The Midnight Circus

by Jane Yolen

  And in a pinch I will reread the Mother of Gothics—Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The Barry Moser illustrated edition.

  So once Tachyon agreed they liked the idea of Midnight Circus, I began to research my collections, magazines, and journals to see whether I had enough stories to fill the book. I started with our database and then reread stories of mine in Asimov’s and F&SF. Then I tackled the anthologies in my attic library. Must be well over a hundred such volumes, each with a story (or stories) of mine safely held within.

  I made lists, annotated them. Sent what I considered my A and B stories to Tachyon to find out what volumes or magazines they already had and which stories we needed to copy here in my office. I must have started—after that early cull—with forty dark stories I still liked. Who knew?

  Then I deleted any that had been in my first two Tachyon collections.

  I had about twenty-five stories left to send to Tachyon. Publisher Jacob Weisman and my buddy Jim DeMaiolo wrestled with who loved which stories most. I think they disagreed on three. Small arguments ensued. No blood was spilt.

  Next we talked about which stories went first, last. No fingernails were pulled. I had been an editor with my own line of books for Harcourt, had also produced or co-edited a bunch of anthologies, so I knew the drill. (Wait, no drills, no carving knives, no box cutters, no. . . .)

  Finally I wrote this intro, did the backmatter about each story, and chose which poem of mine worked best with the individual story, some poems published, some new.

  In the end, with only a bit of sweat, we produced the book. You are now judge and jury of it all.

  There will be no executions.

  Much too bloody.

  Jane Yolen

  The Weaver of Tomorrow

  ONCE, ON THE FAR SIDE of yesterday, there lived a girl who wanted to know the future. She was not satisfied with knowing that the grass would come up each spring and that the sun would go down each night. The true knowledge she desired was each tick of tomorrow, each fall and each failure, each heartache and each pain, that would be the portion of every man. And because of this wish of hers, she was known as Vera, which is to say, True.

  At first it was easy enough. She lived simply in a simple town, where little happened to change a day but a birth or a death that was always expected. And Vera awaited each event at the appointed bedside and, in this way, was always the first to know.

  But as with many wishes of the heart, hers grew from a wish to a desire, from a desire to an obsession. And soon, knowing the simple futures of the simple people in that simple town was not enough for her.

  “I wish to know what tomorrow holds for everyone,” said Vera. “For every man and woman in our country. For every man and woman in our world.”

  “It is not good, this thing you wish,” said her father.

  But Vera did not listen. Instead she said, “I wish to know which king will fall and what the battle, which queen will die and what the cause. I want to know how many mothers will cry for babies lost and how many wives will weep for husbands slain.”

  And when she heard this, Vera’s mother made the sign against the Evil One, for it was said in their simple town that the future was the Devil’s dream.

  But Vera only laughed and said loudly, “And for that, I want to know what the Evil One himself is doing with his tomorrow.”

  Since the Evil One himself could not have missed her speech, the people of the town visited the mayor and asked him to send Vera away.

  The mayor took Vera and her mother and father, and they sought out the old man who lived in the mountain, who would answer one question a year. And they asked him what to do about Vera.

  The old man who lived in the mountain, who ate the seeds that flowers dropped and the berries that God wrought, and who knew all about yesterdays and cared little about tomorrow, said, “She must be apprenticed to the Weaver.”

  “A weaver!” said the mayor and Vera’s father and her mother all at once. They thought surely that the old man who lived in the mountain had at last gone mad.

  But the old man shook his head. “Not a weaver, but the Weaver, the Weaver of Tomorrow. She weaves with a golden thread and finishes each piece with a needle so fine that each minute of the unfolding day is woven into her work. They say that once every hundred years there is need for an apprentice, and it is just that many years since one has been found.”

  “Where does one find this Weaver?” asked the mayor.

  “Ah, that I cannot say,” said the old man who lived in the mountain, “for I have answered one question already.” And he went back to his cave and rolled a stone across the entrance, a stone small enough to let the animals in but large enough to keep the townspeople out.

  “Never mind,” said Vera. “I would be apprenticed to this Weaver. And not even the Devil himself can keep me from finding her.”

  And so saying, she left the simple town with nothing but the clothes upon her back. She wandered until the hills got no higher but the valleys got deeper. She searched from one cold moon until the next. And at last, without warning, she came upon a cave where an old woman in black stood waiting.

  “You took the Devil’s own time coming,” said the old woman.

  “It was not his time at all,” declared Vera.

  “Oh, but it was,” said the old woman, as she led the girl into the cave.

  And what a wondrous place the cave was. On one wall hung skeins of yarn of rainbow colors. On the other walls were tapestries of delicate design. In the center of the cave, where a single shaft of sunlight fell, was the loom of polished ebony, higher than a man and three times as broad, with a shuttle that flew like a captive blackbird through the golden threads of the warp.

