The Big Book of Modern Fantasy

by The Big Book of Modern Fantasy (retail) (epub)

  “It is my observation that there is no fresh water spring nearby, only that stagnant pool. It should be still, but why does it froth and roar so?” Li Daoyuan asked.

  “There is much my guest does not understand,” the old man replied sternly. “This is no ordinary water, but a living creature.”

  Li Daoyuan was astonished. The old man invited him to go down to the pool. The water was still, and only made faint mumbling sounds as if it was talking quietly with the old man. Li Daoyuan clapped his hands together and declared it a marvel.

  “Creatures such as this are no different in substance to water,” the old man said. “Their shape changes according to their substance. This one’s name is ‘Mirror Tao.’ ”

  “Why is he here?”

  “Three years ago, one night at the end of the lunar cycle, a thunderstorm gathered over the Mengmen falls. Early the next morning this pool appeared. At first it did not appear strange, it was only afterward that I realized it was no ordinary water.”

  After he finished speaking the old man called out a few times and again the water began to churn, emitting a noise like a brave lion or a strong man, before reverting to the voice of a young woman, or a cicada. Li Daoyuan tried calling out to the water but it ignored him, seeming rather displeased and embarrassed, like a young girl laying eyes on a young man for the first time.

  Li Daoyuan told the old man that he had dreamt many times of this red water, and had journeyed here to investigate. The old man could not help but sigh.

  Li Daoyuan reexamined the water and observed that it was clear and transparent, with no impurities, and the glossy appearance of lacquer. It was as if he was still dreaming. He reached out and brushed the surface of the water; it felt as if he had been ambushed by the warm, tender skin of a young woman. He reached further into the water, but it felt sticky, holding him. He wrenched his hand out. The water sounded as if it were sneering at him, guffawing.

  He returned to the hut with the old man. The old man told him that over the course of time he had learned to distinguish between the different sounds the water made, and in this way he had conversed with “Mirror Tao,” and had come to understand his life story.

  “Mirror Tao” had told the old man that he had already forgotten which dynasty he came from, and did not even know if he was from the past or the future. All he remembered was that his forefathers were creatures not unlike humans, and they lived on the land. Then there had been a war, which destroyed their habitat, and they had no choice but to take refuge in the water, to which they soon adapted.

  At first, they still looked much like human beings, but over the course of some ten thousand years they evolved to take on new forms, giving themselves over to a life in water—“I am the world, the world is me,” and that way, they could live forever.

  Then, one day, a new calamity befell them, and they had no choice but to leave the water and migrate to an unknown space.

  More misfortune followed. It was not clear what exactly had gone wrong, but during the journey obstacles were hurled down in their path, and they never reached their destination.

  “Where was this world in which they lived, where they formed a perfect union with the water?”

  “The sea.”

  “Indeed, ‘Mirror Tao’ is the sea, and the sea is ‘Mirror Tao,’ ” the old man said sadly. “All his efforts to escape ultimately failed.”

  Li Daoyuan didn’t know much about the sea, but on hearing this a tidal wave of emotion crashed over him. It was impossible for him to imagine that such a vast expanse of ocean and this meager pool were one and the same thing. And when did the blue of the sea become red? Just as “Mirror Tao” had wondered himself, did this happen in the past or in the future? He was deeply confused. The one thing he could be certain of was that the sea was, at that moment, still rising and falling, far away and indifferent to their concerns. Just as Li Daoyuan had never set foot in the south, when on earth would the ocean have come here?

  “It’s such a pitiful creature. How long can he possibly survive here?”

  “I fear time is running out.”

  “What if we return him to running water?” As he suggested this, an image of the Yellow River at Mengmen appeared before his eyes, the waters surging with an energy he had never seen before. He thought of all his previous experiences with water, and dearly hoped that he could help save “Mirror Tao.”

  “If we do that, this creature will rapidly disperse and become a new ocean. It will be a way for him to be born again and grow. All the world’s water will turn red. ‘He is the one, the one is many.’ ” The old man frowned slightly.

