Imaginarium 3

by Sandra Kasturi, Helen Marshall (ed) (v5. 0) (epub)

  “I see you have not, for which I am thankful. We are a brotherhood devoted to these new studies late from Germany and Denmark, now Austria and Italia. None of us can move, let alone publish, without suspicion. That man Vesuvius is as much spy as guide, the Pope’s factotum. How, young Guillermus, would you like to see Brahe’s island of philosophy, in sight of great Elsinore? Uraniborg, city of the heavens, though in fact given over to the muse of a study that has late been revived. And all this by a man with a golden nose. Would you like to see again your starry twin Galileo? See Rome, Verona, Athens? Not Carthage, not possible, don’t say that in good company again. But Spain, possible now. The courtship of Great Elizabeth by Philip makes travel even there approved and safe.”

  “My . . . I’m an actor. I used to play women.”

  “You still do.” Dee’s grim smile lengthened. “Men like Vesuvius dismiss you. Bah! Religion is destroying itself. The Protestants prevent the old Passion Plays, and in their stead grow you and Marlowe. You write the history of tragic kings. That has not happened since the Greeks.”

  Guy shook his head. “Ask Kit to do this.”

  He is, thought Dee, a good, faithful, fragile boy. And something in his thin shoulders tells me that he’s contemplating going into Orders. That must be stopped.

  Dee said aloud, “Kit draws enemies.” The boy’s eyes stared into his. “Men who want to kill him. They love you.”

  Out of cold policy, Dee took the boy into his arms and kissed him full on the lips, held him, and then pushed him back, to survey the results in the creature’s eyes: yes: something soft, something steel.

  Guy said, “You taste of gunpowder.”

  “You would still be able to write your poetry. Send it to Kit in packets to furnish out the plays. In any case he will be undone, caught up in these Watchmen unless we hide him. As you might well be undone if you stay here and miss your chance to see the world blossom. Move for us and write it down. And learn, boy, learn! See where Caesar walked; breathe the scents of Athens’s forest. Go to high Elsinore.”

  Shakespere stood with his eyes closed. The old house crackled and turned about them. The world was breaking. “Are there tales in Denmark of tragic kings?”

  Dr. Dee nodded. “And things as yet undreamt of.” He took up his long staff and the black cloak that was taller than himself. He put his arm around the slender shoulders and said, “Riverwalk with me.”

  The door shut tight behind them, and only then did Bessie come to open it.

  Outside, white carpeted everything, and Bessie stepped into the hush. Somehow it was snowing again, though the sky overhead was clear. She kicked snow off the stone step and sat down, safe and invisible. It looked as if the stars themselves were falling in flakes. The idea made her giggle. She saw thistledown: stars were made of dandelion stuff.

  As so often once it starts to snow, the air felt warmer. The blanket of white would be melted by morning; if she were abed now she’d have missed it. So she warmed the stone step by sitting on it, and let the snow tingle her fingertips. She scooped up a ridge of it and tasted: cold and fresh, sweeter than well water.

  She looked up, and snow streaked past her face like stars. Her stomach turned over and it felt as if she were falling upward, flying into heaven where there would be angels. She could see the angels clearly; they’d be tall and thin with white hair because they were so old, but no wrinkles, with the bodies of men and the faces of women. The thought made her giggle, for it was a bit naughty trying to picture angels. She lifted up her feet, which made her feel even more like she was flying.

  An hour later and Guy came back to find her still seated on the step.

  “Hello, Bessie.” He dropped down next to her and held up his own pink-fingered ridge of snow. “It’s like eating starlight.”

  She gurgled with the fun of it and grabbed her knees and grinned at him. She was missing a tooth. “Did you see the old gent’man home?”

  “Aye. He wants me to go to Denmark. He’ll pay.”

  “Oooh! You’ll be off then!”

  He hugged his knees too and rested his head on them, saying nothing.

  She nudged him. “Oh. You should go. Chance won’t come again.”

  “I said I would think on it. He wants me to spy. Like Kit. I’d have to carry a knife.”

  “You should and all. Round here.” She nudged him again. “Wouldn’t want you hurt.”

