The Long List Anthology 2

by Aliette de Bodard

  She wondered if that would stop him, or if he would just go to the next cheapest person in line.

  He came in, and her stomach dropped.

  Be professional. You’re a pro. Smile and nod. It doesn’t matter why he buys it, only that you can pay the rent on the stall.

  He picked up the smallest carving. It was an older one, a mallard, and she had finally accepted that it was never going to sell and had dropped the price on it.

  Her good intentions deserted her.

  “It’s not very good,” she said.

  He shook his head. The loose skin under his throat moved. “No,” he said. “It isn’t.”

  Sarah let out a single, frustrated sob. “Then why are you buying it? And what am I doing wrong?”

  She put her face in her hands.

  She heard Jep shift from foot to foot, and then he made his slow way up to the counter, and around it. He put one hand on her shoulder and squeezed, harder and heavier than she would have expected.

  “You’re cutting too slow,” he said.

  She wiped her eyes on the back of her wrist. “W–what?”

  He touched the half–carved ruddy, where it sat clamped in the vise. “You’re working too slow,” he said. He pointed to a wobbling line across a feather. “It slips and gouges here. You’re afraid to go faster, so the cuts aren’t clean.”

  He took the carving knife from the bench and made a single unhurried cut, still faster than anything she had ever done. A curl of wood came up behind it, and then it was the edge of the duck’s wing, tucked against its body, and the line was long and clean and perfect.

  “I can’t do that!” said Sarah. And then, so fast that she almost tripped over her own words, “Thank you.”

  Jep looked at her. His immobile face cracked a little, and he said “Will you drive me home? I want to show you something.”

  It was madness driving a strange man home, but she did it anyway. She had her cell phone and Rauf knew what was happening and anyway, Jep was so old that if he tried to kill her, he’d probably have a heart attack stabbing her. She opened the door of her battered truck and let him climb into the cab.

  He lived only a few blocks from the flea market, down a shaded street. The lawns were by turns overgrown and painfully, shabbily tidy.

  Jep’s house was one of the tidy ones. He led her down the walk and paused in front of the battered wrought iron door.

  “Please don’t tell anyone about this,” he said. “It’s not… it’s nothing…”

  He stopped, as if he had run out of words. Sarah said, “I won’t,” and hoped again that she wasn’t making a very stupid mistake.

  He unlocked the door. Inside, it was very dim and she could hear a TV blaring somewhere in another room. The linoleum was a dreadful pattern from the Seventies and there was a little plaster crucifix on one wall, and a painting of sheep on the other. The sheep were fluffy and big–eyed and Sarah couldn’t imagine Jep buying such a thing.

  He led her past the kitchen, to the back of the house and a short hallway and a plain wooden door. She could hear the TV through it. He unlocked that, too, and stepped through the doorway in front of her. She caught a glimpse of a room with a couch and a TV and debris littering the floor.

  “Hello, old man,” said a creaking, clacking voice. “Come to feed me?”

  Sarah’s first thought was that the light from the TV was casting some awful shadow on the person sitting on the couch.

  Her second was that she wanted out of the house, and she wanted out of it now, and she would have run if she thought her legs could carry her.

  There was a marionette on the couch.

  It was the size of a human–being. It had a mouth like a nutcracker and its face was carved like a Roman god. Curls of gilded hair ringed its head.

  Someone is working it—someone—there’s a puppeteer up on the ceiling or something—

  It turned its head at her, and she saw its expression change. The wood moved.

  She backed up so fast that her spine struck the wall opposite. She slid down it. She thought she might be sick.

  It can’t be real wood. It’s a person painted to look like a marionette. It’s a mask or a special effect or something.

  It snickered. “I can’t eat her,” said the marionette. It clacked its hollow jaws at her. “Or I could try, but neither of us will enjoy it.”

  “That’s enough,” said Jep.

  The TV was showing some ridiculous daytime game show. The host gestured for an audience member to come down and try their luck.

  Are you the lucky person who’s seen a horror and is going to walk away alive? Come on down!

  “Enough,” said the marionette. Its voice was nothing like human. “Never enough. Hasn’t been enough since the old lady died.”

  Jep reached in his bag and took out the carved mallard. He threw it toward the couch.

  The marionette caught it neatly out of midair—it can’t be on strings, no puppeteer on earth could make a thing on strings do that—and grabbed the decoy’s neck. She could see the fingers, beautifully articulated, each ball joint perfect, ending in tapered points.

  The duck carving came alive.

  Sarah watched as her poor mangled mallard suddenly stretched out its wings. She caught a glimpse of carved wooden feathers, the bill opening, the legs—she hadn’t even carved legs! Where had they come from?—flailing.

  It hung poised for a moment, as if in flight, and then the marionette wrung its neck.

  The decoy collapsed. It was still wood, it could only be wood, but it was wood carved like a dead bird, the wings trailing down.

  The marionette opened its mouth impossibly wide, showing a black, toothless opening that ran halfway down the thing’s throat, and bit into the mallard’s breast.

  Wood splintered. The marionette chewed. Sawdust fell down around it, and a single wooden feather drifted to the floor.

