The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com

by Various

  “They may,” I answer. “But even if they are, how will you know them among all the others?”

  “That big, tough fellow will stand out in a crowd, don’t you think?” he says. “The one whose crest went up.”

  Maybe he never has seen bulls before. “He’s not a bad animal—not half bad, in fact,” I say. “He’s nothing special, though. Plenty bigger. Plenty meaner, too. They don’t have to be big to be mean, you know. They’re like people that way. Sometimes a mean one won’t just raise its crest at a train. Sometimes it will charge.”

  “What happens then?” Obert Ohn asks in a small voice.

  “About what you’d expect. Once in a while, the train gets derailed. Whether it does or not, the bull winds up dead.”

  “I guess he would,” Obert says. He is a good guesser, Obert Ohn is.

  Late that afternoon, the train pulls into Ganelon, the little town where we are going to fish. No one would ever have heard of Ganelon if they had not fought a battle there a long time ago. Knights in armor hacked away at one another till one side won and the other side lost. Years later, someone wrote a famous poem about it. So now next to no one has heard of Ganelon.

  The hotel is across the square from the train station. It is not a fine hotel, but who needs a fine hotel to fish from? If we were after fine hotels, we would stay in Sirap. But you cannot fish in Sirap. Old men do drop lines into the Neise, the river that runs through the city. They drop in their lines, and they sit in little folding chairs waiting for a bite. I have never seen one of them catch anything.

  We hike to the trout stream the next morning. Our luck is better than decent. I catch more trout than Obert does, but his are bigger. You cannot beat the eating they make. You cannot beat getting away from everything but the water and the grass and the trees and the sun and the sweet mountain air, either.

  After a couple of days, Obert Ohn takes off on his own side trip. I go on fishing. Being by myself never bothers me, and Obert is not the best company I could have. These days, the best company I could have keeps company with Kime Kelbam instead.

  I will say that Obert is better company when he gets back. I have never seen him so happy. He does not dance in the square or sing silly songs or anything like that. But the little annoying habits he has because he usually cannot stand himself have gone missing. I cannot decide whether I like him more or less because of that. He annoys me now in different ways.

  By the time we are supposed to head on to Amblona, we have eaten as many trout as we will hold. We pay off the hotelkeeper and go back to the station. The southbound train is late. Obert Ohn grumbles. I just buy myself a glass of rough red wine. Everything in Astilia always runs late. If you cannot get used to that, the country will drive you wild. A while ago, a general seized power and promised to make the trains go on time. Making promises is easier than keeping them. He could not do it, so the Astilians threw him out.

  I am halfway down my third glass of wine and Obert is back to being annoying in all the old ways when the train chugs up at last. We climb aboard. “On to Amblona!” I say gaily.

  “On to Amblona.” Obert does not sound so gay. Yes, he is back to his old self, all right.

  * * *

  Most of the year, Amblona is as sleepy a place as Ganelon. When the festival comes, though, it swells like a boil. If we had not reserved our rooms—and if I had not made friends with the hotelkeeper the year before—we would have had nowhere to sleep and to stow our trunks.

  Ett and Kime Kelbam are in the hotel dining room when we get there. Kime waves to us. Lady Ett smiles and flutters her fingers. “Come eat with us!” Kime calls.

  “I want to freshen up first,” I say, and start for the stairs. Obert stands there gaping at Ett and Kime as if he is turned to stone. I wonder if I will have to kick him in the ankle to get him moving. He unfreezes just before I haul off and do it.

  He is in room 102. I am in room 101, across the hall. We have to go up the stairs to get to them because what would be the second floor in Dubyook is only the first floor on this side of the ocean. What we call the first floor is the ground floor over here.

  I toss my trunk in a corner and take a fast shower. Nothing wrong with the hotel’s plumbing. It is as modern as next week. But when I slide back the curtain and start to step out of the tub, the first thing I see is a rat sitting on the sink by the faucet.

  I have always hated rats. They disgust me more than anything else I can think of. I do not say there is anything special about this. Of course most people feel the same way. Men and rats. Rats and men. We are of two different kinds, and foes forever. The beady black eyes, the gnawing teeth, the skinny tail—anyone will shudder at just a glimpse.

