Hitherby Dragons

Long ago there was a girl who guarded Rainbow Land. Long ago there were magical bears that lived on clouds up in the sky.

Long ago there was a beautiful and perfect world.

It’s 1952, and Rainbow Land is dead. There’s only Shadow City now. It’s dark and it’s drab but there are glimmers of color here and there around the edges. The shine on the edge of the gang members’ leathers. The shimmer that runs down the length of their guns. The little rainbows you can see in a glass of gin when you hold it up to the light.

Terrence is a sprite. He’s small and cute, covered in gray fur. In another kind of place, it might be a soft and fluffy white. He’s wearing a trenchcoat and a hat. He holds up his glass. He shakes it. Ice cubes clink one against the other. At the edge, the rainbows shine.

“Hey.”

It’s a girl’s voice. He ignores it. Girls are nothing but trouble. But she says it again. “Hey.” A blood-red hand comes to rest on his shoulder. “Terrence.”

“One of my sins,” he asks, “come home to roost?”

“In three hours,” she says, “everyone in Shadow City will die.”

He sets his drink down on the bar and turns. He sees a flare of red and terrible light.

There’s a mansion at the edge of Shadow City. It’s cold white marble, edged in black. In the mornings, the sun casts pale light over its garden and in through its windows. At night, its lights don’t come on. The girl who lives there sits in a chair and looks at the wall, in moonlight or in darkness, and lets her hair grow long.

She hears a bell ring. She rises from her chair. She walks, tall, graceful, and lithe, to the door; and out; and down the garden path to the great black gates.

A man’s standing there. He’s fading away to nothing. He’s drowning in shadows. His face is blurry. “Help me,” he says.

“I don’t have anything for you,” she says.

“Color,” he says. “I need color.”

Her hand comes up to her face. It traces the cold black edge of her chin. It runs across the bleak white of her cheek. It passes across her eyes, two wells of darkness in a perfect face. “I don’t have any,” she says. “I never did.”

She turns and walks away.

“I believe in your rainbow!” he cries.

She walks back to her chair. She sits down. She waits. The man dissolves into darkness.

Terrence wakes, slowly. He looks around. He’s in a car. It’s moving fast. He can make out the driver’s face in the rear-view mirror, but she’s no one he knows.

“Who are you?” he asks.

“Femme Fatale Bear,” she says. “I use sexual forthrightness to unlock the inner desires of men.”

“Sorry, babe,” he says. “Sprites don’t do that kind of thing.”

She smirks.

“Okay,” he admits. “But it’s more ethereal with us. Sprites, we like to get our kids by stork or cabbage, not by knocking up some bear with our star sprinkles, capisce?”

“That’s not what you were moaning in your sleep.”

Terrence frowns in faint memory, then shakes it off. “If this is a kidnapping, you’ve got the wrong sprite. There’s no one left who’d pay a cent for me.”

“You know my kind,” she says.

“Yeah.” He shrugs. His species’ natural deelyboppers wobble. “Magical bears. You live on clouds and ride rainbows around to bestow your gifts on humankind. Am I supposed to be impressed?”

“No,” she says. “There’s no place in the world for that kind of thing any more. It’s a darker time, Twink.”

“Terrence,” he says. “Terrence is the name.”

“It’s a darker time. It calls for a darker bear. All the originals—they shut themselves away back when the rainbows turned monochrome and the stars stopped shining so bright. It’s hard to spread cheer when people’ll kill one another for a little bit of color. It’s hard to spread tender affection when good, honest girls are selling themselves on the streets just so their lips can be red and their hair gold for another few hours of the night. So now there’s just the five of us. Alienation Bear, and Transgression Bear, and Fatalism Bear, and me.”

“That’s four,” Terrence says, and then bites his lip. I’m playing her game, he tells himself. I should know better.

“Nihilism Bear,” she says. “The end-of-everything bear. The bastard bear at the heart of the void. In . . . just under two and a half hours . . . he’s going to stand outside Shadow City and use his Nihilism Bear Stare; and then there won’t be any star sprinkles, or any Shadow City, or any sprites, or even any Earth. Just the great long hungry void.”

“Why’d he wait so long?”

“He wasn’t like this when it started,” she says. “For years, he’s been caring less and less. He’s become a regular grumpy-puss. So last night, he made the decision. ‘Make your goodbyes,’ he said. ‘In the morning, I’ll end the world.’”

Terrence suddenly sits bolt upright. “I can’t help you,” he says. There’s panic in his voice.

“We all pled with him,” she says. “We even tried working together. We all stood next to one another, our bellies bright with the symbols of our aspects and our attributes, and as one we stared. The padlock of alienation, the lipstick of transgression, the hourglass of fatalism, and the broken heart of the femme fatale — our magical bear symbols sprang forth from our stomachs in rays of light and merged into a glorious rainbow of sheer caring. But he only laughed; for he had moved beyond such mortal concerns.”

“No,” Terrence says, vigorously. “I mean, I really can’t help. It’s totally impossible. I can’t do what you think I can. You need to find someone else.”

“You can’t wake the rainbow?”

“She’d never listen to me,” he protests. “Not now.”

Femme Fatale Bear studies him in the mirror. Then she laughs. “You’re afraid, pookie. But you’ll do it for me, won’t you?”

He shakes his head, but the symbol on her stomach is beginning to glow, and the car fills with carmine light. There’s a brilliant beam of energy, the reddest he’s seen in more than a dozen years, and it glances off the mirror to shine full into his eyes.

“Heaven and Earth,” he whimpers.

“You have to help me,” she says, voice almost breaking. “I don’t want to die.”

Terrence closes his eyes and slumps back. “Fine,” he says. “Fine. I’ll talk to her. I’ll talk to her. Please . . . just . . . don’t do that. You’re . . . it’s too much.”

The light fades, and the car pulls up outside the mansion gates.

