“What—” she breathes, and then a voice beside us speaks.
“Well, well, who is this?” The old man is back, setting down two cups of tea and smiling at me.
“Hello. I’m Evan.” I beam at him and then look back at his wife, still staring at me, now with tears in her eyes. “And I’m not a fake,” I add happily, patting her arm. “Feel better, now,” I whisper and start to turn back to my table. Her hands stop me, as she pulls me back around and closer, pressing a kiss to the top of my head.
“I don’t know what . . . how . . .”
I shake my head. Don’t try to figure it out, lady. Nobody else can, either. “Just feel better,” I repeat. I let her hug me one last time and walk back to my table. Mama isn’t back yet. The cafeteria is really crowded. Behind me I can hear her telling her husband that she can’t feel any pain, that she feels like she can walk without the cane. I climb back into my chair and wait for my donut.
Almost immediately, I feel a prickly sensation on the back of my neck, and I look in the other direction. The man in the pink pajamas is standing a few feet away, with a puzzled look on his face. Something about the way he stands there makes me think he’s been watching me with the old woman.
I can’t help smiling at him. His dots bounce like the little happy faces from the Wal-Mart commercials. He smiles back, and I remember my word of the day from a few days ago—bemused. I giggle. He walks past my table and sits down with the old couple.
Mama comes across the cafeteria with a little bag of donuts. I jump up and grab her hand and we head back out to the dreaded elevator. I actually like riding the elevator but I feel bad because she hates it so much.
I start humming as we ride back up to the main floor to leave. I decide not to go with the suit or the congregation at all. I think maybe a pair of pink pajamas might be in my future.
But I’m going to keep the Southern accent.
THE HORSES OF THE HIGH HILLS
Brenda Cooper
Brenda Cooper has published fiction and poetry in Analog, Oceans of the Mind, Strange Horizons, and The Salal Review, and been included in the anthologies Sun In Glory and Maiden, Matron, Crone. Brenda’s collaborative fiction with Larry Niven has appeared in Analog and Asimov’s. She and Larry have a new novel, Building Harlequin’s Moon. Brenda lives in Bellevue, Washington, with her partner Toni, Toni’s daughter Katie, a border collie, two gerbils, and a hamster. By day, she works as the City of Kirkland’s CIO, applying her interests in science, technology, and the future to day-today computer operations and strategic planning. She writes for Futurist.com and can sometimes be found speaking about the future, and suggesting that science fiction books make great reading. The rest of the time, she’s writing, reading, exercising, or exploring life with her family.
MORNING SUN PAINTED the wood chips on the path under Carly’s slender feet red and orange and soft yellow. Soon, the Sawdust Festival would open and the nearly-empty byways would fill with tourists come to mingle with the Laguna Beach artists, listen to the buskers, and eat hot dogs and popcorn and chips. For now, it was just the artists, sipping strong coffee and hoping for a good Saturday crowd. Maybe Carly’s mom, Suzanne, would sell enough pottery today to bring another load from the garage studio they rented up-canyon. If Carly brought her coffee, maybe she could jump-start a good mood; make the day one of those rare ones when her mom stayed with her.
Marla, the women’s shelter lady who served coffee in the morning, sat behind a big yellow picnic table with stick-figure families hand-painted on its top in bright colors. A blue and white family planning banner fluttered above her head and two coffee pots stood on a cart off to the side. She smiled softly at Carly. “Good morning, little one. Come for your mom’s coffee?”
“Yes, please.” Carly eyed the bench beside the tall blond woman.
“Sit.”
Carly sat. Marla reached in her purse for a brush and started in on Carly’s wild hair. “When I was eleven,” she said, “my mother made me cut my hair off because I never brushed it.”
Like her mom would bother. Carly smiled, grateful for the way Marla held her hair so pulling out the tangles didn’t hurt. Much. She sat, silent, while Marla combed through her red-blond hair until it lay shining along her arms, falling nearly to her elbows.
“You know, you can come by the shelter any time.”
