Fantasy For Good: A Charitable Anthology

by George R. R. Martin

  “Relax, son.” The old man pats my arm. “I forget this is new to folks ain’t used to the way things is.”

  “Then explain it to me.” I drop into an ancient office chair made of green metal and cracked vinyl. It’s probably older than the old man, and it squeaks when I move as if bitching about my weight.

  He leans a slim hip on the edge of the desk to stare down at me. The dim light in the shack casts shadows on his angular face. “I didn’t know how to sing the day I met old Rambo. But by that night? I just could, is all.”

  “How could he teach you to sing in one day?”

  “Singing was the easy part. He just touched my throat, and then I could sing like an angel.” I open my mouth to ask more, but he puts up a hand. “What he taught me—the important part—was how to call the souls with my song.”

  I leaned forward. “Go on.”

  “Rambo told me his time was done. He’d been crooning for them spirits going on fifty years. He was tired, he said.”

  “So he passed the gift on to you? Just like that?”

  The old man smiles, a bit sad. “Just like that.”

  I lean back and let this sink in. It can’t be as easy as that, can it? “But what about God?” I blurt.

  “What about ‘im?”

  “Where does He come into all this?” I gesture wildly to indicate the cemetery and the world at large.

  “Can’t rightly say. I’ll know once my time comes, I suppose.” There’s that laugh again.

  “Do you expect me to believe you don’t even know where they go?”

  His face darkens and I immediately regret my patronizing tone. “You ever pray, son?”

  My skin tightens. I glance at the dirty floor. “Used to.”

  “You ever wonder where those prayers gone to?”

  I look up. “To God.”

  “How you know?”

  I huff out an annoyed breath. “Because—where else would they go?”

  The old man smiles and sits back a little, pleased with himself. “Exactly.”

  “What about hell—what if that’s where they go?”

  His face darkens, as if I’ve insulted him. “Did your mama drop you on your head, boy? Heaven and hell? They ain’t my business.”

  “But you said they go to God.”

  “You said they go to God. I ain’t put no name on it. People was dying before that name existed and they’ll keep dying when there’s a new one,” he says. “No, sir, don’t care much for names.”

  I rise because his words make me too restless to sit still. “What do you care about then?” I hear the anger in my own voice but I don’t care. I need answers.

  “I care about singing the right song.” He rises too because I’ve insulted him. He points a finger at me. “What do you care about, boy?”

  A few pat answers spring to my tongue, but I don’t say them. I don’t say them because the air has tightened and the old man’s eyes have narrowed, and I am suddenly painfully aware that for some reason my answer matters. Really matters.

  I close my mouth and think about it. The old man watches me with an odd intensity, but he doesn’t hurry me.

  What do I care about?

  Answers, I think. That’s why I became a writer, right? Hoping that one day I’ll find the right combination of letters and suddenly the great mysteries will reveal themselves? But that doesn’t feel true enough.

  Love? That’s why I’m alone, isn’t it? Once I’d lost real love, I’d tried desperately to replace it. Pleasant lies in smoky bars exchanged for the fleeting press of skin on strange sheets. But those meaningless exchanges of fluids felt blasphemous compared to the sacred pleasure-pain of being totally bare with another human.

  I glance at the old man. He watches me with a frown, as if he can hear my answers and is judging each, ranking them. I dismiss love, too. It’s the stuff of romance novels and tortured heroes and people who believe in other people.

  I rub the bridge of my nose and look to the floor again. But inside, I dig deeper into my own layers. Past the polite facades and the not-so-polite ones. Down past the duty and the dreams. Down to the recesses that no one ever got to see—not even her. To the part of myself I kept hidden from everyone—even myself.

  In that shadowed corner of my psyche, with its face pressed against the wall to avoid the light of my attention, a single word shivered in the cold. Once I spot it there, I know it is the correct answer. Unfortunately, it is also the most terrifying one.

  I speak the answer in a whisper: “I care about the end.”

