Stories: All-New Tales ngss-1

by Neil Gaiman

  I came

  to my feet

  so quickly my

  chair fell over.

  I grabbed his throat

  in both hands and said,

  “You lie. Her father would

  never allow her to accept such

  a gift from a godless blackamoor.”

  But

  another

  friend said

  the Arab trader

  was godless no more.

  Lithodora had taught Ahmed

  to read Latin, using the Bible

  as his grammar, and he claimed now

  to have entered into the light of Christ,

  and he gave the bracelet to her with the full

  knowledge of her parents, as a way to show thanks

  for introducing him to the grace of our Father who art.

  When

  my first

  friend had

  recovered his

  breath, he told

  me Lithodora climbed

  the stairs every night

  to meet with him secretly

  in empty shepherds’ huts or in

  the caves, or among the ruins of

  the paper mills, by the roar of the

  waterfall, as it leapt like liquid silver

  in the moonlight, and in such places she was

  his pupil and he a firm and most demanding tutor.

  He

  always

  went ahead

  and then she

  would ascend the

  stairs in the dark

  wearing the bracelet.

  When he heard the bells he

  would light a candle to show her

  where he waited to begin the lesson.

  I

  was

  so drunk.

  I set

  out for

  Lithodora’s

  house, with no

  idea what I meant

  to do when I got there.

  I came up behind the cottage

  where she lived with her parents

  thinking I would throw a few stones

  to wake her and bring her to her window.

  But as I stole toward the back of the house

  I heard a silvery tinkling somewhere above me.

  She was

  already on

  the stairs and

  climbing into the

  stars with her white

  dress swinging from her

  hips and the bracelet around

  her ankle so bright in the gloom.

  My

  heart

  thudded,

  a cask flung

  down a staircase:

  doom doom doom doom.

  I knew the hills better

  than anyone and I ran another

  way, making a steep climb up crude

  steps of mud to get ahead of her, then

  rejoining the main path up to Sulle Scale.

  I still had the silver coin the Saracen prince

  had given her, when she went to him and dishonored

  me by begging him to pay me the wage I was properly owed.

  I put

  his silver

  in a tin cup

  I had and slowed

  to a walk and went

  along shaking his Judas

  coin in my old battered mug.

  Such a pretty ringing it made in

  the echoing canyons, on the stairs,

  in the night, high above Positano and the

  crash and sigh of the sea, as the tide consummated

  the desire of water to pound the earth into submission.

  At

  last,

  pausing

  to catch my

  breath, I saw

  a candleflame leap

  up off in the darkness.

  It was in a handsome ruin,

  a place of high granite walls

  matted with wildflowers and ivy.

  A vast entryway looked into a room

  with a grass floor and a roof of stars,

  as if the place had been built, not to give

  shelter from the natural world, but to protect a

  virgin corner of wildness from the violation of man.

  Then

  again it

  seemed a pagan

  place, the natural

  setting for an orgy hosted

  by fauns with their goaty hooves,

  their flutes and their furred cocks.

  So the archway into that private courtyard

  of weeds and summer green seemed the entrance

  to a hall awaiting revelers for a private bacchanal.

  He

  waited

  on spread

  blanket, with

  a bottle of the

  Don’s wine and some

  books and he smiled at

  the tinkling sound of my

  approach but stopped when I

  came into the light, a block of

  rough stone already in my free hand.

  I

  killed

  him there.

  I did

  not kill

  him out of

  family honor

  or jealousy, did

  not hit him with the

  stone because he had laid

  claim to Lithodora’s cool white

  body, which she would never offer me.

  I

  hit

  him with

  the block of

  stone because I

  hated his black face.

  After

  I stopped

  hitting him,

  I sat with him.

  I think I took his

  wrist to see if he had

  a pulse, but after I knew

  he was dead, I went on holding

  his hand listening to the hum of the

  crickets in the grass, as if he were a

  small child, my child, who had only drifted

  off after fighting sleep for a very long time.

  What

  brought

  me out of

  my stupor was

  the sweet music

  of bells coming up

  the stairs toward us.

  I leapt

  up and ran

  but Dora was

  already there,

  coming through the

  doorway, and I nearly

  struck her on my way by.

  She reached out for me with

  one of her delicate white hands

  and said my name but I did not stop.

  I took the stairs three at a time, running

  without thought, but I was not fast enough and

  I heard her when she shouted his name, once and again.

