“There was a golden tray on his knee and on the tray rested a common grey rock. It was about the size of a rabbit’s head and streaked with white.
“‘This is the Karma Stone,’ my father explained. ‘My magicians brought it back from Persia. We had to dig a large chunk from the mountain of gold to pay for it.’
“‘Very, eh, pretty,’ I said, reaching to stroke the stone.
“‘Not so eager, Husnivarr,’ said the king, grasping my wrist. ‘The Karma Stone moves people who touch it through their circle of life. It accelerates their incarnations. Watch.’
“My father placed his hand on the stone and immediately transformed. He became a stoat, then a wolf, a tall shaggy beast that I could not identify, then, once more, himself. Finally, he removed his hand.
“‘You get what you deserve, you see. It only took me three incarnations to become a man. Strength of character, you see. And when I die, I will become a stoat once more. You, Husni, I suspect it will take you a thousand years to become human again. Would you like to know how many stages there will be for you?’
“‘No,’ I replied.
“‘I insist,’ said my father, placing my hand on the Karma Stone.
“My transformation was immediate. The world grew huge as I grew small, and only my human thought-process kept me from flying away. I was a mosquito.
“‘Aah,’ said my gigantic father mournfully. ‘It is worse than I thought. You will begin your next cycle as a mosquito. Very low on the reincarnation scale.’
“The urge to suck his blood quickly faded, as I transformed into a dung-beetle.
“‘Still an insect,’ noted the king. ‘I hope you become a mammal soon, for your mother’s sake.’
“My shell popped and disappeared, fur sprouted along my back, and I became a rat. I could clearly see my own nose and the whiskers quivering like tiny foils at its tip.
“‘A mammal,’ admitted my father. ‘But not a very noble one.’
“Then disaster struck. A crazed pig, escaped from the kitchen, burst into the chamber, pursued by a trio of cleaver-wielding butchers. Pandemonium was immediate. I was in the throes of becoming a dove and could barely follow the sequence of events.
“The pig charged my father’s chair, knocking him over backwards to the floor. His head cracked against the stone flags, knocking the life from his body. My contact with the Karma Stone was roughly broken before my human senses had asserted themselves. I had become a dove, with a dove’s brain and vocabulary. The pig lunged, the butchers swiped their cleavers, and I flew. Oink, roar, and coo!
“I followed my dove’s instincts and found an open window. In minutes, I was miles away, riding the tails of a west-bound wind. For two years I roamed the skies as a simple dove, with no inkling of what had befallen me. Until one summer, I made my home in the eaves of a cottage and heard human voices once more. These voices stirred something within me, waking memories and senses.
“I realised that I must return immediately to my grieving family and assure them that their son and heir is alive and well, if a little indisposed. Once they hear what my late father did to me, I feel sure that I will be welcomed with open wings, eh, arms. So that is my quest, and I have only stopped here for a much-needed meal.”
I finished my tale, dipping my beak in a convenient water-jug. My story had been a success. Already the waiter was filling a bowl of stew.
The knight removed his helmet. “A fascinating story, chicken. Prince Husnivarr you say?”
“Alas, yes,” I said. Sad yet noble.
“Amazing. The Karma Stone, you say?”
I snapped my beak. “Yes, yes. That’s what happened.”
The knight removed one gauntlet. “And tell me, chicken…I mean, Prince, about your famous family birth-mark.”
Birth-mark? I had a famous birth-mark?
“Ah, yes. Of course. The heirs to the mountain of gold always have a birth-mark in the shape of a…birth-mark. The exact details escape me at the moment. Not all my memories have returned.”
The knight peeled off his breastplate. “Let me refresh your memory. The birth-mark is in the shape of a peacock’s fan. Rather like this one.”
There was a birth-mark on the knight’s side, in the shape of a peacock’s fan.
I flapped my wings nervously. “So, that would mean that you would be…”
“Prince Husnivarr,” completed the knight. “I’ve been away on a campaign. Not a pig or chicken in sight.”