  “You’re a good lass, Bessie.”

  “Aye,” wistfully, as if being good had done her no good in return. He followed her eyeline up into the heavens, that had been so dreary and cold. The light of stars sparkled in her eyes and she had a sweet face: long nosed, with a tiny mouth like a little girl, stray hair escaping her kerchief, a smudge of ash on her face. He leaned forward and kissed her.

  “Hmm,” she said happily and snuggled in. These were the people he wanted to make happy; give them songs, dances, young blades, fine ladies in all their brocade, and kings halfway up the stairs to God.

  “What do you see when you look at stars, Bessie?”

  She made a gurgling laugh from deep within. “You know when the sun shines on snow and there’s bits on it? Other times it’s like I’ve got something in my eye, like I’m crying. But right now, I’m flying through ‘em. Shooting past!”

  “Are you on a ship?” He glimpsed it, like the royal barge all red and gold, bearing Queen Elizabeth through the Milky Way, which wound with a silver current. Bessie sat on the figurehead, kicking her heels.

  “Oh, I don’t know!”

  “Like Sir Walter Raleigh with a great wind filling the sails.”

  “That’ll be it,” she said and kicked her heels. She leaned forward for another kiss, and he gave it to her, and the rising of her breath felt like sails.

  “Wind so strong we’re lifted up from the seas, and we hang like the moon in the air.” He could see the sails fill, and a storm wave that tossed them free of the sea, up into the sky, away from whatever it was held them to the Earth. “We’ll land on the moon first, beaching in sand. It’s always sunny there, no clouds. We’ll have taken salt pork and hardtack.”

  “Oh no, we’ll take lovely food with us. We’ll have beer and cold roast beef.”

  “And we’ll make colonies like in the Caribbean now, on Mars, and then Jupiter. They’ll make rum there out of a new kind of metal. We’ll go beyond to the stars.”

  Bessie said, “There’ll be Moors on Mars.”

  Shakespeare blinked. She was a marvel. They all were, that’s why he wrote for them. He loved them.

  That old man: like the Greeks had done, he said. Their great new thing that he and Kit were doing. And the others, even miserable old Greene; their Edwards and their Henrys. Mad old John Dee had made them sound old-fashioned, mouldy from the grave. Bessie didn’t care about the past. She was traveling to Araby on Mars.

  So why write those old things from the grammar school? Write something that was part of the explosion in the world.

  I need to bestir myself. I need to learn; I can turn their numbers into worlds, such as Bessie sees, where stars are not crystals, where the moon is a beach of gravel and ice.

  Dee would be gone by dawn. He and the Danes were sailing. Were the Danes still in the house? If they were he could leave with them.

  As if jabbed, Guy sat up. “Bessie, I’m going to go.”

  “I knew you would,” she said, her face dim with pleasure for him.

  Go to that island of philosophy, be there with Rosary; he liked Rosie, wanted to kiss him too—and Rosie could explain the numbers. Guy jittered up to his feet, slipping on the slush. He saw Fortune: a salmon shooting away under the water. He nipped forward, gave Bessie a kiss on the cheek, and ran into the house, shouting, “Squire. My good sirs!”

  From inside the house came thumps and racketing and shouts, the Squire bellowing “Take this coat!” and the Danes howling with laughter. Outside, it started to s
now again, drifting past Bessie’s face.

  Well, thought Bessie, I never had him really.

  She was falling between stars again on a silver ship shaped like a swan with wings that whistled. They docked on a comet that was made not of fire, but ice; and they danced a jig on it and set it spinning with the lightness of their feet; and they went on until clouds of angels flew about them with voices like starlings and the voyagers wouldn’t have to die because they already were in Heaven, and on the prow stood Good Queen Bess in silver armour and long red hair, but Good Queen Bess was her.

  Shakespere’s next play was called A Midwinter’s Nonesuch on Mars.

