Stories: All-New Tales

by Neil Gaiman; Al Sarrantonio

  He was alone. He turned back, and the lights were still there, just below the surface, furling and unfurling to some secret rhythm.

  Like a machine, he thought; some kind of underwater wind farm. A wave farm?

  But no, that was crazy. He rubbed his cheeks, trying to sober up. He’d seen something like this in Ocean City late one night—it was something alive, Leonard had explained, plankton or jellyfish, one of those things that glowed. They’d gotten high and raced into the Atlantic to watch pale green streamers trail them as they body-surfed.

  Now he took a deep breath and waded in, kicking at the waves, then halted to see if he’d churned up a luminous cloud.

  Darkness lapped almost to his knees: there was no telltale glow where he’d stirred the water. But a few yards away, the lights continued to turn in upon themselves beneath the surface: scores of fist-size nebulae, as soundless and steady as his own pulse.

  He stared until his head ached, trying to get a fix on them. The lights weren’t diffuse, like phosphorescence. And they didn’t float like jellyfish. They seemed to be rooted in place, near enough for him to touch.

  Yet his eyes couldn’t focus: the harder he tried, the more the lights seemed to shift, like an optical illusion or some dizzying computer game.

  He stood there for five minutes, maybe longer. Nothing changed. He started to back away, slowly, finally turned and stumbled across the sand, stopping every few steps to glance over his shoulder. The lights were still there, though now he saw them only as a soft yellowish glow.

  He ran the rest of the way to the house. There were no lights on, no music or laughter.

  But he could smell cigarette smoke, and traced it to the deck, where Leonard stood beside the rail.

  “Leonard!” Robbie drew alongside him, then glanced around for the boys.

  “They slept inside,” said Leonard. “Too cold.”

  “Listen, you have to see something. On the beach—these lights. Not on the beach, in the water.” He grabbed Leonard’s arm. “Like—just come on.”

  Leonard shook him off angrily. “You’re drunk.”

  “I’m not drunk! Or, okay, maybe I am, a little. But I’m not kidding. Look—”

  He pointed past the sea of palmettos, past the dunes, toward the dark line of waves. The yellow glow was now spangled with silver. It spread across the water, narrowing as it faded toward the horizon, like a wavering path.

  Leonard stared, then turned to Robbie in disbelief. “You idiot. It’s the fucking moon.”

  Robbie looked up. And yes, there was the quarter moon, a blaze of gold between gaps in the cloud.

  “That’s not it.” He knew he sounded not just drunk but desperate. “It was in the water—”

  “Bioluminescence.” Leonard sighed and tossed his cigarette, then headed for the door. “Go to bed, Robbie.”

  Robbie started to yell after him, but caught himself and leaned against the rail. His head throbbed. Phantom blots of light swam across his vision. He felt dizzy, and on the verge of tears.

  He closed his eyes; forced himself to breathe slowly, to channel the pulsing in his head into the memory of spectral whirlpools, a miniature galaxy blossoming beneath the water. After a minute he looked out again, but saw nothing save the blades of palmetto leaves etched against the moonlit sky.

  HE WOKE SEVERAL HOURS later on the couch, feeling as though an ax were embedded in his forehead. Gray light washed across the floor. It was cold; he reached fruitlessly for a blanket, groaned, and sat up.

  Emery was in the open kitchen, washing something in the sink. He glanced at Robbie, then hefted a coffeepot. “Ready for this?”

  Robbie nodded, and Emery handed him a steaming mug. “What time is it?’

  “Eight, a little after. The boys are with Leonard—they went out about an hour ago. It looks like rain, which kind of throws a monkey wrench into everything. Maybe it’ll hold off long enough to get that thing off the ground.”

  Robbie sipped his coffee. “Seventeen seconds. He could just throw it into the air.”

  “Yeah, I thought of that, too. So what happened to you last night?”

  “Nothing. Too much Tecate.”

  “Leonard said you were raving drunk.”

  “Leonard sets the bar pretty low. I was—relaxed.”

  “Well, time to unrelax. I told him I’d get you up and we’d be at the beach by eight.”

  “I don’t even know what I’m doing. Am I a cameraman?”

