CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 2: More Tales of Beauty and Strangeness Read online

  CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 2

  More Tales of Beauty and Strangeness

  Edited by Mike Allen

  Published by Mythic Delirium Books

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, names, locations, and events portrayed in this book are fictional or used in an imaginary manner to entertain, and any resemblance to any real people, situations, or incidents is purely coincidental.

  CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 2:

  More Tales of Beauty and Strangeness

  Edited by Mike Allen

  Electronic edition copyright © 2012 by Mike Allen. All Rights Reserved.

  Cover Painting: “Medicine (Hygieia)” by Gustav Klimt, c. 1901. Cover Design Copyright © 2009 by Vera Nazarian and Mike Allen

  Published by Mythic Delirium Books

  First appeared in trade paperback from Norilana Books, July 2009

  Introduction © 2009 by Mike Allen

  “Three Friends” © 2009 by Claude Lalumière

  “Six” © 2009 by Leah Bobet

  “Once a Goddess” © 2009 by Marie Brennan

  “Angel Dust” © 2009 by Ian McHugh

  “The Endangered Camp” © 2009 by Ann Leckie

  “At the Edge of Dying” © 2009 by Mary Robinette Kowal

  “Hooves and the Hovel of Abdel Jameela” © 2009 by Saladin Ahmed

  “The Pain of Glass” © 2009 by Tanith Lee

  “The Fish of Al-Kawthar’s Fountain” © 2009 by Joanna Galbraith

  “The Secret History of Mirrors” © 2009 by Catherynne M. Valente

  “Never nor Ever” © 2009 by Forrest Aguirre

  “each thing I show you is a piece of my death” © 2009

  by Gemma Files and Stephen J. Barringer

  “Open the Door and the Light Pours Through” © 2009 by Kelly Barnhill

  “Rosemary, That’s For Remembrance” © 2009 by Barbara Krasnoff

  “When We Moved On” © 2009 by Steve Rasnic Tem

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This has been a tough year for me, for a number of my loved ones and for many of my friends in personal and professional spheres. But we all persevere; it’s our duty. In terms of this book—well, Reader, the volume in your hand could not exist without Vera Nazarian, who insisted this book would go forward even when her own house briefly appeared to be in jeopardy of foreclosure. I don’t see how I could ever ask for a more dedicated publisher.

  Other thanks have to go to Michael M. Jones, who served as my assistant editor (translation: slush slave) while we fielded submissions for this volume. Also to Kathy Sedia, who gave invaluable advice for promoting the first volume far and wide; Amal El-Mohtar, for her enthusiasm and encouragement; Sonya Taaffe, for her insight; and to my wife Anita, who, aside from having to endure marriage to me for almost two decades, suggested the order in which these stories best flow (as she did for the first book). Trust me, neither of those things constitutes an easy task.

  For Dad

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  Mike Allen

  THREE FRIENDS

  Claude Lalumière

  SIX

  Leah Bobet

  ONCE A GODDESS

  Marie Brennan

  ANGEL DUST

  Ian McHugh

  THE ENDANGERED CAMP

  Ann Leckie

  AT THE EDGE OF DYING

  Mary Robinette Kowal

  HOOVES AND THE HOVEL OF ABDEL JAMEELA

  Saladin Ahmed

  THE PAIN OF GLASS

  Tanith Lee

  THE FISH OF AL-KAWTHAR’S FOUNTAIN

  Joanna Galbraith

  THE SECRET HISTORY OF MIRRORS

  Catherynne M. Valente

  NEVER NOR EVER

  Forrest Aguirre

  each thing i show you is a piece of my death

  Gemma Files and Stephen J. Barringer

  OPEN THE DOOR AND THE LIGHT POURS THROUGH

  Kelly Barnhill

  ROSEMARY, THAT’S FOR REMEMBRANCE

  Barbara Krasnoff

  WHEN WE MOVED ON

  Steve Rasnic Tem

  PINIONS

  The Authors

  AFTERWORD

  for the digital edition

  INTRODUCTION

  Mike Allen

  Below us the world burns, though the fires are not visible to the naked eye.

