The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror (79 page)

The words of these plays are like magic. They cast a spell.

Leonard concentrated, even as the feet grew closer, the steps more numerous. A word appeared to him, in Greek letters, but somehow beyond pronunciation. The letters enveloped him, out of focus. If he could grasp the letters, speak the word . . .

The creatures’ heads battered against the lower door. The latch rattled with each hit, and he knew that soon either the wood would splinter, or the hook would jiggle out of the eyelet. To drown out the fearful sound Leonard covered his ears and shouted that strange word.

The spell. The name. The true answer to the riddle.

The door ceased to move against his back. Leonard dropped his hands from his ears, and heard nothing. The creatures were silent. No chittering. No shuffles in the dirt as they moved away.

He stood up, then rushed to retrieve the steak knife from the kitchen counter. Dry clumps of peanut butter stuck to parts of the serrated edge, but the tip was sharp and the heavy wooden handle offered some comfort as Leonard returned to the windowless door. He wasn’t ready to open it, yet he was certain the creatures had disappeared. They were banished once their name was spoken, the Riddle of the Sphinx solved after all these centuries. Leonard had accomplished something where Sibley, where even the mighty Oedipus, had failed.

Beneath that pride, Leonard worried he might have seen too much. The mask of his face must have held its expression, the curious look he’d worn all weekend, brow furrowed in the perpetual pose of a scholar’s inquiry.

A rush of wind blasted through the silence, like the flap of large wings over the cabin. A hideous shriek sent tremors through the walls; the floor shook beneath his feet.

The old story was wrong. She wasn’t suicidal: she was angry.

He clutched the knife’s handle, certain that the Sphinx was ready to pose a new riddle, one he’d never be able to answer. Heavy talons scraped along the roof. Leonard felt the temptation of an itch behind each eye.

Bordertown can be a harsh mistress to the unwary.

A Tangle of Green Men
Charles de Lint

1.

When Tía Luba talks everybody listens. That’s just the way it is for us kids, on or off the rez.

I’m getting my release from the Kikimi County Young Offenders Correction Facility, which is just a fancy way of saying juvie. I’ve been on good behavior, done my time. Studied for my classes—even got my grade 9. Didn’t mouth off to the guards or psychologists or counselors. Moved rocks and dirt around on the weekends to build character and amuse the guards. Basically, I kept my head down and my nose clean.

The guard accompanies me from the buildings to the outer gate. As we walk toward it, I get a good look at the twelve-foot-high chain-link fence with the barbed wire on top that makes a big loop around the facility. I’ve stared at it for the past eight months but the last time I was up this close, I was on the outside being bused in from the city.

The guard talks into his walkie-talkie and the gate swings open. I step through and taste freedom.

“There’s two buses a day,” the guard says. “You missed the first one but another comes by at five.”

It’s noon. The sun’s high, beating down on the desert. It’s got to be 110 out here on the pavement. The road stretches for as far as I can see in either direction. There’s only scrub and cacti.

The guard spits on the ground as the gate closes.

“Should have brought some water with you,” he says.

I hear him chuckle as he makes his way back to the main building.

I start walking. I’ve got two choices: the city or the mountains. The city’s what got me in trouble the last time, so I walk northeast to where the Hierro Maderas rise tall and graying in the distance.

My baseball cap helps against the sun but there’s only so much it can do. I can feel the moisture leaving my body. A couple of hours of this and I’ll be as parched as the dirt on either side of the blacktop. A couple hours more and I’ll be dry enough for the wind to pick me up and blow me away.

When I hear the pickup slowing down behind me, I don’t turn around. I just keep walking. Being around people’s another thing that got me in trouble. I either buy into their crap—which is how I found myself in Kikimi—or I end up taking a swing at them. I don’t seem to have a whole lot of middle ground, but I’m working on it.

The pickup pulls up beside me and a familiar voice says, “You want a ride?”

I sigh. When the truck stops, I pop the passenger door and get in. I look at my aunt. She looks back at me, those dark brown eyes seeing everything. Her skin’s brown but still smooth. Her black hair’s tied back in a braid. She’s wearing jeans and a man’s flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

“Hey, Tía,” I say as she puts the pickup in gear and pulls away. “What brings you out here?”

