Romulus whined, biting in the sound he really wanted to make. He pulled his clothes off. A part of him worried his mother would come to check on him, and what would she think, him standing naked in the pale, moonlit square in his room? She’d caught him in the bathroom the other day, staring in the mirror. She’d said without pausing, “Your father plucks his, you know.”
“What?” he’d said.
“Most people have two eyebrows.” She leaned past him, buffed a spot on the counter, then left.
Confused, he’d looked at himself again. Although he hadn’t been thinking about it at the time, he’d always considered his eyebrows his best mark, in a lupine sort of way, and the shadow between them a distinguishing feature. Dad plucked his?
Of course, he was his father’s son—she wouldn’t be surprised to see him naked in the moonlight either. Still, he worried she might come in. The other part, though, saw himself leaping through the window. He thought, I must go to the forest. Already the trees quivered, waiting for him. And in the trees they would expect him, the entire panoply: elves, fairies, goblins and giants. The other creatures lost in mythical, evolutionary time.
But there would be trolls there too, and dragons. All the old maps said so: in the unexplored areas, here there be dragons.
From the moon-tinted hills beyond town, a thin howl rose in the light. Very lonely. Very far away.
Romulus tried a howl back, a tentative utterance that couldn’t have made it past their front gate.
He did it again, louder. It hurt tearing through his throat that wasn’t quite shaped for it, but it felt good too. Once more. A door popped open across the street, and a neighbor stuck his head out. Romulus buried his head in a pillow. No way Dad heard that, he thought, but he didn’t try it again; and when the moon rose high enough so the light was not so obvious, he curled on the floor to fall asleep.
The day passed miserably until Mythology, where he hoped he could figure a way to warn Fay, but no matter how he thought to phrase it, his message sounded unbelievable. In the classroom’s afternoon mugginess he doodled at the bottom of his notes. Fay split her attention between Campbell, who moved meticulously through the history of the Knights of the Round Table, and the troll, who smiled slyly at her when she turned toward him.
“Many retellings of Arthur’s legend say that after the boy king took the throne at fifteen, and under Merlin’s tutelage, he rid his country of monsters and giants,” said Campbell.
Romulus sketched a sword rising from a lake. If he had Excalibur, he thought, he would rid this classroom of a monster himself.
When the bell rang, Fay continued writing her notes. The troll stood beside her, put his hand on her shoulder, then spoke softly in her ear. Romulus scrunched his toes in his shoes to keep himself from springing from the desk.
* * *
That evening Romulus finished dinner, told Mom and Dad he needed to take a walk, and went out the back door, but not before he caught a knowing glance between them.
Chaney Park was a six mile hike up a gravel road that rose too steeply the last three miles to bicycle, and Romulus figured he could be where kids parked by 8:30 or so. There was no question about using the car. He shuddered to think of himself behind the wheel, driving a two thousand pound vehicle, and the moon pouring through the windshield like a million biting ants.
The houses on his street were new brick and crisply-painted bi-levels, but a block over was an older neighborhood, where the roofs rose to steep peaks, and every house sported a single attic window, a lone eye watching him trudge toward the edge of town. Behind him the sunset flared orange and yellow, but before him only the bluffs’ tops caught the last pale sliver of daylight, and they didn’t hold that long. The woods below already swam in shadows. He crossed the railroad tracks; the blacktop changed to dirt, and soon, thin-trunked trees rustling with spring growth lined the path on both sides. He trudged up a long hill. At the crest he looked back, the town spread out behind him, stretched along the river, a tiny fiefdom at this distance. Streetlights could just as well be campfires, the baseball stadium glowing on the other side of town, a castle. He turned and walked into the dale beyond, losing the town and the day’s final glow at the same time. A few stars twinkled in the sable blanket.
Romulus took deep breaths. He hadn’t walked at night out here before. He felt keen, sharp. Another breath. Oak. Old oak that had started growing before the town existed. There were other smells he recognized too: fox, a shy one who must have crossed this path only seconds before he came into sight; and squirrel, and damp ferns dripping into moldy leaves, some so deep in shadow that winter’s frost was only inches below.
