Fiction River: Unnatural Worlds (27 page)

I’m even able to manipulate the system. Robin
is meant to be some kind of romantic guy, young with long hair and
a nice smile. He’s not my type being a guy and he’s an aristocrat,
a Fey lord which doesn’t work for me.

Just after we met, I found myself looking at
his hairless face, the long lashes on the eyes. Now, maybe because
I’m so lonely, Lord Robin reminds me of Dare. They get tangled in
my mind. I can’t look at him and not think of her.

It turns out he’s actually a woman in
disguise. And Lady Robin and I share a bed and get it on and I’m
pretty sure I’m bending the game and making up my own story. What
worries me is whether this is what I’m supposed to be doing. Or is
this and talking to the dragon instead of trying to kill her, a big
mistake that means I’ll never get home again.

And that worry is with me deep in the night
when the dragon Cassese returns and I’m trying to grab and twist
her brain. And I can’t because it shimmers like glass and slips
away from me. And instead of the dragon it’s Lady Robin I’m
wrestling with.

Then instead of Robin it’s Dare and she’s
screaming because she’s afraid I’m going to kill her. This is what
happened with us before I ended up here.

But as I remember Dare and me, I know what
I’m seeing is all in my mind. I’m awake in the Witch’s house. I
feel the sheet, smell the night woods, scents so strong I can taste
them; hear bugs bouncing off the shades. See the outlines of a
quarter moon.

I know the nightmare stayed inside me and I
disarmed it myself. The Witch won’t even know this happened. The
Soldier’s Malady is still there but I recognize it faster now. I’ve
worked out a kind of treaty with it. At times I want to yell and
scream at the top of my lungs but I know that won’t get me back
home.

When I go downstairs the tea and bread are
there. Out on the porch, though, the viaculum is gone. I hope what
I did with
Lady Enigma
makes the Witch happy. A three-month
stay was what was talked about when I arrived here. I’m down to my
last couple of days.

Later Phil and I walk on a forest path. A
bunch of kids from the nearest town are heading the other way with
baskets to gather berries. Phil doesn’t like it when there are lots
of people around, and wants to take my hand. When I let him he
looks up like I’m the greatest thing in the world. I wonder if
they’ll let me take him with me if I go.

Around here kids my age are all woodcutters’
daughters and millers’ sons like in the fairytales. A lot of them
are barefoot and they’re all dressed simple like me. Everyone knows
I’m staying with the Witch who is a much respected figure and that
I have some kind of magic. They step aside for Phil and me and kind
of bow which I don’t like.

Instead of just busting into their heads like
I’d have done when I got here, I do a gentle scan which I’ve been
taught. Through their eyes I see myself walking around with this
magic creature holding onto me.

First in one then in half a dozen minds I
find their memories of ones who stayed here before me. One is a big
bruiser with a beard and a missing arm, another is a Sprite with
blank eyes and wings, and there’s a woman with a sad face and an
Amazon’s body. Each has Phil. The woman leads him on a leash, the
bruiser carries him over his shoulder like a small sack. Phil
trails behind the Sprite who doesn’t seem to notice him, hurries to
keep up. Phil is never any bigger or smaller, older or younger than
he is now.

He continues to hold my hand and to look up
and I scratch his head. I managed never to think about why he was
around. But this is school and he was a test.

When a tree turns into the Witch I’m in no
way surprised. Over my time here she sent images of knives slashing
my eyes, made me feel like the ground crumbled under me. I showed
her the Oak of Ware burned to the ground and made her see her
stomach blown open with a grenade.

The Witch holds out her hand and Phil
immediately runs over and takes it.
“I watched you with him very
carefully, saw you change,”
she tells me, nods and gives an
actual smile.
“It tipped the balance.”

She shows me her regrets about taking young
warriors, smashed and maddened by what’s happened to them and what
they’ve done, piecing them together and sending them back to maybe
get smashed again. But it’s doing this that makes the Fey protect
these woods and her people from their enemies.

