textfiles/magazines/INTERTEXT/itv10n3.etx

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InterText Vol. 10, No. 3 / Winter 2000
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  Contents

    The Axeman.........................................Brian Larson

    Bobby Walks.........................................Evan Palmer

    Before the Gravity Stopped..........................Jason Young

    The Accordian Man...................................K.S. Moffat

    At the Ocean's Edge................................Lisa Nichols

    From a Whisper to a Roar........................Rupert Goodwins

....................................................................
    Editor                                         Assistant Editor
    Jason Snell                                        Geoff Duncan
    <jsnell@intertext.com>                    <geoff@intertext.com>
....................................................................
    Submissions Panelists:
    John Coon, Pat D'Amico, Joe Dudley, Diane Filkorn, R.S. James,
    Morten Lauritsen, Heather Timer, Jason Snell
....................................................................
    Send correspondence to <editors@intertext.com>
.................................................................... 
   InterText Vol. 10, No. 3. InterText (ISSN 1071-7676) is
   published electronically on a quarterly basis. Reproduction of
   this magazine is permitted as long as the magazine is not sold
   (either by itself or as part of a collection) and the entire
   text of the issue remains unchanged. Copyright 2000 Jason Snell.
   All stories Copyright 2000 by their respective authors. For more
   information about InterText, send a message to
   <info@intertext.com>. For submission guidelines, send a message
   to <guidelines@intertext.com>.
....................................................................



  The Axeman   by Brian Larson
==============================
....................................................................
  He comes bearing death in his hand... 
  and justice in his soul.
....................................................................
  
  The axe drew him toward a town in the midst of California's
  Central Valley. To get there he crossed the wild Sierra Nevada
  Mountains, braving some of the worst shift-storms that the
  western region of the Americas had to offer. The storms were the
  purest of the form of the chaos that engulfed the Earth.
  Curtains of shimmering light decorated the skies even in day
  here, like aurora borealis gone mad. During the nights the
  storms came down, liquefied the air, transformed the landscape
  into colorful hot running wax, twisted the living things into
  grotesque shapes. The Axeman descended from the Sierras in
  relief on the sixteenth day, leaving the insane colors, the
  slick hard lakes and the flopping damned things behind.
  
  The town itself was a hot, dusty little place without much
  personality; only the miracle of irrigation kept it green in the
  July heat. The Axeman walked on a sidewalk, an old sidewalk,
  with many sections that were cracked and lifted up by tree
  roots. The large sycamore trees responsible for the damage
  marched along both sides of the street, leafy stalwart warriors
  wearing their summer colors of vivid green and mottled brown.
  The Axeman moved through their ranks, a sergeant reviewing his
  platoon. Despite the heat he wore a long weather-stained cloak,
  its original color a matter of conjecture, now a deep brown. The
  cloak hid most of his clothing within its shadowy interior, but
  visible below the hem were a heavy pair of well-worn boots.
  Tucked under his left arm was a Bible; slung across his shoulder
  was a small rucksack. Around his neck he wore a stiff white
  collar.
  
  The street and the marching sycamores ended abruptly in a
  ravaged area that marked the passage of a shift-storm through
  the town. He paused to mop his brow with a dirt-smeared bandana.
  The pavement continued after a fashion, presently entering into
  a devastated region, where it became a dark, twisting flow, and
  the asphalt had shifted to a river of black glass. The trees had
  all been slashed and burned down... for safety's sake, of
  course. Their grasping wooden fingers were twisted and charred,
  frozen in a death that had come just as suddenly and brutally as
  had sentient life. The houses were dead monsters, their roving
  windows and snapping doors destroyed by teams of bulldozers and
  axes.
  
  "This used to be my street."
  
  The Axeman whirled, knees bent. An old man sat upon the stump of
  one of the murdered trees. He waved vaguely down the twisted
  strip of glassy asphalt. "My house was just at the corner there,
  before the shifting came through. Fourteen-Sixteen Myrtle it
  was."
  
  "I'm sorry you lost your home," said the Axeman. His dry throat
  made his voice rattle thinly.
  
  "I'm Ben, Ben Carson," said the old man. He extended his hand.
  The Axeman shook it, careful not to stare at the magenta spurs
  that topped all seven of the man's knuckles. The double-bladed
  axe that rode in his rucksack twitched, however, lacking
  manners.
  
  "I got too close to it, as you can see," remarked Ben, placing
  his deformed hand behind him on the stump. "Tried to save the
  wife. A foolish thing, really."
  
  "A natural thing to do," said the Axeman gently.
  
  "You're a traveler?" asked Ben suddenly.
  
  The Axeman nodded. The Axe twitched again and the handle slid
  unobtrusively from underneath the flap. With a slight frown of
  annoyance, he rolled his shoulders to quiet it. Packed away in
  darkness, he sensed the Axe's curved black blades cloud over for
  a moment, then return to their normal glass-like sheen.
  
  "You're very lucky then, and very gutsy," said Ben with a shake
  of his old head. "I never left town, but got touched by the
  chaos anyway. You look like the most normal traveler I've ever
  set eyes on."
  
  A distant smile played across the Axeman's weather-seamed face.
  "Tell me, Ben, how long ago did the last storm hit this town?"
  
  Ben shrugged. "Must've been May since the north end of highway
  99 was cut off. Whole thing turned into a huge serpent, only
  with no head and no tail. Took four days to stop thrashing and
  coiling. This area was hit way back in November -- notice the
  trees have no leaves? A blessing, that. They say the leaves tend
  to come loose and fly around with little mouths like bats," said
  Ben. Despite heat in the high nineties, a shiver ran through
  him.
  
  Taking his leave of the old man, the Axeman passed through the
  devastation and entered a more picturesque part of the town. His
  long legs strode at a steady, rapid pace. After a time he came
  to an intersection and paused before crossing. Here, the homes
  that lined the streets were larger and nicer, with greater
  individuality and superior aspect. Even the sycamores seemed to
  stand straighter and more proudly, tree-soldiers at attention,
  rather than drooping from an endless march. The sidewalk beneath
  his feet was in better repair, as though the great trees hadn't
  quite dared to lift up the slabs of concrete with their powerful
  roots. He was left with the feeling that such horseplay was
  simply not allowed in this neighborhood. Directly before him, on
  the opposite corner of the street he was about to cross, stood a
  stately manse with green ivy-like creepers working their way up
  walls of dark brick. The growth wreathed every pane of the
  windows on the highest turrets of the third floor, stopping only
  at the barricade of the rain gutters that encircled the steep
  slate roof.
  
  A Corvette with a growling engine stalked up the street in front
  of the manse. With a negligence that was impossible to fathom,
  the car drove up and simply ran over two of the three children
  that were playing in a pile of hedge-cuttings to one side of the
  street. The car's molded front bumper scooped up a boy, almost
  gently, and rolled him over the heavily waxed black hood to the
  windshield. From the windshield he was bounced up into the air
  and neatly deposited in the hedge-clippings, a small splash of
  dry leaves and cut twigs shooting up like a whale's plume from
  where he landed. The child, no more than four years old, gave
  only a single yelp when the car scooped him up, and afterward
  simply laid in the rubbish heap, dazed. The second child, a
  girl, was if anything even smaller and younger than her
  playmate. She was more fortunate, as she simply laid down in the
  clippings, letting the heavy car pass over her with its hot oily
  engine and whirring fan inches above her surprised face. The
  third child was another girl, the youngest of the three, showing
  the bulky padding around her hips that indicated she still wore
  diapers beneath her red cotton pants. She simply watched,
  absently sucking her left hand, while her playmates were knocked
  about like bowling pins by the slow-moving car.
  
  The Axeman's jaw sagged. The sheer nonchalance of the driver! To
  simply drive through a group of playing children, traveling at
  no more than five miles an hour! It was incomprehensible. Was
  she intoxicated? He could see even through the heavily tinted
  glass that it was a lone woman at the wheel. Had she experienced
  a stroke? He simply stood for a moment on the curb, his lips
  forming a bloodless O. Then the third child, the uninjured one,
  began crying and ran to him with the jerky, alarming gait of a
  panicked toddler. He shoved his Bible into his pack, where it
  rested easily against the Axe. She raised up her hands to him
  and he stepped forward, sweeping her high into the protective
  wall of his arms. In his pack, the sleeping Axe twitched.
  
  Awakened into action, the Axeman took a step toward the other
  two children. Neither appeared to be seriously hurt; the little
  girl cried wildly while the boy rubbed his arm and tugged at the
  twigs caught in his hair. He then turned his attention to the
  car and its driver. Transferring the weight of the little girl
  to his left arm and hip, he stepped forward onto the street,
  striding toward the car, which slowed almost to a stop. The
  little girl in his arms sniffled and rubbed her eyes. The wispy
  golden hair on her head floated up in the slightest breeze, as
  fine as cobwebs.
  
  The driver sent her tinted window down a third of the way with a
  touch of her finger to the power switch. Wild, annoying music
  floated out of the vehicle, drowning out the steady thrum of the
  engine with foul rasping and banging.
  
  "Are you demented?" he asked. His right arm was free now, and
  the Axe stirred hungrily in his pack, the handle emerging
  unobtrusively from under the flap, well within easy reach.
  
  The driver was an unappetizing woman in her thirties with false
  brown curls and long fingernails painted a brilliant hue of
  lavender. With a look of incomprehension and a slight shake of
  her head, as though she did not understand what it was he was
  asking, she made as if to roll up the window again.
  
  "What about the children?" he shouted at her. The cords suddenly
  stood out on his neck as real anger finally took him. "How can
  you be so uncaring, so callous to injured little ones?"
  
  She spread her long lavender fingernails over her breasts,
  showing concern for the first time. He could tell however, that
  her concern wasn't for the children, but rather for the safety
  of her miserable skin. With a flick of inch-long nails and a
  tiny shrug her eyes asked, what can be done?
  
  Then their eyes met for the first time. The visage of the Axeman
  in anger had once given even a sphinx cause to ponder. In his
  presence there was an undeniable sense of the accountability of
  one for his or her actions. It was a sense of brute justice, of
  violent revenge. He did in fact ponder pulling free the Axe from
  his pack. He restrained himself, as he had nothing upon which to
  base formal judgement. Besides, there was the innocent child
  riding contentedly now on his left arm. She did not deserve
  further trauma.
  
  And so the woman drove away slowly, the tinted glass sliding up
  smoothly to complete the black shell in which she was ensconced.
  Only she and the Axeman knew that she had experienced a thrill
  of fear after looking into his dangerous, electric eyes, that
  her armor of unconcern had been punctured despite all pretense
  to the contrary.
  
  As the Corvette slid away down the street, he noticed that the
  license plate that should have been on the rear bumper was
  absent. Still feeling a hot bubble of anger inside he turned,
  striding back toward the other two children.
  
  To his surprise, the children were not in the hedge-clippings
  any longer. Instead, they had been taken up by two older women.
  Even as the Axeman approached, the two women headed back into
  the open front gate of the ivy-covered manse. They crooned to
  the children who cried steadily. He reached the hedge-clippings
  with several long strides and raised up his hand.
  
  "Wait, I saw what happened!" he cried.
  
  Without a reply the two women entered the gate and closed it
  behind them, the taller and older of the two giving him a sudden
  quick frown before vanishing into the courtyard beyond. He
  paused at the gate and touched his chin. Perhaps these local
  people should be left now to handle their own affairs; perhaps
  they needed no further interference from him.
  
  Still, he could not be sure. He had a feeling -- a hunch,
  perhaps -- that here something dark moved beneath placid waters.
  He was always one to follow his feelings, second only to
  Justice. He followed them at a trot, catching the gate before it
  swung closed and latched.
  
