Paper Cities, an Anthology of Urban Fantasy (33 page)
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Authors: Ekaterina Sedia
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Lucia
! They all cry out when they lie over me.
Lucia! Where will I find you
?
Yet in those shadow-stitched streets I am always alone.
I sought out the dream-city on all those skins. What were plain, yellow-lined streets next to Seraphim? What was my time-clock stamping out its inane days next to the jeweled factory of Casimira? How could any touch equal the seizures of feeling in my dreams, in which each gesture was a quartet? I would touch no one who didn’t carry the map. Only once that year, after the snow, did I make an exception, for a young woman with cedar-colored breasts and a nose ring like a bull’s, or a minotaur’s. She wore bindi on her face like a splatter of blood. Her body was without blemish or mark, so alien and strange to me by then, so blank and empty. But she was beautiful, and her voice was a glass-cutting soprano, and I am weak. I begged her to sing to me after we made love, and when we dreamed, I found her dancing with a jackal-tailed man in the lantern-light of a bar that served butterfly-liquor in a hundred colors. I separated them; he wilted and slunk away, and I took her to the sea, its foam shattering into glass on the beach, and we walked along a strand of shards, glittering and wet.
•
When I woke, the grid brachiated out from her navel, its angles dark and bright. I smiled. Before she stirred, I kissed the striated lines, and left her house without coffee or farewells.
There are two churches in Palimpsest, and they are identical in every way. They stand together, wrapping the street-corner like a hinge. Seven white columns each, wound around with black characters which are not Cyrillic, but to the idle glance might seem so. Two peaked roofs of red lacquer and two stone horses with the heads of fork-tongued lizards stand guard on either side of each door. They were made with stones from the same quarry, on the far southern border of the city, pale green and dusty, each round and perfect as a ball. There is more mortar in the edifices than stones, mortar crushed from Casimira dragonflies donated by the vat, tufa dust, and mackerel tails. The pews are scrubbed and polished with lime-oil, and each Thursday, parishioners share a communion of slivers of whale meat and cinnamon wine. The only difference between the two is in the basement — two great mausoleums with alabaster coffins lining the walls, calligraphied with infinite care and delicacy in the blood of the departed beloved contained within. In the far north corner is a raised platform covered in offerings of cornskin, chocolate, tobacco. In one church, the coffin contains a blind man. In the other, it contains a deaf woman. Both have narwhal’s horns extending from their foreheads; both died young. The faithful visit these basement-saints and leave what they can at the feet of the one they love best. Giustizia has been a devotee of the Unhearing since she was a girl — her yellow veil and turquoise-ringed thumbs are familiar to all in the Left-Hand Church, and it is she who brings the cornskins, regular as sunrise. When she dies, they will bury her here, in a coffin of her own.
She will plug your ears with wax when you enter, and demand silence. You may notice the long rattlesnake tail peeking from under her skirt and clattering on the mosaic floor, but it is not polite to mention it — when she says silence, you listen. It is the worst word she knows.
•
The suburbs of Palimpsest spread out from the edges of the city proper like ladies’ fans. First the houses, uniformly red, in even lines like veins, branching off into lanes and courts and cul-de-sacs. There are parks full of grass that smells like oranges and little creeks filled with floating roses, blue and black. Children scratch pictures of antelope-footed girls and sparrow-winged boys on the pavement, hop from one to the other. Their laughter spills from their mouths and turns to orange leaves, drifting lazily onto wide lawns. Eventually the houses fade into fields: amaranth, spinach, strawberries. Shaggy cows graze; black-faced sheep bleat. Palimpsest is ever-hungry.
But these too fade as they extend out, fade into the empty land not yet colonized by the city, not yet peopled, not yet known. The empty meadows stretch to the horizon, pale and dark, rich and soft.
A wind picks up, blowing hot and dusty and salt-scented, and gooseflesh rises over miles and miles of barren skin.
I saw her in November. It was raining — her scarf was soaked and plastered against her head. She passed by me, and I knew her smell, I knew the shape of her wrist. In the holiday crowds, she disappeared quickly, and I ran after her, without a name to call out.
“Wait!” I cried.
