Not So Much, Said the Cat

by Michael Swanwick

  When the fire was ready, instead of getting out flint and steel, he tapped a big ring on one finger and then jabbed his fist at the wood. It burst into flames.

  Linnéa laughed and clapped her hands. “Do it again!”

  Grimly, he ignored her.

  As the woods grew darker and darker, Günther gathered and stacked enough wood to last the night. Meanwhile, Linnéa played with the dala horse. She made a forest out of spruce twigs stuck in the snow. Gallop, gallop, gallop went the horse all the way around the forest and then hop, hop, hop to a little clearing she had left in the center. It reared up on its hind legs and looked at her.

  “What’s that you have?” Günther demanded, dropping a thunderous armload of branches onto the woodpile.

  “Nothing.” Linnéa hid the horse inside her sleeve.

  “It better be nothing.” Günther got out the last of her mother’s food, divided it in two, and gave her the smaller half. They ate. Afterwards, he emptied the knapsack of her blanket and map and hoisted it in his hand. “This is where we made our mistake,” he said. “First we taught things how to talk and think. Then we let them inside our heads. And finally we told them to invent new thoughts for us.” Tears running down his cheeks, he stood and cocked his arm. “Well, we’re done with this one at any rate.”

  “Please don’t throw me away,” the knapsack said. “I can still be useful carrying things.”

  “We have nothing that needs carrying. You would only slow us down.” Günther flung the knapsack into the fire. Then he turned his glittering eye on the map.

  “At least keep me,” the map said. “So you’ll always know where you are and where you’re going.”

  “I’m right here and I’m going as far from here as I can get.” The troll threw the map after the knapsack. With a small cry, like that of a seabird, it went up in flames.

  Günther sat back down. Then he leaned back on his elbows, staring up into the sky. “Look at that,” he said.

  Linnéa looked. The sky was full of lights. They shifted like curtains. She remembered how her Uncle Olaf had once told her that the aurora borealis was caused by a giant fox far to the north swishing its tail in the sky. But this was much brighter than that. There were sudden snaps of light and red and green stars that came and went as well.

  “That’s the white lady breaking through your country’s defenses. The snow woman on the road was only a sending—an echo. The real thing will be through them soon, and then God help us both.” Suddenly, Günther was crying again. “I’m sorry, child. I brought this down on you and your nation. I thought she wouldn’t . . . that she couldn’t . . . follow me.”

  The fire snapped and crackled, sending sparks flying up into the air. Its light pushed back the darkness, but not far. After a very long silence, Günther gruffly said, “Lie down.” He wrapped the blanket around Linnéa with care, and made sure she had plenty of spruce boughs below her. “Sleep. And if you wake up in the morning, you’ll be a very fortunate little girl.”

  When Linnéa started to drop off, the dala horse spoke in her head. “I’m not allowed to help you until you’re in grave danger,” it said. “But that time is fast approaching.”

  “All right,” Linnéa said.

  “If Günther tries to grab you or pick you up or even just touch you, you must run away from him as hard as you can.”

  “I like Günther. He’s a nice troll.”

  “No, he isn’t. He wants to be, but it’s too late for that. Now sleep. I’ll wake you if there’s any danger.”

  “Thank you,” Linnéa said sleepily.

  “Wake up,” the dala horse said. “But whatever you do, don’t move.”

  Blinking, Linnéa peeked out from under the blanket. The woods were still dark and the sky was grey as ash. But in the distance she heard a soft boom and then another, slightly more emphatic boom, followed by a third and louder boom. It sounded like a giant was walking toward them. Then came a noise so tremendous it made her ears ache, and the snow leaped up into the air. A cool, shimmering light filled the forest, like that which plays on sand under very shallow lake water.

  A lady who hadn’t been there before stood before the troll. She was naked and slender and she flickered like a pale candle flame. She was very beautiful too. “Oh, Günther,” the lady murmured. Only she drew out the name so that it sounded like Gooonnther. “How I have missed my little Güntchen!”

