PSEUDOPOD #264 offers Liz Argall’s A Study In Flesh and Mind, the story of a live model’s struggles to please the Great Teacher. In addition to writing, Liz is a live artist model [...]]]> Back for the first installment of Hear That? for 2012. There is some great audio fiction out there that deserves your attention.

PSEUDOPOD #264 offers Liz Argall’s A Study In Flesh and Mind, the story of a live model’s struggles to please the Great Teacher. In addition to writing, Liz is a live artist model and her experiences lend a quivering desperation to the story. Philippa Ballantine’s reading drives home the ache in the listener’s bones as the model’s session continues.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies #073 for audio fiction presents Seth Dickinson’s first story sale, The Traitor Baru cormorant, Her Field-General, and Their Wounds, read by BCS editor Scott H. Andrews. Seth Dickinson is a graduaste of the University of Chicago and the Alphoa Writer’s Workshop. He tells the story of Baru Cormorant, a traitorous general, and the political subtleties and realities of revolutions. His use of a traumatic brain injury as a means of driving the plot is very well done. Scott H. Anderson’s even reading allows the words to come to life.

As always, I hope you take the time to listen to these wonderful stories. Leave a comment; tell me what you thought of them. Feel free to share this recommendation with others, and don’t forget to drop by either site to leave a comment, or make a donation to help them fund their quest for great fiction.

Until next time, keep your ears open!

A soft chirruping huff came from behind. She glanced over her shoulder. “Good, good. Head on in.”

The tree crept up the ramp and through the portal of swirling black and white, taking the tiny partridge with it. [...]]]> “Okay,” the writer said, scratching the back of her head with her pen. “Partridge and Pear Tree?”

A soft chirruping huff came from behind. She glanced over her shoulder. “Good, good. Head on in.”

The tree crept up the ramp and through the portal of swirling black and white, taking the tiny partridge with it. The writer marked them off her list.

“Two Turtle Doves? Has anyone seen – okay, good. Head on in, guys.”

Wing in wing, the birds strut up the ramp and stepped as one into the portal.

One by one, the lights shut down starting at the far end of the imagination. Christmas was coming, and it was time to move on. “What about the French Hens? You’re up next, Hens.”

The hens minced forward, combs at attention, flags a flying. One chain smoked thin black cigarettes; the other two carried bottles of Chambertin. “Viva la France! Viva la France!”

“Yeah. Viva la whatever,” the writer said, making a note on her list. “In you go.”

“You are American, oui?, Feh, Americans!” said the hens, but they went, and the imagination was a quieter place for their passing.

The writer sighed, rolling her shoulders against the stress of twelve days of overtime and no coffee. She looked around at the characters packing boxes and covering crates for next year, if there was a next year. Times were tough all over. “What’s next? Have we got the Calling Birds? Golden Rings, you’re up after the Birds.”

From above, four birds sounded a challenge and came out of the rafters. The writer dropped to her knees, clip board raised to protect her head. “Wait! I meant -”

The birds swooped passed her, grabbed the five golden rings sitting on the edge of one of the crates, and carried them through the portal. A scattering of feathers landed around the writer, tiny bits of dun and white. The writer sighed. “Um. . .yeah.”

The Geese went without too much fuss, their eggs rolling after them with ovoid enthusiasm. The Swans wouldn’t budge until stagehands brought out the hoses and sprayed down the walkway; the runoff washed over their feet and soaked their bellies. “Cannonball!” said the last, and in he went, wings wrapped around his knees.

It wasn’t quite so bad, really. The year had brought its share of challenges, but in the end all but the most recalcitrant agreed that the writer needed a break, a rest, time away from the tools of her trade. She couldn’t get time away from her imagination, that was a core personal component, but the crew hoped it might stretch and settle while the writer recharged. She could take a walk, lounge in the tub, paint the house, walk the dogs. In the end, what mattered most was not where or how she went on vacation, but that she went in the first place.

The writer cried with all eight Maids, and laughed with six of the nine Ladies, the other three running up the ramp at the last minute. “Take care of yourself,” one said, pressing an envelope into the writer’s hand, and then she spun into the portal and slipped away.

The writer worked her finger under the flap. A copy of Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”, and a gift certificate for an hour long massage. The writer tucked both at the back of her clip board. “Thanks,” she said to the swirl of black and white in the center of the imagination. “Let’s keep moving. Lords-a-Leaping, you’re up!”

The Lords leapt, the Pipers piped, and gifted her with a hookah of all things, and that left only the Drummers.

The writer rubbed her face with both hands. ‘Drummers? Twelve Drummers, you ready?”

No answer.

“Come on, guys. Twelve Drummers, time to get drumming.”

The rest of the crew looked surreptitiously around, careful to not meet the writer’s gaze. She beat herself with the clip board. “Has anyone seen the Drummers?”

The crew shook heads, murmured in the negative without so many words, and hurried to finish their assigned tasks.

“Great. Just great.” The writer strode down the length of the imagination, muttering her own negatives.

She found the drummers at the only water cooler still working. The horned men regarded her approach with expressions of studied indifference. “Hey, guys,” the writer said, stopping a few steps from the frosty cooler. “How’zit going?”

The Drummers shrugged.

The writer smiled. “Time to get moving. You’re the last to go.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” one of the Drummers said.

The writer stood perfectly still. “Pardon?”

“We’re staying,” said another voice. None of their lips moved, she couldn’t identify which one had spoken. Like a high school percussion section, the Drummers stood all for one and one for all.

She gritted her teeth. “Okay. I thought we’d worked this out.”

One of the Drummers tossed his water cup into the garbage, another snorted and spit. “Yeah, well, we changed our minds. We’re tired of playing second fiddle.”

“Twelfth fiddle,” another muttered under his breath, and the group snickered as one.

The writer pinched the bridge of her nose between her pointer finger and thumb, squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. “Come on, don’t do this, okay. Last minute is always a bad idea. You know that, I know that, everybody here knows that Let’s just go through the portal and call it even.”

A flat, hard: “No.”

The writer inhaled, exhaled, did it again. “Okay. Okay. Help me out here. Help me understand. Why, all of a sudden, have you changed your minds?”

The click-snap of lights going out sounded in the distance, and another section of the imagination went dark. Men, women, and things walked towards and past them, some nodding, most doing their best to pretend to be too busy to notice anything. The hum of the portal grew louder, softened, crescendoed a second time. Paused, and started all over again.

“Like we said, we’re tired to playing hind tit. Most people only pay attention to the first five verses of the song, anyway, and you did the same thing with your stories.” The Drummers fidgeted, claws rippling on snares, sticks rat-a-tapping on rims.

“What about my story?”

“It sucks.” Followed by a cymbal rim shot.

The writer repeated her deep breathing. “I did my best. It was the last day, I hadn’t slept well at all since I started, I was tired -”

“That’s just it,” the Drummers said. “Everybody’s tired by the time they get to us.” A few threw their hands up in the air, others gave her wide, idiotic smiles. “Ooooh! Golden rings! Aren’t they great? Wait. Isn’t there something after that? Nah, who cares.”

