by Various
Lord Snow gestured imperiously to a man in a grey and red uniform. “Redcap!”
The man hurried to him. “Yessir, Lord Snow?”
“Put this case in my private car immediately. Track One.” He gave the redcap a dime.
“Yessir!” the porter said briskly, touching his hat.
“Waste of shelf space is what I call it,” Lord Snow grumbled to no one in particular. “I don’t know why I don’t simply have him put down.”
Sasha watched as the redcap dollied the trunk to the train at the end of the platform and hoisted it up into a private car. Sasha ducked into a nearby passenger car and waited, cautious, but steeled by the thought of Yaa Asantewaa, until the man left. Then she slid open the door at the end of the car, darted across the coupling that joined the two cars, opened the other door, and stepped into Lord Snow’s domain.
It was a very fancy car, all white inside, with studded white leather paneling on the walls and a matching club chair by the entrance. An alabaster ashtray stood sentry by the chair on a slender brass column. There was a polar bear skin rug atop an oriental carpet woven from threads the colors of ivory and eggshell and beach sand, forming patterns so pale and intricate that they swam in her vision. At the far end of the car was a sort of baggage cage, to keep luggage from moving around if the train stopped abruptly. In it was the trunk that Sasha had seen outside.
The door to the cage was unlocked.
Taking a deep breath, Sasha slipped within the cage. She rapped her knuckles on the trunk, and something moved inside. “Roland?” she asked. There was silence and then a small sneeze. The darkness inside shifted sadly, and Mr. Chesterton’s snout pressed up against the screen.
“Oh, Mr. Chesterton, I’m so glad to see you!” Sasha whispered. But he didn’t say a word. He just looked at her through red-rimmed eyes. One by one Sasha undid the buckles and unsnapped the latches. She saw that his jacket and trousers were gone, and that he now wore a white leather collar. He emerged walking on all fours.
He was a just a dog again.
“Oh, no!” Sasha cried, hugging him. “What did he do to you?” Mr. Chesterton didn’t answer. His eyes were pools of misery. He didn’t even wag his tail.
A low rumble shook the floor as the distant locomotive powered up. Time to leave. “Heel,” Sasha said, and led Mr. Chesterton out of the baggage cage: Thank goodness he’d had obedience training.
Then the door to the forward car slid open and a large, rather handsome uniformed man stepped through it, a set of bed linens draped over his arm.
“Mr. Big Bill!”
The porter was as surprised as she was. “Miss Sasha!” He looked down at the dog. “Oh, Mr. Chesterton, sir,” he said reproachfully. “Not again!” Putting down the linens, Big Bill seized Mr. Chesterton’s collar. “We’ll have to move fast. If Lord Snow were to come upon us now, he would most assuredly–”
“Most assuredly what?” Lord Snow said, stepping into the car.
Lord Snow was followed closely by Aunt Adelaide. She in turn held Roland by one ear, hauling the unhappy child after her. The space behind them was thronged with elves, their eyes glittering with inhuman malice.
“Well,” Aunt Adelaide said, “we’re all gathered together at last. Isn’t that nice?”
Lord Snow sat with heavy dignity in the white leather armchair and, when Aunt Adelaide flung Roland down on the floor before him, placed one foot on the boy’s head. “Behave yourself,” Adelaide said, “or my master will pop your head like a grape. Look terrified if you understand.”
Roland looked terrified.
“Excellent.” She turned to Sasha. “The trial will begin. You may now plead guilty.”
“What? No!”
“This spiteful little chit won’t cooperate.” Aunt Adelaide turned to Lord Snow in appeal. He said nothing, though. His face was as impassive as snowfields at midnight, as cold as the moon in February. Behind him, the elves were a shifting, murmurous sea of whiteness. She sighed heavily. “Well, if I must I must.”
Turning to Sasha, she said, “We’re going to play a little guessing game. You like games, don’t you? Of course you do, all children love games. I’m going to ask you a question, and you’re going to guess at its answer. You will have three tries. If you guess right, you may leave.” The elves, whispering and giggling among themselves behind Lord Snow, parted so that Sasha could see a mirror on the wall behind them. Its reflection showed not the train car but the parlor room back home. There were toys scattered about on the rug and a big mound of wrapping paper in the fireplace, where it would later be used for tinder. Her heart ached at the sight.
“But if not–well. Lord Snow has to eat, doesn’t he?”
Somehow, Lord Snow seemed to have faded into the background elves, so that his outline was indistinct and his features, though tremendously large, were difficult to make out. He looked less like a human being than like a vast and lifeless wasteland of ice and rock. Sasha imagined that if she were picked up and thrown at his face, she would fall into it, freezing, forever.
“This isn’t fair!” Big Bill cried, his face dark with anger. “You’re not giving this child the slightest chance. This is a mockery of justice.”
“I’m so glad you understand,” Aunt Adelaide said sweetly. She silenced him with a glare, and turned back to Sasha.
“Here is your question, child: What is stronger than reality?”
“It’s imagination,” Sasha said firmly. She was on solid ground here, and she knew it. Her teachers and books had many times told her as much.