In the distance, wheels crunched through gravel, and engine noise rose above the murmuring forest. Romulus loped off the road and into the brush, around a great ball of roots from a fallen tree. He gripped two gnarled, woody wrists and peered out. A moment later a car roared by, radio blaring a steady rap thump. A snatch of laughter and a beer can clattered against a rock. Then dust.
He waited until the air cleared before stepping from behind the tangled dead fall. In the hills above, the car’s rowdy passage rose and fell. Hands jammed deep into his pocket, he continued his walk, thoughtful, now that the car had gone. What if Fay wanted to be with the troll? There would be nothing to warn her about. This trek to Chaney Park could be seen as little more than stalking her. There wasn’t much he could do anyway. Still, he pushed onward, leaning into the road’s steepness, taking each hairpin turn with measured deliberateness. His legs buzzed pleasantly, and he felt as if he could go forever if he had to. With his eyes closed, he imagined trotting along through the forest, tireless, behind deer maybe, waiting for one to drop from exhaustion. He smiled at the image. Several more times he leapt into the covering woods as more cars drove by. He didn’t see the troll’s car.
Finally the road leveled, but the trees surrounded him thicker than ever, leaning over the road and blocking the stars. It wasn’t until he reached a clearing and the forest opened before him that he realized he’d made the top. The moon sat on the horizon, a bloat egg, rich and ivory and huge again, as it had been on Sunday in his room, but now there was no window between him and it.
A full moon in the height of its glory. Romulus had never felt its light so intensely. A breeze swept through the tree tops and the oaks creaked. He looked around for a high place, then saw one, a jumbled pile of boulders that made a miniature mountain to his left. He ran to its base, his wavy, gray shadow flowing over grass and brush and branch. Up he clambered, hands down, like feet, fingernails clicking, leaping from rock to rock until he gained the summit. No forest blocking the moon now. He howled. Not self consciously, but a full-throated paean to the night sky. “Oh,” he said afterwards, and he crouched so his hands took part of his weight. Was this the way it was for Dad? thought Romulus, or am I even closer to the past than he is? Could I actually change?
He felt the animal shape beneath his human one moving about. Then the sky darkened as a cloud crossed the moon’s face. Romulus shook his head to clear it, and he looked about him for the first time. To the east there was no sign of the town, but he knew if he walked a little bit farther along the road, he’d be at Chaney Park, where the bluff offered a view of the entire valley.
A car’s headlights cut through the trees below, and in a few seconds, the car itself passed, turned toward the park, and vanished into the forest, its taillights glimmering long after he’d stopped hearing it. The moon was a hand’s-width above the horizon. How long had he been on the promontory? Moaning, he ran down the boulders, careless of injury, hit the road at top speed, and raced toward Chaney Park.
Three cars and a van rested on the picnic area’s lined asphalt, noses pointed toward town, but none of them were the troll’s convertible. Romulus crossed the back of the narrow lot in the tree’s shadows. From one car a muffled conversation mixed with the wind. A sticker on the van’s bumper proclaimed, “If we’re rockin’, don’t come knockin’.”
Past the parking lot the road turned to dirt again to wind up the hill. Every fifty feet or so a private picnic area opened on the left or right, complete with a split-log table and iron charcoal pit. The first one was empty; a rusted pickup occupied the second. Romulus stayed low, just off the path, walking in the soggy remains of last year’s leaves, his nose telling him as much as his eyes. The breeze caressed his face. Other cars waited ahead; he could smell them, the still warm engines, their tires, cigarette smoke. Then he caught it, a distinct whiff of the troll. He growled. A girl’s quivery voice in a car ten feet away said, “What was that?” Romulus crouched even lower in a run, his hands nearly touching the ground.
Then, ahead, clearly in the forest’s silence, he heard Fay. “Don’t!” she said. “I don’t want…”
The road rose. At the crest he saw the final picnic spot in the clearing fifty yards below, the troll’s car in the middle, top down, bathed in moonlight. He paused. Where was Fay? He could smell her perfume, and he smelled troll. Romulus spotted them in the back seat, the troll’s dark letter jacket blending into the shadow; he was struggling, holding Fay down beneath him. Her hand rose above him, like a drowning person. Cloth ripped.