Like I don’t already know.

“I was interested in seeing which direction you’d choose.”

“I’m guessing since you stopped, I got that part right.”

Her lip twitches, which is about as much of a smile as I’ve ever gotten out of her. She pulls a pack of smokes out of her pocket and tosses them onto my lap. I take one out and light it with one of the matches stuck into the empty half of the pack. When I offer it to her, she shakes her head. I close up the pack and put it on the console between the bucket seats.

“So now let’s see how you do with the second part,” she says. “I’ve got a ticket to Baltimore for you. If you’re interested, Herbert’s got a job for you and you can stay with him.”

What she doesn’t say is I’m turning eighteen next month. The next time I get busted I won’t be going into juvie. Instead I’ll be going into the adult prison system, which for my people is pretty much the biggest rez in the country.

“What’s the job?” I ask.

“Well, you won’t be stealing cars.”

I nod. “I’d like that.”

“If you screw this up . . . ”

“I won’t,” I tell her.

I probably will. So far it’s been the story of my life. I can see in her eyes she’s thinking the same thing. But I’m willing to give it a try and she sees that, too.

Her lip twitches again.

“We’ll make a man out of you yet,” she says.

It’s a ways to the rez. I reach over and turn on the radio, moving through the bands till I get the tribal station. Her lip twitches a third time. She must be in a really good mood.

Uncle Herbert lives like he’s still in the shadows of the Hierro Maderas. He’s got a basement apartment that smells of piñon, sweetgrass and cedar. He’s eating Indian tacos and beans and flatbread that I have to admit taste as good as anything I ever had back home. And he still makes his coffee the way we do on the rez, water and coffee all mixed up in the same pot. Doesn’t matter how well you strain it, you’re still picking grounds from between your teeth, but seriously? I can’t think of a better way to start the day.

He was a medicine man back on the rez, but he left when the war of words between the traditionalists and the casino crowd got too heated.

“If we were supposed to fight over possessions like white men,” he told me, “the Creator would have made us white men.”

Except now he lives here in Baltimore and works as a foreman for a company that provides the set-up gear for conventions and shows. Go figure. I feel like telling him he’s living like the casino crowd, except he’s poorer, but keeping my mouth shut’s been working pretty good these days so I keep it to myself.

The work’s easy. It’s hard, sweaty work, but you don’t have to think—that’s the easy part. We just follow the floor plan that the organizers give us. We haul in all the tables, chairs, and podiums, set up the bare bones of the booths, build stages—whatever they need.

Uncle Herbert’s got a solid team. They’re mostly Mexican and black. They aren’t afraid to work and they love Uncle Herbert to a man. It was like that back on the rez, too, which is why he left. People were ready to go to war if he just said the word. He knew if he stayed any longer, he’d ending up doing that and he didn’t want anybody’s blood on his hands.

“Do you miss it?” I asked as we drove home from a job one night.

He’s got this old Ford pickup that’s held together with rust and body filler, but it runs like a charm. Me, I’m still saving for a ride.

“I miss the quiet,” he said, then he looked at me and grinned. “And I miss living on Indian time.”

Having spent the eight months before I came up here following an institutional schedule, I’m used to getting up early and being on time. But I gave him a smile and nodded.

“I hear you,” I said.

Uncle Herbert goes to bed early—pretty much after dinner. I’d maybe get bored, but I fill my time. I’m trying to teach myself wood carving. I don’t have any tools except my jackknife, but wood’s cheap and I’ve got all the time in the world to learn. Uncle Herbert doesn’t have a TV, but he’s got an old radio that someone left on the curb. He tinkered with it until he got it working again, so I listen to Public Radio while I work on my carvings. Little bears and lizards and birds like Hopi fetishes except they’re made of wood. Sometimes I go to the corner bar and nurse a couple of ginger ales while I watch a game on their big screen.

