Summer 2007

by Subterranean Press

  “Well, sometimes, if you pretend you’re happy, you can trick yourself into at least feeling better.”

  “I don’t think I could do that.”

  “Try by celebrating our lives,” Zia said. “Remember both your children with love and joy. There’ll always be sadness, but try to remember that it wasn’t always that way.”

  “No,” the old woman said slowly. “You’re right. It wasn’t. I don’t know if you can even remember, but we were once a happy family. But then Ted left and I had to go back to work, and you children…you were robbed of the life you should have had.”

  “It happens,” Zia said–a touch too matter-of-factly for the ghost of a dead girl, I thought, but the old woman didn’t appear to notice.

  “It’s time for me to go, Mama,” Zia added. “Will you let me go?”

  “Can’t you stay just a little longer?”

  “No,” Zia said. “Let me walk you back to your bed.”

  She got up and the two of them left the room, the old woman leaning on Zia.

  “I’m going to wake up in the morning,” I heard the old woman say from the hall, “and this will all have just been a dream.”

  “Not if you don’t want it to,” Zia told her. “You’ve got a strong will. Look how long you kept me from moving on. You can remember this–everything we’ve talked about–for what it really was. And if you try hard, you can be happy again…”

  * * *

  Donald and I waited in the bedroom until Zia returned.

  “Is she asleep?” I asked.

  Zia nodded. “I think all of this exhausted her.” She turned to Donald. “So how do you feel now?”

  “I feel strange,” he said. “Like there’s something tugging at me…trying to pull me away.”

  “That’s because it’s time for you to move on,” I told him.

  “I guess.”

  “You’re remembered now,” Zia said. “That’s what was holding you back before.”

  He gave a slow nod. “Listening to her…it didn’t make me feel a whole lot better. I mean, I understand now, but…”

  “Life’s not very tidy,” Zia said, “so I suppose there’s no reason for death to be any different.”

  “I…”

  He was harder to hear. I gave him a careful study and realized he’d grown much more insubstantial.

  “It’s hard to hold on,” he said. “To stay here.”

  “Then don’t,” Zia told him.

  I nodded. “Just let go.”

  “But I’m…scared.”

  Zia and I looked at each other.

  “We were here at the beginning of things,” she said, turning back to him, “before Raven pulled the world out of that old pot of his. We’ve been in the great beyond that lies on the other side of the long ago. It’s…”

  She looked at me.

  “It’s very peaceful there,” I finished for her.

  “I don’t want to go to Hell,” he said. “What if I go to Hell?”

  His voice was very faint now and I could hardly make him out in the gloom of the room.

  “You won’t go to Hell,” I said.

  I didn’t know if there was a Heaven or a Hell or what lay on the other side of living. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. But there was no reason to tell him that. He wanted certainty.

  “Hell’s for bad people,” I told him, “and you’re just a poor kid who got stung by a bee.”

  I saw the fading remnants of his mouth moving, but I couldn’t make out the words. And then he was gone.

  I looked at Zia.

  “I don’t feel any better,” I said. “Did we help him?”

  “I don’t know. We must have. We did what he wanted.”

  “I suppose.”

  “And he’s gone on now.”

  She linked her arm in mine and walked me into the between.

  “I had this idea for a store,” she said.

  “I know. Where you don’t sell anything. Instead people just bring you stuff.”

  She nodded. “It was a pretty dumb idea.”

  “It wasn’t that bad. I’ve had worse.”

  “I know you have.”

  We stepped out of the between onto the fire escape outside the apartment. I looked across the city. Dawn was still a long way off, but everywhere I could see the lights of the city, the headlights of cars moving between the tall canyons of the buildings.

  “I think we need to go somewhere and make a big happy noise,” Zia said. “We have to go mad and dance and sing and do cartwheels along the telephone wires like we’re famous trapeze artists.”

  “Because..?”

  “Because it’s better than feeling sad.”

  So we did.

  And later we returned to the Rookery and woke up all the cousins until every blackbird in every tree was part of our loud croaking and raspy chorus. I saw Lucius open the window of his library and look out. When he saw Zia and I, leading the cacophony from our high perch in one of the old oak trees in the backyard, he just shook his head and closed the window again.