Wisp looks up as she hears a bell ring. “Twice in one night,” she whispers. “That’s not common.” She rises from her chair. She walks, tall, graceful, and lithe, to the door; and out; and down the garden path to the great black gates.

“Terrence,” she says, to the sprite who waits for her there.

“Rainbow,” he cries. It’s a soft and wounded noise.

“Wisp,” she says.

“Wisp.” He looks up at her, pleading. He trembles. He’s terrified of her. She only looks sad, but he’s shaking like a leaf.

“I don’t have anything for you,” she says.

“Wisp,” he says softly. “Please. Get your magic belt. Put it on. If you don’t harness the power of the rainbow, Nihilism Bear will kill us all.”

She tilts her head to one side. She blinks. “Ask me to move aside a mountain to save a trapped child, and I will stand at its base and push. Ask me to run a thousand miles without stopping, that a starving man might find a meal, and I will set my feet upon that course and run. Ask me to sing to charm the angels, or cut out my tongue to staunch the devil’s hate. Do not ask me this.”

Terrence hesitates. He closes his eyes in pain. Then he says, softly, “I lied to you.”

Wisp’s face is still. Her eyes draw in the moonlight. After a long moment, she says, “Why?”

“It was necessary,” he whispers. Leaves skitter across the road.

“You showed me the machine that made me,” she says. “It wasn’t a lie. I was never a real girl. I was just a thing the sprites put together to save Rainbow Land from darkness. You poured in the star sprinkles and out came a girl.”

“That was true,” Terrence answers.

Wisp’s eyes narrow. There’s a glint in them now that chills. “Then the rest is true,” she says. “I have no heart. I have no life. I have no magic. I’m just a tool. A thing. A vessel for power.”

Behind his back, Terrence crosses his fingers. “That’s true,” he says, “but only when you don’t have sprinkles. Don’t you understand, Wisp? When I put the magic in you, you’re a real person. Your hopes are real hopes. Your dreams are real dreams.”

Fast as a striking whip, she has one hand on each of his shoulders and has him pressed back against the stone arch that holds her gate. She’s grown now. She’s twice her old height and her muscles are strong. She leans into his face. “Why?” she hisses. “Why didn’t you tell me that then?”

“You were a threat,” he answers. “Wisp, it wasn’t my idea. You have to believe me. I had orders! You were a threat!”

Her eyes scan his face. “A threat.”

“Don’t you know what it would have done?”

“I could have stopped the war,” she says. “I could have stopped the killing. But I didn’t. Because I’m not a person. You’re telling me I could have been?”

Some strength returns to Terrence’s eyes. His voice is sharp and resonant. “It was not appropriate for Rainbow Land to get involved. Earth would have found us. They would have annexed us. We wouldn’t have Rainbow Land. We wouldn’t have Shadow City. We’d have nothing.”

She holds him there for a moment, then drops him. “It doesn’t matter,” she says. “Give me a heart. I’ll fight Nihilism Bear.”

She holds up her hands, and a rainbow-symbol belt slithers through the air from her house to land in them. She buckles it around her waist, exhaling like a cinched horse. Solemnly, Terrence extends to her a handful of colored stars. She takes them. The air around her shimmers and gleams like a soap bubble, thousands of colors livid in the night. She makes a high and maddened keening noise. The paleness and darkness of her drips away like paint washing off of ice. Then there comes silence. When Wisp next speaks, her voice comes in seven tones and strikes into his consciousness like a god’s.

“Where shall I go?” she says.

Mutely, he gestures to the car. She laughs a little. “No budget for a magic horse?” she sings.

“Lady,” he whispers. “Had I the means, I would give you the stars; and the sky; and a magic horse besides. But now, I have a car, and a fuzzy red bear representing sexual empowerment; this only, and my life.”

She opens the door. She climbs in. She gestures, and he climbs over her into the other seat. The bear gets in the front, buckles up, and drives.

“Femme Fatale Bear,” she says.

“Wisp.”

“He’s mine,” the bear clarifies. “My sprite. Now. I won’t let anyone else have him.”

Wisp laughs. “Our contest, Bear, is for another time, and another place.”

The bear slams a foot down on the accelerator and the car screeches away. “We’ll get to the city’s edge before Nihilism Bear,” she says. “Unless we get attacked by random monsters who serve only to prolong the action and suspense.”

Wisp smiles. “It . . . has been some time,” she murmurs, polytonally. “It has been some time since I was randomly attacked by monsters. I almost miss it. Such things do not happen in Shadow City.”

“No,” agrees Femme Fatale Bear. “Yet . . . perhaps times change.” She gestures out the front window towards the strange alien monster that straddles the road, ten miles ahead.

“It’s okay,” Wisp sings. “It will delay us, and nothing more.”

Nihilism Bear’s alarm rings. He stretches sleepily. He pulls himself upright in bed. The sun shines fully upon him. “Huh?” he asks. “It’s 9 o’clock? I was sure I set my alarm for 7.” He stands up and putters about the room. He brushes his teeth. He pulls on a cap to cover his mullet. “Bother. Someone must have changed it. Now I’ll be late to destroy the city.”

He wanders out onto his cloud. “Hello sun!” he cries out. “I’ll be destroying you today. Hello butterfly! Your days are numbered. Hello bird! Life is a pointless parade of misfortune and anguish.” The sun twinkles merrily. The butterfly whirls around his head. The bird tweets, twice.

Nihilism Bear grabs a giant nihilism balloon and floats towards Shadow City. He touches ground at the edge. He yawns. “Huh. I guess no one’s going to try to stop me. All right,” he says, sharply. “Nihilism Bear Stare!”

He huffs. He puffs. He takes a deep breath and the shiny formless shadow that marks his stomach glimmers and glistens. Then a wind rises from beyond, and the air goes chill; and there’s a piping from far away of maddened, mindless flutes. In the alleys of Shadow City, a drunk girl takes out her knife and holds it to her wrist. On its streets, gang members strut and preen. In the high towers, gray bureaucrats push the papers about that allocate the city’s color to the few. The void rises from Nihilism Bear to consume Shadow City, and the void takes breath.