  I

  don’t

  know where

  I was running.

  Sulle Scale, maybe,

  though I knew they would

  look for me there first once

  Lithodora went down the steps and

  told them what I had done to the Arab.

  I did not slow down until I was gulping for

  air and my chest was filled with fire and then

  I leaned against a gate at the side of the path-

  you know

  what gate-

  and it

  swung open

  at first touch.

  I went through the

  gate and started down

  the steep staircase beyond.

  I thought no one will look for

  me here and I can hide a while and-

  No.

  I

  thought,

  these stairs

  will lead to the

  road and I will head

  north to Napoli and buy

  a ticket for a ship to the U.S.

  and take a new name, start a new-

  No.

  Enough.

  The truth:r />
  I

  believed

  the stairs

  led down into

  hell and hell was

  where I wanted to go.

  The

  steps

  at first

  were of old

  white stone, but

  as I continued along

  they grew sooty and dark.

  Other staircases merged with

  them here and there, descending

  from other points on the mountain.

  I couldn’t see how that was possible.

  I thought I had walked all the flights of

  stairs in the hills, except for the steps I

  was on and I couldn’t think for the life of me

  where those other staircases might be coming from.

  The

  forest

  around me

  had been purged

  by fire at some time

  in the not so far-off past,

  and I made my descent through

  stands of scorched, shattered pines,

  the hillside all blackened and charred.

  Only there had been no fire on that part of

  the hill, not for as long as I could remember.

  The breeze carried on it an unmistakable warmth.

  I began to feel unpleasantly overheated in my clothes.

  I

  followed

  the staircase

  round a switchback

  and saw below me a boy

  sitting on a stone landing.

  He

  had a

  collection

  of curious wares

  spread on a blanket.

  There was a wind-up tin

  bird in a cage, a basket of

  white apples, a dented gold lighter.

  There was a jar and in the jar was light.

  This light would increase in brightness until

  the landing was lit as if by the rising sun, and

  then it would collapse into darkness, shrinking to a

  single point like some impossibly brilliant lightning bug.

  He

  smiled

  to see me.

  He had golden

  hair and the most

  beautiful smile I have

  ever seen on a child’s face

  and I was afraid of him-even

  before he called out to me by name.

  I pretended I didn’t hear him, pretended

  he wasn’t there, that I didn’t see him, walked

  right past him. He laughed to see me hurrying by.

  The

  farther

  I went the

  steeper it got.

  There seemed to be

  a light below, as if

  somewhere beyond a ledge,

  through the trees, there was

  a great city, on the scale of Roma,

  a bowl of lights like a bed of embers.

  I could smell food cooking on the breeze.

  if

  it was

  food-that

  hungry-making

  perfume of meat

  charring over flame.

  Voices

  ahead of me:

  a man speaking

  wearily, perhaps

  to himself, a long

  and joyless discourse;

  someone else laughing, bad

  laughter, unhinged and angry.

  A third man was asking questions.

  “Is

  a plum

  sweeter after

  it has been pushed

  in the mouth of a virgin

  to silence her as she is taken?

  And who will claim the baby child

  sleeping in the cradle made from the

  rotten carcass of the lamb that laid with

  the lion only to be eviscerated?” And so on.

  At

  the

  next

  turn in

  the steps

  they finally

  came into sight.

  They lined the stairs:

  half a dozen men nailed on

  to crosses of blackened pine.

  I couldn’t go on and for a time

  I couldn’t go back; it was the cats.

  One of the men had a wound in his side,

  a red seeping wound that made a puddle on

  the stairs, and kittens lapped at it as if it

  were cream and he was talking to them in his tired

  voice, telling all the good kitties to drink their fill.

  I

  did

  not go

  close enough

  to see his face.

  At

  last

  I returned

  the way I had

  come on shaky legs.

  The boy awaited me with

  his collection of oddities.

  “Why

  not sit

  and rest your

  sore feet, Quirinus

  Calvino?” he asked me.

  And I sat down across from

  him, not because I wanted to but

  because that was where my legs gave out.

  Neither of us spoke at first. He smiled across the blanket spread with his goods, and I pretended an interest in the stone wall that overhung the landing there. That light in the jar built and built until our shadows lunged against the rock like deformed giants, before the brightness winked out and plunged us back into our shared darkness. He offered me a skin of water but I knew better than to take anything from that child. Or thought I knew better. The light in the jar began to grow again, a single floating point of perfect whiteness, swelling like a balloon. I tried to look at it, but felt a pinch of pain in the back of my eyeballs and glanced away.