Aunt Adelaide smiled maddeningly, condescendingly. “Imagine your way out of this!” She slapped Sasha so hard that for an instant Sasha forgot who she was. When she came to, one side of her face stung worse than nettles and the ice-desert had wrapped itself entirely around her. All that remained of the train car were the carpet underfoot and the mirror in its gilded frame, resting against a distant boulder. “Try again.”
Sasha thought long and hard. “Is it… love?”
“Oh! Love!” Adelaide held up her hands in a mockery of delight. “What was it the Bard of Avon said? Men have died from time to time and worms have eaten them, but not for love. If you think love is stronger than reality, then try loving your parents alive again. Love your brother out of Lord Snow’s bondage. Love Mr. Chesterton back into his proper self.” Flurries of snow blew past, dusting her hair and settling on her dress. She brushed the flakes from one shoulder and then the other. “You have one last, futile guess.”
Terror made Sasha’s mind go blank. She looked pleadingly to Mr. Chesterton for help–but he was still no useful than any other dog. Mr. Big Bill’s face was filled with compassion and worry for her. But he said nothing. And out in the bleak and infinite snowlands, half-crushed under a tremendous slab of ice that almost seemed (if you looked at it right; if you squinted) to be shaped like a foot, Roland was–
Roland was trying to tell her something.
She could see it in his eyes. Roland knew something! Now he was working his face, trying to unfreeze its muscles. He swallowed several times. At last he managed to croak, “Sasha! Mr. Chesterton is only a dog! And we’re not–” With a loud crack, the slab of ice sagged down several inches. A look of astonishment and pain appeared on Roland’s face and the words froze in his mouth.
And that was that. Roland had almost managed to tell her something. But he had failed.
Or had he? Sasha had looked to everybody else for help. Now she looked at herself, down at her hands. They were ordinary hands, a child’s hands, their nails chewed and their palms not overly clean. But in Tesseract House she had seen them differently. There, they had been long and red-nailed, with rings on her fingers and an elegant Longines watch on her wrist.
How did she know the watch’s make? How did she know the rings on that hand, which ones had the valuable stones and which she wore only out of sentiment? How did she know that her nails were painted Vamp Red?
Sasha looked at Mr. Chesterton
, trying hard to see him as her brother did. Not as her guardian angel, nor as her savior, nor as a niceums little doggums. But as he was. “You are only a dog,” she said at last, “and it was foolish of me to expect a dog to rescue me. Not from a situation as complicated as this.” Roland still looked anxious, but it seemed to her that there was a touch of hope in his eyes. She turned to Big Bill. “You’re a very nice man. But you’re not a comic-book hero, are you?”
The porter nodded and said, “I strive to do my job in a courteous and professional manner, and to comport myself at all times with dignity. But I can make no claim to being anything other than a human being.”
“So I’m going to have to save myself. I’m not going to make a third guess–”
“That’s good, child.” Aunt Adelaide said. “Despair is a virtue; embrace it if you can.” She opened her arms to welcome Sasha in.
But Sasha wasn’t falling for that. “I’m not going to guess because I know the answer.”
“Oh? What, then, is it?”
“Understanding.”
There was a long, chill silence, as if all the universe were holding its breath. Aunt Adelaide’s eyes were two glittering chips of ice, unreadable.
“Understanding is stronger than truth, because it allows us to endure truth. I am not a child.” That was what Roland had tried so hard to tell her–that they were not children. “Nor is Roland. We’re adults. Our parents are dead. I’m going to die too. Someday Lord Snow will take me and Roland and everything and everybody I love and this is part and parcel of being alive. A child can’t understand this, but an adult must. It’s the way things are and probably even the way things ought to be. I don’t have to like it. But neither should I allow it to fill me with fear.” Not as a question, she said, “Am I wrong?”
Aunt Adelaide had grown progressively paler as Sasha spoke, until now she was entirely without color, a woman sculpted of snow.
Then she crumbled.
Roland came trudging out of the wastes, grinning, carrying the mirror over his head. Barking loudly, Mr. Chesterton ran to meet him. Roland put down the mirror, leaning it carefully against a snow bank. Then, with the dog dancing about his knees, he hugged his sister. He was an adult now, but that was all right for so was she. “You were magnificent!” he said. “You did so much better than I ever could have.”
“I consider myself privileged to have been your friend.” Big Bill solemnly shook Sasha’s hand. “You’ll want to have this, I imagine.” He handed her a copy of The Adventures of Mr. Chesterton. On the cover, girl-Sasha and boy-Roland were open-mouthed with shock as Mr. Chesterton, hanging his head in shame, said, “Lord Snow Is A Frost Giant… And My Father!”
Sasha flipped the book open to the very last page. There, a defeated-looking Lord Snow stood before a triumphant Mr. Chesterton, weeping. A word bubble said, “You’re My Son, Chesterton. Why Won’t You Love Me?”
In the next panel, Mr. Chesterton gestured, and fragments of ice came swarming together to combine to form a glass cane in his hand. “Oh My Goodness, Father,” he said. “Of Course I Love You. I Always Have. I Simply Don’t Approve Of Your Actions of Late.”