Going would be defeat, would be like she couldn’t handle her mom, and she could. Besides, her mom needed Carly to keep her from screwing up too bad. “No thanks. Mom needs me, and we take care of ourselves.”
Marla smiled softly. “Sometimes, caretakers need to be taken care of—just so they can go on helping. You, or your mom, are welcome any time.”
It wasn’t the first time Carly had heard Marla’s offer, and it wouldn’t be the last. But she and her mom didn’t need help. Not from outside.
Marla put the brush away, then poured a cup of coffee. “Here, take this to your mom.” Her gray-blue eyes gathered the clouds of worry that she wore so often. “And take care of yourself today, okay?”
Carly curled her fingers around the warm cardboard cup and looked down at the ground. “I’ll be okay.” She turned, not wanting to see Marla’s face, knowing the exact sad smile Marla would be wearing, the one she used for all the women and girls she worried for.
Back at the pottery booth, Carly’s mom, Suzanne, reached for the coffee, her face crumpled up with her usual morning headache. Her hands shook. “Thank you, honey,” she said, actually smiling. “Go on now.”
“Don’t you want me to help you this morning?” Carly asked.
Guilt flashed briefly in Suzanne’s eyes, then she brushed her short red-brown hair back and looked right through Carly, the guilt gone to cunning. “When I was a kid, I would never have wanted to hang around with my mom. You go on, play.” She fished into her pocket and handed Carly a dollar. “Go on—you can come back after it gets busy.”
Carly balled the bill in her fist and walked away. If she wasn’t in trouble for not being around, then she was in trouble for being around. Just past the first curve she ducked below John Kiley’s silver booth, careful not to rattle the glass cases, and peeked back at her mom through the wooden slats. Sure enough, Suzanne poured whisky from the dark-glass bottle she kept in the bottom of her cash drawer into her coffee. Suzanne glanced in Carly’s direction, but looked up instead of down. Later in the day, she wouldn’t even bother to hide the bottle, but she always tried in the morning.
Some mornings like this, Carly sat by Marla and helped hand out coffee and brochures about AIDS and birth control and family violence, but she’d told Marla she’d be okay.
Well, fine. There was still one place she could go. Carly stepped aside to avoid Jack the caretaker as he passed by, mumbling about fixing the back wall. He called hello at her. She nodded and raised a hand, hiding her face and the tears hovering at the edge of her eyes. She liked Jack all right, but she didn’t want to explain her mood.
She leaned on the rail at the highest public place in the festival—a wide bridge with tables for gathering and a good view. From up here, she could see most of the festival: three acres of unique hand-crafted booths lining winding pathways, and all of it enclosed in a wooden wall, except the back, where a natural scrabble and stone cliff made most of the back wall without any help. The food booths were to her right the right, the stage below her. As festival-goers starting filling the paths, she faded back toward the waterfall behind her, feeling the tug of the water as if it called to her unshed tears. She turned, closed her eyes, and stepped through, water falling on her face, her back, heavy and sweet and bracing. Hands in front of her, Carly felt the soft give of the stone wall as it enveloped her, the thickness of the shimmering black and gray fog of the stone, and emerged on the far side. Stars shone above her.
She’d found the water-door during the first week of the festival, and she ended up back here almost every day, though she usually went later since the time was oddly skewed on this side of t
he doorway—almost two hours behind.
Carly let out a long breath, and wrapped her arms around herself, blinking at the early-morning dark. She shivered, wet from the waterfall. The pre-dawn stillness of the High Hills felt good. A soft wind blew through the trees below her, and three coyotes called the end of night from up-canyon. She started carefully down the path to Gisele’s studio.
The stars began to fade and the black humps of hills to resolve into details like low trees and boulders and ravines in the rising light. The High Hills looked like Laguna Canyon might have before the town came. Carly squinted down to the sea, watching it turn from gray to blue as the sun rose behind her. Beyond the river, a little town nestled in oak trees and big boulders, but Carly had never been that far. What if she got lost, and couldn’t find her way back to her mom?
