Mirror Kingdoms: The Best of Peter S. Beagle

by Peter S. Beagle

  Winter was always hard in that kingdom, even in the south country, but the Grand Vizier was profoundly glad of it. The snow and mud closed the roads, for one thing: there would be no further pursuit of the king for a time, and who knew what might happen, or have happened, by spring?

  What news reached the farm suggested that a group of the king’s former advisors had banded together to install a ruler of their choosing, and thus restore at least their notion of order to the kingdom, but the Vizier could not discover his name, nor learn any further details of the story. But he allowed himself to be somewhat hopeful, to imagine that perhaps—just perhaps—the hunt might have dwindled away, and that the king’s existence might have become completely unimportant to the new regime. For the first time in his long career of service, the Grand Vizier dreamed a small dream for himself.

  But with the thawing of the roads, with the tinkling dissolution of the icicles that had fringed the farmhouse’s gables for many months, with the first tentative sounds of the frogs who had slept in the deep beds of the frozen streams all winter… the soldiers came marching. With the first storks, they came.

  Martine, Clara’s younger daughter, was playing by the awakening pond one afternoon, and heard their boots and the rattle of their mail before they had rounded the bend in the road. She, like all the others, had been told over and over that if she ever saw even one soldier she must run straight to the house and warn her mother’s special friend, and the other one as well, the storyteller. She never waited to see these, but was up and away at the first sound, and through the front door in a muddy flash, crying, “They’re here! They’re here!”

  Antonio had long since prepared a hiding place for King Pelles and the Grand Vizier in case of just such an emergency. It lay under the floor of his own bedroom, so cunningly made and so close-fit that it was impossible to tell which boards might turn on hinges, or how to make them open, even if you knew. The two men were down there, motionless in the dark, well before the soldiers had reached the farmhouse; until the first fist hammered on the front door, the only sound they heard was the beating of each other’s hearts.

  The soldiers were polite, as soldiers go. They trampled no chickens, broke nothing in the house, and kept their hands off Antonio’s fresh stock of winter ale, last of the season. Filling the kitchen with their size and the noise of their bodies, they treated Nerissa and Clara with truly remarkable courtesy; and their captain offered boiled sweets to the children clustered behind them, even responding with a good-humored chuckle when little Martine kicked his shin. Nor did they ask a single question concerning guests, or visitors, or new-hired laborers. Indeed, they were so amiable and considerate, by contrast with what the family had expected, that it took Nerissa a moment longer than it should have to realize that they had not been sent for the king and the Grand Vizier at all.

  They had come for her husband.

  “You see, ma’am,” the Captain explained, as three of his men laid hold of Antonio, who had bolted too late for the back door, “the war just keeps going on. Wars, I mean. It’s chaos, madness, really it is, ever since that idiot Pelles started the whole thing. Everyone turning against everyone else—whole regiments changing sides, generals selling out their own troops—mutiny over there, rebellion here, betrayal that way, corruption this way… and what’s a poor soldier to do but follow his orders, no matter who’s giving them today? And my orders all winter have been to round up every single warm body, which means every able, breathing male with both legs under him, and ship them straightaway to the front. And so that’s what I do.”

  “The front,” Nerissa said numbly. “Which front? Where is the battle?”

  The Captain spread his arms in dramatic frustration. “Well, I don’t know which front, do I? As many of them as there are these days? Somebody else tells me that when we get there. Very sorry to be snatching away your breadwinner, ma’am—’pon my soul, I am—but there it is, you see, and I put it to you, what’s a poor soldier to do?” He turned irritably toward the soldiers struggling with Antonio. “Hold him, blast you! What’s the bloody matter with you?”

  In the moment that his gaze was not on her, Nerissa reached for her favorite butchering knife. Behind her, Clara’s hand closed silently on a cleaver. Only Martine saw, and drew breath to scream more loudly than she ever had in her short life. But the Captain was never to know how close he was to death in that moment, because just then King Pelles walked alone into the kitchen.

