I was frightened then, for she laughed with glee and flung herself down on the bed. I kept reflecting her, as if I were an ordinary mirror. I thought of trees, but they failed to calm me. There was a storm coming, and the treetops moved in the breeze. In innumerable forest houses people were lashing down shutters as evening came on. The old man and the old woman had not been good people, nor necessarily wise, but they had known a lot about magic. Bluebell did not. I was afraid, selfishly, for myself, for what might happen to me if she asked me these impossible questions, forced me to make judgements. Until that day I had, mostly, been happy. I had had no free will, for the spells of the old couple had kept me bound. Now in one way I was more free, and in another more trapped. The girl on the bed was asleep, looking the picture of health and beauty, and smiling gently in her sleep. The trees to the west were lashed by wind and driving rain. I am a failure. I can only see what is, never what is to come.
Copyright © 2001 Jo Walton
*
Jo Walton lives in Wales and on selected parts of Usenet. She has published stories in Odyssey and Ad Hoc, and poetry in Artemis. Her first novel, The King’s Peace, came out from Tor in October 2000. The sequel The King’s Name will be out in November 2001. Her previous publications in Strange Horizons can be found in our archives. For more about her work, see her Web site.
Colleen Doran has been a professional artist since the age of fifteen and has illustrated more than 400 books, comics, and magazines. Her work includes illustrations for Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series as well as work on Clive Barker’s Hellraiser and Nightbreed and Anne Rice’s The Master of Rampling Gate. Her graphic novel series A Distant Soil was nominated for this year’s Spectrum Award for Best Science Fiction. She has also worked as an animation conceptual and character designer. Current work includes upcoming X-Men Unlimited work and a graphic novel called Orbiter written by Warren Ellis to be published by DC Comics/Vertigo in 2002. More of her work can be found at her Web site.
Somewhere Down the River
By Simon Bewick
9/10/01
Part 1 of 2
A lipstick sunset was smeared against the August sky and reflected in the river rolling by. Susan could hear a distant rumble from way behind her, possibly as far back as Hickman. She thought of the long drive ahead of her tonight. Hickman was only two nights ago, but it seemed like longer.
The red neon ahead in the distance shivered in the heat that still hung in the air, a heat that was losing its grip but not giving in without a fight. She drove on at a steady forty and the sign came into view more clearly. A roadside bar. The same roadside bar as in Arkansas City, Greenville, Wilson, and a dozen other places she’d driven through in the last few days, or not different enough to matter. She rubbed a tired hand over weary eyes and coasted into the empty parking lot.
The car gave a wheeze, followed by a shudder that, if not a death rattle, was at least an advanced stage of a terminal disease. She pushed the door open, got out, and gave the car an almost affectionate pat before walking into the bar.
The ghosts of a thousand smoked cigarettes and even more spilled drinks rolled over her as the door shut behind her. Some woman on the jukebox was singing about her cheatin’ husband and her lonely nights.
This bar, like all the others, clearly relied on its weekend bingers to limp through the quiet weekdays. The owner apparently saved money during the week by not bothering to light the place. The room was almost empty. Two men sat on stools at the bar, talking with the bartender. In the dim light, Susan could just make out someone sitting alone at a booth in the back.
She ignored the watching eyes of the men at the bar. She sat on the empty stool at the end of the bar, a few stools away from the men, and ordered a beer. The bartender gave her a close look, and she gave him a weary half-smile, the best she could muster. “What’s the matter? Want to see some ID?”
He didn’t blush the way that young pretty-boy had, back in that bar a few miles outside of Ripley, when she’d asked him if she had something hanging from her nose. This man didn’t look as if he’d ever blushed. He just turned, took a glass, and started pouring.
Susan took the beer and pulled a pack of red Marlboros from her jeans pocket, using a matchbook sitting on the bar to light one.
One of the two men at the bar, a red-faced good old boy who’d probably been a football player a lifetime ago, decided a decent amount of time had passed. “What brings a pretty lady like you into a place like this?”
Susan sighed. A pretty lady. She didn’t feel it, and looking in the mirror behind the bar, she didn’t see it in herself. Still had the charcoal eyes, though. They always liked that. Charcoal eyes and Monroe hips. That’s what Johnny used to say.
She looked along the bar at the men: the ex-footballer with a scrap-iron jaw, and the other, who looked as if he’d always been the football player’s scrawny sidekick.
“I’m looking for a man,” she said quietly.
“Well, honey,” smiled the one-time jock, revealing a mouth containing crooked teeth and a few gaps, “you come to the right place.”
As the men yukked it up, she moved her own mouth to resemble a smile, as though it were the first time she’d heard the joke. They always asked, and they always managed to get something suggestive out of whatever she said. She let the smile die on her lips and took a small drink from the bottle. “Actually, sweetheart, I already got a man. He’s back in Angola doin’ 9 to 12. Killed a man that was nasty to me.”
They always paid a bit more attention after that, and it was almost true. Johnny was her man, and he’d been headed for Angola, back in Louisiana. He’d been in limbo (and he still is, a small voice in her mind said)—in jail waiting for his trial. He would have got 9 to 12; she didn’t think anyone was going to believe the self-defense claim when the prosecutors got through showing pictures of the dead kid. She didn’t see the need to tell these men that he’d never made it to the prison. That they’d been holding him for arraignment when it had all happened. She didn’t need to tell them that, any more than she needed to tell them that for a week now Johnny had been in the hospital, dead to everything but the machine that breathed for him.
She saw the bartender flash the man a warning look. She’d become an expert at picking up glances from sad men who told a “pretty woman” how lonely they were. Men who all thought that Hank Williams had written their life stories.
Men who had no idea how lucky they were.
The bartender, sallow-skinned, with slitted, suspicion-filled eyes too close together, took a rag from behind the counter and started wiping a glass that didn’t need wiping.
“You stayin’ on around here, ma’am?”
She took another mouthful and shook her head. “Nope. Don’t worry about it. Just lookin’ for someone.”
“Maybe I can help,” he said, and she heard what he was not saying: I’m going to say “Never seen him” to whatever you ask me. So, get that startin’-to-spread-south ass of yours out of this bar.
“A man with a lantern,” she said simply. Sometimes when she said it straight out, there was a glint in their eyes before they could hide it. This time it was different. She’d never had muffled laughter before.
“Looks like one for Freddie, wouldn’t you say?” the former football player sniggered.
“You got that right,” agreed his sidekick.
She wondered what this was, whether they were playing with her. She wasn’t going to bite, not that easy. She asked the lizard behind the bar where the ladies’ room was; he pointed vaguely towards the back of the bar. She nodded and left them to watch her walk across to it.
The man sitting in the corner looked at her with interest. She glanced at him, not slowing. In his mid-fifties, she guessed, with what looked like it had been a thin face, now swollen around the chin and cheeks. Probably another boozehound, she thought, pushing through the door into the bathroom.
She splashed water over her face and tied her dusty hair back where it had started to come undone on the road.