Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders

by Neil Gaiman

  She picks it up and opens it to the middle, and reads the story waiting for her: Jane and Michael follow Mary Poppins on her day off, to Heaven, and they meet the boy Jesus, who is still slightly scared of Mary Poppins because she was once his nanny, and the Holy Ghost, who complains that he has not been able to get his sheet properly white since Mary Poppins left, and God the Father, who says, “There’s no making her do anything. Not her. She’s Mary Poppins.”

  “But you’re God,” said Jane. “You created everybody and everything. They have to do what you say.”

  “Not her,” said God the Father once again, and he scratched his golden beard flecked with white. “I didn’t create her. She’s Mary Poppins.”

  And the professor stirs in her sleep, and afterward dreams that she is reading her own obituary. It has been a good life, she thinks, as she reads it, discovering her history laid out in black and white. Everyone is there. Even the people she had forgotten.

  Greta sleeps beside her boyfriend, in a small flat in Camden, and she, too, is dreaming.

  In the dream, the lion and the witch come down the hill together.

  She is standing on the battlefield, holding her sister’s hand. She looks up at the golden lion, and the burning amber of his eyes. “He’s not a tame lion, is he?” she whispers to her sister, and they shiver.

  The witch looks at them all, then she turns to the lion, and says, coldly, “I am satisfied with the terms of our agreement. You take the girls: for myself, I shall have the boys.”

  She understands what must have happened, and she runs, but the beast is upon her before she has covered a dozen paces.

  The lion eats all of her except her head, in her dream. He leaves the head, and one of her hands, just as a housecat leaves the parts of a mouse it has no desire for, for later, or as a gift.

  She wishes that he had eaten her head, then she would not have had to look. Dead eyelids cannot be closed, and she stares, unflinching, at the twisted thing her brothers have become. The great beast eats her little sister more slowly, and, it seems to her, with more relish and pleasure than it had eaten her; but then, her little sister had always been its favorite.

  The witch removes her white robes, revealing a body no less white, with high, small breasts, and nipples so dark they are almost black. The witch lies back upon the grass, spreads her legs. Beneath her body, the grass becomes rimed with frost. “Now,” she says.

  The lion licks her white cleft with its pink tongue, until she can take no more of it, and she pulls its huge mouth to hers, and wraps her icy legs into its golden fur….

  Being dead, the eyes in the head on the grass cannot look away. Being dead, they miss nothing.

  And when the two of them are done, sweaty and sticky and sated, only then does the lion amble over to the head on the grass and devour it in its huge mouth, crunching her skull in its powerful jaws, and it is then, only then, that she wakes.

  Her heart is pounding. She tries to wake her boyfriend, but he snores and grunts and will not be roused.

  It’s true, Greta thinks, irrationally, in the darkness. She grew up. She carried on. She didn’t die.

  She imagines the professor, waking in the night and listening to the noises coming from the old applewood wardrobe in the corner: to the rustlings of all these gliding ghosts, which might be mistaken for the scurries of mice or rats, to the padding of enormous velvet paws, and the distant, dangerous music of a hunting horn.

  She knows she is being ridiculous, although she will not be surprised when she reads of the professor’s demise. Death comes in the night, she thinks, before she returns to sleep. Like a lion.

  The white witch rides naked on the lion’s golden back. Its muzzle is spotted with fresh, scarlet blood. Then the vast pinkness of its tongue wipes around its face, and once more it is perfectly clean.

  INSTRUCTIONS

  Touch the wooden gate in the wall you never saw before

  Say “please” before you open the latch,

  go through,

  walk down the path.

  A red metal imp hangs from the green-painted front door,

  as a knocker,

  do not touch it; it will bite your fingers.

  Walk through the house. Take nothing. Eat nothing.

  However,

  if any creature tells you that it hungers,

  feed it.

  If it tells you that it is dirty,

  clean it.

  If it cries to you that it hurts,

  if you can,

  ease its pain.

  From the back garden you will be able to see the wild wood.

  The deep well you walk past leads down to Winter’s realm;

  there is another land at the bottom of it.

  If you turn around here,

  you can walk back, safely;

  you will lose no face. I will think no less of you.

  Once through the garden you will be in the wood.

  The trees are old. Eyes peer from the undergrowth.

  Beneath a twisted oak sits an old woman. She may ask for something;

  give it to her. She

  will point the way to the castle. Inside it

  are three princesses.

  Do not trust the youngest. Walk on.

  In the clearing beyond the castle the twelve months sit about a fire,

  warming their feet, exchanging tales.

  They may do favors for you, if you are polite.

  You may pick strawberries in December’s frost.

  Trust the wolves, but do not tell them where you are going.

  The river can be crossed by the ferry. The ferryman will take you.

  (The answer to his question is this:

  If he hands the oar to his passenger, he will be free to leave the boat.

  Only tell him this from a safe distance.)

  If an eagle gives you a feather, keep it safe.

  Remember: that giants sleep too soundly; that

  witches are often betrayed by their appetites;

  dragons have one soft spot, somewhere, always;

  hearts can be well-hidden,

  and you betray them with your tongue.