“This is ridiculous,” I blustered. “I am Husnivarr, rightful heir to the…”
“Mountain of gold,” completed the knight. “More of a molehill I’m afraid. Oh, it was a mountain once, but that was before empire tax and a few decades of war. I’d be surprised if there’s a single sovereign left in the treasury now.”
I felt like fainting. “No gold?”
“Not a penny.”
“There’s still the castle,” I said, grasping at straws.
“There is that,” agreed the knight. “A fine castle with portraits of me in every hall.”
“Ah…” I could feel all eyes on me now. “Perhaps I exaggerated my story slightly…”
The boy king drew his sword again. “So, you’re not a magical dove.”
“No. A parrot actually. An albino parrot.”
“And how did you learn to talk.”
“I always knew how to talk. But I learned to understand in a magician’s laboratory. Some chap called Marvin, I think.”
“Merlin?” said the boy.
“That’s the one. I think breathing in the gas from his potions boosted my parrot brain somewhat.”
The knight broke the tension. He laughed until his armour rattled, and salty tears gathered in his beard.
“By God, a conniving parrot. I’ve heard it all now. I want to thank you, little chicken. I haven’t laughed this much in a decade. Not since I was turned into a pig.”
They were all laughing now, and I sensed that a meal might still be on offer. I waved a wing towards the steaming pot.
“I’ve told you a story, do I get a bowl? Just a small one. I eat like a bird.”
The knight snatched a bowl from a passing steward. “Of course, young prince. Your lies are worth at least a few chunks of boiled meat.”
I peered into the bowl. The soup was grey and unappealing.
“And what meat would that be?” I asked.
Prince Husnivarr winked maliciously.
“Chicken,” he replied.
Slipping Sideways Through Eternity
JANE YOLEN
Millions of devout Jews set a place for Elijah at the table every Passover—what would happen, though, if he actually showed up…
One of the most distinguished of modern fantasists, Jane Yolen has been compared to writers such as Oscar Wilde and Charles Perrault, and has been called “the Hans Christian Andersen of the Twentieth Century.” Primarily known for her work for children and young adults, Yolen has produced over 270 books, including novels, collections of short stories, poetry collections, picture books, biographies, and a book of essays on folklore and fairy tales. She has received the World Fantasy Award, the Golden Kite Award, and the Caldecott Medal, and has been a finalist for the National Book Award, as well as winning two Nebula Awards, for her stories “Lost Girls” and “Sister Emily’s Lightship.” Her more adult-oriented fantasy has appeared in collections such as Tales of Wonder, Merlin’s Booke, Sister Emily’s Lightship, Storyteller, Dragonfield and Other Stories, and Once Upon a Time (She Said), and in such novels as Cards of Grief, Sister Light/Sister Dark, White Jenna, The One-Armed Queen, and Briar Rose. Her children’s fantasy collections include Twelve Impossible Things, Here There Be Dragons, Here There Be Witches, Here There Be Angels, Here There Be Ghosts, Here There Be Unicorns, Dream Weaver, and The Girl Who Cried Flowers. Her children’s fantasy novels range from high fantasy like The Magic Three of Solatia, the Young Merlin Trilogy, Sword of the Rightful King, Wizard’s Hall, and Dragon’s Boy to time trave
l such as The Devil’s Arithmetic, to urban fantasy like the Tartan Magic books: Wizard’s Map, The Pictish Child, and The Bagpiper’s Ghost, to science fiction fantasy, most notably the Pit Dragon trilogy. Her most recent fantasy novels are Pay the Piper and Troll Bridge both with Adam Stemple, and The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy for Teens, coedited with Patrick Nielsen Hayden. She and her family live part of the year in Massachusetts and part in Scotland.
SHANNA opened the door slowly and peered out. The lake surface ruffled in the wind but there was no one on it. She shrugged, came back to the seder table. “No one there,” she said. She was only five after all, ten years younger than me. She got to ask the questions, open the door. I got to drink watered wine. It was some sort of trade-off.
Everyone laughed.
“Elijah is there, only you can’t see him,” Nonny said.
But she was wrong. I could see him.
