Interfictions 2

by Delia Sherman

  Can't they see this kingdom and our very existence are only fictions?

  "Mm. Wars not make one great,” said a deep voice behind him.

  The king started and turned, irate. “I hate it when you do that, Merlin."

  The enchanter, dressed in a long habit—his face sometimes bare and sometimes covered with an imposing white beard—approached him, a long rod in his hand.

  "It's part of my nature. I am mystery. I do try, but it's impossible for me to approach someone from the front."

  Merlin reached the king and gazed out on the people of Camelot.

  "They've forgotten,” Arthur said. “Or rather, they refuse to remember. The isle dwindles when we're not looking, Merlin. They all want to leave, but they all deny it. Lancelot even pretended that he's never tried to leave Avalon. And yet it's uncontrollable. We're burying ourselves. We're becoming fossils. We need to transcend our symbolism, but we're so frozen in our forms I fear it's too late. It's a real ... neurosis."

  "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"

  "I'm in no mood for riddles."

  "Forgive me.” Merlin picked a golden apple from a low-hanging branch. “When man was emerging from barbarism and awakening to civilization, he thirsted for an ideal. This thirst was so great that the burgeoning collective unconscious named, fashioned, and codified the heroic archetypes it lacked. Neither being, nor idea, but something intangible halfway between. Unfortunately, the Geste is so powerful that nothing can replace it."

  The mage smiled.

  "We are, rather, so human that we refuse to get out of the way,” Arthur argued. “We'd rather anchor ourselves to this miserable speck of dust than go have a look elsewhere."

  "But no one can see elsewhere, Arthur. Even you, when you die, when you leave the realm on the funeral barge sailing for Avalon—you return here, because you never really leave."

  "So, help me."

  "I don't know what you're talking about, little grasshopper. Good morning!” Hastily, Merlin stalked away from the king, without a backward glance.

  We are all constrained by our madness.

  Not far away, wearing a straw hat, perched on a ladder, the shadow trimmed the golden apple trees.

  * * * *

  Three little turns and then...

  Since we are constrained by our roles, perhaps I could try something completely random, thought Arthur, desperate, walking aimlessly, his hands behind his back.

  He reached the edge of the sea-lake and picked up a yellowish, half-rotten apple. One end of a worm poked through the bruised flesh.

  To be or not to be. On the isle of archetypes, how many inchworms to a metric foot? He eyed the beast. And if I dubbed thee a heroic couplet?

  I, too, could leave thought behind and hurl myself headlong into endless rehearsal of the Geste.

  Elsewhere, somewhere, Arthur was dying, receiving the sword from the Lady of the Lake or pulling it from a stone, meeting Guinevere for the first time: blonde, brunette, or redhead.

  The problem is, I've had it up to here, quite frankly, and everyone around me is nuts.

  Suddenly irritated, Arthur threw the apple with all his strength against the bank of fog that drew inexorably nearer to Avalon/Camelot. The grayness swallowed it greedily.

  Of course the fruit came back from behind and hit him in the head. Disappointed, the king mumbled a vague “Eureka, yeah right” and paid it no more attention.

  He began to shuffle along the shore.

  Do something completely random. Why not, since I'm at the end of my rope. He started to skip like a child, tried a cartwheel and crumpled under the weight of his armor, picked a flower and picked off its petals—she loves me, she loves me not—while thinking of Guinevere, etched insults in the dust with Excalibur's point to shock the skies.

  Nothing happened. Dripping with sweat, staring at the bank, Arthur walked on, discouraged.

  Deviance isn't the answer. The others deviate all the time, and nothing changes. All I've done is act contrary to my usual vision, which is not really random. It's just the exact opposite of my fundamental nature. Which reveals it as much as anything else.

  Arthur passed by the orchard where his court picnicked, bewildered and careless. The shadow climbed down his ladder, took off his straw hat, and went to walk beside Arthur. The king didn't notice a thing.

  He finished his lap round the isle, returning to his starting point, where the same moldy apple lay on the ground. Elsewhere, at the same time, he was marrying Guinevere, discovering Lancelot's betrayal, recruiting Perceval or Galahad.