  Still carrying the little blonde girl in her red cotton pants,
  he entered the grounds of the manse. Within the growth-covered
  brick walls, the courtyard was a fairy book affair, being more
  of a garden than a courtyard. Handsome rose bushes in full bloom
  stood in proud ranks around the path that led to the house, and
  the roses were walled in by a veritable hedgerow of lush
  marigolds. They vaguely reminded the Axeman of the neat rows of
  sycamore tree-soldiers that lined the roads outside. Bees hummed
  busily around the garden, working most happily among the lilacs
  and African pansies that grew up hugging the bricks of the house
  itself. Nowhere, the Axeman noted with appreciation, was there a
  weed to be seen. The gravel path he stood upon led straight to
  the porch of the house itself, a grand affair with much scrolled
  woodwork and high gables overhead. Off to one side the path
  joined with a gravel drive that lead from the quaint carriage
  house to another gate which presumably let onto the street
  again. Another, smaller side-path led to an eight-sided gazebo
  with a high pointed roof that stood amidst the great ranks of
  red rosebushes, a lone tower besieged by a thorn-bearing army of
  flowering plants.
  
  Of the two women and the children they were carrying, there was
  no sign.
  
  Taking only a moment to drink in the beauty of the place, he
  strode purposefully up the gravel path and the steps of the
  porch to the kitchen door. He rapped on the old glass panes,
  peering in through the wavering distortions to examine the
  kitchen. There was a pot boiling on a stove and a set of
  half-washed dishes in the sink, but no sign of the children. He
  twisted the rattling handle immediately, opening the door and
  taking a deep breath to shout for the old women to show
  themselves, but a sound he heard caused the shout to die in his
  throat. Out in the garden, over the twittering birds and the
  buzzing insects he heard the distinct noise of a wooden door
  slamming shut. Wheeling with grace on the heel of his right
  boot, he drew back from the kitchen and stood on the porch, his
  eyes focusing just in time to see a black scrap of cloth being
  yanked back into the door of the gazebo. Someone had gotten
  their skirts caught as they slipped inside. Now that his keen
  senses were aligned to the gazebo, he heard the further sounds
  of the door being latched tight, and the guttural sound of an
  old woman's voice.
  
  "Fool!" she hissed, followed by what could only have been a hard
  slap to the face, and a whimper of submission.
  
  Shifting the blonde child's weight to his left hip, that his
  right hand would be free for action, the Axeman set on the path
  again, his boots crunching rhythmically on the gravel. His mind
  was whirling, and a strange image grew there behind his brow.
  The image was of two old women, huddling down in the vast sea of
  rosebushes, their hands most likely clamped over the mouths of
  two squirming children, or had they simply told them it was a
  game, a contest of quietness? Then further images came of these
  two mysterious fugitives, jumping up as he had strode past,
  taking hasty refuge in the gazebo. He frowned upon all
  mysteries, being a man who preferred the straightforward truth,
  the simple clarity of above-board dealings. Could these women be
  so frightened of him? Was all of this simply a misunderstanding?
  
  To be sure, the Axe which rode his shoulder was certain. It
  twitched and throbbed and all but begged to be drawn. It was
  sure that there was great evil afoot, but this was nothing new.
  The Axe loved fulfilling its purpose; it sought and found evil
  in everything, oftentimes whether it was there or not. Nay, it
  was not up to the Axe the job of judgement; that belonged to the
  Axeman himself. The Axe was only to be drawn when guilt had been
  proven.
  
  In twenty long strides the Axeman reached the gazebo. He grabbed
  the door handle and pulled, muscles bunching up as it resisted
  beyond what one would expect from ancient wood and a thin rusty
  latch. And while he stood there, pulling, a strange sensation
  came to him, emanating from within the walls of the tiny
  building before him, a sensation of terror and woe. He heard no
  sounds, but even so felt that something odd was happening
  inside. Something foul.
  
  Then the door gave way, and he all but fell forward into the dim
  interior of the gazebo. Inside it was hot and stuffy, and within
  sat two women, huddled on the bench that ran around the building
  along seven of its eight walls, the other being occupied by the
  door itself. Of the children there was no sign.
  
  "What do you want?" cried the shorter and fatter of the women,
  her lower lip trembling. Both of them wore knit sweaters wrapped
  over their shoulders like shawls. The Axeman peered at them in
  the green gloom of the gazebo, realizing that these women were
  younger, straighter of spine and smoother of face than what he
  had expected. For some reason, he had thought them quite old,
  perhaps in their seventies at least, now however he could see
  that neither of them were much over sixty. The younger one's
  hair was only partially gray, in fact. He disregarded this, all
  his thoughts being upon discovering the whereabouts of the
  children.
  
  "Where are the other children?" he demanded.
  
  The first woman shook her head and made as if to reply, but the
  older one shushed her with a touch of her fingers to the other's
  lips.
  
  "We aren't saying," said the taller, older one. Around her neck
  hung a small mass of crooked sticks and feathers. It was a
  talisman. Many people wore them these days in the vague hope of
  warding off the shift-storms. In her fingers she twisted and
  fretted with the talisman nervously. Her expression was that of
  great concern, but wasn't there -- just a glint, mind you -- of
  a mocking smile in her eyes? The Axeman could not be sure.
  
  "You are a stranger here, and we don't like strangers. These
  children belong in this neighborhood and you don't. Now give me
  Amanda and clear out. Kids around her know not to talk with
  strange men, and you're scaring her out of her wits."
    
  The Axeman glanced down at the little blonde girl that still
  rode in the crook of his left arm. She still sucked her hand,
  gazing at the two women with mild curiosity, but there was no
  sign of fear in her face, nor of any particular desire to go to
  them. She did in fact, seem quite happy to continue riding on
  his tireless arm. He came to a sudden, irreversible decision: he
  would not allow Amanda out of his reach.
  
  "I repeat: Where are the other children?"

  "What do you care?" replied the dominant one, standing and
  approaching him slowly, her eyes on Amanda, clearly wishing to
  gain possession of her. "You scared us good, so we hid the
  children, not knowing, and still not knowing I might add, what
  kind of man you might be. Amanda, come here right now," this
  last she directed to Amanda, opening her arms.
  
  "You must understand sir," said the plump one, still sitting on
  the bench with her hands in her lap. "Even if you are a
  preacher, you do have the look of a vagrant."
  
  This last rang true in the Axeman's ears. His shoulders heaved,
  sighing and relaxing at the same time.
  
  "I am a fool," he said. And indeed, he felt the fool to the core
  of his being. He was ashamed, mortified. He had suspected great
  mischief and had followed the overzealous instincts of the Black
  Axe into folly. All was suddenly clear; the old women had rushed
  forward, eager to save the children from danger, then he had
  arrived, frightening them out of their wits even as all their
  protective instincts were in full force. He had been an idiot
  not to see it. The children had only been victims of a negligent
  driver, no more. It was not the first time that the Black Axe
  had led him into embarrassment with its constant and eager
  paranoia.
  
  He nodded his head to them, and they saw in his face that he
  believed them now. Smiling, the older woman reached out
  delicately to take Amanda from his arms. The Axeman made as if
  to give her up, but found that he could not uncrook his arm. Not
  just yet. He was not one to easily reverse a decision. The old
  cold fingers lightly brushed his arm, then pulled back, the old
  eyes glaring, when he did not release the girl.
  
  "I am truly sorry," he said, apologizing to them both. "The only
  dangerous person involved has fled. The driver is gone, but we
  are all ready to find threats around every bend. Please excuse
  my trespassing and my crude manners, I only wished to save the
  children from harm."
  
  "We understand," replied the smaller woman, beaming. "Perhaps
  you could join us for tea? I have a pot boiling in the kitchen."
  
  The dominant woman shot her a venomous glance that almost made
  the Axeman snort with amusement. As it was he touched his face
  to hide a grin. "I would be glad to join you, ladies. Allow me
  to introduce myself, I am Reverend James Thomas."
  
  "Nice to meet you, Reverend," replied the taller, regaining her
  composure. "I am Carmen, and this is my niece, Nadine."
  
  He thought of hunting up Amanda's parents, but decided that
  perhaps it was best if he stayed and waited for the other two
  children to turn up. Better to be certain than to be left
  wondering about them, the Axe would never let him rest easy
  again. As they all stepped out, the women leading the way. He
  stepped upon an old wooden grate in the floor, which had escaped
  his attention previously. It gave way slightly, indicating that
  there was an open space beneath. The grate covered an opening in
  the precise center of the gazebo.
  
  "Ah, so this is the escape route that the children took?"
  
  "Ah, yes," replied Nadine, looking uncomfortable at his
  discovery. Her flabby cheeks pinked a little.
  
  Nodding, he let them proceed him into the kitchen. For some few
  minutes they sat and discussed the strange event that had
  occurred, and sipped their tea. As was his custom, the Axeman
  took only the tiniest sip of their brew, then set the cup aside.
  Carmen brought in a glass ball with a snow scene inside that
  snowed when you shook it. She allowed Amanda to look at and
  touch it, but not to remove it from the kitchen table. Even so,
  Amanda was delighted. After a few minutes of polite conversation
  -- during which he learned that both of the women's husbands had
  been lost years since, and that the house was too big and more
  of a bother every year to keep up and heat -- he took the now
  cool tea to the sink and quietly dumped it. As he did so, he
  noted what could only have been the other two children, playing
  quietly along the gravel path outside the kitchen window.
  
  With a smile, he stepped outside and knelt down beside the
  children on the dusty path. Both of them had garden trowels, and
  were digging at the stones with them.
  
  "How are you children? Are you hurt?" he asked them.
  
  "I don't know," replied the boy, shrugging.
  
  "My arm hurts a lot," said the girl, presenting a long red
  scrape and a purpling bruise as evidence.
  
  "Did the car hit your arm?"
  
  "No, the monster did it," she replied, watching him intently as
  he examined the injury.
  
  He laughed. "You mean the Corvette. The only monster was the
  woman driving it."
  
  "The monster is called Or-vet?" she asked with frightened eyes.
  
  "No, stupid," said the boy.
  
  "No, uh..." said the Axeman, frowning.
  
  "She's not talkin' about the car, mister," said the boy. "The
  car is over there in the garage."
  
  "What?" he asked, rising up. He turned toward the carriage
  house, and noted that the door was indeed half-open, but he
  could have sworn he had seen it all the way shut.
  
  "Come on, I'll show ya. That's where we got these shovels."
  
  He followed the boy to the carriage house, where the Corvette
  indeed sat, engine ticking away the heat from a recent roadtrip.
  The Axeman patted the boy's head. He had placed the first piece
  in the puzzle.
  
  "You children stick close to me, now, I -- " here he broke off
  as Lucifer's hot claws squeezed his heart. There was gray in the
  boy's hair. It wasn't all gray, it wasn't even all that
  noticeable from a distance, but up close you could see it. He
  lifted his patting hand, and saw that the boy's blonde hair was
  shot through with silvery streaks. He whirled and crouched in
  front of the little girl then, finding more steel-colored
  threads. Then he rose and dashed out of the carriage house,
  cloak swirling around him, making the astonished children think
  of Batman.
  
  Even as his boots pounded the gravel, he wanted to pound his own
  head. It had been right there, right in front of him all along.
  And worse, he had gone back on his pledge, he had left Amanda
  with them. He thought of the toddler's fine wispy hair shot
  through with gray and sickened inside. Then he ran faster.
  
  In bare seconds he reached the point in the gravel path where
  the side path to the gazebo began, but to his dismay the path
  had vanished. He almost flew headlong into the roses, barely
  managing to check himself. All he could see was a solid wall of
  rosebushes, at least ten yards deep, between him and the little
  eight-sided building. It was as if an army had closed ranks,
  sealing the hole as if it had never been there.
  
  He had in truth been an idiot, and idiot not to trust his own
  instincts. He had sensed the evil and he had doubted himself.
  One witch had nudged the children with her car so as to give the
  old witches a chance to run out and grab them. Perhaps their
  parents were watching; perhaps they were afraid to simply coax
  the children into the walls of the garden without an excuse. The
  plan seemed so elaborate, to go to all the trouble, all the
  risk, of running the car into the children just to get them down
  here into the cellar, it seemed so bizarre. But the plan, insane
  or not, had almost succeeded. He had almost been deceived.
  
  "Amanda!" he shouted. He paused for a moment, but heard only the
  blowing of his own breath and the pounding of his heart. The
  birds and insects had fallen silent. There was no sign of life
  in the gazebo, nor in the house. Only the children watched him
  from the dark mouth of the carriage house.
  
  "So be it," he said.
  
