The Mammoth Book of Extreme Fantasy

by Mike Ashley

  There is no magic there. His dreams are of floorboards, and rafters, and shaped, squared things. He dreams in symbols and metal and wax, and when he wakes, he weeps.

  He touches his knife to the wax that night, and whispers new words into the scores and cuts and careful curves. Give me magic. Let me touch magic.

  That is not the way, the hissing voice of wild magic whispers, but it is the only way he knows. The knife slips, draws blood, and he bandages the finger and keeps going. The night falls silent. He carves until dawn.

  Simon goes to the factory sleepy-eyed and haggard. There is wax beneath his fingernails, and he does not notice or care. Jan takes him aside immediately and sends him to scrub, and chastises him loudly for not doing so the night before. Simon knows he is trying to help. Simon knows he is trying to save his job and his prospects. He scrubs with a knot of resentment building in his belly, and comes out to report sullen and with his eyes downcast.

  Jan takes him into the potters’ room, where the workers have not yet come in for the day. “What,” he asks, “has happened to make you so prickly and careless?”

  “There is no magic in me,” Simon whispers, realizing that Jan has known all along about his small thefts of wax, about his yearning and sleepless evenings, and clenches his fists tighter.

  “There is no magic in anyone,” Jan says, severe, drawn-faced. “They just borrow it for a while.”

  Simon looks down at the older man’s hands, curled around the broom like a falcon’s claw at the moment of dying. “We could make it,” he says. “We could make our own and get out of here. It spoke tome…” he says, and Jan holds up a hand.

  “Magic isn’t to be wanted. Magic is to be feared,” he says, soft, between the murmuring creaks of machinery and the shouts of vendors in the city outside the Factory gates. “Anything that must be chained to serve will destroy you, and anything worth chaining to serve can do the job right and full.”

  Simon looks at his feet, at the unravelling leather shoes that they gave him on his first day at the Factory. He did not know Jan felt himself a philosopher. “Wizards,” he says, “wear fine suits, and cast spells to their own design. They pay in gold. I’ve seen their houses…” and he has, everyone who lives or dwells a while in Calendar Point has seen those graceful, towering spires “…and their children. They never frown, except when they’re thinking of something terrible and great.”

  Jan is silent for a long time. “Sometimes I forget how young you are,” he says roughly, and puts his curled and ruined hand on Simons shoulder.

  He pulls away. He leaves the Factory, his broom still in the cubby. He goes into the stockyards, into the sewers, into the streets, looking for somewhere that is truly still, and by nightfall he is truly lost. Darkened buildings rise above him like forest trees; there are no gaslights on these streets, and there are no signs, and no smells to light his way to somewhere cleaner and bigger and less secret.

  “Magic?” he calls out, not knowing it by any older or other name.

  Simon Lake, it murmurs, heady and hesitant. What is it you truly want?

  “Magic,” he says again, closing his eyes. “I don’t want to be a farmhand anymore. I don’t want to be a cleaner. I want to be like them – the people who are always smiling.”

  You want to be special. You want to inspire: fear, or hope, or doubt.

  “I want to be an honour,” he says, and the words come formal to his lips, and for the first time, he is very afraid indeed. But the wanting is stronger, the wanting was always stronger: to be more than one is, to be great, to be the cause of something. The wild magic smells that, and despairs, and rejoices.

  Very well, the magic says, grim and sad and ready. Very well.

  Simon lifts his head up to the sky, opens his mouth and his arms, closes his eyes. Come in, he cries out to it, voiceless, all the lake stillness gone forever from his mind. Come into me.

  The world rushes into flame and light.

  The mages find him at sunrise, legs deer-quick, ears wolf-sharp, only his eyes still his own. They bring him before the wizard-magistrate, who looks upon him and calls him Simon Lake, who works in the Factory (an honour, that), who rents off Progress Square. They find his hoard of pennies, and they find his hoard of wax, half-carved into trees, into civic fountains, into the houses of the great and the small animals that haunt the lake country, stealing corn and nuts and fruit. The boardinghouse-mistress watches the wizards with eyes round as a rabbits, and her daughter cries. The herb lady nods as if some great mystery is resolved, and flirts with the inspector, and is turned away back to her tea and wares.