  He wore his royal robes, and his crown as well, which the children had never seen in all the time he had lived with them. Nodding pleasantly at the soldiers, he said to the Captain, “Let the man go. You will have a much richer prize to show your general than some poor farmer.”

  The Captain was dumb with amazement, turning all sorts of colors as he gaped at the king. His men, thoroughly astounded themselves, eased their grip on Antonio, who promptly burst free and headed for the door a second time. Some would have given chase, but King Pelles snapped out again, “Let him go!” and it was a king’s order, prisoner or no. The men fell back.

  “We weren’t looking for you, sir,” the Captain said, almost meekly. “We thought you were dead.”

  “Well, how much better for you that I’m not,” the king replied briskly. “There will be a bonus involved, surely, and you certainly should be able to trade me to one side or another—possibly all of them, if you manage it right. I know all about managing,” he added, in a somewhat different voice.

  A young officer just behind the captain demanded, “Where is the Grand Vizier? He was seen with you on the road.”

  King Pelles shrugged lightly and sighed. “And that was where he died, on the way here, poor chap. I buried him myself.” He turned back to the Captain. “Where are you supposed to take me, if I may ask?”

  “To the new king,” the Captain muttered in answer. “To King Phoebus.”

  “To my brother?” It was the king’s turn to be astonished. “My brother is king now?”

  “As of three days ago, anyway. When I left headquarters, he was.” The Captain spread his arms wide again. “What do I know, these days?”

  Even in his happiest moments on Nerissa and Antonio’s farm, the king had never laughed as he laughed now, with a kind of delight no less rich for being ironic. “Well,” he said finally. “Well, by all means, let us go to my brother. Let us go to King Phoebus, then—and on the way, perhaps we might talk about managing.” He removed his crown, smiling as he handed it to the Captain. “There you are. Can’t be king if you don’t have a crown, you know.”

  Nerissa and Clara stood equally as stunned as the men who cautiously laid hands on the unresisting King Pelles; but the two youngest children set up a wail of angry protest when they began leading him away. They clung to his legs and wept, and neither the Captain nor their mother could part them from him. That took the king himself, who finally turned to put his arms around them, calling each by name, and saying, “Remember the stories. My stories will always be with you.” He embraced the two women, saying to Clara in a low voice, “Take care of him, as he took care of me.” Then he went away with the soldiers, eyes clear and a smile on his face.

  If the Captain had looked back, he might well have seen the Grand Vizier, who came wandering into the kitchen a moment later, nursing a large bruise on his cheekbone, and another already forming on his jaw. Clara flew to him, as he said dazedly, “He hit me. I wouldn’t let him surrender himself alone, so then he…. Call them back—I’m his Vizier, he can’t go without me. Call them back.”

  “Hush,” Clara said, holding him. “Hush.”

  In time the long night of wars, rebellions, and retaliations of every sort slowly gave way at least to truces born of simple exhaustion, and reliable news became easier to come by, even for wary hillfolk like themselves. Thus the Grand Vizier was able to discover that the king’s brother Phoebus had quite quickly been overthrown, very likely while the soldiers were still on the road with their captive. But further he coul
d not go. He never found out what had become of King Pelles, and after some time he came to realize that he did not really want to.

  “As long as we don’t know anything certainly,” he said to his family, “it is always possible that he might still be alive. Somewhere. I cannot speak for anyone else, but that is the only way I can live with his sacrifice.”

  “Perhaps sacrifice was the only way he could live,” suggested his wife. The Grand Vizier turned to her in some surprise, and Clara smiled at him. “I heard him in the night too,” she said.

  “I hear his stories,” young Martine said importantly. “I close my eyes when I get into bed, and he tells me a story.”

  “Yes,” said the Grand Vizier softly. “Yes, he tells me stories too.”

  VANISHING

  Jansen knew perfectly well that when Arl asked him to drive her to the clinic for her regular prenatal checkup, it meant that every single one of his daughter’s usual rides was unavailable. She had already told him that it wouldn’t be necessary for him to wait; that Elly, her mother, would be off work by the time the examination was done, and could bring her home. They drove down to Klamath Falls in silence, except for his stiffly-phrased questions about the health of the child she was carrying, and the state of her preparations for its arrival. Once he asked when she expected her husband back, but her reply was such a vague mumble that he missed the sense of it completely. Now and then he glanced sideways at her, but when she met his eyes with her own fierce, stubborn brown ones, he looked away.

