The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Vol. 1

by Carol Emshwiller

  “Old Man Magic Mountain,” she had said, seeing him through rising skirts of fog, “let me go, Old Man, that I should make it to the center of the universe before nightfall if I start before dawn.” She had said this several times, nodding at him, Old Man Mountain, ever her left shoulder,. and then she’d not slept, but waited for the moon to rise and started down. And Old Man Magic Mountain had granted her wish just as though it had been made upon the first star, and she was down, or almost, and it wasn’t quite dark yet. She could lie under a fir tree, hidden in it’s lower branches—a fir tree much bigger than those she’s used to up there—untie her skirts from around her waist and wrap them about her and sleep the sleep of somebody who’s climbed all day long and half the night before, too. In her sleep she sings a song she had forgotten… a song from her great uncles and her grandfather. She sings it all night long.

  Oh the queenly women of Omphalo

  Sing low, sing low,

  Sing down by the sea,

  Sing breasts, sing bellies,

  Sing up to the sky,

  Sing high, sing high, sing high.

  Sing lie down and die.

  Even as a child she hadn’t liked that song, wondering why she, a girl of the mountains, or her sister, or certainly her queenly mother, thin and straight as a sheltered pine, wasn’t worth singing about. She’d forgotten the song, most likely on purpose, and when she wakes up, she has forgotten it again.

  The sounds down here are all different. Bird calls such as she’s never heard before. Something’s squawking just around the slope from her tree, another thing chirps nearby, and far out in the bay there’s some sort of groaning going on. If that’s the women of Omphalo, they don’t sound happy.

  She creeps out from under the fir tree branches. It’s very early, but that’s her usual time for getting up. The sun is hitting her mountain tops, though down here, it’s barely light. But it’s not cold. She begins taking things off, one by one, and still not cold. As she does this, she walks towards the beach, hunkering down, trying to hide behind rocks and trees, not knowing what might happen if she was seen by one of those women. She crosses a wide plain full of unfamiliar flowers or large… huge versions of ones she already knows, lupine that makes her lupines look like dwarves, though the columbines are here, exactly as they are on the peaks. She can see almost the whole bay now, sparkling between the trees. She comes to the edge where there’s a drop off, and beyond it lies the beach, all flat and smooth. It isn’t what she thought it’d be. For one thing, it’s mainly pink, not white, and it’s not soft sand. It wouldn’t be comfortable basking there. She can see, even from there, that it’s made up mostly of broken shells and a group not broken lying, pink or stripped with red, in a little line of their own at the edge of the water, and there’s another reddish-green line of seaweed and another thicker line of foam, and then the water, sucking in and out. There’s nobody there. Not even a goat.

  She’s stripped down by now to her gray, knit petticoat and under-socks. It’s not a bad petticoat. Her best, in fact. There are seven little Indian paintbrush flowers across the top, alternating with six little sulpher paintbrush flowers. She’d not only embroidered them herself, but dyed the yarn. There’ll be no shame in going down on the beach wearing nothing but that.

  She piles her bundle and her outer clothes beside a bush that has rose hips on it. There’s rose bushes—well, they hardly deserve the name bushes—almost like that in the mountains, though so much smaller, both the bush and the hips… not even a quarter… not even a tenth the size of this one, though the hips are just as sweet. Perhaps a tiny bit sweeter.

  That makes her think of the fir tree where she slept, how lush it was and how it came down all around like a tent, and not a small one, either. She has a little shiver thinking of this. What, she wonders, what about the large, round, women of Omphalo? But where is it? And where the women that are supposed to loll along the shore all day?

  Now that she sees the place, she does believe this might well be the center of the universe. What else could be so blue and sparkly? What else could be so large and round, and, almost all the way around, edged with pink, a luminous pink, like a baby’s lips.