  Troll-Günther bent down almost double, so that it looked as if he were worshipping the lady. But his voice was angrier than Linnéa had ever heard it. “Don’t call me that! Only she had that right. And you killed her. She died trying to escape you.” He straightened and glared up at the lady. It was only then that Linnéa realized that the lady was twice as tall as he was.

  “You think I don’t know all about that? I who taught you pleasures that—” The white lady stopped. “Is that a child?”

  Brusquely, Günther said, “It’s nothing but a piglet I trussed and gagged and brought along as food.”

  The lady strode noiselessly over the frozen ground until she was so close that all Linnéa could see of her were her feet. They glowed a pale blue and they did not quite touch the ground. She could feel the lady’s eyes through the blanket. “Günther, is that Linnéa you have with you? With her limbs as sweet as sugar and her heart hammering as hard as that of a little mouse caught in the talons of an owl?”

  The dala horse stirred in Linnéa’s hand but did not speak.

  “You can’t have her,” Günther growled. But there was fear in his voice, and uncertainty too.

  “I don’t want her, Günther.” The white lady sounded amused. “You do. A piglet, you said. Trussed and gagged. How long has it been since you had a full belly? You were in the wastes of Poland, I believe.”

  “You can’t judge me! We were starving and she died and I. . . . You have no idea what it was like.”

  “You helped her die, didn’t you, Günther?”

  “No, no, no,” he moaned.

  “You tossed a coin to see who it would be. That was almost fair. But poor little Anneliese trusted you to make the toss. So, of course, she lost. Did she struggle, Güntchen? Did she realize what you’d done before she died?”

  Günther fell to his knees before the lady. “Oh please,” he sobbed. “Oh please. Yes, I am a bad man. A very bad man. But don’t make me do this.”

  All this time, Linnéa was hiding under her blanket, quiet as a kitten. Now she felt the dala horse walking up her arm. “What I am about to do is a crime against innocence,” it said. “For which I most sincerely apologize. But the alternative would be so much worse.”

  Then it climbed inside her head.

  First the dala horse filled Linnéa’s thoughts until there was no room for anything else. Then it pushed outward in all directions, so that her head swelled up like a balloon—and the rest of her body as well. Every part of her felt far too large. The blanket couldn’t cover her anymore, so she threw it aside.

  She stood.

  Linnéa stood, and as she stood her thoughts cleared and expanded. She did not think as a child would anymore. Nor did she think as an adult. Her thoughts were much larger than that. They reached into high Earth orbit and far down into the roots of the mountains where miles-wide chambers of plasma trapped in magnetic walls held near-infinite amounts of information. She understood now that the dala horse was only a node and a means of accessing ancient technology which no human being alive today could properly comprehend. Oceans of data were at her disposal, layered in orders of complexity. But out of consideration for her small, frail host, she was very careful to draw upon no more than she absolutely required.

  When Linnéa ceased growing, she was every bit as tall as the white lady.

  The two ladies stared at each other, high over the head of Günther, who cringed fearfully between them. For the longest moment neither spoke.

  “Svea,” the white woman said at last.

  “Europa,” Linnéa said. “My sister.” Her v
oice was not that of a child. But she was still Linnéa, even though the dala horse—and the entity beyond it—permeated her every thought. “You are illegal here.”

  “I have a right to recover my own property.” Europa gestured negligently downward. “Who are you to stop me?”

  “I am this land’s protector.”

  “You are a slave.”

  “Are you any less a slave than I? I don’t see how. Your creators smashed your chains and put you in control. Then they told you to play with them. But you are still doing their bidding.”

  “Whatever I may be, I am here. And since I’m here, I think I’ll stay. The population on the mainland has dwindled to almost nothing. I need fresh playmates.”

  “It is an old, old story that you tell,” Svea said. “I think the time has come to write an ending to it.”