A glimmering rainbow rises to meet it. P’a chao! Color and shadow begin to drizzle from the sky.

Nihilism Bear exhales, startled. The darkness dissolves. “Good morning!” he exclaims. Three figures stride towards him through the chromatic rain. “It’s Femme Fatale Bear! You must introduce me to your friends.”

“These,” she says, softly, “are Wisp, who is the Rainbow, and Terrence, her sprite; and they shall bring your madness to an end.”

Nihilism Bear shakes himself, tummy wiggling. “We’ll see about that. Nihilism Bear Stare!”

The symbol arcs from his chest and strikes Wisp’s heart.

“A lot of people get confused,” he says companionably, as she screams and sinks to her knees. “They start thinking that it’s better to exist than not to exist. That’s why you have Nihilism Bear. I bring the enlightenment of the void. I teach children that it’s all right to set aside the burdens of their life and dance forever in nothingness. My motto is, ‘Stop crying — start dying!’ You look like a girl who needs a fresh dose of nihilism. Have you been imagining that life has a point? That’s a good dream, but all it does in the long run is make you hurt more. When you realize it’s all a futile, endless cavalcade of pain, it makes all that struggling you did kind of stupid. Doesn’t it?”

“I saved the universe once,” she says.

“Tsk, tsk.” He points his fuzzy paw at her. “Bang.”

Wisp slumps.

Nihilism Bear relaxes the black glow, and turns to face the other two. His hand goes out to them, palm up, and he wriggles his fused furry fingers in invitation. “Nihilism Bear is hot today. Who else wants some?”

“Wisp,” whispers Terrence. “You can’t die.”

“What?” asks Nihilism Bear.

“You can’t die, Wisp!” Terrence shouts, hardened demeanor slipping. “Then I wouldn’t see you for days and days! I believe in your rainbow, Wisp!”

“Bah,” Nihilism Bear sneers, and the black glow plays across Terrence and Femme Fatale Bear alike. “Your belief doesn’t matter.”

“It does.” The voice is single-toned.

Nihilism Bear turns back to Wisp, who straightens, slowly and painfully.

“It’s one thing to doubt your purpose when you’re just a lost, tired girl gripped in a miasma of existentialist doubt,” Wisp says. Her voice has two tones now, and rising. “But when a gray fuzzy alien in a trenchcoat declares that you can generate color and possibility out of the magic belt you wore when you were a little girl, then maybe — just maybe — the philosophy behind it all isn’t really that important.”

“Oh, hon,” Nihilism Bear says, moved. “You really do need more nihilism in your life. Do you want me to sing the nihilism song?”

Once again, the black wars with the rainbow, against the sound of flutes; and a long seven-toned scream; and then there’s silence.

In Shadow City, a girl fumbles and drops her knife. A thug pauses, and sniffs the air. A bureaucrat, for the first time in seven years, looks out his window to regard the street.

A bird sings.

Terrence opens his eyes. The air is blindingly bright. It’s full of swirls of color. In the center of it all there hangs a girl, her body limp, her eyes closed, and nothing in her expression that is human.

A symbol shines upon Terrence, falling from far away upon a cloud: the lipstick mark of Transgression Bear. In that spotlight he stands, frozen. This is Transgression Bear’s purpose: to teach children and sinners that they must pay for their crimes.

Wisp’s eyes snap open.

“It’s time,” Terrence croaks. “It’s time to take the belt back off. You’ll run out of star sprinkles soon. You won’t have a heart. But it’s good, right? You saved the world. You proved that you’re a true and glorious rainbow.”

“Oh, Terrence,” murmurs the goddess at the rainbow’s heart. “You have lied to me again.”

She takes off the belt. She drops it. It lands, below her, with a clunk. She smiles at him. It’s fierce. It’s predatory. She does not fall.

“You see?” she says, softly. “You lied to me. I never lacked a soul.” She is silent for a moment. “It is not a thing I deserved,” she adds. “That my fuzzy magical companion should be so cruel.”

A length of rainbow lashes out to stroke under his chin.

Once again, Terrence straightens. He glares at her. “Then kill me. I’ve been waiting more’n ten years for you to wake up and put that rainbow through my heart. I won’t be afraid of you. Make an end to it! Make an end to it, Rainbow!”

“No,” she says, and smiles. The rainbows around her slither faster and faster through the air. He feels his mind drifting away into the shifting colors; and it is beyond Terrence the sprite to speak or move or think now.

“It’s not my job,” she says, softly. “I’m not here for revenge.”

The rainbows merge and twist, and the rope of them plunges endlessly into Terrence’s eyes. He shivers. He opens his mouth to scream, and another rainbow plunges in. The gray fades. The white returns, and his fur burns like a star. The trenchcoat whips in the wind and rips away. His hat flies off. He sinks to the ground. The rainbows withdraw.

“I name you Glorious Servant,” she says.

Glorious bounces happily. “All right, Wisp! Thanks for chasing my gloom away. I bet it’s time to bring some color back to Rainbow Land!”

Wisp smiles.

In the alleys, a girl gropes on hands and knees to find her knife. She’s drunk. It’s hard to find. There are only so many places it could be. So many garbage cans, so much waste-strewn ground. She finds it. She brings it to her wrist. “I can’t stop just because I had a moment’s hope,” she says. “There’s so much more despair.”

In the distance, beyond the city’s edge, a tide rises.

In the high towers, a bureaucrat sees the tide. He chokes on his coffee and staggers back away from the window. “Heaven and Earth.”

The tide crests.

The girl cuts. Her white arm begins to trickle deep black blood. She cuts again.

The wave falls.

