It started small: a tear in the fabric of reality, no bigger than a sliver of fingernail, appeared in the center of the stones above Morgana's head and hung there. As we watched it settled into a new configuration: a black, somewhat oily in appearance, droplet held quivering in mid-air by the magic forces surrounding it.
Morgana began a soft chant. The tall stones started to throb, like a heartbeat. The black egg pulsed in time. And now it was more than obvious—it was most definitely growing. It calved, and calved again.
Four eggs hung in a tight group in the center of the stones, pulsing in time with the throb of Morgana's power. Colors danced and flowed across the sheer black surfaces; blues and greens and shimmering silvers on the eggs that were all too familiar—in the 21st Century we would call them mini universes, pockets of matter and chaos with the potential to be anything they could be molded into. Back here, in this place and time, they had another name—the Gate.
In the blink of an eye there were eight.
I was vaguely aware of Galahad screaming, but I was past caring, lost in contemplation of the beauty before me.
Sixteen now, all perfect, all dancing.
Morgana's chanting grew louder still.
Thirty-two now, and they had started to fill the stones with dancing auroras of shimmering lights that pulsed and capered in time with the throb of magic and the screams of the crowd, everything careening along in a big happy dance.
Sixty-four, each a shimmering pearl of black light.
The colors filled the island, spilled out through the stones, crept onto the shore, danced in my eyes, in my head, all though my body. I gave myself to it, willingly. And I would have gone into the dance if I hadn't felt a flicker of memory.
"Put the Kid to the test," Merlin had said. "He won't fail. He doesn't know how."
I strained to turn my head towards Galahad.
"Do you still seek the Grail, lad?" I managed to say.
A hundred and twenty-eight now, and already calving into two hundred and fifty-six.
Galahad had tears in his eyes as he looked at me.
"It is not for me," he said.
"Why, because a bitch says so? Pull the other one, it's got bells on. Do you see what she's doing? Do you see? She wants it all—not just the kingdom, but the land, the moon, the stars, the whole firmament. Don't let her take it. Be what you are meant to be. Save the day—it's what you do, isn't it?"
His grip on his sword tightened.
Morgana's protective circle enfolded what I guessed to be a thousand and twenty-four eggs.
"What's it to be—death or glory?" I asked.
"Why not both?" Galahad replied, and smiled. He stepped forward, raised his sword, and beat on the protections: once, twice, and on the third the spell fell apart before him. Every inch the hero now, he strode to where Morgana stood.
Morgana wailed and raised her hand. Light grew to a brilliant blazing star in her palm.
"We can do it together," she said, holding her hand out to the Kid. "We can have the stars."
His reply was immediate. He brought his sword round over his head and took Morgana's hand off at the wrist.
Several things happened at once. The myriad of bubbles popped, burst and disappeared as if they had never been there at all. Morgana screamed—a wail that in itself was enough to set the tall stones throbbing and quaking. Swirling clouds seemed to come from nowhere to obscure the moon. Everything went as dark as a pit of hell, and a thunderous blast rocked the island, driving me down into a darkness where I dreamed of vast empty spaces filled with oily, glistening bubbles. They popped and spawned yet more bubbles, then even more, until I swam in a swirling sea of colors.
I drifted.
I came back to what passes for reality in these parts slowly. It was early morning, a thin mist hanging over the perfectly calm lake. Galahad sat at my side in the middle of an otherwise deserted island. Blood had spattered on the tall stones, and a trail of it led away towards the shore, but there was no sign of Morgana. The Kid poked at a severed hand with the tip of his sword, as if expecting it to blaze into light.
"Was I really so close to it?" he asked in a whisper.
"Does it matter?" I answered. "You saved us all."
"But at what cost?"
"A couple of hours of your time," I replied. "And as I said before, space and time are just words." I paused to see if Merlin was about to whisk me back to Tooting, but it seems my burger eating days are over, for now. "The Grail is only one of the wonders to be found in the tracks and pathways of the Great Game. What say we play it together for a while?"
"Will I find what I seek?"
"Only if you look in all the right places," I replied, which was just cryptic enough to keep him quiet for a while. I looked out over the expanse of water to the mainland.
"Now, have you seen any ducks about?"
William Meikle is a Scottish writer, now living in Canada, with eighteen novels published in the genre press and over 300 short story credits in thirteen countries. His work has appeared in a number of professional anthologies and magazines with recent sales to NATURE Futures, Penumbra and Buzzy Mag among others. He lives in Newfoundland with whales, bald eagles and icebergs for company. When he's not writing he dreams of fortune and glory. Check out his site at http://www.williammeikle.com
Story illustration by Peter Szmer
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Mother of Monsters
by Joshua Wanisko
1 - Halloween 1955
The beatnik was typical of his kind. That ridiculous striped shirt they favor, sunglasses worn even within the gloom of the club, an expression midway between a smirk and a sneer, the beret perched jauntily askew his head, bongos. He cleaved so closely to the stereotypes, that, if not for the fact that he was also an 800 pound gorilla, I would have called him the archetypal beatnik.
