They probably wouldn’t even notice you’d gone.
But you don’t. You won’t. And you turn away.
And maybe someone looks back at the sound of something heavy never hitting the rails. And maybe they don’t. Because everyone knows these woods, that water, those trees, these rails, are haunted anyway.
She makes a mark on the stone, one shaky line. He stands on the shore, arms crossed, watching. He wants to smile, but it makes his cheeks hurt, as if the rock-hard bubblegum left splinters in his skin. His feet, planted in the mud, ache. He remembers running; she remembers drowning. In the end, it is the same.
In this moment, he loves her for her pity, and he pities her for her love. Could she, would she, ever pity him?
By the stone, she wants to weep, but she smiles, and it tastes of tears. She looks at him, standing in a slant of sunlight, watching her.
One soul, her tally.
He reaches for her, their fingers almost touching.
It is never enough.
His side of the stone is crowded; she has one single soul to her name. It is sweet, oh so sweet, but it won’t sustain her to winter’s end. His souls, crowded thick as they are, are candy-floss, melting on the tongue and never touching his belly.
They have played this game before, and no one ever wins.
She is sick to death of hunger and drowning. He is sick to death of treachery and spit-sealed deals. But they are what they have always been, and what they always will be.
These are the stories they tell you about hungry ghosts, and hungry devils. Every one of them is a lie, and all of them are true.
He reaches for her; she takes his hand. His fingers pass right through hers, leaving her hungrier still. His sigh is the echo of a lonely train running the rails out of town; hers, cold water running over stones.
The season ticks over to fall. A leaf drifts down, caught by the current and swept away, and they look to the bridge just visible through the thinning trees. They know, they both know, next summer they will stand there and start all over again.
And they ache, hoping next time they will remember, next time, they’ll get it right.
THE BOOK OF VOLE (EXCERPTS)
Jane Tolmie
1. Meet Vole
Literature is open to everybody,
even pests.
2. Vole Feed
Nerve-wrung creatures, wasp, bee and bird,
felons for life or keepers of the cell, and
Vole in a wooden crib of seed and feed.
3. Winter Vole
Winter kept Vole warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
4. Vole Seasons
Vole has a winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else Vole would forego a mortal nature.
5. Sleepy Vole
How hard it is for Vole to sleep
in the middle of life.
6. Troubled Vole
Vole is troubled
by the occasional
flea.
7. Further Honey
A smell of further honey,
embittered flowers,
sirens Vole.
8. Vole Venture
Venture for the Vole!
9. Observing Vole
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of Vole.
10. Curious Vole
Vole wonders if honour
to an ancient name
be due.
11. The City of Vole
Through me the way is to the city volent
Through me the way is to eternal Vole.
12. Transient Vole
As for Vole,
Vole is a watercolour.Vole washes off.
13. Vole Collection
Vole searches on endless sandbars in the dark
for building blocks to make Vole’s empire great.
14. Sensual Vole
Imagine, amid the mud and the mastodons,
Vole sighing and yearning with tremendous creative yearning
for some other beauty.
15. Swarming Voles
vole vole vole vole vole vole vole vole Vole vole vole
vole vole vole vole Vole vole vole vole Vole vole vole
vole vole vole vole VOLE VOLE vole vole
volevolevolevolevolevolevolevole
vole vole vole vole vole vole vole vole Vole vole
vole vole vole vole vole Vole vole vole vole
Vole vole vole vole vole vole vole VOLE VOLE
vole vole volevolevolevolevolevolevolevole
vole vole vole vole vole vole vole vole Vole vole vole
vole vole vole vole Vole vole vole vole Vole vole vole
vole vole vole vole VOLE VOLE vole vole
volevolevolevolevolevolevolevole
AGH!
16. Hard Times
Life is hard but
Vole pays no tax.
17. Hungry Vole
By the glow-worm’s light well guided,
Vole attends the Feast provided.
18. Vole Wisdom
It causes nothing but grief
to want to sleep with the gods.
19. Hunted Vole
The falcon cannot hear the falconer,
nor can Vole.
Things fall apart.
20. Vole’s Nightmare
Vole kneels in the nights
before tigers
that will not let Vole be.
21. Volenerable
Ouch!
Vole hurts.
22. Vole Compassion
Smaller and more helpless
but as deeply felt
miniscule lives
extinguished.
23. Vestigial Vole
Vole, you there?
24. Jesting Vole
Vole jests at scars.
Vole never felt a wound.
