The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2013

by Angela Slatter

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  I read loving concern in his face. This much was not a lie. He opened his arms to me. It would be so easy to go with the song’s seductive refrain, still echoing in my heart and body.

  But I could not live as a slave, not even Druaric’s. I took a step back. “You sang my love for you into being.”

  His eyes widened and I saw fear flicker in their ice-blue depths. “I sang to lure you. But only you can give your heart.”

  “I am the Wyrding-mother’s servant. I serve no man. Murtahg was a monster but you . . . you sang him into—”

  “No. I tried to sing him down but his soul was without music.” Druaric licked dry lips. “Didn’t you hear my words when you came in?”

  I’d been focussed on warning him.

  He put the zither aside. “Truly, Sun-fire, if you can see the weave of my song then I have no power over you.” He swallowed. “The clan needs us. If we don’t unite our people the other clans will turn on us, loot our stronghold, kill the men and take the women and children for slaves.”

  “It is no more than you have done to other clans, to my hill-people.”

  “Put aside your need for revenge,” Druaric whispered. “It’s a kind of poison. Look into your heart and tell me what you find.”

  Boots clattered on the steps as the warriors returned but still I hesitated. I could leave right now with my child.

  “I am a cripple,” Druaric said. “They won’t follow me unless you are at my side.”

  It was true. To see the clan crushed and its people scattered would be sweet indeed but . . .

  “Would you condemn the clan’s children to slavery, Sun-fire? Little Ciarnor is innocent of his father’s crimes.”

  The door swung open and I stepped across to join Druaric.

  Old Souls

  David Thomas Moore

  “It’s weird. I honestly never talk about this sort of stuff, even with my friends.”

  She smiles at me, vulnerably, warmly, with a hint of a frown, genuine confusion in her eyes.

  It’s getting late. The sun’s setting, somewhere out of sight behind the shops and terraces of whatever backwoods town it is I’ve got stuck in. The sky’s deepening to that rich lavender colour it holds for maybe a quarter of an hour before the evening truly sets in. A few of the cars drifting past every few minutes now have their lights on. There’s the beginning of a chill in the air; she’s started to hunch her shoulders, and has taken to reflexively tugging her cardigan tighter every few minutes. I don’t think she’s even noticed, yet.

  The table outside the coffee shop—Costa, AMT, something like that; the first place we found outside the train station—is cluttered with the detritus of a wasted afternoon. Wide cups holding drying teabags and the foamy dregs of lattes. An overflowing ashtray, and an empty Silk Cut packet. A battered old book that was too big to keep in my pocket. The scarf she took off when the sun was still out and has, for the moment, forgotten. Her notebook. Plates bearing the crumbs of the sandwiches we ordered an hour or so ago, when her stomach audibly gurgled. She laughed, then, easily and happily, and suggested, since we were showing no signs of leaving, that we get lunch. It wasn’t a question, anxiously feeling out my intentions—you do want to stay, right?—but an admission of something we both knew.

  That’s over-romanticising a bit. She’s bold, self-assured, but I’d be lying if I said there was no insecurity in her at all. She knows she wants to stay here with me, knows I want to stay in turn, but she doesn’t know why—doesn’t understand—and so she doesn’t quite trust it. She’s waiting to wake up from a dream. It would be more honest to say she’s enjoying the moment and choosing to take me at face value, than that she doesn’t feel any uncertainty at all.

  We met on the platform, having both been kicked off the same train. There was a problem on the lines, something to do with signalling, and it had to be cancelled. Another train would be along. But no other train was forthcoming, and we got to talking. When it was clear we were going to be here for a while, I suggested a coffee. Initially we took it in turns to pop back into the station, try and get some sort of update on the situation, but we gave up on the pretence of trying to get home around the time we ordered food.

  She’s a writer, working as a proofreader for a company publishing text books. That was how she put it: “I’m not a proofreader that writes, I’m a writer that proofreads. Proofreading’s just what pays the bills.” She showed me some of her poems, and I smiled at the imagery. A vase, a bust, a stone nymph. “What?” she asked, not defensively. “Nothing,” I said, earnestly. “They’re very good.”