To a horned man, the Drummers scowled. “So we’re done. Finish your own drum solo, and leave us out of it.”

The writer frowned, a slow burn creeping up her neck, her cheeks. “I really don’t have time for this.”

Two Drummers shrugged.

“So, what do you want?” the writer demanded.

“Nothing,” the Drummers said.

The writer crossed her arms over her clipboard and chest. “No, I mean it. What do you want?”

“To be the first in the song for once.”

The writer shook her head. “Can’t do that.”

“Then we can’t go through the portal,” the Drummers said. One, perhaps two, flipped her off.

The writer paced back and forth with tight, impatient steps. “It’s not my song. It’s a traditional song, a helluva lot longer than – look, why are we going through all of this again?” She stopped and faced them. “I need you to get in the portal. Now. I’m on a deadline.”

The Drummers shrugged. “Best of luck with that.”

The writer threw her clip board on the ground. “Jesus, for once in your miserable lives just do what you’re told, okay?”

The Drummers filled and passed out little waxed paper cups of cold water. “You heard what we wanted. Give us top billing, and we’ll talk.”

Lights click-snapped. Voices called good-bye to one another, see you next year, maybe.

The writer ran a hand through her hair, then picked up her clip board. She straightened the paperwork, the poem and gift certificate. “Are you sure this is how you want it to end?”

A row of Drummers shrugged, a slow drum roll building. “Ball’s in your court,” they said.

“You got served,” one said.

Another ripple of laughter, a coarse, crude sound.

The writer looked beyond them, and nodded. “Suit yourselves.” She turned on her heel and walked away, calling as she went: “The Drummers are a no go. Let’s get the rest of the baggage sent out, and strap down the cargo.”

Voices throughout the imagination agreed, and an air of anticipation quickened the pace.

The Drummers stayed by the water cooler, smug in their righteous assurances, until the lights in their section were shut off, followed by others, and others, until the lights around the portal and beyond were shut down, and the twelve Drummers were left in darkness.

“Um. . .” said one.

“Is she coming back?” said another.

A third swore.

One at a time, the voices slipped away, fading to a sudden black and white stop. Silence followed darkness.

“Hello?” said one of the Drummers.

“Shut up,” said another.

“What if they left us here?”

“They won’t.” In the dark, the assertion didn’t hold the confidence it might once have.

“But it’s dark.”

“I said shut up!”

A stick skipped across a skin head, clattered on the floor like a spider. “Who did that?”

“Um. . .”

Emptiness followed silence, curling around it in a chill embrace. Nothing stirred, no stray event. In the distance, darkness turned to nothingness.

“I don’t think she’s coming back.”

“Sure she is. We just have to wait is all.”

Darkness. Silence.

“It’s, uh, really dark. You know, like, dark, dark.”

The Drummers nodded, and could not see the motion.

One of them swore.

“What?” demanded half of them.

“Where’s the water cooler?”

Silence. Emptiness.

“It was right here. Where did it go?”

“I don’t -”

“Will you knock off the -”

“I can’t find my sticks. I had them in my hand, and -”

“Where are my feet?”

Emptiness.

“Wait for us!”

As one, the Drummers ran as fast as they could in what they hoped was the right direction, keeping haphazard time with hands and feet. Emptiness curled around them, coiling through their ranks, turning a dozen into elelven, into ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one -

“Ready?” said a voice from everywhere at once.

The single Drummer stopped dead in his tracks, scraping his bodhrán with the cipin. “Wh-Who?” he not quite squeaked.

“I said ready? We’re all that’s left, you and I, and I’m not long for this world. I really do need to rest.”

The Drummer whirled in a circle, looking high and low. “B-B-But the others. . .”

“Are gone, like you will be once I leave. It gets lonely here after too long, and after the lonely leaves there’s nothing. Nothing at all.” The weight of the last word trembled and sighed on the edge of a breath.

The Drummer tugged on his horns and began to cry. “But I’m. . .And you’re. . .And I. . .”

A portal of swirling black and white appeared before the Drummer. “Last chance. The others said no. It doesn’t have to be that way. I don’t want to leave you behind, but I can.”

The Drummer wiped his nose on his sleeve. “And, and if I say no?”

Darkness. Silence. Emptiness. Or the portal.

The Drummer took a step forward, and the next, and the one after that. Finally, the Drummer boy of the first day of Christmas stepped into the portal, and disappeared.

The writer folded the portal in half, quarters, eighths, on and on, until it fit snugly between the covers of a book which she slid onto the shelf.

She stepped back, dusted off her hands, and smiled up from the page. “He’s fine,” she said. “The others are waiting for him under the tree, each the first verse in their own version of the song. I’m a bitch, but I’m not a BITCH.”

She winked at the reader. “Merry Christmas.”

And that was the end.

Pete groaned. “Come in.”

Paris and Piper stepped inside. “Honey, Piper has something to show you,” Paris said, all sparkles, and dangling earrings, and you-will-show-some-holiday-cheer-or-I-will-go -all-Krampus-on-your-ass behind her smile.

Pete twisted his face into his best Give-me-a-break-I’m-trying-to-figure-things-out-here grin. “Sure. What’cha got for me, sweetie?”

Piper bounced over to her [...]]]> A knock on the workshop door.

Pete groaned. “Come in.”

Paris and Piper stepped inside. “Honey, Piper has something to show you,” Paris said, all sparkles, and dangling earrings, and you-will-show-some-holiday-cheer-or-I-will-go -all-Krampus-on-your-ass behind her smile.

Pete twisted his face into his best Give-me-a-break-I’m-trying-to-figure-things-out-here grin. “Sure. What’cha got for me, sweetie?”

Piper bounced over to her father and presented him with a picture of a dog sitting in a field of flowers. “For you!”

Pete took the picture, searching for something, anything, honestly appreciative to say. “Honey, that’s great. You, you even managed to stay inside the lines this time.” He set the picture on the desk behind him, right next to the coffee mug with eggnog and an extra four fingers of spiced rum.

“I love you, Daddy,” his daughter said, and she hugged him as hard as she could.

Pete managed to return the hug without cringing overmuch. He looked over Piper’s bright red braids to his wife’s you’d-better-figure-it-out-pronto-Mister-I-Can-Fix-It glare. “I love you, too, honey. Why don’t you, um, head into the game room? You’re Xmasakah present is waiting for you.”

Blue eyes widened. “Really deally?”

He couldn’t help it. Pete’s smile softened at her eyes, her smile, everything about her. At least for a moment. “Really deally.”

“Oh, thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou!” Piper squealed, and hugged him again until he couldn’t breathe.

“Okay, Piper, let’s go see your Christmas present,” Paris said, and took the girl by the hand. “Let’s leave Daddy to his work, okay?”

“‘kay!” Piper bounced to the door.

“Hey, sweetie?” Pete said before Paris shut the door. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

Piper looked over her shoulder. “Oh, Daddy! Always bamfunning!”

“Yeah, hehe, that’s me,” Pete said. “Always. . .always bamfunning.”

Piper tugged on her mother’s hand. “Moooom, come oooon!”