She crossed the river at the stone ford and turned back toward a small wooden workroom perched on the river bank under a stand of oak. She glanced back at the cliff that held this side of the doorway between her world and the High Hills, reassuring herself, even though it was always there.
Carly pushed the door open and let the morning light into the dark room. An old woman sat bent over her desk, shaping a tiny wooden bird with a small file held perfectly between bent and twisted fingers. Carly sighed, slightly cheered to be here, but as confused as always—as if crossing through the water-door bent the world sideways; it was hard to make sense of the High Hills. Gisele looked up, her wrinkled eyes narrowing. “Well, there you are.”
“Good morning, Gisele.”
Gisele’s voice was matter-of-fact, cool, as she said, “Can you stay long enough to finish the horse?”
“I bet I can be gone half the day,” Carly muttered. Not that Gisele cared about her other life. Why should she? Carly looked over at Gisele, noting how deep the darkness under her eyes was this morning. Gisele had her own problems, she’d lost her son and granddaughter to Carly’s world five years ago and not seen them since, and her husband had died this past winter. She should feel sorry for Gisele, but she was pretty sure this was a made-up world anyway. It had to be, right? But even if the High Hills was really just her imagination, she didn’t have to act as crazy and rude as the drink made her mom. She could be nice. “Did you sleep well last night?”
Gisele held the little bird up to the light with her right hand, stroking its wooden head with her right finger. “From midnight till a few hours ago. Go on with you, girl, get started.”
Gisele must have a tender heart for all that she never really gave Carly a break. No one without a good heart could possibly make some magical little animals. Carly sighed and went to her little workbench, picking up the fist-sized wooden horse that lay half-painted in front of her. She turned it over and over in her hands, searching for its soul. She’d given it a dark coat, and painted a star on its forehead and two white socks, one on each front foot. She forgot Gisele’s sternness as her hands roamed the perfect musculature, the tiny hooves, the long tail that curled gracefully down to the horse’s hocks. Gisele had given the horse its perfect shape, and taught Carly to hear its dreams and paint it awake. That used to be Gisele’s husband’s job, and Carly was new at it, and slow. A whole box of carved wooden animals sat waiting for Carly’s paintbrush. She’d never finish them all this summer, not with the festival closing in two weeks, closing off her access to the water-door. Gisele had warned her that the waterfall-door stopped working when the festival closed, and didn’t start again until it had been open a few days.
Carly mixed a dark sienna, streaking it with off-white, and swabbed her brush softly through it. Always good to do the hooves early. As she dabbed the paint on, it smoothed itself, filling in cracks, as if it knew exactly where to go.
She finished the white tail and started on the mane. The wood felt bristly under her hands, beginning to soften until Carly stroked it, getting white on her fingers, murmuring, “Be still, little one, let me paint your spirit, your strength, your speed.”
As she reached for the dark eye-black Gisele came and stood behind her, one gnarled hand on Carly’s shoulder. “Speak it softly with that one,” Gisele whispered.
“Come alive, little one, come and dance.” She dabbed one eye with paint and turned the horse over. “Come now,” she whispered, brushing the other eye on, and the horse raised its head in her hand and looked at her calmly. Carly flattened her palm for the little horse to stand up on. It struggled up, its back hooves digging in near her wrist, its front feet settling in just where her middle and index fingers joined her palm. It tossed its head and flicked its tail, and she reached down and stroked it. It shuddered. She crooned, and it finally calmed, whickering softly and nosing her finger.
“Nice job,” Gisele said.
Carly kissed the little horse back to sleep and set it carefully in the box Gisele had made for it. “I wish I could take it with me.”
“It might sleep forever in that world,” Gisele said, her voice rough.
