The Silenced Tale

by J. M. Frey

  “Okay, I’m on your street now. Just . . . stay where you are, okay?”

  “I locked the front door.”

  “It’s fine. I have my keys.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t come in . . .”

  “I’m here, okay?” The sound of a car pulling into his driveway is faint under Linux’s rolling growls. The soft thump of the car door closing makes the cat’s ears twitch. “I’m just gonna . . .” The jingle of keys sounds over the phone.

  Elgar holds his breath, fear and shame seizing his lungs. He has a sudden, horrible flash of whatever it is downstairs punching across the room toward Juan. He gags at the thought of a tidal wave of maggots splashing out of the kitchen, swallowing his assistant under their slimy, pulsing bodies.

  But as soon as Elgar hears the front door open, Linux’s body immediately relaxes. The cat pricks his ears forward, listening, and sits up primly, wrapping his tail around his paws.

  “Boss?” floats up from downstairs.

  Elgar ends the call and shoves his phone in his pocket.

  “Juan?” he calls down. “Are you . . . ? Is everything . . . ?”

  “There’s nothing strange, boss. I mean, your salad is all over the counter. But nothing else is wrong. Good for you, by the way. Salad for dinner. I’m proud of you.”

  Elgar sucks on a horrible, choking breath, torn between wanting to chuckle and wanting to scream. He toes the towel out of the way and cracks the bathroom door. Impatient, Linux bolts through the gap, meowing that special chirrupy greeting he saves only for Juan, the man who always gives him a treat.

  Elgar sticks his head out of the bathroom slowly, tentatively. The overwhelming fear, the funk of rotting vegetables, and the terror that something is coming to get him have all evaporated. There isn’t even an after-image of the horrible, pungent stink. His house just feels . . . normal. Like it always feels: empty of anything but the three of them, smelling faintly of cat litter, dusty paper, and the “Clean Linen” scented sticks the cleaning company likes to hide in discreet corners.

  Cautious, shaky, and exhausted from his fear, Elgar makes his way downstairs. His shoes are silent on the plush gray carpeting, but Juan is looking up at him when he makes it into the kitchen, anyway.

  Juan is the epitome of what Elgar thought gay guys were—skinny, tall, with gym-earned muscles and a tanning-bed glow. His teeth are white, and straight, and perfect. His eyes are a soulful brown, and his dark hair is elegantly coiffed. Juan is never less than perfectly put together; it always makes Elgar feel a little wrinkly and schlubby by comparison. For his date, Juan has apparently pulled out all the stops. He’s wearing a pair of designer jeans and a midnight blue velvet smoking jacket with an honest-to-god pocket square.

  In short, Juan is the complete opposite of the gay guys Elgar had accidentally written into his novels. Well, Kintyre is bi, Lucy had explained to him. Or perhaps only gay for Bevel, in particular; that wasn’t really clear. But Bevel has been gay the whole time, and Elgar hadn’t known it. Although, in retrospect, it makes sense, what with how unenthusiastic the character had seemed about bedding maidens when Elgar had tried to write the celebration scenes. Elgar isn’t the kind of wishy-washy writer who bows to the whim of muses or uses mumbo-jumbo terms to describe where his inspiration comes from, but he does listen when his characters resist or seem reluctant, or just aren’t working right. He always figured it had been his own subconscious telling him that something wasn’t jiving. Now, he knows that it literally was another person, on the other side of the door of his imagination, digging in his heels and saying, “No!”

  Juan smiles at Elgar, and pats his shoulder when he gets close enough. “See? Nothing but salad here. I even think it’s salvageable.” His tone is a little too bright, though, his smile a little too tight, his gestures a bit too deliberate. He’s being patronizing. Whether he realizes it or not.

  Elgar bristles. “I didn’t make it up,” he says as Juan fetches down the colander and tosses the spilled salad into it. “There was—”

  “I’ll check it as I wash it,” Juan promises, his back to Elgar, and Elgar’s frustration mounts.

  “I know you think I get carried away with the things I make up, but I didn’t—”

  “It’s cool, boss. It’s cool,” Juan says, rinsing off the veggies and picking through them carefully.