We get all kinds of gigs but the ones that give me the biggest kick are where the people all play dress-up. Since I got here we’ve done two sci-fi conventions. The set-up’s no different than it is for any other kind of convention, but if you hang around the back halls of the hotel you can watch them walking around like spacemen and barbarians and everything in between.

Some people really put a lot of work into their costumes and seeing grown men and women dressed up like their favorite characters just puts a smile on my face. It reminds me of the powwows where everybody trades in their jeans and Ts for ribbon shirts and jingle dresses. For a couple of days they get to step out of their lives and be the people they wish they were.

But the sci-fi conventions have nothing on our current job. With the sci-fi crowd the regular folks outnumber the ones in costume. At this FaerieCon pretty much
everybody’s
in costume, from the organizers to the people working the tables in the dealers’ room. There are a lot more girls, too—pretty girls with sparkles in their hair and faerie wings on their backs. The guys are working the faerie theme, too, but some of them look like walking shrubs in cloaks with leaves sewn all over their shirts and pants and masks that look they’re made of leaves and tree bark.

“Man,” Luther says, “I’d like me a piece of that.”

I nod like I do when anybody says something to me. I find when you do, people pick the response they want so you don’t have to actually say anything.

He’s checking out an Asian girl who wouldn’t have been out of place at one of the sci-fi conventions. She’s wearing leather with lots of buckles, high boots and a short skirt. Her top hat’s got brass buttons all over it and what looks like a weird pair of binoculars resting on the brim. And of course she’s got wings.

“She looks good,” Luther says, “and she knows it. Wonder what she wears when she’s not playing dress-up?”

I shrug.

“Yeah,” he says. “Doesn’t make much difference. Girl like that, she doesn’t even see a guy like you or me. But she sure is hot.”

I go get another table from the dolly.

I’m outside on a smoke break later when I see one of those guys wearing a costume all made of leaves. I quit smoking since I moved to Baltimore, but I’ll take the break. This guy’s pretty old—in his fifties, I’d guess—and not in the best of shape. I watch him for a moment as he wrestles with some big box in the back of his van, so I go over and ask him if he wants a hand.

“Hey, thanks,” he says as I take one end of the box.

We put it on his dolly and get another box from the van.

“Can I ask you something?” I say.

“Sure.”

“No offense, but what makes a guy your age dress up the way you do?”

He laughs. “What do you think I’m supposed to be?”

“I don’t know. A tree?”

“Close. I’m a Green Man.”

“I still don’t get it.”

He straightens up and launches into his spiel. As he talks I’m still not sure I get it, but I like his enthusiasm.

“The Green Men are the messengers of spring,” he says. “We’re the ones who carry the seeds of rebirth. We’re always looking for a good resting place because we have to sleep away the winter, dreaming the promise of renewal.”

“And that’s a Baltimore thing?”

“No, it goes back to England. Have you ever been over there?”

I shake my head.

“You see the image of the Green Man all over the place,” he says. “On pub signs and on carvings in churches. They’re literally everywhere. On some buildings you see them in place of gargoyles, the water draining from their open mouths. The funny thing is, people don’t really notice them anymore. And if they do, most of them don’t understand their significance.”

“That they’re messengers of spring,” I say.

“Exactly. We’re symbols of hope, but it’s more than just a promise. The Green Man brings in the spring. Without us, all you get is winter.”

“So the people coming to this convention—it’s like a spiritual thing for them?”

“Partly. For some of us. But it’s also fun to just dress up and fill a hotel with a gathering of faeries and goblins and all.”

We’re done loading his dolly and he locks up his van.

“So how come it’s all European faeries?” I ask. “I’ve never heard of Green Men before, but I’ve seen faeries in kids’ books and the people here look like they do in the pictures, or in a Disney movie. How come there aren’t any native faeries?”

“You mean Native American?”

“Sure, but I was talking more about North America in general.”

He gives me a curious look and I realize that since I moved here, this is the longest conversation I’ve had with anyone except for Uncle Herbert.

“I’ve got to get this stuff inside and set up,” he says, “but you should come by my booth when the Market closes. We can talk some more then.”

I shake my head. “I don’t think I’d fit in with your crowd.”