IGMS Issue 41

by IGMS

  "Can I go, Mother?"

  He still had eyes that made "no" impossible to voice. I smiled at him. "Would you like to see my homeland?"

  His emphatic nod and fierce smile back settled the matter.

  "This is unwise, Lady Sun," the city magistrate said. "Think how our lord will take news that his son is not safe within our borders."

  "There is no place under heaven safer than with me. A'dou will come and I'll hear no more of it."

  Even though the expert sailors of Wu rushed to make way, it felt like forever before we left port, every second made an eternity for me to dwell on my mother's failing health. Finally upon your open waters, we encountered yet another delay.

  A small junk sailed swiftly toward us from Gong'An. The sailors resisted slowing down until I began barking at them to yield. When the junk reached the mengchong, a solitary grappling hook flew up to dig into the side. Moments later, Zhao Zilong hoisted himself onto the ship. His eyes scanned the deck until they found me.

  "I have come for A'dou," he said.

  "How is it you know the business of this ship from Gong'An?"

  "I do not pretend to know its business or care. I am a general; it did not take a great strategist to see this ship came for you and if you would care to board it, A'dou would be with you. I cannot permit it."

  "I am his mother," I said, a cold rage building in me. "Who are you to permit anything?"

  "I am nothing more than a servant of Liu Xuande, but loyal enough to swear my life to him. My lord has but one son of his body, a son I have risked my own life to see safe. He cannot leave with you."

  "Zilong, you worry for nothing. I'm merely going to see my sick mother. Introducing her to her grandson is important to me. We will be back in less than a fortnight. His safety is guaranteed with me."

  He dropped to one knee. "Forgive me, Lady Sun of Shu," he said, "but it is not your motives I question."

  Zilong had never called me "of Shu," which was at this time only an informal name for my husband's lands. The message was clear; he considered me a lady of these lands now, my intent without question. I looked up to the crew of the mengchong, all armed soldiers of a rival state.

  I shook my head, as if that alone could negate the suspicions he never put to voice. "We will return," I said evenly.

  "A'dou cannot go," was his simple reply.

  The sailors began to yell and point. While Zilong had slowed us down and kept us occupied, he had ordered capital ships to sail. Now a half dozen mengchongs bore down on us swiftly. We could not outrun them without full sails, something I knew Zilong wouldn't abide unless he was dead.

  I nodded to my husband's Tiger General. "So be it. When I return, you will face the full measure of my wrath."

  He bowed. "As it should be."

  I did not doubt I would be back within a fortnight. Still, I hugged A'dou fiercely before surrendering him to Zilong.

  Jianye

  The city that had once been home became a prison. Jianye hosted a healthy mother and scheming brother. And I, the brat turned fool, was there as the first spoil of war.

  My brother had heard of Xuande's victories in the west and they disgusted him. "He scarcely has to fight any battles!" Zhongmou spat. "Everywhere he goes, generals and men defect to join him. 'Here comes Lord Liu Bei,' they say, 'the true Emperor of the Han.' Rubbish!"

  "They go to him because he is worth going to," I replied. "The same reason I must go, Zhongmou."

  "You would leave Wu?" he asked. "You would tell our people he is indeed worthy of the Dragon Throne?"

  "I care nothing for thrones!" I shouted. "He is my husband. My place is with him."

  "Before you were allied by words you were allied by blood, Renxian. Here is where you belong, a clear message to our people and theirs of the strength of Wu loyalty and the weakness of Liu Bei."

  My brother had used me twice.

  Under house arrest, the only news of the outside world I received were hints of war and rumors. Some talked of border skirmishes between Shu and Wu. More rumors said the devil Mengde had finally descended from the north, forcing my husband to contend with his massive army. Other rumors still said I had never loved Xuande and abandoned him the first moment I could; only Zilong's intervention prevented me kidnapping the heir.

