by Neil Gaiman
From the folds of his robe, Dream produced a silver-framed mirror. "I found this downstairs," he said. "In Cain's wheelbarrow."
"I--er--" stammered Cain. "I came across it..."
"I know exactly where you must have come across it." His voice was like iron pipe in winter, that tears the skin off a human hand. Eyes dark as the slag of failed stars turned on Cain, who sank to his knees, his face pressed to the floor.
"Eight hundred years ago I came close to being destroyed, binding that thing, chaining it when a stupid and irresponsible wizard first summoned that particular variety of solipsistic nightmare into material form." When Dream was angry his voice became terrifyingly quiet. "I bricked it up in the bottommost crypts of my palace so that it could never wreak its havoc on humanity again. There its heart, its essence, is imprisoned once more."
He held up the mirror, and in it could be seen the gilded lintels, the bricks between them not only whole, but layered as they had always been with cobweb and dust.
"I will not have my secrets meddled with."
"No," whispered Cain, clenched hands pressed together. "No, my lord. I swear, my lord, I..."
"Silence." He turned to the others: Lucien, Nuala, Mrs. Norton, the Fashion Thing. "You all may go." As they filed past him he laid a hand on the librarian's arm, looked up into the sweat-streaked face. "Thank you, Lucien."
"I'm only glad to see you survived, my lord. "Alone, he turned back to Cain. "Son of Adam," he said, and held out his hand palm down, "for that which you have done, I condemn you ..."
"Muh-my lord?" Abel's chubby face appeared around what was left of the door. "Puh-please ... Cuh-Cuh-Cain didn't mean any harm."
"What he meant," said Dream, each word cold and separate, "is no concern of mine. Leave us. And bid your brother good-bye."
Abel took a step back, cradling the tiny gargoyle in his hands, then inhaled, stiffened his shoulders, and came forward again. In his own way the Dream King, in his anger, was much more dangerous than Cain to cross.
"Muh-my lord ... I ask a ... a boon. A g-gift. I did ... I did save you. Puh-Please. D-Don't... D-Don't..." His voice failed him, tongue-tied, and he stood biting his lip and gazing up at the thin, pale master of the Dreaming.
Dream looked from Abel to the wretched man groveling at his feet, then back at that round, earnest face. He lowered his hand, and though there was no change in his countenance, he sounded almost sad. "Is this truly what you want, out of all that it is in my gift to give?"
"Y--Y--Y ..." He couldn't speak, but nodded so that his dark thinning curls bounced on his head.
Dream's eyes returned to Cain. "Get up," he said quietly. "Get a mop. Have this palace clean by morning."
"Yes, my lord. Certainly, my lord." Cain scampered for the door, pausing beside Abel only long enough to hiss viciously at him, "And I don't need you to fight my battles for me, nitwit!"
And he was gone.
"Cuh-Cain ... !"
Dream caught Abel's arm, staying him as he would have gone through the ruined doorway after him. "He will only kill you again," he said, in a voice like the dark beyond the stars. "You know that."
"He muh-might change," said Abel. "One day."
He broke free, and hurried down the twisting stairs after his brother, his yellow gargoyle in his arms.
THE BIRTH DAY
B. W. Clough
I met Brenda Clough in Washington at a signing, and it was a very long signing, and she had waited with an astonishingly patient infant son for hours to get her books signed.
This story arrived unsolicited, and is chronologically the earliest of the tales in here. It's science fiction, I think. Or maybe romance.
It was quite a new thing the band was planning, a thing so new there was no name for it yet. "I will think of a name," Ikat promised her uncles. "It will be here ready when you all come back, triumphant."
Her words were deliberately well-omened. Uncle Rav winked at her--there were no flies on him. Everyone else murmured approvingly and fingered their pebble bags or sticks to rub the luck onto where it would do the most good. "Now remember," Uncle Oren fussily repeated, "don't kill! We're just scaring them along. You remember where the dead-end canyon is. And you, Ree, keep your paws off that sling of yours, it's deadly!"
The boy grinned happily at this slanted compliment. People moved off in twos and threes down the hill to find their places. Everyone except Ikat went, old and young, even the nursing mothers, who were supposed to wait at the canyon and keep the captured goats inside by yelling and whistling until the woven wicker barriers could be tied into place.