  Then he drew the Axe. The double-edged weapon pushed its handle
  into his waiting hand and leapt free of the pack. A great
  feeling of relief and freedom awoke in the Axeman's heart, the
  feeling of release from boredom and imprisonment. He held it
  aloft and admired it for a moment in the fading afternoon light,
  as it was a thing of great beauty. The blades were a liquid
  black, the black of a cellar on a starless night, the black of a
  buried cave at the bottom of an ocean. Unlike the surface of the
  blade, which sucked light, the edges flashed brightly,
  reflecting the orange afternoon sun. He swung the Axe once,
  experimentally, and the cutting edges cast off gleams that
  dazzled the eyes and numbed the senses.
  
  Lifting the Axe up high again, he set to work, swinging low so
  as to chop each of the bushes off at the thickest point of their
  trunks. The first three went down with a single, wide sweep,
  making a delightful triple-thunking sound. He could feel and
  almost hear the evil plants grieve as they sensed their distance
  from the fruitful earth and realized their deaths. They had of
  course been touched by the shifting, molded into forms of evil
  by the storms of chaos.
  
  He took a half-step forward and swung again, setting to his work
  with gusto. He began to hum, then soon broke into full song,
  singing of Gabriel and the other angels, singing of flaming
  swords, of battle and righteous revenge. Inch-long thorns
  stabbed savagely at him, fallen soldiers wielding their daggers
  as the conquering army marched over their bodies. They caught
  and tore at his cloak, but could not penetrate the thick leather
  of his boots, which crushed their flowers as he passed, sending
  up a most pleasant perfume.
  
  Halfway through to the gazebo, he realized vaguely that the
  ranks of the rosebushes had closed behind him, but this did not
  matter to him now. He had worked up quite a sweat, perspiration
  popping out of his pores even as his eyes were popping from his
  head with the light of fanaticism. They were going down faster
  now, four or five at a clip. He couldn't tell if they were
  getting denser, or if his swings were becoming wider, nor did he
  care. Words poured from his mouth now, indistinguishable
  syllables from John and Matthew, parables mixing with hymns in a
  feverish chanting. With a final sweep he cleared the last of
  them, and won through to the gazebo doorstep. He paused only to
  glance back over a shuffling sea of thorny plants to where the
  children still stood near the carriage house. The roses were
  moving openly behind him now, rattling their thorns together,
  lusting to avenge their dead. Their blossoms were swollen and
  uniformly the color of fresh blood. Their exhalations were no
  longer sweet, but rather fouled the air, creating the stink of a
  week-old summertime battlefield.
  
  Without further ceremony the Axeman cut through the door,
  destroying the latch and doorjamb with one stroke, exploding the
  hinges and with the second. Shattered, the door fell in
  splinters. Stepping forward, sides heaving, the Axeman
  discovered that the tiny room was empty, but the wooden grate
  covering the floor was gone. Keeping his Axe upraised, he
  climbed down into the darkness.
  
  There he found the imp, just as he knew it must be there. Born
  of the shifting, even as the Black Axe had been, the vile,
  frog-like beast with bat's wings should never have lived -- but
  it did. It was chained by the neck to the wall of the root
  cellar, and it reached for Amanda even as the Axeman dropped
  down into the chamber and regained his feet. The creature's eyes
  shone like molten gold nuggets in the dim light of the cellar.
  
  "He comes too soon!" hissed the woman who had driven the
  Corvette.
  
  "We didn't mean to hurt 'em," wept Nadine, falling to her fatty
  knees. "She said it wouldn't hurt the children."
  
  "Shut up," Carmen told her. "Stop him, Tricia."
  
  The driver of the Corvette, Tricia, stepped close and threw a
  green bottle full of dirty-looking fluid at him, which she had
  pulled from a rack on the wall. With a deft flick of the wrist,
  the Axeman diverted the bottle, smashing it with the flat of his
  Axe. The liquid showered away from him, only landing a few drops
  on his long cloak, but doused Tricia as she stood only a few
  feet away.
  
  Tricia made only a strangled, gargling sound, then seemed to
  stiffen, eyes wide, mouth open in an eternal scream. Then she
  toppled forward and cracked into three pieces, and the Axeman
  looked down on nothing but a broken statue. At this, Nadine
  screamed and burst into tears of terror, now, rather than shame.
  Carmen grabbed hold of the chain that bound the monster to the
  wall. With a twist of a key she unlocked it.
  
  The shift-creature leapt at the Axeman, teeth and tiny scaly
  hands seeking his throat. Its glowing fish-like eyes locked with
  his, and he could see in them the horrors that it had lived
  through in the cold void beyond the shift-lines. Perhaps it had
  been human once, but the shifting had touched its body, twisting
  and withering, and had touched its soul as well. Its form had
  mutated and flowed like hot running wax, solidifying into
  something horrible to see. As a moth's wings that brush open
  flame, its soul had been seared, transformed into something
  shriveled and burnt.
  
  For a moment they struggled, the shift-creature hissing and
  ripping his clothing and flesh, the Axeman holding it off with
  one shredded, bleeding arm, his hand flat against the monster's
  bony chest. And then he managed to get in a stroke, and the Axe
  sheared the thing in half, spraying him with a shower of hot
  fetid blood.
  
  Carmen had in the meantime grabbed up Amanda and run for the
  rear exit that presumably led back up into the house, or perhaps
  the garden. The Axeman gave chase, catching her at the top of
  the stairs as she struggled with a trapdoor. She turned and
  hurled Amanda at him, and he caught the child, grateful to have
  the little girl back into the crook of his arm, where she should
  have never been allowed to leave in the first place. He was not
  expecting the attack that came next however, as Carmen whirled
  on him, her face suddenly changed to that of a ghoul, long of
  fang and claw. She engaged him in a desperately strong hug,
  snapping jaws and hot breath at his throat. He could not use his
  Axe, as she was too close, he could not keep her back, as Amanda
  was clinging to one arm. His neck tingled with the closeness of
  her sharp teeth.
  
  And then, also unexpected, there was aid from behind him. A
  garden rake was thrust past his ear, taking Carmen in the face.
  She was rudely forced back, screeching, and the Axe was lifted.
  
  "'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live'," he quoted, and so
  saying he did slay her with a single clean stroke. The severed
  head bounced down the stairs and came to rest beside the broken
  statue that was Tricia. The Axeman's only regret was that Amanda
  had not been protected completely, that despite all his careful
  steps, she had witnessed the wrath of the Axe in addition to the
  evil of this house.
  
  Back down in the cellar, he found Nadine, her sweater fallen
  from her shoulders. In her hands she held the rake with which
  she had helped him.
  
  "She said it would not hurt them. She lied."
  
  He nodded, putting Amanda down and sending her up the steps to
  into the gazebo. There still might be work to be done. He turned
  and his arm raised up of its own accord, holding aloft the Axe.
  
  Nadine trembled, expecting the blow. She eyed the silvery edge
  of the blade and raised the rake before her in a futile gesture.
  "Spare me!"
  
  "You have drunk the lives of children," said the Axeman in a
  terrible voice that was not entirely his own, in a voice that
  was more than that of Reverend James Thomas.
  
  "I know," she wept.
  
  "You have taken years from their lives, and this you can't
  return," he went on, in the tone of one passing judgement,
  meting out sentence. For the Axe's part there was but one clear
  verdict: guilty, and but one possible sentence: death.

  The Axe trembled in his hand, the desire, the wanting to strike
  was almost too great to control. His hand and wrist trembled.
  Then he lowered the Axe.
  
  Nadine looked up in surprise.
  
  "The Axe is the executioner," he explained. "But to me still
  falls the task of judgement, and mercy."
  
  He gathered up the children and left the manse, discovering on
  the way out that the rose garden, although much of it now lay in
  ruins, again smelled quite sweet.



  Brian Larson (bvlarson@yahoo.com)
-----------------------------------
  Brian Larson has won awards for his short fiction and is an
  active member of SFWA. In addition to writing and designing Web
  pages, he teaches college and works as a factory automation
  consultant. As a free service to fellow authors, he maintains a
  categorized list of online publishers on his homepage.

  <http://www.sff.net/people/brian-larson/Links_Page.htm>



  Bobby Walks   by Evan Palmer
==============================
....................................................................
  This is a walk through Bobby's life. 
  It's the only way to go.
....................................................................
  
  It's Sunday.
  
  Bobby walks fast: leaning to the left, then to the right, a bit
  of a hip-hop every third or fourth step, a jitter. Bobby always
  walks fast. He chews that noisy grape bubble gum. He's walking
  and chewing, gum snapping in his half-open mouth with crooked
  bottom teeth, blowing bubbles, looking around, checking on
  things. He runs his slight hand with ridged nails through his
  hair: it's thick and wavy; he combs it fifty times a day; he
  keeps his small black comb in his back right pocket, next to his
  small army knife.
  
  "Bobby," she yells. He looks up and right at her, no hesitation.
  He smiles and flashes a brilliant toothy smile.
  
  "Jessica!" he yells back to her. There is something a little off
  about his voice, not quite all there. She settles back, a
  satisfied smile on her face. Bobby waves as he turns the corner
  and out of her sight.
  
  His white running shoes with the blue racing stripes are worn
  out on the outer front corner from the way he walks. He kinda
  floats on his toes when he walks, pushing off and up as soon as
  his heel touches. Bouncy.
  
  "Where you going, Bobby?" the cop Steckham calls to him as he
  rounds the corner.
  
  "Nowhere, officer," says Bobby.
  
  Steckman laughs and flaps his hand in disbelief. That's Bobby
  for ya,he indicates with his gesture.
  
  There's not much traffic on Sunday. The fruit market is open.
  Bobby walks in and picks out an apple.
  
  "An apple a day?" asks the clerk, Maggie, as Bobby stands at the
  counter to pay for it.
  
  Bobby smiles and nods. "An apple, a sandwich, a drink of
  milk..." he pauses. She isn't listening; she's attending to
  another customer.
  
  He puts his nickel and penny change into his right jean pocket
  and leaves. He shines his small green apple on his loose
  t-shirt; the green looks good against the brown cotton. He picks
  up speed as he bounces along the cracked concrete sidewalk, the
  pant legs of his jeans swishing as he strides. He avoids the
  sticky patches of gum on the ground. With his free hand, he
  pulls out his gum wrapper and plunks the purple mass from his
  mouth into it and puts that into his t-shirt pocket, over and to
  the left of his heart. He bites into the hard surface of the
  apple as he waits at the corner for the traffic to open up.
  
  An old big shiny car slows down as it passes. A thin pimply guy
  with slicked black hair leans out of the open window. "Hey,
  retard. Stay back from the curb." The pimply guy smiles.
  
  Bobby steps back and waits. He knows that pimply guy. The
  streetlights change and a path opens for him. He crosses the
  street. The car is a long way down the street. It's a narrow
  city street with cars parked on both sides, old half-repaired
  cars, most rusted a bit.
  
  Bobby walks up to the old man's club. It used to be Portuguese
  but now it's anyone. Jaime is sitting on the worn white bench in
  front of the club. The club's window drapes are half-drawn, the
  front door is propped open. Jaime pulls on his smelly
  dark-tobacco cigarette, puffs out. Bobby sits down beside him.
  "Bobby," he says. "Mister Jaime," he replies. Jorge is on the
  other side of Jaime. Jorge is eighty-something. They chit-chat,
  Jaime and Bobby, for a couple of minutes and then Bobby goes.
  After a minute or so, Jorge asks Jaime what color Bobby is.
  
  
  
  It's Monday.
  
  There's a drizzle and it's cold for July. It's nine-fifteen and
  Bobby's at the fruit market buying an apple. He picks out a Red
  Delicious. He's short two pennies. "Tomorrow," says Maggie. He
  nods.
  
  Bobby goes slow now, biting his apple carefully. He doesn't want
  to bite his tongue again. The woman he calls mother told him to
  be careful chewing: not to talk and chew or run and chew, things
  like that. It's still swollen a little and hurts.
  
  There's more traffic today. He goes into the fish market. He
  walks up and down the aisles. He looks at the mackerel and the
  salmon and the tuna and the swordfish. He stops and stares at
  the lobsters. The seafood manager comes by.
  
  
  "Makes you think," he says to Bobby as Bobby stares at the
  lobsters. Bobby looks at him.
  