  “It’s not cool. There were bugs . . . maggots . . .” He looks at the floor, but even the splattered puss is gone. Linux circles his ankles, meowing up at him, and then butts the cupboard that holds his food cans with deliberate care.

  “You hungry, too, little man?” Juan asks the cat. Linux meows again, more pitiful than the last one, and Juan sets the salad aside to dry and gets Linux his dinner, too.

  “You don’t have to—” Elgar starts.

  “I’m here. That’s what you pay me for, boss. To do stuff for you.”

  “Not on your off time.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “But I can—”

  Juan dumps the can into Linux’s bowl, and then straightens and frowns at what he finds on Elgar’s face. “I don’t think you can, boss. Sit.” He points imperiously at one of the stools tucked under the overhang of the kitchen island. Juan always has impeccable posture, and when he’s feeling imperious, it becomes downright birdlike.

  Elgar sits. His face feels cold, and sort of like it’s drooping, and his stomach pools somewhere around his knees when he finally settles.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Juan says gently. He washes his hands, and then puts on the kettle.

  “I feel like it,” Elgar says, swallowing down the bitter aftertaste of adrenaline.

  Juan sucks on his lips for a second, clearly coming to a decision about something. He sighs, shakes his head, and says: “I gotta ask, boss—did you take anything tonight?”

  Elgar stiffens. “What do you mean?”

  Juan looks down at the counter, clearly uncomfortable to be asking this of his employer, and traces the pattern of the granite with one perfectly buffed fingernail. “You know, like . . . did you get some special mushrooms for your salad?”

  “I . . . Juan! You know me! I don’t . . .”

  “I had a boyfriend once who started in on hash to relax when he got too stressed out at work. I know you’ve been under a lot of pressure, boss, especially with this Flageolet stuff.” He looks up, dark eyes earnest with worry.

  “No,” Elgar says, gripping the edge of the counter. “Never.”

  “You wouldn’t be the first writer to use in order to get over a block, and I—”

  “A block?” Elgar splutters, jerking back. The stool sways, but he manages to yank himself back to center. “What makes you think I have writer’s block?”

  Juan scratches the back of his neck. “Well, you haven’t produced anything new since you finished Magicwon. I didn’t want to bring it up, but Kim—”

  “If my agent is worried, she can damn well ask me herself!” Elgar snarls, stunned to realize that they were gossiping about him behind his back.

  “She’s tried!” Juan shoots back. “Boss, you told her you ‘weren’t writing anything right now.’ You’ve never gone so long without at least pitching something. It’s been almost two full years since you finished the Shuttleborn series, and you wouldn’t even let them publish the first book until the third book was written. You’ve declined every invitation to short-story anthologies, and you changed your mind about wanting to write a script for the TV series. You—”

  “I know what I’ve done!” Elgar interrupts, frustration and shame blooming in his gut as his assistant enumerates his cowardice.

  Juan slumps a little, curling his velvet-clad shoulders inward, trying to look soft and comforting. His hands flutter on the edge of the counter, and a smile pulls uncomfortably on the side of his mouth. For the first time since they were first feeling each other out, he looks nervous.

  “Sure, boss, but . . . what we can’t figure out is why.”

&nbs
p; Elgar drops his face into his hands, rubbing his forehead. The exhaustion is tugging harder now, a headache building behind his eyes. “I have my reasons, okay?”

  “Which are?”

  Elgar presses his thumbs against the bridge of his nose. “I . . . I can’t . . .”

  “Is it writer’s block, boss?”

  “I don’t believe in writer’s block, and you know that, Juan. I just . . . I don’t have any ideas. Okay?” He looks up, feeling that a confession this humiliatingly personal deserves at least eye contact. “I have no ideas.”

  It’s a lie. And he really hopes Juan doesn’t notice that. It isn’t that he’s drained of ideas. It’s more that every time he comes up with a new world or character, he realizes that he might be harming another actual person in order to give that character enough motivation to begin the story. There’s no narrative without conflict. So he cringes away from each new book that germinates in his imagination. He refuses to water those sprouts, to nurture them. Only to then have to twist and hack at them, to rip them up or cut them down.