I was here, in the seat of their power. Arrayed against me were the forces of nightmare and superstition. I was the lone representative for Reason, and it was my sword and my shield, a poor tool for those purposes despite its virtue.
But my daughter was here, standing with those who would strand mankind in a perpetual Dark Age. If I wanted to save her, I would have to stop them.
The things we do for love.
2 – Motherhood
Like the mother of any willful child, I wondered where I had gone wrong. At night, I would turn events over in my mind, reliving them, worrying at them, until the recollections were worn smooth beyond all recognition; wondering if there was something I could have done, or not done, said, or not said, to have caused events to unfold differently. In time, I concluded that many of these ruminations are meaningless, simply excuses to reshape our memories, because unearned guilt is easier to accept than helplessness.
I wanted to give her a good life. I was born in Russia, but I learned my English in France and I speak it with a French accent. So many records were lost in the war. Ludmilla Nikolovski is not a good name to have in America in 1955. And so I teach science at the secondary school as Mme Lorraine Noisette: Mrs. N. to my students here in Santa Fe.
Noisette is the French word for both hazelnuts and the color hazel. I have always liked the word, and in reinventing oneself, one is permitted certain luxuries.
Odessa had run off with a boy full of grand tales of a game, a clash between supernatural forces of good and evil. I wasn't bothered so much about the boy, a leather-clad hoodlum who never combed his hair and who made a habit of jumping his motorbike over increasingly ridiculous obstacles, but in her acceptance of the supernatural. I thought I had raised her better than that.
She had been withdrawn in the months leading up to her departure. I didn't want to suffocate her. We are very much alike, and I thought that coming to a strange new country, with its own set of values and mores was difficult for anyone, but especially for a teenaged girl. So I gave her "space", as they say in America. I did not judge her new friends (not out loud, at any rate), and I passed
no comment when she returned late. I was concerned the first time she stayed out all night, but I knew she was bright and capable and in no real danger from anything she might encounter in the city or the sands. She returned at dawn, in time to complete her calculus homework. Then she kissed me on the cheek and departed for school.
I remember our last fight. It was a Sunday afternoon. I was leafing through a collection of journal clippings, but unable to concentrate on it because Odessa kept nattering on about that absurd game.
Frustrated, she finally demanded, "Is progress the only thing that matters to you, mom? You think knowing more facts is going to fix the world?"
I put down my papers. I clearly wasn't going to be able to read them today. "Yes, Odessa, I do. The application of knowledge can be bent towards evil ends, but the accumulation of knowledge itself is always a net positive. We must never turn away from a resource because we're afraid of what we think we'll find."
She shook her head sadly. There is nothing more infuriating than a condescending teenager. "One of these days, you're going to unearth something man was not meant to know, and you, and all the others in your grey flannel suits, are going to be sorry."
I raised an eyebrow. "In light of your history, I'm surprised you feel that way."
She clenched her jaw. There is nothing more infuriating to a condescending teenager than the suggestion of hypocrisy, no matter how mildly it is offered. She stomped into her room and stomped back out again with her windbreaker and a backpack. "I'm going out with my friends, mother. You don't need to wait up for me."
I did, because that's what mothers do. But she never came back. I found a note in her room in the morning, explaining that she was leaving to "find herself". I covered up her disappearance with a story about a sudden illness. As far as the community here knew, I was a widow who never remarried, raising my daughter on my own. I really didn't need to give them more reasons to pass judgment on me.
It was a Friday afternoon, the sixteenth of September. I had returned home and not been long enough to change my clothing before I heard a knock on my front door.
I answered it, pulling it open enough to see Miss Reed from the school, the mousey little English teacher. She was so young that I had taken her for one of the students on first meeting her. I think she still lived at home with her parents.
"Mary," I said, opening the door further to let her in, "to what do I owe this pleasure?"
She set a tote bag full of books down on the table beside the door. "Mister Jenkins asked me to give you Odessa's schoolwork, but you left before I could catch you. How is she feeling?"
"She's fine. She's sleeping." I have a certain reputation for abrasiveness, which I exploited here to discourage further inquiries.
Mary didn't take the hint. She dithered. I decided to help her along.
"Is that everything?" I asked, looking at the bag.
She fidgeted, playing with her fuzzy brown hair. She wore it in a fashionable cut, in that pageboy style that so many girls favor these days. "The books? Yes, they're all there. It's just-"
"What?"
"Is she really sick?"
"Yes," I assured her, trying for a smile, but lacking a mirror, not knowing if I succeeded. "Now, if that is all?
"Yes," she said, and then ruined it by adding: "Well, no."
My smile stretched thinner.
"It's just that I saw her last night."
3 - The Echthros Club
We came to America for a new life in the New World, though it is foolish to believe that such things did not happen in the Old Country. I am 57 years old, two years older than the 20th century. I believe the fact of the matter is that Odessa would have rebelled no matter what I had done, or where we were. Only the details would have changed. I was fully grown in 1917. I remember the Revolution and the madness that gripped the country. I fled with my father and my sisters and lived in Europe in the years that followed. I have seen how the young are seduced by appeals to high ideals and base pleasures. I hold no illusions about that aspect of human nature.