  Using the only resource left to me, I gazed in fire and looked through water. Sometimes the visions were clear and sharp as cut glass. While the banners of Shu flew in northern fields fending off Cao Cao's invasion, the banners of Wu waved over the city of Gong'An. My husband's men clashed with my brother's. No matter how different the battlefields, they all produced the same sick feeling in my gut.

  Sometimes the visions were murky. It was only through fire gazing that I saw my Xuande cry. The vision did not offer a reason for his tears and I cried with him in my longing to be with him. Fear trembled in me as I wondered if he believed the rumors that I had never loved him.

  Baidicheng

  Though I am almost out of names, I name Baidicheng despite my never seeing it. I know little of this small town which sits along your banks, but what I do know compels me to name this horrible place in the same fashion I named the devil Cao Cao.

  Forty-nine days ago, Xuande died there, sick and defeated by my brother.

  It was late spring.

  Chiang Jiang

  Finally we come to you, great river. You have beheld all these people, all these places in your majestic waters. Your waters course strong like life's blood through this country. You are eternal. Who better to be the final name of my life poem than you?

  Though the Han Dynasty has disintegrated, the People of the Han remain. Future generations of Han will sail and swim and draw from your waters, they will call you Yangtze, and in your current, they will hear my life poem. And in hearing it, these seven people and seven places will linger in their minds, their stories will issue from their lips. The people will find greatness in them, the beautiful magic which only lies in legends and myths.

  They will hear it because of the binding I place now, one of unbreakable finality revealed to me by Zhuge Kongming.

  This alone would be reason enough to name you, great river, but it is not the only reason I have.

  Seven is sacred, the auspicious number of togetherness. Seven upon seven days ago it was late spring and my husband breathed his last. Now it is the seventh day of the seventh month and the Qixi Festival begins anew. Soon the bridge will form across the Heavenly River and the lover stars will reunite.

  But the Tian He is not the only great river. Just as you will carry my seven names and seven places across time through your waters, so too I ask that you allow me to journey upon you once more.

  Carry me to Xuande on this night of sevens, the auspicious number of togetherness.

  I see the magpies.

  It is time to embark.

  The Time Mechanic

  by Marie Vibbert

  Artwork by M. Wayne Miller

  * * *

  My friend asked me to pick up some real Prohibition moonshine for him, and I'm not a guy to turn down an opportunity to show off my time machine. I did a web search for photos and the found one labeled "Dogleg Lick, KY, 1928," right over the leg of a cop breaking bottles against a wagon. Kentucky had great whisky. I'd read that somewhere, or maybe it was an ad.

  I'm just pointing out that this was a lark, a short jaunt - a trip to the store, if you will.

  The interior of my garage bubbled out, flexed and broke into a bramble of waxy rhododendron leaves. The console showed me the short path through the trees to my destination. I had to push my way through branches, but soon enough I was in a clearing in front of a shack, barely more than a dog shed, but there was that wagon from the photograph - I hadn't realized it was painted a vivid orange. A few half-naked children looked up at me from their game of eat-the-dirt, and I questioned the sanitation of this establishment. Fortunately, the proprietor soon appeared, a lanky man of middle age. I stammered, but before I could state my n
eeds, he nodded and led me behind the shack, where an impressive array of copper tubing and shining metal showed the moonshine operations, if not the childcare facilities, were top-notch.

  He said a number, which I translated into coins, and voila! I had procured a crockery jug of the local vintage.

  A straightforward errand, skillfully accomplished. I'd been there hardly an hour and I was already imagining how I'd describe it all to my friend. Having secured my loot behind the driver's seat, I set the controls for home, strapped myself in, hit the confirmation button . . . and nothing.

  I got out of the machine, walked around it, stared stupidly at it, got in and did it all again. The control panel informed me there was an error and assumed I'd know what to do about it.

  I was in a town with a comically quaint name in the eastern Kentucky hills, in 1928, with a broken time machine.

  After I finished hyperventilating, I started walking. The road from the whisky still to town was so narrow and poorly formed that I found it hard to credit the police would drive up it in a few weeks' time.