  She climbs down the short, steep way, over rounded rocks to the beach. (Where she comes from, she’d hardly call it a cliff.) Even before she crosses the line of weeds and then the line of shells, and puts her toes—socks and all—into the line of foam, she already knows the water won’t be anything like the cold of the mountain streams, yet, when she does put her toes in, it’s warmer than she even expected—warm like having been kept in a kettle at the back of the damped stove so there’d be something warm to wash with in the morning. She wouldn’t have thought that such a thing could be—as though the center of the universe was one warm, big, pot, though why not?

  But now that she’s out in the clear, standing up to her knees in the water, she turns around to get a good view of the curve of the bay. She looks in a great circle, trying to see if she can get a glimpse of any of the white palaces of the city, or any white towers, for it’s known, or at least it always said t’was known, for its towers and balconies and pillars, and for its great halls where they dance all night and then lie down on beds of snow goose down, and there, do all the strange things that they do do with each other. But all she sees are the red and white rocks of the cliff, red on top and white on the bottom, curving away for more than half the arc of the world, and finished off with the line of the sea behind her, and not even one small tower… not even the tiny edge of anything white or pink peeking out from among the trees that line the drop off to the beach. She studies the whole of the borders of the bay over again, slowly, and she begins to see that there’s more here than, at first, there seemed to be. There are fissures and caves and, yes, even balconies right in the cliffs, and windows and pillars and pilasters and balusters and balustrades, if you look at it all in just the right way. Squinting your eyes. And even tables and chairs here and there in front of the portals, mushroom-like tables, big and little, with red tops and white bottoms. And there are towers, red ones, though not very many and not very tall. These and the caves and balconies line the bay as far as she can see, all in the round, carved, curves of Omphalo, the rocks looking soft, just as you’d expect them to, and pink, red, and white, just as you’d expect.

  Is this great curve of cliff, then, Omphalo itself? Are the eyes of Omphalo all facing, then, out towards her? out of their niches, windows, vents, crannies, portals, watching her secretly and laughing at her tiny breasts?

  She’s so startled at the thought she can only stand and stare out, both arms crossed at her chest. A black-headed tern flies by, not two feet from her, and looks at her sideways with one beady eye that has no feeling in it at all. Just so, she thinks, just so, no doubt, the eyes of the women of Omphalo when looking at a woman of the mountains.

  But all of a sudden it’s as though there’s nothing more to lose than standing here so small and in her socks and petticoat. She puts her arms down and heads for the nearest portal. Changes her mind halfway across the beach and turns to a much smaller door.

  When she gets up to it, there’s nothing to knock on. She tries knocking on the stone, but that makes such a dull thunk she can hardly hear it herself. Well then she’ll go right on in and apologize for it right away. The door she’s chosen is so small she has to lean over to enter. It’s like their houses up there, small doors to keep out the cold. Before she gets quite through it she calls out, “Kutch koo, kutch koo,” but softly, almost a whisper, rather like a dove, and yet it echoes off into other, connecting caverns, to the left and right of her, and on and on, seeming to get louder and making itself into a kind of round, so that she thinks the women of Omphalo have answered her in a great chorus and that their voices are shriller than she thought they’d be and that they’re laughing at her again. But when the last “kutch koo” sounds out, almost by itself, she hears that it’s her voice, as though she mocked herself for thinking there were ot
hers who were mocking her.

  Nothing more to lose, indeed, after that racket, so she calls out, louder and bolder, “Hoo haa,” but, again, no answer but herself, echoing back at her. She steps completely in then, and through a vestibule and on into a great hall, and then to another, and another beyond it following the curve of the beach. Yes, yes, here are, certainly, the quarters of the women of Omphalo, and worthy of them, too, one cavern connecting to another through huge halls and doorways, smooth and round, sometimes the walls curving in like great bellies. Sometimes the floors ballooning up… and there are balconies leading on to other balconies, porches leading on to other porches, and every single one of them with beautiful views of the sea and the beach.