  For a year and a day, Vera stayed in the cave apprenticed to the Weaver. She learned which threads wove the future of kings and princes, and which of peasants and slaves. She was first to know in which kingdoms the sun would set and which kingdoms would be gone before the sun rose again. And though she was not yet allowed to weave, she watched the black loom where each minute of the day took shape, and learned how, once it had been woven, no power could change its course. Not an emperor, not a slave, not the Weaver herself. And she was taught to finish the work with a golden thread and a needle so fine that no one could tell where one day ended and the next began. And for a year she was happy.

  But finally the day dawned when Vera was to start her second year with the Weaver. It began as usual. Vera rose and set the fire. Then she removed the tapestry of yesterday from the loom and brushed it outside until the golden threads mirrored the morning sun. She hung it on a silver hook that was by the entrance to the cave. Finally she returned to the loom, which waited mutely for the golden warp to be strung. And each thread that Vera pulled tight sang like the string of a harp. When she was through, Vera set the pot on the fire and woke the old woman to begin the weaving.

  The old woman creaked and muttered as she stretched herself up. But Vera paid her no heed. Instead, she went to the Wall of Skeins and picked at random the colors to be woven. And each thread was a life.

  “Slowly, slowly,” the old Weaver had cautioned when Vera first learned to choose the threads. “At the end of each thread is the end of a heartbeat; the last of each color is the last of a world.” But Vera could not learn to choose slowly, carefully. Instead she plucked and picked like a gay bird in the seed.

  “And so it was with me,” said the old Weaver with a sigh. “And so it was at first with me.”

  Now a year had passed, and the old woman kept her counsel to herself as Vera’s fingers danced through the threads. Now she went creaking and muttering to the loom and began to weave. And now Vera turned her back to the growing cloth that told the future, and took the pot from the fire to make their meal. But as soon as that was done, she would hurry back to watch the growing work, for she never wearied of watching the minutes take shape on the ebony loom.

  Only this day, as her back was turned, the old woman uttered a cr
y. It was like a sudden sharp pain. And the silence after it was like the release from pain altogether.

  Vera was so startled she dropped the pot, and it spilled over and sizzled the fire out. She ran to the old woman who sat staring at the growing work. There, in the gold and shimmering tapestry, the Weaver had woven her own coming death.

  There was the cave and there the dropped pot; and last the bed where, with the sun shining full on her face, the old woman would breathe no more.

  “It has come,” the old woman said to Vera, smoothing her black skirts over her knees. “The loom is yours.” She stood up fresher and younger than Vera had ever seen her, and moved with a springy joy to the bed. Then she straightened the covers and lay down, her face turned toward the entrance of the cave. A shaft of light fell on her feet and began to move, as the sun moved, slowly toward her head.

  “No,” cried Vera at the smiling woman. “I want the loom. But not this way.”

  Gently, with folded hands, the old Weaver said, “Dear child, there is no other way.”

  “Then,” said Vera slowly, knowing she lied, but lying nonetheless, “I do not want it.”

  “The time for choosing is past,” said the old Weaver. “You chose and your hands have been chosen. It is woven. It is so.”

  “And in a hundred years?” asked Vera.

  “You will be the Weaver, and some young girl will come, bright and eager, and you will know your time is near.”

  “No,” said Vera.

  “It is birth,” said the old Weaver.

  “No,” said Vera.

  “It is death,” said the old weaver.

  A single golden thread snapped suddenly on the loom.

  Then the sun moved onto the Weaver’s face and she died.

  Vera sat staring at the old woman but did not stir. And though she sat for hour upon hour, and the day grew cold, the sun did not go down. Battles raged on and on, but no one won and no one lost, for nothing more had been woven.

  At last, shivering with the cold, though the sun was still high, Vera went to the loom. She saw the old woman buried and herself at work, and so she hastened to the tasks.

  And when the old woman lay under an unmarked stone in a forest full of unmarked stones, with only Vera to weep for her, Vera returned to the cave.

  Inside, the loom gleamed black, like a giant ebony cage with golden bars as thin and fine as thread. And as Vera sat down to finish the weaving, her bones felt old and she welcomed the shaft of sun as it crept across her back. She welcomed each trip of the shuttle through the warp as it ticked off the hundred years to come. And at last Vera knew all she wanted to know about the future.

  The White Seal Maid

  ON THE NORTH SEA SHORE there was a fisherman named Merdock who lived all alone. He had neither wife nor child nor wanted either one. At least that was what he told the other men with whom he fished the haaf banks.

  But truth was, Merdock was a lonely man, at ease only with the wind and waves. And each evening, when he left his companions, calling out “Fair wind!”—the ‘sailor’s leave’—he knew they were going back to a warm hearth and a full bed while he went home to none. Secretly he longed for the same comfort.

  One day it came to Merdock as if in a dream that he should leave off fishing that day and go down to the sea-ledge and hunt the seal. He had never done such a thing before, thinking it close to murder, for the seal had human eyes and cried with a baby’s voice.

  Yet though he had never done such a thing, there was such a longing within him that Merdock could not say no to it. And that longing was like a high, sweet singing, a calling. He could not rid his mind of it. So he went.

  Down by a gray rock he sat, a long sharpened stick by his side. He kept his eyes fixed out on the sea, where the white birds sat on the waves like foam.