  NAHUALES

  Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  The nahual smiles, showing off its yellowed teeth, as it stands under the streetlamp. He wears a black leather jacket, smokes cheap cigarettes, but he is still a nahual. There is the whiff of mountains about him and the glint of the coyote in his eyes. I’ve never seen a nahual, but I heard of them through my great-grandmother. Old-lady stories. Folktales. The tales steer me to the other side of the street, avoiding him. He notices, the corner of his mouth twitches, but I head down the steps towards the subway.

  Safe, sitting inside the orange subway car, the smell of the mountains and the matorral fades and I am once more in Mexico City. A boy walks down the aisle selling bubble gum. A teenager bobs his head up and down to the music from his headphones. A man reads a newspaper. Once more nahuales are stories, very old stories, and nothing more.

  And yet I place three nails in my bag the next morning.

  Three days later I step out and feel the city changing. The scent of pines and shrubs where there ought to be only smog.

  I look at the homeless man sprawled in an alley and wonder if his grey shape betrays another nature.

  I take the underpass to the subway, quickening my pace. When I emerge, I almost bump into him.

  The nahual from the other night with his black jacket. He’s with two others this time. They’re also dressed in leather; they also smoke cheap cigarettes that stain the fingers.

  The one in black smiles at me and he says something I can’t make out. Maybe he’s trying to put a spell on me.

  I can deal with this.

  I duck my head and toss the nails behind me, and they do not follow.

  I turn to look at them as I reach the steps. They’re laughing. It resembles the barking of wild dogs.

  I place the rosemary and the knitting needles under my bed for protection. I carry nails to ward my tracks. But that doesn’t make them go away. They remain there, waiting by the subway station.

  In my great-grandmother’s time, in her hometown, they tied a poor, bawling goat to a post to lure the nahual, then dropped a crucifix at its feet when it appeared. My great-grandmother shot the nahual in the head herself. It had killed her sister. The only thing she regretted was the bawling of the goat as the nahual tore its belly open.

  It is impossible to attempt that these days. Where would one get a goat? How could one fire a rifle? The only rifles I’ve seen are in the sepia-coloured pictures of my great-grandmother’s youth, she with the weapon against her shoulder, staring squarely at the camera, the corpse of the nahual at her feet. A dark mountain range behind. A land of forests and monsters.

  I lower my head, I try to hide between the folds of my clothing and walk faster. Faster, faster. The click of my shoes against the cement. Their shadows behind me until I slip into the subway car. Until it pulls from the station and I can breathe again.

  The walk from work to the subway has become unbearable. Each night they are there. Sometimes they sit, hunched down, drinking from green bottles. Other times they lean against the wall, arms crossed. But they’re always there.

  The nails will only do so much and I fear my method of protection might be losing its strength. Meanwhile, their grins seem to grow wider. I can almost hear the snapping of their jaws as I rush forward, trying to move as quickly as my heels will allow.

  I never understand what they say to me. I don’t want to understand. Garbled nonsense which might be a threat. Or an entreaty.

  I take a taxi one Friday, unable to face the walk to the subway. But I can’t afford one each night. Only the subway can take me to my apartment.

  The nahuales, not content with inhabiting the outskirts of the station, have made the neighbourhood their home. Shadows and cracks appear where they have never been before, and the buildings resemble mountains. One day I fear I shall walk out the door and find myself deep in the matorral, the dense thickets making it impossible to make my way back.

  Fear has made me look for different routes. But eventually, just like all rivers lead to the sea, I must make my way into the station. And they’ll be there. It does not matter if I approach it from the north or the south, if I take the underpass, or round the streets. They find me.

  They have grown brazen in their approach. No longer content to whisper and watch me, they sniff and touch a strand of hair as I walk by. Sneak a hand up my arm.

  They are so close I think I see the ticks in their matted hair, which is like fur. Their eyes are narrow, opportunistic.

  Their voices, as I descend into the station, bounce off the walls with vicious glee.

  The rain comes and seems to flush the nahuales away. Once again I can walk to the station, heels splashing in the puddles.

  I am relieved.

  But then I spot it, gnawing at garbage: a great black dog. It growls at me. Two other dogs appear and join the black one.

  I take a step back.

  It takes a step forward.

  I run, back through the underpass, back to the street. I take off my heels and run barefoot, nylons tearing and sweat dripping down my neck.