  But not before I saw him smile to himself.

  * * *

  I went back to the old woman’s apartment a few weeks later to see if the ghost boy was really gone. I meant to go sooner, but something distracting always seemed to come up before I could actually get going.

  Zia might tell me about a hoard of Mardi Gras beads she’d found in a dumpster and then off we’d have to go to collect them all, bringing them back to the Rookery where we festooned the trees with them until Lucius finally asked us to take them down, his voice polite, but firm, the way it always got when he felt we’d gone the step too far.

  Or Chlöe might call us into the house because she’d made us each a sugar pie, big fat pies with much more filling than crust, because we liked the filling the best. We didn’t even need the crust, except then it would just be pudding, which we also liked, but it wasn’t pie, now was it?

  Once we had to go into the far away to help our friend Jilly, because we promised we would if she ever called us. So when she did, we went to her. That promise had never been like a chain dangling from our feet when we flew, but it still felt good to be done with it.

  But finally I remembered the ghost boy and managed to not get distracted before I could make my way to his mother’s apartment. When I got there, they were both gone, the old woman and her dead son. Instead, there was a young man I didn’t recognize sitting in the kitchen when I stepped out of the between. He was in the middle of spooning ice cream into a bowl.

  “Do you want some?” he asked.

  He was one of those people who didn’t seem the least bit surprised to find me appearing out of thin air in the middle of his kitchen. Tomorrow morning, he probably wouldn’t even remember I’d been here.

  “What flavour is it?” I asked.

  “Chocolate swirl with bits of Oreo cookies mixed in.”

  “I’d love some,” I told him and got myself a bowl from the cupboard.

  He filled my bowl with a generous helping and we both spent a few moments enjoying the ice cream. I looked down the hall as I ate and saw all the cardboard boxes. My gaze went back to the young man’s face.

  “What’s your name?” I asked him.

  “Nels.”

  He didn’t ask me my name, but I didn’t mind.

  “This is a good invention,” I said holding up a spoonful of ice cream. “Chocolate and ice cream and cookies all mixed up in the same package.”

  “It’s not new. They’ve had it for ages.”

  “But it’s still good.”

  “Mmm.”

  “So what happened to the old woman who lived here?” I asked.

  “I didn’t know her,” he told me. “The realtor brought me by a couple of days ago and I liked the place, so I rented it. I’m pretty sure he said she’d passed away.”

  So much for her being happy. But maybe there was something else on the other side of living. Maybe she and her ghost boy and her daughter were all
together again and she was happy.

  It was a better ending to the story than others I could imagine.

  “So,” I asked Nels, “are you happy?”

  He paused with a spoonful of ice cream half way to his mouth. “What?”

  “Do you have any ghosts?”

  “Everybody’s got ghosts.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded. “I suppose one of the measures of how you live your life is how well you make your peace with them.”

  My bowl was empty, but I didn’t fill it up again. I stood up from the table.

  “Do you want some help unpacking?” I asked.

  “Nah. I’m good. Are you off?’

  “You know me,” I said, although of course he didn’t. “Places to go, people to meet. Things to do.”

  He smiled. “Well, don’t be a stranger. Or at least not any stranger than you already are.”

  I laughed.

  “You’re a funny man, Nels,” I said.

  And then I stepped away into the between. I stood there for a few moments, watching him.

  He got up from the table, returned the ice cream to the freezer and washed out the bowls and utensils we’d used. When he was done, he walked into the hall and picked up a box which he took into the living room, out of my sight.

  I could tell that he’d already forgotten me.

  “Goodbye, Nels,” I said, though he couldn’t hear me. “Goodbye, Ghost Boy. Goodbye, old lady.” I knew they couldn’t hear me, either.

  Then I stepped from the between, out onto the fire escape. I unfolded black wings and flew back to the Rookery, singing loudly all the way.

  At least I thought of it as singing.

  As I got near Stanton Street, a man waiting for his dog to relieve itself looked up to see me go by.

