When I look straight on, it is gone. No footprints mark the snow where it passed. The wind stills. I breathe in and out and look around. There's a sudden movement of leaves cascading from the crutch of branches where they were caught. They loosen from the hollows of trees. I hear scuttling and I twirl around. Nothing. Just a slight movement amid the lichen. The sunlight glitters on the marred snow of the trail. Shadows pool in my empty footprints that lead back down the slope.
I shake my head and laugh, then move up the hill. It is only Agnes. My love, my imagination. The muscles ping in the tops of my thighs. I sweat in the warmth of the wool cardigan Agnes knitted three years ago. And around me the woods still rustle. I catch small movements from the corner of my eye; see a great black-tailed squirrel dive for cover and tell myself it is only him and his brethren that cause the movements. But the cold suddenly chills me. There are not that many squirrels. Something else stirs among the leaves.
At the top of the hill I turn around like a lighthouse, surveying the changes the new snow brings to the landscape: a downed tree, a newness, a wound, a healing. Through the branches I catch glimpses of bright red—yarn I tied hither and yon to hold memories of Agnes in the forest. I sense movement in the way the leaves settle too smoothly in place when I look at them. The sun-glare on the snow hides all footprints.
The coyote interrupts my study. He approaches directly through a copse of aspen, shivering the saplings. At the top of the hill he circles me, his gray fur rough around his shoulders and hips. His sharp face holds hazel eyes that cast furtive glances at me. He has only mangy fur on his back and tail. A poor excuse for a coyote, I think. Something ill. No wonder it preys on the neighbors’ pets. It still circles and I turn with it. Then it sits down and stares.
“What do you want? I've no food for you, I'm afraid.” I think of Agnes. If she were here she'd want me to try to bring it home. She'd want to set out food for it. “Poor thing,” she would say. “See how its ribs stick out?"
She would be right. The coyote looks poorly fed. It stands up and approaches. “Get on with you.” I shoo it away with a sweep of my hand. “Go chase something small. Go trick someone else."
It stops and studies me again. Its dark eyes shift over me. I shiver as the wind picks up. As its eyes meet mine. Things move in the brush and then go still. The coyote starts moving again. I don't want a sick animal near me. I stomp my foot at it. The coyote jumps back. “Go on. Get away,” I yell.
The coyote stops again.
And then it leaps forward. It comes at me from the side, its tongue still lolling from its mouth, its teeth bared. Its body crashes into my shins and I stumble. Almost fall. “Get away!” I yell and stagger a step. I kick at the coyote and it jumps back. It leaps again, sideways. Leaps again and hits the backs of my knees. I fall, oh-my-God, I fall. I hit the snow face-first. “Get away!” I moan as I scrabble in the snow for a stone, a stick, anything to defend myself. I wait for its weight on my back. Wait for teeth. Nothing.
I roll over and the coyote is nowhere to be seen. The underbrush trembles with unseen movements. Shivering, I fall back onto the snow. My head rests in one of the empty spots created by my footprints. What happened? I didn't know coyotes did such things—were dangerous. When I reach into my pocket, Agnes's glove is gone. Stolen.
“Give it back,” I yell into the still air. My words die, useless. I get up and stumble down the trail towards home. The woods rustle, whisper, quiver around me. Unseen beings hover. Fear—fear of the coyote—rides me. When I get home the house sits empty. Oh God, it is so empty. Except for my newfound fear.
* * * *
Spring, and Agnes's cats still have not come home. Small heaps of yellowed bone in the coyote den, I suppose.
The trails, though, have filled with birdsong. The robins returned last week and the song sparrows. I know because I stood at the edge of the woods and listened. But I did not enter. Only once have I entered since coyote came to me and then I saw his flickering shape amongst the trees, watching. Waiting. Keeping me from Agnes just as Dr. Michael has done.
In the woods the branches fill with the blush of intended leaves. Once they fluttered with their load of yarn, but—well, I cut the strings from the branches on my last furtive foray into the trees. I left them to litter the forest floor; the birds would take them, I thought. Agnes would be pleased. But I could not leave those memories tethered as small offerings to the coyote that wanders those ways. Not when he has banished me from the forest. From Agnes.
