten his jacket when people came up to him. It had been a few years since he'd removed himself from the great, the smoldering, eye of fame, but he remembered its heat.

  "I've read all of your work, sir. Especially Myths of the Green Tablet. A very brave book."

  "You speak like a native Smaragdinean," the writer said.

  The man looked away, actually blushed. The writer found this charming.

  "Thank you. I came there as a child. I know English. And French, too. A little. I read you in French, at first."

  How long ago? He'd been out of print in France for at least half a decade.

  "That's very good, um...?"

  "My name? Farid. You can call me Farid Sabouri."

  "Nice to meet you, Farid."

  The notebook in front of him now seemed inert, useless. The thoughts welling up behind the pen receded into some middle distance, waiting for him to call them forth again.

  "Tell me, if I'm not bothering you," Farid said, "how you came to write Myths of the Green Tablet."

  "You mean you don't know?" He'd meant it as self-deprecating but it came out vainglorious. "I guess I've told it so many times I expect anyone who wanted to know would know."

  It had gotten him in trouble. Vague death threats from a bunch of doddering priests. A shorter stint at the university in Smaragdine than he would have liked. The Green Tablet not the gospel, not even vaguely true? He hadn't realized the effect it would have when he was writing it - he just wrote it.

  "I know, but it's different reading it in the paper."

  "Well, if you insist." Do I really mind that much? "I wrote it because I think that Smaragdine has suffered from its fetish for the color green. It keeps us looking at the past. I feel that, for the average Smaragdinean, the future is behind him. I mean, it's practically fantastical. Medieval. Alchemy? Airy-fairy about earth-air-water-fire? No offense," he added, noting the intent look on Farid's face.

  Farid smiled, revealing yellowing teeth, and said, "I am fascinated by the

  bravery in the act. To become a...a lightning rod for many difficulties."

  "Yes, well..."

  Above them the fans swirled slowly and out on the street a steady procession of outdated vehicles used the worn street. The waiter came with two coffees.

  "My gift for our meeting," Farid said. "Please, enjoy it."

  "Thank you," the writer said. And he was, actually, surprised. Usually the people who came up to him wanted something but offered nothing, no matter how trivial, in return.

  "So what brings you to Tashkent?" the writer asked.

  Farid did not look away this time. "I came to see you. I studied your work at university. I've studied your life, too."

  Oh no, the writer thought, here it comes. Sometimes he felt his personal life had become the size of a postage stamp.

  "And did I measure up?"

  "Oh, you are very brave," Farid said. "Although I don't know if you understand that."

  "It's kind of you to say," the writer said, although Farid's syntax seemed odd.

  Farid almost said something, stopped, bit his lip, leaned forward. "No, it's the truth. It makes me weep a little, thinking about it. If you don't mind me saying it. You've used your talent for things that don't always make sense to me."

  The writer tried to shrug it off with a chuckle.

  Is this where the conversation turns obsessional?

  "And here I took you for a bit of a sycophant, Farid. A bit of a hanger-on, as the Brits here like to say."

  "Not in the least - you believe too little but know too much," Farid said, and pulled out a gun and shot the writer in the stomach.

  Baryut had the odd sensation of Farid walking over him and past while he lay there staring up at the ceiling fan and people were running away screaming. There was no pain. Nothing so fast could really be painful, could it?

  Possessed of a sudden and terrible clarity, Baryut thought: What can I write in the next few minutes?

  Transept

  Why church broke? That question all ask when get Barakhad? Though no many tourist now - just detective last week, bad circus week before. But I tell you - even drunk sitting end of bar give answer if you want answer - he say we run out money when no water. That man, head on table, see? He tell you merchants. Merchants of Barakhad break church because priests too big, too big. Or I, sir, I tell you Devil visit Barakhad when church of Smaragdineans building and break it.

  Or it could be that the architect's plans were too complicated and they planned not one but three transepts, with gold leaf that wouldn't flake off for the archways and brushes made from the tongues of hummingbirds to paint the column detail.

