Last Plane to Heaven: The Final Collection

by Jay Lake

  Someday she will be so famous that they will have to write down her dreams. When she grows into her power and announces her true name, darkness will settle like a cloak, bringing the nighttime of the soul to all those who have plunged her into darkness.

  Which is to say, all of everyone.

  For now, dreaming is enough. There is no higher truth.

  The Fall of the Moon

  * * *

  My grandfather Lake was a man whose presence in my life was as great as the moon’s pull over the tides. In a very indirect way, this tale is about me and him.

  * * *

  Hassan polished the twisted beech keel of his boat. The vessel had been a-building for years, assembled only from holy wood—thrown up by the raging Sea of Murmurs which even now coiled on the western horizon frothing like blood—and his grandfather’s bones. It was not a large boat, but Hassan was not a large man. All he intended was to ride the Tide of Spring.

  His work of late had been mostly in waiting. His grandfather had passed as all men someday do, with a familiar smile on his old man’s face and a strange woman’s name on his young man’s lips. Hassan had carefully burned his grandfather’s flesh to send the soul spiraling toward the outer moons, then baked the flensed bones in an oven built from clay mixed with his own blood.

  The old man had emerged grinning and polished, pale and harder than he had ever been in life.

  Now those bones were fitted into the ribs of the beech-keeled boat. It cost a soul to sail upon the Sea of Murmurs, a sacrifice endlessly renewed upon the smoking waves. Hassan had whispered his grandfather’s name as he’d fitted each knuckle, each rib, each long bone, until the syllables had vanished from his mind with the final setting of the jaw in the tiller lock.

  His grandfather had become the boat. A soul to sail on the sea, while Hassan remained a breathing man with his eyes open six feet above the welcoming soil.

  “I will live forever,” Hassan told his grandfather.

  The boat said nothing, though Hassan thought he could hear it breathing.

  * * *

  “You listen, boy. You’ve ears to hear.” The old man’s hand was a crab’s claw, twisted fingers bent together to grab young elbows in pain. “There’s more to this world, and more, even as God wills us to be here.”

  Hassan smiled. “Drink your tea, Grandfather.” He passed a little clay tumbler over to a shivering hand. They lived in a small hut hard by a cypress, as far from Telos as anyone did.

  Alone together, thinking thoughts, the two of them.

  “Tea.” His grandfather grimaced. “This isn’t real tea. More like seaweed soup. Tea grows in little sacks on bushes tended by coolies on the sides of steep mountains.”

  “What are coolies?”

  After a long pause, his grandfather puffed out a ragged breath. “I don’t know, boy. I don’t know either.”

  * * *

  Obsidian cliffs towered behind the village of Telos, a wall sheer and hard enough to daunt even the most adventurous boys. Each day their dark glass reflected the setting sun in a multiplicity of dim fetches, a small, stubborn galaxy brought down close to the land for casual inspection. They made a mirrored hell of the Little Moons and the Great Moons on nights when the entire sky danced.

  If a boy risked all to tramp across the sands at low tide, he could turn back and see the carved tops of the cliffs. There was a city there, a thousand thousand times greater than Telos had ever dreamed of being with its three waterfalls and single corral.

  The contrast between the glittering ramparts high above and the little driftwood homes below could strain even the most stoic heart. Very few ever chanced the damp sand and the red-boiled wrath of the waves for a glimpse.

  Otherwise the village and lives of its people unfolded in the strip of hay meadows and salt marshes and twisted cypress trees that stood as stubborn as life between the glassy cliffs and the burning sea. It was a world that reminded folk of their place with each ragged breath and staggering step.

  Only Hassan’s grandfather had been different, and through him, Hassan.

  * * *

  The night Hassan’s grandfather died, Etienne the hetman burned the village library. Hassan stood in the flickering light of blazing paper, watching sparks arc from the useless, melting datacubes.