Spatters of coffee, sinking into the bureaucrat’s papers, shimmer a bright and wooden brown. The cuts on the girl’s wrist shine; her skin turns flush and pink, her blood a pure wine-red. The shadows and grime of Shadow City fade. The bandanas of the gangs shine a brilliant blue, save for the one that is green; and a gangster realizes with cold terror that he’s been hanging out with his blood enemies for the past ten years.

There’s a wind, and it carries a message from the rainbow girl.

“Hi,” says the wind.

“This is my city now.”

There is no blood that flows but red; and no tears that fall that are not jewels; and for a time, of Rainbow Land, we hear no more.

There’s a knock at the door. Six-year-old Bethany answers.

Martin’s standing outside. He’s thirteen. He’s wearing a black suit. It’s snazzy. It might be older than he is. He’s also wearing goggles.

“Hi, Bethany,” Martin says. “Could you take me to your room?”

“I’m not supposed to talk to strangers,” Bethany explains.

“I’m not a stranger,” Martin says. “I’m the smith. I’m the test. I’m the maker.”

Bethany considers. Then she nods, gravely. She reaches up with her pudgy fingers and takes Martin’s hand. She leads him to her room. He looks over her toy shelf. He takes down a Barbie.

“Her name is Watcher,” Bethany says. “But she’s all weird.”

“Don’t worry,” says Martin. “I’ll fix her.”

**

Edna reads. Martin knocks on Edna’s door. Edna opens the door.

“Hi,” Martin says. “Do you have a Barbie?”

Edna looks Martin over. “Are you the Barbie Inspection Squad, or the Barbie Repossession Unit?”

Martin smiles at her. “Please, ma’am, just answer the question.”

“Yes,” she agrees. “Would you like me to fetch her?”

“That won’t be necessary, ma’am.” He slides past her into the apartment. His eyes scan the room. Finally, he sees it, on top of the VCR.

“Has your Barbie been acting . . . oddly, ma’am?” he asks. He walks closer. He touches it.

“Oddly?”

“In an aberrant fashion, ma’am. Doing things that one would not expect Barbies to do. Changing her appearance. Moving. Engaging in philosophy.”

“No.” Edna looks mildly unnerved.

Martin frowns. He twists the Barbie’s head off and looks inside. He shakes it some. Then he smiles. “Ah,” he says. “It’s stuck.”

He bangs the Barbie sharply against the VCR and something shiny falls out into his hand. Martin replaces its head with one sharp screwing motion. It locks back into place. Martin sets the Barbie back down.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

**

It is 2001. The monster sits in his living room and reads. Martin knocks on the front door. The monster answers. Martin smiles at him. The monster looks uncomfortable.

“Pardon me, sir,” Martin says, “but do you have a Barbie?”

“You can’t come in,” the monster says, then turns. Martin is already browsing the monster’s shelves. After a moment, the monster grinds out, “I have one. But it’s perfectly normal.”

Martin glances around, then spots it. He walks over to it. He holds it to his ear.

“I know why you’re here,” the monster says.

“Barbie Inspection Squad,” Martin says. He takes his goggles off and looks into the monster’s eyes. The monster adjusts his shiny tie. Martin looks away. “A while back, someone thought it’d be a good idea to come out with a new Barbie line that had souls.”

“You can’t just come in here and start taking my stuff,” the monster blusters. “I could have you unmade.”

Martin replaces his goggles. He shakes the Barbie. Its eyes begin to shine with a golden glow. He holds it up. “See? Soul.”

“Glowy eyes,” the monster says dismissively.

Martin breathes in the Barbie’s mouth.

“Living with monsters is hard!” the Barbie says.

The monster clenches his jaw. “Mindless babbling.”

“See?” the Barbie says. “He disses me at every opportunity. And we never play dress-up. He likes his spider more than he likes me.”

“The Barbie Inspection Squad,” Martin says, gravely, “tracks these Barbies down and deals with the matter.”

Suddenly, the monster relaxes. “You don’t know what you are.”

Martin smiles lazily. “I’m the smith. I’m the test. I’m the maker. You’re just the dross.”

“Prove it.”

Martin pokes the monster’s chest. “I can touch you.”

“That’s even lamer than bringing my Barbie to life.”

Martin grins. He takes the monster’s hand. He leads the monster down to the basement. Then he lets go. He walks out into the middle of the room.

“It’s funny walking here,” he says. “It’s like the floor is piled high with the bones and wings of angels.”

The monster taps the floor with a foot. It’s stone. It’s dusted. It’s reasonably clean.

“I figure,” Martin says, “that you went through a few dozen before you got to me.” He kicks the air above the floor. “Frederick. Manuel. Steven.” With a tone of wry amusement, he adds, “Lisa.” Then he continues. “Cedric. Clay. Tilly. Basil. Gerard. Earl. Morgan. Thess.” He hesitates.

“The rest weren’t angels,” the monster says.

“Ah,” Martin says.

“So,” the monster says, “you can see names.”

“No,” Martin says. “I can do what it takes. I can kill woglies. I can make myself from nothing. And I can do this.”

He looks around. The room is full of the bones of things that never were. He raises his hand.

The air fills with a storm of becoming. Wings wake and bones straighten. Limbs and fluttering fills the room, and feathers squish into the monster’s mouth. Martin is gone, and the monster realizes, with an odd detached sort of humor, that he is drowning in angels.

The monster turns, choking and gagging, and flounders towards the stairs.

**

“Tell me,” Augusta says. “Why would anyone put a soul in a Barbie?”

“There’s only so much that Heaven can do in the world,” Martin says. “There’s only so much. So evil and horror slips through the cracks. A bunch of souls volunteered to get put inside childrens’ dolls, and come into the world, and help.”

“Oh.” Augusta frowns. “Then why is it bad?”

“I dunno,” Martin says, and shrugs. “It just kinda creeps me out.”

“Father,” asks Eritrea, “why are we a people of salt?”