  “Then…”

  “Then our world will become a world of water, and it will no longer contain the water we know.”

  Li Daoyuan didn’t know how to respond.

  Night had fallen, and Li Daoyuan stayed with the old man in his thatched hut. During the third night watch he awoke to the sound of whimpering from outside. It was hard to imagine that there was a life form, a world, which was formed out of water. He couldn’t help wondering whether the members of this strange species hadn’t destroyed themselves through some imprudence?

  The sobbing grew louder. Was “Mirror Tao” crying?

  Maybe he was calling out to other creatures—all the world’s water? But Li Daoyuan already knew that those bodies of water had no souls.

  Li Daoyuan was curious about where the creature had originally planned to seek refuge. Where was it? A new place of escape beyond the sea, was, unfortunately, hard to imagine.

  The old man must have been used to it, as the sound did not wake him, and instead he snored loudly, seemingly caught up in a sweet dream. Li Daoyuan was disturbed and upset, so he threw on his clothes and went out.

  The darkness was permeated with a fearful atmosphere; this was the time of night when even monsters did not dare venture abroad. It reached into even the densest corners, and up in the sky a ferocious, dark red nebula loomed above him. This mysterious wreath, far, far away, had never before hung so low. It felt as if it were about to drop onto his head. Li Daoyuan thought it looked like a bloodstain splashed on the sky. His whole body shook. After that, a thought that had never really occurred to him before appeared dimly in his mind. He had difficulty describing what exactly it was, it exceeded his powers of comprehension, nothing could induce greater despair than this.

  “Mirror Tao’s” sobs became even more mournful. The surface of the water began leaping and jumping energetically, and then formed a column one meter high, as if reaching out to that other world, but the distance was still too great. Finally, the column of water gave up, and fell back, dejected, to perfect stillness.

  Li Daoyuan sensed…we might call it space, but actually it was something that exists outside of space, with a strength that exceeds all else, and the most elementary of structures; something which can neither be seen nor comprehended, but makes a prisoner of your imagination. Was it water? Or not water? It was the first time that such an awkward experience had intruded upon his otherwise perfectly planned life, introducing the possibility of change. When faced with this sort of being, one so impossible to describe in words, he thought, it didn’t matter if he were water or a person, the question remained, how could “Mirror Tao” hope to rescue himself so easily?

  A sourceless, lancing pain made him want to wail and cry out. At that moment, he felt that the pool of water was watching him like a surprised and timid eye. Ashamed, he controlled his feelings.

  But for the ocean, what did it actually mean to transcend the “space” of space? And how did “Mirror Tao” discover this strange existence in the form of a water creature? If he really found his place of refuge, what form would he have to take in order to survive? One fears it would not be water.

  Nothing in this world has an innate form.

  At that mome
nt, Li Daoyuan became conscious of his connection to the water, and a feeling of terror surged inside of him. He felt that his thoughts and body were about to become one with the water.

  He stood, frozen to the spot, helpless, while the roseate dawn spread across the sky, and everything seemed to slip into the past like a nightmare.

  The water did not stir, but in its redness appeared a layer of ash. Flustered, he used his hand to stir the water, and could feel it beginning to coagulate, freeze, and recede.

  “He’s dead.” Surprised, he turned back to look at the thatched hut only to see it too receding in a dense, gray fog.

  He threw himself forward, using both hands to try to push the grayness back in through the flimsy bamboo door, but he was pushing a void. The void leapt into Li Daoyuan’s chest causing him severe pain as if a screwdriver was boring through his heart. He looked up and saw that there was nothing before him but blue mountains and crags.

  He turned to look behind him and saw a silver dot quivering in the sky, too high to reach, flickering close to the swollen, pallid sun before vanishing.

  For one moment he experienced the existence of many worlds. And the one in which he lived wasn’t necessarily the most real.

  After some time he left, feeling weary. Only once he saw that the Yellow River was still flowing did he let out a sigh of relief. The water resonated deeply with his soul.