She stopped and turned towards me, her square jaw and huge brown eyes familiar as a pillow. We stood together in the rainy street, beside a makeshift watch-stand.
“It’s you,” I whispered.
And I showed my knee. She pursed her lips for a moment, her green scarf blown against her neck like a wet leaf. Then she extended her tongue, and I saw it there, splashed with raindrops, the map of Palimpsest, blazing blue-bright. She closed her mouth, and I put my arm around her waist.
“I felt you, the pipe of bone, the white smoke,” I said.
“I felt the dress on your shoulders,” she answered, and her voice was thick and low, grating, like a gate opening.
“Come to my house. There is brandy there, if you want it.”
She cocked her head, thin golden hair snaking sodden over her coat. “What would happen, do you think?”
I smiled. “Maybe our feet would come clean.”
She stroked my cheek, put her long fingers into my hair. We kissed, and the watches gleamed beside us, gold and silver.
On the south corner: the lit globes, covered with thick wrought- iron serpents which break the light, of a subway entrance. The trains barrel along at the bottom of the stairs every fifteen minutes. On the glass platform stands Adalgiso, playing his viola with six fingers on each hand. He is bald, with a felt hat that does not sit quite right on his head. Beside him is Assia, singing tenor, her smoke-throated voice pressing against his strings like kisses. Her eyes are heavily made-up, like a pharaoh’s portrait, her hair long and coarse and black. His playing is so quick and lovely that the trains stop to listen, inclining on the rails and opening their doors to catch the glissandos spilling from him. His instrument case lies open at his feet, and each passenger who takes the Marginalia Line brings his fee — single pearls, dropped one by one into the leather case until it overflows like a pitcher of milk. In the corners of the station, cockroaches with fiber optic wings scrape the tiles with their feet, and their scraping keeps the beat for the player and his singer.
•
On the north corner: a cartographer’s studio. There are pots of ink in every crevice, parchment spread out over dozens of tables. A Casimira pigeon perches in a baleen cage and trills out the hours faithfully. Its droppings are pure squid-ink, and they are collected in a little tin trough. Lucia and Paola have run this place for as long as anyone can remember — Lucia with her silver compass draws the maps, her exactitude radiant and unerring, while Paola illuminates them with exquisite miniatures, dancing in the spaces between streets. They each wear dozens of watches on their forearms. This is the second stop, after the amphibian-salon, of Palimpsest’s visitors, and especially of her immigrants, for whom the two women are especial patrons. Everyone needs a map, and Lucia supplies them: subway maps and street-maps and historical maps and topographical maps, false maps and correct-to-the-minute maps and maps of cities far and far from this one. Look — for you she has made a folding pamphlet that shows the famous sights: the factory, the churches, the salon, the memorial. Follow it, and you will be safe.
Each morning, Lucia places her latest map on the windowsill like a fresh pie. Slowly, as it cools, it opens along its own creases, its corners like wings, and takes halting flight, flapping over the city with susurring strokes. It folds itself, origami-exact, in mid-air: it has papery eyes, inky feathers, vellum claws.
It stares down the long avenues, searching for mice.
•
Ekaterina Sedia
lives in New Jersey with the best spouse in the world and two cats. Her new novel,
The Secret History of Moscow
, is coming from Prime Books in November 2007. She is currently working on
The Alchemy of Stone
, due from Prime in 2008. Her short stories sold to
Analog
,
Baen’s Universe
,
Fantasy Magazine
, and
Dark Wisdom
, as well as
Japanese Dreams
and
Magic in the Mirrorstone
anthologies. Visit her at www.ekaterinasedia.com.
Forrest Aguirre
won the World Fantasy Award for editing the
Leviathan 3
anthology. He has edited several other anthologies, including his most recent anthology,
Text:UR, The New Book of Masks
. His fiction has appeared in a variety of markets including
Polyphony
,
American Letters & Commentary
, and
Notre Dame Review
. His short fiction has been collected in
Fugue XXIX
and his first book-length release,
Swans Over the Moon
is available from Wheatland Press. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin with his wife and four children.