25. Loser Vole
It’s not true,
of course.
The art of losing
is
hard to master.
26. Poem without a hero
Vole is
no hero.
27. Stoic Vole
Vole does not fondle the weakness inside
though it is there.
28. Vole
Vole is not Vole
which alters.
29. Constant Vole
The woods have no voice but the voice of complaining
but Vole
holds fast.
30. Mistaken Vole
Vole is mistaken
for a shadow or symbol.
31. Procession
One had a cat’s face,
One whisked a tail,
One tramped at a rat’s pace,
One crawled like a snail,
One was Vole.
32. Strong Vole
Vole is not proved too weak
To stand alone.
33. Shadow Vole
Vole has a dark side.
34. Sage Vole
When the sun rises on ugliness, it is stark to see.
Vole does not carry it home.
35. Vole Heals
There will be mornings of sunlight
after the end of all things.
36. Vole Marker
When the dust falls over Vole’s thoughts
over Vole’s head with its gleaming jaws,
the brows made beige and ugly, into a blown ripple
into a snake of powder on the trail,
chance will maybe leave an edge
marking the jawbones, the dust wandering in the sun.
37. Vole in Love
Vole’s vegetable love grows
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
38. Happy Vole
Vole has a green thought
in a green shade.
39. Vole Pride
Pest is best!
To view a selection of the accompanying original artwork by British Columbia artist Perry Rath (http://www.perryrath.com/), see Strange Horizons 2013:
http://www.strangehorizons.com/2013/20130506/tolmie-p.shtml
BLACK HEN À LA FORD
David Nickle
We cooked her, feathers and all, during the last hundred miles of that long drive to Agatha’s Perch . . . and oh, her fume filled the cab with such a wonderful, peaceable scent. One might drift off to sleep by it—and that is precisely what I did.
I dreamed of the kitchen, hot with the afternoon sun and fire of the wood stove, the steam off the slowly cooling meat pies on the sill. . . . Gudrun, my dear sister, humming an old chant as she rolled out dough for more—out of sight, in the pantry. . . .
Were it not for that, I almost might have forgotten—what I’d come to do.
William had gutted her with an old scaling knife. After wiping the blood off, he applied the blade to coring crab-apples we’d filched from the same farm as we’d found her. He stuffed them up inside the cavity until she was ready to burst. He shoved salted roast peanuts and some pork rinds up between skin and breast, and he took two layers of thick-gauge tinfoil, wrapped her up tight and wedged her against the exhaust manifold. Then he turned the oven on—that’s to say the oven of his truck, by driving it fast on the straightaways and too fast on the turns, into the foothills, up to the Perch.
“Black Hen à la Ford,” he said when he finally cracked the hood and pulled her free.
She was hot in her bright shell, and he tossed that hen from hand to hand as we all gathered in the late afternoon haze, in the shade of that old house on the ridge.
“Voila!” he hollered, and we all howled.
William is a good grandson. Not the best, but I’d never dream of telling him that.
There were a lot of grandchildren at the Perch already and more to arrive before nightfall. Grandchildren, and nieces and nephews—great-grandchildren, maybe even a great-great-grandchild.
I lose track of them all, but I know the families: Alfred’s and Rainer’s, Kerr’s and Lars’s, and of course Gunnar’s.
It was their turn this time. So of course they were there.
Janet, Gunnar’s wife, had set up long tables on the front lawn, and dangled paper patio lanterns above them from the tree branches. She’d even arranged for two old blue plastic privies, side by side next to the old garden house.
Not far from that, a long green hose dribbled water into the grass. It was a good idea; you could wash up after doing your business, without ever feeling need of setting foot indoors.
Janet took the chicken from William and ran up the path to the house so William could go to the back and get my things.
There wasn’t much to get: just an old suitcase with a new frock and a set of iron fry-pans—wrapped up in newspaper and covered in a green garbage bag. I packed them myself two days back, with great care. Wouldn’t do for them to rust; it’d taken decades to season them right.
William carried them in one trip to the long porch, set them down next to where Janet had laid his offering. Then it was off to the privy. It’d been a long drive and we’d only stopped the once. Janet took me by the arm, hauled me over to a big green Muskoka chair at the head of the first table.
She said, “You look good, Granny Ingrid,” which I didn’t care for. No one tells good-looking people they look good.
Janet, now. What Janet looked was tired. There were new lines around her eyes, and her face was red with sunburn. She had probably earned it. The drive was long enough for William and me. We weren’t hauling a trailer up the mountain road; there were no children in William’s truck. William was young enough to have reserves. I’m old enough to know my limits. Janet, stuck between us, would have wrung herself dry with work, and with worry.
