Horse of a Different Color

by Howard Waldrop

  “You have a moment with your parents before we leave.”

  Hansel and Gretel said good-bye to their poor crying father. Their stepmother had not come to the village with them.

  By the second hour of the march they were already tired, and by the third some of the children stumbled. Already they were beyond the limits of the farthest they had ever been from the village. Hansel noticed that the path they had taken was a new one that had not been there a month before, but already it was well-worn. He tried to dawdle toward the back of the file of children to drop the occasional crumb. After a while, he did it less and less.

  They were so tired by the time the summer sun was setting that when the ogre-officer whispered to them that this was the spot where they would sleep for the night, they all slumped to the ground in their tracks.

  The soldiers passed out food—a little to each child to augment what they had brought from their homes—plus some hard candy.

  Then they fed the heads of their dogs alternatively. One of the dogs got in a fight with itself over a piece of meat. It made the children laugh—and be shushed—and forget about their tiredness for a moment.

  “What about the bread crumbs?” asked Gretel in a whisper.

  “It was a stupid idea,” said Hansel.

  “No talking,” said a soldier far away.

  The second day was worse. Some children limped from blisters or hobbled along on bruised feet. Some had lost one of their shoes, one child both, who knows where?

  Through his tiredness Hansel saw that by now they were coming out of the deepest woods and were passing by streams which dashed from boulder to boulder in sprays of foam under the overhanging flank of a great mountain.

  Even in this time of war, there were trees full of birds; once they saw a solitary goat high on the edge of a hillside, and hares ran from their approach, far ahead on the path.

  They came out of the woods sometime after noon. Far away they saw a tall column of smoke at the edge of the horizon.

  “The Childrens’ Retreat!” said the officer in a low voice. “Those are the ovens where even now they bake the cakes and cookies for you! Hurry, and we shall be there in a few hours!”

  Greatly heartened, they walked faster with their sore feet and tired knees and legs.

  Afterword Kindermarchen

  I wrote this the morning of Friday, July 15, 2005, at Conestoga, a late-lamented convention in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I read it on Sunday afternoon and revised it the next week.

  It was bounced a couple of places (Ellen Datlow; F&SF ) before Lou Antonelli, who’d always wanted to publish something of mine, bought it for his website and paid me $25.

  It was ignored by the rest of the whole world.

  In the old days, I could tell exactly (within five hundred words) how long a story would be before I started it, by how much ground I had to cover.

  I seem to have lost this ability in the last ten or so years. I imagined “Kindermarchen” to be a novelette at least ten thousand words or so and was truly surprised when I did it all in sixteen hundred words.

  (Other examples—I’d imagined “Ninieslando” as a novella, and it was only sixty-two hundred words, and “The Dead Sea-Bottom Scrolls” (coming out next year in the Old Mars anthology) as way long, which it wasn’t).

  I don’t know why I had that ability, or why it went away. I’m not sure I miss it, either.

  Avast, Abaft!

  The Pinafore’s gaining on us, Your Majesty!” yelled the bosun. The Pirate King swung his spyglass aft. “Put out more sail!” he hollered. “And wet ’em down.”

  The ship’s deck was blurred as the crew brought out canvas, lashed ropes to buckets, threw them alongsides, and hauled up seawater. Others climbed in the rigs, unfurled sails, pulled up the bucket-lines, and poured them over the filled sails.

  The deck was slippery as owl snot in a matter of moments.

  “Bosun. See to the cargo,” said the Pirate King.

  The cargo was five daughters of another general. They’d seen them on the shore having a picnic when they had stolen the ship out of Penzance. They’d put a crew out in a boat, run ashore, and grabbed them. They’d do very well for ransom, on this, the crew’s first return to sea and piracy.

  The pirate crew had all been Lords of the Realm who had gone bad years ago, and made a life of brigandage, but they hadn’t been very good at it, being too sentimental. There’d been another in a long series of disappointments; they’d all reformed and taken their former places in society.