  Yet when you look down through the remarkable prisms that form the razor-keen feathers of our steed and host, you cannot deny the oilslick rainbow of infernos that rages underneath those deceptively orderly urban rows. The city floats atop them just as the shell of this planet floats atop layers upon layers of molten hells.

  The gears of the raptor that carries us spin and shift; great coiled springs compress and unwind; chains rattle through sprockets; wings contract; and we drop lower. Light bends through the body of our phoenix, bends so far in its dimensions that we can see under the rooftops and between the floors of these teeming towers, tall boxes now open to us like tesseracts, granting us shockingly intimate views of those who live inside these structures and what lies inside their lives.

  See the ghosts of the slaughtered and the suicides as they rise past us or scream inside prisons of cathode and glass.

  See the deformed lovers, their eyes too damaged to perceive—much less grasp—the desperate hands that grope beside them. See the perfect lovers, painful in their glory, steady their spears against the slavering hate lurching toward them from all sides, determined to smash them into easily consumed pieces. See the lovers’ children: boys buried deep, waiting for the dark robed ones to dig them up again; girls forced too soon into the harshest sunfire glare.

  And watch out, my friend—for now they begin to see us.

  Look how they sing their screams at us, their combined voices like all the animals sealed together in the hold of the Ark.

  These denizens: their eyes, like their throats, are not like ours. They spy us through crevices and spaces our own eyesight focuses too clearly to detect.

  See that pair of egg-round men in striped sweaters who share one mouth at the corner of their massive dual skull—can you hear what that mouth yells at us? That we have no right to impose our visions over theirs, that we command this height simply to distract the gaze of the One On High from all the rest of them?

  And what is this woman rushing out onto the next roof, scrambling to climb its steeple, her vestigial wings flapping behind her as her long reptilian neck snaps our way? She roars that we’ve nothing to tell, that we’re made of pretty surfaces and all mirage beneath.

  And they scream louder, exuberant, thrilled at the damage they’re doing as feathers start to fall away.

  No need, my friend, to clutch so tight. We won’t fall. Not yet.

  See how the sharp feathers spin faster and faster as they drop, how the rabble below so vigorously hurls their ragged voices that they don’t notice how the feathers follow the sound, track the shouts to their sources. By the time each feather reaches its mark, it is spinning so fast the poor morsels can’t possibly see what hits them.

  Have you ever seen so many beautiful hues of blood? And more beautiful yet, when the fluids ignite and the iridescent fires bloom.

  And so the hidden infernos beneath become vivid blazes above, an incandescent splendor at our backs as we abandon these erupting towers for the buttoned-down brick safety of the suburbs. These square domiciles beneath, loyal regiments of secretive red soldiers that fight with shale and mortar to keep us from knowing what’s inside—I assure you, the things that combust within their furnaces burn even hotter than the conflagration we just left behind.

&nb
sp; Why do you keep looking back?

  You still smell the burning city, you say? No. Look closer. Look down.

  Look how the gears shimmer under our feet. Look at the sparks that fly between them, thickening rapidly from trickle to multitude to flood. Look at how the edges of the pinions snake with orange glows, fireplace embers blown hotter, kindling to life.

  A phoenix can only endure its own friction for so long.

  I never promised you a safe ride, friend, and surely you never expected one. Surely you desire this end as much as I do. Surely, you do.

  The pain is exquisite and all too short, and you and I are now ash scattered out through the sky, our last thoughts raining down upon this single lonely house, itself as burnt to gray as we are.

  THREE FRIENDS

  Claude Lalumière

  Part 1

  Out of the Summer and into the Grey

  That morning, so very near the end of summer, the Boy Who Speaks with Walls emerged from his parents’ house with his tote bag full of lollipops, just like he had every day since school had let out in June. As he walked down the three wooden steps of his front porch, he glanced back affectionately at the red brick wall of his house. He liked how, in summer, the corners were softened by the leaves and branches of oak trees. He wore a baseball cap to protect his bald head from the summer sun, faded beige corduroy pants (he never wore shorts because he disliked exposing his bare legs), and a T-shirt with an iron-on picture of Timothy Draxton, the star of his favourite television show, The Adventures of Shade Savage.

