I smell, faintly, a trace of cinnamon on the wind, and nothing has ever been sweeter.
The small goddess (of cinnamon, of one man’s love) leaps from the cliff, and turns to light.
I sit, watching, until her brightness merges with the sparkles on the surface of the water, and then I walk away, mouthing a prayer of thanks to the small gods of waking up in the morning, the small gods of drawing breath, the small gods of holding on.
Copyright © 2002 Tim Pratt
* * * *
Tim Pratt is a graduate of Clarion ‘99, poetry editor for Star*Line, and all-around writer type. He spends most of his days working for a science fiction magazine and too many of his nights playing computer games. It’s a wonder he gets anything written at all. For more about him and his work, see his Web site. Tim’s previous publications in Strange Horizons can be found in our Archive.
Mark Precious was born in Los Angeles in 1967 and graduated with a fine arts degree from Pomona College in Claremont, CA, in 1989. He currently works at Random Lengths News, an independent local newspaper in San Pedro, CA, as an advertising production assistant. This illustration is his first online publication.
Travel Agency
By Ellen Klages
2/11/02
My older sister and her daughter, my favorite niece, have come to stay with me in my house outside Boston for a few nights. Marjorie is a frequent flyer; she works for the airlines, in management. She wears stretch jeans and a white sweatshirt with glittery appliquéd gingham teddy bears. This is Emily’s first visit. She’s almost ten. She gives me an awkward hug, and a shy smile when her mother is not looking.
My guest room is a room that is usually the den. I have cleaned up the day-to-day clutter of papers and books, and put clean sheets on the sofabed. Marjorie frowns when she sees it. It is a little small for two to sleep comfortably.
I tell Emily that she’ll be sleeping in the attic, if that’s okay. The child’s eyes light up as if she’d just been offered a bunk on a pirate ship. They live in a suburb, in a split-level ranch house with white carpeting. But I know from her letters that many of her favorite books seem to involve old houses with great, sometimes magic, attics. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s house has an attic, and the Four-Story Mistake. I think there’s one in Half Magic, too.
Magic rarely happens in a living room, or in a basement, unless it’s scary magic, which isn’t the kind you want to have surround you at night.
For most of my guests, my attic is a utilitarian place. It’s just a room at the top of the house, the place where the luggage lives when it’s not traveling, and where the boxes of Christmas ornaments and books without bookshelf space are stored. Winter clothes in the cedar closet in July; bathing suits in plastic boxes in December.
But the child is beside herself, hopping excitedly from one foot to the other, waiting to see my attic. I am a librarian. I am neither blasé about the importance of my offer, nor alarmed at the hopping. I am actually rather delighted. Marjorie puts a hand on Emily’s shoulder and tells her to behave. The child stops hopping and pulls her ears a fraction closer to her shoulders.
The attic door opens off the upstairs hallway, between the guest room and the bathroom. It isn’t one of those attics that is reached by pull-down stairs set in the ceiling. It is a proper attic, with a proper doorway and small, twisting, steep stairs. Emily turns to me and smiles when I open the door, her eyes so bright I’m amazed that the narrow stairwell isn’t illuminated by them.
At the top of the stairs, we step out into one big slope-ceilinged room. It’s finished in the sense that there are paneled walls and not just exposed beams and studs and lath. But it is not wallpapered or carpeted or decorated. Two-thirds of it is full of the usual attic-y jumble of boxes and trunks, lamps that don’t match my new couch, and occasional tables whose occasion has come and gone. It is a place for things that no longer belong.
The far end is an open, rectangular space with a small iron cot of the same shape and vintage as the ones in the cabins of my childhood summer camp. A thin mattress lies atop springs that I know will squeak when the child sits down, or when she turns over. I have made it up with some faded green sheets and an equally faded summer-weight quilt.
The cot sits in the middle of an old, threadbare Oriental rug that holds the encroaching boxes at bay. An upturned footlocker stands at the side of the bed, topped with a green glass-shaded lamp. Next to the lamp is an offering of nine-year-old-type books that I have pulled from the dozens of bookcases that line the rest of my house: The Lilac Fairy Book, The Wind in the Willows, an Enid Blyton schoolgirl book about the fourth form at St. Clare’s, and The Phantom Tollbooth.
A few feet above the bed, there’s a small, round window, filled with the leaves of the neighbor’s tall maple. The wall faces west, and the late afternoon light streams golden onto the tiny bed.
Emily stops in her tracks when she sees all of this, stops moving altogether. I’m not even sure if she’s breathing.
She looks from her mother to me and then asks, “Do I really get to sleep here?” The wonder in her voice makes one of us smile.
“For two whole nights? Just me? By myself?”
I nod. The child has her own room at home. It’s not like she lies shackled to her straw pallet next to the kitchen hearth, deprived of both comfort and privacy. But this is a place that she’ll remember. Years from now, she’ll be able to close her eyes and recall every detail. She may no longer be able to remember where she’d been, or why, exactly, but she’ll remember there was a bed in an attic, and a doting aunt who gave her the chance for a bit of a storybook childhood.
“We’re going to go down and start dinner,” I say, giving her a wink. “Do you want to stay up here, or come down and have a root beer while we cook?”
It is not a hard choice.
“Here, I think. Maybe I’ll kind of unpack.” She is already eyeing the books on the bedside table.
So Marjorie and I go downstairs and open a bottle of Chardonnay, and I begin chopping vegetables while she goes on about United, and Donald, and how they plan to landscape the yard next spring. An hour later, I excuse myself and tiptoe back up the narrow stairs.
Dust motes swirl in the last rays of twilight. As I had hoped, the cot is empty, only a small girl-shaped indentation left in the quilt. Enid Blyton is lying face down, pages open. I smile as I close it and tuck it under my arm.
I thought it was what she’d choose. It’s a lovely place for a holiday, and the girls in the fourth form are such a lively bunch this year.
Copyright © 2002 Ellen Klages
* * * *
Ellen Klages is an eclectic writer. She has co-written four books of hands-on science activities for children for the Exploratorium museum in San Francisco. Her short fiction has been on the final ballot for the Nebula, Hugo, and John W. Campbell Awards. She is on the board of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, and is somewhat notorious as the auctioneer/entertainment for the Tiptree auctions. For more about her, see her web site.
The Final Solution
By K. Mark Hoover
2/18/02
Part 1 of 2
1.
When it becomes necessary to abandon reason, decisions become more visceral. Changing from fight-or-flight back into reason is a slower process—but necessary for the continuation of any species.
—Paul Brome, The Last Jew
Coarse bracken whipped the boy’s legs as he ran through the forest. A full moon kept pace with his terror, gliding between jet branches.
Breath rasping, he gripped an empty 7.65mm pistol, its barrel warm from the last shot. In the distance behind him, German submachine guns barked their symphony of murder, suddenly stopped. Fifty meters into the thickening woods he still smelled the harsh stink of cordite intermingling with his own dank fear-sweat.
Moonlight dappling through the trees briefly illuminated him. The machine guns opened up again. Bark splintered; bits of pine needles and broken stems showered like green rain. A ricochet struck the side of his face, ripping open his cheek to expose gleaming bone, teeth.
He sprawled headlong and scrabbled across the frozen ground, biting back a scream. Frantic, he burrowed into the patch of shadow where the bracken was thickest, a wounded animal.