  That hadn’t worked out, either. A few weeks ago they’d had a reunion, decided to steal a ship, and take up their former ways.

  “We’ve done well on our first day back at the job,” said the Pirate King. “Well away from land; hold full of ransom. If it weren’t for that damn Rackstraw and the Pinafore; he’s closing on a course that’ll suck our wind as he closes.” He put down his spyglass as the ship, with more wet sail out, left the jagged dot of the Pinafore farther back on the horizon.

  The crew, its present work done, had gathered around the Pirate King.

  “What we’ve never heard, Your Majesty,” said the bosun, “is how you yourself first became a pirate.”

  “Really?” asked the Pirate King. “I’m sure my story’s much the same as yours. Next but one youngest son, not a chance for the peerage, waning family fortunes since the Enclosures and Industrialization—” Somewhere aboard, a mouth organ began a sprightly tune, and the Pirate King began to bob up and down.

  “When I was a lad, and hardly knew a thing—

  “My old pater pledged me to the service of the King.

  “I powd—”

  “Majesty!”yelled the bosun, the only man-jack aboard not in the circle around the Pirate King, who was looking through his spyglass.“The Pinafore gains again!”

  “Look lively, lads! Pray for more wind. Singing continues at eight bells, attack and repel boarders notwithstanding.”

  After they’d wet sails and put out all canvas, the crew of the Pinafore had gathered around Captain Rackstraw as he told the tale of how he had first come to the Navy. A concertina played belowdecks, and Captain Rackstraw bobbed lightly. He was describing his twelve-year-old self.

  “I powder-monkeyed up and I powder-monkeyed down

  “And never again saw London t—”

  “Captain, Captain!” yelled the first mate. “We again gain on the pirate tub!”

  “Land Ho!” yelled the lookout from the crow’s nest. “The pirates make for it. Two points off the starboard bow.”

  The concertina stopped, and the circled crew let out a sigh of disappointment.

  “Sorry, lads,”said Ralph Rackstraw.“When I was one of you, I know how much we all enjoyed a good sing-round. We’ll have a real rip-snorter as soon as we free some captives and hang a few pirates.”

  “Smoke!” yelled the lookout. “Smoke from the island.”

  Rackstraw watched through his spyglass. The island was barely a dot, but fronds of smoke curled up from it. Then more, lighter smoke came from the left end of the place.

  “Answering smoke!” shouted down the lookout. “Same four big puffs and a small one.”

  “That’s no volcanic vent,” said the Pirate King. “There are people there, and they’ve seen us.” He turned back, looked toward the gaining Pinafore. “We can put the island alongships, protect our side, slug it out with the Navy ship, though we’re outgunned,” he said.

  “Bring me the charts!” he yelled to the first mate. “We sure don’t want to put in at a British provisioning station. I don’t remember there being land for six hundred leagues.”

  “It’s unknown to me, and not on the maps,”said the bosun to Captain Rackstraw. “We’re off the main lanes, and the Canaries and Azores are far south and behind; the Bermoothes a thousand nautical miles WSW.”

  The crew, including Dick Deadeye (who for some reason the rest of the crew loathed), had gathered round, hoping for some chanty or other, despite the captain’s ear
lier words. When none was forthcoming, they dispiritedly went back to their duties.

  “Ready the cannons!” said Ralph Rackstraw. “He’ll put one side to shore, and run his heaviest guns out seaward, in shoaling water, so we can’t cross the T on ’em. Helmsman, keep on him like he were a fox trying to go to earth, and we the lean hound.”

  “Aye, aye!”

  The smoke continued from the two ends of the island as it grew larger.

  “They’re certainly talking to each other,” said the bosun to the Pirate King.

  “That they are, and such a small island, too. Typical high mountain in the middle. Charts show no bottom here, so it must be like one of the Pacific ones, rising straight up from the seafloor for miles. Very atypical for the Atlantic. Rest of the island probably like a ring around the mountain.” He took his spyglass away from his eye.“I think I saw a waterfall off the far side, and it’s inhabited, so there’s fresh water. If we settle the Pinafore, we can at least fill our water barrels and be ready for a long run somewheres.”