Though it was autumn, the day was too hot for garments. Ikat wore nothing but the clay bead around her neck. She reclined on her folded deerskin skirt, with the dogs for an armrest, in the shade of the big cedar tree overlooking the river valley. The yellow dust of the band's descent rose up into the blue sky, higher and higher, to join the bigger yellow stain up there, the one stirred up by a thousand thousand cloven hooves.
"Do you wish to go, too?" a voice asked quietly behind her.
Startled, Ikat half turned. A stranger, lurking in the brush? "Flint! Thunder!" The dozing dogs leaped up, alert in an eyeblink. Flint and Thunder knew something exciting was happening down the hill, and felt left out. Now they were delighted to discover an enemy. Flint's lionlike mane rippled and bristled, and his eyes got red. Thunder's savage low growl hung like smoke in the air. They loomed on either side of Ikat, waiting only for her word to tear the intruder apart like a buck. "Come round the tree, stranger, to where I can see you," Ikat ordered.
"This is not the way a New Meeter should greet people," the visitor said reprovingly. His feet made no noise at all on the coarse grass. He loomed very tall over Ikat, but then she was sitting down. A black antelope hide was knotted around his thin brown body, and his bead was smooth-polished red agate, cunningly bored through to take a neck thong.
"You are not quite a stranger, then, if you know my job," Ikat said sunnily. "If I have offended against hospitality, let me make amends. Flint, back! Please, sit in the shade here--I will move over to give you the coolest spot. Lie down, Thunder! When you are thirsty there is a skin of water in the tree hollow there. I regret, sir, that I have forgotten your name, if I ever knew it."
"You have long known it, Ikat, but we have never met," the visitor said. "You call me Shaper, and you have served me all your life."
"Oh!" Quickly Ikat averted her gaze in respect and touched her forehead to her sitting knees. "You honor me, lord!"
"You are not afraid," the god noticed in mild surprise.
"I have never met a god before, but what sort of a New Meeter should I be, if meeting someone new frightened me?" She would have said that anyway, but was pleased to feel only a slight flutter in her stomach, no worse than when Uncle Rav called on her to tell a story after supper to guests. "And as to your first question, lord, if you know me so long, you know why I do not go with my band today." She stretched out her legs, so that the sunshine fell on her club foot.
"Are you sorry for that?"
She frowned. If anyone else asked, she twisted her answer, but it's unwise to lie to a god. "Well, it's horrid not to be able to ran. I dislike that a lot. But I can walk fast enough to keep up, when we move to the winter camp. The cousins take turns carrying my bundle. I might never have become the New Meeter if my foot was well. It's fun to tell the stories, and put names to new things. And this year I've found something truly new, something really useful and exciting if it all works out. So I'm a helpful member of the band; what more could anyone want?"
She glanced sideways at him to see if she was rambling on too much, for that was a fault she was often subject to. But he was gazing out over the heat-hazed valley at the wild goat herds on their journey. The oncoming winter drove them out of the northern mountains, south and west to where summer lingered all year. Ikat imagined the summer place as green and well watered, buzzing with bees. "We should follow t
he goats someday, and see," she said out loud, and then covered her mouth to show she meant nothing by it. "I'm sorry, I will make a story out of that one. I shoot out these things like sparks from a flint. It's my job."
"You do it well," the god said. "What is this new spark of yours?" He pointed to where some band members were just visible down below trotting through the tall grass.
"Oh, it is my best one so far! It came to me when I went with Aunt Ama to draw water from the river. We use baskets lined with clay because these goatskins are too hard to come by." She dragged the waterskin out and took a drink, first politely offering it to her guest. "It was last spring, right after the goats passed by on their way north. We had eaten all the meat, and were living on nothing but wild grain and roots. You don't get berries around here till mid-summer. And, I thought, the animals are a lot like the river, flowing by us. We can dip out the water and save it in baskets and skins. Wouldn't it be great to dip out some goats and keep them a little while? Then instead of eating meat until we fall down, twice a year, we could spread out the food for a longer time."
"Very clever," the god said.
"It's not me that's going to make it work," Ikat admitted. "The band will do all the work--Uncle Rav had the idea about tying basketry panels to pen the goats in, for instance. I'm the New Meeter--I had the thought, like the way the father begets the baby in the womb. The band has to actually go into labor to birth the child, and today is the birth day. That's why it's really all right, that I'm not there. Fathers aren't allowed in the birthing tent." She knew it sounded silly, a girl referring to herself as a father, but Shaper, of all gods, would surely understand.