  When they parked at the clinic, he said, “I’ll come in with you.”

  “You don’t have to,” Arl said. “I told you.”

  “Yeah, I know what you told me. But it’s my grandson in there”—he pointed at her heavily rounded belly—“and I’m entitled to know how he’s getting on. Let’s go.”

  Arl did not move. “Dad, I really don’t want you in there.”

  Jansen consciously kept his voice low and casual. “Tell you what, I don’t care.” He got out of the car, walked around to the passenger side, and opened the door. Arl sat where she was for a moment, giving him the I just dare you face he’d known since her childhood; but then she sighed abruptly and pushed herself to her feet, ignoring his offered hand, and plodded ahead of him to the clinic. Jansen followed closely, afraid that she might fall, the walkway being wet with recently melted snow. He would have taken her arm, but he knew better.

  This one would rather die than forgive me. Gracie almost has, Elly might—someday—but Arl? Not ever.

  In the clinic they sat one chair apart after she signed in. Jansen pretended to be browsing through Sports Illustrated until Arl disappeared with the OB/GYN nurse. He lowered the magazine to his lap then, and simply stared straight ahead at the gray world beyond the window. A sticky-faced child, running by, kicked his ankle and kept going, leaving its pursuing mother to apologize; a young couple sitting next to him argued in savagely-controlled whispers over the exact responsibility for a sexually-transmitted disease. Jansen froze it all out and asked himself for the hundredth useless time why he shouldn’t sell the shop—or just close it and leave, the way people were walking away from their own homes these days. Walk away and put some daylight between himself and trouble. Hanging around sure as hell wasn’t doing him any good, and alimony checks didn’t care whether you mailed them from Dallas or down the block. Neither did Elly and the girls, not so you’d notice. At least in Dallas he could be warm while he was lonely. He let his eyelids drift shut as he tried to imagine being somewhere else, being someone else, and failed miserably in the attempt. Eyes closed, all the screw-ups and disappointments just seemed to press in closer than ever.

  Shit, he thought. All of it, all of it. And then, At least the little rugrat quit zooming around. That’s something.

  The magazine slid from his relaxed fingers, but he didn’t hear it hit the floor, and when he opened his eyes to reach down and pick it up he saw that he wasn’t in the waiting room anymore.

  He wasn’t in Klamath Falls anymore, either. It was night, and he was on the Axel-Springer-Strasse. Instantly alert, he knew where he was, and never thought for a second that he was dreaming. Despite shock, beyond the uncertainties and anxieties of age, he knew that after more than forty-five years he was back at the Wall. The Wall that didn’t exist anymore.

  Kreuzberg district, West Berlin, between Checkpoint Charlie and the checkpoint at Heinrich-Heine-Strasse, just past where the Zimmerstrasse runs out and the barbed wire and barriers start zigzagging west….

  There it was, directly before him, just there, lit by streetlamps—not the graffiti-covered reinforced concrete of the Grenzmauer 75 that had been hammered to bits by the joyously triumphant “woodpeckers,” East and West, when Germany was reunited, and the pieces sold off for souvenirs, but the crude first version he had patrolled in 1963, a gross lump haphazardly thrown together from iron supports, tangles of barbed wire, and dirty gray cement building blocks the East German workers had pasted in place with slaps of mortar no one bothered to smooth. Jansen said softly, “No.” He put his fingers to his mouth, like a child, shaking his head hard enough that his neck hurt, hoping desperately to make the clinic waiting-room materialize around him; but the Wall stayed where it was, and so did he.

  He was sitting, he realized, in the doorway of a building he did not want to think about; had, in fact, refused to think about for many years. The old ironwork of the entrance was hard and cold against his shoulders as he pushed away from it and struggled to his feet.