  Do not be jealous of your sister:

  know that diamonds and roses

  are as uncomfortable when they tumble from one’s lips as toads and frogs:

  colder, too, and sharper, and they cut.

  Remember your name.

  Do not lose hope—what you seek will be found.

  Trust ghosts. Trust those that you have helped to help you in their turn.

  Trust dreams.

  Trust your heart, and trust your story.

  When you come back, return the way you came.

  Favors will be returned, debts be repaid.

  Do not forget your manners.

  Do not look back.

  Ride the wise eagle (you shall not fall)

  Ride the silver fish (you will not drown)

  Ride the gray wolf (hold tightly to his fur).

  There is a worm at the heart of the tower; that is why it will not stand.

  When you reach the little house, the place your journey started,

  you will recognize it, although it will seem much smaller than you remember.

  Walk up the path, and through the garden gate you never saw before but once.

  And then go home. Or make a home.

  Or rest.

  HOW DO YOU THINK IT FEELS?

  I am in bed, now. I can feel the linen sheets beneath me, warmed to body temperature, slightly rumpled. There is no one in bed with me. My chest no longer hurts. I feel nothing at all. I feel just fine.

  My dreams are vanishing as I wake, overexposed by the glare of the morning sun through my bedroom window, and are being replaced, slowly, by memories; and now, with only a purple flower and the scent of her still on the pillow, my memories are all of Becky, and fifteen years drifts away like confetti or falling blossom through my hands.

  She was just twenty. I was by
far the older man, almost twenty-seven, with a wife, and a career, and twin little girls. And I was ready to give them all up for her.

  We met at a conference, in Hamburg, in Germany. I had seen her performing in a presentation on the future of interactive entertainment, and had found her attractive and amusing. Her hair was long and dark, her eyes were a greenish blue. At first, I was certain that she reminded me of someone I knew, and then I realized that I had never actually met the person she reminded me of: it was Emma Peel, Diana Rigg’s character in The Avengers television series. I had loved her and longed for her in black-and-white, before I ever reached my tenth birthday.

  That evening, passing her in a corridor, on my way to some software vendor’s party, I congratulated her upon her performance. She told me that she was an actress, hired for the presentation (“after all, we can’t all be in the West End, can we?”) and that her name was Rebecca.

  Later, I kissed her in a doorway, and she sighed as she pressed against me.

  Becky slept in my hotel room for the rest of the conference. I was, head-over-heels, in love, and so, I liked to think, was she. Our affair continued when we returned to England: fizzy, funny, utterly delightful. It was love, I knew, and it tasted like champagne in my mind.

  I spent all my free time with her, told my wife I was working late, needed in London, busy. Instead I was in Becky’s Battersea flat with Becky.

  I took joy in her body, the golden litheness of her skin, her blue-green eyes. She found it hard to relax during sex—she seemed to like the idea of it, but to be less impressed by the physical practicalities. She found oral sex faintly disgusting, giving or receiving it, and liked the sexual act best when it was over fastest. I hardly cared: the way she looked was enough for me, and the speed of her wit. I liked the way she made little doll-faces out of modeling clay, and the way the Plasticine crept in dark crescents under her fingernails. She had a beautiful voice, and sometimes, spontaneously, would begin to sing—popular songs, folk songs, snatches of opera, television jingles, whatever came into her mind. My wife did not sing, not even nursery rhymes to our girls.

  Colors seemed brighter because Becky was there. I began to notice parts of life I had never seen before: I saw the elegant intricacy of flowers, because Becky loved flowers; I became a fan of silent movies, because Becky loved silent movies, and I watched The Thief of Baghdad and Sherlock Junior over and over; I began to accumulate CDs and tapes, because Becky loved music, and I loved her, and I loved to love what she loved. I had never heard music before; never understood the black-and-white grace of a silent clown before; never touched or smelled or properly looked at a flower, before I met her.

  She told me that she needed to stop acting and to do something that would make her more money, and would bring that money in regularly. I put her in touch with a friend in the music business, and she became his personal assistant. I wondered, sometimes, if they were sleeping together, but I said nothing about it—I did not dare, although I brooded on it. I did not want to endanger what we had together, and I knew that I had no cause to reproach her.

  “How do you think I feel?” she asked. We were walking back to her flat from the Thai restaurant around the corner. We ate there whenever I could be with her. “Knowing that you are going back to your wife, every night? How do you think it feels for me?”

  I knew she was right. I did not want to hurt anyone, yet I felt as if I were tearing myself apart. My work, at the small computer company I owned, suffered. I began to nerve myself to tell my wife that I was leaving her. I envisioned Becky’s joy at learning that I was to be only hers forevermore; it would be hard and hurtful to Caroline, my wife, and harder on the twins, but it would have to be done.