Romulus charged toward them, his lips pulled away from his teeth in a noiseless snarl, but everything suddenly felt underwater and syrupy. It took an hour for his foot to hit the ground and an hour for the next. Fay’s hand froze in the air like a marble statue. Slowly, it seemed, so slowly, he came closer.
The troll laughed, the throbbing sound coming to Romulus almost too low to hear. More cloth ripped. A button, a fine pearl colored disk, flipped lazily into the air. Only ten yards away now, but every step seemed to cover less distance.
Then the air about the convertible changed. Even in his urgency, breath tearing through his throat, his teeth aching to bite something hard, Romulus slowed. The air changed, centering on Fay’s hand. A circle of moonlight ten feet around slid toward her. It was as if the light wasn’t light at all, but a thin coat of paint, funneling to her hand. For a moment it seemed as if the stars themselves swarmed, each touching her hand until it shone with potency, and her palm turned down. Her elbow crooked as if she were about to embrace the troll. Romulus stopped, nearly touching the car. Now he could see it all. The troll had pushed her back, trapped her legs with his own, pinned her with his weight, one arm stuck behind her, his lips pressed against the side of her face. Her eyes were closed, but not in fear—Romulus had time to study her—she was concentrating. The light flowed down her arm, filled her face. She glowed from within, like a porcelain nightlight. Then all the brightness emptied from her hand in a cascade of sparks, slamming into the back of the troll’s head.
He stiffened.
Romulus stepped back, covering his eyes.
When he opened them, he had to blink away a black spot in the spark’s shape to see Fay, now sitting up. She’d rolled the troll onto the car’s floor, and her feet rested on his back.
“Dang,” she said. “Just look at my blouse.” She pulled the torn front together, then zipped her jacket.
She turned to Romulus and said in a voice no different than if she’d run into him in the mall, “What brings you to Chaney Park this time of night, Romulus?”
Her face still glowed, and something glimmered in the back of her eyes, very sharp and ancient. She combed her fingers through her hair. Romulus noticed her ears. They were distinctly pointed. He’d not seen that in her before.
“It seemed a good night for a walk,” he said lamely. The troll snorted beneath her feet, then settled into a comfortable sounding snore. “What are you?” Romulus said.
She stood on the back seat, brushed her hands down her pants in short, brisk strokes.
“Fairy, I think. At least that’s what my mother says. And you?” She jumped out of the car to land beside him.
Romulus tried to answer, but all his words had been sucked out of him. He attempted to speak a couple of times, but nothing came out.
Understanding came into her eyes. “It’s the moon thing, isn’t it?” She looked into the sky. “That’s why you couldn’t go to prom. Oh, I should have figured it out earlier. But I still don’t know why you’re here tonight.”
Finally Romulus said, “I couldn’t sleep.” His voice rose at the end, as if it were a question.
Fay glanced at the troll, then back at him. She shook her head. “You’re sweet, Romulus.” She looked thoughtfully into the car for a moment, then pulled the keys out of the ignition and threw them into the forest. “Would you like to walk me home? I think I’ve lost my ride.”
Romulus nodded dumbly, so happy that if he had a tail to wag, he would wag it a thousand miles an hour.
They started toward town, leaving the sleeping troll and his car behind.
Romulus took a deep, deep breath of night air. He could smell everything, all of it, leaf, branch and tree.
Fay cleared her throat. “You’re not going to try to bite me, are you?” She sounded only half-joking.
Romulus let the air out in a relieved rush. “Oh, no! Not you.”
“Good,” she said. “That would make it tough for us to date.” She moved next to him.
They walked down the winding dirt road, hands not touching, but very close, both so full of moonish power they thought they’d burst.
THE SATURN RING BLUES
Old Jelly Roll Morton’s soulful voice fills the buglighter’s cabin.