  What? Oh, don't be mad. Just a little joke I like to play on tourists. So many of you think that our command of English is crumbling along with our infrastructure. But I went to university, even spent a summer at the University of San Diego on an exchange program, a long time ago. You're lucky you bumped into me, my friend. That drunk over there, for example - he doesn't want to speak English anymore. His whole family died last year.

  But do you really want to know why the church isn't "finished"? Why not get a drink and sit down. It won't take long, but you might need the drink. Don't worry, I'll keep it simple. I know the names around here confuse foreigners.

  So: the real reason the church looks unfinished is that until recently we had a civil war in this country. Hadn't heard of it? Well, we're not in an area with anything of any value, really. Not anymore.

  First one side held Barakhad. They starved us and killed some of us and took some of us away. Then the other side took over. They starved us and killed some of us and took some of us away. Then the peacekeepers came to our country, although we never saw one in Barakhad, not once, and a coalition of countries so far away that none of us here in Barakhad had ever visited any of them began to use planes to bomb us. I believe your country participated in that effort.

  We already had little food, no electricity. Now when people walked down to the market, they might become splintered bones and shredded flesh and a stain of red on the roadside in a blink of the eye. We lost maybe half of the people in Barakhad during those months.

  Now that the bombs have stopped, we are doing our best. The priests who might have helped are gone. There has been no time to rebuild the church, my friend. We haven't had time to rebuild many things, as you may have seen when you came in to town.

  So at the moment the church is crumbling and overgrown with weeds. It's green enough to make even a Smaragdinean happy. The north side of the transept remains one wall and a promise of a roof. No one likes a church where the wind can catch you up like the breath of God. No one likes a church with the rain on the inside. Except me, since that's where I'm forced to live for now.

  Am I talking to you? Are we speaking? Are you hearing me?

  Vignette

  Once, a very long time ago, an adventurer became a problem for the King of Smaragdine. Something to do with the king's daughter. Something to do with the king's daughter and wine and a dance hall. So the king decreed that this adventurer should be sent "on a long quest for the good of the Green." The quest? To find the lost Tablet and bring it back to Smaragdine. The Tablet was in Siberia or Palestine or somewhere in South America or even possibly on the Moon, depending on one's interpretation of the writings. Regardless, this fit the very definition of "a long quest." U
nfortunately for the adventurer, he had earned the nickname of "Vignette" because his adventures, although intense and satisfying in the retelling, were always short and occurred in and around the city.

  Vignette wasn't very happy about the king's decision, but a long quest was better than immediate death, so off he went. Through Samarkand and East Asia he traveled; up into Siberia and around Lake Baikal; down to Mongolia; across China to Japan; by sailing ship to India; a brief stop in North Africa; up into the Mediterranean; over to Greenland; doubling back to England; braving the trip to the New World for several storm-tossed months; finding nothing there and sailing briefly down to South America.

  He talked to everyone he could find - Arabs, Jews, Christians, Bantus, Moslems. Holy men and beggars. Merchants and royalty. Over time, his body grew lean and weathered but strong. His eyes narrowed against the sun and yet he saw more clearly. Fighting brigands in the steppes. Running from tribesmen with blow darts in the Amazon.

  If only they could see "Vignette" now, he thought as he pulled an arrow from his shoulder and prepared a charge with Sudanese warriors against the fortifications of some other tribe. Climbing a mountain in the Himalayas, eyelashes clotted with frost, an avalanche crushed over them in a blink and as he dug himself out, he thought, I'll show you the good of the Green.

  After a time, though, it really didn't matter to him if he ever found the Tablet - in fact, he no longer believed in its existence. He was homesick for Smaragdine and his friends there. So one day he began to head back, slowly. Some months later, he was close enough that all he had to do was cross the river by ferry and the walls shimmering in the distance would be real once more.