  There is no trial. There never is, with magic involved.

  They hang him at high noon, and the wild magic whispers in his ear, hush hush, as the trap opens and the knot tightens and his legs kick in the air. The papers say hangings are a quick death, the knot striking one just so and the suffering brief. Simon strangles slowly as the goodwives and children watch. His hands clench like those of a dying falcon, and his bear’s heart bursts, and the blood bubbles at his mouth before they cut him down and pronounce him.

  “This,” call out the street preachers, the dervishes, the mad, “is why it is foolish to toy with stolen magic. This is how you lose your soul!”

  The crowd wails and shudders in terrified glee. A few young ones turn away, lips twisted. A few more of them follow the wind than might have otherwise: cobblers boys, and shop clerks, and a heavy young woman who bastes fine gowns together for the third best seamstress in the city. They dream of bees that night, and wake up hungry, and do not go to hangings anymore. They meet, and marry, and open up public houses and greenhouses and places where things are still, and they allow no man-made magic in their homes, and they never speak of this day.

  They mark their doors with a sprig of rosemary, for remembrance, until they forget what it means or who hung their cutting first. Nobody who writes in decades to come about the Rosemary Revolution speaks of this day, or this hanging; it is forgotten by its own historians. It sleeps in peace, and it is still.

  His parents come for his body, his mother weeping, his fathers face hard as cobblestone streets. They bury him on the farm, and plant an apple tree atop the grave. The roots twist down and empty his coffin of those things that fall away in earth, leaving good hard applewood and bone in the shape of a man, a young man, one barely past his fifteenth birthday. The substance drains out of him, dirtied and spent into the catchbasin of the soil, and something else fills the gap that is left behind.

  The apple tree bears bewitching fruit. Those who bite into it go a little mad, for a while: they smell things that are not there; they see things that have never graced the lake country, machines and dirty streets and the way a night sky looks through haze and smoke. They mostly go to the city: they stay in certain public houses, they eat fruit from certain greenhouses. They make friends, and they do not visit home. They never quite fit into the lake country again, after that taste.

  There is a storm on the night ten years after Simons death. The apple tree cracks and falls, splitting into two at the touch of lightning. The children from the farms and the village crowd around it, all afraid to touch: the children are afraid of that spot. Already they do not remember why.

  The stump is uprooted and they find the roots broken, the space between them cradling the shape of a man, the bones of a man poured out on the ground between them like lost wax after the casting.

  They split the mold, but there is nothing inside at all.

  It remembers brooms. It remembers that things should always be clean and clear and true. Falcon’s-Claw-Bear’s-Heart, smelling of apples and rain and moving like wind and purpose, takes its first steps towards the taste of the city.

  SAVE A PLACE IN THE

  LIFEBOAT FOR ME

  Howard Waldrop

  When I began planning this anthology one of the very first authors I considered for inclusion was Howard Waldrop. I was, though, spoiled for choice. Waldrop (b. 1946) is one of tho
se writers who is incapable of writing anything normal, thank goodness. All of his stories are wild and unpredictable but, because of that, there were few magazine markets for his kind of madness. Much of his material appeared in small-press magazines like the beautiful Shayol or Nickelodeon - the latter published by Tom Reamy who appears elsewhere in this anthology. Waldrop’s work did appear occasionally in original anthologies and his “The Ugly Chickens” in Terry Carr’s Universe 10 in 1980 went on to win the Nebula and World Fantasy awards for that year. He has published a couple of novels, Them Bones (1984) and The Texas-Israeli War (1999) and maybe some day we’ll see I, John Mandeville, which he’s been working on since forever. Thankfully many of his short stories have been collected in various volumes, including Howard Who? (1986), All About Strange Monsters of the Recent Past (1987), and Night of the Cooters (1990), all essential reading for devotees of the bizarre and unusual. The following story, which depicts several of our favourite silver-screen comedians in search of their destiny, is just a taster.