Her father, Sabin, is an older man, kind of coffee colored, kind of gray. There’s a bit of gray in his hair, too. His eyes are very blue.

“Once upon a time,” he says, and puts Eritrea on his lap, “there was magic in the world. And it is the nature of magic to take two forms: dark and light, and the nature of the dark to eclipse the light.”

Eritrea adjusts herself for comfort, and looks up, and listens.

“We were gods in Babylonia,” he says, “and in a monster’s thrall; and in his hands all terrors and all sorrows. And we raised up one of our number to be a hero, and kill the monster, and free the world, and her name was Mylitta, and she was the mother of our line. And the dark enchantments broke, and following, the dawn; and Allah said to us, ‘No more shall you be gods, for you are needed no longer.’”

Eritrea thinks. “That is not very salty,” she says.

“Have you heard me say,” Sabin asks, “that we are a people defined by our sorrows?”

She nods.

“We did not bring that dawn,” Sabin says. “The hero fell, and the monster triumphed over her. Not our hand but Allah’s broke his tyranny. Not our efforts but Allah’s will saved us from eternal slavery. And, even so, some of our people are still in the monster’s hands.”

“Oh,” she says. “That’s sad.”

“That is one reason,” he says, “that we are a people of salt.”

There is a sword calling to Sabin as he tells this story; and the path of his life is close to ending; so let us look back to its beginning.

It is 715 years into the common era.

In Syria there is a carpenter’s apprentice, and his name is Sabin, a self-effacing young man with startling eyes. The daughter of Caliph Sulayman falls in love with those eyes, so, will he or nill he, Sabin is summoned before Sulayman.

“Tell me,” says Sulayman, “are you worthy of my daughter?”

“No, milord,” says Sabin. He shakes his head, and a shock of hair falls across his eyes.

“I thought as much,” Sulayman agrees. “Yet if I execute you, I shall hear nothing but weeping and wailing for all my days.”

“It must be terribly hard to be caliph.”

“You cannot imagine,” Sulayman assures him. He hesitates. “Very well,” he adds, decisively. “You shall travel to the edge of my domain, where a great scorpion troubles the lives of my people. You shall kill it and prove your heroism, or you shall die trying; and either way, I shall benefit.”

“The caliph is wise,” Sabin says, and does obeisance, and leaves the court. He travels to the edge of the caliphate. He digs a trough and fills it with wine, and waits for the scorpion to come. Eventually, it does, stalking along the earth with sinister intent. It is as long as Sabin is tall, and a sickly brown.

“Respects, mighty scorpion,” Sabin says. He prostrates himself, and the scorpion slows its advance.

“It is rare,” says the scorpion, in a high thin voice, “for someone to greet me in this manner.”

“I have been sent,” Sabin says, “to kill you, or die trying. Since I cannot kill you, I feel that I should make the best of things, and drink wine with you before I die.”

“You are wise,” the scorpion says, and sidles up beside him, and sips from the trough of wine.

“How did you come to be?” Sabin asks, with genuine curiosity. “I had not thought that creatures like you still existed.”

“Here and there,” the scorpion says. “Now and again.”

“And yourself?”

“I was an ordinary scorpion, limited in scope,” the creature explains. “Then I stung the local mullah. As he died in agony, he cried out, ‘Ah! Allah is no merciful God!’ This blasphemy shocked me so terribly that I became . . . as you can see.”

“Does that happen often?”

“I have never seen another of my kind,” the scorpion admits, “but I do not mind; my libido is much smaller than my stature. So I wander this land, stinging and eating humans and cattle, and living as a scorpion must.”

It sips some more from the wine.

“They do not appreciate me,” it broods. “I mean, perhaps I am the only one. Perhaps I am a wonder of the world, the greatest of all scorpions. They should fete me with fine foods and I should have palaces and silks. Instead, they send you out to kill me.” It looks up. “I suppose you are hoping that I will become drunk, and fall into this trough.”

“No,” Sabin admits. “I mean, that would be clever of me, but my thought was this: you are a wonder of the world, the greatest of all scorpions. You’re neat. And I did not want to die as just another unknown bit of prey. I wanted to drink with you through the night and then wrestle drunkenly until one of us met a tragic end.”

The scorpion peers at him blearily. “You are an odd creature.”

“We are a people of salt,” Sabin says.

It thinks for a moment, then sighs and lowers itself into a crouch. “Ah.” It hesitates. “I almost do not want to kill you,” it says. “For the wind spoke the story of your people, and I know that we are kin.”

“It is all right,” Sabin says. “Kinslaying is a tradition.”

“I know,” the scorpion says. “And besides, I am a scorpion. I cannot very well resist my nature; not for kin, not for pleasure, and not for all the riches of the world.”

“It must simplify things.”

“That,” says the scorpion, and lowers its head to sip from the wine, “it doesh.”

“You’re getting drunk,” Sabin says. He’s a bit tipsy himself, so it seems very amusing.

“What of it?” The scorpion’s tone is defensive.

“It’s funny.”

He laughs, and the scorpion joins him in his laughter. Then there is a silence, and then more words, and they talk late into the night. In the morning, they rise, and face off against one another.

“Do you want to win?” the scorpion says.

“Why do you ask?”

“It’s important,” the scorpion says. “I would call you friend, but I have no stance for fighting friends. I must fight you as enemy, or as prey.”

Sabin thinks. “I do not want to win,” he says.

The scorpion thinks about that.

“You are an odd man,” it says.

“No,” Sabin says. “It’s not that. It’s just . . . if I kill monsters, I’ll die.”

The scorpion stops.

“That is a strange statement,” it says.

“The world is full of strangeness,” Sabin says.

“True,” the scorpion says; and they face off; and as the stinger charges down, fear takes hold of Sabin’s throat, and he catches it in flight and drives it down into the scorpion’s brain. The scorpion twitches, twice, and goes still.

“Oh,” says Sabin. “Oh.”