  I am a code, the incarnation of a concept. Tragically, I am only myself. How can I understand what I lack, if my wings are clipped? The Grail Quest is, above all, a journey of enlightenment. But even the Quest can't give us answers; it, like everything else, is part of the Geste. It belongs to the system.

  The shadow matched Arthur's progress, hands—or sleeves—joined, head tilted forward like a monk in his cloister. They passed the trees again. The knights were finishing their feast and returning to the castle.

  The Grail, too, is a symbol. The human mind gave it the form of something to be sought in a wilderness because that was easy to understand, but in the end, the Grail is just an illusion. Only what it signifies matters here.

  Arthur picked the rotten apple off the ground and, without thinking much about it, bit down. He began methodically to chew its flesh, sickly sweet and still crunchy in places. Swallowed the syrupy juice squeezed out by his teeth. Felt the sugary aroma of rot rising into his nasal cavities, choking his throat, burning the sides of his tongue. Ignored the wild wriggling of worms going down his royal gullet.

  He finished the putrefied fruit and turned on the shadow.

  Which nodded in return. Far off, emerging from the fog, rose the evanescent pillars of a misty and immaculate bridge, woven from light, appearing bit by bit, reaching the shore of l'ile close.

  Somewhere, the first few measures of “O Fortuna” from Carmina Burana rang out.

  Staggered by fear of what was to come, the king fell to his knees and vomited forth the awful seeds of reality.

  * * * *

  The Third Way

  Anonymous corpses littered the plain of Camlann all the way to the horizon—a very close horizon: the sea was lapping at the castle on all three sides now, and before the battle, the two armies had faced off only a few yards apart. And yet the epic charge of the final battle of Arthur's reign had seemed to last an eternity, and the faceless dead were heaped up in their thousands.

  Arthur, his handsome armor scarlet-stained, his hair and beard sticky with mud, sweat, and blood, advanced unsteadily through the groans of the dying, Excalibur in his fist. The sticky sword was heavy, still heavier to bear than the crown: his royalty resided in the weapon, in divine glory, and not in the human symbol of kingship.

  A single idea, one sole desire drove the king to the end of his era: to find Mordred, his treason, the heir he'd never have.

  "Mooordred!” he shouted over the plain.

  A young man with a face too perfect to be beautiful emerged from the smoke, bloody lance in hand, and advanced with a faltering step, a grimace of hatred on his lips.

  "Here I am, father,” he growled.

  The true king and the usurper met in the center of the plain of Camlann among the remnants of past grandeur, amid fire and death, beside Stygian waters.

  The Geste neared its end. Again.

  Mordred let out an animal roar that grew in intensity. With a final effort, burning with hatred, he brandished his lance, ready to commit parricide.

  Arthur opened his arms. And flung Excalibur aside like a fence picket.

  "I abdicate,” he announced.

  There was a moment of uncertainty. Mordred remained frozen, as though he'd been hit in the stomach, and then gathered himself. “It's a trick—you're trying to win by cheating, you want to keep things as they are!” he hissed through his clenched teeth.

  "No, I promise,” Arthur re
plied. “I'm fed up with this story, with these patterns whose infinite repetition has pretended to immortalize us. The human unconscious needs—we need to evolve. But I'm too old, too attached to the old order to give it a new ending. I embody wisdom and you change. It's your turn to take the throne. Do you want it?"

  He picked up Balmung and gave Mordred an ambiguous look. “Here, take my phallus and give the earth back its fruitfulness."

  Dumbfounded, Mordred contemplated the sword without touching it. He stuck his lance in the earth and leaned on it, and then frowned.

  "I...” he stammered. He looked around him at the dying men, who would breathe their last only at the battle's end, when the scene was over. Then he turned back to his father—frowned, all hatred extinguished.

  "Don't want it,” he said sulkily.

  Arthur felt a wave of dizziness. He stared at his son.