  It took another bite, and another, then wiped its mouth.

  “Where’s my horse, old man?” asked the marionette.

  The game show host on TV showed the contestants what they could win. Door after door opened, revealing new cars and shiny appliances, and the marionette turned away. It lowered its gaping mouth to the body of the duck and chewed as it watched.

  Jep came out and closed the door. He locked it again, his movements as slow as when he came into the stall.

  “What,” said Sarah from the floor. “What. What?” She looked up at him, half in fear, half hoping that he would confirm what she thought she’d seen. “What was that? What—who—”

  He helped her into the kitchen and then he made tea. When he opened the pantry to get the tea bags, she could see empty shelves, a few cans, and a pink hat on a hook that certainly wasn’t his.

  She could hear the TV from down the hall still, and knowing what was sitting there and watching the screen made her shudder. If she thought too closely, she’d go completely mad. Perhaps she’d gone mad already.

  Did my mallard really come alive? Did it really—no, it couldn’t have—it was some kind of trick, he had a live duck in his bag all this time—

  Which was completely ridiculous. He’d had the bag on his lap in the truck. She would have noticed if he was carrying a live duck around in it.

  She started to laugh and stuffed both hands in her mouth to stop it.

  “He can only eat wooden meat,” said Jep. He pushed the mug of tea in front of her. It had a faded picture of a kitten on it. The ancient avocado refrigerator hummed soothingly. “He doesn’t eat much of it, not really. A duck will last him all week. And the wood doesn’t go bad.”

  Sarah stared across the table at him. She wondered if he’d let her go, if she ran.

  “He’s wood,” she said.

  Jep nodded.

  “He’s alive, though.”

  Jep nodded again.

  Sarah held the mug of tea and her hands shook so badly that she had to set it back down on the table. The faded kitten ogled at her.

>   “My wife wanted a son,” he said. “We couldn’t have one. So I carved him.” He looked into his own tea. “It’s not a good idea to do that.”

  “No,” said Sarah in a high voice. “No, I bet it isn’t!”

  It was impossible, of course. She knew that it was impossible.

  She thought of the carved walrus and the laughing gull and the prancing horses.

  If any man on earth could have brought a carving to life, it would have been the person who carved those horses.

  “How did you do it?” she whispered.

  Jep shrugged. “Wood’s half alive already,” he said. “You know. A good carving’s not a dead thing, if you put enough of your heart into it.”

  Sarah clutched the mug of tea. It was hot enough that her hands were starting to burn, but she had to hold onto something.

  Yes. She did know. But there was a great deal of distance between believing that good art had a life of its own, and having a thing that sat in a room and tore apart carved birds with its clacking mouth.

  “I think more people can do it than let on,” said Jep. “But you shouldn’t make people. It’s not good, making people like that.”

  “You’ve been feeding him my carvings,” said Sarah. She said it out loud and felt nothing at all. She knew that she should feel something—grief, perhaps, or outrage. They had not been very good carvings, but she had worked hard on them. She didn’t expect them to end up in museums, but she’d thought that maybe someone was appreciating them.

  Apparently they had been appreciated briefly, and only once.

  She thought of the mallard coming to life and had to put the tea down and put her hands over her mouth.

  Had all her poor carvings come to life at the last? Had they been alive just so that they could die?

  Now she felt something, but it was so huge and terrible that she didn’t dare let it out.

  “I’m sorry,” said Jep. “They have to be hand–carved. I tried the mass–produced ones and they don’t come alive. He can’t eat them.”

  He reached across the table and touched her hand, tentatively. “It’s not that yours are bad. It’s just… I’m on a fixed income. I can’t afford anyone else’s.”

  She took a burning gulp of tea. It seared all the way down.

  When she could speak again, she said “Why don’t you carve them yourself?”

  He rose from the table and led her to the back door.

  There were two sets of boots by it. One was large and black and looked like the footwear equivalent of Jep’s suit.

  The other pair were smaller and faded and had pink flowers on them. She looked away.

  It was entirely possible, of course, that Jep planned to kill her, now that she knew his terrible secret, and bury her in the backyard. But stepping outside was a relief and it was hard to believe, as the sunlight fell over her, what lay in the house behind her.

  There was a little wooden shed behind the house. He led her to it and opened the door.

  It was almost completely empty. There was a table in one corner, and few pieces of wood slid through the rafters. Jars of nails caught the light from the windowsill.

  It smelled of pine and dust. Sarah turned her head, tracing pale squares on the floor, where machinery had been and now was gone. There were not even spiderwebs in the corners.

  So poor they can’t afford cobwebs, her mother had said once, about a relative. And here it was. The only things left were the shop lights overhead, their bulbs gone dim, but still she recognized it.

  “This was your woodshop, wasn’t it?” said Sarah.

  Jep nodded. There was no emotion on his face, not even grief. “When my wife was sick, I had to sell the tools. We couldn’t afford the meds otherwise. We would have lost the house, and then someone would have found him.”

  He straightened. “I didn’t tell her, of course. I said I’d got a commission. She never knew.”

  There was a note in his voice that at first she thought was bitterness, and then recognized.

  Pride.