  "They're alive, he says with amazement." The manager smiles.
  "Not for long, he replies." Bobby frowns.
  
  He goes back out. It's sunny and he covers his eyes. He walks a
  few blocks and then sits down at a wooden bench at a bus stop.
  There's no one at the stop. He rubs his legs, kneading the faded
  jeans, whitened at the knees.
  
  
  
  It's Tuesday and Bobby's at the curb along Elmside, waiting for
  the streetlight. A old black Buick glides by; the pimply guy
  leans out the window when he sees Bobby. "Hey retard," he calls.
  Bobby smiles. It's almost a hello.
  
  Bobby walks fast with a weaving falling-down kind of gait. He
  chews that noisy grape bubble gum, blowing bubbles, looking
  around, checking on things. He runs his hand through his hair.
  
  "Bobby," she yells. He looks up at her and smiles; "Jessica!" he
  yells back to her with enthusiasm. She settles back smiling and
  turns to her sewing. Bobby waves as he turns the corner and out
  of her sight.
  
  "Where you going, Bobby?" the newspaper delivery guy calls to
  him as he rounds the corner.
  
  "Nowhere," says Bobby.
  
  The radio forecaster says it's going to be a hot one. The
  temperature is over eighty and it's only ten in the morning.
  Bobby wipes the back of his hand over his forehead to dry it.
  The fruit market is open. Bobby walks in and picks out an apple.
  
  "An apple a day?" asks Maggie as he stands at the counter to pay
  for it.
  
  Bobby smiles and nods. "An apple and a walk," he says. She looks
  at his slight figure, body at all angles.
  
  "You okay, Bobby?" she asks. "You look thinner."
  
  "I'm okay," he says insistently. "I'm real okay."
  
  He shines the apple on his t-shirt. He bought a Golden
  Delicious. The yellow looks nice against the red cotton of his
  shirt.
  
  He rushes past the fish market. He looks in the dusty windows
  but can't see much. He doesn't like the smell today. He holds
  his breath as he hurries away.
  
  Bobby walks up to the old man's club. Jaime is sitting on the
  worn white bench in front of the club. The club's front door is
  propped open. Jaime is drinking coffee. Bobby sits down beside
  him. "Mister Jaime," he says.
  
  Jorge is not there this morning. They chit-chat, Jaime and
  Bobby, for a couple of minutes, and then Bobby asks, "Where's
  the old guy?"
  
  Jaime likes that, Bobby calling Jorge the old guy. "He's in the
  hospital," says Jaime.
  
  
  
  It's Wednesday and Bobby feels tired and under the weather. It's
  raining, not hard but not a drizzle. He carries an old black
  umbrella, three of its ribs bent. He chews gum from yesterday;
  he likes the extra hardness.
  
  He looks for Jessica but her window's closed. The street is
  crowded with cars, but the sidewalks are almost empty.
  
  Bobby walks slow today. He steps more carefully and has one hand
  out for balance and to catch himself if he falls.
  
  He buys a McIntosh apple. Maggie's off. He pays the two cents he
  owes from Monday. The apple is very shiny so he doesn't shine
  it. He spits his gum into a waste basket. It's too hard to chew.
  
  No one is in front of the men's club. Bobby walks by. He's
  picking up speed now as his feet get accustomed to the
  slickness. He chews his apple.
  
  The florist delivery guy sees Bobby and says hello. "Where you
  going, Bobby?" he asks.
  
  
  
  Bobby stays in bed all day today, sick with a fever and the
  sniffles. The woman he calls mother goes to work so he's alone.
  He doesn't mind. He likes being alone. He sings most of the day,
  humming really. A cat named Thaddeus lives there too. Sometimes
  Thaddeus scares him but it's okay today.
  
  
  
  It's Friday.
  
  Bobby stands in the sunny patch and lifts his face to the
  warmth. The park clock chimes ten times. There's less traffic on
  Friday at this time: long weekends, people sick at the end of
  the week.
  
  He looks for Jessica. She waves to him but doesn't call out.
  Bobby coughs; his throat is still sore. He just waves.
  
  Bobby walks fast, that hip-hop every third or fourth step. He
  chews his noisy grape bubble gum. It makes his throat feel
  better. He runs his slight hand with ridged nails through his
  thick and wavy hair; he combed it ten times already.
  
  "Where you going, Bobby?" the cop Steckham calls to him as Bobby
  rounds the corner.
  
  Bobby walks past the fruit market. "No apple today," he mutters
  to himself. He keeps walking.
  
  Two people on the sidewalk watch Bobby for a while. They look at
  each other; one raises his eyebrows and rolls his eyes.
  
  Bobby keeps going. He goes into the fish market. He walks up and
  down the aisles. He looks at the mackerel and the salmon and the
  tuna and the swordfish. He stops and stares at the lobsters. The
  seafood manager comes by. "You like looking at those lobsters,"
  he says to Bobby. Bobby nods. The manager smiles and says, "You
  know those ones are different ones from the last time." Bobby
  asks him if the lobsters are retards.
  
  Bobby glides so fast and smooth; it's almost as is he's sailing.
  He walks up to the old man's club. It's still mostly Portuguese.
  Jaime is sitting on the worn white bench in front of the club.
  The club's window drapes and the front door are open. Jaime
  stares straight ahead, almost asleep. Bobby sits down beside
  him. "Bobby," he says, waking up. Jorge is on the other side of
  Jaime. Jorge is back from the hospital. They chit-chat, Jaime
  and Bobby, for a couple of minutes.
  
  "How's the old man feeling?" asks Bobby. Jaime looks over at
  Jorge: How you feeling? No answer. Jaime says to Bobby, "He's as
  good as can be expected at his age."
  
  Bobby frowns and then says, "My mother's in the hospital." Jaime
  nods, not looking at Bobby. "I know, Bobby."
  
  Bobby gets up and goes. After a minute or so, Jorge asks Jaime,
  "What hospital?"
  
  
  
  It's very busy today. It's Saturday. Bobby walks fast, that
  jitter, that precarious jumble of limbs that is his walk. He's
  not chewing that noisy grape bubble gum. He's just walking. He
  doesn't run his hand through his hair. He keeps his small black
  comb in his back right pocket. He hasn't used it today.
  
  "Bobby," she yells. He looks up and she's on the sidewalk,
  beside him. He smiles and flashes a brilliant toothy smile.
  "Jessica!" he yells. There is a startled something in his faint
  blue eyes. She steps toward him. "How are you?" she asks him.
  Bobby smiles, some blush in his cheek: okay, he says. "My mother
  was wondering about you," she says. He sneaks a caress of her
  flowing brown hair. Smiling, she pats his cheek. They turn the
  corner. His white running shoes with the blue racing stripes are
  worn out on the outer front corner from the way he walks. He
  pushes off and up as soon as his heel touches. "I'm okay, real
  okay." They walk side by side for a block. Bobby steals glances
  at her as they walk together. "Are you still trying to visit
  her?" she asks. "No," he responds glumly,
  
  "I just walk by. Walking by isn't wrong. I know that much." He's
  stuttering.
  
  They're at the curb near Elmside, waiting for the streetlight.
  The black Buick glides by; the pimply guy leans out the window
  when he sees Bobby, then he sees Jessica and says, "Hey Bobby."
  Bobby smiles. It's almost a hello. Jessica smiles and looks at
  the pimply guy. The fruit market is open. Bobby stops and
  hesitates. "Go in, Bobby. Don't let me stop you," she says
  gaily. He looks into her wide brown eyes. "You want me to go in
  with you?" He nods. They walk in together and he picks out an
  apple.
  
  "Let me guess, an apple?" asks Maggie as he waits at the counter
  to pay for it. Jessica stands behind him and smiles at Maggie.
  
  Bobby nods. "An apple and a walk," he explains.
  
  Maggie gives him his change and Bobby and Jessica walk out of
  the store.
  
  He shines the apple on his t-shirt. He bought a Northern Spy.
  The red looks nice against the brown cotton of his shirt.
  
  "It's your favorite," he half-chirps. Jessica laughs and says he
  has a good memory.
  
  They walk further down Elmside. The florist delivery guy sees
  Bobby and says hello, then he asks: "Where you going, Bobby?".
  
  "Nowhere," says Bobby.
  
  The florist guy cackles: "You're always going there," he says.
  
  Bobby and Jessica approach the residence, as it's called. He
  slows down. Her too. He stops and stares at the third window on
  the left side of the second floor. The blinds are up and he can
  see in a bit but no one's at the sill. "It's not your fault,
  Bobby," says Jessica.
  
  She pats his arm. He's quiet. There's a trace of a tear in his
  right eye. They're quiet. "It is so," he answers.
  
  
  
  It's Sunday.
  
  Bobby walks his fast, controlled stagger of a walk. He makes
  people nervous. They give way. He chews that noisy grape bubble
  gum; the gum snapping in his half-open mouth. He runs his slight
  hand with ridged nails through his hair.
  
  "Bobby," she yells. He looks up and right at her. He flashes a
  brilliant toothy smile. "Jessica!" he yells back to her. There
  is something about his voice. She settles back. Bobby waves as
  he turns the corner and out of her sight. His white running
  shoes are worn out. He kinda floats on his toes when he walks.
  
  "Where you going, Bobby?" the cop Steckham calls to him as he
  rounds the corner.
  
  "Nowhere, officer," says Bobby.
  
  There's not much traffic on Sunday. The fruit market is open and
  Bobby walks in and picks out an apple.
  
  "Don't you get tired of apples?" asks Maggie as Bobby stands at
  the narrow counter to pay for it.
  
  He pauses to think. "I never get tired of something that's
  good," he replies.
  
  She's attending to another customer.
  
  He puts his dime and two pennies change into his right jean
  pocket and leaves. He shines his big yellow apple on his loose
  t-shirt; the yellow looks good against the black cotton. He
  picks up speed as he bounces along the cracked concrete
  sidewalk, the legs of his jeans swishing as he strides. He
  avoids the sticky patches of gum on the ground. With his free
  hand, he pulls out his gum wrapper and plunks the purple mass
  from his mouth into it and puts that into his t-shirt pocket,
  over on the left. He bites into the hard surface of the apple as
  he waits at the corner for the traffic to open up.
  
  The old big Buick slows down as it passes. The thin pimply guy
  with slicked black hair leans out of the open window. "Hey,
  retard. Stay back from the curb." The pimply guy smirks.
  
  Bobby reaches for his knife and pulls it out of his back pocket
  but doesn't open it. He steps back and waits, the unopened knife
  in his hand. He knows that pimply guy. The streetlights change
  and a path opens for him. He crosses the street. The shiny car
  is a long way down the street. It's a narrow beat-up street
  lined with crusty poor-man's cars.
  
  Bobby walks up to the old man's club. Jaime is sitting on the
  worn white bench in front. The club's window drapes and the
  front door are closed. Jaime pulls on his smelly dark-tobacco
  cigarette. Bobby sits down beside him. Jorge is on the other
  side of Jaime. Jorge is mumbling. Jaime and Bobby chit-chat for
  a couple of minutes. "Do people hate me?" he asks Jaime. Jaime
  doesn't say anything at first. He's very serious. He turns to
  Bobby. "Some," he says. "Very few, Bobby. You're a good guy. _I
  like you._" They sit quietly and then Bobby gets up and walks
  away. After a minute or so, Jorge asks Jaime what's wrong with
  Bobby.
  
  
  
  It's Monday and Bobby's been at the doctor's about thirty
  minutes. The woman he calls mother told him to go. The doctor
  pats Bobby on the elbow and asks him, how he feels. Bobby
  shrugs.
  
  "Do you know what day it is, Bobby?" asks the doctor.
  
  Bobby laughs: "Sure," he says, "It's today."
  
  The doctor smiles back at him. "You're doing real okay," he
  says.
  
  They walk to the door.
  
  "The nurse will call your stepmother for your next visit,
  Bobby."
  
  They face each other at the door way. Bobby looks up into the
  doctor's eyes.
  
  "Have a good day, Bobby," the doctor says.
  
  Bobby exhales and thanks the doctor and says, "It's already a
  good day."
  
  The doctor nods and squeezes Bobby's thin arm again. He asks:
  "Can you get back alright, yourself?"
  