Nothing more mournful and perfect than a good, solid dose of the blues while you’re waiting at the edge of the ring for the start of the race. That and the cloud-striped surface of Saturn turning below, the dusky-edged ridge of the rings above, catching a little of the reflected light, and between them both the sharp-eyed light of the stars. Lots of sad stringed guitar and bent-note blues harp, and his whiskey voice down deep. It’s a pool hall voice.
I met Elinor in a pool hall. She had an attractive way of blowing chalk dust off her knuckles that caught my eye. We racked up games till the bar closed. Only thing I can beat her at. I see the angles clear. “You got those angle eyes,” she said.
It’s true. I even like my hull transparent. Most of the equipment’s behind, all that stuff that shapes the forces around the buglighter, keeping me safe from danger, and, when the need arises, pushing me where I want to go. So with the hull clear, I’m sitting alone and pretty in the stars. That’s the way I feel, just like those blues songs tell me: “Lordy, I’m all by myself since my baby done left me.”
Lots of buglighters can’t do it—perch in the clear like I do—too much space around them. It’s hard on the heart. Elinor said to me, “Virgil, you’re too much of a sit down and look around kind of guy.” She would know, I guess. Of course I wasn’t paying attention at the time; we were playing pool and I said, “Shh. I’m concentrating.”
The starter’s voice interrupts the music: “Flyers, welcome to the 17th annual Greater Circumference of Saturn Ring Runners Challenge, 2,500 Kgram class. Five minutes to race time.”
A hundred meters around, dust motes spark off the bubble that contains me. Zap, zap… there go a couple more. That’s where we get the name, buglighter, little bits of ice and rock, zappin’ like firecrackers in the forces surrounding us. In five minutes the race will start, and I’ll adjust the bubble. Instead of flicking that ring sand away, it’ll suck it in, transform it in an instant, and shape the pulse into comforting thrust, rolling me around the inside of the ring on fission fire in my perfect sphere of protecting energy, sort of like a transparent cue ball bounding off the bumpers of the ring. From the start, all the way around again, about 578,000 Kmeters, or roughly 15 times the circumference of the Earth.
Over my shoulder, Elinor’s buglighter is all aglow. She’s a hot one, her. She likes to start these races fast, so she’s storing energy in the field. She’s always got a plan. Plan ahead, that’s her. She didn’t see me in her future, I guess. Cut me loose clean. She likes to fly light.
“Gotcha on my backsid
e, Elinor G.,” I say on a private channel, figuring that it won’t hurt to assay some warmth in her direction.
“Cut the chatter, Delta Mud,” she says. That’s my ship, not me. Feel that way most the time though, just as low down as can be. So I turn up the music. Little bit of Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry, “Blues from the Lowlands.” I got ’em too. Got ’em bad. Don’t know why you’re sayin’ no to me, Elinor G.
Nothing to do then except study the course ahead, sending out some high-imaging radar. It shows me what to miss—klunking into a chunk of ring matter bigger than a football or so at 50,000 kph would put a dent in my day, and, of course, it’ll send that rock flying like a cannonball in the opposite direction—but, it doesn’t show me where to go: the rich sand and pebbles I can eat up and convert to thrust. That’s the art and joy of ring running: dodging the big ones; following the fuel, shooting fast around the ring without spinning out.
My first two chords are clear, but after that, I’ll be checking as I go: thousands of kph, glimpsing ahead for widow-makers on the high wire edge of the ring. It’s only a kilometer wide, generally, at least only a kilometer of usable rock.
Ring racing is in the chords’ progression and rhythm—like the blues—cutting across the arc of the orbit’s circle. The way I fly, the shorter the chords, the faster the ship. Look and blast, look and blast. Can’t look while you’re blasting (too much interference); can’t blast without looking (otherwise you’d be sure to fetch up against some pocky chunk of rock, big as a barn and your race would be over forever). It’s a funny looking race, if you diagram it. Put two circles on a piece of paper, one inside the other, and the outside one not too much bigger than the inner. That inside circle is Saturn. The outside one is the inner edge of the ring. Now, take a ruler and draw a straight line that connects two points of the outer circle without crossing the inner circle. That’s one chord. If you keep drawing chords, you end up with a polygon that goes around the planet. That’s the race.
The Radio Magician and Other Stories Page 30