Never Never Stories

by Jason Sanford

  I didn't understand – only knew my parents weren't coming back. I sat in the stub grass and cried. Diane walked over and picked me up, even though I was too big for her to hold for long.

  “They'll send us away,” she said. “Please. We're all the family we've got.”

  Chapél stood slowly, supporting himself with that carved tooth walking stick which shook and bent as much as his skinny body. “I'm not a bad man,” he said, stepping toward the dark of his shack's open door. “But I make deals. It's what keeps me going. What can you offer for my help?”

  Diane sat me back on the ground and stepped onto the porch. Chapél nodded and walked through his shack's doorway, which swallowed him to the murmur of far distant voices. Voices angry at what the world had become. Voices angry at Chapél.

  Diane paused for a moment before following him inside.

  * * *

  The sea serpent is smaller than I'd imagined from my father's stories – only three times as long as my boat, and slender as a telephone pole. Maybe this is all a wizard can pull together these days.

  I don't have a magic sword like my father fought his serpent with, but I do have a pistol. I do have a shotgun. My weapons. My weapons of science.

  But I reach for neither. Instead, I'm curious about this storm, which could have been bad enough to sink me. I'm curious about this tiny sea serpent. So I kill the dual outboards, causing the boat to slip broadside to the storm's waves. The boat tips, about to capsize, as the serpent shoots out, wrapping its body around the hull and holding it steady.

  “That's what we call an experiment,” I yell over the wind. “A way to test a hypothesis. Now we both know you aren't here to kill me.”

  The serpent's body twines around the boat like its kin must have done to sailing ships hundreds of years ago. It shrieks its fanged maw at me from a yard away, rage and anger and poison splattering my face. But it doesn't strike.

  Accepting my hypothesis as correct, the serpent sets my boat once again heading into the waves, and releases me. I gun the engines and ride on.

  * * *

  My family house is gone. Decades of waves and hurricanes have rearranged the shoreline so the mud flats where my parents grew our home are now only empty shallows.

  The gale has already sucked back into the blue sky from which it was created, so I easily pilot my boat to where our house would have stood. A rotten piling rises from the tiny waves. The single seagull sitting on top of it eyes me with irritation.

  I tie off the boat and wade to shore, the shotgun on my back, the pistol holstered on my hip. Mud sucks my boots six inches down and the waist-high sea grass cuts my hands and arms. Still, nothing to be done.

  Soon I reach the swamps leading to Chapél's shack. Ghosts of wizards and witches fly through cypress trees, caressing the trees' upjutting knees and skimming the brackish waters. They cast rainbow spells and magic at each other in hazy displays which pass through the trees and water and me like never-never words. Some of them turn toward me, promising riches and enchanted swords and even my family if only I'll return magic to this world. Others threaten, saying I'll suffer unless I return their world to them.

  Most importantly, the ghosts whisper that no matter how strong the spell, it only lasts so long. That even the most powerful wizard's magic must be renewed again and again by the lives of those who've felt the spell's pain and power.

  I remember my father's words – how magic lives off the loves and pains of others. My parents whisper not to trust these ghosts, but to instead do what I know to be right.

  Holding my shotgun before me, I walk the path to Chapél.

  * * *

  I never knew the deal my sister and Chapél struck, but when we returned to our house, life was as it had been, except for our parents being gone. Our family boat was repaired and floating. The deputies and social worker never returned to hunt us down. And when we needed food, money appeared in the same cubbyhole where Mom and Dad always hid their meager savings.

  Diane now piloted our boat across the bay each school day. But where before my sister had been laid back, daydreaming of boys or the new radio she wanted to buy our mother, now she was driven. She pushed me to study science and math, and history and religion and English, too. Each day after school, sitting in Apalachicola's tiny library, she would grill me on my studies and throw new learning at me which my teachers hadn't even taught. We'd stay in that library until the setting sun hurried us to our boat ride home.

  Occasionally a teacher or police officer would ask what two kids were doing by themselves, but even as the words left their mouths a sudden electricity would light their eyes and they'd turn and wander off, convinced by whatever truth they'd heard.

  After the first year of living alone, Chapél visited us. I'd never heard of him leaving his shack, but there he was, sitting on our front porch. He asked me questions about my education. On science and math. On biology and physics. He seemed fascinated by the science I was learning and urged me to study even harder. “Such amazing things,” he said, “these explanations of your world.”

  Happy at the praise, I pointed to the stars above us. “Maybe I'll be an astronaut,” I said. “Go to the moon and see what's up there.”

  “And that's how marvelous ideas are always born,” Chapél said.

  Before he left, he nodded at Diane, who shook with relief at his approval.

  And so life went, with me studying as hard as I could, taught day after day by Diane. At some point she stopped going to her own classes, instead spending hours in the library putting together lessons and tests so I could learn all there was to know. At twelve I aced calculus. At fifteen, physics and biology.

  And every summer Chapél would walk to our house and quiz me, and pronounce me good for another year.