  For me, the hair is the worst. It sticks out all over them, but sometimes you can still see their soft, pink skin through it. The idea of having hair touch me … I cannot begin to tell you how chilling that is.

  And it has happened to me. You always have trenches in war, and where you have trenches you will have rats. Rats are made for trenches, much more than people are. They feast on scraps and rubbish. They feast on the dead, too, and they will start to eat wounded soldiers. They scramble over you while you sleep, not that you can stay asleep after you feel that skittering touch and the furtive brushiness of their horrid hair.

  We used to hope the enemy would gas us. We truly did. That put down the rats when nothing else would, for a little while anyhow. Rats have not figured out gas masks. When they do, we are all in trouble.

  This flashes through my head in a lot less time than it takes to tell you. I look around like a wild man for something to smash the rat with. I throw a little bottle of liquid soap at it. If I catch it square, I may stun it long enough to let me grab something bigger and kill it.

  But I miss. I suppose I am lucky not to smash the mirror over the sink. The rat jumps down and disappears. When I look under there, the hole does not seem wide enough for it to squeeze through. It does, though.

  So before I go to the dining room, I call on the hotelkeeper. His name is Tonmoya. He is a fine fellow. In Dubyook, a man in his job would deny that rats could ever get into his hotel. In Dunlin, a man in his job would deny that rats exist. He listens to me. He sighs. He says, “Under the sink, is the hole? I’ll send a man to plug it up. Enjoy your supper, sir. He’ll fix it by the time you finish.”

  And the man does. No more rats bother me while I am in Amblona. Other things, yes, but not rats.

  Obert is already sitting with Kime and Lady Ett when I get to the table. Ett is, well, Ett. She wants to hear about Ganelon. She wants to hear about the train ride. She squeaks when I tell her about the rat. Kime pulls a face. He is drinking hard. He often drinks hard, but he is drinking harder than usual.

  When Obert gets his supper, he only picks at it. With the magic that comes out of the kitchen here, that should be a crime. He keeps staring at Lady Ett. She does not give him any special notice. No one who knows Obert Ohn ever gives him any special notice. That must be part of the reason he is the way he is.

  But the way he stares at Ett says she ought to notice him. It says she has noticed him before. It makes me wonder where he went on his little side trip from Ganelon, and what he did there. So does the way Kime is drinking. I feel like drinking that way myself.

  I have had suppers I enjoyed more, then. I am not sorry to go up to my room. When I see the workman has taken care of the rathole, I go downstairs again to thank Tonmoya.

  “It is nothing,” he says. “I am only sorry the miserable creature troubled you. I hope you rest well tonight. In the morning, you will go and see the bulls?”

  “Oh, yes,” I say. We smile at each other. The bulls are the reason we are friends, Tonmoya and I. He had trouble believing a foreigner could be an enthusiast for the bulls, the way he is and so many Astilians are. Bulls are in their blood, they say.

  It took some doing, but I convinced him I am also an enthusiast. I know a good bull from a bad one, and I know why each is as he is. Just kn
owing is not enough, though. Caring counts for more. When Tonmoya saw I cared, that was when our friendship hatched.

  He makes a certain sign with his hand. If you have been to Amblona, you will know what it is. If you have not, I may not tell you. “The god watch over you in the running,” he says. “Thimras watch over you and your friends, if they run.”

  I return the sign. I have earned the right to make it, as I have earned the right to see it. “May he watch over you and yours, as well,” I say. “I don’t know if my friends will run. We’ll see on the day.”

  “On the day, we always see,” Tonmoya says gravely.

  * * *

  I go out early the next morning, before the sun rises. The hotel is quiet as an urnfield. No one sits behind the desk. I cannot grab a quick coffee no matter how much I want one. Most Astilians go to bed late and rise the same way. They often nap in the afternoon, when the day is hottest. They expect visitors to do likewise.