  Everything around him was familiar, his memory somehow fresher for so rarely having been examined. To his right the Wall angled sharply, blocking the road and continuing along the Kommandantenstrasse, while across from him he could see, just barely, the top of the eastern guard tower that looked down on the Death Strip, that deadly emptiness between the eastern inner fence and the Wall, where the VoPos and Russians would fire on anyone trying to make it across to West Berlin.

  Jansen turned from the Wall and took a few hesitant paces along the street. Most of it had actually belonged to East Germany—the Wall had been built several meters inside the formal demarcation line between East and West, so in some places any West Berliner who stepped too close was in danger of being arrested by East German guards; but elsewhere, in the West Berlin suburbs and beyond, there had been small family gardens growing literally in the shadow of the Wall, and even a little fishing going on. Jansen had always admired the Germans’ make-do adaptiveness.

  Here in the city’s urban heart, however, the buildings and shops and little businesses displayed a jumble of conditions, some still unrepaired nearly twenty years after the Allies had bombed and blasted their way into Berlin. Aside from the pooling glow of the streetlamps, Jansen could see no slightest sign of life. All the windows were dark, no smoke rose from any chimneys, and there was no one else in the street. The world was as hushed as though it had stopped between breaths. Beneath the unnaturally starless, cloudless black of the night sky there was not so much as a pigeon searching for crumbs, or a stray dog trotting freely.

  Jansen moved on in the silence, confused and wary.

  A few buildings past the Zimmerstrasse he couldn’t take it anymore. Feeling overwhelmed in the empty quiet, he knocked at the next door he came to, and waited, struggling to bring back what little German he had ever had. Sprechen Sie Englische? of course. He’d used that one a lot, and found enough Germans who did to get by. But there was also Wo bin ich?—“Where am I?” and Was ist los?—“What is happening?”—and Bitte, ich bin verloren—“Please, I’m lost.” They all seemed entirely appropriate to his situation.

  When no one responded, he knocked again, harder; then tried the next door, with the same result, and then the three doors after that, each one in turn. Nothing. Yet he had no sense of the city being abandoned, evacuated; even the front window of the little shop where he and Harding had taken turns buying sausages and cheese for lunch was still crowded with its mysterious, wondrous wares. He
saw his dark reflection in the shop window, and recognized his daily grizzled self: lean-faced and thin-mouthed, with deep-set, distant eyes… no change there, he thought: an old man caught, somehow, in this younger Jansen’s place.

  He might have graduated from knocking to shouting, except for what he discovered at the next intersection.

  Ernie Hamblin—one of the traffic section MPs quartered with Jansen in the Andrews Barracks—had gotten a big laugh out of Jansen getting turned around and lost, twice, in his first week on duty, all because the two streets that met here had four different names, one for each direction of the compass. Jansen looked to the right, up the Kochstrasse, and saw nothing unusual when compared with his memory. Straight ahead—as Axel-Springer-Strasse became the Lindenstrasse—looked wrong, but in the darkness he couldn’t quite make out why. To the left though, down the Oranienstrasse, there was nothing.

  Literally nothing. No street, no houses, no streetlamps… only the same endless black as the sky, extending both outward and downward without the slightest hint of change. He walked as close to the road’s sharp edge as he dared, trying to make sense of what he wasn’t seeing, but could not. It wasn’t a cliff face or a pit: it was simply emptiness, darkness vast and implacable, an utter end to the world, as if God had shrugged, shaken His head and walked away in the middle of the Third Day. The ground that should have been there was gone. The city that should have been built on it was gone and worse than gone, carved away with absolute, unhuman precision. Looking out and away at that edge, where it floated rootless in the black sky, Jansen could see buildings that had been neatly sliced in half, as though by some cosmic guillotine, their truncated interiors looking pitifully like opened dollhouses.

  After a while Jansen realized that the edge had a shape; and that it matched, block for receding block, the cartoon lightning jag that was the corresponding section of the Wall. In the face of that understanding, rational thought was impossible. He turned and ran, and didn’t notice anything at all until he stopped, out of breath and shaking, in front of the same doorway where he’d come back to this place.