So I no longer walk to Thurman Ridge. In fact I stay home much more. When I do walk—even just down the lane—I carry a walking stick. I tell my children my age affects me, I tell people the stick helps on the hills, but really I intend it for the coyote—to save myself. And when I walk the road, the woods that border it are full of whispers, full of half-seen movement. Agnes's doing, I know. She walks in the forest, tethered away from me, as Dr. Michael wanted.
I could live in the forest, if it were not for the coyote. But the beast has confined me to the garden.
I sit back on my haunches and study my handiwork. The cat door gleams, oiled and ready. I pulled the nails this morning, then tidied and painted the small opening. It looks welcoming to all.
That done, I turn back to Agnes's garden, which glimmers with crocus, primula, and the phallic swell of hyacinth buds that rise through last year's dead foliage. Leaves rattle under the cedar hedge, the sound I've known in the forest. I smile. A wood-wren tsk-tsks me. A flock of titmice twitter in the hedge, in the hoary apple tree covered in lichen and old moss. The sword fern in the corner quivers as if something waits there. The rhododendron's dark leaves cup the offering of early flowers. The garden lives, knows. I smile more broadly and sit cross-legged on the still-cold ground.
The earth rises away from the garden towards Thurman Ridge, where coyote lurks. Lower down the trees cover the hillsides and shelter the memories I abandoned there. The memories I ripped from the house behind me. The memories I visited on all those long walks—until coyote.
I lay my hands on my thighs, palms upwards, pleading. “Agnes,” I whisper. “It's okay now. Dr. Michael and the children are gone. We can do as we please. We can repay their trickery.” I close my eyes and the spring sunlight warms my face. The breeze wipes at my skin in a familiar touch. I hear the foliage shift.
“Yes,” I whisper. Agnes returns on creature-feet, unseen in the underbrush. I open my eyes and the small things crawl toward me, brown and beautiful with bits of colored wool in their wild-lichen hair. “Come,” I say, and point towards the cat door. “You can come and go as you please. It's safe. There are no coyotes, no Dr. Michaels here.” I blink and the beings are gone. The cat door swings, beating in the sun. I hear Agnes's laughter from the kitchen. I climb to my feet and enter, calling to the denizens of my unempty house. Perhaps I will get a cat and call it Agnes, so people will not think me strange.
Copyright © 2002 Karen L. Abrahamson
* * * *
Karen's stories and poetry have previously appeared in Canadian literary magazines. This is her first SF sale. She lives in Langley, British Columbia, and is currently working on both fantasy and mainstream novels. She says “The fantastic is all around us. We just have to be willing to see."
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Interview: Blöödhag
By Victoria Garcia and John Aegard
9/23/02
Portland, Oregon; Spring 2001: it's a Saturday night and we've crammed ourselves into a dank little bar in Old Town. The crowd has dyed-black hair, torn jeans, Betty Paige bangs, and four-season leather. It's a thrash night, and we've just learned that the guys we want to see are third on the bill. A shaggy teenaged boy opens; he stares at his sneakers and wants, obviously and desperately, to be a guitar hero. The crowd likes him well enough; maybe they remember what it was like when they were shaggy, desperate and obvious too. A twenty-something bunch follows, roaring, their fingers egg-beater fast on their guitar strings. The lead s
inger has a razor grin. Bass boils through the floor and the crowd roars back at the band, pressing close to the stage. This is what they came for. A mosh pit develops. Beer flows across the floor. Kids at the front glow, slick with pearlescent sweat. Then their set ends, the bar goes dark, and twenty minutes later, it's our turn.
The boys mount the stage in pressed white shirt-sleeves; ties; studded belts; horn-rimmed glasses. This is what we came to see. The crowd quiets a bit when the bassist steps up to his mike and begins to read from Parable of The Sower. Then the drummer raises a copy of The Sheep Look Up and also begins to read. Seconds later, the lead singer follow with The Lathe of Heaven, the guitarist with Dune. Around the bar, a dozen or so others are nodding and smiling along with us. When the reading is over, we, the die-hard dozen, scream our lungs out. A few drunken thrashers scream along with us, but the rest of the crowd seems a little confused.