Paris blew him a I-mean-it kiss, and closed the door.

Leaving Pete with the eggnog and a Xmasakah problem the likes of which God® had never seen.

He grabbed the picture and examined it in detail, searching for the minutest hint of a difference. Nothing. This was one of Pipers pictures, well, not Piper exactly, Piper number seven, actually. Seven? Eight? Pete rifled through the paperwork on the desk, six pictures total. Piper Seven. He would have to start tattooing numbers on their foreheads.

From down the hall and two rooms over he heard his daughter: “Piper!”

And his daughters piped in: “Piper!”

Pete finished the eggnog in three gulps and dropped his head on his desk. “Oh God®.”

They’d adopted Piper in utero, selected hair and eye color, her love of cats and cooking, her eventual acceptance into Harvard to study particle physics. At first he and Paris had been devistated when they learned she wouldn’t be able to conceive, but modern wonders and a sufficient credit balance gave them the daughter they’d always wanted.

Adoring, funny, insightful, Piper loved the world. Her first sentence: “I want to hug the world, Mama.”

Her gift to them on her nuptial in February: “I want a baby sister.”

Certainly they could manage the latter easier than the former! They had enough love in their hearts and rooms in their house for another genetically hand-crafted bundle of joy. He contacted the adoption agency only to learn that they had closed their doors months ago. Something about pretty men and embezzling samples. So the family browsed the catalogues and finally made an application with another adoption agency, yet they weren’t the only family thinking of expanding, and that meant a twenty-three month waiting list. Piper collapsed in tears. “But Daaaaddy,” she said. “I want a baby sister!”

They gathered her up and showered her with kisses. “Don’t worry, hon,” he’d said, securing her eighteen point harness in the backseat. “You’ll get your baby sister.”

Later that night, after two bottles of wine and a satisfyingly sweaty snuggle, Pete came up with an idea and Paris agreed. They would make Piper a baby sister themselves. All it took was ingenuity, some specialized equipment, and a sample of Piper’s genetic material from her toothswabs. Paris was so enthused by the thought of twins a year apart that she bought a case of wine and cleared Pete’s schedule for the next week.

Pete got hold of a friend of a friend, who knew someone who had a certified friend, who helped him find the best deal on replicator equipment and a used uterine accelerator – good-bye spring vacation, hello second lease bomb – and he set to work. He bought the chips and scripts from a genetics major taking a sabbatical to Maui to supplement his own tactical genetics engineering degree, and spent the next four months hip deep in DNA kits and coffee. Paris gave him frequent foot massages. Piper wrote letters to her new sister, hoping they would like many of the same things.

A sharp knock at the door. Peter finished pouring another finger of rum, and screwed on the cap. He looked at the clock and decided that it couldn’t be that late, he still had rum left. “Yo.”

Piper burst through the door, a fuzzy pink fair snake wrapped around her neck. “Look, Daddy! Look what I found!”

Paris stepped in behind her, missing a few hairs here, a few more gray there. “She found it at the back of the garage, didn’t you, sweetie?”

Well? said Paris’ eyebrow.

Pete gave a Allahsus-I’m-doing-my-best eye roll. “That’s great, honey. Really deally. Yeah.”

“Mama’s going to take me to meet my new sister,” this Piper, said. “She says my sister will love my snake.”

“It will be great, honey. Let’s leave Daddy to work, hmmm?” Paris held up eight fingers, eight I-am-not-a-happy-woman fingers, ticking them off one at a time.

“‘kay!” Piper ran up to Pete and threw her arms around him. “I love you, Daddy. Thank you soooo much.”

And they were gone.

“Maybe there will be three ghosts,” Pete said, sipping rum. “And I’ll wake up and it will be Christmas day all over again.”

He checked the time, sighed. Best to get back to work just in case.

He swung around in the chair and went over the plans and circuits, the entire genetic coding, all the while sipping rum and muttering to himself: “I love you, Daddy. Thank you, Daddy. Daddy, why can’t we all go to Harvard?”

He splashed more rum in his cup. “I love you, rummy. Nobody understands me like you do.”

Four hours before dawn, Pete and Paris went out to the garage and set the genetic starter to percolate, and this morning, before Piper rushed into their room with a display of her tae-kwon-do gymnastics, they hurried together to check the results. What to their wondering eyes did appear, but a naked six-year-old sitting at the edge of the uterine accelerator, picking her toes. She was Piper from the tips of her toes to the tops of her ginger hair. “Hi!” she said. “I fell asleep out here. Can I open my presents now?”

Pete and Paris exchanged parental looks. They’d expected an accelerated version, but not this accelerated. Still, they opened their arms and their hearts, and hurried her into the house to get her dressed in one of Paris’ nightrobes to meet the original Piper.

They snuck her into Piper’s bedroom where the original sat up in bed, rubbed her eyes, and at the sight of herself squealed, “Piper!”

“Piper!” squealed the new Piper, and they embraced, babbling and laughing, talking about puppies and the boys in the websims.

Pete and Paris stepped out of the room. Paris gave him a peck on the cheek. “I’ll go make breakfast, and you -”

“- figure out what happened,” Pete agreed. “But we did save a bundle on diapers.”

His wife had slapped him on the rump, and sent him on his way.

A few hours and a plate of organic soy chicken eggs later, he was in the workshop making his second pass at the circuitry maps when there came a knock at the door. Pete opened the door to a glassy-eyed Paris, and Piper dressed in one of his pre-stained garage wardrobe work shirts. “What’s up?” he’d asked.

Piper smiled up at him, wrapped her arms around his waist. “Mama said I should ask you if it’s okay to open my presents now. Can I? Pleeeease?”

He looked up at his wife, and then down at the girl with her arms around him. “But you already did that,” he said.

“I found her in the garage on the accelerator,” Paris said, pulling herself together enough to affect a casual tone. “We talked about how important it is to stay away from Daddy’s equipment, didn’t we?”

Piper, this Piper, Piper Number Three, had nodded, frowning with due seriousness. “Those aren’t toys no matter how many buttons and lights,” she’d said. Then she broke out in smiles. “So, can I open my Xmasakah presents now?”

Paris had given him a do-something look.

Pete had felt faint. “Yeah, I, um, sure, sweetie.” I-can-fix-this his furrowed eyebrows said. “You go ahead. Daddy has some work to do out here, so, be good for Mama, okay?”

“‘kay!” She’d bounced off, a hapless Paris in tow.

Now, after cutting power to the accelerator, forcibly dismantling the replicator, leaving a dozen messages, and eighty zillion-ish reviews of circuitry and quantum whozits, Pete had eight Pipers upstairs sussing out the finer points of Britney dolls, which was seven Pipers too many. On the plus side, he’d given up panic in favor of drinking and was making excellent progress on the bottle.

Another knock at the door, frantic and ringing with a hint of chipped ferro-enamel fingernails. Pete stopped drinking long enough to check the time. Half as long as the last knock. He blanched, and lurched to the door, not at all surprised to find Paris standing there, but damn near floored at the sight of two Piper’s grinning happily. “Hi, Daddy! We fell asleep in the garage. Can we go open our presents now?” they said in unison.