Elijah stood in the doorway, tall, gaunt, somewhere between a concentration camp victim and a Beat poet. I read a lot of poetry. Then I paint the poems, the words singing their colors onto the page. Sometimes I think I was born in the wrong century. Actually, I know I was born in the wrong century.
Elijah saw me see him and nodded. His eyes were black, his beard black and wavy, like a Labrador’s coat. When he smiled, his eyes nearly closed shut. His tongue came out of his mouth tentatively, licked his upper lip. It was the pink of my toe shoes. Not that I dance anymore. Pink toe shoes and The Nutcracker. That’s for babies. Now I’m into horses. But his tongue was so pink against his black beard, it made me tremble. I’m not sure why.
I motioned to the chair. No one but Elijah noticed.
He shook his head, his mouth formed the words: “Not yet.” Then he turned and left, slipping sideways through eternity.
“He’s gone,” I said.
“No,” Nonny contradicted, shaking her head, the blue hair a helmet that never moved. “Elijah is never gone. He is always here.” But she looked at me strangely, her black-button eyes shining.
I took another sip of the watered wine.
THE next time I saw Elijah was in shul. It’s the only temple on the island so everyone Jewish goes there, even though it’s a Reform temple. I was sitting snuggled up next to Shanna, more for the warmth than friendship. Shanna’s okay, when she’s quiet and cuddly. But little sisters can be a pain. Especially when they’re ten years younger, an embarrassment, and a sign that your parents—your parents, for G-d’s sake—are still having sex.
We were in the middle of one of Rabbi Shiller’s long, rambling book reports. He rarely says anything religious. My mother likes that. Thinks it’s important. “Keeps us in touch with the greater world,” she says. Meaning non-Jews. I get enough book reports in school in my AP classes, where we call them essays but they are really only high school book reports, though with bigger words. Besides, the rabbi was talking about Maus, which I’d just done an AP report on, and got an A, and my insights were better than his. So I snuggled close to Shanna and closed my eyes.
Or I almost closed my eyes.
And there, standing on the bima, finger on his lips, was Elijah, same black eyes, same black wavy beard, same pink tongue. I was not sure if he was shushing me or the rabbi but he was definitely shushing someone.
I sat up, pushed Shanna off me, looked around to see if anyone else had noticed him.
But the congregation was intent on the rabbi, who had just announced that in Maus, “The commentary should disrupt the facile linear progression of the narration, introduce alternative interpretations, question any partial conclusion, withstand the need for closure…” which I recognized immediately as a quote from Friedlander. The rabbi had been doing his research online. And he was not giving credit where credit was due, as my AP English teacher, V. Louise always reminds us. She would have had him gutted for breakfast.
I glanced back at Elijah, who was shaking his head, as if he, too, knew the rabbi was a plagiarist. But maybe if you had to give a sermon every Friday night for your entire life, plagiarism becomes a necessity.
To be certain I wasn’t the only kid seeing things, I checked on my friends. Barry Goldblatt was picking boogers from his nose. Nothing new there. Marcia Damashek was whispering to her mother. They even dress alike. Carol Tropp had leaned forward, not to listen to the rabbi but to tap Gordon Berliner on the shoulder. She has a thing for him, though I can’t imagine why. He may be funny—like a stand-up comic—but he’s short and he smells.
I kept checking around. Every single one of the kids I knew was distracted. No one seemed to have seen Elijah but me. And this time I had no watered wine to blame.
Clearly, I thought, clearly I’m having a psychotic break. We studied psychotic breaks in our psychology class. They aren’t pretty. Either that, or Elijah, that consummate time traveler, that tricky wizard of forever, was really standing behind the rabbi and snorting into a rather dirty handkerchief, the color of leaf mold. Couldn’t he take some time out of his travels to go to a Laundromat? We’ve got several downtown I could tell him about.
I shook my head and Elijah looked up again, winked at me, and slipped sideways into some sort of time stream, and was gone. He didn’t even disturb the motes of sunlight dusting the front of the ark.