  The hill was high and cold when they appeared there, and the first thing they did was to look around.

  It had snowed the night before, and the ground was covered about a foot deep.

  Arthur looked at Leonard and Leonard looked at Arthur.

  “Whatsa matter you? You wearin’ funny clothes again!” said Leonard.

  Arthur listened, his mouth open. He reached down to the bulbhorn tucked in his belt.

  Honk Honk went Arthur.

  “Whatsa matter us?” asked Leonard. “Look ata us! We back inna vaudeville?”

  Leonard was dressed in pants two sizes too small, and a jacket which didn’t match. He wore a tiny pointed felt hat which stood on his head like a roof on a silo.

  Arthur was dressed in a huge coat which dragged the ground, balloon pants, big shoes, and above his moppy red hair was a silk tophat, its crown broken out.

  “It’s a fine-a mess he’s gots us in disa time!”

  Arthur nodded agreement.

  “Quackenbush, he’s-a gonna hear about this!” said Leonard.

  Honk Honk went Arthur.

  The truck backed into the parking lot and ran into the car parked just inside the entrance. The glass panels which were being carried on the truck fell and shattered into thousands of slivers in the snowy street. Cars slushing down the early morning road swerved to avoid the pieces.

  “Ohh, Bud, Bud!” said the short baby-faced man behind the wheel. He was trying to back the truck over the glass and get it out of the way of the dodging cars.

  A tall thin man with a rat’s mustache ran from the glass company office and yelled at the driver.

  “Look what you’ve done. Now you’ll make me lose this job, too! Mr. Crabapple will…” He paused, looked at the little fat man, swallowed a few times.

  “Uh…hello, Lou,” he said, a tear running into his eye and brimming down his face. He turned away, pulled a handkerchief from his coveralls and wiped his eyes.

  “Hello, Bud,” said the little man, brightly. “I don’…don’…understand it either, Bud. But the man said we got something to do, and I came here to get you.” He looked around him at the littered glass. “Bud, I been a baaad boy!”

  “It doesn’t matter, Lou,” said Bud, climbing around to the passenger side of the truck. “Let’s get going before somebody gets us arrested.”

  “Oh, Bud?” asked Lou, as they drove through the town. “Did you ever get out of your contract?”

  “Yeah, Lou. Watch where you’re going! Do I have to drive myself?”

  They pulled out of Peoria at eight in the morning.

  The two men beside the road were dressed in black suits and derby hats. They stood; one fat, the other thin. The rotund one put on a most pleasant face and smiled at the passing traffic. He lifted his thumb politely, as would a gentleman, and held it as each vehicle roared past.

  When a car whizzed by, he politely tipped his hat.

  The thin man looked distraught. He tried at first to strike the same pose as the larger man, but soon became flustered. He couldn’t hold his thumb right, or let his arm droop too far.

  “No, no, no, Stanley,” said the larger, mustached man, as if he were talking to a child. “Let me show you the way a man of gentle breeding asks for a ride. Politely. Gently. Thus.”

  He struck the same pose he had before.

  A car bore down on them doing eighty miles an hour. There was no chance in the world it would stop.

  Stanley tried to strike the same pose. He checked himself against the larger man’s attitude. He found himself lacking. He rubbed his ears and looked as if he would cry.

  The car roared past, whipping their hats off.

  They bent to pick them up and bumped heads. They straightened, each signaling that the other should go ahead. They simultaneously bent and bumped heads again.

  The large man stood stock still and did a slow burn. Stanley looked flustered. Their eyes were off each other. Then they both leaped for the hats and bumped heads once more.

  They grabbed up the hats and jumped to their feet.

  They had the wrong hats on. Stanley’s derby made the larger man look like a tulip bulb. The large derby covered Stanley down to his chin. He looked like a thumbtack.

  The large man grabbed the hat away and threw Stanley’s derby to the ground.

  “MMMMMM-MMMMMM-MMMMM!” said the large man.

