"'Now we must awaken him,' said Lilit. 'I will walk around him three times one way, and you must walk around him three times the other. Then I will spread honey on his lips, and you must put honey into his mouth, so that his words will be both nourishing and sweet.'
"Kamora rose. She was so tired that she stumbled as she walked, but three times she stumbled around the poet, and when she had done so, she took the jar from Lilit and put honey into the poet's open mouth.
"'There,' said Lilit. 'And I really think that this time I have outdone myself. He will be the greatest poet that ever lived, and every night he will write a poem that has never been heard before for the Empress Nasren. He will be like the river Alph, endlessly replenished by the streams that flow down Mount Abora.' The poet was no longer the color of clay. Now he had brown hair hanging down to his shoulders, and his skin was as white as milk and covered, irregularly, with brown hair. Lilit took off her gray shawl and wrapped it around his hipbones. 'Speak, poet. Give us the gift of your first poem.'
"The poet turned to her and said,
'A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.'
"'That's enough for now,' said Lilit. 'You see, Kamora, your poet works. Now take him to your Empress, and marry your Cloud Dragon. But don't visit me again, because the next time you come I won't be here.'"
"And was he the greatest poet that ever lived?" asked Samuel. We were sitting on the riverbank, where the Alph begins to disappear into the fissures below, surrounded by the scent of roses. The sun was setting, and the walls of the palace had changed from white to gold, and then to indigo. I could not see his face, but his voice sounded sad.
"He was, in the palace of the Empress Nasren," I said. "He wrote a different poem for her every night, and she gathered scribes around her to make copies so they could be taken to every village. They were set to music, as poems were in those days, and sung at every village fair. And when her ambassadors traveled to other countries, they carried the volumes of his poems, fourteen of them, the number of the constellations, on the back of a white elephant, so they could be presented to foreign sultans and caliphs and tzars."
"But elsewhere, in the country of daffodils and mutton and rain? Because I think, Sabra, that you come from outside this dream, as I do."
"In that country, he was a poet who could not finish his poems, and who, for many years, did not write poems at all. How could he, when every night in the palace of the Empress, he wrote a new poem entirely for her? What was left over, after that?"
"Perhaps. Yes, perhaps that is true."
We heard it then: lightening, crashing over the palace, turning the walls again from indigo to white. Once, twice, three times.
"He has come," said Samuel. "He has come, the person from Porlock." And then suddenly, he was gone.
I was staring at my computer screen, on which I had written: "The Kubla Khan of Coleridge's poem is not the historical Kubla Khan, founder of the Yuan Dynasty, and Xanadu is not Shangdu."
Again, I heard three knocks on the apartment door. "Sabra, are you there? It's Michael."
I rose, and went to open the door. "You people!" I said, as Michael walked in, carrying two bags of groceries.
"What do you mean?" he asked, startled.
"You people from Porlock, always interrupting."
He kissed me and put the bags he had been carrying on the table. "I was thinking of making a curry, but—you've had better curry than I can make. Are you going to laugh at my curry?"
"I would never laugh at your curry."
He began unpacking the grocery bags. "So, what were you thinking about so hard that you didn't hear me knock?"
"Coleridge. About how he never finished anything. And about how I'm not sure I want to finish this PhD. Michael, what would you think if I became a writer?"
"Fine by me, as long as you become famous—and rich, so you can keep me in a style to which I am not accustomed."
Later, after dinner, which was not as disastrous as I had expected, I called my mother. "Nasren Makeda, please."
"Just a moment. Madame Makeda, it's your daughter."
"Sabra! How good it is to hear your voice. I'm in Vienna with Ronnie. Darling, I'm so bored. Won't you come visit your poor mother? You can't imagine these rock and roll people. They have no culture whatsoever. One can't talk to them about anything."
"Mom, I'd like you to come to Boston and meet Michael."