  The ship closed with the island.“Start soundings! Helm! Make for the indentation on the port side of the island. A bay or cove, mayhaps. Look lively, make ready the cannons, O my Lords of the Realm.”

  “Yo!” yelled Captain Rackstraw aboard the Pinafore. “Make ready for battle. Break out the munitions. Riflemen, up the yards!”

  Sailors ran like ants and scrambled up the ratlines. Powder monkeys disappeared belowdecks and returned with long cylinders and passed them up to the men in the rigs.

  Dick Deadeye admired their precision as he lashed a wooden trough to the fore-topmast. These new munitions could scuttle any pirate tub. He nodded skyward, thanking whomever it was was responsible for science and such . . .

  The stolen ship had long since disappeared around the headland. The island loomed larger, such as those he’d heard in tales from old Cook’s sailors. Smoke, and the answering smoke rose up.

  As the Pirate King’s ship rounded on the port beam, the lookout yelled down: “There’s females on the rocks.”

  With a squeak like a vole a half-naked girl slid off a boulder in the middle of the estuary. She slapped the water with her long green tail. Instantly, squeaks like bedsprings echoed off the island, and with a flurry of spray, like sunning turtles wakened by an otter, dozens and dozens of fish-tailed girls left their rocks and went into the lagoon. They abandoned whatever they had been doing, leaving fruit, mandolins, and half-eaten oysters atop the boulders. In an eyeflash, it was as if they had never been there.

  Above on the mountain, more and more smoke rose.

  “They’s gone now!” came the lookout’s cry.

  “They’s gone now?”yelled up the Pirate King.“My God, man, you went to Eton! Speak the Queen’s English!”

  “Your pardon, sir,” shouted down the lookout. “Brevity being the soul of wit, I thought the signal more important than the noise. The females—strange indeed, sir—who formerly lay about the rocks in the estuary seem to have departed.”

  “See your brevity is occasionally nuanced with conjunctions and gerunds,”said his commander.

  “Aye aye, sir!” yelled the lookout. “And a pleasant day to you, too, sir!”

  As the Pinafore rounded the curve in the island, the lookout yelled there were women swimming about.

  “Women?” yelled Rackstraw. “Well, we’ll have to be very careful they’re not in the line of fire when we close battle.”

  Women? the crew was thinking. The only thing they liked better than singing was the possibility of unaccompanied females on remote islands.

  Here and there a long-haired head bobbed up in the water, then disappeared to reappear hundreds of yards away.

  “Damn but they can swim!” said Rackstraw to the first mate.

  There happened to be another pirate ship far around the island at the back edge of the lagoon, where a creek entered the river just before it dumped into the bay. The ship stood at anchor, creaking on its chain from the river current. It was wash day, and the yards hung with breeks, blouses, vests, and head-scarves.

  “Damn but I’m tired,” said the bosun to the first mate. “Tireder than the time in the shoals off Africa where we crawled on our hook for three days after a week of no wind.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” asked the first mate. “I was there!”

  “Just passing the time while we await the captain’s pleasure, which seems to be waiting,” said the bosun.

  “Something disturbs the fish-girls!” yelled down the lookout. “To seaward.”

  The captain, in his fine courtier’s outfit from two centuries before, ran out of his cabin. He had been there, putting the finishing touches on his manuscript“The Great Cocodrillo of Time,”which he would post to the Secretary of the Royal Society as soon as he reached a civilized port. He hoped it would be published in the Proceedings. He had been a Fellow since before he took up his life of crime. He waved his great hook in the air. “Strike the wash! Weigh anchor! Ready the guns!”

  The ship was a blur from the deck upwards. Bright clothes rained down as if from a piñata. Cannonballs rolled across the deck, men jumping and dodging.