  Stanley retrieved his hat. “But Ollie…” he said, then began whimpering. His hat was broken.

  Suddenly Stanley pulled Ollie’s hat off and stomped it. Ollie did another slow burn, then turned and ripped off Stanley’s tie.

  Stanley kicked Ollie in the shin. The large man jumped around and punched Stanley in the kneecap.

  A car stopped, and the driver jumped out to see what the trouble was.

  Ollie kicked him in the shin. He ripped off Stanley’s coat.

  A woman pulled over and slammed into the man’s parked car. He ran over and kicked out her headlight. Stanley threw a rock through his windshield.

  Twenty minutes later, Stanley and Ollie were looking down from a hill. A thousand people were milling around on the turnpike below, tearing each other’s cars to pieces. Parts of trucks and motorcycles littered the roadway. The two watched a policeman pull up. He jumped out and yelled through a bullhorn to the people, too far away for the two men to hear what he said.

  As one, the crowd jumped him, and pieces of police car began to bounce off the blacktop.

  Ollie dusted off his clothing as meticulously as possible. His and Stanleys clothes consisted of torn underwear and crushed derby hats.

  “That’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us in, Stanley,” he said. He looked north.

  “And it looks like it shall soon snow. Mmmm-mmmm-mmmm!”

  They went over the hill as the wail of sirens began to fill the air.

  Hello, a-Central, givva me Heaven. ETcumspiri 220.”

  The switchboard hummed and crackled. Sparks leaped off the receiver of the public phone booth in the roadside park. Arthur did a back flip and jumped behind a trash can.

  The sun was out, though snow was still on the ground. It was a cold February day, and they were the only people in the park.

  The noise died down at the other end and Leonard said:

  “Hallo, Boss! Hey, Boss! We doin’-a like you tell us, but you no send us to the right place. You no send us to Iowa. You send us to Idaho, where they grow the patooties.”

  Arthur came up beside his brother and listened. He honked his horn.

  On the other end of the line, Rufus T. Quackenbush spoke:

  “Is that a goose with you, or do you have a cold?”

  “Oh, no, Boss. You funnin’-a me. That’s-a Bagatelle.”

  “Then who are you?” asked Quackenbush.

  “Oh, you know who this is. I gives you three guesses.”

  “Three guesses, huh? Hmmmm, let’s see…you’re not Babe Ruth, are you?”

  “Hah, Boss. Babe Ruth, that
’s-a chocolate bar.”

  “Hmmm. You’re not Demosthenes, are you?”

  “Nah, Boss. Demosthenes can do is bend in the middle of your leg.”

  “I should have known,” said Quackenbush. “This is Rampolini, isn’t it?”

  “You got it, Boss.”

  Arthur whistled and clapped his hands in the background.

  “Is that a hamster with you, Rampolini?”

  “Do-a hamsters whistle, Boss?”

  “Only when brought to a boil,” said Quackenbush.

  “Ahh, you too good-a for me, Boss!”

  “I know. And if I weren’t too good for you, I wouldn’t be good enough for anybody. Which is more than I can say for you.”

  “Did-a we wake you up, Boss?”

  “No, to be perfectly honest, I had to get up to answer the phone anyway. What do you want?”

  “Like I said, Boss Man, you put us inna wrong place. We no inna Iowa. We inna Idaho.”

  “That’s out of the Bronx, isn’t it? What should I do about it?”

  “Well-a, we don’t know. Even if-a we did, we know we can’t-a do it anyway, because we ain’t there. An if-a we was, we couldn’t get it done no ways.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Did-a you ever see one of our pictures, Boss?”

  There was a pause. “I see what you mean,” said Quackenbush.

  “Why for you send-a us, anyway? We was-a sleep, an then we inna Idaho!”

  “I looked at my calendar this morning. One of the dates was circled. And it didn’t have pits, either. Anyway, I just remembered that something very important shouldn’t take place today.”

  “What’s-a that got to do with us two?”

  “Well…I know it’s a little late, but I really would appreciate it if you two could manage to stop it.”

  “What’s-a gonna happen if we don’t?”