He slid down the doorframe, staring up at his. . .daughters? “Um, what? I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening.”

The girls climbed on him with hugs and kisses.

“- Can -”

“- we -”

“- go -”

“- open -”

“- our -”

“- presents -”

“- now?”

One sentence said in two voices, in perfect synchronicity. Pete stared up at Paris who appeared to have left the building and not told her body she’d gone. He rested his head against the wall. “Sure, girls, sure. Say hello for me.”

Twice the arms, twice the hugs. “‘kay! Thank you, Daddy!”

The Pipers dragged Paris off with them, leaving Pete to contemplate the toes of his slippers. Brown slippers. Fuzzy brown slippers. Neither one named Piper. Lovely, lovely, lovely brown slippers.

Minutes later came a piping of Pipers from upstairs: “Piper!”

He crawled back to the desk and up into the chair. Not knowing what else to do, Pete poured the rest of the rum into his mug. He dialed the certified friend, who knew someone who was the friend of a friend and hung up at the “Sorry I can’t take your vid right now, but I’m filming my son opening Xmaskah gifts. Follow me online!” message. “Great. Jess fricklin’ great.”

The pair, pair of them for God’s® sake, had taken half as long to form as the Piper before that. Something about that made a kind of warped sense. He gave up trying to get the computer to understand his perfectly fine voice, and dutifully typed in his numbers, peering at the screen with the vid flaw that made the read-outs wobble. Based on the hypothetical read outs, hypothetical because the thing shouldn’t have frickling worked anymore, every Piper since the first had appeared in successively less time. “Jess fricklin’. . .great.”

He closed his eyes, and opened them sometime later, no, don’t tell him, just about half the time since the last Piper cleaners twins things, to find himself on his back and a concerned freckled face peering down at him. “Daddy, are you okay?” Piper said.

He smiled up at his loving, perfect, whatever. “Jess fricklin’ great,” he drawled, tousling her hair.

“Okay.” She gave him a hug filled to the brim with six-year-old love. “I must have fallen asleep out in the garage. Can I open my presents now?”

“Sure. Can you, can you get Daddy a cray, a cray, a pencil marker thingie?”

Piper did, handing it to him.

Pete grabbed the wiggling thing with both hands. “Take off the cap, hmmm?” he said.

Piper giggled, and did. “Oh, Daddy. Always bamfunning.”

“Yup. That’s me. Hold. . .still.”

She did, and Pete very carefully wrote “11″ on her forehead. He took care to replace the cap. “Gwon, sweetie. I’ll be up. . .later.”

“kay! I love you.” Another hug, and Piper skipped out of the room, leaving Pete to ponder the ceiling and Piper’s wish to hug the world.

Pico jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “That way. Follow the sounds of the cows.”

The man bowed low – “My thanks!” – and bounded over the chuckwagon into the darkness.

The [...]]]> “Harkin to me, good fellows!” said the man in tights, bells, and a doublet of burgundy crushed velvet. “Where might I find -?”

Pico jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “That way. Follow the sounds of the cows.”

The man bowed low – “My thanks!” – and bounded over the chuckwagon into the darkness.

The thirteen men around the cook fire listened to the offended cows shuffle and complain, and the heady “Huzzahs!” when the stranger found the others.

“That’s, what, seven? Eight so far?” Carl said finally.

Pico threw the dregs of his coffee into the fire, where it hissed and made the night smell a little less like cow shit. “Nine,” he said, setting his cup beside him on the ground.

Stan snorted on Pico’s. “Said you should have run the first two off.”

Pico cut a piece of tobacco off the twist and tucked it between his cheek and gum. It burned a moment, then his spit began to seep into the wad and turn the fire to juice. “I get paid to be a trail boss and drive cattle. Can’t no one pay me enough to draw on a man without him having a go at me first, amigo, not even men like those hombres, whatever they are.”

He patted the Colt on his hip, drawn twice to shoot at coyotes. The other men sniggered and guffawed.

Stan shrugged and spit off to the side. “So long as they don’t get so bad as them geese near Denver a few years back.”

That earned a full round of laughter.

Pete poked Cookie in the shoulder. “Geese. You remember that, huh, Cookie? The geese, they. . .”

And the two drew the rest of the men into the story of geese, and eggs, and feathers in embarrassing places. Pico listened for a time before excusing himself to head for the bushes.

Open sky and no clouds made for a chill night, but Pico had had enough of hot riding the herd. At night all he wanted was stars, and tonight had plenty and to spare. He peered at the sky, searching for familiar shapes. There was oso menor, and oso mayor, and to the east tauro, the bull. There were many, many more, but Pico couldn’t recall the names his abuela sang on her front porch of a night much like tonight, when the saints drew close and waited for Jesucristo to be born.

How many days until Navidad? Three? Probably. He was too tired to remember the day of the week, let alone how many days until Navidad. With any luck, he could celebrate the day with a bath in a real tub, maybe a meal that didn’t have to be soaked, or cured and cut with coffee.

Driving cattle up from San Antonio to Kansas City and Dodge City wasn’t a bad way to live. He ran men, checked brands, and kept an eye out for trouble. Sometimes he spent a night or two in town with a woman who had most all of her teeth. He had five ounces of gold in the bankbox back in San Antonio, and might have another two by the end of next year if he managed his pay and kept an eye out for people wanting to sell. Pico Dentale looked to the future. He wouldn’t always be a trail boss. Someday he’d buy into his brother-in-law’s property, maybe with a wife and a few hundred head of cattle. The gringos in their fancy houses might not like it, but folks back in Austin would know his name and that made all the difference.

Yup, it was a good life, though on nights like this, far from the towns, with only a few hombres and vacas for company, Pico sometimes stared at the sky and wished, if only for a moment, that he was a boy again with his abuela on a small wooden porch, smelling the smoke of her clay pipe and listening to her sing.

No doubt about it, when thoughts like that came around he was plumb worn down.

He was buttoning up his Levi’s, when a Negro in gold and white pantaloons and a crown of gold stars landed with a curt bow on the other side of the bushes. “Hola!”

Pico accidentally caught a couple of hairs in a button hole and pulled them out. He jumped and swore and bit his bottom lip to keep from screaming.

The man struck a pose, hands on his hips, chin up. “Can you direct me to a gathering of such nimble men who find solace and purpose in the making of merriments?”

Pico waved over his shoulder, beyond chuckwagon and fire. “That way,” he said between clenched teeth.

“Gracias.” The man flexed his knees, and leapt away.

Pico waited until his eyes stopped watering before he returned to the fire. At the north end of the two-thousand head herd, the cows complained long and low, the sound rippling back towards camp with the shuffling of hooves and sharp whip of tails against flanks. Above that came the whooping and hollering of men leaping back and forth, clapping and cheering one another on. Why they did so in the middle of nowhere, and how they came to be in the middle of nowhere, he had no idea.

Pico stopped by Cookie sorting through a bowl of beans. “You take good care with those Pecos strawberries, Cookie.”