  She finds only one object. A curious thing, too. A round silver bell, smaller than what one might put on one’s best, pet goat. An odd thing, she thinks, for the women of Omphalo to have, and just a tiny sound to it, too, that would hardly be heard across a room, though here where, in lots of places, it echoes so, the sound would be adequate. After she finds it, she rings it as she goes along. She hopes, apologetically. She does not want to intrude, but if she’d known that everyone had gone away, she’d have brought more food. Rose hips and raspberries will hardly do.

  She goes a long ways through the caves down one side of the bay. The place is so big, though, she doesn’t try to do even half. When she finds a balcony she likes a lot—it’s just her size and she can sit on a red knob and look out at the view… all along the floors there are these strange lumps and knobs and tables. Certainly the women of Omphalo don’t dance the way the men say they do. Or if they do, they do it on the beach. Maybe in the moonlight? . When she finds that place, she decides she’ll spend the night there, honored to be spending it even in this small corner of Omphalo—small corner, but a small corner at the very center of everything and from which everything else rose up. She’s glad she didn’t put on a red hat (and wouldn’t ever now) and jump over—down—beside Gem Lake.

  The doorway to her chosen place is small, exactly the size of the doors she’s used to, and there’s an alcove on the far wall that’s high enough so that, even when she lies down in there, she can still get a good view of the sea over the balustrade. She brings up seaweed to make herself a soft bed and then sits a while looking out at the view and wondering if she’ll have to hold her nose and swallow some of the little soft things along the beach. The snails… periwinkles…. She might be able to manage those little ones.

  As she sits, she catches a glimpse of something white far out beyond the mouth of the bay. At first she thinks it’s just more sparkle, but then she sees that it’s a sail. As it comes closer, crossing the mouth of the bay, she sees it’s a cluster of sails, two square ones and two triangles, front and back. So much sail that the ship looks tiny underneath it. The way the sails belly out makes her think it must surely be a ship of Omphalo, but it just goes straight on as though Omphalo wasn’t the center of anything important. For a while, the sails glow pink in the setting sun, and then it’s too dark to see it anymore. She lies down in her niche, but she doesn’t sleep well. She keeps wondering what there’ll he to eat the next morning.

  Though she’s hungry when she wakes up, that doesn’t seem to be a problem, at least not for the moment, because the sky is so full of the sunrise and the water’s lap-lapping in a way that makes all the little shells sing their own songs as they rustle up and down the beach, and the breeze, as she comes out from her balcony, is touching her cheeks like she’d not been touched since she was a child, and not often then, either. So that before she even thinks about it, she’s taken off her petticoat and socks and gone right on in the water, lain down in it, her face up to the sun, arms out, and lolled and basked away half the morning just like the women of Omphalo would do.

  But then something starts happening behind her out in the bay. She feels it in the water before she hears or sees anything. This is something big and possibly dangerous. She hurries out and back up the beach to stand just under the umbrella of a mushroom-shaped stone, and turns to watch whatever it is that’s happening out there. There’s a spot, far out, where the water is roiling, but also something is nearer and coming in fast. Whatever it is leaps a great, last leap and lands up on the shore, half in, half out of the water, a huge thing, whitish, and, here and there, spotted with ugly callouses. And she knows, right away, that, as mountain rose to beach rose, as mountain fir to beach fir, just so, is she to this being. She had begun to suspect that such would be the case even before she’d gone into the caves.

  The creature sighs, or perhaps groans. It sees her, too. She can tell that, and she’s looking back at it, right into its tiny, unblinking eye (tiny, that is, only compared to the size of the rest of it). It sees and seems to her to understand everything so far. With one hand and arm she covers her small dry breasts and with the other she covers her skinny ribs, for this calm, sad, understanding eye is more than she can bear.

  The creature makes that sound again. Is it speaking to her in some language she knows nothing about? She moves closer. “Opal?” she asks, and waits. “Opal?”

  But suddenly here comes another one, and then three more, and four, leaping out and lolling there, leaning back into the pink shell beach, until so many she’s stopped bothering to count. The first one is already changing color, turning blue and purple, shivering a great shiver. It’s skin has begun to have a dry look. She squats in the sand beside it, not afraid any longer. “Opal?” she says, “Opal? Opal?” for this is, clearly, the largest and the leader.

