My father left their town that night. He rode to the edge of the earth and he sailed the sea in search of moon glass, even though it was impossible. He danced with the Priestesses of the Moon, and was forced to flee them when he denied the High Priestess a kiss. He studied ancient scrolls in the library of an ancient land, and he climbed a mountain so high that at its peak it was impossible to breathe—but love makes people do impossible things.
From there, he could see the moon’s shattered surface. The mounds of moon dust swirled across her surface, caught up in the gravitational pull. My father dropped to his knees and prayed for the moon—or perhaps he prayed for my mother’s love. Maybe he asked for both.
As he stood on the mountaintop, two shining points of light began to descend from the moon’s glimmering surface. The first sliced into the earth at his feet. The second sliced into his chest, where it was embedded in his heart, and where it still remains. He picked up the glass and climbed down the mountain, and sailed across the sea back to a small and inconsequential town, where a small and inconsequential girl dreamed of holding starlight in her hands.
I’m told that on their wedding night there was a moon shower — glittering specks of dust filled the nighttime atmosphere and made the whole world glow with celestial light.
They say that moon dust is a blessing. I hoped for moon dust on my own wedding day, but there were only clouds and shadows. “We don’t need starlight,” my husband said.
He was the boy from two houses over. We skinned our knees together, and practiced fumbling first kisses. He broke my heart, and I broke his, time and time again.
I would have climbed the highest mountain for him—I would have sailed a river of stars just to pluck a piece of moon glass from the moon’s surface. Instead, I asked for the impossible. I asked for the moon, and I asked for starlight, but he found his true love on the other side of the sea.
After he was gone I had the moon glass, and my daughter, to remind me of the existence of love that defies all impossibilities.
*~*~*~*
She looks very much like my mother, and not at all like me. She has pale yellow hair and a spray of freckles across the bridge of her nose, which is still dotted with dust. The moon did not shine for my wedding day, but the sky was flooded with dust on the night that she was born.
When she smiles, her eyes do more than sparkle—they are kaleidoscopic in the way they catch the light. Her thrilled shrieks reverberate throughout the empty house and I sit at the kitchen table, waiting for my father to walk through the door.
He has been restless since my mother died. The emptiness of the house they built together eats away at him. He says it is as strange and dark inside those walls as it would be if the moon were to vanish from the sky.
Although it is still not night, I can see the moon shimmer in the pale blue light preceding dusk. I can almost see the glimmer of my mother’s eyes in the near-translucent sphere, and I imagine that her soul has been caught up inside the glass.
*~*~*~*
My father comes through the door. He pauses at the threshold, and half-smiles as he sees my daughter, his hand involuntarily clutching at his chest. Then there is an excited squeal and my daughter sails into the room. “Granddad!” she calls out, and as she skids to a stop the cord of the moon glass necklace comes undone and slips from around her throat.
It falls to the floor and breaks. The three of us stand and stare at the shattered glass, and without a word I lean down to brush it all up, ignoring the sting as the most minute of pieces embeds itself in my palm.
“I’m sorry,” says my daughter, breathless, repeating the phrase over and over again until it becomes meaningless.
All I do is smile at her, like my mother smiled at me every time she promised broken hearts don’t last forever.
I hand the shards of moon glass to my father, and he places them into the box that holds my mother’s ashes. And I know now where he will go. He will cross the sea, and climb the highest mountain. Once, when they were young, he promised her the moon and returned with a piece of glass. Now he will give her the moon itself.
*~*~*~*
Someday, I know, the time will come that something large enough to break the moon invades our atmosphere. The moon will shatter into a thousand-thousand pieces, sending brilliant shards showering to the earth to be ground to multicolored, iridescent dust.
The night will be streaked by starlight as pieces of the moon rain down, and for one brief instant all of humanity will marvel at her beauty and her grace as the sky lights up with one last celestial ballet. Then they will crash down, and down, and everything will be ended.
Someday, my daughter will learn. We are all afraid, when we are young. Afraid that we will never find love, or afraid that we will find love and lose it. Someday, someone will promise my daughter the stars and he will climb the highest mountain for her, or sail the sea just to find an impossible piece of glass. Someday I will die, and she will die, and all these memories will be forgotten.
But there will always be moon dust, and moon dust is a blessing. It holds all our hopes and dreams, even those that seem impossible.
“Tell me the story, Granddad,” says my daughter, the matter of the broken glass already forgotten. My father lifts her up onto his knee and wipes the smudge of green dust from her nose.
“Which one?”
“You know which one!” she says.
I move to the window, listening as my father begins a tale I have heard too many times to count. The night sky shimmers with dust.
The late ROGER ZELAZNY is the legendary author behind the much-loved Amber Chronicles, which began in 1970 with Nine Princes in Amber. The series is considered by many to be one of the finest ever written. During his career, he was awarded with six Hugos and 3 Nebula awards (after being nominated a staggering 14 times for each), as well as a host of other awards. He wrote around 50 novels, 150 shorts and 3 collections of poetry, and he also edited multiple anthologies.