The trail cook hrumphed deep in his chest. “I’ll do what I want with them, that’s all you gotta know.” He tossed a small rock into the dark.

A colorful shout from the dancing men startled the cattle and had the vaqueros peering into the night. “Better get something done about that before them doggies get to thinking about running,” Cookie said, not looking up from the beans.

Pico stifled a yawn, nodded. “Si.” He stepped over to the fire. “Stan, take Pete out and tell them men they got to be going now. Miles, Lee, and Charlie, you get a couple of horses and start riding the line. Turn the leads right if they look to start running.”

Stan set his coffee cup down, and stood. “‘Bout time.” He spit not quite at Pico’s feet.

Pico grit his teeth, wishing Stan were a coyote on four legs and not two. He crossed his arms over his chest. “Suit yourself.”

The men got moving, even Stan. Pico was the trail boss and gave out the pay at the end of the drive.

Pico had taken off his hat and washed his face, thinking that it wouldn’t be long before he slept, when he heard the sharp crack of gunfire and a tumble of panicked screams. “Wilbur, get the horses!” he said, rushing toward the north end of the herd. “Cookie, shut her down!”

He turned past the cows struggling against one another in the crush to get away from the shots fired, and hurried with the rest of the men into the night.

A figure soared overhead, and then another. Screams turned to a cacophony of angry shouts and laughter. A third figure leapt high above them and landed on the back of a longhorn. The cow tried to turn and bolt, but just as fast the man in yellows and greens leapt off its back and was gone again.

“I said stop all that bouncing or I’m gonna bounce you right on your ass!”

That was Stan, and he did not sound happy.

A voice he didn’t recognize, cultured and decidedly English: “But, sirrah! We were only -”

“You were only what?” Pico demanded, slowing to a thunderous walk as he came to the crowd. Out of the firelight there wasn’t much light, but the near full moon shone bright enough that he made out the ten fancy-dressed men, and Stan and Pete. “What the hell is going on here?”

The ten men laughed and leapt into the air, turning summersaults and triple twists as they went.

“That’s what’s going on,” Stan snarled, jabbing his free hand in their direction. His other hand gripped his own Colt tight, but he had sense enough to keep the gun at his side. “They got their feather heads up their Mary asses and they is going to get themselves killed if they – I said to put an end to it!”

This last was directed to a pair of men turning back flips over one another. Stan raised his pistol, maybe out of reflex, and Pico pushed his hand down as he strode over to the men. “You got a problem listening to the man?”

The two men looked at one another, and then at Pico. Something of his authority must have conveyed itself, for the one in peach silk said, “We have too much joy not to express it by leaps and bounds.”

“That’s all well and good, but enough is enough.” Pico turned a slow circle, looking every man in the eye until they kept still and he knew for certain he had their undivided attention, another of his abuela’s tricks. “Now, you listen to me. And you WILL listen.”

The herd pushed itself away from the men. Pico trusted the others to keep them from stampeding, and if that didn’t work, well, he’d think of something later. One crisis at a time.

“I was plenty nice when the first of you showed up, but now it’s time for you to be on your way.”

A blonde fellow in a green leather jerkin and brown pantaloons, the fifth to arrive, stepped forward. “Truly we appreciate your efforts to maintain order, but ’tis Christmas and we -”

Pico stepped forward as well and glared down at the small, fragile looking fellow. “Are gonna do just what I tell you to do, or I am gonna show you how we make men dance in Texas, and what we do with those who dance too slow.” He drew his gun and cocked the hammer back.

The man took a step back. “Here now. We leap and cavort to express our gratitude to the world. There’s no reason for any of this.”

“Glad to hear it, but go do your expressioning someplace else.” Pico spit chaw juice at the man’s feet. “I don’t know where you folks come from, or where you head to when you leave, but I figure you’re ready to head on.” Again he turned a slow circle. “Now.”

Pico didn’t care to shoot, but so help him God he’d put a hole in any one of these whatever they were if they made him look bad in front of his men.

The ten men looked at one another. Stan and Pete stood a little straighter. Pico slid his finger over the trigger.

The Negro in white and gold stepped forward. “Si,” he said, and bowed from the waist.

One at a time, the ten men bowed much the same until all had agreed, and as one they bent their knees and leapt into the air. Up, up they went, and did not come down, disappearing into the night sky.

Only the cows had anything to say about it.

Pico took a deep breath. He holstered the Colt, glanced at Stan who could not look him in the eye. “Let’s get these vacas settled down,” he said with clipped, precise authority. “Got a lot of miles tomorrow, and it’s getting late.”

*

It didn’t take as long as he feared to calm the herd. All the same, Pico set Pete and Wilbur to watch them for the rest of the night. He would have liked to put Stan on watch, but he figured the older vaquero had suffered enough humiliation for one day. Anymore, and Stan was likely to get mean.

Pico had settled down with a last sip of water and a bit of jerky when he heard birdsong, the silver rippling of water, the running of feet and laughter. The sounds wrapped themselves around a cascade of notes that dipped and soared and then stilled as a man dressed in silvers and greens stepped out of the fire. He carried a wooden flute.

“Greetings,” he said with a bow and tip of the cap. “I am a piper sent to play for ten lords-a-leaping. Where might they be found?”

*

Cho-Bet rode her bike to the top of the hill and stopped, shielding her eyes against the glare of the swollen red sun. Finding what she wanted, she climbed back on the rickety two-wheeler and continued riding.

An hour later, she [...]]]> Once there was a girl who destroyed a world, but first she danced.

*

Cho-Bet rode her bike to the top of the hill and stopped, shielding her eyes against the glare of the swollen red sun. Finding what she wanted, she climbed back on the rickety two-wheeler and continued riding.

An hour later, she stopped in the middle of the road and slowly climbed off the bike. Tiny puffballs popped, covering her feet and the remnant of paving stones in a cloud of spores. Mushrooms the size of old-timey dreamshacks grew in clumps and rings along both sides of the road. To the left, mini-myconid-men, the tiny 3Ms, not the larger, more self-aware 2Ms, shambled about, carrying wads of spore infested detritus from one pile to the next. She would have liked to look for someplace else, but Kemb-Kim’s map showed a lady holding a stick above her head, and this place had a statue of a lady holding a stick above her head, so this was the place. She walked the bike off the road to the right, carefully stepping around the largest patches of ochre fuzz to reach a comparatively clear area behind a stand of bamboo shrooms.

She unloaded her knapsack, propped her bike against one of the stems, and built a fire from dried burnshrooms and Kemb-Kim’s map. Would have been nice to have Kemb-Kim around, to talksies with or maybe feelsies, but Kemb-Kim had turned back at the Big River Gorge. “You go on ahead,” she’d said to Cho-Bet, smiling sad-like as she leaned on her staff.

Cho-Bet had opened her mouth to protest, but Kemb-Kim stoppered her with a wave of her hand and a shake of the head.

“It was all I could do to make it this far, Birdie,” she’d said. Kemb-Kim was the only one who called her Birdie. “I can’t go no fartherer.” Then she’d pulled a worn leatherskin pouch out of her robes and presented it to Cho-Bet. “For you.”