“Where are the girls?” I asked.
She pointed over to the Lookout. My great-grandchildren were there, on their toes, peering over the stone wall that came up to their chins. That was good. The drop off the lookout was fierce and far, and Lars and his boys had built it so even a grown man would have to mean it, to tip over that edge.
“They’re getting big,” said Janet. “Amanda’s going to be in high school next year.” She saw my perplexity, and pointed to the one on the left, coppery hair cropped short at her shoulders. She was bigger than I remembered. But it had been five years. One can’t expect time to stand still, where a child’s concerned.
“Mandy. And Lizzie—” the smaller of the two, with darker hair braided down her back, was bending down to pick up a pebble “—is she talking yet?” I asked. Last time, Liz only spoke to scream, and there were no words. She was five years old. We’d made a chant then—one of so many—that she wouldn’t grow up a retard, but I hadn’t much hope for her.
“She is,” said Janet. “We put her in a special program at school. Now you can’t shut her up.”
Liz flung the pebbles overhand, and they rattled through the branches of the poplar trees below.
“Well that’s a blessing.”
Janet smiled, and waved to her daughters. “Come on over and see Granny Ingrid!”
Amanda waved back, and nudged her little sister, who looked over at us with a stricken expression.
“Oh, let them have their fun. I should go unpack,” I said, “before the rest get here.”
Janet smiled thinly, and nodded toward the porch.
“That’s been taken care of,” she said, and I looked over and saw it was true.
The porch was empty. While we were talking, Gudrun had collected my things, William’s bird—and carried them all inside.
“I’ve got lots to do,” said Janet. “Talk to your great-granddaughters. She . . . your sister can wait.”
Janet left just as her girls arrived. I made a smile for them, and gave them both hugs, and asked them only a few questions before they set in with their talk.
Amanda was enrolled in a basketball program and she was very good at it, thank you very much. Lizzie was learning how to play chess and she wasn’t very good yet, but would be soon. Amanda and Lizzie were both fond of a series of novels about a girl a few years older than they were, and her lover, a young man a few years older than she. According to Lizzie, Amanda had let a boy who was also a few years older than she kiss her, and when Amanda shouted no, Lizzie said all right, Amanda had kissed the boy, and asked if that was better? I believe Lizzie was trying to shock me, but it didn’t work.
“Are you going to cook today?” asked Lizzie, and Mandy said, “You don’t have to,” and thought about what she said, and added, “I didn’t mean that I don’t like your food,” which scarcely made matters better.
“We’ll see how it goes,” I said.
“Mandy means you can let Granny Gudrun do it if you’re too tired,” said Lizzie.
“I don’t think that would do,” I said, and lied: “The recipes take two to make their magic work.”
“Magic!” said Lizzie. “Black magic!” Her sister shushed her.
“It’s just cooking,” said Mandy, and then she said to me: “It’s not black magic.” And after a heartbeat or so, she asked:
“Are you angry with us?”
Now that made me smile. Mandy had put her arm around Lizzie and her eyes were round. Lizzie was a step behind her sister, but as I watched, tendrils of worry crossed her face, like cloud over moon.
“I’m not angry,” I said finally. “I’m not tired either. I had a wonderful nap in your Uncle William’s truck on the way up. I’m ready for whatever the night brings. Black magic or not.”
Mandy tried to smile, tried to laugh, failed at both. Lizzie did better just keeping quiet. I could barely see her trembling as I heard the familiar f
ootsteps approaching behind me.
“You’re good girls,” I said. “You can run along now.”
“They don’t have to be told twice,” said Gunnar as he stepped around the chair and bent to give me a kiss. “Help your mother!” he called after them as his daughters ran toward their family’s van.
Gunnar opened a canvas chair beside me and sat in it.
“You look good,” I said, and I wasn’t lying. Gunnar’s daughters had grown beyond recognition, splendid little weeds that they were; Janet’s sunburned face was gradually taking on the texture of cowhide, and she was, to be honest, going to fat. Yet Gunnar—here was the same handsome, strapping lad I’d hugged the last time we’d gathered here. He had cut off most of his long blond hair, and shaved the little pirate beard he’d been so proud of. Past that—the years had treated my eldest grandson tenderly. One might even say neglectfully.
“I don’t know what you said. But you scared the noses off my girls,” he said.
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