  It’s been one of those long, rambling, winding conversations you can only have when you’ve completely connected with someone: intimate, familiar, frighteningly honest, ranging over every topic from work, to family, to sex, to books, to past relationships. Her hopes, her frustrations. We’ve sat side by side, eyes meeting and then looking away; tearing up till receipts, playing with our teaspoons; she touching my wrist once, me brushing her shoulder. We’ve people-watched and joked. An hour or so after sitting down, she phoned someone called “Babe” to say she’ll be late and not to worry, and then put her phone away without explanation.

  It’s been one of those conversations that feel completely comfortable and completely familiar, even though you barely know the person you’re talking to. One of those conversations where you feel like you’ve fallen in love, all in one day. It’s straight out of a film. She’s even mentioned Coward’s Brief Encounter once, eyes dancing, smirking slightly.

  It’s tearing me apart. I don’t think I can do this again.

  * * *

  I’m dying, and soon. A month or two, maybe a year. I’ve felt it coming, and I’ve been getting my affairs in order.

  It’s different for us; not surprisingly, I suppose. Not for us the gradual senescence that robs most men of half their lives, the creeping illness and eventual betrayal of our bodies. The day before we die, we’re as strong as when we’re born. Instead, we’re visited with a growing awareness of the coming end, a feeling almost of doom. It’s a gift, in a way—a chance to make arrangements, to ensure everything goes over smoothly—although it hangs over us, crouching over our hearts, just as it does everyone else.

  That’s why I was on the train. There’s paperwork to be sorted out, payments to be made. Dying’s a more expensive and complicated affair than it once was.

  The thing is, even if I were—even if she were offering what I want from her . . . If she could offer what I need . . .

  Well. It’s too late. We won’t have the time.

  * * *

  I smile back at her, and she sees something in my expression.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” I say, and fuss with my tea, add sugar. “It’s just . . . ” I have to look at her. I owe it to her. I can’t retreat from her now, not after the time we’ve had. “This has been really nice.”

  She doesn’t answer; cocks her head and gives me that slight smirk again, knowing, coy. She lays her hand on my wrist—deliberately, leaving it there for a moment before withdrawing it. I look down at her hand, back to her face. She’s beautiful, really. Soft and expressive, with a smile that takes in her whole face.

  “But”—how do I explain?—“eventually they’re going to fix that fucking train.”

  She laughs, rips a page out of her notebook and scrawls on it. “I was kind of assuming this wasn’t goodbye, to be honest.” She hands the page to me: a mobile number, two names. “That’s my name on Facebook,” she says, pointing. “I don’t like to be too easy to find.” She shrugs. “We can keep in touch, and next time you’re in Manchester, or I’m in London, we can meet up, have coffee again.”

  I nod, tuck the sheet away, flash her a grin. “Sure. Sorry, I was being silly.”

  * * *

  All flesh is dust. Nothing lives forever. That’s Maat. Even Lord Osiris died, and if the gods can die, then what recourse have mor
tals to complain?

  If we cheat death—and can it be cheating, if we are following in His footsteps?—it’s not by dodging death, but by returning on our own terms. Everyone returns—provided, of course, their hearts pass judgement—but most become lost when they do. The spark is gone, and with it the mind, the shadow, and the name are lost, scattered on the wind. The soul returns in new flesh, and cannot know itself, or recognise any other thing.

  If you’re properly prepared, the ka—the spark—and the soul are brought back together. And it’s like a key in a lock, or one of those wooden puzzles they sell at gift shops around Christmas: bring those two parts together, and it all comes together. You’re reborn in your own flesh, born an adult, with your own mind and your own name and your own shadow. It’s just like waking up after a long sleep. We do it every human lifetime, with all the uncertainty that entails. Sometimes I have thirty years, sometimes near on a hundred, usually somewhere in between.