“I can’t take the map. That’s what you’re for.”

“Haven’t you been listenearing?” Kemb-Kim said, looking her right in the eye. “I’m not going no fartherer.” She held out the bag.

Cho-Bet hesitated, and then took the bag with a hating, and a longing, and a sadding. “Where will you go?”

Kemb-Kim shrugged. Her smile crinkled the edges of the gray fungal fuzz that trailed down her left cheek and across her thick chin. Without it, she looked like Cho-Bet; with it, she looked goner. “Back to the camperie.” She wiggled her bare toes in the dusty soil; tiny hairs along the tops and edges wiggled even more. “These mycelials want to put down every time I stop to catch my breath, and don’t want me to starters when I got to move again. No place else to go but back to the start and take root.” She tapped the bag, bringing up tufts of spores. “That is, no place that isn’t come the end of the world, anyway.”

Cho-Bet felt weak in the knees, and wet salt stung her eyes. “But you did the figurering about the end of the world. You is the alphamega.”

That’s what Kemb-Kim kissed her on the mouth, slipping a bit of mushroom meat between Cho-Bet’s lips. Cho-Bet chewed without thinking – meat was meat, was meat, when there was no other food – and the bit of Kemb-Kim’s tongue filled her insides up to the top of her head with knowings. Cho-Bet began to cry with all the things she didn’t want to know. “I don’t want to be the alphamega,” she said, burying her head in the crook of Kemb-Kim’s neck. “I don’t want to be aloner.”

The other girl had hugged her harder, harderer even, and finally pulled away, holding Cho-bet by the shoulders. “There was niners, then eights, then seventies, and then all the way down to me, and now down to you. You’re the alphamega now. I believe in you.”

And she turned and walked away, leaving the new alphamega to wonder what she’d done that was so horrible as to deserve the honor of destroying the world.

The memories came and went and turned to burnshroom ash along with almost everything else: the knapsack; the extra shirt; the picking tools; Cho-Bet’s last breather cartridge. The first breath without the breather burned like shroom fire all the way down, but after coughing and spitting-up she began to feel better. The spores didn’t waste and settled into her blood; they turned the red sky even more red, made the soles of her feet itch and filled her mouth with cotton. Cho-Bet knew that she’d eventually take root or die, but if she died withouter dancing then the world wouldn’t end and the eight holdouts beforer her would have carried the weight of that possibility in vein. Being the alphamega, she knew this.

The one thing that did not burn with everythinger else was the metronomer. She fished in her pockets for the remaining piece of the turning key, the key to the end of the world. The tiny piece of metal rattled in her hand when she pulled it out, then dropped and lost itself in the dusty soil. “Ratterdamn,” Cho-Bet swore under her breath, and spent whole minuters sifting through the dirt with both hands.

When she looked up, piece in hand, two 3Ms stood on the far side of the fire.

Cho-Bet set the metronomer in her lap, covered it with one hand. “What do you want?” she said warily.

The little myconid men watched her with blank faces, not faces, really, folds in the fleshy annulus rings just under their caps. They glowed and strobed iridescent rainbows over their gills and florescent spots along their caps.

“I don’t talk shroom talk,” Cho-Bet said, “and I don’t talk to shrooms anywayer, so go on and go back to whateverer you were doing.”

The 3Ms strobed, but did not move.

Cho-Bet sighed. “Finer.” She put them out of her mind, and turned her attention to fitting the bit of turning key into the back of the metronomer. After a bit of fussing, she wedged the piece into place and began to carefully winder the metronomer, holding so the turning key remained intact. With the final turn, Cho-Bet pressed a finger to the side of the key to keep it still. She looked up to find the 3Ms watching her. “You still here?”

Strobe and flash, a ripple of dots.

“I don’t got nothing for food any more. I won’t be eating anything, and I know you don’t eat livinger folks like me. You here to kill me?”

Not a sound, save her breathing, and the wind spinning spores and dirt into dust devils.

“I’m going to dance now, so you better move out.” She stood, metronomer in hand. “I mean it. Better get out of here. There’s going to be fire, and lightning, and thunderrain all over the place. I mean it. Go tell your brothers so you can get inside someplace. Anyplace. Go on.”

The 3Ms remained still.

“You’re weird,” she said, and meant each of the fiver letters of the word.

Which didn’t mean she wouldn’t dance. Cho-Bet drew in a lungful of spores for inspiration, a way to remind her that she had to dance no matter how the fear flapped in her stomach. Bringing her eyes to the giant red sun that the spores filled with corkscrew yellows and bright balloons of orange, Cho-Bet set the metronomer in the dirt. The tiny box of wood with the metal swinging bar ticked, tocked, and kept time for the end of the world.

Rust and spore take the 3Ms. Cho-Bet slid her sinister foot into position for the first step of Kemb-Kim’s dance, her dance now, then her dexter foot for the second step. Always best to start with the sinister foot because beginnings and endings were made up of darkness before anything else. Comfortable, brooding, nurturing dark. Not the giant red sun that burned up the sky and grew closerer every day.

Kemb-Kim’s knowings went way back, all the way to Webs-Di, and then to Upt-Brid, and all the on backs until the niner Jare-Mich, the firster holdout of them all. Jare-Mich had knowings from other folks, but those knowings were too cluttered and spun up for Cho-Bet to know like her own, something about twisting one helixes into two helixes and runnaknots, but the knowing helped lead Cho-Bet’s feet where they needed to go. This dancing would finish the pattern and end everything, a key for the big compost-uterer. The stick lady would poke the sun, and all the sun stuff would spill out so there would be dark again. The end of the world. Good.

Cho-Bet tilted her face to the sky, eyes closed. She stared at the red sun through her eyeskins, and the red sun stared back. On her first pass of the 3Ms, she brushed her hand against their caps. Cho-Bet brought her hand up to her face, opened her eyes. Her fingers glowed miniature rainbows.

As she danced, she removed her shirt and then her pants, tossing them into the fire. The 3Ms did nothing when she took off her first shoe, but when she pulled off her second shoe and threw that into the fire they feller in step behind her and began to dance along. What do you think you’re doing? she wanted to say. Go on, get out of here. But she was thick in the dance now, and she didn’t have the time or know-how to speak anymorer. She could feel the dance working on her body, mixing with Kemb-Kim’s knowings to start a reaction to end the world. So, let them dance along. Couldn’t be too bad, seeing that they were as much girl folk as she, making sprouts and other 3Ms in their own way. Laydemis, Jare-Mich would have called them. No, wrong word. Layeedems. No. Neverer mind.

Faster she danced, tiny cilia extruding from her pores. She tasted red, saw the sounds of her feet on the soil, smelled the air pressure as more 3Ms joined the circle. First oner, then twosies, finally sixties, and seventies total. A 2M genuine myconid-man joined them, its cap a bouncing blur as Cho-Bet danced, making niners in all. The myconids waved their stumpy arms and thick fingers, stomped their stemmy feet in time with the metronomer. Niners layeedems danced around the fire.