  "Sure," says Bobby.
  
  
  
  It's today.
  

  
  Evan Palmer  (evan.palmer@burningmail.com)
--------------------------------------------
  Evan Palmer lives in Ontario, Canada. His stories have appeared,
  or are upcoming, in Wings Online, The Paumanok Review, Jack,
  The Wooly Mammoth, Carve, A Writer's Choice, Alicubi Journal,
  Stirring, and Melange. He has written an as-yet-unpublished
  novel, Oaklane Woods, and is currently working on a second
  long work.



  Before the Gravity Stopped   by Jason Young
=============================================
....................................................................
  Certain things we quite rightly take for granted. And yet,
  there's no such thing as a sure thing.
....................................................................
  
  The last green chopper is dragging in another survivor as I
  float in silence, Girl at my side. She hasn't spoken to me since
  I told her about my cousin and how I'd watched him drift into
  the pull of a giant refrigeration fan outside of Saskatoon.
  Pieces of Benny, littering the evening sky, coating the clouds
  blood-red. Leaving me, safe. Me, a survivor.
  
  Drifting sideways over the sand, Girl can't form a word. But her
  eyes speak volumes; she paints the void with looks. Not looking
  at me, but not looking away, she cuts her gaze right through me.
  Between the hanging ribs, the feet dangling loosely beneath.
  
  "When?" she finally asks.
  
  I don't want to talk about Benny anymore. I want to forget him,
  it, everything. I want to start again.
  
  "Yesterday."
  
  She's crying now. And it's funny, it really is. Ever since
  gravity stopped I've been accepting it -- coping with the
  change. But as her tears break free, bend the lashes, lift off
  and swirl around her eyes, I realize how truly bizarre this is.
  Such a pretty girl, such a pretty sky. We should be parked above
  the cliffs, counting the pinhole stars, holding each other
  close. Not wondering whether the last chopper will save us or
  not.
  
  I steady her; the extension cord I tied between us grows limp.
  It was the only thing I had time to grab as my feet left the
  lawn seven days ago. Benny and I were mowing the lawn at my
  auntie's place before the gravity stopped. As we drifted up over
  the rooftops, Benny hollered: "Tie it around me -- it'll keep us
  together!"
  
  That was a week ago. The end of the extension cord tied through
  Girl's belt loop is now frayed where it got sucked into the fan
  with Benny. I just finished telling her about him; she just
  started to cry. Probably not for Benny, though. Probably for the
  ones she knew.
  
  I turn around so she can be alone.
  
  
  
  I catch a floating chocolate bar and unwrap it. Above me, the
  helicopter retrieves a baby from an airborne crib. Girl has
  stopped crying; maybe she'll tell me her name now.
  
  The other day, when I managed to grab onto her right foot, she
  seemed alarmed that a stranger would do something like that.
  Then I explained it to her, said we'd have a better chance of
  surviving if we both held on together. I told her my name. She
  said she was scared, angry, cold. Thirsty. I gave her a sip from
  the water bottle I found floating in a stack of low clouds.
  
  After she'd wiped her lips dry, she told me about her mother,
  her father, her sister, her boyfriend. Her car, her job, her
  tennis awards, her books.
  
  But I didn't get her name.
  
  
  
  It's nighttime now; we're all alone. The chopper took off a
  couple of hours ago, its belly full of people. People who will
  live. I wonder where they're being taken. Hopefully somewhere
  with a roof.
  
  Girl told me her name -- it's Ashley. I caught hold of a
  floating soda machine (its cord frayed just like ours) and
  managed to pull a can out for her. She finished off the warm
  Sprite as though it were her last, sipping it slowly,
  gratefully.
  
  That was a couple of hours ago. The chopper pulled away just
  after she finished.
  
  We haven't said too much since.
  
  "Ashley," I say, nudging her awake. "Look!"
  
  It must have something to do with the earth's rotation, causing
  us to float not just upward but a bit to the side as well. We
  must have floated over a lake during the night. The air around
  us has turned to water: tiny, turning circles of not-rain.
  
  My hair is wet and so is Ashley's as she says:
  
  "I don't thing we're going to make it."
  
  "We won't drown up here," I say quickly, fanning my arms to show
  her how much air there still is. "It's just a little damp,
  that's all. Look -- it's gonna help us keep cool!"
  
  Ashley looks down at my arms, sees the moisture coating my
  sunburned flesh.
  
  "Apollo 13 in frame-by-frame rewind," she says softly. "That's
  what we're gonna be. Apollo 13 in frame-by-frame rewind."
  
  I grab her arms and yell, "We're not gonna burn up, Ashley!
  We're not gonna die!"
  
  I think she hears me -- maybe she even believes me. But if we
  die tomorrow, then I'm a liar twice. Once because I promised
  Benny he'd be okay, twice because I told Ashley the same. But
  it's not all that important anyway. Even if the gravity hadn't
  failed, we still would have died.
  
  Just not together.
  
  As her tears begin floating again, joining the circling droplets
  of ground-water, I slowly reach down and untie my end of the
  cord -- putting things back to where they were before the
  gravity stopped.
  
  "Goodbye, Girl," I say, "I should never have grabbed on."
  
  She begins to say something, but by then there's so much water
  between us.



  Jason Young  (mrmoob@hotmail.com)
-----------------------------------
  Jason Young is a 21-year-old graphic designer at a newspaper in
  Saskatoon, Canada. He has been writing fiction for a couple of
  years.



  The Accordion Man   by K.S. Moffat
====================================
....................................................................
  Your appreciation for music isn't just about sound.
  It's about the emotion behind the sound.
....................................................................

  A year ago today, I found it at a yard sale in a cheap trailer
  park in North Fort Worth behind the old Swift packing plant.
  
  It wasn't a fine black concert accordion, like a Polina, with a
  dozen sparkling treble voices and lots of pipe organ bass like
  the ones you might see up on stage with Frankie Yankovic, the
  Polka King, as he and His Yanks played the Blue Skirt Waltz to a
  hundred geriatrics lurching into the night under a mirrored ball
  in a mildewed hall somewhere out on Long Island. But on the
  other hand, it wasn't a plain-jane Wurlitzer, with
  tobacco-stained keys and frayed bellows, all the finish worn off
  and an old tin cup screwed crooked on the front case, most
  likely played by a blind beggar or disabled vet on a busy street
  corner.
  
  As accordions go, it wasn't a bad one. Not all beat up. I could
  tell it was a player. Well used and worn off in all the right
  places with just the faintest smell of long-gone after shave on
  the case where a serious man who loved the sound would rest his
  chin and with his eyes closed, pull the music out into the
  night. It was more than both. So I paid the man and set the
  instrument back in its battered case, lined with scraps of
  crushed velvet that smelled like a hundred stuffy closets and
  wondered when, or if, the obsession would ever end.
  
  I don't come from a musical family. None of my brothers or
  sisters or cousins ever played music. Momma sang all right in
  church, but my father was a source of deep embarrassment to us
  every Sunday when he turned the Doxology into something that
  just made your head hurt. At some point, momma became aware of
  the musical void surrounding her and began telling the neighbors
  I was musically inclined because I liked to lie in front of the
  mahogany Victrola with my head stuck in the speaker and listen
  to the music. Then she signed me up for guitar lessons. Since I
  was only ten, I didn't have much say about it.
  
  My lessons were at a music store in downtown Ft. Worth, on
  Houston Street, next to the court house. It was the summer of
  1957 and we lived about three miles west in a flat brick
  subdivision with all the other hillbillies who funneled out of
  Kentucky and Tennessee and Arkansas, chasing defense work west
  down Highway 70 into Texas after World War Two. My dad always
  worked overtime on Saturdays so the only way I could get to my
  lessons was by taking the bus.
  
  It dropped me off three blocks south of Kahn's House O'Music, in
  front of a big granite bank and that's where I first saw him. I
  nearly stepped on him when I got off the bus. That's where I
  first saw the Accordion Man.
  
  I was short, I thought, but he was even shorter. Like someone
  sawed him in half and set him on a square of wood with roller
  skates nailed under it. I'd never seen anything like him. He was
  like some strange creature I discovered in the pages of National
  Geographic. A member of a lost tribe of legless men. I was
  horrified and fascinated by this grizzled and bewhiskered little
  man-without-legs who scooted back and forth along a busy
  downtown sidewalk, playing the prettiest music I'd ever heard.

  His legs disappeared just below the zipper of his faded trousers
  and the pant legs collapsed and folded neatly back to make a
  cushion against the hard wood of the platform. His stumps slid
  under a heavy canvas belt, like an old piece of fire hose that
  was nailed down to each side. On his back, over a grimy soldier
  jacket and a gray, almost transparent T-shirt hung a faded army
  pack and on each side, tied to the straps with shoe string and
  kite string and every-kind-of-string were blue Folgers cans full
  of bright yellow pencils with powdery pink tips. And across his
  chest, mostly hiding an old war medal and a few frayed, faded
  ribbons, was an accordion. An Accordiola.
  
  When a bus pulled up, the Accordion Man would scoot up front
  where people were getting off and start playing a song.
  Sometimes he'd sing and sway and make the little platform twitch
  back and forth in time with the music. He put on a real show.
  After he played, he'd make his pitch in a high voice.
  
  "Be kind to a vet. Buy a pencil? Everyone needs a pencil. Buy a
  pencil. Only a nickel. Buy a pencil and be kind to a vet, will
  ya? Buy a pencil!"
  
  Except he didn't say it like that. He didn't have any teeth that
  I could see, and "pencil" came out "pinshul." "Vet" sounded like
  "wet." Be kind to a wet, will ya?
  
  I'd never seen an incomplete person before. No crippled people
  lived in our neighborhood or went to our church. No legless kids
  went to my school. Everyone had all their arms and legs. I'd
  ripped my finger open on a tack the year before and had to get
  stitches and I knew how much that hurt. I couldn't imagine how
  much hurt it would take to get your legs cut off.
  
  The Accordion Man and I struck up an odd friendship there on
  that street corner. Me with my guitar case longer than I was.
  Him with his accordion and his pencils. After my lesson I had
  over an hour to wait before the bus home, and not knowing what
  to do with the time, I went back to the bank and sat on the wide
  stone steps to watch the Accordion Man and listen to him play.
  
  The songs were old. I recognized a few from the radio shows my
  momma listened to when she'd sing along. And he played good.
  Played right along as they say. But most people just ignored
  him. They just looked past him when they went by. I kept
  thinking, if he could just stand up so people could see him,
  then maybe they'd stop and listen because he played so good.
  
  And some people did stop, mostly older women in expensive coats.
  Some men my father's age, but they never looked him in the eye
  or shook his hand like the old ladies did. Most people that
  walked in front of the bank looked at him but they didn't see
  him. I knew this because I was a kid and it was the same way.
  
  One Saturday he just scooted up to where I was sitting and
  started playing a song, just playing it to me. When he finished,
  I didn't know what to do so I clapped and he offered me a
  pencil. I tried to give him a nickel but he wouldn't take it and
  I told him it wouldn't be fair. I couldn't take the pencil. He
  gave his little platform a twitch and winked at me, stuck out a
  rough hand and I offered a soft one. I guess since he and I were
  both short we could see each other, so we introduced ourselves
  and became friends. His name was Tommy.
  
  He said the music was always in him. It just couldn't find a way
  to get out until a night in 1943 when he heard an accordion
  playing outside a field hospital in France. They'd taken his
  legs that morning but he could still feel them down there, under
  the empty sheets. He was crying for his legs when the music put
  an arm around his shoulder and led him away like an angel. Ever
  since that night, he'd never wanted to do much except make the
  music. Said it kept the angel with him. Kept him happy.
  
  That summer, with Tommy as my angel, we explored the city
  looking for people who needed his music. A ten-year-old boy and
  a legless man, easy on the streets and invisible to everyone who
  couldn't see.
  
  I was a little uneasy, walking around with a crippled man I
  barely knew. Everything so different from where I lived. But the
  more I walked with Tommy, the more I saw that my other life, the
  one lived within the confines of six square blocks, that's what
  was becoming unreal. Home, church, grocery, school. Church,
  home, school, grocery. Only so many combinations before it all
  folded back in on itself like a Mobius strip of boredom and
  sameness. Out in the world with Tommy, my eyes couldn't be
  stopped.
  