  “Uh-uh. That’s me. You don’t know how to work it, plus it’s my camera. The boys are in charge of the windbreak and, I dunno, props. They hand things to Leonard.”

  “Things? What things?” Robbie scowled. “It’s a fucking model airplane. It doesn’t have a remote, does it? Because that would have been a good idea.”

  Emery picked up his camera bag. “Come on. You can carry the tripod, how’s that? Maybe the boys will hand you things, and you can hand them to Leonard.”

  “I’ll be there in a minute. Tell Leonard he can start without me.”

  After Emery left he finished his coffee and went into his room. He rummaged through his clothes until he found a bottle of ibuprofen, downed six, then pulled on a hooded sweatshirt and sat on the edge of his bed, staring at the wall.

  He’d obviously had some kind of blackout, the first since he’d been fired from the parks commission. Somewhere between his seventh beer and this morning’s hangover was the blurred image of Crayola-colored pinwheels turning beneath dark water, his stumbling flight from the beach, and Leonard’s disgusted voice: You idiot. It’s the fucking moon.

  Robbie grimaced. He had seen something, he knew that.

  But he could no longer recall it clearly, and what he could remember made no sense. It was like a movie he’d watched half awake, or an accident he’d glimpsed from the corner of his eye from a moving car. Maybe it had been the moonlight, or some kind of fluorescent seaweed.

  Or maybe he’d just been totally wasted.

  Robbie sighed. He put on his sneakers, grabbed Emery’s tripod, and headed out.

  A scattering of cold rain met him as he hit the beach. It was windy. The sea glinted gray and silver, like crumpled tinfoil. Clumps of seaweed covered the sand, and small round disks that resembled pieces of clouded glass: jellyfish, hundreds of them. Robbie prodded one with his foot, then continued down the shore.

  The dune was on the north side of the island, where it rose steeply a good fifteen feet above the sand. Now, a few hours before low tide, the water was about thirty feet away. It was exactly the kind of place you might choose to launch a human-powered craft, if you knew little about aerodynamics. Robbie didn’t know much, but he was fairly certain you needed to be higher to get any kind of lift.

  Still, that would be for a full-size craft. For a scale model you could hold in your two cupped hands, maybe it would be high enough. He saw Emery pacing along the water’s edge, vid cam slung around his neck. The only sign of the others was a trail of footsteps leading to the dune. Robbie clambered up, using the tripod to keep from slipping on sand the color and texture of damp cornmeal. He was panting when he reached the top.

  “Hey, Dad. Where were you?”

  Robbie smiled weakly as Zach peered out from the windbreak. “I have a sinus infection.”

  Zach motioned him inside. “Come on, I can’t leave this open.”

  Robbie set down the tripod, then crouched to enter the makeshift tent. Inside, bedsheet walls billowed in the wind, straining at an elaborate scaffold of broom handles, driftwood, the remains of wooden deck chairs. Tyler and Zach sat cross-legged on a blanket and stared at their cell phones.

  “You can get a strong signal here,” said Tyler. “Nope, it’s gone again.”

  Next to them, Leonard knelt beside a cardboard box. Instead of his customary white tunic, he wore one that was sky blue, embroidered with yellow birds. He glanced at Robbie, his gray eyes cold and dismissive. “There’s only room for three people in here.”

  “That’
s okay—I’m going out,” said Zach, and crawled through the gap in the sheets. Tyler followed him. Robbie jammed his hands into his pockets and forced a smile.

  “So,” he said. “Did you see all those jellyfish?”

  Leonard nodded without looking at him. Very carefully he removed the Bellerophon and set it on a neatly folded towel. He reached into the box again and withdrew something else. A doll no bigger than his hand, dressed in a black frock coat and trousers, with a bowler hat so small that Robbie could have swallowed it.

  “Voilà,” said Leonard.

  “Jesus, Leonard.” Robbie hesitated, then asked, “Can I look at it?”

  To his surprise, Leonard nodded. Robbie picked it up. The little figure was so light he wondered if there was anything inside the tiny suit.