  3. NO WAY TO ESCAPE

  On his return to Luoyang, Li Daoyuan wrote about this experience in his “Commentary on the Classic of the Waterways.”

  From then on, he worked even more diligently at recording all the different bodies of water in the world as if afraid that they might, one day in the future, all vanish.

  Yet for a long time he refused to go to the seaside, making only the sloppiest references to the sea in a work which later scholars deemed not to be in accordance with his usually rigorous academic standards.

  In the third year of the reign of Xiaochang (527 CE), after the treachery of the provincial governor of Yongzhou, Xiao Baoyin, was revealed, the court ordered Li Daoyuan to act as an ambassador beyond the Tongguan Pass, where he would negotiate with the traitor. This was, in fact, a plan to place him in danger, a plan concocted by Li Daoyuan’s political opponents, who wished to use the traitor Xiao as a means to finish Li Daoyuan off.

  Li Daoyuan was, in fact, well aware of this fact, yet he went with an open heart, thinking of the pool of red water, which had witnessed the turning of time, yet had no means of escape.

  A place from which even water has no escape; what manner of realm could that be?

  Water, you fundamental element, you conquer all through your ability to yield, and yet you found yourself in such a predicament. Surely, this is the deeper meaning of “that which is abundant in the world is water.” It is impossible to put into words the feelings of the geographers of that age.

  In the end, Li Daoyuan met his end at the Yinpan Station (close to what is now Lintong in Shaanxi Province). His blood gushed from his body, seeped into the mud, forming myriad rivulets that eventually reached the seashore upon which he had never set foot.

  As if in some fateful response, not long afterward the manuscript of Li Daoyuan’s “Commentary on the Classic of the Waterways” was destroyed in the flames of the war in Luoyang. Future generations never learned what Li Daoyuan had recorded in it.

  Now, all we can do is piece together the surviving scraps that make up his description of the Mengmen falls, which amounts to one hundred and thirty-one characters. His landscape of surging waters and floating clouds has been considered a poetic masterpiece, inducing anguished sighs in subsequent generations of readers.

  The Mengmen falls are today’s Hukou waterfalls. Research indicates that these waterfalls have moved more than five thousand meters to the north of their position when they were visited by Li Daoyuan.

  In early summer, during the last year before the beginning of the third millennium of the Christian era, the muddy waters of the Hukou waterfalls suddenly turned a clear emerald color. According to the people who have lived the best part of their lives on the banks of the Yellow River, such a thing had never happened before. What color the river might turn in the future is anyone’s guess. Yet our most authoritative news agency has recently reported that the Hukou waterfalls will, in a hundred years’ time, disappear completely.

  Dean Francis Alfar (1969– ) is a Filipino writer of stories, novels, graphic novels, essays, and plays. His short fiction has appeared both in his native Philippines as well as in international publications, including Strange Horizons, The Apex Book of World SF, and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. His novel Salamanca (2006) won the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature, and his stories are collected in The Kite of Stars and Other Stories (2008), How to Traverse Terra Incognita (2012), A Field Guide to the Roads of Manila and Other Stories (2015), and Stars in Jars: Strange and Fantastic Stories (2018). In addition to his writing, he is also accomplished as an editor with the annual Philippine Speculative Fiction anthology series. “The Kite of Stars” first appeared in Strange Horizons in 2003.

  THE KITE OF STARS

  Dean Francis Alfar

  THE NIGHT WHEN she thought she would finally be a star, Maria Isabella du’l Cielo struggled to calm the trembling of her hands, reached over to cut the tether that tied her to the ground, and thought of that morning many years before when she’d first caught a glimpse of Lorenzo du Vicenzio ei Salvadore: tall, thick-browed and handsome, his eyes closed, oblivious to the cacophony of the accident waiting to occur around him.

