Ages of Wonder

by Julie E. Czerneda

  I perceive a crowd similar to the one around me, but I can’t distinguish the details. “What should I see there?”

  The Flutz sorcerer makes a discreet sign and my eyes shed tears again, then suddenly I can zoom in on distant targets. I study the expanse of fields on the other side of the city, where a swarm of bodies moves, mandibles clacking—beasts born from the most despicable nightmares.

  For now, I have limited yours to this side of the city. The wizardry still works because it is alien to the earth deities. But not for long. The others, though, the ones that you saw on the far side, they’re our gods and creatures. They started gathering there last night. And we can’t hold them there.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Richard, even if you decide not to believe in gods or fairy tales, all of these will continue to exist in the shadows deep in your soul. You take them with you everywhere you go. And now you have brought your entire mythological existence to this side of the universe. Even if you have banished them from your consciousness, you have still worn them permanently in your being and now they’re here, in our world, ready to take it by force.

  The Flutz pauses to let these ideas sink in.

  Our world is too small and crowded for such an invasion. What you see beyond the city is our divine army preparing to confront the invaders.

  “That’s insane,” I protest, terrified by the implications.

  It will be a bloodbath, a slaughter of cataclysmic proportions that we, the Flutzi, cannot watch from the sidelines. It will be our apocalypse, to use one of your terms. The Flutzan world will cease to exist after this confrontation. Our civilization will fall into ruin; we cannot know if there will be any survivors left to rise and start all over again. It is the End of the World War. I know in detail all the prophecies, and I recognize the signs now.

  I remain silent, overwhelmed by all these revelations. The scientist in me keeps saying that everything I’ve heard and seen is impossible. And yet, on a different level, a deeper one, I begin to believe.

  We killed your envoy hoping that once the only humans among us were dead, everything they brought with them would vanish as well. We were wrong, and we are sorry for the crime we committed. But the truth is that we’re desperate. And you, Richard, you’re our last chance.

  “What could I do?”

  There’s only one solution left—you need to make the final step in the evolution of the human species. Give up for good and forever everything that is divine and magic in you, uproot faith, abandon creation, and they will all disappear into nothingness.

  “Is such a thing possible?” I ask without thinking.

  I’ll give you a magic potion that you must distribute to all humans. Tomorrow morning, when you awaken, everything will be forgotten.

  I look again at the valley that bustles with creatures from fairy tales, legends, and myths. Human culture and civilization, in the flesh. Deicide or apocalypse? What right do we, humans, have to destroy a world? But how to choose? How can we choose?

  “All right,” I agree to gain some time. “Give me the potion.”

  Ximb leads me back to the shuttle. The two warriors join us. This time I see the forest around teeming with fantastic beings, for whom I do not exist as long as I don’t leave the flowers’ protection.

  A few steps from the entrance I stop, surprised. On the metallic hood, above the cockpit, a character waits, leaning on his sword. I know him as the archangel Michael. His eyes, searching the surroundings, pass over me—I am as invisible to him as I am to all the others. And yet, he suddenly seems startled; somehow, he can sense me. Like a blind man, he gazes blankly at the general area where I’m standing.

  What happened? the Flutz sorcerer asks me anxiously.

  I swallow and try to answer, but I can’t take my eyes or thoughts off the angel. I’ve seen a lot of movies and cartoons containing dragons, elves, and dwarves. But how many times in life does one have the chance to see a real live angel? And even more, the archangel Michael himself! “Help the angels fly,” I remember Dr. Henderson telling me before my departure. Now, I understand.

  Don’t look. Close your eyes and go! Ximb commands me.

  But I can’t move. The angel deposits his gigantic sword on the shuttle’s metal hull, and kneels. His white and shining wings stretch to the right and to the left; he puts his hands together in prayer and lowers his eyes. He remains in that position, mutely imploring me, the man, the mortal, the sinner Richard. I feel tears flowing down my cheeks.