  Juan’s eyes go round at the fake confession. “No ideas at all, boss?”

  Elgar shakes his head as convincingly as he knows how. Forsyth despises lying, but he’s a consummate dissembler by nature. Algar’s wrath had taught him how to hide, and Lewko Pointe the Elder had honed it in him. His time as Shadow Hand had made it second nature. And Elgar has been studying under his creation, mostly so he could get better at handling the press. He holds eye contact with Juan and forces himself to blink slowly, not to lick his lips, or perform any of the other tells Forsyth says he’s prone to.

  Poker face.

  “Maybe you can—”

  “I’m just tired, Juan,” Elgar says. “I need a break for a while, okay? I want to focus on the TV series. On my family.”

  “Yes,” Juan says, eyes narrowing and spine straightening again. “This mysterious new family that you somehow acquired, who you never show me pictures of.”

  Elgar rolls his eyes. “They’re real. I promise I’m not going up to Victoria once a month to score drugs.”

  “But how are they related to you, boss?”

  “Syth’s my sort of . . . cousin. You know, twice removed or something like that.”

  Juan shifts like he wants to pace or come around the counter. He puts his hands on his hips and leans back again, clearly attempting to convey that he isn’t rushing or crowding Elgar, that he is waiting patiently for the rest of the explanation. Of course, he isn’t patient about it at all. Even Elgar can see that.

  “I, um . . . they reached out to me at a . . . con.” Elgar puffs up, feeling defensive. “I like hanging out with them, okay? They’re good people. They get me out of the house. I thought you wanted me to get out more, spend time with people, do more than just go to conventions.”

  “I did. I do,” Juan says, holding up his hands, palms out, don’t shoot. “Just . . . maybe talk to Kim, okay? Tell her what you told me. She’s worried.”

  “I’ll call her tomorrow.”

  “Okay. Okay, boss. Thanks.” Juan turns away then, assembles the salad in a bowl—sans steak—and sets it down in front of Elgar with a fork. “Here. Eat up. Get some sleep. Maybe you just had a stress dream.”

  Elgar narrows his eyes and tries not to gag at the smell of the vegetables under his nose. They’re not rotting anymore, but the smell still turns his stomach. “You mean, if it wasn’t a bad high,” Elgar sneers.

  Juan huffs a sighing chuckle. “I’m not going to live that down, am I?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, boss.” He pats Elgar’s shoulder. “I’ll lock up after me. Anything else you need?”

  “No. No, I . . .” The childish shame is back, sliding up Elgar’s back, surging out from where Juan is touching him. “Thank you for coming, all the same.”

  “All good, boss. It’s what you pay me for.”

  “I don’t pay you to walk out on your dates.”

  “Ah, now that was a favor,” Juan says with a wink. “I have to go back now and break it to him that no bookie means no nookie.”

  “Good luck.”

  Juan pats himself down, making sure he still has his wallet, keys, and cell phone. His grin is brilliant, sparkling, his worry for Elgar wiped away in the face of returning to his date, for all that he says he intends to break the poor bastard’s heart and blue-ball him all in one go. “Thanks! I’m gonna need it!”

  Elgar waits for Juan to say his goodbyes to Linux, and locks the door behind him. Then he stands, grabs the salad, and goes out into his backyard through the kitchen porch. His trash can is in the corner of the yard, against the fence. Elgar throws the salad—bowl, fork, and all—straight into it.

  Forsyth

  There is a saying in the Overrealm that the weather of the month of March either begins as a lion or as a lamb, and ends the opposite. This year, it seems, March intends to arrive as a Library Lion. For even now, in the last week of February, we find ourselves surrounded by slushy snow that refuses to melt away, and weather that is much like that mythical creature—large, buffeting, and leaves my hair standing up in odd wet swirls.

  “Pray tell, wife, what has caused you to be so obsessed with fitness, recently?” I smile at Pip as I ask this, for she has diverted our afternoon outing so that we may collectively glance into the window of a newly opened studio space. The printed advertisement blaring out over the high street in dayglo colors proclaims the availability of classes and personal instructors for all manner of the martial arts, including—

  “Look, fencing,” Pip says, pointing to the sign. “And stage combat lessons.”