Then she sat up straight, digging her elbow in so suddenly that Thunder whined protestingly beside her. "And that spark came from you, lord! For you are master of the Uncreated. You must be come to bless the occasion and receive our thanks! Do you prefer blood sacrifice, or sex, or---"
Her own unheeding chatter suddenly made her blush right down to her breasts. The other big problem with her foot, which she hadn't mentioned to the god, was that no other band would accept a limping bride, however clever. And she couldn't marry any boy here, they were all her cousins. Up to this point her best hope had been to captivate some visiting hunter. But now--she looked full at him, as a girl should when assessing a possible sex partner, and her heart sank. So far as she could read his strange face, he looked acutely embarrassed! "Libations," she blurted. "Some gods prefer drink offerings; that's good, too. Just indicate your wishes, lord."
The god fingered his neck stone, staring down at it. "To speak the truth, Ikat, I come because I am of two minds about your 'new thing.' You might call it 'herding,' by the way. The goats are already in their herds, you are merely moving them to your own design."
"It shall be named as you say, lord, thank you," Ikat said, delighted.
"But think carefully about it. You press forward to embrace new things. As you say, it is your job. But is every new thing a good thing?"
Ikat stared. "How could this be other than good? You are a god, lord, and know no hunger, but for us it is very different! Do you know what I dreamed yesterday night?" The god nodded, but Ikat, absorbed in her words, didn't notice. "I dreamed that the little canyon was brimful of imprisoned goats, so full that we ate meat once a day!" She sighed with pleasure at the memory.
"Ikat, listen to me. Your band, all of humanity, is like a fish in the river, at a place where the stream splits into two channels. The choice the fish makes will change its life, its world, forever, and should not be taken lightly."
Beat clapped her hands in delight. "You can talk in word pictures, too! But I shouldn't be surprised, the thought skills are yours. It is the best fun! Do you warn the fish, then, against the river channel ahead? What is it like?"
Suddenly, though he did not stir, the god seemed to be very tall. "I could show you," he said quietly. Thunder the dog shivered beside her, and Ikat noticed for the first time how very shady the cedar was, how its broad cool boughs cast the deepest and most clinging shadows around the god. They were shadows of the uncreated, of things that were not now and might never be. And the chief horror was their namelessness. Ikat, the namer, could not name them, though she could see that some were big and some were little in the hand, and others were thought skills while yet others were arts of finger and leg and arm. There were literally no words yet, for the things that stirred there in the shadow of the god. The New Meeters who would name those things were themselves yet to be born.
Dizzy and sick, Ikat turned and hid her eyes against Thunder's flank. "Forgive me, lord, I am not strong enough to see!"
"No--I should not have done that. It is not weakness, Beat. It is your strength that prevents you from seeing, the strength of simplicity and innocence.... Tell me, what is the name of that river?"
Ikat swallowed her nausea. The god had actually apologized, and was trying to soothe her--amazing! It was up to her to respond. She seized on the plainness of his question with relief. "It--we have no special name for it, lord. It is just the river. Is it your will that I should find it a name?"
"I will name it for you," the god said. "Call it Euphrates."
More important issues distracted Ikat from this pronouncement. What about the "herding"? He had said he was in two minds about it. She thought about pleading for mercy, but discarded the idea. Too late to be humble, and anyhow it was her way to be bold. "Oh, Lord Shaper, if one wishes to prevent the birth of a child, it is far easier at the beginning. Perhaps the pregnancy has already come too far to abort it."
He looked down at her, wrapping the antelope skin more firmly around himself. "Even the birth day is not too late. A child may die of its birthing. Have you no stillborns in the birthing tent?"
We will conceive again, she wanted to retort. Instead she said, "But you've already named the baby, lord, named it yourself!"
"So I did," the god said, disconcerted.
Mistake, Ikat thought to herself, wincing. Even kindly Uncle Oren didn't appreciate having his inconsistencies pointed out. No man did--how much less a god? She bowed her head to her knees again. "We are the grass under your feet, lord. Do to us as you will."