I understand that I’ll be going back to a
place where even the ones who knew me before I developed my powers
came to be afraid of me. Like The Witch I’ll serve the Fey to keep
my people alive. She takes my hand for a moment.

It’s late summer now, almost fall and clouds
form as we walk toward the Oak of Ware. After hating this place and
this woman I don’t want to leave.

Hearing Dare scream; being shown her cut in
two doesn’t stop me now. But as we approach the Oak, a figure,
tall, thin with curly hair stands and all I can think is that this
image is one more of the Witch’s tests. Dare was afraid to be near
me; everyone was. Now she’s running towards me with her arms out
smiling and crying. And the Oak and the Witch, the satyr and the
forest slip behind me like a dream.

Introduction to “Dog Boy Remembers”

Newsweek
calls Jane Yolen “the Hans
Christian Andersen of America.” She is that and more. Her 300 books
range from picture books to novels for adults. She has won two
Nebulas, a World Fantasy Award, the Golden Kite Award, three
Mythopoeic Awards, two Christopher Medals, and has had many more
nominations, including one for the National Book Award.

“
Dog Boy Remembers,” she writes, “explores
the birth/creation of one of the characters in
Except the
Queen
, a novel that Midori Snyder and I wrote together. As Dog
Boy was my creation, Midori gave me permission to write more about
him.”

Good thing she did; what follows is one of
the most powerful original stories we’ve ever read.

Dog Boy Remembers

Jane Yolen

The Dog Boy was just a year old and newly
walking when his father returned to take him into Central Park. It
was summer and the moon was full over green trees.

The only scents he’d loved till then were the
sweet milk smells his mother made, the fust of the sofa cushions,
the prickly up-your-nose of the feathers in his pillow, the pure
spume of water from the tap, and the primal stink of his own shit
before it was washed down into the white bowl.

When his father came to fetch him that first
time, his mother wept. Still in her teens, she’d not had a lot of
knowledge of the world before Red Cap had taken her up. But the
baby, he was all hers.
The only thing
, she often thought,
that truly was
.

“Don’t take him,” she cried, “I’ve done
everything you asked. I promise to be even more careful of him.”
Her tears slipped silently down her cheeks, small globules,
smelling slightly salty, like soup.

His father hit her with his fist for crying,
and red blood gushed from her nose. He hated crying, something Dog
Boy was soon to find out.

But Dog Boy had never smelled blood like that
before, only his mother’s monthly flow which had a nasty pong to
it. His head jerked up at the sharpness, a scent he would later
know as iron. He practically wet himself with delight.

His father watched him and smiled. It was a
slow smile and not at all comforting, but it was all Dog Boy would
ever get from him.

“Come Boy,” his father said, adjusting the
red cap he always wore, a cap that was the first thing Dog Boy
recognized about his father, even before his smell, that odd
compound of old blood and something meaty, something nasty, that
both repelled and excited him. Without more of an invitation, his
father reached into his pocket and pulled out a leather leash,
winding it expertly about the Dog Boy’s chest and shoulders,
tugging him toward the door. And not knowing why, only that it
would surely be something new and interesting, Dog Boy toddled
after him, never looking back at his mother who still simpered
behind them.

***

Off they went into the city, that big, noisy,
sprawling place so full of sound and movement and smells, Dog Boy
always shuddered when the door opened.

Oh, he’d been out with his mother before, but
always held in her arms, smothered by the milk-mother smell. This
time he was walking out on his own. Well, walking might be a slight
exaggeration. It was more like falling forward, only to be caught
up again and again by the leather leash.

Their first stop was at a spindly ginko right
outside the door of the house, the tree just leafing out. Dog Boy
stood by it and inhaled the green, soft and sharp at the same time.
He reached over and touched the bark. That was the soft smell, and
it was not—he realized in surprise—the bark itself but the mallow
he could sense inside, though of course then he hadn’t the words
mallow
or
bark
. The leaves were what smelled sharp
and new and somewhat peppery. The other smell was clearly much
older. Old and new had different scents. It was a revelation.