  Dogleg Lick was just a church and a general store, the latter of which had an honest-to-god blacksmith's shed on the side. It had been converted to working on cars, though by the looks of things its only customer, ever, was the Model A sitting in front of it, a world-weary conveyance with much-patched upholstery.

  A prosperous farm stood within sight of these two edifices. Other families presumably lived within a short walk, but as the valley being small and steep and heavily wooded, they were not immediately visible.

  I bought a ginger ale at the store and sat on the trestle bench outside its door, telling myself that I'd give the machine an hour or so to think about what it had done and repent. Five cents for soda - highway robbery! I paid five dollars a pop for time-specific pennies. I determined, therefore, to get twenty dollars of enjoyment out of that soda, but my steadily building panic kept distracting from the folksy charm of vintage pop. Why hadn't I packed a sandwich or a change of clothes or even a sleeping bag? My time machine had all the trunk space of a kayak, but I could have brought something to calm my nerves. An aspirin. A book.

  I've changed a flat tire in dicey neighborhoods. I've been lost in a country where I didn't speak the language. This was scarier. If the machine didn't start working soon, I could spend the rest of my life in a world populated by gangsters with a world war looming in the future.

  "You okay, mister?"

  I looked up to see a young woman in denim coveralls wiping grease from her hands with a gingham cloth. She had a frizzy bob and freckles. "I'm fine," I said.

  "You look lost."

  "Oh, I know exactly where I am, thanks."

  "Ah," she said, nodding, "so your car broke down?"

  "My . . . no. Sort of. Not really." I sighed. "You can't help."

  "You might think that, on account of I'm a girl, but I've kept this old rattletrap running." She waved at the Model A. "And I haven't yet met a car I couldn't fix."

  "Well, there's always a first time."

  She put her fist on her hip. "What is it? New? Foreign?"

  "What if I told you it was mostly made in China?"

  She snorted. "Chinese don't make cars."

  "Well, they made this one, and you wouldn't even know which end the engine is in."

  Instead of being insulted, she looked excited. "Aw, let me see it? I never seen a Chinese car."

  I looked helplessly around the abandoned Main Street. There wasn't so much as a shiny rock to distract her with. "I'm sorry," I said, the words I had read so long ago in the owner's manual, "I can't show you my vehicle, and nothing you say will convince me to."

  She un-balled and re-balled her handkerchief and studied me carefully. "Are you some kind of time traveler?"

  I blinked, shocked but also a little hopeful. "What makes you say that?"

  She cocked her head. "That was a joke, mister. Why you reactin' so peculiar?"

  "No reason. Uh . . . science fiction? Do you guys even get that down here?"

  Narrowed eyes. "Show me your car."

  "No."

  "I'll fix 'er for free!"

  "I lied. There is no car. I walked here from, uh, Cat-Leg Bone." I really should have glanced at a map before I came.

  She sat down on the bench next to me with her eyes steady on my face. "You look like what I'd think a time traveler would look like. There's something off about your clothes; they don't fit right, but they're all spanking new."

  "That's a very personal statement, criticizing a stranger's clothing."

  "And you talk all very careful and slang-free. And there's how you won't let me look at your car, even though you're obviously sick with worry over it. Now, plenty of guys have refused to let me help them, on account of my sex and all, but they outright say it. You haven't so much as called me 'missy' or 'little girl.' In fact, you kinda look straight at me, like you were talking to a man." She tilted her head. "Also, a normal city slicker wouldn't let himself look so scared and worried in front of a gal."

  She was an annoyingly smart country bumpkin in prohibition Kentucky. I cleared my throat. "There's no such thing as time travel."

  She nudged me with her bare elbow - her floral sleeve was rolled up to the mid-bicep. "Okay. So where you from?"

  "Cleveland."

  She leaned forward. Her grease-rag was uncomfortably close to my knee. "Tennessee or Ohio?"

  "Ohio."

  "Did you catch the Indians game last night on the radio?"

  She was trying to catch me in a lack of time-appropriate knowledge. I had a ready answer for that. "I don't follow sports."