  “Goddamned crows,” he said.

  He took a plastic bag out of his pocket and deftly bagged his dog’s poop.

  I sang louder, a laughing arpeggio of croaking notes.

  Being happy was better than not, I decided. And it was certainly better than scooping up dog poop. If I was ever to write a story the way that Christy did, it would be very short. And I’d only have the one story because after it, I wouldn’t need any more.

  It would go like this:

  Once upon a time, they all lived happily ever after. The end.

  That’s a much better sort of story than the messy ones that make up our lives. At least that’s what I think.

  But I wouldn’t want to live in that story, because that would be too boring. I’d rather be caught up in the clutter of living, flying high above the streets and houses, making a joyful noise.

  Fiction: Stone Shoes by C.S.E. Cooney

  Jack Yap was his Marm’s good boy, maple-syrup mouth, toffee-tongue, such sweetness, wasn’t he? His Marm’s pride was Jack Yap, so Marm told her neighbors–so she told him every day.

  “Jackie, love,” she said into his muteness, “such a laddie, such a cuddlewump! Always smiling, aren’t you? Always helping your poor old Marm around the house.”

  Jack Yap’s duties, which he did each day with seeming cheerfulness, were to bake the bread in the morning, bring his Marm her tea, unchain his brother Pudding from his bed and then take him to the outhouse.

  Once Pudding did his sprinkle-and-splat, Jack Yap would guide him back to the hen yard in front of their cottage, where their Marm waited, and together, they would help Pudding on with his stone shoes.

  This always took some doing.

  “Them’s your special boots, Pudding dear,” said Marm when Pudding balked. Pudding always balked. He didn’t like the stone shoes. He sweated when he saw them, and made squeaking noises. “See how special? Made of crystal they are, diamond boots. Real seven-leaguers, like them giants of old!”

  Now, Jack Yap knew, and so did Pudding, those boots were not diamond, or crystal, but hard gray granite, boots hewn of boulders by Marm’s mason friend from down the road. Still, Jack Yap kept his mouth shut, kept his teeth closed tight. Many years ago, he used to talk like lightning, like hummingbirds darting, like hares hopping, earning him his second name “Yap.” He even used to talk back to Marm–especially where Pudding and the stone shoes were concerned–until she sewed his mouth shut one morning with goat gut and a darning needle, and left the stitches in for three whole days, and ever since then, Jack Yap didn’t talk much around Marm.

  So Jack Yap helped his brother Pudding into his stone shoes, smiling encouragement when Pudding made a pout, whispering words like, “Think of giants, Pudding Man! Now you get to be a giant!”

  Marm called her eldest son Pudding, “on account his head was soft,” and it suited him, with his flat, blank face, blob of nose, tulip lips and eyes as round and red-brown as pennies. He was only fifteen and already balding, but what he lacked in wispy blond curls, he made up for in height. Pudding was taller than the lintels of the cottage, and still growing. He was wide, too–not fat, merely the solidity of one who has spent his boyhood wearing shoes of stone.

  They were, his Marm always said, for his own protection. He was such a lummox he couldn’t be trusted to leave the yard. Them stone shoes’d keep a hippo put.

  Unlike Pudding, Jack Yap was as tall at twelve as he had been at nine (which wasn’t very), had plenty of hair, fox-fur colored, thatched like the roof over their loft and almost as full of vermin. His eyes were sharp and narrow and very long–and glinted more red than brown. Because of the scars on his mouth, he always seemed to be smiling.

  He smiled that morning when Marm told him, “Jackie, pet, my wee wooly rufus, your old Marm has errands to run today. So you keep to the hen yard and watch your brother close so he don’t step on the eggs. Ta, now! Ta, Pudding, my little spongy brains!”

  And with that, she kissed Jack Yap first on one smiling cheek then the other, and patted one of Pudding’s long-muscled thighs. Like her second son, she was small, and couldn’t reach Pudding’s head, or even his shoulder. After making the requisite half-hearted croonings, Marm set off to see her friend the mason, whose company she preferred infinitely to that of her sons.