  “It does us no good,” the hetman told Hassan. The village leader was an older man, blocky and stolid, uncle to Hassan’s late mother, and had always claimed a soft spot toward Hassan.

  “It’s what we know,” Hassan muttered.

  “No.” Etienne’s voice was a quiet, intense reflection of his grandfather’s. Like a version of the old man kept in a bottle. “We know the tides, and when the sea burns and stings, and to avoid the splinters of the cliffs. We know how the rains come and when they stay away. We know when to plant the maize and when to walk the fields plucking the borers from the stalks. That’s what we know. Not the names of kings and admirals and who discovered each of the metals.”

  Hassan stared into the spitting fire. “He always said we were lost.”

  “Maybe. But here is where we are found. Here is where we will stay.”

  “Here.” The obsidian cliffs gleamed in the night as Hassan raised his eyes to the empty stars.

  “It’s a good life,” said Etienne.

  * * *

  The hetman had missed one book. When Hassan went to fold his grandfather’s bedroll for the last time—Martine needed it for her middle son—he found the ragged volume beneath. It had a spine of split bamboo, that had been bound and rebound many times.

  His grandfather had taught Hassan much about what few books they had. But Hassan had never seen this one.

  He turned his find over in his hand. The cover was stretched leather, perhaps an eelskin, though he couldn’t be sure as it was worn with long handling. When he opened the book, the pages crackled.

  Whatever the original creators had meant to say had been long lost to the scribings of dozens of others. Writing crabbed across the pages, up, down, sideways, on a slant, in the colors of different inks and the soft gray of clay and the dark red of blood.

  Voices from the past.

  He even recognized his grandfather’s hand.

  Hassan sat down to read.

  “Boy,” it said in the old man’s shaky block printing. Hassan had never been able to master writing himself. “First, you’ll need my bones.”

  * * *

  Once there had been boats which sailed the seas, both the mercurial Sea of Murmurs and the seas of ordinary water that stretched on all the worlds dreaming in the harsh light of the evening stars. Once there were boats which sailed the air, some fast as forked lightning that split the night, others slow as thought. Once there were boats which rode the tides of light that bound the stars together.

  Now there were no boats at all.

  The book told stories under stories. With practice, Hassan could pick out each hand. As he prepared his grandfather’s bones, then searched the beach for the right wood, he would take moments and read the different stories. The hand which had written rounded letters in blood could be picked out of the confusion of the pages just as Maryam’s drum could be heard beneath the singing of the village on Round Moon Festival.

  Each story was a voice. The book was a chorus. Hassan knew that he would be the last.

  The book told him many secrets:

  “We are bound here between life and death. The black city on the cliffs behind us is our past. The deadly sea before us is our fate.”

  “You will need to spend a soul to cross the fiery waters. Do not trade your own.”

  “Our life was never meant to be this way. I cannot believe that either God or any man intended such for us.”

  “Love while you can, live as you must.”

  “I will be free beyond the horizon.”

  “Beechwood thrown up by the sea will make a suitable keel. Cypress smokes until the oil bursts into flame.”

  “This is the way to build a boat: a
ttend to the pictures of my poor hand.”

  “Sail away.”

  “Live forever.”

  “Sail away.”

  * * *

  Etienne came to Hassan in the month after his grandfather’s death.

  “The old man needs to be within the soil,” the hetman said.

  “He goes there piece by piece,” Hassan whispered. It had been among the first lessons of the book, marked with some urgency.

  You will need to spend a soul.

  “There is talk in the village.”

  “There is always talk in the village. I do my duty.”

  Etienne grabbed Hassan’s shoulder, squeezed it, a sort of distancing hug. “You are not healthy out here. Move into the town. Woo Maryam. She sees you as being … of interest.”

  I will be free beyond the horizon.

  “No. I bury him in pieces, in all the places he loved.” Such a lie; Grandfather had loved nothing but books. “He returns to soil.”

  “You are as strange as he.”

  Hassan had no answer for that.