  The old man cocks his head. “Come again.”

  I know he heard me just fine. But I reply anyway because I need to understand it myself. “I care about the fact that one day this is all going to end. That you and I and everyone else out there will simply cease to be. It’s unbearable, but also a terrible relief.” I shook my head, trying to understand the words even as they left me. “I guess what I’m saying is, I care about making the time I have worth the fact it’s all going to end.”

  Silence ticks by like heavy heartbeats. My skin feels clammy despite the heat, and a strange pressure clogs my throat. I try to swallow it down, but it refuses to budge.

  Finally, the old man removes his hat and places it over his chest. The corner of his mouth lifts a little. I worry for a brief, terrifying moment that this old man is going to shame me. My ears burn and pulse, preparing for the painful bite of his laughter.

  Instead, he tips his chin and says, “Good answer, son. Mighty good answer.”

  *~*~*~*

  The old man leads me to the center of the main gravel avenue, which ends at the cemetery’s large black gates. Sounds are muted by the tall oaks with their mourning veils of Spanish moss, as well as the tall brick wall that allows the dead to rest in peace.

  The light has mellowed and every surface seems kissed by silver. The French call this time of day l’heure bleue—the blue hour. It’s the time of day when it is neither full day nor complete night. When light and shadow combine into a sweet dreamy blue-violet. According to the old man, it’s also when the veil between the corporeal world and the other world is gossamer thin and easily pierced.

  “It’s time,” the old man says in a hushed tone reminiscent of prayer.

  I clasp my hands together and lower my head. I’m not sure what was coming, but I am sure giving voice to my questions would be blasphemous. We aren’t in a church, but the moment feels sacred nonetheless.

  “Whatever happens, stay out of the way and quiet,” the old man warns. In this light, his angles have softened, but the edge in his tone ruins the effect. It seems to say that he might make jokes out of a lot of things, but not this. Never this.

  A hush falls over the graves. The old man lifts his face to the sky. He clears his throat. And then…

  A single note escapes from between his lips and rises into the air. I’m no music expert—I can’t tell clefs from flats–but something told me this note was perfection. Crystal clear, cutting almost—painful in its beauty.

  That note hangs above us even as the old man moves on to produce more. The air in front of his face shimmers until the notes become opaque points of light. Before I can recover from this shock, the lights vibrate into the shape of birds.

  The light birds—thirteen of them—circle the air over our heads.

  The old man ignores my shock. Until that moment, he’s been singing single notes without words attached. But now, he finally begins to sing the first verse of a song I’ve never heard.

  Oh Lord, take me down.

  I say, Oh Lord take me down.

  Take me down to the riverside

  Where the water’s cool and the shore is wide.

  Oh Lord, take me down.

  Like I said, I’m no music expert, but I know the blues when I hear them. As he sings, the birds fly away from the cemetery in a starburst pattern.

  Take me down where the water’s clean

  Where the saints give blessings and the current’s
mean

  Oh Lord, take me down.

  I close my eyes and let the song wash over me. It tugs at my heart, like a magnet’s pull. Or perhaps it’s not my heart at all. My soul? Maybe.

  When the waters rise I won’t run away

  ‘Cause we’ll all be a’swimmin’ come judgment day

  Oh Lord, take me down to the river wide

  And carry me away on your righteous tide

  Oh Lord, take me down.

  My limbs fill with the dark waters he’s describing. I float on the air in the blue light, being swept away by the music and the magic. It seems both unreal and real at the same time. Surreal, hyper-real. Disorienting and completely grounding at once. The possibility he might be a con artist—an illusion master—occurs to me, but I instantly dismiss the notion. Despite my shock, I know the things I’m seeing and hearing are absolutely happening.

  The old man stops singing lyrics and the song mellows into a sort of peaceful humming. The round sounds vibrate into the air like circles of light. The air around the old man shimmers until a corona of light surrounds his body, like the opening of a great eye.