  He sold all his equipment to pay for his wife’s care. And he’s proud that she never found out about it.

  She had the sensation again of standing on the edge of an emotion so huge that if she let it reach her, she would drown.

  “This is the only thing left,” Jep said. He pointed behind her, up against the wall, and she turned. “Couldn’t find a buyer, since it wasn’t done.”

  It was a horse.

  It stood twice the size of the carousel horses, the neck arched. Its face was exquisitely carved, its front hooves feathered like a draft horse. The mane rippled. There was no bridle, no saddle, hardly any decoration. It needed none.

  The back half, though, was barely roughed in. The hooves were square and the tail was a crude rectangle of wood. She could see the exact point where he had set down the chisel, the different coloration of the wood.

  He was working on this when his wife got sick.

  It was a crime that it had never been finished.

  And what do you want him to finish it with? His teeth?

  She thought of the marionette saying Where’s my horse, old man?

  She stepped out of the shed and went around the house, toward her truck. Astonishingly, she did not seem to be dead. Jep walked with her, and didn’t show any sign of stopping her.

  “Don’t think too badly of him,” he said. “My wife tried to teach him some manners. She loved him. He misses her.”

  So do you, thought Sarah, thinking of the flowered boots by the back door and the hat still hanging in the pantry.

  “It’s the TV,” said Jep. “But if he doesn’t have it, he gets restless. And there’s nowhere he can go.”

  “What are you going to do?” asked Sarah, with her hand on the door handle.

  He stood on the sidewalk, not moving. Then he made the barest shrug. “Keep feeding him,” he said, and turned away.

  She drove around the block and then she parked the truck and bent over the steering wheel and sobbed.

  She cried for horror and for her poor dead carvings and for an old man who had lost everything and then had lost his wife too, who was left caring for a monster. She cried until her eyes were dry and burning and her nose ached and her forearms hurt where the steering wheel cut into them, and the world was still terrible.

  Then, because she’d left the cash box there, and because some habits die hard, she went back to the flea market.

  “You okay?” asked Rauf. “You don’t look so good. What did he want, anyway?”

  Sarah exhaled. Her throat was raw. “He showed me his workshop,” she croaked “He doesn’t carve since his wife died.”

  Rauf nodded.

  “If my wife died,” he said slowly, “I wouldn’t do anything again. I’d just close up the shop and sit down and wait to see her again.”

  Sarah had met Rauf’s wife two or three times, a small, round, dark–skinned woman with a smile that could light up a continent. She wondered if it was her smile that could make her husband want to do nothing but sit down and die if he lost her.

  She wondered what Jep’s wife’s smile had been like.

  “Hey, it’s okay,” said Rauf, seeing her face. “She’ll outlive me. She’ll do better without me than I would without her.”

  Sarah laughed dutifully and went into her stall. She threw her tools into her bag—all of them, and the paints too, which took three trips out to the truck—and dropped the half–finished ruddy on the passenger seat.

  She went home to get the rest of her gear, and then through a drive–thru because she couldn’t live on Rauf’s popcorn all day.

  And then she drove back to the little house with the painfully tidy yard and knocked on the door with her hands full of chisels and a bag of burgers.

  Jep opened the door and blinked at her.

  “Come on,” she said. “I’ve brought my tools. Let’s finish your horse.”

  Sarah thought, at some point in that mad night, that she had learned more
about carving in the last five hours than she had learned in the fifteen years leading up to it. Her hands were nicked and bloody and her arms ached from holding the heavy wood at the proper angle. She did not have a vise remotely large enough, so they had to improvise with the table and the walls.

  The years did not fall away from Jep’s face, but his hands were younger than they had ever been. He stroked the tools over the surface of the horse and under the blades, the muscles came to shining life.

  She knew that her tools were cheap, amateurish things compared to the woodshop he must have had, but he held them as if they belonged to a master.

  When he passed her the knife and gestured to the horse’s tail, she stared at him.

  “Are you sure?” she said. “My ducks aren’t that good…”

  He stared down at the horse.

  “The greatest thing I ever made came alive,” he said finally. “Because I wanted to make my wife happy. And now she’s gone and it sits there and I feed it and sometimes I dream about setting us both on fire.”

  Sarah’s hand closed convulsively on the carving knife. She swallowed.

  “You’re a good girl,” said Jep. He sounded tired. She knew that it must be very late. “I don’t know if this will work. But I want you to know I’m grateful. And I’m sorry about all your decoys.”

  “It’s all right,” said Sarah, even though it wasn’t.

  She steeled herself, and began to carve the tail.

  It was closer to morning than midnight when Jep cut the last hair on the back hoof. Sarah had been sanding the flanks until they gleamed under the shop lights.

  He stepped back and looked at the horse.

  “Yes,” he said finally. “Yes, that’s not bad.”

  There was a noise at the door.

  They both looked up, and Sarah took a step back.

  The marionette stood in the entryway.

  It’s between us and the outside, what do I do, can we distract it…

  She moved so the horse was between her and the creature. If it came at them, it would have to move out of the doorway, and she could make a break for it.

  And what about Jep? He can’t move that fast.

  “I locked the door,” said Jep. “I always lock it.”