"Tell it to me again," I said. We were in my sedan, in the parking lot of the Echthros Club. "Once more, please."
"I was here with Pete last night. My boyfriend. He wanted to see the band. And I saw Odessa. I wasn't sure if it was really she, so I followed her into the bathroom. She pretended not to know me, but I'd recognize her eyes anywhere."
I closed my own eyes for a long second and then opened them. The eyes. That's what everyone remembers. But they are a consequence of what she is, beacons of her inner fire.
"I'm going in to look for her. Wait here, please."
I exited the car and crossed to the entrance. The lot was crowded with clusters of garish sports cars and flashy motorcycles. The Echthros Club. I rolled the word over in my mind. Mary hadn't known what it meant. Underneath the tension of the situation and the fear of losing Odessa, I was faintly annoyed at the quality of American education. Was she not a teacher of the language arts?
Echthros is a Greek word. It means "Enemy".
Young people were queued up to enter, stretched nearly around the building. I walked past them to speak to the doorman, a huge young man with a clipboard and smoked glasses. "My name is Lorraine Noisette. My daughter Odessa is in your club. I've come to get her."
"Not on the list," he said, and then made a slight show of bobbing his head to make it appear that he had actually checked.
I continued, "She is still a young woman. A minor. I'm trying to keep this easy for you, but I don't think your establishment would enjoy the scrutiny I would bring. Now, do I get inside or I come back with the police?"
There were scattered catcalls from the youngsters close enough to hear, but the doorman pressed a button on the door jamb. I permitted myself a slight smile. Despite the efforts of these hairy-eyed revolutionaries, we are still a nation governed by laws.
"The manager will see you over there," he said, and nodded to indicate a spot around the corner of the building.
As I stepped around the corner, the sounds of the club became deadened, muted, distorted, seeming to fall out of sync with the actions that produced them. Visibility fell to a mere several feet in front of me, with my eyes unable to focus on anything beyond that distance. There was jumbling of sensory input, like some kind of low-grade synesthesia, sights becoming smells and sounds flowing into sensations. It was as if I had stepped into another world entirely.
"You have," a woman's voice intoned. For a moment, I had the ridiculous thought that she had somehow read my mind. But that was absurd. She had merely made an informed guess as to the most likely train of thought.
I hadn't seen her until she spoke. She was taller than I, and I stand nearly six feet. She seemed slender, but it was hard to tell, with her body enveloped by a cacophony of silks. Her hair was long and dark and free. Her face was so flawless and so featureless that it seemed to belong to a ceramic doll.
"You are the creator? Ludmilla?" She spoke without an accent, without much inflection of any kind, but from the way she stressed her words and made her pauses, her manner of speaking led me to believe that she was not a native English speaker.
"No," I said, "I'm her mother," and, as long as I was correcting her, I added, "Lorraine."
She smiled thinly, the lips not seeming to move so much as flow.
"I'm here for my daughter." I met her eyes. Mine are hazel, like my name. Hers were liquid grey-green, glimmering with a metallic sheen.
"Your daughter has chosen her side. She has chosen us.”
"I'd like to hear that from her, if you don't mind."
She raised her arms, moving with a quick, liquid grace, and a tenebrous presence flowed forth from beneath her. I didn't even have time to be surprised before it was upon me, seizing me by the wrists and the ankles and splaying me out like the Vitruvian Man.
She dropped her arms, but her shadow remained where it was, holding me helpless.
"How are you doing this?" That was going to be my
last question. Not why, but how.
She produced a long silver needle from within the folds of her silk, and approached me. I struggled, but it was useless. I twisted my head away as much as I could. Her doll mouth smiled. "Magic," it said.
There was a flare of light from behind me. Her lips made a perfect "o", to match the smaller "o" that had suddenly appeared on her forehead. The ensnaring shadow vanished. I turned in the direction in which the flash had come and saw Mary standing there, completing the tableau, her lips in that same shape, fingers smoldering but slightly.
4 - The Game
Back at my home. "Let me repeat it back to you to make sure I understand everything you've told me."
"Okay." Mary nodded eagerly.
"There is a 'game' held every Halloween when there is a full moon over a gateway to another world. Everybody involved on either side has 'super powers' and animal sidekicks which they use to complete a magical scavenger hunt."
"That's right! You've got it."
"And your pet 'Squeakers' can talk to you."
She held a small grey mouse up to her ear and it crinkled its nose. "Right. But only between midnight and one AM."
"Am I forgetting anything?"
"Openers want to open the gateway and Closers want to close it."
"Oh, yes. Of course. I should have made that explicit. We wouldn't want the casual observer to think it's the other way round.”
Her smile began to fade, and I spoke again. “That’s the stupidest thing I've ever heard."
She stuck her chin out defiantly, which made her seem even younger. "How do you explain the encounter in the parking lot?"
"I can't. Yet. But there is no shame in saying 'I don't understand the mechanism of what I've observed, at this time.' Science is about the search for truth, and not turning away from facts that might be uncomfortable or upend your worldview."
She was silent.
"Get out of my house," I added.
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