  He waited through sunrise and sunset and through the long, cold night, the singing in his head. Then, when the wind went down a bit, he saw a white seal far out in the sea, coming toward him, the moon riding on its shoulder. Merdock could scarcely breathe as he watched the seal, so shining and white was its head. It swam swiftly to the sea-ledge, and then with one quick push it was on land.

  Merdock rose then in silence, the stick in his hand. He would have thrown it, too. But the white seal gave a sudden shudder and its skin sloughed off. It was a maiden cast in moonlight, with the tide about her feet.

  She stepped high out of her skin, and her hair fell sleek and white about her shoulders and hid her breasts.

  Merdock fell to his knees behind the rock and would have hidden his eyes, but her cold white beauty was too much for him. He could only stare. And if he made a noise then, she took no notice but turned her face to the sea and opened her arms up to the moon. Then she began to sway and call.

  At first Merdock could not hear the words. Then he realized it was the very song he had heard in his head all that day:

  Come to the edge,

  Come down to the ledge

  Where the water laps the shore.

  Come to the strand,

  Seals to the sand,

  The watery time is o’er.

  When the song was done, she began it again. It was as if the whole beach, the whole cove, the whole world were nothing but that one song.

  And as she sang, the water began to fill up with seals. Black seals and gray seals and seals of every kind. They swam to the shore at her call and sloughed off their skins. They were as young as the white seal maid, but none so beautiful in Merdock’s eyes: They swayed and turned at her singing, and joined their voices to hers. Faster and faster the seal maidens danced, in circles of twos and threes and fours. Only the white sea maid danced alone, in the center, surrounded by the castoff skins of her twirling sisters.

  The moon remained high almost all the night, but at last it went down. At its setting, the sea maids stopped their singing, put on their skins again, one by one, went back into the sea again, one by one, and swam away. But the white seal maid did not go. She waited on the shore until the last of them was out of sight.

  Then she turned to the watching man, as if she had always known he was there, hidden behind the gray rock. There was something strange, a kind of pleading, in her eyes.

  Merdock read that pleading and thought he understood it. He ran over to where she stood, grabbed up her sealskin, and held it high overhead.

  “Now you be mine,” he said.

  And she had to go with him, that was the way of it. For she was a selchie, one of the seal folk. And the old tales said it: the selchie maid without her skin was no more than a lass.

  They were wed within the week, Merdock and the white seal maid, because he wanted it. So she nodded her head at the priest’s bidding, though she said not a word.

  And Merdock had no complaint of her, his “Sel” as he called her. No complaint except this: she would not go down to the sea. She would not go down by the shore where he had found her or down to the sand to see him in his boat, though often enough she would stare from the cottage door out past the cove’s end where the inlet poured out into the great wide sea.

  “Will you not walk down by the water’s edge with me, Sel?” Merdock would ask each morning. “Or will you not come down to greet me when I return?”

  She never answered him, either “Yea” or “Nay.” Indeed, if he had not heard her singing that night on the ledge, he would have thought her mute. But she was a good wife, for all that, and did what he required. If she did not smile, she did not weep. She seemed, to Merdock, strangely content.

  So Merdock hung the white sealskin up over the door where Sel could see it. He kept it there in case she should want to leave him, to don the skin and go. He could have hidden it or burned it, but he did not. He hoped the sight of it, so near and easy, would keep her with him, would tell her, as he could not, how much he loved her. For he found he did love her, his seal wife. It was that simple. He loved her and did not want her to go, but he would not keep her past her willing it, so he hung the skin up over
the door.

  And then their sons were born. One a year, born at the ebbing of the tide. And Sel sang to them, one by one, long, longing wordless songs that carried the sound of the sea. But to Merdock she said nothing.

  Seven sons they were, strong and silent, one born each year. They were born to the sea, born to swim, born to let the tide lap them head and shoulder. And though they had the dark eyes of the seal, and though they had the seal’s longing for the sea, they were men and had men’s names: James, John, Michael, George, William, Rob, and Tom. They helped their father fish the cove and bring home his catch from the sea.

  It was seven years and seven years and seven years again that the seal wife lived with him. The oldest of their sons was just coming to his twenty-first birthday, the youngest barely a man. It was on a gray day, the wind scarcely rising, that the boys all refused to go with Merdock when he called. They gave no reason but “Nay.”

  “Wife,” Merdock called, his voice heavy and gray as the sky. “Wife, whose sons are these? How have you raised them that they say nay to their father when he calls?” It was ever his custom to talk to Sel as if she returned his words.

  To his surprise, Sel turned to him and said, “Go. My sons be staying with me this day.” It was the voice of the singer on the beach, musical and low. And the shock was so great that he went at once and did not look back.

  He set his boat on the sea, the great boat that usually took several men to row it. He set it out himself and got it out into the cove, put the nets over, and did not respond when his sons called out to him as he went, “Father, fair wind!”

  But after a bit the shock wore thin and he began to think about it. He became angry then, at his sons and at his wife, who had long plagued him with her silence. He pulled in the nets and pulled on the oars and started toward home. “I, too, can say nay to this sea,” he said out loud as he rode the swells in.