"The one from Ohio? Oh, Sabra. Well, I suppose we can't control whom we fall in love with. It was like that with your father. He was the only man I ever loved, and yet he was shorter than I am by three inches, and that nose—such a pity you inherited it, although you have my ears, thank goodness. But I tell you the truth, I would have married him even if he had not been rich. He was that sort of man. So, I will come and meet your Michael. I can fly over in Ronnie's plane. Is there a month when Boston is warm? I can come then."
Perhaps he would fall in love with her. But sometimes one has to take chances.
For Kamora's marriage to the Cloud Dragon, the Empress' poet Samuel wrote a new poem, one that no one had heard before. It began:
Do you ask what the birds say? The sparrow, the dove,
The linnet and thrush say, "I love and I love."
Alem Das himself sang it, playing a dulcimer strung with the whiskers of the Cloud Dragon, whose sound was sweeter, more passionate, and more filled with longing than any instrument that had ever been made. When he was finished, the Empress Nasren clapped, and Kamora, in the Empress' wedding veil, turned to her husband and blushed.
Later that night, in the cave of the Cloud Dragon, he said to her, "It may be that you are too clever to be my wife."
She stroked his silver hair and looked with wonder at his pale shoulders, shy for once before his human form. "And perhaps you are too beautiful to be my husband."
"Then we are well-matched," he said, "for together there is none in the world more clever or more beautiful than we. And now, my clever wife, are you going to kiss your husband?"
That night, the top of Mount Abora was wreathed in clouds. The Empress Nasren saw it as she walked in the garden of her palace, and she told blind Alem Das, who was walking with her. "Did you know, my friend, that it would end like this?" she asked.
Alem Das laughed in the darkness. "I suspected, from the moment Kamora insisted that my dulcimer should be strung with the whiskers of the Cloud Dragon. She always was a clever girl, although not as clever, I like to think, as her uncle."
"So, your niece is happy," said the Empress. "It is good that she is happy, although we who are old, Alem, know that happiness is fleeting." And she sighed her soft, mad sigh.
"Yes, lady," said Alem Das. "But tonight your roses are blooming, and I can hear the splashing of fountains. Somewhere inside the palace, your poet is reciting to the wedding guests, who are drunk on honey wine. And we who are old can remember what it was like to be young and foolish and happy, and be content." And they walked on in the moonlight, the instrument-maker and the Empress.
The Witch's Headstone
Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman (www.neilgaiman.com) is the acclaimed writer/creator of The Sandman series of graphic novels, and is the author of the novels Coraline, American Gods, and Anansi Boys. Having started his career as a journalist in the 1980s, Gaiman has garnered acclaim and wide popularity for writing everything from comics to novels to screenplays. His most recent book is collection M is for Magic. Upcoming is a new novel, The Graveyard Book.
One of Gaiman's greatest assets as a writer is his "voice." He manages to write in a welcoming, inviting manner that brings the reader quickly into the story, and makes him or her complicit in the action. In the story that follows, a charming Charles Addams-influenced tale that is also a central chapter from The Graveyard Book, Gaiman introduces us to a boy who grew up in a graveyar
d and the people he met there . . .
There was a witch buried at the edge of the graveyard, it was common knowledge. Bod had been told to keep away from that corner of the world by Mrs Owens as far back as he could remember.
"Why?" he asked.
"T'aint healthy for a living body," said Mrs Owens. "There's damp down that end of things. It's practically a marsh. You'll catch your death."
Mr Owens himself was more evasive and less imaginative. "It's not a good place," was all he said.
The graveyard proper ended at the edge of the hill, beneath the old apple tree, with a fence of rust-brown iron railings, each topped with a small, rusting spear-head, but there was a wasteland beyond that, a mass of nettles and weeds, of brambles and autumnal rubbish, and Bod, who was a good boy, on the whole, and obedient, did not push between the railings, but he went down there and looked through. He knew he wasn't being told the whole story, and it irritated him.
Bod went back up the hill, to the abandoned church in the middle of the graveyard, and he waited until it got dark. As twilight edged from grey to purple there was a noise in the spire, like a fluttering of heavy velvet, and Silas left his resting place in the belfry and clambered headfirst down the spire.