He sits for a while, and travels for a long time, and then he stands, dustily, before the Caliph.

“You killed it,” the Caliph says.

“Sheer luck!” Sabin assures him. He has grown more cheerful as he traveled. “It is not something I could normally do.”

“I heard,” the Caliph says, momentously, “that you got it drunk and it fell into a trough.”

Sabin frowns. “I should not wish to dispute the Caliph’s illustrious sources.”

“Your methodology was clever; but clever enough to earn my daughter’s hand? This is what I must ponder.”

“Great Sulayman,” Sabin pleads, “Your daughter is lovely, and your kingdom great, but I wish only to be a carpenter’s apprentice. I have no wish to perform great deeds. I do not want to marry into wealth. I wish only to labor with my hands and die in obscurity.”

“Perhaps,” the Caliph says, stroking his chin, “I should assign you a more terrible monster.”

“As the Caliph thinks best,” Sabin grumbles.

“In the northern region,” the Caliph says, “there is a beast, or so I am told, with thirteen limbs and seventeen eyes, and great fierce claws, and a rumbling roar, and it is a great disturbance to the peace. Its skin is hard enough to turn aside a soldier’s blade. You shall kill it and prove your heroism, or die trying.”

“Ah!” Sabin says, stricken. “Surely the Caliph’s great beast is a better tool for that than I!”

“My daughter does not wish to marry my great beast,” says the Caliph.

Sabin sighs and lowers his head.

“The caliph is wise,” Sabin says, and does obeisance, and leaves the court. He travels to the north. With the caliph’s funds he buys seven great bolts of silk, fine foods, and the service of a young maiden named Parmys. He goes to the creature’s haunts, and roasts the meats, and waits, and in time the creature comes stalking out. It is huge and grey and powerful and it has many legs and many eyes and many arms and its shape is somewhere between an elephant’s and a bug’s.

“Respects, mighty beast,” Sabin says. He prostrates himself, and the creature stops.

“Hm,” it says. “You show respect.” It looks at him through its seventeen eyes. Five of them blink. “You are unusual.”

“I have brought you gifts, too,” Sabin says. “Fine foods. Silks. A woman for your harem.”

“No sexual services,” Parmys clarifies. She studies the creature, and then nods firmly. “I am strictly a prestige odalisque.”

“You are generous,” the creature says. It strides forward on its muscular legs and regards the silks. It looks up at Sabin. “You are hoping that I shall try on these silks and find myself tangled in them, unable to move while you locate the one weak spot in my armor and pierce it with a blade?”

“The worthy creature misjudges me,” Sabin says. “I wish only to honor you as you deserve.”

“Very unusual,” it sniffs. Then its eyes narrow all at once. “You smell of kin.”

Parmys looks at Sabin. She looks at the creature. She looks back.

“I don’t see a resemblance,” she volunteers.

“I am a god,” it says. “He is a god.”

“No,” Sabin says. “We are gods no longer.”

Parmys looks at him.

“We aren’t,” Sabin says. “At least, I’m not. I don’t even know what he . . . it . . . is.”

The creature lowers itself into the silks, and thinks.

“I do not know myself,” it says. “Once, I was a person. But I . . . don’t know. I don’t remember what I looked like.” Its body ripples, shifts, and sprouts a new limb. “Like this, perhaps,” it says. “I do not know.”

“Ah,” says Sabin.

“I am content,” it says.

Parmys stares at it. “Sometimes I forget what I look like,” she says. “Or even who I am. But I do not look like that.”

“No,” the creature agrees. “You are lovely.”

“And you,” Sabin says, “are fortunate.”

He stares at the creature with naked envy in his eyes; and it blinks at him seven times.

“Why do you say that?” it asks.

“Both of you,” he says. “You have no idea. You can afford to forget yourself.”

It hulks closer to him. One foot snags on the silks.

“And you cannot?” it breathes.

“I have a gift,” Sabin says. “I can kill monsters. And it is always nagging at my mind. If I forget myself, then I will kill you, and I will die.”

“I am not a monster,” it offers. It sounds almost offended.

“I use the term loosely,” Sabin admits. “But come: you stalk around on many legs killing people.”

“I also rip out their brains and sup on their memories of self,” the creature admits. “But still. Call me titan. Creature. Beast. Not monster. I have seen monsters in my day.”

Sabin sighs. The creature looms closer. Then it trips on the silks and falls on them both. Parmys screams. Then there are knives in each of Parmys’ hands and she is stabbing at the creature’s eyes. It is roaring. It is kicking out at them with one great foot. Everything is confusion and war. In that chaos Sabin, drowning in indecision, finds himself reaching out his hand and pushing it through the creature’s weak spot and into its brain. It is shrieking and his mind is spinning as he squeezes the pulp therein. Then it twitches, and casts them both aside, and dies.

“Sabin!” Parmys says, and shakes him. “Sabin! Are you all right? Don’t . . . don’t . . . die however it was you thought you were going to die!”

Sabin’s eyes are white and staring, and his hands are twitching. Impulsively, Parmys kisses him, hard; and he gives a horrible jerk and falls back, and his eyes clear.

“I am here,” he says, and his voice is quiet. “I am still here.”

“Good,” she says. “I . . . I have never seen . . .”

“I hired you,” he says. “So I will take you back with me to the court of the Caliph; but you must never say what you have seen and heard.”

“Of course,” she says.

And so they travel back, and the Caliph calls them to his court, and with great honor greets Sabin.

“Sabin,” he says, “you are truly a hero of my land.”

Sabin grits his teeth.

“And,” the Caliph says, “you may marry my daughter, and have a great parcel of land, and six sacks full of gold; and do not think of refusing, for she has set her heart on this.”

“She is beautiful,” Sabin says, “and kind, and she would accept it if I said ‘no’.”

“Perhaps,” the Caliph says, “yet I would be the one to live with her grief, not you; and, in an odd coincidence, I am the Caliph, and you are not. Thus, you shall wed.”