  Most Astilians rise late, but not all. I start toward the holding pens by the train station. Workmen are already putting up the plywood sheets that will channel the runners and the bulls in their dash to the arena. One of them nods to me. Astilians have great dignity. It leaves them poorly suited to our modern world. I wave and walk on.

  At the temple, a preacher and some acolytes ready the statue of Thimras for a procession through the streets. Bull-headed Thimras is an old god in these parts. The statue is nowhere near so old as the cult, though it is ancient next to anything in Dubyook. They have given the dark-blue-and-red stripes on his arms and torso a fresh coat of paint. The horns above his eyes and on his beak are freshly gilded. His frill shines silver in the lamplight.

  The preacher wears a red that matches the god’s. The acolytes are painted dark blue. Seeing me go by, the preacher uses the same sign Tonmoya had. He smiles when I give it back.

  A train pulls in just as I get to the station. Yard men wrestle heavy ramps into place by the freight cars. They shout back and forth in Astilian and Skeuaran. Next to Skeuaran, Thimras is a newcomer in these parts. It is the oldest, hardest language in the world. Even demons cannot learn to speak it. If you do not believe me, ask a Skeuara. He will tell you more than you want to know.

  Plywood barriers go up between the freight cars and the holding pens. The bulls could break through them, but hardly ever do. To a bull, something that looks like a wall is a wall. He does not think to test it.

  A freight-car door creaks open. The yard men shout again, in warning this time. A bull thunders out of the car and down the ramp to the ground. The ramp groans under his weight, but holds it. They are made to get bulls down, and do the job well.

  One more shout says the bull has gone into his pen. A gate slams shut behind him. He makes a noise—half bellow, half deep grunt. Then he finds the manger full of hay. He settles down to eat. The yard men open the next freight car.

  I walk over to the holding pens to study the bulls that are already in them. Several other men pace the narrow walkways between the pens. They look over the bulls with an educated eye. Sometimes they talk to the handlers. Sometimes a handler will ask one of them what he thinks. When they exchange words, both sides show great respect.

  I stop by the pen with the bull just down from the freight car. I admire the surge of muscle under his brown, scaly hide. I like the way the black-and-white feathers of his crest run all the way from his frill to the tip of his strong tail. Enthusiasts say that is a sure sign of a brave bull.

  A handler comes over to me. “What do you think, sir?” he asks.

  “He looks like a good one to me,” I answer. “He has wide shoulders and big feet. The horn on his beak is long and curved. His crest is first-rate, too. He should put on a fine show in the arena.”

  The man stares at me in surprise. I speak Astilian about as well as I speak Ecnarfish, but no one in either place ever takes me for a native.

  Sure enough, the handler exclaims, “The gentleman is a foreigner! He is a foreigner, but he knows bulls!”

  “Thank you for thinking so,” I tell him, and I mean it. A handler in Amblona at festival time cannot give higher praise.

  “It is true, sir. You see what stands before you.” His own gaze sharpens. “Are you the foreign gentleman who also came here last year?”

  “I was here then, yes.”

  “I heard there was a foreign gentleman who was a true enthusiast. I had trouble believing it—you will excuse me for saying so. But now I see it was no lie.”

  “You do me too much honor.” I would never talk about honor in Dubyook or Dunlin or Ecnarf. In Astilia, it is as natural as water to a trout.

  “Not at all, sir. Not at all. And because you are an enthusiast, I want to tell you to watch out for Moremo when you go to the arena. Amblona has not seen a bullfighter like him in a heap of years.”

  “I’ve seen his name in the sporting papers,” I say. “He was still an apprentice last year, wasn’t he? I don’t think I got to watch any of his fights.”

  “You would remember if you had. He was something to see, even then. And he’s better now. The chances he takes! But when he does it, they don’t seem to be chances.”

  “They never do, till one goes wrong.”

  He nods. “You know how things work, all right, sir. One is all it takes. Remember the name, though. Moremo.”

  “Thanks. I’ll do that.” I go on to look at some more of the bulls. I like one of them even better than the first one I saw. He looks mean and smart and full of muscle. Anyone in the arena with him had better stay on his toes if he wants to come out with a whole skin.