  "But ... you wanted it so much! You have to lead the kingdom to a new age. What'll become of the world? Of the island?"

  Mordred shrugged.

  "Dunno. Not my problem.” The words flowed naturally now, as if they'd just been waiting to ripen, to blossom, and give his ideas new meaning. “I was only making war on you because Mom hated you. And because you represented everything I didn't have and would never have. But if you just give it all to me, well, that's another story. It doesn't interest me anymore. I don't want to become you."

  Embarrassed, father and son studied their armored feet for a moment.

  "Just like that?” Arthur asked, panic creeping into his voice.

  "Yeah, well—I like the idea of kissing it all off on a whim,” Mordred replied with a cynical laugh. He sat down on a soldier, who protested faintly.

  More respectful, Arthur remained standing, pensive.

  "I know how to leave,” he confessed at last. “But I can't. I have responsibilities to this world.” A pause. He took a deep breath. “No, that's not true. I'm just scared."

  Mordred half-smiled. “This world, it's us. And I've had it up to here. “C'mon,” he said, getting up. “Let's blow this joint. Hey, do you know that guy in black who's waving at us?"

  * * * *

  The Depths

  In the bowels of the isle, far beneath the castle, in the heart of the earth, of the dragon, the shadow made its way among stony sculptures, columns joining floor and ceiling. In the sub-basement of the collective unconscious, the odor of sulfur reigned.

  The figure came to an underground lake, an unfathomable mirror whose still waters no wind had ever stirred.

  The Lady rose from the waves without a ripple, without a splash. The lake seemed to sculpt her shape from water, its impossible curves draped in a veil woven of space, time, and stars. In her right hand, she held the king's sword.

  Facing the shadow, she set foot on the black stone where scarlet veins pulsed, tracing incomprehensible patterns.

  In silent answer, the shadow's cape collapsed, as though the forces sustaining it had suddenly tired. With barely a rustle, the fabric fell empty to the floor.

  A snake slid from the folds of the cloak and curled itself around the Lady's calves. By touches on her veil and the slip of scales across her skin, the animal asked, “You got it back?"

  The Lady of the Lake traced a complex alphabet on the serpent's skin with her fingertips. “Yes. Despite his king's absence, Girflet still remained blindly loyal to the Geste. After three trips, he threw Excalibur into the water."

  "But now there's no one left to reclaim it,” the snake replied with a few flicks of its tongue at the insides of her thighs. “Arthur and Mordred have left the isle. The enemies have called a truce and, without denying their natures, have taken their first steps on the path of evolution."

  "Yes, but toward what?” the Lady asked, petting the serpent's scales most insistently.

  "I know no more than they. I am only the gardener. They've taken the bridge, but its far end is still shrouded in fog."

  The serpent climbed languorously toward her groin, insinuating itself under the cloth. Cool scales sent a shiver up the length of the Lady's spine.

  "They say the true king will return one day. But even then, I don't think he'll need this prop any more.” She glanced at the royal sword and then chuckled, breaking the age-old silence of the cave. “You know, Lucifer, one day the human mind will no longer need the mystery we embody, and the death of myth will open these caverns to the light of day and reveal all their secrets."

  The serpent stopped. “That day is not yet come. I concede we're only tools, but there are still so many archetypes on the isle who haven't yet discovered the secret of the apples of immortality."

  Before surrendering to the cold sensuality of the Bringer of Light, the Lady answered him with a final caress, smiling under her veil: “Yes. But something's going on in the human mind all the same."

  Translated from the French by Edward Gauvin

  * * * *

  When the French anthologist Lucie Chenu first asked me to write a story about the Arthurian myth, I enthusiastically accepted—only to curse myself later. How does one rewrite such an archetypal story, manage to find something new to say in a framework within which, I felt, everyone—especially much celebrated writers—had already tackled all the important aspects? Well, I thought, let's tackle all the aspects at once, then.