  Above the humming, birdsong reaches my ears. Over the buildings, through the deepening blue of dusk, the dark outline of dozens of black wings. Their songs fly out before them like harbingers, and I realize with a start they’re singing the same melody as the old man.

  As they fly closer, I realize that each bird has a small sphere of light gently clasped between its claws.

  The music sinks through my skin and makes the blood quiver in my veins. The closer the birds fly, the more intense the sensation. I place a hand over my chest, as if the move will prevent my own soul from escaping.

  The birds circled overhead. The lights they carry create a dizzying laser show.

  The tunnel of light the old man opened earlier pulses between us. The old man raises a single finger into the air. The humming stops. The birds’ song ends. For a brief, sharp moment the entire world holds its breath.

  The old man raises his face to the sky and sings a single note. The sound slashes through skin and bone down to my marrow. One by one, the birds break off from their flying circle and dive toward the portal of light. When they each fly into the circle, they have the spheres of light in their claws, but when they emerge on the other side, the lights are gone.

  It takes a full minute for each bird to be relieved of its burden. When the final one flies through, the old man tapers off the note. When it ends, a great sucking accompanies the portal closing in on itself.

  My ears pop and the pressure in my chest eases instantly. Air whooshes from my lungs and I sag against a nearby tomb. Pressure pulses behind my lids and distorts my vision until the old man’s image wavers and shifts like a hologram.

  I lick my dry lips and try to sift through my fractured thoughts to find enough letters to create a coherent sentence. The old man leans heavily against a faux bois statue of a tree stump. He blinks away the tears that have gathered in his eyes. He watches me, as if waiting.

  But before I can utter a single syllable, the old man’s hand flies to his chest. A gasp escapes his lips.

  The universal signal of distress disperses the mental fog and marshals my limbs. I scramble toward the old man even as he falls to the ground.

  I lean over him and cradle his head in my arms. “Wh—”

  “Shh.” He’s not looking at me. His eyes look past me, as if someone is standing at my shoulder. I glance around just in case, but find that we are alone. “Do you hear it?” he whispers.

  “Hear what?”

  His lips lift in a smile. “The music.”

  I swallow hard. “No,” I say, “I don’t hear anything.”

  His eyes move toward my face finally. “It’s time, son.”

  I know immediately. I know suddenly and completely what he is saying. “No,” I say, “not yet.”

  He doesn’t argue with me. He simply lifts a single brown finger to my throat. The pad of the finger presses against my Adam’s apple. Presses so hard that I begin to choke and fight. But despite his weakened state, he presses on, his face a mask of determination.

  A shock of electricity passes through my throat. It expands and fans out through my nerve endings, contracting every cell, expanding every vein. My eyes open impossibly wide and I see things I never noticed before. The layout of the entire city like a map in my mind—thousands of spots of light dotting the landscape like Christmas bulbs. I also see birds. So many birds. Pelicans and cranes and swallows and crows. I not only see the souls and the birds—I feel them as visceral energy in my chest.

  My breathing speeds up until I’m panting from the pain and the connection and the awareness he’s forcing on me.

  The old man swallows and his throat clicks. His eyes are impossibly bright in the darkness. Finally, that finger lifts from my skin, but its imprint throbs on my throat like a bruise. “Sing, son,” he says. His voice is weak, gritty. “Sing.”

  Cold sweat coats my skin like paste. I’m stuck. I feel stuck and scared. I want to run, but I am as rooted to the ground as those tombs surrounding us. “I—I can’t,” I say. My voice sounds like metal scraping concrete. “I’m scared.”

  He grabs my hand with a surprisingly strong grip. “Sing, damn you.” But before I can decide to obey or leave, a convulsion rocks the old man’s body. His grip on my hand tightens painfully. His eyes—those watery, too-knowing eyes—roll back in their sockets until all that’s visible is the yellowed whites.

  He gasps in a lungful of air. His body arcs up from the ground. He freezes in mid-air, as if someone pressed a pause button on his life. My hand hurts and my chest is impossibly tight. I know this is the end for the old man, and it’s too late to ask for more answers. Too late to do anything but hold on.