Standing, I pushed past my sister and mother and father and walked out of the hall. I know they thought I had to pee, but that’s not what I was doing. I went downstairs to wait in the religious center till the service was over. The door to the middle students’ classroom was open and I went in. Turning on the light, I sighed, feeling safe. Here was where I’d studied Hebrew lessons with Mrs. Goldin for so many years. Where I’d learned about being Jewish. Where no one had ever said Elijah was real. I mean, we’re Reform Jews, after all. We leave that sort of thing to the Chassids. Leaping in the air, having visions, wearing bad hats and worse wigs. Real nineteenth-century stuff.
I idled my way over to the kids’ bookcase. Lots of books there. We Jews are big on books. The People of the Book and all. My father being a professor of literature at the university, we have a house filled with books. Even the bathrooms have bookshelves. We joke about the difference between litter-ature and literature. One to be used in the bathroom, the other to be read. Those sort of jokes.
My mom is a painter but even she reads. Not that I mind. I’m a big bookie myself, though I don’t take bets on it. That’s another family joke!
Finding a piece of gray poster paper, I began to doodle on it with a Magic Marker. Mom says that doodling concentrates the mind. I didn’t draw my usual—horses. Instead I drew Elijah’s head: the wavy hair, the dark beard, the tongue lolling out, like a dog’s. A few more quick lines, and I turned him into a retriever.
“And what do you retrieve?” I asked my drawing. The drawing was silent. I guess the psychotic didn’t break that far. Yeah—I have the family sense of humor.
I thought maybe there’d be a book or two in the classroom on Elijah. Squatting, I quickly scanned down the spines. I was right. Not one book but a whole bunch. A regular Jewish pop star.
Settling down to read the first one, I felt a tap on my shoulder that didn’t make me jump as much as it set off a series of tremors running down my backbone.
I turned slowly and looked up into Elijah’s long face. Close, he was younger than I’d thought, the beard disguising the fact that he was probably only in his twenties. A Jewish Captain Jack Sparrow with a yarmulke instead of a tricornered hat.
He crooked his finger at me, held out his hand.
Years of stranger-danger conversations flashed through my head. But who could be afraid of a figment of her imagination? Besides, he was cool-looking in a Goth beatnik kind of way.
I put my hand in his and stood. His hand seemed real enough.
We turned some sort of corner in the middle of the room, slid sideways, and found ourselves in a long gray corridor.
WAS I afraid?
I was fascinated. It was like being in a sci-fi movie. The corridor fli
ckered with flashes of starlight. Meteors rushed by. And a strange wandering sun seemed to be moving counterclockwise.
“Where are we go…?” I began, the words floating out of my mouth like the balloons in a comic strip.
He put a finger of his free hand on his lips and I ate the rest of my question. What did it matter? We were science-fictional wanderers on a metaphysical road.
The sound of wind got wilder and wilder until it felt as if we were in a tunnel with trains racing by us on all sides. And then suddenly everything went quiet. The gray lifted, the flashes were gone, and we stepped out of the corridor into…into an even grayer world, full of mud.
I craned my neck trying to see where we were.
Elijah put his hands on both sides of my head and drew me around till we were facing.
“Do not look yet, Rebecca,” he said to me, his voice made soft by his accent.
Was I surprised that he knew my name? I was beyond surprise.
“Is this place…bad?” I asked.
“Very bad.”
“Am I dead and in hell?”
“No, though this is a kind of hell.” His face, always long, grew longer with sadness. Or anger. It was hard to tell.
“Why are we here?” I trembled as I spoke.
“Ah, Rebecca—that is always the most important question.” His r’s rattled like a teakettle left too long on the stove. “The question we all need to ask of the universe.” He smiled at me. “You are here because I need you.”
For a moment, the grayness around us seemed to lighten.
Then he added, “You are here because you saw me.” He dropped his hands to my shoulders.
“I saw you?”
He smiled, and, for the first time, I realized there was a gap between his top front teeth. And that the teeth were very white. Okay, he might not hit the Laundromat often enough, but he knew a thing or three about brushing.
“I saw you? So why is that such a big deal?” I think I knew even before he told me.
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