  Each time I played with the twins, my two almost-identical girls (clue: look for the tiny mole above Amanda’s lip, the rounder line of Jessica’s jaw), their hair a lighter shade of Caroline’s dark honey color, every time I took them to the park or bathed them or tucked them in at night, it hurt me inside. But I knew what I had to do; that the pain I was feeling would soon be replaced with the perfect joy that living with Becky, loving Becky, spending every waking moment with Becky, would bring me.

  It was less than a week before Christmas, and the days were as short as they were going to get. I took Becky out to the Thai place for dinner, and, as she licked the peanut sauce from a stick of chicken satay, I told her that I would soon be leaving my wife and children for her. I expected to see a smile on her face, but she said nothing, and she did not smile.

  In her flat, that night, she refused to sleep with me. Instead, she told me it was over between us. I drank too much, cried for the last time as an adult, begged and pleaded with her to change her mind.

  “You aren’t any fun anymore,” she said, simply and flatly, as I sat, forlorn, on the floor of her living room, my back resting against the side of her battered sofa. “You used to be fun, and funny. Now you just mope around all the time.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, pathetically. “Really, I’m sorry. I can change.”

  “See?” she said. “Absolutely no fun at all.”

  Then she opened the door to her bedroom, and went inside, closing it and locking it, finally, behind her; and I sat on the floor and finished a bottle of whiskey, all on my own, and then, maudlin drunk, I wandered about her flat, touching her things and sniveling. I read her diary. I went into the bathroom and pulled her soiled panties from the laundry basket, and buried my face in them, breathing her scents. At one point I banged on her bedroom door, calling her name, but she did not respond, and she did not open the door.

  I made the gargoyle for myself in the small hours of the morning, out of gray modeling clay.

  I remember doing it. I was naked. I had found a large lump of Plasticine on the mantelpiece, and I thumbed and kneaded it until it was soft and pliable, then, in a place of drunken, horny, angry madness, I masturbated into it, and kneaded my milky seed into the gray, shapeless mess.

  I have never been a sculptor, but something took shape beneath my fingers that night: blocky hands and grinning head, stumpy wings and twisted legs: I made it of my lust and self-pity and hatred, then I baptized it with the last drops of Johnnie Walker Black Label and placed it over my heart, my own little gargoyle, to protect me from beautiful women with blue-green eyes and from ever feeling anything again.

  I lay on the floor, with the gargoyle upon my chest; and, in moments, I slept.

  When I woke up, a few hours later, her door was still locked, and it was still dark. I crawled to the bathroom, and threw up all over the toilet bowl and the floor and the scattered mess I had left of her underwear. And then I went home.

  I do not remember what I told my wife, when I got home. Perhaps there were things she did not wish to know. Don’t ask, don’t tell, all that. Perhaps Caroline teased me about Christmas drinking. I can barely remember.

  I did not ever return to the flat in Battersea.

  I saw Becky every couple of years, in passing, on the tube, or in the City, never comfortably. She seemed brittle and awkward around me, as I was, I am sure, around her. We would say hello, and she would congratulate me on whatever my latest achievements were, for I had taken my energies and channeled them into my work, building something that was, if it was not (as it was often called) an entertainment empire, at least a small principality of music and drama and interactive adventure.

  Sometimes I would meet girls, smart, beautiful, wonderful girls and, as time went on, women for whom I could have fallen; people I could have loved. But I did not love them. I did not love anybody.

  Heads and hearts: and in my head I tried not to think about Becky, assured myself I did not love her, did not need her, did not think about her. But when I did think of her, memories of her smile, or of her eyes, then I felt pain. A sharp hurt inside my rib-cage, a perceptible, actual pain inside me, as if something were squeezing sharp fingers into my heart.

  And it was at these times that I imagined that I could feel the littl
e gargoyle in my chest. It would wrap itself, stone-cold, about my heart, protecting me, until I felt nothing at all; and I would return to my work.

  Years passed: the twins grew up, and eventually they left home to go to college (one in the North of England, one in the South, my not-so-identical twins), and I left home too, leaving it with Caroline, and I moved into a large flat in Chelsea and lived on my own, and was, if not happy, then, at least content.

  And then it was yesterday afternoon. Becky saw me first, in Hyde Park, where I was sitting on a bench, reading a paperback book in the springtime sun, and she ran over to me and touched my hand.

  “Don’t you remember your old friends?” she asked.

  I looked up. “Hello, Becky.”

  “You haven’t changed.”

  “Neither have you,” I told her. I had silver-gray in my thick beard, and had lost most of my hair on the top, and she was a trim woman in her mid-thirties. I was not lying, though, and neither was she.

  “You are doing very well,” she said. “I read about you in the papers all the time.”

  “Just means that my publicity people are earning their keep. What are you doing these days?”

  She was running the press office of an independent television network. She wished, she said, that she had stuck with acting, certain that she would, by now, have been on the West End stage. She ran her hand through her long, dark hair and smiled like Emma Peel, and I would have followed her anywhere. I closed my book and put it into the pocket of my jacket.

  We walked through the park, hand in hand. The spring flowers nodded their heads at us, yellow and orange and white, as we passed.

  “Like Wordsworth,” I told her. “Daffodils.”