  He crossed the street, to the house where the Girl Who Eats Fire lived with her parents. Actually, the Boy assumed that the Girl lived with her parents in that old broken-down house. He had never seen them, and the Girl never spoke about them. He knew better than to ask the Girl questions she didn’t want to answer. The house stood in the middle of a large lot, far from the sidewalk and from the houses on either side of it. The chipped, dirty bricks, the rotten wood, the rusted metal, the broken windows all fused into one stern grey mass that forbade colour. There was one old, dead, grey tree near the porch. The ground around it—and on the whole lot—was paved in concrete. People said the house looked like something from Greytown, and they avoided the Girl Who Eats Fire because of it. But the Boy didn’t care. The Girl was his friend, and that’s all that mattered.

  He knocked on the door (the doorbell had been broken for as long as he could remember). Sometimes, it took several minutes for the Girl to answer his knock, so he was prepared to wait. In the meantime, he sucked on a lemon-cherry lollipop and lost himself in that bittersweet pleasure. After he chewed off the last pieces of candy from the white stick, he tossed it in the paper sack he carried in his tote bag for just that purpose. He thought, The Girl never takes this long. Maybe she didn’t hear me knock? He looked at the house; he noticed—not for the first time—that a few of the windows were boarded up and that old paint was flaking off the crooked brick wall. Out of respect for his friend, he resisted the temptation to reach out and touch that old wall and ask it to share its secrets. He knocked again, putting all of his strength into it. This time the door gave and opened slightly. He heard a loud crash coming from inside the house.

  There was a second, louder crash. And muted laughter. The Boy pushed the door open a bit wider and shouted: “Girl! Are you in there?”

  There was no answer, and that frightened the Boy. He was worried about his friend. He had never been inside her house, and the thought of crossing the threshold filled him with a dread he couldn’t explain.

  He forced himself to gather his courage. Sometimes, his friends teased him because of his cowardice, but he knew he was brave. It’s just that there was so much that scared him. Every day there were new fears to confront. Yes, he cried and sometimes froze with fear. But he didn’t run away, and he didn’t pretend not to be scared. Every morning, after his mom had filled up his tote bag with lollipops and kissed him goodbye, she smiled at him and said: “My brave little man!” His mother would never lie to him.

  Suddenly, just as he was about to push the door wide open and run into the house in search of the Girl (or at least when he thought he was just about to), the door flung open and the Kid Whose Laughter Makes Adults Run Away stepped outside the Girl’s house. The Girl followed, holding hands with the Kid. Today her hair was white with jet-black streaks. She wore a torn button-up shirt. Black, of course. She always dressed in black. The shirt was so long that it covered up the usual black denim shorts that she was in all likelihood also wearing.

  The Girl, her face impassive (as it so often was), closed the door behind her while the Kid, grinning wide, said: “Good morning, Boy!” The Kid chuckled. “Good morning! Ha! Did these walls tell you anything?” The Kid punched the wall of the house.

  The Boy blushed. The Kid had been in the Girl’s house! No one ever went inside the Girl’s house. And why were they holding hands? Something new and different was happening, but he didn’t know what. He felt left out. No—more: he felt betrayed by his two friends, but he couldn’t articulate or even guess at the nature of this betrayal.

  The Boy tried to speak, not really knowing what he was going to say, but the words were trapped by a stutter, and he repeated the same indeterminate sound several times until the Kid tickled him and then bolted from the porch, daring both the Boy and the Girl to catch up.

  Without meeting his eyes the Girl squeezed the Boy’s shoulder, and they ran off together after the Kid. The long-legged Kid ran much faster than either the Girl, who tended to be easily short of breath, or the plump, short-legged Boy, who never cared much for physical exertion. After a block and a half of heavy breathing, they completely lost sight of the Kid.