Carly swallowed her longing. The horse could be such a friend! “I know.” And suddenly the tears she’d hidden from Jack and drowned in the waterfall and blinked away in the cold on this side of the rock poured out of her, falling on the sleeping little horse, on Carly’s hands, on Gisele’s hands. Gisele turned Carly’s head up and looked deep into Carly’s eyes. Gisele’s eyes were such a soft blue they were almost white. As if the years had thinned them. Carly shuddered a little. Why did she come here anyway? Surely the High Hills were a dream. Gisele was the only person she’d seen here, but there had to be more, people to bring the wood and make the tea and buy the little animals Gisele made. People that lived in the little town in the distance. “Can’t I stay here? I like being magic.”
Gisele brushed at Carly’s hair, a gesture like Marla’s, but with no worry for Carly in her eyes. Just sadness, and magic, and age. “Take the horse with you. Just bring it back.” She gestured to the box by Carly’s arm. “I made it a family, and families should stay together.”
So that was Gisele’s answer about staying. “Why doesn’t the magic go with me?”
The edges of Gisele’s mouth turned into a thoughtful frown. “Doesn’t it?” she asked.
“How would I know?” Carly glanced at the box, furrowing her brow. “Can I take a waiting one, too? Paint it over there?”
Gisele took her hand from Carly’s shoulder and turned away. “Be careful with them. Go on now, go home.”
Carly sighed. Gisele’s sadness reminded her of her mom, except Gisele just kept going, making magic instead of pots. She didn’t try to distract herself, and her only addiction was her craft.
Carly patted the sleeping little horse, watching it breathe softly. She closed the lid over it. Then she picked out a small mare from the box. She found a box for it, too, and put one horse in each pocket, then walked back to the ford, across the meadow, and up to the doorway. From this side, she had to close her eyes and trust, and her hands always went first, feeling for water, needing the wet on her fingertips before she could make her body walk through the stone.
It was past lunch at the festival and the summer sun beat down on the pond below the waterfall. She had to step around two little boys splashing each other and laughing while their mom took pictures. The woman looked at her and smiled patiently, waiting for Carly to step out of the space between the camera and the boys. Somehow no one ever asked her how she appeared from inside the waterfall, even though the stone wall shone wet and solid behind it. It must be part of the magic.
Carly walked back down the path until she could see her mom talking earnestly with an old woman about a vase. Satisfied that her mom was okay, she clambered up behind Paula’s leather booth to a rock ledge and wriggled until she could get the two horses out of her damp pockets. The first box she opened held the unpainted mare, looking as warm and alive as wood-tools could make it, like it looked in the High Hills. Waiting. She opened the other box, and the black horse lay with its legs tucked into the same position as she’d seen it last. It d
idn’t breathe, but its mane lay tangled and the paint that filled in its eyes was too perfect to have been done by a clumsy brush: the whites showed, thin as a hair, and the center of each eye glowed just slightly darker than the outside. The little horse felt caught—not dead, not alive. Perhaps its spirit had gone back to the same place the other carved animals waited before Carly painted them. She closed each box, confused that they were still there, pleased that life still whispered through the black horse’s stillness. Only then did she realize she truly hadn’t expected the boxes to pass through the waterfall. The meant the High Hills were real, right? She wasn’t making it up, and suddenly she knew she had known that, but she couldn’t really believe it, and now she had to. It made her tremble and want to sing, both at the same time, and she just sat there and held the boxes in her hands, not opening them again, but holding them and looking from one to the other. It took almost a half-hour before she was ready to tuck the boxes back into her pockets.
All afternoon she kept them in her pockets while she fetched lunch for her mom and helped wrap up two sets of candlesticks, a vase, and a salt and pepper set her mother had fashioned into a cat and a mouse, each so fat it would take two hands to use them. She tried to ignore the horses as hard as she tried to ignore the coming night.
Dark came anyway.
As day faded, the festival crowd shifted. Families and busloads of gray-haired grandparents with canes and canvas shopping bags gave way to young women with bare bellies and young men with pierced eyebrows prowling for the women or for other men, to a mix of locals and tougher, edgier tourists come to feed on the festival’s drug trade and guzzle beer from Coke cans.
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