  Other handlers talk up Moremo, too. They call him the real thing. They sound pleased when they do it. The real thing does not come along very often.

  “In bullfighting or anything else,” I say. The handlers nod. Some seem sad when they do. For others, that is just the way things go, and you cannot change it no matter how much you wish you could.

  * * *

  It is still early in the morning when I get back to the hotel. Obert Ohn is mooching around outside. He looks like hell. His shoulders slump. His tail is down. When he sees me coming, he runs over and grabs both my hands. “It’s no good, Baek,” he says. “It’s no good at all.”

  “What’s no good?” I ask, though I have a bad feeling I already know the answer.

  He kicks at the ground. The dirt is hard and dry, but his toeclaws furrow it all the same. Looking away from me, he says, “When I took that side trip out of Ganelon, I—I went to meet Ett.”

  “Yeah, I pretty much figured that out.” I hold my voice as steady as I can.

  “Just the two of us,” Obert says, so I cannot have any doubts. “And it was wonderful!” He sticks his snout in the air and shows his teeth. He is defying me to call him a liar.

  I do not want to call him a liar. I am too damn tired. Besides, I remember how he was when he got back to Ganelon. Not like Obert Ohn at all, not hardly. I say, “Yeah, I pretty much figured that out, too.”

  He grabs my hands again, like a drowning man this time. “But you saw how she was last night! The whole thing might as well never have happened!”

  I am not the chunk of driftwood he is looking for. I have enough trouble keeping myself afloat, let alone anybody else. “That’s probably how she feels about it,” I tell him.

  “But it meant something. It had to mean something!” Obert Ohn sounds as if he is trying to convince himself along with me.

  “To you, maybe. Not to Lady Ett.” Why am I the one who gets stuck explaining the facts of life to him? He has been over on this side of the ocean for quite a while now. Hell, he should have learned that kind of thing before he ever left Dubyook.

  “I love her!” he cries.

  “Welcome to the club.”

  “What am I going to do, Baek?”

  “It’s over.” I shake my head—that is not right. “It never got started. She decided she’d spend a little time with you, so she did. And now she’s decided she’ll do something
else for a while. Rough, I know, but that’s how things go. You can remember or you can try to forget. Whichever hurts less.”

  “They both hurt,” Obert Ohn says.

  “What do you want me to say? A moth flies into a candle flame. The flame can’t help being what it is. The moth can’t help doing what it does. It can’t help getting burned, either. And the flame just goes on shining.”

  He looks as if he hates me. I bet he does. If somebody gives you the straight goods, how can you help but hate him? “I’ll make her notice me again!” he says. “You see if I don’t.”

  “Maybe you will. But even if you do, it won’t do you any good.” Well, I end up right about that—righter than I know then. I go on, “I’m here to tell you, she doesn’t come back to yesterday.”

  Obert’s face gets ugly. He is not handsome, but most of the time he is also not too bad. You would forget him an hour after you met him, if you know what I mean. You would not forget him now. “I’ll make her notice me again!” He forgets he has already said that once.

  I set my hand on his arm. The scales on his skin feel hard and tight. I give him the best advice I have. “Go to the bar. Drink some wine. When you start to buzz, switch to brandy. Get good and tight. Stay tight all day. In the morning, you’ll feel too rotten to care about Ett Brashli or anything else.”

  “I can’t do that,” he says impatiently. “The bulls run tomorrow morning, and I’m running with them.”

  A band starts up—drums and lutes and horns. It is a dreadful noise unless you are used to it. It may be a dreadful noise even if you are used to it. It means they are parading the statue of Thimras through Amblona’s streets. They always do that the day before they run the bulls.

  Obert Ohn pushes away from me. He is off to watch the parade. I go into the bar myself. I take some of my own advice—not all of it, but some. Fool that I am, I aim to run with the bulls tomorrow, too.

  * * *

  I am up too damn early one more time the next morning. The bulls run at sunrise—they turn them loose when the sun touches the topmost spire on the temple roof. I hope Obert sleeps through it. Dinner last night was grim. He drank a lot, and said a lot of stupid things. He has it bad, all right.