Cho-bet’s feet moved faster and faster, sliding in the soil until her skin peeled away. New cilia formed and then broke off the next turn around. Gills fluted and disintegrated. She laughed hard and long, giddyish with the pattern unwinding. Faster now, her skin shed itself. Fingernails dropped to the soil and scuttled away. Hair flew off her head and went east. Her eyesballs dissolved; she sucked them into her lungs to watch from within. Faster, Cho-Bet, faster, faster. Dance, Cho-Bet, faster, faster. Dance.

The wind joined the dance, stealing strands of Cho-Bet, depositing them on the tiny 3Ms and the towering 2M. The strands coaxed their way inside the myconid. Hellow, Layeedem Cho-Bet. Join us at the end of the world, join us and make it new again. Dance, alphamega, be the end all and beginning all. Cho-Bet laughed to the sky and the dance. Her tongue swallowed itself, and was stolen away.

And when she danced herself away, the myconid-men, small and large, walked away from the fire, back to their piles, taking the omega and the alpha with them.

*

Once there was a girl who remade the world, but first she danced.

I kiss Amy Lynn’s hair and hold her tight. “It’s okay, Bunny.”

My little girl, my reason for everything that happened, snuggles closer to me. Outside the closet door, the seven ghosts move about, whispering my name.

“Dada?”

“It’s okay.”

Four bony fingers slide under the door. Light pools like spilled milk around them. [...]]]> “Dada?”

I kiss Amy Lynn’s hair and hold her tight. “It’s okay, Bunny.”

My little girl, my reason for everything that happened, snuggles closer to me. Outside the closet door, the seven ghosts move about, whispering my name.

“Dada?”

“It’s okay.”

Four bony fingers slide under the door. Light pools like spilled milk around them. “Heather?” a ghost whispers, shattered glass tearing through silk.

“Go away!” my fear says before I can stop it.

Amy Lynn gives a start and begins to cry.

“We are so lonely, lonely, lonely.”

Seven voices I once believed, that once sounded so sweet.

Save for an icy patch at the bottom of the door, the closet is muggy and hot. Stifling. Heating ductwork runs up the back wall. I hunch in the farthest corner from the door, Amy Lynn on my lap, the red high heels Aaron gave me last Christmas press uncomfortably against my lower back. I didn’t grabbed Aaron’s cell phone, should have grabbed his cell phone. Not that the police can do anything.

*

Aaron loves the house. A dream come true ten miles outside Parker City limits. Fixer upper, save money, out on three acres, a mother-in-law house out back he could rework into his art studio. We pick out color schemes for each room. He lays track lighting. Aaron and Amy Lynn end up covered in flour, baking a double chocolate, Daddy and Daughter “Welcome Home” cake.

Then come the headaches, the dreams. He starts sleeping less and snapping more, skulking around the house at odd hours. Two months ago, his art studio catches fire and burns to the ground. He insists he has nothing to do with it, goes into a rage and starts throwing things when I press, but I cling to the hope that he will calm down.

“We can get counseling,” I say one night after a particularly nasty, silly argument over kosher salt, of all things. “Please. Let’s work things out.”

He stop attending after the first session, announcing to God and the world that the counselor is an uptight cunt who can’t find her ass with both hands. I pray to God and the world that Aaron will come to his senses.

He starts listening in on my phone conversations, follows me into town, watches me sleep. My tea-totaling husband begins drinking heavily, beer and hard liquor, anything he can find some weeks. In an increasingly rare moment of honesty, when I ask him why, he says it helps with the headaches. “And the dreams,” he whispers, seated at the dining room table with a bottle of Captain Morgan’s and a plastic coffee cup in front of him. “I just want to sleep, but the dreams. . .”

I take a chance and put my hand on his arm. “Would you like to talk about it?”

He flinches and grabs his bottle. Hate stews at the bottom of his green, sleepless eyes. “What the fuck do you know?”

I sleep on the floor of Any Lynn’s room that night.

And the day he found me in the basement. . .

*

The spectral fingers curl around the bottom edge of the door. The wood turns gray, then white. Fingers grip wood and it crumbles at the touch. The hand thrusts through the hole up to the wrist. “We did as you asked,” one of them said, hissing and screaming at once. “We love you.”

From downstairs comes the splintering of heavy wood. I scream, Amy Lynn screams, and the ghost pulls another handful of splinters off the door.

*

I’m under the stairs looking for canning supplies when Aaron comes up behind me, blocking me in. “What are you doing?”

He stinks of beer and cigarettes. In the dim light of the single bulb all I can see of his face are his eyes, two bright spots in sunken sockets. I take a step back, Aaron a step forward. Fear burrows under my skin, maks me shiver. “Canning -” I clear my throat. “- Canning supplies. I’m looking for canning supplies.”

He grunts, shakes his head, cocks it to one side, and for a moment I think he is listening to someone, something, but I can’t hear anything beyond my frantic heartbeat. “Excuse me, please,” I say, almost sounding calm. “I need, need to get by.”

He shakes his head again, a quick back and forth, a bull shaking off a buzzing fly. “No, no,” he grunts. “No.”

My thoughts go everywhere. Tumor? Drugs? Seizures? “Yes, please.”

That’s when he knocks the lids out of my hands and grabs me around the throat. “No.”

He tears my shirt away, bends me back against the shelves. I scream with his first dry thrust. He covers my face with a moldy burlap sack. I struggle to keep quiet, more afraid for my life than my marriage.

*

Decay, rot, the reek of mold so thick I can barely breathe. The ghost wail, beating against the walls, knocking over furniture. One of them pushes her face against the hole. “You promised,” she sobs. “We helped you and you promised. Promised!”

“Get away!” I kick at her, knocking more wood away. “Fucking get away from me! Leave me alone!”

*

That’s when my own dreams start, softly at first: the gentle hush of the stream at the back of the property; naked women, pale as the moon, dark as blood, dancing under the trees, crying together, comforting one another with tender, knowing hands; those hands on my body, soothing Aaron’s hate.

As the nights grow longer, and Aaron confines me to the house, I confess to the women every hurt Aaron had ever done to me. In my dreams, I tell them, and I cry.

“Let us help you,” they whisper, coo, breathe against my skin. “We can help you, keep you safe, teach him what it is like to hurt. Poor Heather. Poor, poor Heather.”

For two weeks, I resist. Even in my dreams, I want things to get better, want my husband back, the man who brought me tulips on our third date, and chocolate gelato on our honeymoon, but the night he beats me and then threatens Amy Lynn with a butcher’s knife, I flee to my dreams and say yes. Yes, yes, yes! Don’t let him hurt my daughter, don’t let him hurt me ever again.

“Poor Heather,” say the women of my dreams. “Poor, poor Heather. We will help you, and then we can dance forever.”

Seven women, seven voices, pale as the moon, dark as blood.

That night, I wake from to the sounds of I don’t know what. Sucking, squeezing, slurping. Screaming. I hurry downstairs to find the seven bloody women decorating the Christmas tree with Aaron. His skin hangs from the tree in thin strips, his finger bones tucked amidst the boughs. A mass under the tree may be his body. I stand wide-eyed and frozen at the bottom of the stairs, too afraid to move. Then they come for me with open arms, and I run for Amy Lynn.