  And death is . . . How to explain it, to someone who isn’t one of us? For a time, all the parts of you are separated. The soul presents the heart to be weighed, while the mind sleeps, and the ka . . . waits. Regains strength. No part of you can wholly understand what’s happening, without the other parts, and when you come together again, you can’t properly remember. It’s like a dream. You know you stood before Him, and His sister-wife; you know you were judged by His brother. But you can’t remember what He said.

  We’ve come together, those of us who are still around—a couple of hundred, I suppose; we’re scattered, and can’t always be reached—and talked about bringing back the practice, teaching people how to have eternity. Some of us say the knowledge should not be kept in our hands, and it would be Maat to spread truth and wisdom, while some way that the gods allowed our culture to be destroyed for a reason, and that it is Maat to respect their will. In the end, we always agree that it would be too dangerous to draw attention to ourselves.

  And so I’ve met Christians, and Moslems, and Jews, and Buddhists, and people of all sorts of faiths, everywhere I travel, and I have been moved by their conviction, and impressed by their wisdom, and it breaks my heart to walk away from them knowing that they are, ultimately, doomed. Nothing but voices, whispering in the dust. But it’s not my place to do anything about it, and I’m not sure I could change anything if I tried.

  Not that it would help her. I lost her more than a thousand years ago.

  * * *

  What’s written on the sheet in my breast pocket isn’t her name. It’s the name she knows, but it’s not hers. She’s used so many—Adrienne, Njèza, Elizabeth, Mawar, I forget them all—but her name, her real name, is Phoebe.

  I met her in Greece, years after the homeland was lost. It would have been the fifth century, I suppose? I was already thousands of years old.

  She was a farmer’s daughter, but she’d come to Athens to be a sculptor’s model. Even then, she’d had a fierce love for art, and she’s always, every lifetime, been an artist, or worked with artists. She’s a sculptress herself, usually, although she’s also been a painter, and a composer, and other things besides. But her passion is to shape things.

  It’s much the same for me, I suppose. I was an architect, building tombs and temples in Abdju, in my first lifetime, which was why I was afforded the right to a tomb; and I’ve always been an architect, or an engineer—a builder, sometimes, if that’s the only opportunity open to me. But I remember all my lives. I do it because this is who I am, what I know. She always seems to find her art again from scratch, one lifetime to the next. It’s as though her soul remembers, even when her mind is gone.

  She always seems to find me, too.

  It took me a while to notice. I suppose I just thought I was drawn to people that were like her. But soul speaks to soul—it’s something you become more aware of, when you’ve gone and returned enough times—and at length, I began to recognise her. We found each other, and we came together, again and again. I don’t even know how she finds me, though find me she does.

  We’ve not always been lovers. Sometimes she’s been very young, when she’s found me, sometimes very old. Sometimes, one or both of us has already been wedded. We’ve been lifelong friends, we’ve married, we’ve had affairs that have torn both our lives apart. I’ve raised her as though she were my daughter, and nursed her in her dotage.

  It torments me. Every time, I recognise her; and I know that she recognises me, but she doesn’t understand why. Always, there’s this wonder to her, that she can find someone who understands her so well, and to whom she is so instantly drawn. Someone who fits. Always, when I see that hint of recognition in her eyes, that slight confusion, I’m filled with a sick hope: that she’ll know me. That she’ll be Phoebe, and she’ll know me as she knew me then. I know it’s impossible, that Phoebe’s ib, her heart—her mind—is lost in the world, an echo of who she was, and that all that’s looking out at me is her soul, as innocent and unknowing as a child. But I feel her soul call to me, and I can’t help but hope.

  I’ve told her, of course. She usually believes me. It speaks a sense to her, I suppose. But it’s worse, then. She feels the burden of her past lives, an obligation to try and be the woman I loved, to be Phoebe. She rebels, which I understand—if she were to submit easily to that sort of tyranny, she wouldn’t be the soul I know—and I lose her, or she wastes away, tortured by the history she can’t remember.

  I don’t tell her anymore.

  I’ve died for her. Been killed defending her, or avenging her. Fought with her brothers or husbands. In one instance, she killed me herself. Violent deaths are the most dangerous, for us. We’re usually unprepared for it. Someone has to collect the body, see it conveyed to its tomb within seventy days. We tend to look out for each other, check in from time to time to see if it’s needed. So far, thank the gods, one of the others has got to me every time.