  But as he turned it gently, he could feel slender joints under its clothing, a miniature torso. Tiny hands protruded from the sleeves, and it wore minute, highly polished shoes that appeared to be made of black leather. Under the frock coat was a waistcoat, with a watch chain of gold thread that dangled from a nearly invisible pocket. From beneath the bowler hat peeked a fringe of red hair as fine as milkweed down. The cameo-size face that stared up at Robbie was Maggie Blevin’s, painted in hairline strokes so that he could see every eyelash, every freckle on her rounded cheeks.

  He looked at Leonard in amazement. “How did you do this?”

  “It took a long time.” He held out his hand, and Robbie returned the doll. “The hardest part was making sure the Bellerophon could carry her weight. And that she fit into the bicycle seat and could pedal it. You wouldn’t think that would be difficult, but it was.”

  “It—it looks just like her.” Robbie glanced at the doll again, then said, “I thought you wanted to make everything look like the original film. You know, with McCauley—I thought that was the point.”

  “The point is for it to fly.”

  “But—”

  “You don’t need to understand,” said Leonard. “Maggie will.”

  He bent over the little aircraft, its multicolored wings and silken parasol as bright as a toy carousel, and tenderly began to fit the doll-size pilot into its seat.

  Robbie shivered. He’d seen Leonard’s handiwork before, mannequins so realistic that tourists constantly poked them to see if they were alive.

  But those were life-size, and they weren’t designed to resemble someone he knew. The sight of Leonard holding a tiny Maggie Blevin tenderly, as though she were a captive bird, made Robbie feel light-headed and slightly sick. He turned toward the tent opening. “I’ll see if I can help Emery set up.”

  Leonard’s gaze remained fixed on the tiny figure. “I’ll be right there,” he said at last.

  At the foot of the dune, the boys were trying to talk Emery into letting them use the camera.

  “No way.” He waved as Robbie scrambled down. “See, I’m not even letting your dad do it.”

  “That’s because Dad would suck,” Zach said as Emery grabbed Robbie and steered him toward the water. “Come on, just for a minute.”

  “Trouble with the crew?” asked Robbie.

  “Nah. They’re just getting bored.”

  “Did you see that doll?”

  “The Incredible Shrinking Maggie?” Emery stopped to stare at the dune. “The thing about Leonard is, I can never figure out if he’s brilliant or potentially dangerous. The fact that he’ll be able to retire with a full government pension suggests he’s normal. The Maggie voodoo doll, though…”

  He shook his head and began to pace again. Robbie walked beside him, kicking at wet sand and staring curiously at the sky. The air smelled odd, of ozone or hot metal. But it felt too chilly for a thunderstorm, and the dark ridge that hung above the palmettos and live oaks looked more like encroaching fog than cumulus clouds.

  “Well, at least the wind’s from the right direction,” said Robbie.

  Emery nodded. “Yeah. I was starting to think we’d have to throw it from the roof.”

  A few minutes later, Leonard’s voice rang out above the wind. “Okay, everyone over here.”

  They gathered at the base of the dune and stared up at him, his tunic an azure rent in the ominous sky. Between Leonard’s feet was a cardboard box. He glanced at it and went on.

  “I’m going to wait till the wind seems right, and then I’ll yell, ‘Now!’ Emery, you’ll just have to watch me and see where she goes, then do your best. Zach and Tyler—you guys fan out and be ready to catch her if she starts to fall. Catch her gently,” he added.

  “What about me?” called Robbie.

  “You stay with Emery in case he needs backup.”

  “Backup?” Robbie frowned.

  “You know,” said Emery in a low voice. “In case I need help getting Leonard back to the rubber room.”

  The boys began to walk toward the water. Tyler had his cell phone out. He looked at Zach, who dug his phone from his pocket.

  “Are they texting each other?” asked Emery in disbelief. “They’re ten feet apart.”

  “Ready?” Leonard shouted.

  “Ready,” the boys yelled back.

  Robbie turned to Emery. “What about you, Captain Marvo?”

  Emery grinned and held up the camera. “I have never been readier.”

  Atop the dune, Leonard stooped to retrieve the Bellerophon from its box. As he straightened, its propellers began turning madly. Candy-striped rotators spun like pinwheels as he cradled it against his chest, his long white braids threatening to tangle with the parasol.

  The wind gusted suddenly: Robbie’s throat tightened as he watched the tiny black figure beneath the fuselage swing wildly back and forth, like an accelerated pendulum. Leonard slipped in the sand and fought to regain his balance.