For a moment, bent over, she knew he was still there, maybe thinking it over. Then Thunder gave a half whine, and Flint sneezed. She sat up and saw the deity was gone, evaporated like a puddle in the sun. "That was scary," she told Flint, pulling his ears. "And, oh dear, what's happening down at that canyon?" She couldn't stand waiting anymore--suppose the god was down there right now, tossing goats over the wicker barriers like Ree slinging pebbles?
She hung the waterskin over her shoulder and hauled herself to her feet. Tying her skirt on, she began limping down the rocky slope. The dogs ran ahead, but she called them sharply to heel. Trained to chase and kill, the dogs might never learn the art of "herding." "Heck, we haven't learnt it ourselves," Beat sighed. "And it was such a good idea...."
She paused, listening. They were coming; she could hear the voices! As soon as the first people came in sight she shrieked, "What happened?"
The children ran up the hill to her, seizing the waterskin and talking all together at the tops of their voices. More tired, the adults came on in a tight clot, arguing all the way. "Only a partial triumph, niece," Uncle Rav said. "Half a dozen goats caught alive, no more. And all because of this bean-balled, wisp-brained, snot-arsed, misborn--" He shoved someone forward, someone entirely new.
"I'm sorry," the strange young man said miserably, hanging his head. "But I really didn't know. I still don't."
Ree said, "I keep trying to tell you!"
"We need that limber tongue of yours, Ikat," Uncle Oren grumped, "to get it through his thick head. This is Neem, from a band up the river. A hunter, and thought we were hunting. Jumped in and speared half the goats before we could stop him!"
Ikat assessed the newcomer with one piercing glance. His beautifully flaked spear showed there was a clever flint-knappe
r in his band. And the tiger skin he wore-- wow, if he killed that animal himself, he was a superb hunter indeed! "I'm Beat, the New Meeter," she said to him. "Since you killed, you should eat of the kill with us, that would only be fair."
Neem's face lightened at her words. "How kind you are," he said. "I thought you'd hand me my head, for spoiling your trick, whatever it was!"
"Lend me your arm up this hill, for you see I have a limp, and I'll forgive you." Close beside him like this, Ikat could smell Neem's strange and attractive odor, a whiff of male sweat and tiger leather. Aha, I see your plan, Lord Shaper, she said to herself, smiling. Admirably subtle! You will distract me with pleasures, perhaps even children, and count on my other child, the child of thought born this day, to die of neglect. But I am not so poor a parent as that!
SPLATTER
Will Shetterly
Will Shetterly is one of those people I feel like I've known forever. Will is a fine writer who, inexplicably, keeps doing other things instead, like nearly becoming governor of Minnesota, and nearly directing and releasing an independent film. He has had a beard long enough that I cannot remember what he looked like without one. He is also a nice man, gentle and perceptive. This is not a story I would have expected him to write, but then, nasty tales lurk in the nicest of us.
He sets his story during Sandman #14, the story I called "Collectors," in The Doll's House collection. (It's also a pretty accurate portrait of the whole signing tour thing.)
Sometimes he suspected his publisher called each city before a signing tour to order, "Fans, assorted, at least two geeks in every batch." Today, the geeks seemed to be a Demented Duo, a young man and woman dressed in black who placed a stack of his books before him and asked for an autograph doodle on the woman's thigh that could be turned into a tattoo. He obliged them, pleased for just that moment that this last-minute appearance was so poorly publicized that no photographers were present. He knew he was grateful that they wanted his signature sketched on her skin with a felt-tip rather than a razor blade.
He drew a cartoon cat's head with vampire teeth and a knowing wink, then added an indecipherable scrawl that might be Peter Confry or Please Crucify. They both thanked him profusely. He felt old as he realized he had miscategorized them. They were actually a Nice Young Couple who would not embarrass him with offers of obscure drugs or inventive sex that he would have to politely decline. This realization saddened him. It was always nice to be' asked.
He inscribed their books and instantly forgot their names (Teri and Jon?), though he wrote thirteen times "To (her name) and (his name)--Best wishes! P-scrawl C-scrawl." While he scribbled in the worn paperback copies of every novel of his except the new one, the hardcover that they'd bought here, they told him they had driven from Alabama just for this. Before they drove home, they would eat cheeseburgers side by side at McDonald's with their copy of Hunting Butterflies open between them. Grandma liked to take care of the baby, and besides, their autographed copies of Confry's complete works weren't just to make them happy--those signed books were investments in their baby's future.