  “What is that? It burns my eyes,” I asked.

  “A little spark stolen from the sun. You can do all sorts of wonderful things with it. You could make a furnace with it, a giant furnace, powerful enough to warm a whole city, and light a thousand Edison lights. Look how bright it gets. You have to be careful though. If you were to smash this jar and let the spark escape, that same city would disappear in a clap of brightness. You can have it if you want.”

  “No, I don’t want it,” I said.

  “No. Of course not. That isn’t your sort of thing. No matter. Someone will be along later for this. But take something. Anything you want,” he said.

  “Are you Lucifer?” I asked in a rough voice.

  “Lucifer is an awful old goat who has a pitchfork and hooves and makes people suffer. I hate suffering. I only want to help people. I give gifts. That’s why I’m here. Everyone who walks these stairs before their time gets a gift to welcome them. You look thirsty. Would you like an apple?” Holding up the basket of white apples as he spoke.

  I was thirsty-my throat felt not just sore, but singed, as if I had inhaled smoke recently, and I began to reach for the offered fruit, almost reflexively, but then drew my hand back for I knew the lessons of at least one book. He grinned at me.

  “Are those-” I asked.

  “They’re from a very old and honorable tree,” he said. “You will never taste a sweeter fruit. And when you eat of it, you will be filled with ideas. Yes, even one such as you, Quirinus Calvino, who barely learned to read.”

  “I don’t want it,” I said, when what I really wanted to tell him was not to call me by name. I could not bear that he knew my name.

  He said, “Everyone will want it. They will eat and eat and be filled with understanding. Why, learning how to speak another language will be as simple as, oh, learning to build a bomb. Just one bite of the apple away. What about the lighter? You can light anything with this lighter. A cigarette. A pipe. A campfire. Imaginations. Revolutions. Books. Rivers. The sky. Another man’s soul. Even the human soul has a temperature at which it becomes flammable. The lighter has an enchantment on it, is tapped into the deepest wells of oil on the planet, and will set
fire to things for as long as the oil lasts, which I am sure will be forever.”

  “You have nothing I want,” I said.

  “I have something for everyone,” he said.

  I rose to my feet, ready to leave, although I had nowhere to go. I couldn’t walk back down the stairs. The thought made me dizzy. Neither could I go back up. Lithodora would have returned to the village by now. They would be searching the stairs for me with torches. I was surprised I hadn’t heard them already.

  The tin bird turned its head to look at me as I swayed on my heels, and blinked, the metal shutters of its eyes snapping closed, then popping open again. It let out a rusty cheep. So did I, startled by its sudden movement. I had thought it a toy, inanimate. It watched me steadily and I stared back. I had, as a child, always had an interest in ingenious mechanical objects, clockwork people who ran out of their hiding places at the stroke of noon, the woodcutter to chop wood, the maiden to dance a round. The boy followed my gaze, and smiled, then opened the cage and reached in for it. The bird leaped lightly onto his finger.

  “It sings the most beautiful song,” he said. “It finds a master, a shoulder it likes to perch on, and it sings for this person all the rest of its days. The trick to making it sing for you is to tell a lie. The bigger the better. Feed it a lie, and it will sing you the most marvelous little tune. People love to hear its song. They love it so much, they don’t even care they’re being lied to. He’s yours if you want him.”

  “I don’t want anything from you,” I said, but when I said it, the bird began to whistle: the sweetest, softest melody, as good a sound as the laughter of a pretty girl, or your mother calling you to dinner. The song sounded a bit like something played on a music box, and I imagined a studded cylinder turning inside it, banging the teeth of a silver comb. I shivered to hear it. In this place, on these stairs, I had never imagined I could hear something so right.

  He laughed and waved his hand at me. The bird’s wings snapped from the side of its body, like knives leaping from sheaths, and it glided up and lit on my shoulder.

  “You see,” said the boy on the stairs. “It likes you.”

  “I can’t pay,” I said, my voice rough and strange.

  “You’ve already paid,” said the boy.

  Then he turned his head and looked down the stairs and seemed to listen. I heard a wind rising. It made a low, soughing moan as it came up through the channel of the staircase, a deep and lonely and restless cry. The boy looked back at me. “Now go. I hear my father coming. The awful old goat.”