  She knows by the look in its eye that it’s dying. She’s seen that look before. “Poor friend,” she says and strokes what might be the forehead. The creature shivers just there, where she touches, as though the rough skin were exquisitely sensitive. Then she walks among them patting and stroking as the breeze had done to her, and calling them, “My poor friends,” and she calls one Amethyst, and one Ruby, and one Sapphire, and one Rose Quartz, and one Lapis Lazuli, and, at the same time, tries to chase away the gulls that are gathering, and the vicious little things that walk sideways.

  She knows by their eyes when they die, and they all die. The gulls and the others peck at them even before that happens. When they’re all dead, she lies down among them to keep company with them till they get used to being dead.

  A long time after, in the middle of the night, with all the little things still tearing at the bodies, eating and eating… the sounds of eating all around her, she realizes how hungry she is. Like them. No different from them.

  Opal will be, soon enough, gone, that’s clear. Opal and all the others, nothing but bones. She’ll be sorry to see it. Perhaps Opal would be glad if a little of her flesh didn’t go to gulls and crawly things. Perhaps Opal would like to contribute… to go on in her… as her. (That had happened once up there one terrible winter when some of the grandparents gave themselves for the sake of the others and it had been a grand and useful gift.) Something of Opal would certainly live on in her, then, just as she, herself, had become more and more goatlike. And she would thank Opal, just as they always thanked the goats who were also friends. And some of Opal could be smoked and dried and put away in the right sort of cave and kept a long time there.

  She goes up to get her knife. When she comes back she sings them, “Dead an gone, dead and gone,” before she touches any of Opal.

  So that’s how there came to be a fat woman on the beach at Omphalo, who, everyday, watched the sailing ships go past the mouth of her bay, and everyday lay on a torn piece of sail upon the shells among the bones, and ate periwinkles and floated on her back in the warm water, and sang “Going on down” songs, “gooseberry down,” and, on clear nights, lit fires along the beach so that the men of the mountains could see that Omphalo was there and would know that Opal waited for them at the center of everything.

  Ice River, No. 4, June 1989

  Yukon

  HE’S A DRAGON. He’s a wolf. He’s caribou. She tries to please him. She tries to keep
out of his way and, at the same time, tries to get him to notice her by doing little things for him when he’s gone or asleep. She needs him for warmth so they can cuddle up and he can warm her. She’s afraid to leave because that’s all the warmth she has. But she’s afraid to stay. Is it possible to rush away when you live this far north? These high valleys never get warm. Mountain water coming down from glaciers is bright turquoise.

  He’s always looking at the sky or the ground or the horizon, not at her. But bits of red wool is all she has to look good in and then she never was a popular girl. If had big fur boots and hat, then maybe make a move. Make a run for it.

  As valley to mountain top… might as well be ship-to-shore, sending signals. How live that way. How love?

  He’s a rattlesnake, but no immediate threat (that she can tell). Comes home when he feels like it, bringing dead things to eat. Holds conventional views. Passes judgments on. Everything that needs to be said, he says, already said, and she thinks he’s probably right, or almost. Make him chopped liver. Make him hasenpfeffer. Make him big mugs of glogg, but might not be home till three AM anyway. Wait up. And always those Englemann spruce. A couple of hundred years old-even more-but still skinny. Nothing to them. She loves them, though what else is there to love? It’s the only tree around.

  He’s a giant. He’s a dwarf. She has to help him climb up onto his throne. For the love of the spruce trees, she nuzzles into his furry chest, thinking that to love him you have to love horses, spiders, and raw oysters, thinking how now she’s going to have a baby. Should she tell him? She’s already fairly big-with-child, but he hasn’t noticed. She decides not to tell him. She decides, boy or girl, she will name it Englemann as though they were Mr. and Mrs. Spruce.