Roger left us too soon in 1995 after being diagnosed with colon cancer. We are honoured and delighted to include one of his classic stories in this volume.
The George Business
Roger Zelazny
Deep in his lair, Dart twisted his green and golden length about his small hoard, his sleep troubled by dreams of a series of identical armored assailants. Since dragons’ dreams are always prophetic, he woke with a shudder, cleared his throat to the point of sufficient illumination to check on the state of his treasure, stretched, yawned and set forth up the tunnel to consider the strength of the opposition. If it was too great, he would simply flee, he decided. The hell with the hoard; it wouldn’t be the first time.
As he peered from the cave mouth, he beheld a single knight in mismatched armor atop a tired-looking gray horse, just rounding the bend. His lance was not even couched, but still pointing skyward.
Assuring himself that the man was unaccompanied, he roared and slithered forth.
“Halt,” he bellowed, “you who are about to fry!”
The knight obliged.
“You’re the one I came to see,” the man said. “I have—”
“Why,” Dart asked, “do you wish to start this business up again? Do you realize how long it has been since a knight and a dragon have done battle?”
“Yes, I do. Quite a while. But I—”
“It is almost invariably fatal to one of the parties concerned. Usually your side.”
“Don’t I know it? Look, you’ve got me wrong-”
“I dreamt a dragon dream of a young man named George with whom I must do battle. You bear him an extremely close resemblance.”
“I can explain. It’s not as bad as it looks. You see—”
“Is your name George?”
“Well, yes. But don’t let that bother you—”
“It does bother me. You want my pitiful hoard? It wouldn’t keep you in beer money for the season. Hardly worth the risk.”
“I’m not after your hoard—�
�
“I haven’t grabbed off a virgin in centuries. They’re usually old and tough, anyhow, not to mention hard to find.”
“No one’s accusing—”
“As for cattle, I always go a great distance. I’ve gone out of my way, you might say, to avoid getting a bad name in my own territory.”
“I know you’re no real threat here. I’ve researched it quite carefully—”
“And do you think that armor will really protect you when I exhale my deepest, hottest flames?”
“Hell, no! So don’t do it, huh? If you’d please—”
“And that lance… You’re not even holding it properly.”
George lowered the lance.
“On that you are correct,” he said, “but it happens to be tipped with one of the deadliest poisons known to Herman the Apothecary.”
“I say! That’s hardly sporting!”
“I know. But even if you incinerate me, I’ll bet I can scratch you before I go.”
“Now that would be rather silly—both of us dying like that—wouldn’t it?” Dart observed, edging away. “It would serve no useful purpose that I can see.”
“I feel precisely the same way about it.”
“Then why are we getting ready to fight?”
“I have no desire whatsoever to fight with you!”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand. You said your name is George, and I had this dream—”
“I can explain it.”
“But the poisoned lance—”
“Self-protection, to hold you off long enough to put a proposition to you.”
Dart’s eyelids lowered slightly.
“What sort of proposition?”
“I want to hire you.”
“Hire me? Whatever for? And what are you paying?”
“Mind if I rest this lance a minute? No tricks?”
“Go ahead. If you’re talking gold your life is safe.”
George rested his lance and undid a pouch on his belt. He dipped his hand into it and withdrew a fistful of shining coins. He tossed them gently, so that they clinked and shone in the morning light.
“You have my full attention. That’s a good piece of change there.”
“My life’s savings. All yours—in return for a bit of business.”
“What’s the deal?”
George replaced the coins in his pouch and gestured.
“See that castle in the distance—two hills away?”
“I’ve flown over it many times.”
“In the tower to the west are the chambers of Rosalind, daughter of the Baron Maurice. She is very dear to his heart, and I wish to wed her.”
“There’s a problem?”
“Yes. She’s attracted to big, brawny barbarian types, into which category I, alas, do not fall. In short, she doesn’t like me.”
“That is a problem.”
“So, if I could pay you to crash in there and abduct her, to bear her off to some convenient and isolated place and wait for me, I’ll come along, we’ll fake a battle, I’ll vanquish you, you’ll fly away and I’ll take her home. I am certain I will then appear sufficiently heroic in her eyes to rise from sixth to first position in her list of suitors. How does that sound to you?”
Dart sighed a long column of smoke.
“Human, I bear your kind no special fondness—particularly the armored variety with lances—so I don’t know why I’m telling you this… Well, I do know actually… But never mind. I could manage it, all right. But, if you win the hand of that maid, do you know what’s going to happen? The novelty of your deed will wear off after a time—and you know that there will be no encore. Give her a year, I’d say, and you’ll catch her fooling around with one of those brawny barbarians she finds so attractive. Then you must either fight him and be slaughtered or wear horns, as they say.”
George laughed.
“It’s nothing to me how she spends her spare time. I’ve a girlfriend in town myself.”