  The Flutzan emperor’s emissary makes a sign. The two moth-warriors jump onto the hull next to Michael. They cut down God’s messenger with their arm-blades as if he’s only a wax doll. I try to scream, but everything happens too fast.

  Richard! I perceive the sinister rattle of the sorcerer’s thoughts.

  In the heat of the moment I can’t control my feelings and I look at it with hate, then I breathe deeply and calm down. Ximb is not doing anything but protecting its world. My decision has nothing to do with it or its deeds. The choice is still between deicide and the Flutzi apocalypse.

  “I’ll go back to the planet and let them taste their own medicine. They’ve infected me with a virus that would have created an epidemic on board Odyssey. They’re very advanced; we won’t have too many chances against them. So my advice is, leave orbit as soon as possible and never come back to their world.”

  The Chief of Security is quiet for almost a minute, then replies, “The President agrees with your solution. He wants you to know that the people of Odyssey are profoundly grateful. You will live forever in our conscience, as the first hero of our colony. God bless you.”

  The transmission ends. The shuttle is silent again.

  “I expected an ending like this.” A woman’s voice.

  Startled, he turns to the cockpit’s entrance, then smiles. “Eve, I told you to stay on the ship. Now you’ve condemned yourself to exile.”

  “Story of my life.” She grins and sits in the copilot’s chair. Then she looks at the corpse lying behind the chairs. “He didn’t make the right decision?”

  “I don’t know what decision he would eventually have made,” Adam replies, casting a disgusted look at Richard Cambry’s body. “He vacillated between us and them until the very last moment. Even after we all forgave his sins, even after Michael sacrificed himself in front of him, he still had his doubts. People are weak.”

  EDITORS

  Julie E. Czerneda is an award-winning, best-selling author and editor, with a dozen novels (the most recent being Riders of the Storm from DAW) and fourteen SF/ F anthologies in print, the most recent of those being Misspelled from DAW Books. World-building plays a crucial role in her writing, and she always looks for original, thoroughly conceived settings in what she prefers to read, so it was with great delight that she agreed to work with Rob St. Martin on this project. Not to mention she got the chance to learn more cool history!

  Rob St. Martin earned his BA in History at Concordia University because “history is cool”—with the full understanding that to most people, that statement made no sense. Regardless, he found the past filled with amazing stories and incredible characters, and wanted, in some small way, to bring that to others. While at university he co-edited (and later, became editor-in-chief) for a series of anthologies of short stories written by his friends. His short stoires, reviews, and articles have appeared in magazines, e-zines, a one-shot comic about William the Conqueror, and Misspelled, edited by Julie E. Czerneda. His longer works include the Truth-seekers YA series and the Squirrelman trilogy.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Kristen Bonn lives in Keizer, Oregon, with her two preteen boys, two teenage girls, eight ever-present cats, and one incredibly supportive and creative husband. She attempts to divide her time fairly between her family and her two jobs, one as an elementary school library assistant and the other as the executive director of the local youth symphony, neither of which relate much to her degree in interior design. She fills her
spare time as a voracious reader, a decent quilter, and a developing handbell player. Trapped indoors during Oregon’s dreary, wet winters and pollen-filled springs, writing became a perfect outlet for Kristen to transport herself to other worlds filled with blue skies and abundant tissues. “A Small Sacrifice” is her first published story.

  Though born and raised on an Ontario tobacco farm, Brad Carson has spent most of his time in cities working in theater, where he learned the craft of writing dialogue and the value of strong coffee. Currently he can be seen—or not seen as that is the nature of the job—as a background performer in movies and television. He has planted trees, managed bookstores, painted buildings, wheel-barrowed gravel for swimming pools, and served as a security guard. These days he lives in Toronto with his life mate, Arlene Stinchcombe, and a wayfaring cat named Mooch. The former is his collaborator on a high fantasy series called Knights of the Pentacle, and the latter just likes to be scratched behind the ears. “Here There Be Monsters” is his first professional sale in the fantasy genre.