  Soon as she was gone, Jack Yap turned to his brother.

  “Come on, Puds. Let’s go creature-killing.”

  Pudding grinned. He had never lost his baby teeth; so there they were, like tiny seed pearls in his vast, wet, pink flower mouth.

  Grabbing up a walking stick, Jack Yap planted the butte and vaulted, hurling himself through the air to the top of the chicken coop. Within the fragile wire cage, the fowl trembled and clucked. Jack Yap stood tall with ease and grace, and from the coop climbed atop his brother’s shoulders, settling there.

  “Now,” said Jack Yap, firm of voice, “who’s the strong one, Puds?”

  Pudding craned his neck and grinned and made a damp murr sound.

  “Who’s the brave one, Puds?

  Murrrrrr.

  “Who walks like an earthquake, even wearing his stony stone shoes?”

  MURRRRR!

  “Yeah!” cried Jack Yap, lifting his stick and pointing to the hills beyond their cottage, their vegetable garden, their outhouse and their chicken coop. “Yeah, King Pudding, walk on! Two feet of stone and a heart of oak! There’s creatures in the hills need killing, howlers and skinchangers, and you and me is the boys to do it, says I!”

  Murrrring and chuckling, Pudding lifted his massive right leg, encased in its boot-shaped boulder, all the muscles in his body straining, rippling, but moving, moving, first one foot then the other, as he set out, with his brother on his shoulders, for the hills where the creatures were hiding.

  And the great egg hunt was on…

  #

  Now, the hills were stiff with woods, and the woods were grisly-bear brown as the hair on a witch’s left breast. But there were bald spots, too, where the white skull of the hills showed through. In these places of stone, the same gray granite as Pudding’s boots, where the village mason made his quarries, in these places the hill creatures laid their eggs.
>
  Jack Yap liked eggs.

  He didn’t like them to eat. No, sir. Ever since he was his Marm’s little pink-cheeks, her wee swaddle-me-down, he refused to eat eggs, poached or scrambled, soft or hard. Nor yolks nor whites did he allow to pass his mouth, even after his mouth had been sewn shut and opened again after no food or drink three days later, and eggs were what his Marm offered.

  “Them’s good for you, Jackie-lad,” she said. “All good things come from eggs.”

  But Jack Yap merely bared his teeth at her, rawly through his wounds, and she took his look for a smile.

  “Never mind, nettle-rump,” she told him. “Have a gruel then. Plenty of sawdust in that sack over there. Boil it yourself. Tonight your Marm’s making eggs or nothing.”

  So Jack Yap, practically transparent with starvation, bleeding at the mouth, made his own gruel and drank it down.

  No, he did not like eggs to eat, did Jack Yap. But oh! The feel of them, smooth and warm and brown, or cool and white as porcelain. How the quail laid them mottled and the robin laid them blue. The pure, bright owl egg. The egg of cormorant so coral-rough against the skin. And how the eggs of heron and egret were like the children of the moon.

  And didn’t Jack Yap love to hold them, carefully, his naked palm a cradle, and him barely breathing? Didn’t he love, slowly, so deliberately, to squeeze his thin, strong fingers, ’til they cut like wires through the shell and shattered it? Or–if the eggs were too large, dark as lapis, green as jade, he would shake them like a baby shakes his rattle, like a shaman shakes his bag of bones, then dash them to the ground.

  This always made Pudding laugh and laugh.

  “You like that Pudding?” asked Jack Yap.

  “Murr!” said Pudding, nodding his great, wispy head. The vigor of the gesture almost sent Jack Yap flying off his brother’s shoulders.

  “Let’s sing the egg song!” said Jack Yap.

  And Pudding laughed, his tiny pearl teeth glinting. What he did then passed for singing in his own head, but was really more of a forlorn baying that echoed hill to hill and sent small things scurrying for burrow and nest.

  “That’s the way to do it, Puds,” said Jack Yap absently. His long eyes scanned for the glimmer and glitter of eggs. Best of all the eggs in the hills, Jack Yap loved to hunt and break the skinchangers’ eggs.