  While I was proud of my learning, I never forgot how much my sister sacrificed for me. Late at night, when I was supposed to be asleep, I'd often see her on our porch listening to Mom's little transistor radio and staring sadly at the sky.

  I graduated from high school at the top of my class. Diane was so proud. We discovered extra money in our cubbyhole, so Diane announced we'd rent a cap and gown for my graduation.

  But I couldn't have something for myself and forget my strong, strong sister. So when I went to town, I convinced the store owner to rent me a slightly frayed cap and gown at half price. With the savings I bought my sister a new radio. I'd never seen her so happy as when I handed her that gift. We sat on our porch all night listening to blues and jazz and so many other musics playing around our little world.

  To our surprise, Chapél announced he'd attend my graduation. Diane and I drove him in our boat across the bay, where he walked through town as if he'd come to destroy the entire place. Men and women and children – both black and white – avoided his eyes and turned away, afraid of something they couldn't describe. When we reached the high school gymnasium, he marched to the front row and said in his gravel voice for the mayor and his wife to vacate their seats.

  That pompous white man looked startled – I doubt a black man had ever ordered him around – but when the mayor tried to say something, his tongue tied and his face paled. He grabbed his wife's hand and led her away, apologizing to Chapél as he went.

  I was impressed. Diane, though, didn't seem to care. She held the new radio I'd given her and smiled a weak smile.

  Chapél listened carefully to my valedictorian speech, watched me receive my diploma, and nodded silently to himself. I laughed, excited at the future. Diane cried.

  “Be good to yourself,” she said later, wiping her eyes. “Go where you want.”

  I told her I would. I turned to hug one of my friends. When I turned back, my sister and Chapél were gone.

  At first I thought they'd merely stepped away for a moment, but as the minutes and hours ticked off, I knew they were gone. Truly gone. Suddenly understanding more than I should, I ran to a friend's pickup truck and stole his pistol. I then piloted my boat across the bay and ran
through the swamps to Chapél's shack.

  I found him in that damn leather and wood rocking chair. I aimed the pistol as he laughed, but before I could pull the trigger a massive raven flew for my eyes.

  I woke in Apalachicola Bay, floating under a deep star night. I now believed my sister had been dead for years, and that it was up to me alone to make something of myself in this damn world.

  Looking at the stars as I treaded water, I swore I would.

  * * *

  As I tread the path to Chapél, the ghost wizards and witches abandon their phantom displays, having failed to impress me with either deed or word. I reach Chapél's shack to find him sitting in that same leather and wood rocker, and holding the same carved tooth of a walking stick. His raven sits on the rocker's arm, eyeing me.

  The summer sun heats the shotgun in my hands so I can barely hold it.

  “Welcome home, Sol,” Chapél says.

  Before he says more, I shoot him, but even as I do the raven flies between him and me, absorbing most of the blast. The raven screams and flops onto the porch, while Chapél falls back in his rocking chair. I rack another round into the chamber and slowly approach him.

  “It's your choice,” Chapél gasps, his skinny body shaking. Only a few of the pellets hit his right arm and leg, but he's so old and weak that's enough to keep him from standing.

  The raven flops blood and feathers across the porch, but I ignore it. “I'd forgotten about her,” I say. “My sister. You made me forget her.”

  Chapél nods. “That was her choice. She knew what she needed, and that's all I ask of anyone. Simply know what you need to do.”

  I pause. “And what do I need to do?”

  Chapél pulls the wounded raven to him, the bird's high-pitched cries easing as he holds it to his rib-gasping chest. “You need to kill me. But before you do, know what I am. I'm science and math and reason.”

  That catches my interest. “Seems more likely you're the exact opposite of all that.”

  “Indeed. I'm the most powerful wizard of the last thousand years. I destroyed every other wizard and witch on this planet.”

  “Not much of a wizard these days, I guess. That storm in the bay, and the sea serpent and ghosts, they were laughably weak.”

  Anger flashes Chapél's eyes and I know the old man still pulses to the pride and arrogance I remember from my childhood. “That wasn't to stop you. That was so you'd taste what will happen if you kill me.”

  And there it is. I ease the shotgun barrel from his body and sit beside him. The raven caws softly from the cradle of his hands and chest.

  “Surely your parents told you what the world used to be like,” he says. “Of bowing and scraping to any two-bit sorcerer and magic shaker. You think there's bad in the world now? Imagine a world where your enemy could wish you dead and your lover bind you for all eternity. Imagine a world where kings knew who'd one day kill them – if they let them live. Imagine a world where the powerful truly are all-powerful.”

  I remember my parents describing such a world. “So you . . .”

  “I hold all that back. Within me is all the magic and wonder of a dead age. Because of me, science and math and the laws of what you call physics rule this world. While there are still powerful men and women, they now answer to natural forces even they can't control.”

  I remembered Diane and me sitting on our front porch, staring at the bright-shine Milky Way while listening to her radio. Of her telling me that in this world I could reach the stars.

  “Why do you do this?” I ask.

  “Maybe I tired of a world where anything was possible with so little effort. Maybe I want to be the only wizard around. All you need know is that if you kill me, all the magic inside me goes back into the world.”