"What's in the far corner of the graveyard," asked Bod. "Past Harrison Westwood, Baker of this Parish, and his wives Marion and Joan?"
"Why do you ask?" said his guardian, brushing the dust from his black suit with ivory fingers.
Bod shrugged. "Just wondered."
"It's unconsecrated ground," said Silas. "Do you know what that means?"
"Not really," said Bod.
Silas walked across the path without disturbing a fallen leaf, and sat down on the stone bench, beside Bod. "There are those," he said, in his silken voice, "who believe that all land is sacred. That it is sacred before we come to it, and sacred after. But here, in your land, they bless the churches and the ground they set aside to bury people in, to make it holy. But they leave land unconsecrated beside the sacred ground, Potter's Fields to bury the criminals and the suicides or those who were not of the faith."
"So the people buried in the ground on the other side of the fence are bad people?"
Silas raised one perfect eyebrow. "Mm? Oh, not at all. Let's see, it's been a while since I've been down that way. But I don't remember anyone particularly evil. Remember, in days gone by you could be hanged for stealing a shilling. And there are always people who find their lives have become so unsupportable they believe the best thing they could do would be to hasten their transition to another plane of existence."
"They kill themselves, you mean?" said Bod. He was about eight years old, wide-eyed and inquisitive, and he was not stupid.
"Indeed."
"Does it work? Are they happier dead?"
Silas grinned so wide and sudden that he showed his fangs. "Sometimes. Mostly, no. It's like the people who believe they'll be happy if they go and live somewhere else, but who learn it doesn't work that way. Wherever you go, you take yourself with you. If you see what I mean."
"Sort of," said Bod.
Silas reached down and ruffled the boy's hair.
Bod said, "What about the witch?"
"Yes. Exactly," said Silas. "Suicides, criminals, and witches. Those who died unshriven." He stood up, a midnight shadow in the twilight. "All this talking," he said, "and I have not even had my breakfast. While you will be late for lessons." In the twilight of the graveyard there was a silent implosion, a flutter of velvet darkness, and Silas was gone.
The moon had begun to rise by the time Bod reached Mr Pennyworth's mausoleum, and Thomes Pennyworth (here he lyes in the certainty of the moft glorious refurrection) was already waiting, and was not in the best of moods.
"You are late," he said.
"Sorry, Mr Pennyworth."
Pennyworth tutted. The previous week Mr Pennyworth had been teaching Bod about Elements and Humours, and Bod had kept forgetting which was which. He was expecting a test but instead Mr Pennyworth said, "I think it is time to spend a few days on practical matters. Time is passing, after all."
"Is it?" asked Bod.
"I am afraid so, young Master Owens. Now, how is your Fading?"
Bod had hoped he would not be asked that question.
"It's all right," he said. "I mean. You know."
"No, Master Owens. I do not know. Why do you not demonstrate for me?"
Bod's heart sank. He took a deep breath, and did his best, squinching up his eyes and trying to Fade away.
Mr Pennyworth was not impressed.
"Pah. That' s not the kind of thing. Not the kind of thing at all. Slipping and fading, boy, the way of the dead. Slip through shadows. Fade from awareness. Try again."
Bod tried harder.
"You're as plain as the nose on your face," said Mr Pennyworth. "And your nose is remarkably obvious. As is the rest of your face, young man. As are you. For the sake of all that is holy, empty your mind. Now. You are an empty alleyway. You are a vacant doorway. You are nothing. Eyes will not see you. Minds will not hold you. Where you are is nothing and nobody."
Bod tried again. He closed his eyes and imagined himself fading into the stained stonework of the mausoleum wall, becoming a shadow on the night and nothing more. He sneezed.
"Dreadful," said Mr Pennyworth, with a sigh. "Quite dreadful. I believe I shall have a word with your guardian about this." He shook his head. "So. The humours. List them."