Next, he and his father walked along a stone
walk that was filled with other interesting scents. People smells,
lingering leather smells, the sweat of feet, plus the sweet cloy of
dropped paper wrappers, and some smallish tangs of tobacco in a
white cover. Then Dog Boy found three overflowing garbage cans,
overflowing with smells.

Suddenly, there were far too many odors, most
of them much too strong for his childish senses, and Dog Boy ended
up swooning onto the pavement, his legs and arms making quick
running motions, like a dog does when it dreams.

With great disgust, Red Cap slung him over
his shoulder like some dead thing, and took him right back
home.

Once upstairs, he flung Dog Boy onto the
sofa, saying in his growl of a voice, “I have kept you in comfort
all this time and you raise up this. . .this wimpish thing. I need
a sniffer-out, an offspring who can track and trail. Not this
puling, fainting. . .”

“He’s only a baby,” his mother said quickly,
picking Dog Boy up and unwrapping the leather leash from his body
which—strangely—burned her hands. Dog Boy smelled the burning right
before she cradled him against her milk-full breasts, before that
familiar scent comforted him and made him forget everything else.
“And I have kept him in this room, as you demanded. . .” his mother
murmured above him, neglecting to mention the bi-weekly runs to the
bodega when she was so lonely for an adult to speak to, she
couldn’t stay in and didn’t dare leave the child in the room
alone.

For her outburst, she was hit again, this
time on the cheek, which rocked her back and made Dog Boy whimper
for her, though she made no sound at all. But her cheek came up
quickly into a purplish bruise that his little, plump fingers
explored gently, though by then Red Cap was already gone, the door
slamming behind him. He didn’t return for a month, on the next
moon.

***

During that month, Dog Boy’s mother wept,
fussed, petted and spoiled him outrageously, thought about running
off with him, hiding out somewhere.

“Just the two of us,” she’d whisper before
the tears pooled again in her eyes. “Anywhere.” But she couldn’t
think of a single place that would be safe. Red Cap could come and
go to anywhere on earth, seemingly at will. He’d told her so when
they’d first met, and she believed him. His fists had made her into
a believer.

Red Cap was the only name she had for him. He
said it was the only name he had. She’d tried calling him Red once,
and he hit her so hard, she lost consciousness and never tried
again. Even her father had never hit her so hard. But after that,
she had trouble calling him anything and spent stuttering moments
whenever she had to address him directly. She thought if she could
only call him by his right name, he’d forgive her, but the words
never seemed to come out right.

He wore that disgusting cap everywhere, even
in bed. The only time she’d ever seen him take it off was when they
were first seeing one another. It was a pearly evening, and they’d
come upon a dying squirrel run over in the park, it’s insides
squashed onto the pavement, made even more horrible by the moon
overhead and the shadows it cast. She’d started to turn away from
the sight. But when Red Cap took off his hat and dipped it into the
squirrel’s blood, she’d been mesmerized and couldn’t stop watching.
For a moment, the hat had seemed to glisten and glow, red as a
sunset, though she knew that couldn’t really have happened. Then
the squirrel’s eyes glazed over; so, in a way, had the hat.

After the moment in the park, she shrank away
from him, which seemed to make him even more ardent. He showered
her with money. Especially when he found out she was pregnant. He
didn’t ask her to marry him, but by then marriage was the last
thing on her mind. Escape was foremost. That and getting rid of the
child in her womb. But Red Cap stayed with her, imprisoned her
really, in that little house in Brooklyn, with its view of the
backside of another building. Threatened her. Hit her a couple of
times a week just to remind her he could. He knew how to draw blood
and how to bring bruises. He did not mistake them. It was as if he
knew her body better than she did. And her soul.

He stayed just long enough for the child to
be born. Childbirth tore her up so badly inside, the doctor warned
she’d never have another child, though she didn’t want another.
Certainly not with Red Cap.

When she was well enough to take care of the
child on her own, he showed her what to do, and then left, warning
her not to run away.