Soon, the spotlight comes up again. The lead singer grabs the microphone. “This is Frank Bellknap Long!” he yells, and, feverish, launches into a lecture on Long's oeuvre. There can't be more than a handful of people on this earth who could get a beer-sodden thrash crowd to listen to an English Lit lecture. Thirty seconds later, the audience is sufficiently educated, and the guys begin to wail. Jake the singer holds the microphone over his head and belts out the song in a growling voice that's monster-movie low. “No reason! No corners!” he shouts. Two minutes later, they're done with the pulps and ready to move on to the New Wave. “Our next song is about Harlan Ellison!” Jake bellows, and the geeks, the hipsters, the metalheads, and the drunks let out a howl of mutual joy.
Blöödhag—note the dual umlauts—hails from Seattle. Describing themselves as “edu-core,” the band performs nothing but two-minute thrash tributes to science fiction writers. Between songs, the band pelts the audience with paperback books, quizzes them on book titles, and demands that the audience show their library cards. Their motto: “The Faster You Go Deaf, the More Time You Have to Read."
Last month, we visited Blöödhag at the Seattle home of bassist Sir Zachary Orgel. Also present were guitarist Dr. J. M. McNulty and singer Professor J. B. “Jake” Stratton.
Strange Horizons: Where did the idea for the band come from?
Dr. J. M. McNulty: We made up the idea from a little thing that Jake and I would do just sitting around the house; we wrote a song about Edgar Rice Burroughs and we were joking about it, wouldn't it be funny if we did that. Then Jake started writing lyrics about this n’ that and I actually started listening to a lot of metal at the same time.
Professor J. B. “Jake” Stratton: We were always a metal band. We wrote those songs and I just thought of every fact I could think about those guys.... Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tolkien, and Moorcock.
McNulty: A. E. Van Vogt, who was my favorite writer at the time.
Stratton: We just wrote those off the top of our heads with the basic knowledge I got from reading the books and the little biographies—and it wasn't until we started doing the band that we went back and studied up—
McNulty: And my mom gave me a couple books about it, like “here's a big book about these sci-fi authors.” Thanks, Mom!
Stratton: So our early songs didn't have nearly enough details about the guys. They were just funny little songs.
SH: Who were the first songs about?
Stratton: Van Vogt, Burroughs, Moorcock, Philip K. Dick, Kenneth Robeson, J. R. R. Tolkien—
McNulty: Joanna Russ
Stratton: Well, Joanna Russ was second era.
McNulty: I wrote Joanna Russ.
SH: So Blöödhag has always been Blöödhag?
Stratton: Under the name Blöödhag we've always been the same. Writing about authors was a hell of a lot better than the subjects that have already been written about.
McNulty: How much more can you write about your ex-girlfriend?
Sir Zachery Orgel: The first year we were together I had to write down all the authors I knew off the top of my head, then I started going through all my collections of short stories. I made a list of 150, 160 authors.
McNulty: We've got fodder for the next five years.
Stratton: We've got 35 songs? 36?
McNulty: Way more than that. Like, 40.
Stratton: Wow.
SH: When did you guys play your first gig?
Stratton: Our first gig was a party at the house where my girlfriend and I were living.
McNulty: ‘97? ‘96?
Stratton: I thought it was ‘95. We were just winging it, inflicting ourselves on our party guests. One of our party guests, our good friend Brent—who wound up being our drummer a few months down the line—he got us our first real gig, at the former all-ages place down in Pioneer Square, Area 51. That was the first time we wore ties.
McNulty: Did we wear ties at the party?
SH: Is that when your look came together?
McNulty: We decided if we were gonna do it, we'd have to do something out of the ordinary. Since Day 1, we wrote simple precepts about what the band was going to be. Science fiction, really short songs. We always threw books. Shirts and ties, everything.
