Slices

by Michael Montoure

  “Don’t you need to sleep?”

  “Maybe later. I need to guard the cave.”

  “I could do that,” Matthew said. “We could take turns.”

  “Yeah?” the Boy said dubiously. “I don’t know. Do you think you could handle this?” He hefted the spear.

  “Sure. I mean, I guess so, sure.” Matthew looked past him, down into the moonlit forest. “What’s out there, anyway?”

  “You know. Bears. Cougars. Indians.”

  “Indians?”

  “Sure, Indians. Pirates, too, some nights. Rattlesnakes. Werewolves.”

  Matthew laughed uncertainly, not sure if the Boy was joking. “There’s no such thing as werewolves,” he said.

  The Boy turned and looked at him with wide eyes. “There’s not?” He deflated a little, looked suddenly less certain; he let the tip of his spear dip a little as a curious expression crossed his face, and as he looked back up wonderingly at the full moon.

  “Well,” he said finally, “that’s one less thing to worry about, at least.” He smiled looked forced as he handed the spear to Matthew. “Here. If anything happens, come wake me.”

  So Matthew stood watch while the Boy slept.

  Matthew followed the Boy everywhere in the weeks that followed, and the Boy never once seemed to mind the company, or said he was busy, or told Matthew to go find something else to do.

  And there was so much to do, for the two of them. The Boy showed Matthew how to build that lean-to after all, even though they slept in the cave, most nights. He showed Matthew how to use the spear to fish, and to hunt rabbits and squirrels and, eventually, lions. They watched some nights, in secret and shelter, as pirate ships went down the river; ran and danced and sang in moonlight; scared off bears and coyotes with flaming torches.

  The Boy told Matthew everything he knew about The Woods, and Matthew drank it all in. He started to suspect, over time, that there was more to the world than even the Boy understood, and he sometimes watched alone as slender and graceful rocketships rose into the night sky, as sunsets tinted their fuselages rose and red and imperial violet; or on other nights, as robots dueled with cannons from the decks of ironclad dirigibles.

  But Matthew never mentioned these things, content instead to do the things the Boy did, learn the things the Boy had to teach. He had never had a friend like this before, had barely had friends at all, and this was more like having a brother.

  “I wish you really were my brother,” Matthew finally told him one day.

  The Boy paused for a moment; he’d been knapping a new spear point for Matthew to use. “No, you don’t,” he said, his tone light and conversational.

  “I don’t?”

  “No.” He looked more serious now. “If I was really your brother, we wouldn’t be doing — any of this. Anything fun. We’d be arguing. About who has to set the table, or who has the better bike, or, you know. Anything. Nothing.”

  Matthew frowned. “I don’t think we would.”

  “We would. And when we got older it would be worse. There would be girls and cars and parties and money and nothing would ever be simple.”

  He went back to knapping the new spearhead with sharp, sure strokes. Matthew didn’t say anything else.

  That night, by the light of the ever-full moon, Matthew brought down a tiger with the new spear. The point was sharp and heavy and sure and cut deeper than anything.

  Nights later, Matthew started to explore more on his own. He didn’t think much about what the Boy had said, about being brothers, but not thinking about it was taking more and more effort, requiring more stillness and solitude.

  He wandered, aimless and quiet, farther than he’d ever been from the paths of The Woods he knew, and the animals here were few and wary; there was no sign, here, that anyone had walked here before him, no Indian, no pirate.

  The trees here were smaller and sparser, their colors less vibrant. Matthew was starting to think he was really alone, might not be able to find his way back, and he was holding on to his new spear with a deathgrip when he heard The Boy’s voice from behind:

  “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “Why?” he asked, not turning around.

  “This is almost the Edge of the Woods,” the Boy said. “It’s not safe here.”

  Matthew started to see shapes, shadow and light, out in the dark.

  “What’s out there?” he breathed. “Animals?”

  “Yes,” came the answer. “The most dangerous animals ever.”

  A sound came out of the dark, and a light, and Matthew listened and watched, and saw flashlights and heard men calling his name —

  “Come on,” the Boy said urgently, a hand firmly on Matthew’s shoulder.

  “But — ”

  “Don’t listen. Run.”

  He took Matthew’s hand, and they ran through the trees, lights flashing close behind, and the Boy stopped at a stream, and he found them two hollow reeds to breathe through, and they hid, somehow, in the clear water — Matthew didn’t understand how it worked, but he’d read about it once in a cowboy book, so he knew it would. After a cold, wet, measureless time, they broke out into the air again. The flashlights were nowhere to be seen, but one last cry of “Matthew!” still hung in the air.

  They made their way by stealth back to their cave, and lay on the stone floor breathless and aching.

  The Boy started to build a fire after a while, and when it was lit, Matthew could see the Boy was watching him, his eyes glittering and strange.

  “So that’s your name, then,” he said, and his voice was flat and careful. “Matthew.”

  It seemed weird to have him say it, so Matthew just nodded. He watched the Boy stir the fire again, aware, not for the first time, how much the Boy looked familiar. Like a hero from a bedtime story.

  Matthew felt his lips moving, but hadn’t realized he’d spoken out loud until the Boy’s eyes snapped around to look at him again.