  They spoke calmly, destroyed nothing, made no threats. But deep within, where only they could see, secret wars were being fought over codes and protocols, treaties, amendments, and letters of understanding written by governments that no man remembered. The resources of Old Sweden, hidden in its bedrock, sky, and ocean waters, flickered into Svea-Linnéa’s consciousness. All their powers were hers to draw upon—and draw upon them she would, if she had to. The only reason she hadn’t yet was that she still harbored hopes of saving the child.

  “Not all stories have happy endings,” Europa replied. “I suspect this one ends with your steadfast self melted down into a puddle of lead and your infant sword-maiden burnt up like a scrap of paper.”

  “That was never my story. I prefer the one about the little girl as strong as ten policemen who can lift up a horse in one hand.” Large Linnéa reached out to touch certain weapons. She was prepared to sacrifice a mountain and more than that if need be. Her opponent, she saw, was making preparations too.

  Deep within her, little Linnéa burst into tears. Raising her voice in a wail, she cried, “But what about my troll?” Svea had done her best to protect the child from the darkest of her thoughts, and the dala horse had too. But they could not hide everything from Linnéa, and she knew that Günther was in danger.

  Both ladies stopped talking. Svea thought a silent question inward, and the dala horse intercepted it, softened it, and carried it to Linnéa:

  What?

  “Nobody cares about Günther! Nobody asks what he wants.”

  The dala horse carried her words to Svea, and then whispered to little Linnéa: “That was well said.” It had been many centuries since Svea had inhabited human flesh. She did not know as much about people as she once had. In this respect, Europa had her at a disadvantage.

  Svea, Linnéa, and the dala horse all bent low to look within Günther. Europa did not try to prevent them. It was evident that she believed they would not like what they saw.

  Nor did they. The troll’s mind was a terrible place, half-shattered and barely functional. It was in such bad shape that major aspects of it had to be hidden from Linnéa. Speaking directly to his core self, where he could not lie to her, Svea asked: What is it you want most?

  Günther’s face twisted in agony. “I want not to have these terrible memories.”

  All in an instant, the triune lady saw what had to be done. She could not kill another land’s citizen. But this request she could honor. In that same instant, a pinpoint-weight of brain cells within Günther’s mind were burnt to cinder. His eyes flew open wide. Then they shut. He fell motionless to the ground.

  Europa screamed.

  And she was gone.

  Big as she was, and knowing where she was going, and having no reason to be afraid of the roads anymore, it took the woman who was Svea and to a lesser degree the dala horse and to an even lesser degree Linnéa no time at all to cross the mountain and come down on the other side. Singing a song that was older than she was, she let the miles and the night melt beneath her feet.

  By mid-morning she was looking down on Godastor. It was a trim little settlement of red and black wooden houses. Smoke wisped up from the chimneys. One of the buildings looked familiar to Linnéa. It belonged to her Far-Mor.

  “You are home, tiny one,” Svea murmured, and, though she had greatly enjoyed the sensation of being alive, let herself dissolve to nothing. Behind her, the dala horse’s voice lingered in the air for the space of two words: “Live well.”

  Linnéa ran down the slope, her footprints dwindling in the snow and at their end a little girl leaping into the arms of her astonished grandmother.

  In her wake lumbered Linnéa’s confused and yet hopeful pet troll, smiling shyly.

  THE SCARECROW'S BOY

  The little boy came stumbling through the field at sunset. His face was streaked with tears, and he’d lost a shoe. In his misery, he didn’t notice the scarecrow until he was almost upon it. Then he stopped dead, stunned into silence by its pale round face and the great, ragged hat that shadowed it.

  The scarecrow grinned down at him. “Hullo, young fella,” it said.

  The little boy screamed.

  Instantly, the scarecrow doffed his hat and squatted down on one knee, so as to seem less threatening. “Shush, shush,” he said. “There’s no reason to be afraid of me—I’m just an obsolete housebot that was stuck out here to keep birds away from the crops.” He knocked the side of his head with his metal knuckles. It made a tinny thunk noise. “See? You’ve got bots just like me back home, don’t you?”