  "I don't believe you, but okay. Why'd you come to Dogleg?"

  I bit my lip, trying to come up with an answer that wasn't "Moonshine."

  "Ah," she said. "You came to visit Wallace's whisky still." At my shock, she laughed. "It's okay. The coppers aren't hiding behind the woodshed. In fact, if you like, I have some very nice cherry brandy stocked up, for medicinal purposes only."

  It was my turn to give her a shrewd look. "You want to get me drunk so I'll show you my time machine."

  Her smile was all sharp points. "So you do have a time machine."

  "No. That was a joke."

  She mm-hmm'ed for about eight syllables, and then, nodding to herself, got up and walked away.

  I felt bereft. She'd gotten my mind off the prospect of being stuck in the past. Also, I was out of ginger ale and period-appropriate money. The dappled light on the Model A and the old-fashioned gas pump hurt my eyes.

  But then she sashayed back from the blacksmith shop with a canning jar full of something that gleamed like garnet in the sun. She plopped back down beside me and unscrewed the lid. "If you won't let me fix your car, at least have a sip of somethin' to take your mind off it."

  The red liquid tasted like warm, ripe cherries straight off the tree. Like how I'd forgotten cherries could taste. "That's . . . wow."

  "Name's Holly. Come on back to my shop, there's plenty."

  Well, I'm not made of stone.

  Inside the blacksmith shed there was a big fat anvil still in place, probably too heavy to move, and a section of steel rail lying across the rough-hewn beams of the roof, a rusty chain dangling from it. Oil and grease smells mixed with sawdust and the grassy smell of livestock. Over the tool bench, a bookshelf stood filled with beautiful ruby-red canning jars.

  I sat on the anvil. "The revenuers don't come here too often, I gather."

  She wouldn't take the jar back from me but opened a second for herself. "The only people who care about Dogleg Lick are the people who live here and God, and he's been less than forthcoming on the subject."

  "I can't get drunk," I said. The longest I'd been in the past was for three days. Any longer and parts of the machine would melt to prevent them from being reverse-engineered by scientists of the past. "I shouldn't. I don't have the time."

  I drank more brandy.

  "You seen that picture by that French guy,
Mel-e-yays? The one with the moon?"

  I'd seen a movie about it when I was a kid. "Isn't that a little old?"

  "I like old things. I think they ought to make a moving picture of 'The Time Machine,' don't you? I can just see it, how they'd do the part where they move through time. You could speed up the film, like."

  "Oh, I can imagine it," I said, having seen the 1960 movie.

  "I think traveling forward in time makes more sense. If you go back, you could mess things up terrible. Like if you killed your own daddy."

  "You'd mess it up for you," I said. "The rest of the world wouldn't give a crap." I toasted my succinct explanation of the "Robust History Model" from Time Traveler Registration class. This would be the last time I felt smug in Dogleg Lick.

  We ended up on the floor, our backs to the tool-bench, passing a nearly empty jar back and forth, and despite my better judgment I started blubbering a bit. "I could have just gotten him something from the damn liquor store. Poured it in a canning jar. Done."

  "Tell me about your liquor store, mister. What's that like? Is it like a candy store?" Her face was blurry, but I could tell she was laughing at me.

  "I just want a hot shower and a Best Western," I sobbed. "Not even a Quality Inn. A Best Western's all I ask."

  She took the empty jar from me. "You got some 'shine from old Wallace, what you say we polish this off with something a little sharper?"

  It didn't seem like such a bad idea, but the trudge back up the steep mountain path sobered me enough to question my decision-making skills. We pushed through the rhododendron thicket that hid my machine from view. The dirt-eating children were crawling all over it.

  "Get out of there!" I cried, and waved my arms around like a madman. The kids laughed. A completely naked little boy sat in my driver's seat, one hand in his mouth, his other hand smearing baby-drool on my dashboard.

  Holly did not help with the invasion of children but immediately started poking at the front of my machine.