  Maria Isabella had just turned sixteen then, and each set of her padrinos had given her (along with the sequined brida du caballo, the dresses of rare tulle, organza, and seda, and the diadema floral du’l dama—the requisite floral circlet of young womanhood) a purse filled with coins to spend on anything she wanted. And so she’d gone past the Calle du Leones (where sleek cats of various pedigrees sometimes allowed themselves to be purchased, though if so, only until they tired of their new owners), walked through the Avenida du’l Conquistadores (where the statues of the conquerors of Ciudad Meiora lined the entirety of the broad promenade) and made her way to the Encantu lu Caminata (that maze-like series of interconnected streets, each leading to some wonder or marvel for sale), where little musical conch shells from the islets near Palao’an could be found. Those she liked very much.

  In the vicinity of the Plaza Emperyal, she saw a young man dressed in a coat embroidered with stars walk almost surely to his death. In that instant, Maria Isabella knew two things with the conviction reserved only for the very young: first, that she almost certainly loved this reckless man; and second, that if she simply stepped on a dog’s tail—the very dog watching the same scene unfold right next to her—she could avert the man’s seemingly senseless death.

  These were the elements of the accident-waiting-to-happen: an ill-tempered horse hitched to some noble’s qalesa; an equally ill-tempered qalesa driver with a whip; a whistling panadero with a tray of plump pan du sal perched on his head; two puddles of fresh rainwater brought about by a brief downpour earlier that day; a sheet of stained glass en route to its final delivery destination at the house of the Most Excellent Primo Orador; a broken bottle of wine; and, of course, the young man who walked with his eyes closed.

  Without a moment’s further thought, Maria Isabella stepped on the tail of the dog that was resting near her. The poor animal yelped in pain; which in turn startled the horse, making it stop temporarily; which in turn angered the qalesa driver even more, making him curse the horse; which in turn upset the delicate melody that the panadero was whistling; which in turn made the panadero miss stepping into the two puddles of rainwater; which in turn gave the men delivering the sheet of stained glass belonging to the Most Excellent Primo Orador an uninterrupted path; which in turn gave the young man enough room to cross the street wit
hout so much as missing a beat or stepping onto the broken wine bottle; which in turn would never give him the infection that had been destined to result in the loss of his right leg and, ultimately, his life.

  Everyone and everything continued to move on their own inexorable paths, and the dog she had stepped on growled once at her and then twisted around to nurse its sore tail. But Maria Isabella’s eyes were on the young man in the star-embroidered coat, whose life she had just saved. She decided she would find out who he was.

  The first twenty people she asked did not know him. It was a butcher’s boy who told her who he was, as she rested near the butcher’s shop along the Rotonda du’l Vendedores.

  “His name is Lorenzo du Vicenzio,” the butcher’s boy said. “I know him because he shops here with his father once every sen-night. My master saves some of the choicest cuts for their family. They’re rather famous, you know. Maestro Vicenzio, the father, names stars.”

  “Stars?” Maria Isabella asked. “And would you know why he walks with his eyes closed? The son, I mean.”

  “Well, Lorenzo certainly isn’t blind,” the butcher’s boy replied. “I think he keeps his eyes closed to preserve his vision for his stargazing at night. He mentioned he had some sort of telescope he uses at night.”

  “How can I meet him?” she asked, all thoughts of musical conch shells gone from her mind.

  “You? What makes you think he will even see you? Listen,” the butcher’s boy whispered to her, “he only has eyes for the stars.”

  “Then I’ll make him see me,” she whispered back, and as she straightened up, her mind began to make plan upon plan upon plan, rejecting possibilities, making conjectures; assessing what she knew, whom she knew, and how much she dared. It was a lot for anyone to perform in the span of time it took to set her shoulders, look at the butcher’s boy, and say, “Take me to the best Kitemaker.”

  The butcher’s boy, who at fourteen was easily impressed by young ladies of a certain disposition, immediately doffed his white cap, bowed to Maria Isabella, gestured to the street filled with people outside, and led her to the house of Melchor Antevadez, famed throughout Ciudad Meiora and environs as the Master Builder of aquilones, cometas, saranggola, and other artefactos voladores.