  But he wasn't a fool. He'd brought three miraculous things with him, in a chest banded with gold: an ancient book from Siberia made of broad, thick leaves, written in a secret language none alive knew; a healing tincture from the Yucatan that smelled like honeysuckle and chocolate; and a shiny green stone that tribesmen in the Amazon had told him was a god's eyeball that had fallen from the sky one night. At least he wasn't returning empty-handed. With any luck the king would reward his efforts, or at least forgive his trespasses.

  Word must have spread about his return, for a royal pavilion awaited him on the far side of the river.

  But it was not the king who greeted him there. Instead, it was a woman and her retinue. At first he did not recognize her. Then he realized it was the king's daughter, five years older. She had wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. She had let her hair grow long. It hung free to her shoulders, framing a face that seemed too wistful, too sad, for one still so young.

  "Where is the king?" he asked.

  "He died a year ago," she said, and he could feel her gaze upon him, lingering over every scar and bruise on his stubbled face. "I rule Smaragdine now."

  "I didn't find the Tablet, but I brought back a chest of treasures," he said. It was somewhere behind him, but he couldn't stop looking at her.

  "I don't give a damn about any of that," she said, and leaned up and kissed him on the lips.

  Vivisepulture

  And the Turk came down upon Smaragdine like a storm of plagues and breached the city gates and slew the defenders on the walls with arrows and their horsemen, led by their captain Baryut Aquelus, outstripped their infantry and so came unto the great Lyceum where the priests had hidden the Green Tablet, and Baryut took the heart of Smaragdine from that place, leaving the priests dead upon the steps as they rode out again.

  And in the streets beyond they came upon the din of fierce battle, for the Smaragdineans had recovered from their surprise and now fought like demons for their city and men fell in great numbers on both sides as the city began to burn.

  Raising his sword, Baryut led the way for the Turk, cutting down any who opposed them.

  But when he rode under the shadow of the city gates and looked back, Baryut saw that the Smaragdinean prince Farid, upon a black charger, had come up behind and slain his riders and would soon overtake him.

  Safety lay at the semaphore tower by the river, but Farid outstripped the Turk and forced him up into the hills and ravines and the coffeehouse beyond.

  Farid was only a few paces behind him, driven by righteous conviction.

  The Tablet became heavier and heavier in the Turk's hands and the prince shouted at him now, sword slicing the sky into jagged pieces.

  "Bring it back or I'll feed you to my dogs!" Farid shouted. "You are very brave, although I don't know if you understand that!"

  "And here I took you for a bit of a sycophant, Farid," Baryut shouted back. "A bit of a hanger-on."

  "Not in the least. You believe too little and know too much."

  Soon Baryut was trapped at the edge of a ravine. In a coffeehouse. A ravine. The prince would kill him now and the Tablet would go back to Smaragdine and he would never write another book. Or perhaps even another sentence.

  Baryut wheeled around and drew his sword to make his stand at the edge of the ravine.

  "Sacrilege!" Farid screamed, galloping forward. Their horses came together and they were now so close that he could smell the betel nut on Farid's breath, could see the design on the green T-shirt he wore under the blazer.

  The force of their swords clashing shuddered up and down his arm and the ground beneath their horses' hooves caved away and they fell headlong into the ravine, still in their stirrups.

  The horses were dead by the time they reached the bottom, necks snapped. The tablet had cracked into a hundred pieces.

  Baryut and Farid were buried alive under the pebbles and rocks and boulders dislodged by their descent. Their mouths filled with dirt. Their bones broke.

  Then, because Farid could not reach his sword, he shot Baryut in the stomach.

  Baryut looked up at the ceiling fan and could hear a slow pounding that he knew was his blood abandoning his body.

  As Baryut died, he had the satisfaction of knowing Farid would die, too, soon enough.

  Within a month, the flesh decayed from the bodies of the two men, leaving only bones. In four months, the shifting of earth confused the collapsed skeletons of the horses and the men until there was no difference between the two.

  That spring, the rains came and water trickled through the ravine, loosening the stones, picking through the bones and the pieces of the Green Tablet. Every year, the water dislodged more and more fragments until over time the Tablet became not a hundred pieces but two hundred and then a thousand, until no one piece was any larger than a Smaragdine coin.