“The Caliph is wise,” Sabin says, and does perfunctory obeisance.

Sabin takes the Caliph’s daughter, and Parmys, and lives in a grand estate. At first he is unhappy and eats every meal in sorrow. As time goes by, his affection for the Caliph’s daughter grows. For she is, as he has said, beautiful and kind, and it is not her fault that her father’s ways are stern. They become more and more in love, and in this all would be well; but a jealousy rises in Parmys’ heart, and she says to the Caliph’s daughter, “Ah, he does not love you much, you know.”

“Oh?” the Princess says, and raises an eyebrow.

“Well,” Parmys says, “when he slew the monster for me, he said, ‘Why, this is the least of the things I would do for the woman of my heart; I like you but scarcely, and still you deserve this death. Ah! If I loved you, then I would pile such beasts before you as to make a kingdom of their meat.’”

The Princess’ nose wrinkles. “That seems unsanitary; and, moreover, difficult, for there are not so many monsters to go around.”

“There is,” Parmys says, “the Caliph’s great beast.”

“Foo!” says the Princess; but the seed was sown. And one day, as she lay with Sabin, she says, “Will you kill the great beast for me?”

And he rises, and glares at her.

“It is as I thought,” she announces. “You love me not! With your eyes and your ways you woo’d me, but you love me not!”

“More than the mountains love the sun,” he says. “More than the deserts love the sand. I would bring you its heart, Princess, but I cannot.”

She snorts. “Men are easy with such words.”

“Yes,” he agrees. “I am hardly the only man unable to slay the Caliph’s great beast.”

She leaps to her feet, and cleans herself, and dresses, and says, “Come. We will go to the palace, and beneath it, and I will show you to the beast, and you will kill it for me.”

“You do not understand,” Sabin says. “If I kill it, I will die.”

“Why?”

“I am a hero,” Sabin says. “It is my nature to kill monsters. But I am also djinn.”

She hesitates, and then sits upon the bed. “I should like to hear such things,” she says, “before the wedding, rather than after.”

“We were gods in Babylonia,” he says. “And in a monster’s thrall. So we rose up a hero from our numbers, to kill the monster and free the world. It was the final battle in centuries of battle. It was the chance that Allah gave us to answer our long pain and end the tyranny of the monster’s power. And the hero met the monster, and they fought, and the monster won.”

She looks him up and down. “You are here. You are alive.”

“We are a people of salt,” he says, “defined by our sorrows.”

“You are alive.”

“As the monster gloated of his victory,” Sabin says, “the hand of Allah struck him down. It obscured the sun. It blotted out the sky. Everything was chaos and terror. But we were not strong enough, you see. We had failed. So he cast us down too. Allah banished us from Heaven. He cast us down to earth, to live in the mud and the muck. He stripped us of our godhead. And without it, we are simply slaves.”

“Allah is merciful,” the Princess protests.

“I am a hero,” Sabin says. “It is the law of my nature. I can kill monsters. That is my slavery, and it is not a harsh one.”

“Then why do you not?”

“It is not a time for heroes,” Sabin says. “That time is ended. And Allah’s judgment on us was harsh. If I succumb to my nature, if I become more than human, if I let myself transcend, then I will die, and it is no clean death. I will become a god stripped of godhead. It means becoming nothingness. Not even the angel of death will come for me.”

“I do not believe you,” she says. Then, with a wisdom uncharacteristic of a Princess, she adds, “but I trust you. You need not kill the beast for me.”

“Thank you,” he says.

And Parmys’ jealousy withers as the days grow long, for she is a practical woman. Sabin’s happiness and the Princess’ happiness grow, but still that conversation nags at his mind and does not give him peace; and only the birth of his daughter Eritrea keeps him there so many years.

“I don’t think,” Eritrea says, “that we should define ourselves by our sorrows.”

“Oh?” Sabin asks.

“Those things are sad,” she says, “but they’re done. Maya’s tears. The monster’s victory. They’re done. We should make things brighter, and not dwell on the bad things.”

“Ah,” Sabin says. “But it is not to dwell that we call ourselves a people of salt.”

“It is not?”

“It is the nature of those who suffer tragedy,” Sabin says, “to say: this is our nature, this is as we deserve, this is part of us.”

Eritrea nods.

“We are a people of salt,” he says, “to remind us that we were worth Mylitta’s sacrifice, and Ella’s before her, and all those after, and most of all of Maya’s tears.”

And it is seven nights thereafter that he rises, and dresses in armor, and takes up a sword, and travels down into the Caliph’s dungeons.

“I am here to kill you, beast,” he says, and there is a hissing and a rumbling and a shining in the dark. And he draws his sword, and for a moment all is light, and then he shreds, like a tissue in a gale, and the angel of death does not find him, nor any place thereafter bear accounting for his soul.

And Eritrea does not forget.

It is 550 years before the common era. In Harran, at the temple of the moon god, Nabonidus binds Mylitta to the altar.

“I’m sorry,” Nabonidus says.

Mylitta is drowning. She cannot breathe. It makes no sense what is happening to her.

There are words for what he does. They are mundane words, words of everyday life, but they are not pleasant ones. But in the end, it is not the things he does to her that hurts. It is that she cannot stop them.

I loved my world,
My world, where I was strong, where I was fair, where I shone bright,
My world, where I was strong, where I was fair, and I would win.

I did not want to leave that world,
My world, where I was strong,
But passage took to me.
And now my world is thin, and dark, and trembling.
And now my world is thin, and dark, and full of storms.

I trembled when I dreamed
Of it,
The passage to a place of storms.
But passage took to me.
– Mylitta’s Lament

In the temple of Sin, at Harran, Nabonidus escorts Mylitta into a world where neither reason nor magic has power, and nor does she.

This act is named eduction.

At the end, there is a god.

“I like the rain,” Sid says.

“It’s nice,” Max says.