  But more than tall buildings and long limousines, the jukebox
  hustle and rattle and snap of the city, I was captured by the
  discovery of a nation of people I never knew existed outside the
  pasteurized, flat topped-laced-up-khaki-colored square of my
  existence. A nation of people like Tommy. People who'd lost a
  part of their bodies, lost a part of their hearts or their minds
  or their dignity. People who'd lost their place in time. People
  who had little chance of ever being found. It was Tommy's job to
  look for them.
  
  We went to the jail that sat down the hill from the courthouse
  and there behind a barbed-wire fence, men in stripped shirts
  tended a small garden in the hot Texas sun. He played "The
  Yellow Rose of Texas" and the prisoners began to smile. One
  pulled a harmonica from his prison pants and began to play
  along. Others began to sing softly. A giant, a monster of a man
  with tattooed arms and a crooked face came to the fence and gave
  me a bright red tomato, warm from the sun, while Tommy played
  away their troubles and erased their crimes.
  
  And every Saturday we met someone new. Behind the public
  library, I met a man who lived in a wooden crate with a three
  legged dog named Snap. In a dead end alley off Seventh Avenue I
  met Annalise, a beautiful blind girl who lived on the fire
  escape of a tumbled down building. In the old wooden section of
  town down by the train station, I met a man without a nose.
  Nothing but a hole in his face covered loosely with a dirty
  kerchief. I met a beggar who used a piece of rope for a belt and
  safety pins for buttons. And I met people asleep on benches and
  in doorways who didn't wake up when Tommy played for them. He
  said it didn't matter they were asleep. What mattered was that
  he played a song just for them.
  
  "Might be all they get ya know, just a song. Maybe all they
  really need."
  
  When the fall from grace is so stunning and complete and there's
  nothing left to subtract from your life but life itself, maybe a
  song was about the only thing you could give a man without
  hurting him in some small but terrible way.
  
  At first, I thought the music itself transformed the people he
  played for, like he played magic on that instrument. But as the
  summer wore on, I began to realize it wasn't the music. It was
  the player. And what Tommy played was aimed at their souls. He
  said a man could steal food and beg money if he was hungry. But
  if a man was hurting in his heart because no one cared about
  him, well, there's no place he could go to steal that. No place
  to beg for it either.
  
  On July Fourth weekend we went to a small unkempt park behind
  the Western Union office and there, I met other men like him.
  Men who went to war and left pieces of themselves behind, the
  pieces they left replaced with clumsy imitations. Legs that
  sounded hollow and looked swollen and pink like my sisters
  dolls. Feet that looked like the old wooden shoe trees my father
  put inside his Sunday shoes. Arms that stopped short and ended
  in shinny mechanical hooks. Arms and legs that creaked and
  clicked when they moved. But the men didn't seem to mind. At
  least they didn't show it.
  
  Tommy played for them too. Old war songs, songs I never heard
  before. Like the prisoners behind the jail, some of the men sang
  softly and some just stared off in the distance. Others got very
  quiet and looked down at the bristly grass as the music swelled
  and floated out over that weedy little park. He played each of
  them an angel that led them away, it seemed, to a place they
  wanted to be.
  
  I began to wonder about my own music and the effect it had on
  people who heard it. Momma dragged me all over the neighborhood
  that summer for uninvited concerts with members of her bridge
  club.
  
  I hated it. Traipsing up someone's driveways lugging that long
  case and the little electric amplifier. Momma's friends would
  greet us with startled looks and when the awkwardness was over,
  they'd invite us in. Momma would announce in a breathless voice
  how I'd just learned a new song that I was dying to play for
  them. I was dying all right, but she never noticed. The startled
  neighbor would have to move a lamp or a magazine table out of
  the way so I could plug in the amplifier.
  
  "Sorry, that's okay, I think the cord will reach now. Sorry,
  thank you."
  
  Then I'd play Steel Guitar Rag which was the only song I knew
  without messing up. The notes would roar out of the little amp,
  screaming around the living room, bouncing off slip-covered
  furniture, crashing into family portraits and banging against
  wall clocks; blasting dogs and cats out of sleepy dreams so
  they'd run off and hide behind the couch. My angel was a
  tortured, electrified monster. Bent on destruction.
  
  Through it all, momma would smile knowingly at her startled
  friend as if to say, "I know, you wish your child could do
  this."
  
  Afterward, in the thank-God-it's-over silence, grateful for the
  absence of my amplified howling, I was offered a sugar cookie
  and blue Kool-Aid.
  
  "Well! That was certainly nice! How long have you been taking
  lessons?"
  
  Before I could ever answer, momma would take the floor and I'd
  drag everything out of the poor woman's house as quiet as I
  could, sometimes wishing I could just crawl in the case with
  that guitar and close the lid forever.
  
  Toward the end of the summer, the week before my birthday, Tommy
  was gone from his usual spot by the bank. I looked for him after
  my lesson but he was nowhere to be found. The only evidence that
  he'd ever been there was a few broken pencils in the gutter by
  the bus stop. The following Saturday I looked for him again,
  going to all the places he'd taken me, looking for the people
  we'd met, hoping they might tell me where he'd gone. But like
  Tommy, they seemed to have vanished too. Even the old soldier's
  park was empty. I missed the bus and began to walk toward home,
  the guitar case banging a familiar sore spot on my knee, tangled
  up in my thoughts about him and the music.
  
  Thinking and daydreaming like kids do, I paid no attention to
  where I was going until I heard a siren several blocks away. It
  was then I noticed I was on Seventh Avenue, standing just in
  front of the dead end alley where Tommy played for Annalise. And
  up there on the fire escape in a little patch of light, I saw
  her. Beautiful sightless eyes looked down and past me. Smiled a
  little.
  
  "You seen Tommy?"
  
  "Come up. We can talk if you want."
  
  So I climbed the rusted steps to her and in a small piece of
  August sun, high above the alley, Annalise told me the music was
  gone.
  
  It happened in front of the bank where I'd first met him.
  Crushed under the wheels of the same bus that took me out of my
  world and into his. Maybe he got too close to the curb and
  rolled off. Maybe someone in a crowd of people trying to get on
  hadn't noticed and accidentally pushed him. No one knew. No one
  had seen him.
  
  "He played so good." she said. "Like an angel. He was, you know.
  A real one."
  
  Not long after, I quit going to lessons. It was a great
  disappointment to momma and ended in one of those long
  discussions at the supper table kids all hate about didn't I
  appreciate the opportunity that other kids didn't have and she'd
  talked with my teacher and he said I played better than the
  other students and what was wrong with me not wanting to play
  anymore? I tried to tell her it wasn't the guitar or the lessons
  or anything else she was thinking, but I couldn't. I was still
  too short and couldn't figure a way to say any of it right. I
  couldn't figure how to say that I loved the music and maybe it
  was enough right now just to love it. That I knew the power of
  music to help and maybe heal just a little and that I wasn't
  tall enough to hold that power and might never be. That it was
  enough right now just to know these things.
  
  
  
  I take the accordiola out of its beat-up case and run the
  scales. Pull a few major chords out long and loud. Hold them out
  until the sound gets so soft it just disappears.
  
  It has a beautiful voice. High and sweet like a young girl
  singing in church. The straps are frayed and C-Major wants to
  stick a little, but other than that, it's a fine instrument. I
  place it carefully, high up on the fifth shelf, in the center. I
  climb down, put the rickety ladder away and turn back to look at
  them, smiling.
  
  A wall of accordions. Row after row. Like a chorus of angels.
  

  
  K.S. Moffat  (Ksmoffat3@aol.com)
----------------------------------
  K.S. Moffat  grew up in the shadow of a Texas defense plant and
  as a teenager, gained a measure of notoriety as a porpoise
  trainer and monkey handler at the Ft. Worth Zoological Park
  until a vicious encounter with one of his primate charges
  resulted in its untimely death. Following a string of
  educational failures, he subsequently moved as far north as
  citizenship would allow and currently resides in a heavily
  mortgaged home outside Detroit, where he maintains a healthy
  distance from monkeys and most people. When not obsessing about
  middle-age, he practices architecture.



  At the Ocean's Edge   by Lisa Nichols
=======================================
....................................................................
  There's usually no way of knowing any time is the last time
  until it's much too late.
....................................................................

    Full fathom five thy father lies 
    Of his bones are coral made; 
    Those are pearls that were his eyes: 
    Nothing of him that doth fade 
    But doth suffer a sea-change 
    Into something rich and strange.

           --The Tempest, Act I, Scene 2



  Tonight I go down to the sea, where it all began. Not this sea,
  true, but there seems an odd sort of symmetry to it, that what
  began on one shore should end on the other. I'll take my
  daughters with me, walking between them and holding their hands.
  From where I sit I can see them: Elen, the faerie child I
  adopted so long ago, and Aislinn, my baby.
  
  "Push me higher, Elen!" Aislinn giggles, trying to reach the oak
  limb above her head.
  
  Elen, ever the dutiful big sister, stretches up on her tiptoes,
  standing at the base of the tallest tree in Cill Dara. "Don't go
  too high, Aislinn, or I'll have to climb up and get you." Nearly
  nineteen, Elen is a young woman now. Although she doesn't know
  it, she's ready to step into my shoes as the ruler of Cill Dara.
  One of the brownie-folk, short and round and stubborn with dark
  eyes and dark hair, she has grown into a strong and beautiful
  woman. I can hear her laugh as she helps Aislinn grab one of the
  oak's lowest branches.
  
  Aislinn. She looks so much like her father that it hurts to see
  her at times. She has his golden hair and his azure eyes, set
  into features that could almost be my own. I've done what I can
  to prepare her for this night. She knows as much of my tale as I
  felt she could understand, as much as I could bear to tell her
  while looking into those eyes. She knows about the Fair Folk,
  raised here in Cill Dara, in the space just beyond the mortal
  world. She knows who her father was, and how he died saving Cill
  Dara. What she doesn't know is that she was my salvation during
  that wild, grieving time. When Elathan died, I thought about
  passing on my sealskin to another then and there, surrendering
  my life as a selkie in exchange for a chance to leave everything
  behind, to forget. Before I could, I learned that I was carrying
  Aislinn. Knowing she was with me, part of me and part of my
  love, gave me the hope, the purpose I needed to continue on.
  Aislinn is eleven now, a mixture of all the good and bad of her
  father and me. Most people see only him in her, but I know
  differently. While Aislinn bears the blood of the sidhe, the
  blood of her father, she comes from a long line of selkies as
  well, and the sea calls to her as it always did to me. In a way,
  that makes this so much easier.
  
  "Momma!" Aislinn cries from her perch in the tree. "Look! Look
  at me! I did it!" "I see," I smile, giving a wink to Elen, who
  stands beneath the tree, ready to catch Aislinn if she falls.
  They're so different from each other, and yet both so much a
  part of me. I'm wondering if I'll truly be able to leave them
  tonight. The sun is low in the sky. It's time for us to go.



  "I met your father here, Aislinn. Did i tell you that story?" My
  eyes go to the blue of the water as we reach the shore, as they
  always have, drawn there by instinct. An ordinary beach in the
  mortal world, on the shore of the Pacific Ocean, it is empty
  except for Aislinn, Elen and me. Nearly sunset. Almost time.
  
  "Yes, momma. You said he was like an angel." Unlike most
  children, Aislinn never seems to get tired of my stories. Not
  the ones about her father, at least. Skipping at my side her
  feet toss up little puffs of sand, forming a pattern like the
  tracings of feathers wherever she passes.
  
  Elen chuckles and chimes in, "I thought he was too, the first
  time I saw him. He seemed so tall and beautiful, I thought Cill
  Dara was heaven, and he was there to greet me. In fact, I think
  I asked him that. He smiled and said that Cill Dara was the
  closest he'd ever been to heaven and that he was very happy to
  welcome me there."
  
  Aislinn grins up at Elen, each of them on either side of me, as
  I wished. "But he didn't have his wings back when you met him,
  right?"
  
  I close my eyes and listen to these two, our daughters. Elen's
  always made such a good big sister. I know I can leave Aislinn
  and Cill Dara in her hands. I hear her reply, "Well no, he
  didn't... but he still looked like an angel, even without his
  wings."
  