Barth Anderson
’s imaginative fiction has appeared in
Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld Magazine, Polyphony,
and a variety of other quality venues. Regarding his first novel,
The Patron Saint of Plagues
(Bantam Spectra; 2006), Salon said, “Anderson has some serious writing chops, and he delivers a page turner that is at once a medical thriller, cyberpunk romp and provocative tease.” His second novel,
The Magician and The Fool
, is forthcoming in 2008. Barth lives in Minneapolis with his wife and two children.
Steve Berman
grew up on an unhealthy diet of Saturday morning television. It affected his lower brain functions and now he cannot help but have delusions of being a writer. He imagines he has sold over 80 articles, essays and short stories. Maybe a young adult novel. Or edited some anthologies. He thinks New Orleans might once have been his home. Or Philadelphia, which does resemble the Fallen Area if you turn to the right UHF channel on Saturday mornings. He can be channeled at steveberman.com.
Darin C. Bradley
is the fiction editor and designer for
Farrago’s Wainscot
. He holds a Ph.D. in Poetics, specializing in the mechanics of “weird,” and has placed work with
Electric Velocipede, Strange Horizons, Polyphony 6, The Internet Review of Science Fiction, Abyss & Apex, Astropoetica, GrendelSong
, and
Bewildering Stories
.
Stephanie Campisi
’s work has appeared in
Fantasy Magazine, Farthing, Shimmer
, and more. She is currently working on a novel set in the same world as this story.
Hal Duncan
was born in 1971 and lives in the West End of Glasgow. A long-standing member of the Glasgow SF Writers Circle, his first novel,
Vellum
, was nominated for the Crawford Award, the British Fantasy Society Award and the World Fantasy Award. The sequel,
Ink
, is available from Pan Macmillan in the UK and Del Rey in the US, while a novella is due out in November 2007 from Monkeybrain Books. He has also published a poetry collection,
Sonnets For Orpheus
, and had short fiction published in magazines such as
Fantasy, Strange Horizons
and
Interzone
, and anthologies such as
Nova Scotia, Eidolon
and
Logorrhea
.
Michael Jasper
gets by on not enough sleep and too much caffeine in Wake Forest, North Carolina, where he lives with his lovely wife Elizabeth and their amazing young son Drew. Michael’s fiction has appeared in
Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, Interzone, Fantasy Gone Wrong, Heroes in Training, Aeon
, and
Polyphony
. His story collection
Gunning for the Buddha
came out in 2005 from Prime Books, his paranormal romance
Heart’s Revenge
(writing as Julia C. Porter) came out in 2006 from Five Star, and his novel
The Wannoshay Cycle
is due out from Five Star in January of 2008.
Vylar Kaftan
writes science fiction, fantasy, horror, slipstream, and cleverly-phrased Post-It notes on the fridge. Her stories have appeared in
Strange Horizons, ChiZine
, and
Clarkesworld
, among other places. She’s appeared in Spanish translation in the Argentinian magazine
Axxon
. She lives in northern California and has a standard issue tie-dyed T-shirt to prove it. A graduate of Clarion West, she volunteers as a mentor for teenaged writers with the online group Absynthe Muse. Her hobbies include modern-day temple dancing and preparing for a major earthquake. She blogs at http://www.vylarkaftan.net.
Jay Lake
lives in Portland, Oregon with his books and two inept cats, where he works on numerous writing and editing projects. His current novels are
Trial of Flowers
from Night Shade Books and
Mainspring
from Tor Books, with sequels to both books in 2008. Jay is the winner of the 2004 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and a multiple nominee for the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards. Jay can be reached through his blog at jaylake.livejournal.com.
Paul Meloy
works as a psychiatric nurse in a crisis team in Bury St Edmunds. In 2005 his story
Black Static
won the British Fantasy Society Award for best short story. He has had stories published in
The Third Alternative, Nemonymous
and
Interzone
. TTA Press will be publishing his collection,
Islington Crocodiles
in late 2007.
Jess Nevins
is the author of the
Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana
, a guide to the characters and concepts of 19th century genre fiction. He is a librarian at Sam Houston State University and is currently writing the
Encyclopedia of Pulp Heroes
, a guide to the characters and concepts of 20th century genre fiction.