Dart’s eyes widened.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand…”
“She’s the old baron’s only offspring, and he’s on his last legs. Why else do you think an uncomely wench like that would have six suitors? Why else would I gamble my life’s savings to win her?”
“I see,” said Dart. “Yes, I can understand greed.”
“I call it a desire for security.”
“Quite. In that case, forget my simple-minded advice. All right, give me the gold and I’ll do it.” Dart gestured with one gleaming vane. “The first valley in those western mountains seems far enough from my home for our confrontation.”
“I’ll pay you half now and half on delivery.”
“Agreed, be sure to have the balance with you, though, and drop it during the scuffle. I’ll return for it after you two have departed. Cheat me and I’ll repeat the performance, with a different ending.”
“The thought had already occurred to me. Now, we’d better practice a bit, to make it look realistic. I’ll rush at you with the lance, and whatever side she’s standing on I’ll aim for it to pass you on the other. You raise that wing, grab the lance and scream like hell. Blow a few flames around, too.”
“I’m going to see you scour the tip of that lance before we rehearse this.”
“Right. I’ll release the lance while you’re holding it next to you and rolling around. Then I’ll dismount and rush toward you with my blade. I’ll whack you with the flat of it—again, on the far side—a few times. Then you bellow again and fly away.”
“Just how sharp is that thing anyway?”
“Damned dull. It was my grandfather’s. Hasn’t been honed since he was a boy.”
“And you drop the money during the fight?”
“Certainly. How does that sound?”
“Not bad. I can have a few clusters of red berries under my wing, too. I’ll squash them once the action gets going.”
“Nice touch. Yes, do that. Let’s give it a quick rehearsal now, and then get on with the real thing.”
“And don’t whack too hard…”
That afternoon, Rosalind of Maurice Manor was abducted by a green-and-gold dragon who crashed through the wall of her chamber and bore her off in the direction of the western mountains.
“Never fear!” shouted her sixth-ranked suitor—who just happened to be riding by—to her aged father who stood wringing his hands on a nearby balcony. “I’ll rescue her!” and he rode off to the west.
Coming into the valley where Rosalind stood backed into a rocky cleft, guarded by the fuming beast of gold and green, George couched his lance.
“Release that maiden and face your doom!” he cried.
Dart bellowed, George rushed. The lance fell from his hands and the dragon rolled upon the grounds, spewing gouts of fire into the air. A red substance dribbled from beneath the thundering creature’s left wing. Before Rosalind’s wide eyes, George advanced and swung his blade several times.
“…and that!” he cried, as the monster stumbled to its feet and sprang into the air, dripping more red.
It circled once and beat its way off toward the top of the mountain, then over it and away.
“Oh George!” Rosalind cried, and she was in his arms. “Oh, George…”
He pressed her to him for a moment.
“I’ll take you home now,” he said.
*~*~*~*
That evening as he was counting his gold, Dart heard the sound of two horses approaching his cave. He rushed up the tunnel and peered out.
George, now mounted on a proud white stallion and leading the gray, wore a matched suit of bright armor. He was not smiling, however.
“Good evening,” he said.
“Good evening. What brings you back so soon?”
“Things didn’t turn out exactly as I’d anticipated.”
“You seem far better accoutered. I’d say your fortunes had taken a turn.”
“Oh, I recovered my expenses and came out a bit ahead. But that’s all. I’
m on my way out of town. Thought I’d stop by and tell you the end of the story. —Good show you put on, by the way. It probably would have done the trick—”
“But—?”
“She was married to one of the brawny barbarians this morning, in their family chapel. They were just getting ready for a wedding trip when you happened by.”
“I’m awfully sorry.”
“Well, it’s the breaks. To add insult, though, her father dropped dead during your performance. My former competitor is now the new baron. He rewarded me with a new horse and armor, a gratuity and a scroll from the local scribe lauding me as a dragon slayer. Then he hinted rather strongly that the horse and my new reputation could take me far. Didn’t like the way Rosalind was looking at me now I’m a hero.”
“That is a shame. Well, we tried.”
“Yes. So I just stopped by to thank you and let you know how it all turned out. It would have been a good idea—if it had worked.”
“You could have hardly foreseen such abrupt nuptials. You know, I’ve spent the entire day thinking about the affair. We did manage it awfully well.”
“Oh, no doubt about that. It went beautifully.”
“I was thinking… How’d you like a chance to get your money back?”
“What have you got in mind?”
“Uh—When I was advising you earlier that you might not be happy with the lady, I was trying to think about the situation in human terms. Your desire was entirely understandable to me otherwise. In fact, you think quite a bit like a dragon.”
“Really?”
“Yes. It’s rather amazing, actually. Now—realizing that it only failed because of a fluke, your idea still has considerable merit.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow you.”
“There is—ah—a lovely lady of my own species whom I have been singularly unsuccessful in impressing for a long while now. Actually, there are an unusual number of parallels in our situations.”
“She has a large hoard, huh?”
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