  * * *

  A few weeks after Hassan found the beechwood for the keel, the Sea of Murmurs ran with mice and rats. The surf came rolling in oily sheets, tumbling the screaming animals to the sand. All of Telos scrambled along the beaches with nets and pots to harvest such a bounty of meat and pelts. In the normal course of life the village had only goats and a few surly chickens too precious to eat and too troublesome to roust out of the papaya trees.

  This was a feast, one of the sea’s rare gifts among its endless curses.

  The bounty ended suddenly in a wave of larger things with teeth like needles and a dozen scampering feet. These creatures slaughtered the survivors of the rodent tide, then had to be driven back into the sea with sticks and shouts and some injuries.

  Still they feasted, though many limped and Majid the Younger lost three toes and a piece of one calf.

  * * *

  “Boy,” his grandfather said. “Wake up.”

  Hassan blinked. Had he been sleeping?

  The old man was young, younger than Hassan had ever known him, his fingers strong and supple as he shook Hassan’s shoulders. “There’s a Tide of Spring coming. After that, fires and the fall of the moon. Be ready, boy.”

  “I’m ready,” Hassan said, but he spoke only to the empty hut. He went out to work on the boat by moonlight.

  * * *

  The book had this to say, in a reeling purple hand which spoke but rarely throughout the threaded pages:

  “A moon will fall in time, as it has before. The black city was broken by a bright fist from above. The red sea was poisoned by a dark fist from beneath. All life changes.”

  All life changes.

  The night after his grandfather came to him, Hassan carved those words in his chest with a bone needle and some fire ash, then cried for the old man for the first time until the pain and blood-slicked sweat sent him into fever dreams of green fields of tea and giant brass coolies with the slack faces of apes, the wicked eyes of goats, and the tears of a lonely young man.

  * * *

  Etienne’s visits became fairly regular, usually while Hassan was polishing his grandfather’s bones or fitting pieces of bone and wood into the boat.

  “Maryam will soon wed Majid the Younger,” the hetman said one day. “They have trod the corn together, and he has already captured a gull for the feast.”

  “Don’t like gull meat.” Hassan tried to grin at Etienne. When had he last seen Maryam? “Stringy and sour.”

  “You likewise.” Etienne patted the boat’s gunnel. “I know what this is.”

  “It’s a boat.”

  They both glanced toward the Sea of Murmurs. The water was a violent blue today, silver-finned mermaids singing sweetly perhaps half a kilometer offshore. Deadly.

  “Such … craft and dedication … would serve Telos well. You could build a new council house. With your name upon the door for generations to read.”

  I will live forever.

  But Hassan said nothing.

  After a while Etienne deposited a sack of papayas, squeezed Hassan’s shoulder, and departed.

  * * *

  One day the boat was done. Hassan simply knew that. He measured its length in three paces, its breadth in one, sighted down the oars carved so painstakingly in accordance with the rare picture drawn in a stained brown hand in the last book. Then he covered it over with a woven mat, walked into Telos, and began to survey the ground for a new council house.

  It was something to do while waiting for the Tide of Spring.

  Etienne misunderstood.

  “So you are finally done with the old man,” the hetman said. “Perhaps you would sup with my family tonight? Crazy cousin Hassan is come to town, my daughters are saying.”

  Love while you can, live as you must.

  “I will see the children,” Hassan said quietly. He was surprised to find his voice creaking so.

  Something like a shadow flitted across Etienne’s face. “They have not been children for a while.”

  * * *

  One evening as Hassan worked at carving out the notch in a cross-beam just so, he realized that the world felt different. Wrong.

  It was the light.

  He looked up.

  The Round Moon was just bellying over the obsidian cliffs to the east. First and Third Little Moons danced in the mid-sky as always. But al-Maghrib, the Soulful Moon of Paradise, was too large, too low.

  “The Fall of the Moon,” he whispered.

  Hassan dropped his tools and sprinted from town. He had to get to his boat. Behind him people shouted, cried out, called to one another. Even as he left their words behind, Hassan could hear it was him they spoke of, not the Soulful Moon.