  “What?” the Boy said. “What did you just say?”

  “Peter,” Matthew repeated. “I think I’ll call you Peter. Like Peter Pan.”

  The Boy’s face darkened. “Damn it,” he whispered. He lunged across the fire to Matthew, kicking and scattering burning logs. He grabbed Matthew’s shirtfront and shoved him against the cave wall. “Take it back!”

  “You’re hurting me!”

  “Take it back!”

  “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

  The Boy let go of him, shoved him away, stood there with tight fists and ragged breaths.

  “Why do you have to ruin everything?” he asked. “Why do you have to name everything? Decide what’s real and what’s — why can’t you just enjoy things? What’s wrong with you?”

  “I don’t — I’m sorry, I don’t understand — ”

  “I tried to tell you. Will you remember that? I tried to tell you.” The Boy turned, stalked to the front of the cave, stood staring at the sky.

  Matthew stepped carefully around the broken fire to join him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I’ll never call you that again, I promise.” He took the Boy’s hand and squeezed it tight.

  The Boy smiled weakly. “It doesn’t matter. I mean, you will call me that again. Or you’d look at me and think it, and that’s just as bad. It doesn’t matter. I don’t know what I was thinking. You can’t take back a name, once you’ve said it. You can’t unthink it.”

  He kicked and stamped out what was left of the fire, poured dirt on the embers.

  “Are you crying?” Matthew asked.

  “I don’t know,” the Boy said, with a long, shuddering sigh. “I don’t know. I’ve never cried before. Am I crying? You tell me.”

  But Matthew couldn’t tell in the dark. “I’m sorry,” he said again. The boy sighed. “Go to sleep, Matthew,” he said.

  Matthew dreamed and dreamed and woke up, expecting it to be morning, but it was still night. He was afraid, for a moment, that it would never be morning again.

  Th
e Boy was gone.

  Matthew jerked awake. Maybe, he thought, noticing the Boy’s spear was gone, maybe he just couldn’t sleep, maybe he’s out hunting. But all the Boy’s things were gone, his animal skulls and his skins and wood carvings and all his good skipping stones, and Matthew knew he wasn’t coming back.

  He sat and cried for a while, hating himself for doing it — he was too old for that now — and eventually wiped his face on his sleeve, and stood up to find him.

  His own spear was gone, and Matthew thought maybe it was still at the bottom of the stream from last night, so he’d have to find that, too. He checked to make sure he had the rest of his belongings — the comb, the wallet, the knife — and headed out. Taking one last look back at the cave.

  He ran through the woods in the dark, looking for some clue, some trail. A broken branch, a muddy footprint. He found nothing. He ran farther and faster, and if he noticed he was nearing the Edge of the Woods, he didn’t stop to care.

  He ran headlong into an unseen stream, stumbled through it. Tripped on something that might have been his missing spear or might just have been an old branch. He fell down on the other side and lay there, stunned and crying again.

  “Please,” he said to no-one between sobs, “please let me find him.”

  No sooner had he said it, he heard a familiar voice. A voice calling his name.

  His head jerked up. He took in a breath to call out an answer.

  And The Woods shuddered and listened.

  “Peter?” he whispered.

  He didn’t want to say it out loud — he remembered what he’d promised, but —

  “Matthew?” the voice called again. There were powers gathering in the woods, dim lights like will-o’-the-wisps.

  “Peter!” he cried out.

  “Matthew! Where are you? Keep calling!”

  “Peter! I’m here! Peter!”

  A rush, a crash, a crackling of branches, and he stepped out of the trees and into the clearing.

  Matthew just stared at him for a moment, lost, bewildered, and then he burst into tears.

  It was Peter, after all; Peter, his only brother, with his glasses and neatly-trimmed curls, his earnest and worried look. Peter come at last to take him home.

  And if Matthew could see something wild and trapped in Peter’s dark eyes, he couldn’t remember for the life of him what it was.

  He just held on to Peter and cried as the other men closed in, men with their flashlights and their radios and their dogs, policemen and his father and others, all these men who had come to take him back to the world.

  Life went back to normal, after that, as it will do if you’re not careful.

  Over the next few months, the next few years, Matthew and Peter fought and argued and found ways to hurt each other, large and small, as brothers will.

  Some nights, when the moonlight outside Matthew’s window was so bright it hurt his eyes, he would get out of bed and creep down the hall to Peter’s room and watch his brother sleep. The shapes in the room, Peter’s furniture, his model rockets, his jacket tossed over the back of a chair — all of it would loom out of proportion in the moonlight, look distorted and wrong and out of place, and for a minute, Matthew would forget where he was.

  But then he would remember, and go back to bed.

  One day, someone died. Some uncle that Matthew had barely met. And they were left alone. Peter, just sixteen and already tasting adulthood, was left to watch Matthew as Mom and Dad went off to comfort relatives.

  Come the weekend, and the school week was over, and Peter was to drive Mom’s car out to join them for the funeral. Matthew, fourteen, was his reluctant passenger, sullen and squirming. He hated long car rides, didn’t think much of Peter being in charge.