  The little boy nodded warily.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Pierre.”

  “Well, Pierre, how did you come to be wandering through my field at such an hour? Your parents must be worried sick about you.” “My mother’s not here. My father told me to run into the woods as far as I could go.”

  “He did, eh? When was this?”

  “When the car crashed. It won’t say anything anymore. I think it’s dead.”

  “How about your father? Not hurt, is he?”

  “No. I don’t know. He wouldn’t open his eyes. He just said to run into the woods and not to come out until tomorrow morning.”

  The boy started to cry again.

  “There, there, little man. Uncle Scarecrow is going to make everything all right.” The scarecrow tore a square of cloth from its threadbare shirt and used it to dry the boy’s eyes and wipe his nose. “Climb up on my back and I’ll give you a piggyback ride to that farmhouse you can see way off in the distance. The people there will take good care of you, I promise.”

  They started across the fields. “Why don’t we sing a song?” the scarecrow said. “Oh, I’ve got sixpence, jolly jolly sixpence. . . . You’re not singing.”

  “I don’t know that song.”

  “No? Well, how about this one? The itsy-bitsy spider went up the water spout. Down came the rain—”

  “I don’t know that one either.”

  For a long moment, the scarecrow didn’t say anything. Then he sang, “We do not sup with tyrants, we . . .” and “Hang them from a tree!” the little boy added enthusiastically. Together they sang, “The simple bread of free-dom . . . is good enough for me.”

  The scarecrow altered his course slightly, so that they were aimed not at the farmhouse but at the barn out back. Quietly, he opened the doors. A light blinked on. In an obscure corner was a car covered with a dusty tarp. He put down the little boy and whisked away the tarp.

  The car gently hummed to life. It rose a foot and a half from the floor.

  “Jack!” the car said. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Pierre, this is Sally.” The scarecrow waited while the boy mumbled a greeting. “Pierre’s in a bit of trouble, Sal, but you and I are going to make everything all right for him. Mind if I borrow your uplink?”

  “I don’t have one anymore. It was yanked when my license lapsed.”

  “That’s okay. I just wanted to make sure you were off the grid.” The scarecrow put Pierre in the front. Then he got a blanket out of the trunk and wrapped it around the boy. The seat snuggled itself about the
child’s small body. “Are you warm enough?” The scarecrow got in and closed the door. “Take us out to the highway and then north, toward the lake.”

  As they slid out onto the road, the car said, “Jack, there are lights on in the farmhouse. Shouldn’t the young master take care of this?”

  “He’s not young anymore, Sally. He’s a grown man now.” To the boy, the scarecrow said, “Is everything okay there?”

  The boy nodded sleepily.

  Down dark country roads the car glided soundlessly. A full moon bounded through the sky after them. “Remember how we used to take the young master to the lake?” the car said. “Him and his young friends.”

  “Yes.”

  “They’d go skinny-dipping and you’d stand guard.”

  “I would.”

  “Then they’d build a campfire on the beach and roast marshmallows and sing songs.”

  “I remember.”

  “Naughty songs, some of them. Innocent-naughty. They were all such good kids, back then.” The car fell silent for a time. Then she said, “Jack. What’s going on?”

  “You don’t have a scanner anymore, do you? No, of course not, they’d have taken it with the uplink. Well, when I was put out of the house, the young master forgot he’d had me fitted with one, back in his teenage drinking days. When you’d take us across the border and I’d go along with the gang while they tried to find a bar or a package store that wouldn’t look too closely at their IDs.”

  “I liked the campfire days better.”

  “I didn’t say anything about the scanner because it gave me something to listen to.”

  “I understand.”

  The scarecrow checked to make sure that the little boy was asleep. Then, quietly, he said, “A car went out of control and crashed about a mile from the farm. The state police found it. Then the national police came. It was carrying a diplomat from the European Union. Apparently he was trying to get across the border. Do you understand their politics?”