In the penultimate panel, the cane came down on Lord Snow’s bald pate with a sharp thump. Finally, that vile creature fell back, clutching his head, and Roland, Sasha, and Mr. Chesterton strode past him, hand in hand in paw, to step through the mirror leading back to their home, their family, their parents, their lives.
Sasha could not help but smile. “It’s a sweet story,” she said. “But I’m not a child anymore.” She handed back the comic book and said, “Promise me you’ll take good care of Mr. Chesterton.”
“I always have, Miss Sasha. I always have.”
Swiftly, Sasha kissed Mr. Big Bill on the cheek. She stooped down to rub Mr. Chesterton’s head the way he particularly liked and laughed when he enthusiastically licked her face in return. Then she turned to Roland. “Are you coming? I think we’re done here.”
They stepped through the mirror.
The phone call came as it did every year when the weather turned cold and winter was in the air.
“Well, Sister Sasha? Are we on?”
“When have I ever failed you? I’ve already made the reservations.”
“Splendid.”
Sasha and Roland met in the Four Seasons as was their custom, to reminisce and talk over old times. They and their siblings were all grown now, with children of their own. But every year, when the holidays rolled around, they all put their families aside for a few hours so they could talk of things that only they four in all the world had in common. Roland and Sasha, however, were careful to always show up first.
“So. Did you put up a Winter Tree?” Sasha asked.
Roland smiled down into his martini. “Well, as always, I said we wouldn’t. And of course the children wouldn’t hear of it. Everyone has a tree, they said. Which isn’t true, but you can’t argue facts with children. I suggested–quite reasonably, I thought–that the time spent decorating a tree could be put to better use in other ways. Preparing a special dinner, perhaps, or helping out at the food bank. I tried sweetening the deal by offering to let them stay up late so they could see the moon at midnight and look for spectral reindeer. But the children wouldn’t hear of it. You’d have thought I was Ebenezer Vinegar Grinch, the way they carried on.”
Sasha laughed. “Oh, I can hear the arguments now! So you caved in.”
“To my children? I most certainly did not. But Victoria put her hands on her hips and gave me the Look. Then she told the kids, ‘Don’t listen to your father, he has no idea what he’s talking about.’ And she said to me, ‘We’ve had this conversation before, and it always ends the same way.’ So of course, there was nothing to be done, and up the tree went. How did it go with you?”
“Oh, I tried. But James gave me that puppy-dog look and, well, I just folded. As far as Stanley and Keisha were concerned, there’d never been any doubt we’d have one.”
“I hate those things,” Roland said.
“Me too. But what can you do? The world is a dangerous place, but we won’t always be there to protect them. So I suppose they have to learn. One way or another.”
“Amen, sister. Alas.”
Then Zoë and Benjamin arrived together–they’d met by chance at Grand Central Station, they said, and shared a cab–and sat down, and ordered drinks and the menus, and the conversation shifted in tone. They talked and talked, about Mother and Father and Grandmother and Great-Aunt Adelaide, and even about Mr. Chesterton, what a wonderful pup. They looked back on a common childhood that glowed in their memories as bright as the Garden of Eden, and which was, like the Garden, gone beyond retrieval, an alien land whose inhabitants were as unreachable as if they’d all been killed by elves.
It was the best part of the holidays, this conversation. It always was. They all four cherished it. They laughed until they cried.
Copyright © 2010 by Michael Swanwick and Eileen Gunn
Books by Michael Swanwick
The Dragons of Babel
Bones of the Earth
Jack Faust
The Iron Dragon’s Daughter
Griffin’s Egg
Stations of the Tide
Vacuum Flowers
In the Drift
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
The Dog Said Bow-Wow
The Periodic Table of Science Fiction
Cigar-Box Faust and Other Miniatures
A Geography of Unknown Lands
Gravity’s Angels
Moon Dogs
Puck Aleshire’s Abededary
Tales of Old Earth
Books by Eileen Gunn
SHORT STORY COLLECTION
Stable Strategies and Others
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Contents
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Something terrible had happened. Linnea did not know what it was. But her father had looked pale and worried, and her mother had told her, very fiercely, “Be brave!” and now she had to leave, and it was all the result of that terrible thing.
The three of them lived in a red wooden house with steep black roofs by the edge of the forest. From the window of her attic room, Linnea could see a small lake silver with ice very far away. The design of the house was unchanged from all the way back in the days of the Coffin People, who buried their kind in beautiful polished boxes with metal fittings like nothing anyone made anymore. Uncle Olaf made a living hunting down their coffin-sites and salvaging the metal from them. He wore a necklace of gold rings he had found, tied together with silver wire.
“Don’t go near any roads,” her father had said. “Especially the old ones.” He’d given her a map. “This will help you find your grandmother’s house.”
“Mor-Mor?”
“No, Far-Mor. My mother. In Godastor.”
Godastor was a small settlement on the other side of the mountain. Linnea had no idea how to get there. But the map would tell her.
Her mother gave her a little knapsack stuffed with food, and a quick hug. She shoved something deep in the pocket of Linnea’s coat and said, “Now go! Before it comes!”