  That is, for me, one of the greatest joys of being a writer: to look for resonances, echoes, relations between ideas, concepts, feelings, things in the world around us and inside us. To build some kind of synthesis (or synaesthesia?) from them, to imbue them with meaning in order to form a story. For me, there are no boundaries of any sort in the world—only those people build for themselves, consciously or not: limitations we should strive to tear down, in art as well as in everyday life. I do write in the SF&F fields, but I am really a child of surrealism and magical realism. I am convinced that all creations, all thoughts, do exist somewhere, elsewhere. Their physical impact on our world is proof enough of that—reality is not all material. The world is shaped by what we think; thought and action are two sides of the same coin. The world is a decision.

  That is why I like to think that I build my life in the image of my writing—and not the other way round. Is this madness? Well, that's fine by me. Being crazy sure beats the hell out of consensual reality.

  Lionel Davoust

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  Afterbirth

  Stephanie Shaw

  My obstetrician has four heads.

  She stands in front of me, arms crossed, tapping one foot.

  She only has the two feet.

  We are in Evanston, a socially-politically-ecologically aware suburb of Chicago, and she wears sensible shoes, expensive clogs, and natural fibers to draw the eye away from the four heads.

  I sit on the edge of the exam table, in a nest of feathers, twine, and bits of bone. The stirrups are up, flanking me, each giving me the great big hairy eyeball, just like my obstetrician. Only she has eight eyes.

  My obstetrician holds out her hands.

  She only has the two hands.

  In them, she holds a small, opaque lump.

  Fleshy and purple-veined, it is about the size, color and texture of a large plum tomato, recently blanched and peeled. She holds it out in front of her, cupped in her hands, like a priest about to bless the host. Almost imperceptibly, the lump shifts and sighs, whether on its own or under some subtle manipulation from her gloved fingers is impossible to tell, and I realize that (oops!) this is my amniotic sac, one of them. Containing (oops!) the fetus, one of them. I had somehow managed to misplace it, scatterbrained me, and my obstetrician is not angry with me, she is just very, very disappointed.

  "Just because there are two of them,” she tells me, “does not mean we can afford to be careless."

  I cup my palms, and my obstetrician dumps the thing cautiously into them. It is warm and sticky.

  My obstetrician has four mouths, of course, lipstick faded after a hard day of blood and afterbirth.
She has four noses, all of them very thin bridged and possessed of expressive nostrils, like the noses of young female movie stars. Her eyes number eight and they are so sincere that they have no choice but to be pale blue. She is varying shades of sandy, no-nonsense blond. One of the heads tells me that she needs to punch a needle through my abdominal wall and into my melon belly, so she can extract secret baby juice and read its code. Another deciphers my blood results and tells me that one or both of my babies stands an increased risk of arriving in this world with Down syndrome. One tells me to get into bed and stay there. The other says nothing, just snaps on a glove, reaches inside me, and punches me in the cervix to make sure it's still closed.

  It is difficult to argue with a four-headed obstetrician—she has three more mouths than I, and many more degrees of higher education, and anyway, I have been taught not to argue with doctors. They are high priestesses, and best avoided altogether, if possible.

  I cannot avoid them. I am manacled with a blood pressure cuff.

  I breathe, as I have been instructed.

  I examine the living tomato in my hands. I squint at it, trying to see the child inside, looking for claws or webbed feet, pearly horns or wisps of smoke from tiny, dilated nostrils. But the sac I have built is tough, and it resists my scrutiny. I see nothing but the throb of it. It doesn't believe in long-range predictions any more than I do.

  Before anyone can stop me, I put it in my mouth and am reminded of my grandmother's spaghetti sauce before I swallow it whole.

  * * * *

  Now, bear with me, because here is where it starts getting a little weird. A little of the fairy tale comes into play here.

  And why not?

  A fairy tale often starts with a childless woman, doesn't it, one who would give anything to anyone—her soul, for instance, to the devil or the witch or the toad in her bathwater—for the gift of a child? And let me tell you something about this woman. It's not so much that she has love in her heart to spare or that she's known all her life that mothering was her destiny or that she woke one morning with all her nurturing powers suddenly revved up and ready to be unleashed on an unsuspecting infant.