  "Why did he ever lose them?" Aislinn asks. She knows the answer,
  but asks anyway.
  
  I can feel Elen glancing at me, as if waiting for me to answer.
  When I don't, she sighs, "Well... once he and Momma were very
  upset with each other, and he went away for a while, on a quest.
  While he was gone, he started to believe that Momma didn't love
  him anymore, and his wings went away."
  
  Breathless, Aislinn nods, "And how did he get them back?" Her
  favorite part of the story.
  
  My eyes remain on the darkening water, listening to the girls,
  but focusing my thoughts on what I came here to do. I can hear a
  smile in Elen's voice as she answers, "When he came back from
  his quest, he realized that Momma had never stopped loving him,
  and when they made their oaths to each other, his wings came
  back."
  
  My eyes lift to follow the path of a gull, winging its way over
  the mythical ninth wave, the one Elathan always seemed to be
  seeking. I think back to that night, letting the memory of it,
  the awe and the wonder and the pure blinding joy, warm me for
  the last time.
  
  Aislinn claps her hands, as she always does, "And then he looked
  like the stained glass window at St. Brighid's again!"
  
  How many hours did I spend praying beneath that stained glass
  window after he was gone? Past and present almost seem to blur
  slowly, like thick oil paints swirling together. The weight of
  memory presses down on me, making it hard to breathe. To protect
  our home from an invasion of the Fomhiore, dark creatures older
  than the Fair Folk themselves, Elathan led a small band of
  warriors down into the abyss that held the gate to the Sunless
  Sea, where the Fomhiore had been imprisoned for millennia. I
  waited with my own small company in Cill Dara, ready to protect
  our home from a surprise attack. I knew the battle had ended
  when Elathan appeared to me in a vision. I stood still and
  silent as my oathbound love spoke to me in a voice only I could
  hear. Activity bustled around me, but I saw only him. Sad-eyed
  and distant, he told me the sacrifice he had made. The gateway
  was closed, locked from the far side and resealed with my love's
  blood. I felt the link between us fray and then snap not long
  afterward, and with it went the last of my hope that he still
  lived. Elathan was gone.
  
  Surrounded by life, by the present, my attention is drawn back
  to it: my daughters on either side, the rich smell of the sea
  surrounding us all. In the deepening twilight, a seal barks from
  the shadows, a sharp sound in the soft evening. The sun slips
  below the horizon. I look over at Elen and say quietly,
  "Remember what you promised me." No matter what happens, once
  everything is over, she is to take Aislinn immediately back to
  Cill Dara, with no looking back. Elen nods at me, a short sharp
  motion of discontent. She looks afraid. Aislinn knows something
  important is going to happen tonight, but not what. She looks
  excited.
  
  The darkening sky is like burnt orange and spilt wine, purple
  and sienna melting into wonder at the edge of my eyes. The sea
  smells so sharp, so pure. One last breath of it, and then it is
  time.
  
  I release their hands, and kneel in the sand in front of
  Aislinn. My baby. "Aislinn, love. You've always known you were
  special. And I've always told you one day I would give you what
  was mine, what my mother gave to me." Aislinn nods, her eyes
  shining. I rest my hands on her shoulders. Now comes the hard
  part. "But love, this gift comes at a price. You remember what I
  told you about us: as we grow older, we forget, and eventually
  we have to leave the ones we love behind..." I think, How can I
  stay when I won't remember you anymore? "...and the ones we
  leave behind have to move on." She nods again, a trace of worry
  in her blue eyes now. So like his. I take a deep breath and move
  my hands to my sealskin, unfastening it.
  
  Aislinn's eyes go wide, "Momma, no!" I look to Elen, my hands
  starting to shake. Rock that she is, she nods, and moves to
  stand behind Aislinn, her hands resting where mine just were.
  "Aislinn." How is it that my voice sounds so calm? "It's time
  for me. I love you. I will always love you, but the longer I
  stay, the more harm I do to this sealskin. There are some who
  say I've stayed too long as it is. One way or the other, it's
  time for me to go. Please... let me go knowing that my daughter
  is carrying on the tradition?" I sound calm, but I feel the
  tears threatening to fall. I don't want to frighten her any
  worse, so I keep them back. Instead, my hands extend, holding my
  sealskin, my faerie soul. Offering it. "Aislinn, please. Take
  it."
  
  She reaches up. Our hands meet, then separate. I hear myself cry
  out. Gods, why did no one tell me it would feel this way? This
  burning like cold iron. Letting go. I'm letting it all go. I
  want to tell them that, but I cannot form the words. The burning
  changes. I see Aislinn change. The sky itself changes, colors
  washed out and fading, the sharp, dreamlike smell of the sea
  fading to the mortal, mundane odor of dying kelp and fish. I see
  Elen pull Aislinn away as if in slow motion. Aislinn is crying,
  they both are crying. Then I see the sand coming up to meet me.
  Burned clean. I am burned clean. I dream for a while.



  It's dark. The sand is cold. How long have I been out here? I
  sit up and look around. Nothing looks familiar. Nothing feels
  familiar, either. How did I get here? For a long, long moment, I
  sit and listen to the surf crashing, and realize that I can
  recall nothing at all. Fear rises up, threatening to overtake
  me. "Take it easy," I hear myself say, followed by laughter
  bubbling up, edged with hysteria. I'm talking to myself, and I
  don't even know who I am.
  
  A man's soft voice sounds behind me. "I thought I would find you
  here." I stumble to my feet and turn, trying to see owner of
  that voice. All I can see is a tall shadow.
  
  "Do I know you?" I ask cautiously.
  
  With a soft, lingering laugh, the shadow nods. "You did once."
  He pauses. "You do not remember me, do you? You might not. It
  has been a while."
  
  Fear threatens again. The beach is empty except for the two of
  us. Alone and confused, I wonder if I can trust him, this
  shadowy figure who claims to know me. "I don't remember
  anything," I confess. "You know me? Honestly?" Perhaps he will
  be honest. There seems little else for me to do but trust, for
  now.
  
  The answering voice is gentle. "I do know you. Perhaps in time
  things will come back to you. Perhaps not, but either way..." He
  pauses, sounding somehow sad when he asks, "You do not remember
  anything at all?"
  
  For a moment, I get a glimpse of golden hair in the starlight
  and I feel an impending memory. Almost, almost... Then the
  epiphany falls flat, leaving nothing. I sigh and shake my head.
  "No... not really."
  
  "In time," he repeats. "There is always time, it is the one
  thing we can never run out of." He leans over, giving me a brief
  glimpse of pale skin and bright eyes, before he scoops something
  up from the sand. "I think you dropped this." He extends it to
  me, the shape hidden in the shadow of his hand. Unthinking, I
  reach for it. My hand closes over a ring of white gold, and I
  blink as the world doubles. I feel the magic washing over me,
  seeping into my skin. The sea smells sharp again, the colors
  brilliant in my eyes, dazzling me and blinding me with memory. I
  remember it all. And then I look at him again.
  
  Wings. White and silver traced, sweeping down about him.
  
  Oh God, I see wings. I see _wings._ His hand remains extended.
  "Come with me, Joanna. Please." So many years and I still can
  feel that voice. How could I ever have forgotten? "Trust me."
  How could I not? This might be dream, I don't know for certain.
  It doesn't matter. It feels real though, as I take Elathan's
  pale hand, smiling through tears. Quietly I answer, "Always."



  Aislinn pleaded with Elen all the way back to Cill Dara. "Elen,
  we have to go back! I have to make sure Momma's okay!"
  
  Elen replied with a tired, troubled sigh, "I swore to her,
  Aislinn. We can't go back."
  
  As they took the blurring step through the stained glass window,
  stepping from the mortal world to the one just beside it,
  Aislinn was still protesting, "But what if she tries to go
  swimming? She's used to... being able to swim better than she
  can now. We have to watch her..." Elen shook her head wearily.
  Like it or not, she had made a promise, and she was determined
  to stick to it. Elen took Aislinn to her room, and as she turned
  to go she stopped in the doorway, her voice very sad, "I
  promised, Aislinn. It was the last thing she asked of me."
  
  For a long time, or what seemed like it, Aislinn lay still in
  the darkness. The room should have been comforting, familiar,
  but she kept hearing a voice calling to her. Everywhere she
  looked, white wings framed her vision, just beyond her line of
  sight. Tears stung at her eyes, her father had wings like that.
  Wings she had never seen, never been able to touch so much as a
  feather. "I didn't promise anything," she mouthed to herself.
  She sat up, slipped out of the room and out of Cill Dara.
  
  Aislinn ran all the way back to the beach, panting as she
  stumbled onto the sand once again. She knew, she remembered,
  that often selkies who'd given up their skins had to be watched,
  lest they overestimate their non-magical abilities in the water
  and drown. The beach was empty. Aislinn soon found the place
  where her mother had fallen to the sand, the scuffs and
  indentation there. Leading away from it, toward the water, were
  a single pair of footprints, slender and feminine, with a hint
  of webbing to the toes.
  
  "Oh no, Momma, no," Aislinn prayed, already slipping her
  sealskin over her shoulders as she followed the lone footsteps
  to the water. She reached the water's edge, where the prints
  disappeared into the sea. Bright eyes scanning the waters for
  any disturbance, she suddenly came up short, her eyes going
  wide. There, in the foam near the shore a silver-white guard
  feather floated, its brightness shimmering against the darkened
  water. Aislinn leaned down and pulled it from the water, rolling
  the stem between her fingers as she sat down at the water's
  edge. She looked at it for a long time, drifting.
  
  Elen found her there, hours later, nearly at dawn. Aislinn's
  eyes were on the sea, watching the light change from darkness to
  day, that single feather cradled in her hands in her lap. Elen
  touched the girl's shoulder, struck by how seamless a mixture
  she was of both her parents. She didn't look up at all, nor did
  she respond. "Aislinn?" Elen asked quietly.
  
  The girl still didn't move, save to shift her eyes from sea to
  feather and back again. In a distant dreaming voice she answered
  the unspoken question: "They're together now."


    "The soul takes flight to the world that is invisible.
    But there arriving she is sure of bliss, and forever
    dwells in paradise."
                             --Socrates



  Lisa Nichols  (lisa@selkie.net) 
----------------------------------
  Lisa Nichols lives with her cat in largely landlocked
  Michigan--at least she's never seen a seal there. When she's not
  writing, she works for an accounting software company. A long
  time fan of role-playing games, she has written a book for Dream
  Pod 9 due out in February 2001.

  <http://www.selkie.net/>



  From a Whisper to a Roar   by Rupert Goodwins
===============================================
....................................................................
  Loneliness is a condition that's hard to understand unless
  you're in it. So is being human.
....................................................................
  
  It was getting harder, as the nights lengthened and the air
  cooled, to hold in mind things still to do. October slowed and
  settled; the engine of the seasons ran down; the coming winter
  the absence of autumn as autumn had been the absence of summer.
  Spring was distant as the start of time, hopeless to imagine. I
  sat alone in the broken zoo at Regent's Park, London around me
  an empty cinema, my memories too weak to light its screen.
  
  4 p.m., 5 p.m.... evening. I waited as usual for the plane, and
  there it was in the dark blue of the southern sky, distant
  lights, distant drone, slipping down its memory of the glide
  path to Heathrow. The great trees on the edge of the park had
  long shed their leaves; the automatic xenon of the aircraft's
  strobes sparking through empty branches on the way to earth. A
  clear night, I thought as I stared into the sky at the early
  stars left in the plane's wake. Frost later. Cold enough now. I
  stuck my hands in my jacket pockets, asked it for just a little
  more warmth up to my face. I hate a cold nose.
  
  I walked down toward Baker Street and the hotel, wondering how
  alone I wanted to be. A quick check: a couple of hundred people
  within half an hour. Most on do not disturb, of course. A small
  group in Marylebone with the welcome mat out, but that was
  Sandra's lot. I'd rather go for a swim in raw sewage. They were
  probably trying to raise ghosts through television again,
  sitting around in a fug of dull, drugged bonhomie telling each
  other how special they were. No.
  