Stratton: Having a stage outfit defined us as a band and also drove home the fact that we weren't just some other metal band.
Orgel: In many ways, we're a shtick band, but it's very liberating because we don't have to worry about what the song's gonna be about. It's gonna be about a science fiction author.
Stratton: Right, then it's up to me to find a resource that has enough information—good information. Some biographies are thin, you know what I mean? A lot of time I'm writing about an author I haven't even read yet.
SH: Like who?
Stratton: Oh, I can't say. A lot of time I end up reading them as a result of someone in the band giving me the book—
McNulty: We're doing a Gene Wolfe song right now.
Stratton: Then I get these guys to give me the facts.
McNulty: Like the lyrics to Moorcock.
Stratton: Right, or some major storylines in their best books, and I see what I can come up with. Other than the personal interest, I try to put in information about their major themes and theories, book titles, anything like that. In the early ones we were trying—
McNulty: We were trying to be funny—
Stratton: We were trying to be funny, and we were trying to lampoon metal styles at the same time. I was actually learning how to play—
McNulty: and sing, and everything else. The early four-track shit is hilarious, it's so funny.
Stratton: He's gotten really good now.
SH: The Alfred Bester line about L. Ron Hubbard is really funny. “When Campbell fell under L. Ron's spell, Bester said, ‘man, you can fucking go to hell.’”
Stratton: I try to have one funny line in there, at least funny to some nerd who's read everything about the guy, if no one else.
SH: Well, metal is like the nerdliest music.
Stratton: Yeah, most people who like metal are ugly loners.
McNulty: Rock-star metalhead guys don't like to think about it that way, but it's geeky as hell.
Stratton: I've said this before, but anybody who's particularly obsessed about any one thing is a nerd. It doesn't matter how cool you think that thing is, you're a nerd to somebody else. Like those hoity-toity record collectors out there. They're cool in their little world. Football nerds? Football players, they're nerds. That's all they can talk about.
McNulty: Baseball fans. Baseball is the geekiest sport of all.
Stratton: Even if it gets you girls, it's still nerdy.
Orgel: Not like Blöödhag really gets girls.
McNulty: Oh, don't say that.
Stratton: We're beating them off with a stick.
McNulty: No, not us. We're just sitting around on tour talking about different writers, making fun of them.
Stratton: Not making fun in a bad way.
McNulty: No, not at all.
Stratton: You sit and you think about it and you an
alyze it, you realize, aw, this shit's actually kinda funny.
McNulty: I think everything's humorous. I could be in a totally dark doom band and that'd still crack me up. That's why I like dark doom metal, because it's hilarious. The more serious they are about their music, the funnier it is.
SH: It's like you sprang fully-formed from the forehead of Zeus. You had the look, the tunes, the book-throwing. You see any change in direction, like including other kinds of writers?
Orgel: Our next album is for authors who are normally placed in the literature section but whom we consider sci-fi. Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, William S. Burroughs, Aldous Huxley, J. G. Ballard. Orwell, of course.
McNulty: That's Appetite for Deconstruction, our new record.
SH: Is that out yet?
McNulty: It's recorded. It'll probably be out by the end of this year. We definitely like horror too, though we're not going to write about Dean R. Koontz or Stephen King. Although we could do a song about Stephen King, but I kinda think he sucks.
Stratton: I try not to do too many songs where we have a really negative opinion. I felt like I was too negative in the Harlan Ellison song, I was negative in the Robert A. Heinlein song and I think that ultimately I did them a disservice—
McNulty: Well, it needs to be said, man.
Stratton: I'd just rather reach for something positive. What we want to do is look for ways we can expose Blöödhag to the rest of the world rather than switch up what we're doing. I still don't feel like we've done enough. We'll never get to play a stadium or anything like that. But I sure would like everyone to know about us. The other side of Blöödhag that's developed is the literacy program, playing the libraries. Even though we have a lot of fun with it, we're actually serious. I don't care what people want to read. I just want them to want to read.
SH: Tell us more about the literacy program.
Stratton: It's something we want to expand.
Strange Horizons, September 2002 Page 12