  “Move out where we have a clear field of fire!” yelled the captain. “It may be the Boy, though he usually doesn’t scare the fishy-folk.” He looked up toward the forested mountain.“The Indians are certainly agitated,” he said. Then he preened his mustaches with his glinting hook. “Perhaps for a change this will be an interesting day, methinks.”

  “Aye, sir,” said the first mate.

  As they rounded the point in the Pinafore, Dick Deadeye froze stock-still. It was as if he were living a dream; he was translated to a higher state of consciousness that included a perceptual breakthrough and had a paradigm shift. It was like having déjà vu two times in a row.

  For he suddenly recognized this island, as if he had been there before or had been born there but had not seen it for a long time. He knew the bay, the rocks with the musical instruments and bitten-into fruit, the long curve of the lagoon, the woods on the mountain, the rising smoke.

  It was as if he had heard of it long ago in a lullaby.

  And then it came to him, and he went running to the ship’s tailor, whose battle-station was in the repel-boarders-starboard gang.

  “Pockets!” yelled Dick Deadeye. “Pockets! Run off scads of pockets. They’re mad for pockets!”

  “What? What?” asked the tailor’s mate.“What kinds of pockets? What material are the clothes? You don’t just run off pockets. You put them in.”

  Dick Deadeye strained his brain. “Furs, I think. Skins! They have no pockets of their own.”

  “Who we talking about?” asked the ship’s tailor, himself, putting his cutlass point-first into the Pinafore’s deck.

  “Boys!”said Dick Deadeye.“Boys bereft of parent or guardian; boys who suffered early perambulatory mishaps,” he said. “I heard tell.”

  “Find these boys; we’ll measure them, their clothes, and then see about pockets,” said the ship’s tailor.

  “I’ll pay well for pockets,”said Dick Deadeye.“We’ll put them as trade goods on shore, see what they take, run off more.”

  “Dammit, man,” said the tailor’s mate. “You have to put pockets in; what you want’s bags, wallets, budgets.”

  “They can’t be wanting those. I’m sure it’s pockets they crave,” said Dick Deadeye.

  “See us later,” said the tailor. “We’ve got some pirate hash to settle.”

  Dick Deadeye climbed back up to his battle-station in the foretopmast. Cowardly men, afraid to run off a few dozen pockets. The whole crew hated him. That was probably because they didn’t like their day in the barrel.

  “They’re flying the Roger,” yelled down the lookout to the captain. The man swung his spyglass to seaward. “Chased by a British man-o’-war.”

  “Prepare to sink ’em both,”said the hook-handed captain. He watched the pirate tub heave into view. “He dares to fly a Roger wit
h a crown above it in my presence. The second because I sink all men-o’-war on sight, as you know.”

  “Aye, aye, Cap’n!” the crew yelled.

  “Roll out Large Willy!” he yelled. The crew groaned but hopped to. It was stowed amidships, pointing forward, and took up all the room. There were two removable sections in the port and starboard gun rails to which it could be trundled. When it was run out, the breech reached halfway to the other railing and the ship listed to the mouth-side. It was the largest gun afloat. “Put him to port!” the captain yelled, pointing with his hook.

  They groaned again, but with levers and movable gears swung him around.

  “And for the first volley,” said the captain, “give ’em a whiff o’ the grape!”

  They groaned louder. Why have the largest gun on any ocean if you had to come in so close as to use it for a giant blunderbuss? Why not sink the bastards with solid shot a mile off? Nevertheless they started bringing up boxes of broken horseshoes and busted anchor chains they’d bought at their last port, and shoveling them down Large Willy’s barrel . . .

  Before they came within sight of the river, the Pirate King said, “Drop anchor here! We make a stand to port. Run all the guns out that way. Take the two-pounders up into the rigging. Make ’em pay. Bosun—take the hostages to shore and guard ’em.”

  Horns blatted and whistles blew. Feet pounded. The port rail bristled with cannon and firearms.

  “Just as I figured,”said Rackstraw.“They’re putting the island to their starboard. Very well, prepare the first volley.”