  It did not matter. He would ride the Sea of Murmurs beyond the horizon and live forever.

  * * *

  Dragging his boat down the sand was back-breaking work. Small as it was, the craft was heavy. His grandfather’s soul seemed to serve as an anchor, a tether. Had Hassan misunderstood it all?

  “You are too late for doubts,” he told himself.

  The Sea of Murmurs rumbled behind him. It sounded almost gravelly, running thick tonight.

  “I follow your secrets, Grandfather.”

  “Hassan.”

  He looked up. It was Etienne, looking much like his grandfather by some trick of the moon’s light. The hetman had half a dozen others with him, including two of his daughters.

  “Leave it off, Hassan. Come home.”

  “I must take my boat down to the sea.”

  “No. There is work to be done. None of us have much, so each of us is precious. Leave off your grief.”

  “It’s hope, not grief!” Hassan shouted.

  When they came for him, he laid to with the oar until he broke ribs on one of his girl-cousins.

  As she screamed, Etienne waved the others off. “Please, Hassan. Come home.”

  “No.” Secrets spilled from his lips like rain from a careless cloud. “This is the Fall of the Moon, and the Tide of Spring. I must away before the world ends. I must be free.”

  “Come home and be free.”

  Hassan threw the oar back into the boat and returned to his dragging. After a moment, Etienne leaned into the stern and pushed. “Come on,” the hetman shouted, “the sooner he sinks his silly boat, the sooner we all go home.”

  But the growing light of the Soulful Moon gave lie to the words and hope to Hassan’s heart.

  I will be free beyond the horizon.

  * * *

  The Sea of Murmurs ran with sand and soil, a foam of wiggling worms atop the heaving brown tide. Was this the Tide of Spring? Hassan couldn’t imagine how the boat could navigate such a muddy, almost-solid expanse.

  Most of Telos had come down to the beach to watch the madman and his boat. Some cried, casting him hot looks, especially those tending his injured girl-cousin. Others stared at the blazing moon. Wind drove along the sand, carrying s
oil from the sea and an unexpected heat.

  Hassan could believe this to be the end of the world.

  “Look!” someone shouted.

  There was color in the sea. Flashes here and there, like fire sparks on a distant stretch of beach.

  The Tide of Spring?

  Then all the muddy water burst into bloom, a thousand million billion flowers exploding on the Sea of Murmurs in a riot of color and scent. Hassan grabbed the bow of his boat and ran. It was light as a palm leaf, floating across the sand behind him. When he glanced back, he saw many hands helping.

  His feet met the sea on the first spray of petals from the incoming tide. Hassan ran until the flowers were up to his knees. There was still water down below, a thick syrupy nectar, but even below the surface it was filled with the soft nudging of blooms. The boat slid in among the raging color as if made for the task, and Hassan tumbled into it. He would cross the horizon. He would live forever.

  “Who will you take with you?” asked Etienne, waist-deep in flowers, his face glowing sad and hard by the blazing light of the Soulful Moon.

  “Grandfather,” Hassan answered. He sat down on the single bench, nodded to the gleaming bones worked in among the planks of the boat, and bent to his oars. Each stroke broke the surface of the Sea of Murmurs with a spray of perfumed scent that shivered his spine.

  Behind him, they cried on the beach as the Soulful Moon fell. When he looked over his shoulder, Hassan saw that lights winked on one by one in the black cities atop the obsidian cliffs.

  Then Hassan turned his face to horizon, and freedom, even as the moon fell and the air burned and flowers carried him in his grandfather’s arms to someplace he never could have known before.

  A Critical Examination of Stigmata’s Print Taking the Rats to Riga

  * * *

  Jeff and Ann VanderMeer asked me to write a story for them. I did. They hated it, telling me the story did everything they wanted, but in a way that did not work for them. So I wrote this story instead. See how many genre writers you can spot in here somewhere.