  Jennifer Crow began studying Russian in high school, and quickly fell in love with the history and culture of that country. When she visited what was then the Soviet Union as a student ambassador, Saint Petersburg was her favorite stop on the tour, so it was only a matter of time before the city made an appearance in one of her stories. Jennifer’s work has appeared in a number of print and electronic venues, and several of her poems have received honorable mentions in past editions of the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror anthology. She lives beside a waterfall near Buffalo, New York.

  Linda A. B. Davis was originally schooled in journalism but has decided that writing science fiction and fantasy is a lot more fun. She enjoys creating worlds and characters that she would like to see become real. Her work has appeared in various Web and print magazines as well as local newspapers. Her other anthology story, “Winds of Change,” appeared in Something Magic This Way Comes, edited by Sarah A. Hoyt. Linda lives in northwestern Florida with her husband, Steve, and their teenage daughter, Erica. They are all graciously tolerated by three dogs, a cat, and a rabbit. The rabbit rules.

  Urania Fung, a daughter of Chinese immigrants, was born in Kansas and raised in Texas. Her father’s love of Asian myths and fantasies made it easy for her to spend her childhood immersed in videos and books of the genre. Inspired by the author Jin Yong, she began writing stories in eighth grade. She has been a finalist in the San Gabriel Writers’ League’s Writing Smarter contest and the Writers’ League of Texas Novel Manuscript Competition. She is co-editor of Mascot Mania: Spirit of Texas High Schools. She has an M.A. in English, and she has taught English in China and in Texas.

  Although K. J. Gould has had several nonfiction articles and essays published, she has always considered writing fiction to be a private pleasure. Doing it in public makes her nervous. On the other hand, getting paid for writing fiction revives dreams of authorhood that she has nurtured since she discovered that actual people got paid actual money for writing the stories and books she so loved to read. While she awaits the Famous Author Fairy’s tap of the wand, she lives in southeastern Michigan with her husband, an ever-changing number of four-footed “kids,” and a large backyard, where she indulges her inner child’s need to play in the dirt.

  Costi Gurgu is a Romanian writer born in the city of Constanta on the Black Sea. He currently lives in Toronto with his wife, Vali. He is a graphic designer and an illustrator and has been the art director of Playboy magazine, Madame Figaro magazine, and Tabu magazine. His more than forty stories have appeared in different Romanian magazines and anthologies and have won numerous awards. He has a story collection, a novel, and has edited three KULT anthologies. “Angels and Moths” is his first North American sale. He had a turtle, Cleo, which apparently suffered from seasickness and flysickness and couldn’t cross the ocean to its new home. He is sure Cleo will roam the Carpathians for many centuries.

  Over the past 25 years, Nina Kiriki Hoffman has sold many novels and more than 250 short stories. Her works have been finalists for the Nebula, World Fantasy, Mythopoeic, Sturgeon, and Endeavour awards. Her first novel, The Thread That Binds the Bones, won a Stoker Award. Spirits That Walk in Shadow, a young adult novel, came out in 2006, and her novel Fall of Light will be published in 2009. Nina does production for F&SF, teaches short story writing, and works with teen writers. She lives in Oregon.

  Liz Holliday is a British writer who lives in London with the obligatory cat. The equally obligatory list of past occupations includes theater director, bookshop owner, senior playleader, and teacher. She’s now given up all that to write full time. Her original fiction has appeared in anthologies and magazines in the U.K., U.S., Europe, and on the net. One of them was short-listed for the Crime Writers’ Association (UK) short story dagger and later adapted for the U.S. TV show “The Hunger.” She has also written ten TV novelizations, piles of sf/f-related journalism, educational material, Web content, and games—which is what you end up with when you have a grasshopper brain.

  Natalie Walker Millman is a former English literature and history teacher who now enjoys the perils and benefits of working in her home office. She has traveled extensively, and is a long-time student of martial arts. Raised on a diet of myths and legends, she’s been an avid devourer of science fiction and fantasy since she learned to read. She lives with her family in Toranto.