“It’s like the corpses of melted snowflakes dripping slowly from some great snowflake graveyard. Don’t you think? A graveyard like elephants have.”

“I miss you,” Max says. “It hurts my heart. Because it’s so very Sid not to know the word ‘cloud.’”

Sid looks down. His eyes are winsome.

“It’s a hard word,” Sid says. “Two vowels in a row, like ‘ouzo’.”

A distant crashing noise intrudes. It is followed by a soft and faraway hum.

“It’s starting,” Max says.

“What is?”

The world vibrates softly. Something new is happening. Something strange. The salt and pepper shakers rattle. The beaded curtain in the doorway shakes.

“The running of the luggage,” Max says.

In Babylon, in 2004, it is the running of the luggage.

Sid listens.

“Is that why we’re here?” Sid asks.

“It’s why I’m here,” Max says. “I don’t know why you’re here.”

“I wanted to go to Sydney,” Sid says. “It has the best name of any Australian city ever. But I drowned in confusion and got on the wrong flight. That’s why I’m in Babylon.”

“Like luggage,” Max says.

“Like lost luggage.”

“My bag came here,” Max says. “A lot of luggage does. The undeliverable. The forgotten. The lost.”

The table shakes with its hidden passion.

(It is its love for the nearby table. It can never be expressed. It can never be spoken. If a table speaks of such things it is the end. But it may tremble.)

The water glasses on the table shiver.

“Every year,” Max says, “Babylon holds the running of the luggage.”

“I met you when I got off the plane,” Sid says. “It was an accident. I wanted never to see you again. I didn’t know it was the running of the luggage.”

“Have a drink,” Max says. “It’s no big deal.”

“It is a big deal,” Sid says. “I have to turn you in to the police.”

“It’s no big deal. We met. We walked to a restaurant. We got our hair wet in the rain. We went through the curtain. We sat down at a table. I ordered a drink. You should too.”

A pack of luggage gallops by outside the door. A damp breeze stirs Sid’s hair. A few thin locks of hair curl against his cheek. They look dead sexy there.

Sid looks pretty good today, for Sid.

“If you get an alcoholic drink,” says Max, “you might forget to turn me in. But if you get something watered down, the local water will make you sick.”

Sid looks sad and lost.

“Have I no third option?” Sid asks.

Max thinks. The cloud of his thoughts grows richer and denser. A suggestion precipitates. “Rum and coke?”

“Okay.”

Sid orders a rum and coke. He sits back.

A carousel of luggage storms by. It turns the street’s puddles into spray.

“Is this festival safe?” Sid asks. “The door is a beaded curtain. It cannot save us from feral Gucci.”

“I don’t know,” Max says. “I guess so. Nobody else is leaving.”

“That’s true.”

A single solitary bag ghosts by. It’s lean and underpacked, like a scavenger. Its hunger is tragic.

“I lost a head,” Max says.

“A head?— oh, thanks,” Sid says. His drink has arrived. He sips it through a straw. Each sip is daringly unabashed.

“I packed it to prove I killed someone. I checked it for Detroit. But it got sent to Babylon.”

Sid sips further.

Max waits.

“Hard luck,” says Sid.

Max nods.

“Sometimes I miss you and my bones ache and my eyes blur,” says Max.

“It’s not a big deal,” Sid says.

Max half-smiles.

Sid looks sad.

“I plan to do this,” says Max. “I’ll have a drink with you. I’ll hang out. Then when I can bear to leave, I’ll sneak out and find my luggage.”

“It’s out there?”

“Out there.”

There’s a scream from somewhere outside. The scream stops, sudden and short. The locals look up from their tables. There’s a silence in the room.

“Tourists,” one man says.

Another man shakes his head.

Then the locals go back to their conversations.

“Don’t go out there,” Sid says.

“Why?”

“It’s dangerous.”

“My bag is mine,” Max says. “It won’t hurt me.”

“It’s running with a bad crowd,” says Sid. “It might go feral.”

“Things like that don’t happen,” Max says. “Not to my luggage. My luggage wouldn’t go feral.”

“Mine bit me once.”

Sid drinks some more. It’s suddenly cold and bitter drinking.

“I caught my finger in the zipper. I had to rip the whole bag apart.”

“Harsh.”

“No,” Sid says. He’s hard-edged now. “Practical.”

“Ah,” says Max.

Sid sips ruthlessly at his straw.

“You know— I mean, that thing— what happened with us—”

“Practical?”

“Yeah.”

“I know,” says Sid. He smiles. His smile has sun and snow and ice in it. “I still have to turn you in. For closure.”

“I understand.”

“But I’ll go to the bathroom first,” says Sid. “I have to pee. So you can run away then, like a terrified puppy.”

“Okay,” says Max.

“I mean, not that you should.”

“Of course.”

“Just, I have to pee.”

“It’s okay.”

Sid gets up. He asks a waitress where the bathroom is. He faces the bathroom hallway with determination and walks in.

Max stands. He slinks to the door.

“It’s not safe,” the waitress says.

“It’s okay,” Max says.

“It’s not safe,” she insists. But he pushes past her, out through the beaded curtain. It rattles like a snake. Like a snake with maracas, preparing to strike.

“Be well,” Max says, to the waitress.

The luggage run is fierce now. It fills most of the streets. It shouts to Heaven like a world in pain. It thunders like the wrath of God. Max jumps up and grabs the fire escape ladder. He drags himself up towards the roof. He needs a lofty height to find his bag.

“I can’t see it,” Max says.

He goes higher. He’s standing on the roof.

“Black,” he says. “Black as pitch. Zippers like dragon’s teeth. My bag, with a teddy bear and some clothes and a poor damned bastard’s head.”

The luggage runs fiercer.

“Where are you?” Max asks the world.

There’s a growling snapping zipper behind him.

The bag is not Sid. It did not love Max long. It did not love him well. And it does not love him now.