"Um. Sanguine. Choleric. Phlegmatic. And the other one. Um, Melancholic, I think."
And so it went, until it was time for Grammar and Composition with Miss Letitia Borrows, Spinster of this Parish (Who Did No Harm to No Man all the Dais of Her Life. Reader, Can You Say Lykewise?). Bod liked Miss Borrows, and the cosiness of her little crypt, and could all-too-easily be led off the subject.
"They say there's a witch in uncons—unconsecrated ground," he said.
"Yes, dear. But you don't want to go over there."
"Why not?"
Miss Borrows smiled the guileless smile of the dead. "They aren't our sort of people," she said.
"But it is the graveyard, isn't it? I mean, I'm allowed to go there if I want to?"
"That," said Miss Borrows, "would not be advisable."
Bod was obedient, but curious, and so, when lessons were done for the night, he walked past Harrison Westwood, Baker, and family's memorial, a broken-headed angel, but did not climb down the hill to the Potter's Field. Instead he walked up the side of the hill to where a picnic some thirty years before had left its mark in the shape of a large apple tree.
There were some lessons that Bod had mastered. He had eaten a bellyful of unripe apples, sour and white-pipped, from the tree some years before, and had regretted it for days, his guts cramping and painful while Mistress Owens lectured him on what not to eat. Now he waited until the apples were ripe before eating them, and never ate more than two or three a night. He had finished the last of the apples the week before, but he liked the apple tree as a place to think.
He edged up the trunk, to his favourite place in the crook of two branches, and looked down at the Potter's Field below him, a brambly patch of weeds and unmown grass in the moonlight. He wondered whether the witch would be old and iron-toothed and travel in a house on chicken legs, or whether she would be thin and carry a broomstick.
And then he was hungry. He wished he had not devoured all the apples on the tree. That he had left just one . . .
He glanced up, and thought he saw something. He looked once, looked twice to be certain. An apple, red and ripe
Bod prided himself on his tree-climbing skills. He swung himself up, branch by branch, and imagined he was Silas, swarming smoothly up a sheer brick wall. The apple, the red of it almost black in the moonlight, hung just out of reach. Bod moved slowly forward along the branch, until he was just below the apple. Then he stretched up, and the tips of his fingers touched the perfect apple.
He was never to taste it.
A snap, loud as a hunter's gun, as the branch gave way beneath him.
A flash of pain woke him, sharp as ice, the colour of slow thunder, down in the weeds that summer's night.
The ground beneath him seemed relatively soft, and oddly warm. He pushed a hand down and felt something like warm fur. He had landed on the grass-pile, where the graveyard's gardener threw the cuttings from the mower, and it had broken his fall. Still, there was a pain in his chest, and his leg hurt as if he had landed on it first, and twisted it.
Bod moaned.
"Hush-a-you-hush-a-boy," said a voice from behind him. "Where did you come from? Dropping like a thunderstone. What way is that to carry on?"
"I was in the apple tree," said Bod.
"Ah. Let me see your leg. Broken like the tree's limb, I'll be bound." Cool fingers prodded his left leg. "Not broken. Twisted, yes, sprained perhaps. You have the Devil's own luck, boy, falling into the compost. 'Tain't the end of the world."
"Oh, good," said Bod. "Hurts, though."
He turned his head, looked up and behind him. She was older than him, but not a grown-up, and she looked neither friendly nor unfriendly. Wary, mostly. She had a face that was intelligent and not even a little bit beautiful.
"I'm Bod," he said.
"The live boy?" she asked.
Bod nodded.
"I thought you must be," she said. "We've heard of you, even over here, in the Potter's Field. What do they call you?"
"Owens," he said. "Nobody Owens. Bod, for short."
"How-de-do, young Master Bod."
Bod looked her up and down. She wore a plain white shift. Her hair was mousy and long, and there was something of the goblin in her face—a sideways hint of a smile that seemed to linger, no matter what the rest of her face was doing.
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year-II Page 38