  “Uh-oh,” said Emery.

  The wind died, and Leonard righted himself. Even from the beach, Robbie could see how his face had gone white.

  “Are you okay?” yelled Zach.

  “I’m okay,” Leonard yelled back.

  He gave them a shaky smile, then stared intently at the horizon. After a minute his head tilted, as though listening to something. Abruptly he straightened and raised the Bellerophon in both hands. Behind him, palmettos thrashed as the wind gusted.

  “Now!” he shouted.

  Leonard opened his hands. As though it were a butterfly, the Bellerophon lifted into the air. Its feathery parasol billowed. Fan-shaped wings rose and fell; ailerons flapped and gears whirled like pinwheels. There was a sound like a train rushing through a tunnel, and Robbie stared open-mouthed as the Bellerophon skimmed the air above his head, its pilot pedaling furiously as it headed toward the sea.

  Robbie gasped. The boys raced after it, yelling. Emery followed, camera clamped to his face and Robbie at his heels.

  “This is fucking incredible!” Emery shouted. “Look at that thing go!”

  They drew up a few yards from the water. The Bellerophon whirred past, barely an arm’s length above them. Robbie’s eyes blurred as he stared after that brilliant whirl of color and motion, a child’s dream of flight soaring just out of reach. Emery waded into the shallows with his camera. The boys followed, splashing and waving at the little plane. From the dune behind them echoed Leonard’s voice.

  “Godspeed.”

  Robbie gazed silently at the horizon as the Bellerophon continued on, its pilot silhouetted black against the sky, wings opened like sails. Its sound grew fainter, a soft whirring that might have been a flock of birds. Soon it would be gone. Robbie stepped to the water’s edge and craned his neck to keep it in sight.

  Without warning a green flare erupted from the waves and streamed toward the little aircraft. Like a meteor shooting upward, emerald blossomed into a blinding radiance that engulfed the Bellerophon. For an instant Robbie saw the flying machine, a golden wheel spinning within a comet’s heart.

  Then the blazing light was gone, and with it the Bellerophon.

  Robbie gazed, stunned, at the empty air. After an endless m
oment he became aware of something—someone—near him. He turned to see Emery stagger from the water, soaking wet, the camera held uselessly at his side.

  “I dropped it,” he gasped. “When that—whatever the fuck it was, when it came, I dropped the camera.”

  Robbie helped him onto the sand.

  “I felt it.” Emery shuddered, his hand tight around Robbie’s arm. “Like a riptide. I thought I’d go under.”

  Robbie pulled away from him. “Zach?” he shouted, panicked. “Tyler, Zach, are you—”

  Emery pointed at the water, and Robbie saw them, heron-stepping through the waves and whooping in triumph as they hurried back to shore.

  “What happened?” Leonard ran up alongside Robbie and grabbed him. “Did you see that?”

  Robbie nodded. Leonard turned to Emery, his eyes wild. “Did you get it? The Bellerophon? And that flare? Like the original film! The same thing, the exact same thing!”

  Emery reached for Robbie’s sweatshirt. “Give me that, I’ll see if I can dry the camera.”

  Leonard stared blankly at Emery’s soaked clothes, the water dripping from the vid cam.

  “Oh no.” He covered his face with his hands. “Oh no…”

  “We got it!” Zach pushed between the grown-ups. “We got it, we got it!” Tyler ran up beside him, waving his cell phone. “Look!”

  Everyone crowded together, the boys tilting their phones until the screens showed black.

  “Okay,” said Tyler. “Watch this.”

  Robbie shaded his eyes, squinting.

  And there it was, a bright mote bobbing across a formless gray field, growing bigger and bigger until he could see it clearly—the whirl of wings and gears, the ballooning peacock-feather parasol and steadfast pilot on the velocipede; the swift, silent flare that lashed from the water then disappeared in an eyeblink.

  “Now watch mine,” said Zach, and the same scene played again from a different angle. “Eighteen seconds.”

  “Mine says twenty,” said Tyler.

  Robbie glanced uneasily at the water. “Maybe we should head back to the house,” he said.

  Leonard seized Zach’s shoulder. “Can you get me that? Both of you? E-mail it or something?”