  Further out, some friends. Some asleep, some working, but... no,
  no reason to make the journey. I would have to do a tour soon, I
  supposed, but there were weeks left yet. And if I didn't, I
  didn't.
  
  And then a voice, warm as a West Country sun. "Roland?
  Orrrrrrlando? You around, or is that just your machine down
  there in Babylon?"
  
  "Sally?" Sally. Out in Dagenham, the old football ground. No
  more information. But Sally was data enough. "Sally!"
  
  "That's right. Hello, stranger. Didn't expect to see you, but
  there's a nice surprise."
  
  "You're really here! When did you get back? What are you doing?
  Are you staying?"
  
  There was a pause, and for a second or two I was alone again in
  the park, in the night. Which was, I found, more alone than I
  wanted to be, this evening.
  
  "If you want to know more, you'll just have to come and visit.
  If you're free this evening. Don't want to mess up your social
  life."
  
  "But what are you doing back here? I thought I'd seen the last
  of you."
  
  "You never listen, do you?"
  
  "Sorr..."
  
  "Never listening, always apologizing. Coming? I haven't got all
  night!"
  
  Dagenham was a long way away. Wouldn't make it before tomorrow.
  I wanted to see her... of course I wanted to see her.
  
  She knew me. "You could drive out," she said. "Wouldn't take you
  more than half an hour. Go on, go and get a car and call me when
  you're on your way. OK?"
  
  And that was that.
  
  A car wasn't a problem. The roads behind Baker Street tube
  were full of them, carefully parked up, clustered around the
  dispatch point. Many of them were full of stuff. Relics.
  Notes. Photographs. Some had their windscreens painted in
  ornate scripts, letters glowing pale blue or green or, the
  horror, swirling, moving, day-glo rainbows. "From this point
  on July 5th, 2120, the family Graham slipped the surly bonds
  and joined the next life. We give thanks for this release,
  and we will see you among the stars." Not me, chums. Not you
  and your charming children, grinning at me from behind the
  glass. You're welcome to it. If I ever do join up, I'm taking
  my taste filters with me.
  
  It took me ten minutes to find something suitable: a black Ford
  Fusion Bhopal, on the edge of the parking zone, clean and empty
  and not more than five years abandoned. I touched the door, said
  yes, I was prepared to register my ownership, waived my
  protection rights, agreed to recompense the last owner should
  they return. _Ego te absolve, ego te absolve_ of your sins of
  insurance and possession. The car opened, I sat inside it, and
  we slipped away.
  
  I'd forgotten how comfortable a car could be. It was a good
  model, this one; I turned out the windows and ran through the
  environmentals. Whoever the owner had been, he -- no doubt of
  his gender -- was no relative of the Grahams. There was no hint
  of his name, no personals, but the way he'd casually left his
  presets open to browsing... he was top dog, and he knew it.
  Smug, yes, but enthrallingly so.
  
  The journey took close to an hour. I didn't know what was going
  on outside, but from the pauses, turns and occasional bursts of
  speed I doubted I wanted to get involved. And I was having a
  great time: I sat in the stalls of the Al'Dharbi opera watching
  "The Rape of New York;" I replayed the world finals of the last
  Scent Chess league from fifty years ago; I went flying over
  Berlin during the Volksschuld, and then during the last days of
  the second great war of the 20th. All those people.
  
  And, finally, I got to the Park. The car apologized for not
  getting closer to the football ground, but the feeder road was
  overgrown. I checked: outside seemed safe enough, but I didn't
  know the area, not these days. I turned the windows back on, but
  I was under a canopy of trees, dark sky filtering through black
  pines, a star or two distant above.
  
  "Sally?"
  
  Silence. Nothing. Oh, come on.
  
  "Thanks for telling me you were on your way, Mr. Reliable. No,
  don't bother saying sorry. I'll take it as read."
  
  "I... well, I'm here now. And it was a lovely drive, thanks."
  
  "Yeah. Stay where you are, we'll come and get you. Five
  minutes."
  
  And there she was, and a kiss on the cheek, that childhood touch
  of summer sun again, enough to lift a frozen season of nights.
  
  We walked away from the car, years unwinding with each step. I
  had forgotten how small she was, how she smelled, how her eyes
  brought that serious face alive. She was in her winter suit,
  turned right down, the faintest purple glow outlining her shape
  against the darkness of the woods. "Not like you to be so...
  unflamboyant," I said.
  
  "Doesn't pay to advertise around here. It's not a bad place, but
  you learn to keep yourself to yourself." She looked up at me and
  smiled. "Same everywhere, I suppose. You're good enough at it."
  
  "Why are you here? Why didn't you say hello before?"
  
  "I'll show you when we get in. We're about there anyway, I'm
  afraid you'll have to register to get in."
  
  "Doesn't bother me. I did it for the car. Nobody plays those
  games these days."
  
  She wrinkled her nose. "I wouldn't be so sure, you know. You're
  OK here, still. But there's always more going on than we'd like
  to think. Ah, here we are."
  
  We'd reached a concrete wall in the forest, and a smooth metal
  door. I touched it, assented, stood back as Sally did the same.
  She pushed, and it swung open.
  
  "Come in."
  
  We were in a bright metal room. "Two seconds," said Sally,
  touching the clasp of her suit so it fell open. And there she
  was, soft in her microchain tunic, soft and glittering and a
  thousand reasons for being there all at once. "Flamboyant
  enough?"
  
  "I hope you didn't get dressed up just for me," I said, hoping
  nothing of the sort.
  
  "Silly," she said.
  
  I unbuckled, a bit ashamed of my charcoal gray sloppy. She
  angled one brushstroke eyebrow, and we laughed. Easy as that.
  
  And then the far end of the room opened as the building decided
  we were probably OK, all in all, and we walked through into the
  old stadium.
  
  Which was a silent land of monsters. In the center, arcing into
  the sky, a metal pylon with spreading webs of wires, around and
  underneath it huge and unfamiliar machines. I couldn't see a
  roof; the sky above was still dark but the air down here was
  warm and the light was morning.
  
  "Sally! This is... I don't know what it is. All your own work?
  
  "Not really, there's someone over in old L.A. and a group of
  weirdniks across Asia. You up for a walk through the grounds, or
  do you want to eat, or what?"
  
  I thought for a second, and rediscovered some lost appetites.
  But I knew a private viewing when I saw one.
  
  "Show me this lot. It's been a quiet week for London's cultural
  life."
  
  "Nothing to write about, huh?"
  
  We wandered into the stadium, through severely geometric green
  and purple bushes at chest height, along a sparkling path that
  crunched underfoot. "Safety glass," she said. "We found tons of
  it out in Docklands, near the New City. Must've been there for
  years, all fallen out of the towers and heaped on the ground.
  You can't get near some of them for drifts of the stuff and
  nothing grows through it, of course. Shame to waste it."
  
  I recognized some of the great metal boxes that rose out of the
  vegetation. "Menhirs?" I asked
  
  "You're the only one..." she said, deadpan. "Er, well, sort of
  menhirs. Standing stones, I suppose. Not deliberate, but I liked
  it when it happened. I don't think it's deliberate. Whatever.
  Oh, this is our newest piece. Freshly arrived."
  
  We stood in front of a golden cone, twenty feet tall, a foot
  wide at the top and thirty at the base. Convoluted slots, a
  finger wide, coiling and twisting, Mayan, covered the sides.
  
  "That's the last of the comsats. Got it out of orbit last week."
  
  "What's it like up there? I didn't know you could still go..."
  
  "You can't. Well, you probably can, but that's serious work. But
  you can ask the belt, and if it's in a good mood it will
  deliver. This turned up in the garden, together with a note
  saying not to worry about the propellants."
  
  "I thought all the big stuff had gone."
  
  "Nearly all of them, used up when the belt got going. But if you
  go looking, you find all sorts up there. I don't know what the
  belt's thinking, but it seems to like history as much as we do.
  It even has a sense of humor. It knows that there's not a
  molecule of propellant left in this, and it knows we know."
  
  "Very dry."
  
  "Very."
  
  Silence. In the distance, an electrical hum started, grew
  louder, cut out.
  
  "What's that?" I asked
  
  "Don't know. Something fixing itself."
  
  We walked on through the formal garden, meandering past
  television transmitters, optical transceiver racks, network
  meshes. A gallery of a lost age.
  
  "Is that it?" I asked. "The British Museum of the Empire of
  Technology?"
  
  "Would I be that literal?" she asked. "There's no point in that.
  Why don't you ask it?"
  
  So I did. A beacon, it said. Thanks for asking.
  
  "When the city goes dark, you build a bonfire on the beach",
  Sally said. "And we're dark, now. Everything's gone. You want to
  know something, you think it. Tiny signals. The belt hears and
  answers. Tells you where you are, who's nearby, who's far away,
  sends your thoughts, sends theirs back. We're all reverting to
  apehood... no, beyond that. Sea creatures. Naked. Beyond tools."
  
  "Those who are left..." I said. "People like us. We're not
  naked. I'm not ready to take off my clothes and leap back into
  the sea."
  
  "You and me, we're the last. How many of us are there? Go on,
  ask." She stared up at the tower in the centre of the stadium.
  
  I asked. Three million, said the belt. Three million, down from
  five last year. Come on in, the water's lovely. "Not many." I
  said. "But I'm not going anytime soon. I like it here."
  
  Sally looked back at me. "Yeah, yeah, I know. Me too. But it's
  getting very lonely. Look, come over here. This is my favorite
  installation. It was the first. I found it, and it gave me the
  idea for all this."
  
  We walked over to an anonymous piece of racking. Hundred years
  old? Something like that. Mostly electronic. Scientific, I
  guessed.
  
  "It's part of Serendip NG, dear," she said. "The last serious
  attempt to find signals from space. Ran for twenty years all
  over the planet, with outriders in solar orbit." She reached out
  and touched the case. "This listened to the cosmos for two
  decades. We mapped the lot. Heard nothing. Twenty anomalies
  outstanding when we stopped bothering, but nothing you could do
  anything with."
  
  "So there really is nobody out there?" I hadn't thought about
  that for years.
  
  "How can we tell? We always thought civilization is radio. Once
  you learn how, you build transmitters and announce your presence
  to the listening hoards whether you want to or not. But look
  around you."
  
  "Plenty of transmitters here. I've got one in my earring, one on
  my belt. There must have been thirty on that car I got here."
  
  "Nothing impolite, though. We had a hundred years of television,
  radar, shouting our heads off. Now we know better. We whisper at
  each other, tiny clouds of radio just enough to get to their
  destinations and no further. All the big stuff's turned off, the
  frequencies dead. Beyond the belt, you'd never know anyone was
  home."
  
  "And you're going to light the bonfire again?"
  
  "That I am. All this stuff... just enough to recreate the noise
  of a bustling, shouting, mid-tech planet in the prime of life."
  
  "What does the belt think of this?"
  
  "It doesn't seem to mind. But I wonder what it knows; it's
  evasive if I ask. Oh, enough of the bloody belt. I'm having a
  grand opening next week, with a ceremonial throwing of the
  switch and quite possibly a ceremonial explosion of
  misconfigured equipment shortly afterward. Be nice if you could
  stay. Could use the publicity, and a firefighter."
  
  It would be good, at that. "I'm hungry now," I said. "It's been
  a journey and a half, and noble, futile gestures always make me
  puckish."
  
  She laughed. "As per usual. Come on, let me show you the Head of
  Broadcasting's office."
  
  We walked off, under the spreading cables of the aerial, and
  back into the night at the edge.
  
  And distant minds swept past, sifting space, finding noise,
  moving on.
  
  
  
  Rupert Goodwins  (RupertGo@aol.com)
-------------------------------------
  Ex-chief planner of the Tongan manned mission to Mars,
  international jewel thief and mild-mannered reporter, Rupert
  Goodwins writes about computers by day and behaves oddly at
  night. He lives in London, a large post-imperial city set in an
  alluvial clay bowl, but doesn't worry about it. Other InterText
  stories by Rupert Goodwins include "Little Acorn" (v6n4), "Fade
  Out, Mrs. Bewley" (v6n5), "Neon Sea Dreams" (v7n4), "The Year
  Before Sleep" (v8n1), and "Amo, Mensa!" (v8n5).



  FYI
=====

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