Richard Parks
lives in Mississippi. His fiction has appeared in
Asimov’s SF, Realms of Fantasy, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Fantasy Magazine, Weird Tales
, and numerous anthologies, including
Year’s Best Fantasy and Fantasy: The Best of the Year.
He has two books out in 2007, a novella titled
Hereafter And After
from PS Publishing and a story collection,
Worshipping Small Gods
, from Prime Books.
Ben Peek
is a Sydney based author. His short fiction has appeared in
Leviathan 4
, edited by Forrest Aguirre,
Polyphony Six
, edited by Deborah Layne and Jay Lake,
Agog! Ripping Reads
, edited by Cat Sparks, as well as
Aurealis, Fantasy Magazine
, and various Year’s Best volumes. He is the author of
Twenty-Six Lies/One Truth
, released by Wheatland Press, and
Black Sheep
, released by Prime Books. He keeps a lo fi web presence at http://benpeek.livejournal.com
Cat Rambo
lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest with her charming spouse, Wayne. She is a graduate of both Clarion West and the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. Among the places in which her work has appeared are
Fantasy Magazine
,
Subterranean
, and
Strange Horizons
. “The Bumblety’s Marble” takes place in the seaport of Tabat, a setting shared by several of her stories as well as the novel she is currently completing,
The Moon’s Accomplice
.
Jenn Reese
has lived in various suburban landscapes most of her life — Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, and upstate New York — but now makes her home in Los Angeles. It’s a sun-bleached desert city of freaks, and she absolutely loves it. When she’s not writing or at work, she’s studying martial arts, playing strategy games, or sitting in traffic. You’ll find a list of her publications, including information on her first novel,
Jade Tiger
, at www.jennreese.com .
David J. Schwartz
’s fiction has appeared in such venues as
Strange Horizons, Twenty Epics,
and
Fantasy: The Year’s Best
. His first novel,
Superpowers
, will be released in 2008.
Cat Sparks
lives on the south coast of New South Wales, Australia, where she works as a graphic designer and runs Agog! Press with her partner, author Robert Hood. In 2004 she was a graduate of the inaugural Clarion South Writers’ Workshop and a Writers of the Future prizewinner. Cat has accumulated seven DITMAR awards since 2000 and was awarded the Aurealis Peter McNamara Conveners Award in 2004. She recently became a member of SFWA
Anna Tambour
currently lives in Australia. Her collection
Monterra’s Deliciosa & Other Tales
& and her novel
Spotted Lily
are Locus Recommended Reading List selections. The adventurous might also want to visit the ormless lands of Anna Tambour and Others at www.annatambour.net, and Medlar Comfits, a blog http://medlarcomfits.blogspot.com.
Most days,
Mark Teppo
lingers at Calliope’s Coffee House and Bookstore, perched in a comfortable chair near the front window. He’ll be nursing a cinnamon double ristretto while watching for patterns in the flow of traffic through the intersection of Mission and 14th. Occasionally, a meeting of the Fourth Foundation Society will dislodge him from his favorite seat and he’ll spend the afternoon in the park, chasing squirrels. If you have access to the Internet (or an aversion to squirrels), you can find him at www.markteppo.com. During 2007,
Farrago’s Wainscot
has serialized his hypertext novel (www.farragoswainscot.com).
Catherynne M. Valente
is the author of the
Orphan’s Tales
series, as well as
The Labyrinth, Yume no Hon: The Book of Dreams, The Grass-Cutting Sword
, and four books of poetry,
Music of a Proto-Suicide, Apocrypha, The Descent of Inanna
, and
Oracles
. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and is the winner of the 2006 Tiptree Award. She currently lives in Ohio with her two dogs.
Greg van Eekhout
’s fiction has appeared in places such as
Asimov’s Science Fiction, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
, and
Realms of Fantasy
. Several of his stories have been reprinted in year’s-best
anthologies, and his story “In the Late December” was a finalist for
the Nebula Award. He is an instructional designer by trade, an avid
coffee drinker, and an enthusiastic if not terribly skilled martial
arts student. Greg keeps a blog at writingandsnacks.com/blog.
Kaaron Warren
’s short story collection
The Glass Woman
will be released by Prime Books this year. The Australian edition won three fiction prizes. She has a story in Ellen Datlow’s
Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 20
and lives in Fiji.