  I remember my dad saying magic lives off the loves and pains of others. I remember the ghost wizards and witches saying spells must occasionally be renewed.

  I throw the shotgun off the porch. Throw the pistol after it. Objects of science. Of engineering and physics. Of me.

  “You did this on purpose,” I say. “You wanted to know if all this is worth it.”

  “Is it?” he asks, his eyes dancing across the pain and love I feel. I stare at the clouds above us and remember the joy of living a life which dared reach so high.

  How can I deny others that same life? How can I trap people in a world where magic alone makes you king?

  “It's worth it,” I say, and Chapél smiles the first true smile I've ever seen on his old face. He hugs the raven tight as a small sun surrounds the bird. The raven's body heals and its feathers once again shine to the purple-burn I first saw in space. The raven grins – and I still don't know how birds grin – as it speaks my name in my sister's lovely voice.

  From inside the shack, a tinny radio clicks through static and far off music.

  I laugh as I take the raven in my hands and whisper to my sister the many many ways a man of science can rationalize serving a wizard for a few hundred years.

  Additional Materials

  Publication Credits

  The Science Fiction Stories

  “An Introduction to Never Never Stories” is original to this edition.

  “The Ships Like Clouds, Risen By Their Rain” originally published in Interzone, issue 217, August 2008.

  Reprinted in Year's Best SF 14, edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer.

  Reprinted in the Czech magazine Ikarie and the Russian magazine ESLI.

  Nominated for the 2008 BSFA Award for Best Short Fiction.

  Longlisted for the 2009 British Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction.

  Postcast by StarShipSofa.

  “When Thorns Are the Tips of Trees” originally published in Interzone, issue 219, December 2008.

  Winner of the 2008 Interzone Readers' Poll.

  Reprinted in Apex Magazine, the Czech magazine Ikarie and the Russian magazine ESLI.

  Postcast by StarShipSofa.

  “Where Away You Fall” originally published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, December 2008.

  “Here We Are, Falling Through Shadows” originally published in Interzone, issue 225, November/December 2009.

  Longlisted for the 2010 British Fantasy Award.

  Reprinted in Apex Magazine, the Czech magazine Ikarie and the French book anthology Ténèbres.

  “Rumspringa” originally published in Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, Issue 5, July 2007.

  “Freelanga” originally published in the anthology I Am This Meat, Susurrus Press, 2007.

  Podcast by Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine.

  “Millisent Ka Plays in Realtime” originally published in Interzone, issue 231, November/December 2010.

  Reprinted in the Russian magazine ESLI.

  “Memoria” originally published in Interzone, issue 231, November/December 2010.

  Reprinted in the Czech magazine XB-1.

  “Peacemaker, Peacemaker, Little Bo Peep” originally published in Interzone, issue 231, November/December 2010.

  Podcast forthcoming by Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine.

  The Fantasy Stories

  “An Essay on Archeology and Fantasy” is original to this edition.

  “Into the Depths of Illuminated Seas” originally published in Interzone, issue 226, January/February 2010.

  An earlier version of the story was published in issue 2 of Tales of Moreauvia.

  Reprinted in StarShipSofa Stories, Volume 2.

  Postcast forthcoming from StarShipSofa.

  “A Twenty-First Century Fairy Love Story” originally published in Tales of the Unanticipated, issue 30, spring 2010.

  “Maps of the Bible” originally published in Monsters and Critics, spring 2008.

  Podcast in Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine.

  “The Dragon of Tin Pan Alley” is original to this edition.

  “The Never Never Wizard of Apalachicola” originally published as the cover story in Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic M
edicine Show issue 20.

  About the Author

  While Jason Sanford was born and raised in Alabama, he currently lives in the Midwestern U.S. with his wife and sons. Among his life's adventures includes work as an archeologist and a Peace Corps Volunteer. Many of his short stories have been published in the British SF magazine Interzone, which devoted a special issue to his fiction in December 2010. His fiction has been published in Year's Best SF 14, Analog, Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, Tales of the Unanticipated, The Mississippi Review, Diagram, Pindeldyboz, and other places.

  Among the awards and honors Jason has received includes being a finalist for the Nebula Award for Best Novella, winning both the 2008 and 2009 Interzone Readers' Polls, receiving a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship, being nominated for the BSFA Award, and being longlisted for the British Fantasy Award. Jason's fiction has been reprinted in several languages, including French, Russian, and Czech.

  Jason Sanford online:

  Twitter: twitter.com/jasonsanford

  Website: www.jasonsanford.com

  About the Cover Artist

  Julie Dillon is a freelance illustrator living and working in Northern California. She received her BFA in Fine Arts from Sacramento State University in 2005, with continued education at the Academy of Arts University in San Francisco and Watts Atelier. Her clients include Wizards of the Coast, Roto Studio, Paizo Publishing, Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, Volta Creations, Fantasy Flight Games, Fantasist Enterprises, and Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show.

  Julie Dillon online:

  Website: www.juliedillonart.com