  Beyond the ravine, more wars were fought. Some the Turk won, some the Smaragdineans won. Men died searching for the Tablet. Smaragdine became a backwater held together by the weight of dead ritual and then, eventually, broken by a mad dictator who fancied himself an architect on a grand scale.

  Pieces of the Tablet were carried away by the rainwater and entered the river. Fish ate them and became strange with the knowledge, uttering sentences in a language no one understood. Herons ate the fish and fishermen noticed how mournful and heavy their eyes became.

  In a hundred ways, the Green Tablet re-entered the world, but like the men, it had been buried alive and its knowledge with it. Reborn, it became a hidden thing, seen in glimpses from the corner of the eye. Sometimes things happened because of the Tablet that no one could understand because no one knew what the Tablet said anymore. Perhaps they never had.

  And still people searched for it, never realizing that they could search their whole lives, die because of it, and yet it was there all the time, in front of them, even in the pattern of green mold across a dirty floor in a Tashkent coffeehouse or somewhere in the blood leaking from my body or in the patient whir of the ceiling fan overhead or in anything in the world that received love or hate or some lingering attention or ... anything always forever.

  AFTERWORD

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Sometimes you run out of words. Much of what I might have to say about these stories is inconsequential next to the evidence itself. This ha
sn't always been so. For my last major collection, Secret Life, I provided extensive story notes, using the opportunity to lay bare process, inspiration, frustrations, perceived triumphs, and other insight that I thought might be of use to other writers.

  I'm reluctant to do the same here for a number of reasons, but in part because the stories in The Third Bear are so often about the search for, or encounter with, the inexplicable. What can I add that Seether or Savant or Sensio hasn't already said for me? These stories are also meant to reveal more and more of themselves, and the connections between the stories, over the course of multiple readings. They are, hopefully, the kinds of stories that change every time the reader experiences them. My thoughts on that process would just undermine the effect.

  Perhaps, too, I'm not interested in my perception of the stories any more - I am interested in yours. My interpretation is on the page, encoded with the personal experience that makes almost every story, no matter how surreal, a secret diary entry. How you personalize them now is the most important thing.

  In that context, let me end with one last story.

  The Magician

  There was a magician, of course. I say "of course" because we had no right to expect a magician, or anyone else. At first, he didn't seem that good. The cards were still visible when the doves appeared from his hands. The sleeves of his shirt seemed loose, suspect. He smelled, inexplicably, of lime. His coattails were muddy. Only gradually did we realize that the magician was doing things we hadn't noticed. He turned Kotie's shirt from gray to a melange of orange, red, and green. He gave Sewel a lisp and a moustache. The stupid sad tricks that dripped from his hands with a loose insolence, the limp shuffling of the cards, the way he flexed the singing saw before he cut his lackluster assistant (a sad-eyed terrier) in half- these were just the decoys to distract us as we began to tell him things we didn't want to, things we'd never told the guards, even when they were interrogating us. Details about our families, about our pasts, about our very blood. And so: our ID tags changed. Our opinions on a myriad of topics changed. We realized we were standing in the snow in our boots, chained together, with just a tent roof to protect us. The horizon was an engulfing yellow-black line and in front of it there was nothing but the camp and the dogs and the fence. None of that changed, but we changed. And kept changing. In the cold. Under the gray sky. During his entire routine, the magician did not speak, his arms and hands, in their deceptive motions, speaking for him. At the end of his performance, he stood there for a moment, waiting for the applause frozen in our minds. He nudged us with, "It's your turn now." But there was no turn for us. Why should there be? We had not asked for a magician. We wanted our tongues back. We wanted our words. Our lives. After awhile, the guards took him away, leaving us as we had been before, only a little more so. The doves lived for a day, but only because we waited until then to kill and eat them. The doves were all that remained of the magician, and our need to preserve that memory had been stronger than our hunger. For a time. And so we waited. Waited for the next. And the next.