  A final, loud exhalation of air escapes a split second before he body goes slack. His grip slips from mine.

  Before I can consciously aware of giving my body the order, the first note escapes my lips. I hear it both from inside my body and outside, like a stereo. The sound is timid but clear. This is not the voice I have heard come from my body for the last thirty-nine years. This is a new voice that comes from the same place I found my answer to the old man’s question.

  Another note. This one stronger. I hold it until it rises up from my lips and shimmers in the air. I keep holding it as it morphs into the shape of tiny bird. A swallow, I think.

  I’m not dumb. The old man has not bamboozled me. Sure, he pretended to want to help me find answers, when all along he’d wanted me to help him. But this feels too inevitable to pretend I didn’t know it was coming. I’d left that protective gris gris bag in the hotel for some reason. I knew he was going to touch my throat before he did. And I knew before I sang my first note that it would be clear and bright and sharp as a blade.

  The bird circles above the man’s chest in tight circles.

  “What do you care about?” he’d asked.

  The end.

  Hesitantly, I echo the words I’d heard from the old man.

  Oh Lord, take me down.

  Each note felt like a prayer. Each word, a benediction.

  I say, Oh Lord take me down.

  The old man lay still on the ground. His eyes stared up past the dark night sky, past the stars—to a place beyond human knowing.

  Take me down to the riverside

  Where the water’s cool and the shore is wide.

  Without conscious thought or strength of will, that portal opens in the same spot it had opened for the old man.

  Oh Lord, take me down.

  I continue singing all the words. I watch as the sphere of light rises from the spot in the center of the old man’s chest. From the place where his heart once beat strong and true, now silenced just like his song. The bird snatches the light from the air. Then it circles some more as it echoes the melody I’m singing.

  Even as the song has summoned the old man’s soul, it’s also gone to work on mine. It’s stitching th
e ragged, black edges. It’s mending the worn spots. Soothing, yes. It’s soothing my soul.

  When I reach the final line of the song—the old man’s song, which is now mine to sing until I find my own song—the bird flies up into the sky. After one triumphant circuit around the cemetery, it executes a graceful dive. I hold the final note and realize it isn’t just a note—it’s a farewell.

  Just before the bird flies through the portal, that sphere of light shines impossibly bright. Pain like an aneurysm—the pain of knowledge of eternity—explodes in my brain.

  The bird disappears into the great eye of light. Two heartbeats later, it reappears on the other side without its burden.

  Now, the cemetery is unbearably silent. It is the quiet of a tomb. The quiet of eternal sleep. The quiet of nothingness. Of disappearing. Of never having existed at all.

  Tears flood my eyes. But not tears of mourning. Not tears of loss or hopelessness. They are tears of relief.

  I know I will never return to the life of before. I won’t return to the booze and the angst and the looking for meaning in words no one will read. The tears are a baptism.

  I finally understand how the old man could laugh so easily. I finally know why the soul singers sing.

  All ends are beginnings.

  Beginnings are to be celebrated.

  And every celebration deserves a song.

  SAMIT BASU is well known in his native India where he wrote his first novel, The Simoqin Prophecies, when he was just 22. It was published a year later. Since then he has completed the GameWorld trilogy, all of which have topped the Indian bestsellers list. In 2012, Samit came to the attention of western readers with his superhero novel, Turbulence, which won an award from Wired Magazine. He has written comics and a YA novel, and he is also a columnist, screenwriter and documentary filmmaker.

  Visit his official site to find out more: samitbasu.com

  Pandal Food

  Samit Basu

  There are about four hundred people in and around the pandal at midnight—just a trickle, then. I think we got around five thousand in the early evening. Good night. Busy night. But it’s hardly surprising. This is Calcutta, during the pujas, of course thousands of people have shown up to worship the goddess. All right, not worship the goddess, worship each other, and food, and the fact that they made it through another year.