  “I see that,” I say, not bothering to turn my eyes away from my wife’s face.

  Below us, where her stroller has been pushed up beside the glass, I can hear Alis slapping her palms against it. Somehow, she’s pushed her way out of her hateful, hateful knitted mittens. I am quite glad that they are clipped to the cuffs of her jacket, or she would have relieved herself of the burden of having mitts at all the instant we first put them on her. She must also wear her knitted toque, which she finds equally unacceptable. And I am equally glad that she is unable to untie the dongles when we knot them under her chin, or our brazen girl would be bareheaded, as well.

  “Maybe you could—” Pip says, and then looks up, catches the expression on my face, and halts herself. “Don’t you miss it?”

  “Of course I miss sparring,” I say.

  “Sooo . . .” Pip says with a small, hopeful grin that nonetheless is too tight around the corners, shows too much teeth between her plum-slicked lips.

  “So, what interests me more than a studio where I may practice with Smoke opening within walking distance of our neighborhood, my dear, is how you have clearly brought us three blocks out of our way in order to appear to accidentally come upon this sign.”

  Pip deflates. “Busted.”

  “Indeed.” I raise an eyebrow at her, Spock-like, and add, “Fascinating,” just to make her smile. This smile is a real one, for all that it is watery and a little tremulous. “Was this your attempt at being subtle?”

  “Maybe?” she says.

  “You’ll have to try harder to trick a Shadow Hand of Hain,” I scold gently, and turn the stroller back out onto the sidewalk. We resume our slow meander down the pavement, shoppers and errand-runners flowing around us like fish amid the reeds.

  Pip reaches out and takes my nearest hand. I am well able to steer the stroller with one hand at this pace, so I curl my gloved fingers around my wife’s and bring them up to kiss her breeze-chilled knuckles. Like her daughter, Pip dislikes gloves.

  “And this failed subterfuge of yours, wife?” I say amiably, keeping my tone light so she knows that I am curious, and teasing, not accusing. “Is this your way of saying that I am getting fat again?”

  Pip snorts. She whips her hand out of mine, slides quick fingers as cold as eels under my pea coat and button-down shirt together, and pinches the little bubble of flesh o
ver my hips that is caused by my belt.

  “Yow!” I protest. “Pip, your hands are cold.”

  Grinning, Pip flattens her whole palm against the small of my back, and I jump. Alis giggles at my discomfort, the traitor, but everything is made better when Pip slides her pinky and ring finger a little lower, dipping the pads of her fingers into my undergarments and scratching lightly at the upper swell of my buttocks.

  “Stop,” I mutter. “Or I will be in no fit condition to remain in public.”

  Pip giggles, free and happy, and that pleases me. Whatever worry brought us to the studio, it seems to have cleared now. Pip removes her hand from the back of my clothes and wraps it around my own once more.

  “You’re not fat,” Pip reminds me. “And you never were.”

  “But I am far more sedentary than I used to be. You must admit to that,” I point out.

  “You can always come to the gym with me.”

  I make a face at that, for Pip knows how greatly I dislike exercise for the sake of exercise. It is repetitive, and boring. If I were to exercise, I would much prefer for it to have a point—to work on skills like fencing, or archery, or to at least include a lovely view of the countryside, like horseback riding.

  “I’d . . . I’d like it if you came to the gym with me,” Pip says softly, and the shadow of worry is back, like storm clouds passing across her face.

  “And what would we do with Alis?” I ask.

  “Dad would come to the house for a few hours if we—”

  “Every day? That’s asking much of Martin.”

  Pip blows out a frustrated breath. “It would make me feel better if you . . . practiced.”

  I am not certain how to reply to this, so I do not. True, Pip has been acting oddly since Elgar called to confess that his typewriter had vanished. Her sleep has grown lighter, and she no longer rests on her back. Yesterday, I caught her looking through a glossy booklet that she must have requested from a home security company, for it looks too grand to have simply arrived as junk mail. And now she is expressing concerns about my ability to fight.

  What has Pip so agitated? Which clues have I been missing? For something has obviously happened—or is currently happening—and I have failed to notice.