  They didn’t talk. Matthew just stared out the window and daydreamed until he was half-asleep.

  Until —

  “Peter, stop the car!”

  Peter did, and looked at him questioningly.

  Matthew got out without a word.

  Peter followed. “What’s the matter? Carsick?”

  “No. No, I’m not sick, but — Peter, look. This is it, isn’t it?” He pointed into the trees by the side of the road. “This is the woods I got lost in, isn’t it?” he asked.

  Peter frowned. “I don’t know. I guess, maybe, yeah. It was somewhere around here.”

  Matthew stared and thought. “What was I doing out here in the first place?”

  Peter shrugged. “I don’t remember. It was a long time ago.”

  He looked at his watch. “Come on, let’s get back in the car.”

  “Not yet,” Matthew said. There was something important about these woods, if he could only remember … “Peter?” he whispered.

  The branches of the nearest trees shifted in the breeze, seemed to answer; Matthew?

  “What?” Peter said impatiently.

  “Do you remember — what you were trying to tell me out there?”

  “Huh? When?” Peter was frowning — Matthew knew without turning around. “When I found you, all I said was — ”

  “No — before that.”

  Peter laughed. “Before I found you?”

  “Yeah,” Matthew said slowly. “Before — before you were Peter.”

  “What?” Peter laughed again. “I think you’ve been out in the sun too long, kiddo.”

  “Yeah, I think I have,” Matthew said, looking at the cool green woods.

  He turned and looked at Peter, really looked at him for the first time. Peter actually took a step back.

  “You were trying to tell me something,” Matthew said, “about naming something, and making it real. I didn’t understand you then. But I think — I think I’m starting to get it.”

  “Matthew, come on, you’re really creeping me out here,” Peter said, reaching out for him. “Come on, come back to the car.”

  “No,” Matthew said, struggling away. “I’m never coming back.”

  And with that, Matthew turned his back and ran.

  Into the woods.

  PUPPETS

  Will made himself smile and sat patiently, watching it make its way slowly across the carpet. The tray it was carrying rattled and shook, and all he really wanted was to walk over and just get his damn coffee, already, make Harrison come to the point and quit wasting his time.

  The doll stopped, staring glassily, taking half a step forward, half a step back, nearly losing its balance, then starting again. Harrison smiled indulgently. His house was full of the damn things. This one had come from — where? A market stall in Korea, if Will remembered correctly.

  A tin soldier had met him at the door; a wooden ballerina had taken his coat. There were dozens more, most making their own way through the house on business of their own, some of them so feeble they could hardly move. They just turned slightly when you came into the room, eyes tracking you as they half-slumbered in their display cases.

  And all but half-a-dozen or so had been tracked down and purchased — or otherwise acquired — by Will, who sold them to Harrison for as much as he could get away with. Sometimes a little more. But Harrison kept coming back.

  “Thank you,” he said automatically, once his coffee was finally held up to him on thin and trembling arms.

  This time, something was wrong. He didn’t know what. But Harrison had a new smile he couldn’t read, a smile that looked unpleasant.

  “There is a doll,” Harrison said, pausing to sip his coffee, “that I would very much like you to find for me.”

  Will nodded. Not an unusual request. Harrison saw things, heard things, other collectors and other collections, and sometimes all he needed was to have Will track down the current owner and negotiate a price. For a percentage, of course.

  “That shouldn’t be a problem,” he said.

  “Oh, I don’t expect it will be,” Harrison said. There was that smile again. “Especially since this is a doll you already tracked down once before.”

  “I’m sorry?” Will ke
pt his expression carefully neutral, like he had no idea what the old man meant, even though he was afraid he might.

  “Yes. I expect you will be sorry. Very sorry.”

  He picked up the newspaper that was carefully folded on the table next to him, and held it out so Will could see it.

  Blaze Claims Four Lives, the headline screamed. There was a full-color picture of the bones of a building, some scattered family forced out into a cold night lit by fire and ambulances and cameras. All of it in lush color, the newspapers loved this as much as a teenager loves porn —

  Wait. The little boy in the back of the photo, shell-shocked and vacant, was clutching — was that —

  “Please tell me,” Harrison said, “that that’s not Edgar.”

  Edgar. A ventriloquist’s dummy, very classic, very perfect, clutched in this boy’s arms.

  “Tell me that’s not Edgar, and our business here today is concluded, and Sebastian will see you out.”

  The coffee tray hung loosely from the doll’s hands, and it looked at Harrison, then back suddenly at Will with a deep clockwork clack.

  “I don’t know,” Will said. “I can’t tell from this picture.”

  “I can’t be, can it? Tell me it can’t.”

  “It might be Edgar.”

  Harrison sat his coffee cup down so hard it nearly broke. “I thought I made it absolutely clear to you that doll was to be disposed of — ”

  “You said to get rid of it. I did.”

  “You knew I wanted it destroyed.”

  “And I told you I was in the business of selling merchandise. Not destroying it.”

  “I paid you a great deal of money to change your mind.”

  Will nodded. “You did pay me a great deal of money, I appreciate that fact, but I never said a word about changing my mind. You wanted Edgar gone and I made sure it wasn’t your problem any more, end of story.”