  I’ve rejected her before, for my own sanity. Fled her, reduced us both to shadows of ourselves. I can barely express how I suffer. I’m more conscious of what’s happening, and can refuse it, in a way that—not understanding why she’s drawn as she is—she’s rarely able to, but don’t imagine for a moment I’m any less compelled than she is. When people speak of soul mates, of destined love, they imagine it as an ennobling thing; but it’s nothing of the sort. It’s bitter, and it’s oppressive, and it robs you of every simple and honest emotion.

  I’ve raised whole cities, in my time, seen them spring from bare earth, sprawl out across miles, then wear away to ruins and dust. I’ve sat on the hills overlooking Carthage’s ruins—both times—and drunk sharp, sour wine to remember buildings I wrought. I’ve fought in wars that have, centuries on, shaped whole continents. I’ve met people who are now legends. In recent years I worked for both Wren and Brunel, if in a fairly minor capacity each time; today, fortunately, my skin colour is less of a barrier to working in my chosen field. But I look back and I barely see all of that. Just her, over and again through the ages.

  * * *

  I sit at that table, talking and joking, but there’s a distance there now, and she feels it. I can’t do this. I’m going to my tomb in a month or two, and I’ll be gone, for a year, or ten years, or half a lifetime. I never know. But it’ll be too long, and I’ll lose her again. And I can’t do it, to her or to me.

  She’s muted now, confused. We’ve touched one another, connected at a level she didn’t expect, and now I’m withdrawing again. I don’t want to, didn’t mean to, but I have to. She gets her phone out again, checks her messages. Thinking about “Babe,” and about getting back on a train.

  My heart is leaden.

  * * *

  I’m going north to prepare. The body has to lie in its tomb, to re-enact His descent into Duat. Certain spells have to be set around the body, and the canopic jars have to be present. It doesn’t have to be the same tomb as I was first buried in; it felt like taking a terrible chance, first time I tried that, but Meryetamun insisted she’d moved, and it had done her
no harm. It came as a great relief to all of us, especially the way well-meaning academics kept pulling our resting bodies out of the ground. I’ve seen Tutankhamun’s body, reinterred in his tomb, too late for the boy to make the return. We all loved him; he was beautiful, and always happy.

  This time I’m using a lockup in Leeds, bought outright, with the best security and climate control money can buy. A couple of the others will be checking in on me every now and again.

  The ushabti aren’t necessary either, although they make life a little more comfortable in the underworld. I’ve left most of my old ones in Abdju, but I have a small box of them in my improvised tomb: a few servants, some tools and luxuries. Meryetamun went to bed with a crate of teddy bears, last time she went down. I’ve heard they snuffled about in Duat for a year or two, quite useless as servants, but caused something of a stir.

  Aside from my tomb, I need to arrange for my current identity to “die” and for my disappearance to be explained. I need to create my new identity, have funds moved and documents created. I have the resources for all of this—I’ve become practised—but the wheels have to be set in motion.

  * * *

  Using the internet on her phone, she’s confirmed that there’s a bus service to get us both on our way again. We’ve a short wait. She’s become brusque, cold. She orders another coffee and another tea, smiles breezily, starts talking about a film she’s seen recently.

  I miss her. Not just Phoebe, but already I miss her in herself, this proud, bold, warm, loving woman I met on the platform today. Sitting next to me, the scarf around her neck now, less tangible armour up around that, blowing on her latte and sipping it, and regarding me over the lip of the cup with bright, brittle eyes.

  Blue eyes. Clear and open. Phoebe’s had been dark. I actually think I like these more.

  She’s hurt, and she’s not sure why. That I’m rejecting her, of course; that we’ve touched each other so and I’m closing up again. But she can’t see why this stranger, this man she’s just met, by chance, one autumn afternoon in a train station in the middle of nowhere, can have such a hold over her. She’s angry with herself for caring that I’m leaving.