  Jana Paniccia lives in Toronto, although she tries to get out of the city as much as possible, preferably to visit more places she’s never been before. Thanks to Ages of Wonder, she already has her eyes set on the next horizon: sailing on a tall ship. One day! Her short stories have appeared in a number of antholgoies, morst recently Children of Magic and Fantasy Gone Wrong. She also co-edited the DAW anthology Under Cover of Darkness with Julie E. Czerneda, released in 2007.

  Tony Pi is something of a sphinx himself. Is he an award-winning writer or a well-traveled linguist? A winner of the Writers of the Future Contest in 2006, Tony’s poetry and fiction have seen print in On Spec, Abyss & Apex, Tales of the Unanticipated, and elsewhere. He enjoys fantasy with a twist of mystery, served on a bed of history. From the Louvre to the Royal Ontario Museum in hometown Toronto, museums have been his constant muse. Then again, when you least expect it, Doctor Pi descends upon a Canadian university and challenges students with fiendish riddles in linguistics. Or he may quiz you on the words you use and how you pronounce them, to uncover the secret of how dialects change over time and spread over geography. One or the other, both or more? Tony simply smiles like Schrödinger’s Sphinx, basking in the paradox.

  Elizabeth Ann Scarborough grew up hearing tales from the Wild West told by her Grandpa Scarborough, a former working cowboy, and his brother, her Great Uncle Hap, who learned to use a bullwhip and later, while working as a carpenter for MGM, imparted this knowledge to actress Maureen O’Hara who needed to use the whip for a role in a western. Scarborough became better acquainted with tales of leprechauns and Irish history both in Ireland and America while visiting Anne McCaffrey at her home in County Wicklow. At last count she’s written 36 novels, 22 solo and 14 with Anne McCaffrey, including the 1989 Nebula winner Healer’s War. Some of the many short stories she’s written were collected in an anthology called Scarborough Fair. When she’s not writing she’s designing and making jewelry and doing the bidding of her co-resident felines. For more information on any of the above, visit her website www.eascarborough.com.

  Karina Sumner-Smith is a Toronto-based author, Nebula Award nominee, and Clarion graduate. Her short fiction has been published in a number of anthologies, including Children of Magic and Mythspring, and magazines such as Strange Horizons, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and Fantasy. Karina also works in Canada’s oldest science fiction bookstore and co-owns a small jewelry design company.

  Caitlin Sweet has been an ESL instructor, a trombone teacher, an administrative assistant, and a doula. Her first novel, A Telling of Stars, was published by Penguin Canada in 2003. I
t was nominated for an Aurora Award, a Crawford Award, a Locus Best First Novel Award, and long-listed for the Sunburst Award. Her second novel, The Silences of Home, was published in 2005 and nominated for an Aurora Award. The editors of SFSite placed it at number four in their Best SF and Fantasy Books of 2005 list. She has been working on her third novel for far too long. Caitlin lives in Toronto with her family.

  Sandra Tayler spends the majority of her days juggling meals, dishes, transportation, and laundry for the four children she shares with her pet cartoonist (and husband) Howard. She manages his business in the slices of time she finds sandwiched among the kids’ sandwiches, yet still finds gaps large enough to accommodate a compulsion to write. Her writings include essays, a blog, short stories, and her husband’s paychecks. Tens of thousands of schlockmercenary.com readers would be amused to see her hand the cartoonist a check which she wrote, he endorses, and then she cashes (and spends). “Immigrant” is Sandra’s first published story. It is enthusiastically and vaingloriously beating its chest in front of the rest of her work, which can be found at sandra.tayler.com.

  Queenie Tirone is her real name. Honestly. And no, her mother was not a hippie, though she wishes that were true. She feels ripped off she doesn’t live in a castle. She’s a young Canadian writer who loves fiction in all its forms, but her main interest lies in fantasy and horror. Some of Queenie’s hobbies include spoken word, video games, and working part time as assistant editor of Burning Effigy Press. Dreams and nightmares are her passions.