  The pack chases me across a forest of tall pines. I wade through a stream and emerge on the other bank, until I reach the safety of a café and rush inside. I look out the window and see the dogs’ eyes in the dark. They glow yellow, like the stub of a cigarette.

  I hear laughter and three men walk from the shadows. The one in the black jacket opens his mouth and smoke curls out of it, like incense rising in the night. He smiles at me.

  I wait for an hour before I leave the café, but I do not seed my tracks with nails.

  When I get home, I climb into bed without taking my clothes off and press my bag against my chest. I think of the goat tied and bawling in the dark.

  The moon shines yellow and round through the curtains. The din of traffic grows distant and the night is blacker than ink, all the city lights blotted out.

  The door creaks open as a black dog nuzzles his way into my bedroom. Two other dogs pad behind him.

  The black dog sniffs and approaches my bed. Its bark is close to laughter.

  I draw the sharp knitting needle from my bag and grin before plunging it into his neck.

  TRAP-WEED

  Gemma Files

  For their land-longing shall be sea-longing and their sea-longing shall be land-longing, forever.

  —An old legend of the Orkneys, concerning those seals who shed their skins to become women and men.

  Any selkie can be Great, if he fights for it when challenged. We are by no means a democracy.

  But for myself, I did not care to, and was driven forth, into deeper waters. So I swam until my fat and fur could no longer warm me, ’til the chill had almost breached my heart. I swam ‘til my lungs gave out, then sank, deep into darkness.

  When I woke, I found myself aboard-ship, peltless and doubly nude. A lean man stood looking down on me, his elegant face all angles, while others watched from behind, above . . . so many, for this creaking wooden shell to carry ocean-bound in safety. I had never seen such a number before, all in one place.

  (For we stay as far from human men as possible on Sule Skerry, if we can, unless our instincts drive us otherwise. We know their works.)

  I was gasping, painful all over, in strange places�
��burnt and scraped, as though I’d been dragged over rocks. Indeed, my arm had a chunk torn from it, neat and triangular—nipped straight out at the point where it blended into shoulder, that same place I saw most mariners adorn with tattoo-work. I gaped at this a while, then tried to touch, and flinched from the sting of my own fingers’ salt.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” the man advised, without sympathy. “Call it the price of your salvation—a lesson either to keep to shallower waters or learn to hold your breath longer, when you choose not to.”

  Though it had been some time since I tried for human speech, I found it returned quick enough. “Where . . . am I, sir?”

  And this he smiled at, grimly enough—no surprise there. Since in their hearts, most men like the pap they call courtesy, that sorry salve to their impossible pride.

  “This scow of a brig’s mine, by right of seizure,” he replied, sweeping a contemptuous little bow. “Bitch of Hell, some call her, or Salina Resurrecta, since she’s cobbled from shipwrecks. While I myself am Jerusalem Parry, captain: A pirate, as you suspect. You were drowning, meantime—a sorry sight, in one sea-bred. Yet Mister Dolomance here brang you up, before mortality could quite take hold entirely . . . and while I misdoubt he did you as little hurt in the performance of it as he might have, we must always recall how those he comes from are not known for their restraint, in general.”

  “Mister Dolomance?”

  “Aye, that’s he, hid over yonder, where he likes it best—you’d be dead if he hadn’t found you, or if he was still able to do as he wished, instead of how I tell him to. For which you should, in either case, be suitably grateful.” Fixing me with cold, pale eyes, then, like two silver pennies salt-blanched to the colour of water-cured bone turned coral: “And what are we to call you?”

  You could not say it if you tried, I thought. But since I seemed compelled to answer, I rummaged for the last human name I’d heard—the one that boy I’d pulled from his boat’s kin had called after him, its syllables dissolving down through water into meaningless sound by the time they reached the cave where my sisters kept him tethered, forcing him to sire a fresh crop of younglings. What they did with him after I never witnessed, for I was already at the sparring by then, about to choose discretion over valour, exile over family. Indeed, it only now occurred to me, I might not see them again, in his company or otherwise.