  The Boy, drenched in sweat, and the Girl, so pale now that she almost looked like a skeleton, plopped themselves against the wall of Venus & Milo’s High-Class Discount Beauty Salon, Coffee Shop & No-Nonsense Aquarian Therapy Clinic. The Boy, hunched over with his eyes half-closed, trying to catch his breath, heard the Girl giggle wheezily. He looked up at her, and she pointed at the large window of Venus & Milo’s. Inside, the Boy saw Milo parading around like a runway model, in what looked like a fancy, expensive dress. He walked in those spike heels like he was born to it. Venus lounged back in one the swivelling chairs that customers sat in to get their hair cut or styled, smoking a long cigarette and clapping his hands in delight. Milo’s legs were thick and hairy, and, to the Boy, the dress had a comical effect, but from the loving expression on Venus’s face the Boy Who Speaks with Walls knew that Milo was showing off for someone who thought he looked radiant.

  The Boy laughed along with the Girl. It was such a rare treat to hear her laugh. He caught her eye and was rewarded with a conspiratorial wink that soothed away the betrayal he had felt earlier.

  Suddenly the door to Venus & Milo’s pushed open, and out poured Milo, in his low-cut blue velvet dress that showed off a thick patch of chest hair. “Boy! Girl! What a pleasure! Come on in!”

  The Boy and the Girl sat down on the swivelling chairs, and, as they often did, spun them around, enjoying the dizzy feeling. Milo lit a cigar and then snapped open a Tupperware container, offering the children some doughnuts. “I made these last night. Go on.”

  The two children each grabbed a sugar-sprinkled doughnut. “Thank you,” the Boy said for the both of them. “Where’s Venus? We thought we saw him through the window.”

  Blowing out thick rings of smoke, Milo said, “He’ll be right out. He just went to—” Just then, Venus walked through the bead curtain that separated the front from the back of the shop, holding a tray, saying, “Herbal tea, darlings?”

  Venus was slim and elegant. He wore black wool pants, a pocketless and collarless white shirt with the top button open, a trim black vest, and shiny black shoes. Black eyeliner highlighted his dark blue eyes. A red scarf, tied around his neck, added a flash of dazzle that was echoed by the red belt across his waist. His jet-black hair was gelled tightly on his head, and a pencil-thin
mustache decorated his upper lip. He moved with the grace of a cat.

  Venus winked at the children. “The usual?” The Girl nodded her assent, while the Boy grunted his: lemon-ginger zinger for the Girl, three-berry blend for the Boy, both heavily laced with honey. The adults drank mint.

  “Isn’t the Kid with you today?” asked Venus. “That one dresses so well.” His eyes lost focus, as if he were staring into a dream.

  The Boy, interrupting his attempt to cool down the tea by gently blowing on it, answered, “We were all together this morning, and then the Kid ran off, daring us to catch up.” The Boy took a sip of tea. “That Kid sure runs faster than we do. A lot faster. But we’ll find the Kid. We’ll get the Kid.”

  For the next minute or so, everyone sipped their tea in silence. All around the shop, there were plastic plants (“So much cleaner!” Venus always said) in hand-painted pots (“It’s the inner me,” Milo often repeated about the loud colours and abstract designs). A long and narrow counter showcased a spectacular variety of coffee pots, coffee grinders, coffee makers, and all kinds of coffee paraphernalia that looked very strange to the Boy. Most of it was for sale, but some of it was to prepare coffee for customers. One wall featured a rotating gallery of Milo’s paintings (“The outside world’s not ready yet,” he would sometimes remark sadly). The wall facing it displayed Venus’s most recent photographs. The current series were all self-portraits in extreme closeup. Next to the door, hung a giant sign advertising the different products and services offered at Venus & Milo’s High-Class Discount Beauty Salon, Coffee Shop & No-Nonsense Aquarian Therapy Clinic.