*

“Come for you, or come for daughter,” the ghosts chant, sing-song. “You or daughter. You or daughter. Come for you, or come for daughter.”

I hold Amy Lynn tight, muffling the sounds of her cries against my night shirt. “Hush, Bunny. Please.”

The head pulls away, and with it another chunk of door. I can see the bloody feet shuffling on the other side, and hands reaching for the door.

Amy Lynn hiccups and smears her face against my chest. I don’t have a choice. God forgive, I do not have any choice. I screw my eyes shut. “All right!”

Everything stops, the screams, the moans, everything but my daughter’s tears.

Before I can think about it, I kiss Amy Lynn and push her off my lap. “No, Mama,” she cries, grabbing my night shirt, my hair. “No, no, Mama.”

I bury her in clothes torn off the hangers, wrapping them around her not so tight that she can’t escape but tight enough that it won’t be instantaneous. “I love you, Bunny. Mommy loves you. Never forget that.”

“Mumu, Mumu,” comes her voice, muffled by sweatshirts and jackets. “No, no, Mumu. . .”

I get to my feet and throw open the door. The seven women stand in a semi-circle, eyes intent on my face. “Don’t hurt her,” I manage to say without crying.

The center ghost nods once. Is she different from the others? Taller? Brighter?

“Please don’t hurt her,” I whimper.

She nods again.

As my little girl, my reason for giving myself up so she can live, screams and cries for me, I walk out of the closet and into the women’s arms.

The first touch burns, the second chokes, and the third snaps every bone in my body. With every bite and dredge, they introduce themselves. The first, a young bride beaten to death in the bedroom on her honeymoon night by her drunk husband when he can’t perform. Alone and abandoned to lonliness, she lingers until the farm is bought by another couple, and encourages the second husband to strangle his wife when she refuses to let him bring another woman into their bed. The third is that woman, and the first time they kill the man. And on, and on. They want someone to love them and keep them warm, so they lure families to the house. They come in dreams, to the men to drive them mad, and to the women to foster a sense of helplessness and rescue.

As they gorge on my blood and suck the marrow from my bones, I scream, then sob, then sigh with desire, and know them. Oh, my sisters, how I know them sweetly. They/We are lonely. They/We are hungry for life and love.

I am the eighth maid of the house, no longer a matron, no men for me. Cry, child, cry. Soon there will be a new family, a new man to hate and sister to love. Soon. My skin falls at my feet, and I reach for my beautiful, beautiful sisters.

The words became seven swans that circled the sky in a halo of feathers. They took with them memories, and thoughts, and left Keith alone.

“Ready?” said the lady dressed in rainbow feathers. She smiled and held out a hand.

First [...]]]> On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me. . .

The words became seven swans that circled the sky in a halo of feathers. They took with them memories, and thoughts, and left Keith alone.

“Ready?” said the lady dressed in rainbow feathers. She smiled and held out a hand.

First Sergeant Keith Lamont, 1st Battalion, 12th Marines, got to his feet and looked around at the vague smears of shape on the ground, dark greens and reds, blacks and browns. A hulking shape to the east smoked, and other shapes, smaller, more agile, dashed around it pointing sticks at one another. “I guess so,” he said, trying to remember why it was important that he remember what he’d forgotten, but he couldn’t, so he took the lady’s hand and together they went up.

First they passed through the white that blinded, and he could not see, then through the red that burned, and he screamed his soul charred. Finally, they passed through the blue that soothed, and he slept until they reached the green of grass beside a mirror lake. High above flew the swans.

The chevron of birds circled seven times before alighting in the lake. White became black and charcoal and light gray upon reflection in the water. They swam to the shore, and Kevin knew this was how it would be. No cut and dry answers, only reflections of considerations of opinions of acts of war. Men.

Young and old, clean shaven and bedraggled, sometimes they wore uniforms and sometimes white feathers. Keith looked from a middle eastern man with wide, brown eyes, to his own dun camouflage uniform and flak vest, and back again. “Do I know you?” he said.

The man laughed and clapped him on the back. “Yes, but not in the way you think.”

Keith thought of the quick shapes running around with sticks, harder to see now and growing fainter with time. Some were brown such as this man. “Then how?”

The seven men smiled. “In time, brother,” the brown man said. “That is all we ask. Come.”

They sat around a fire dancing scarlet and orange in a ring of gray rocks. The men told stories and joked with one another, rough humor that ruffled and smoothed feathers. Language was no barrier. They made crass jokes, what the chaplains and counselors called inappropriate jokes, but for every word there was a look, a gesture, that took away any hurt and offered forgiveness. Sons of different mothers, these men were brothers under the skin.

Keith watched and listened. He knew this camaraderie; it shone familiar around the fire. Still, surrounded by the open majesty of greens and blues, he couldn’t shake the feeling that the world forgot itself and faded whenever he looked away. He worried at the loneliness of it like he would a hole in his gums after having a tooth pulled, exploring the edges of something no longer there. He tried to smile around the emptiness, but could only manage the occasional nod before walking away as the swans sang another chorus of the Soviet World War II song, Katyusha.

He wandered the lakeshore, skipping rocks, making a whistle from a piece of grass they way he had as a boy. Small flocks of colorful birds kept him company in branches and the sky, sometimes flying low over the water as if admiring their reflection. On a lark, Keith took off his boots and socks, rolled up his uniform pants, and waded into the water. As he stepped into the cool water, smooth stones massaged his feet, and tiny white fish darted under every step. In another place and time, he would have had a reflection. Here and now, he didn’t. Keith couldn’t say what it meant.

Sometime later, a swan found him on a low rise looking down on the lake. It settled beside him, preening himself and sucking on a butterscotch hard candy. A long drink of water in olive green and brown, the man had blonde hair, hazel eyes, and a three day growth of beard.

“I have a wife and two kids,” Keith said when he found words that made sense. “Had. A daughter, ten, and a son, seven. He’ll be eight in June.” He plucked a blade of grass, picked it to tiny green bits. “I usually carry a picture of them in my inside pocket, near my heart. I don’t know what happened to it.”

“Pictures and the like don’t make the crossing,” the swan said, sounding every inch from Liverpool. “Memories are the best way to be keeping things like that.”

Keith nodded, not really understanding, yet accepting. “I guess.” He held out a hand. “First Sergeant Keith Lamont, First Battalion, Twelfth Marines, Iraq.”

The swan took Keith’s hand in his own. “Alec Tolliver, Corporal, Twenty-First Brigade, Eighteenth Batallion, half the bloody continent.” He laughed. “For what it’s worth.”

They took turns skipping rocks over the lake, ripples advancing, mingling, retreating into stillness. “What happened?”

Whiz, skip, skip, skip, went Tolliver’s rock. “You really want to know?”

“Yeah.”

“A bomb under your truck,” the swan said.

“IED,” Keith said, eyes on the horizon. “Improvised explosive device.”

Tolliver half nodded, half shrugged. “You said it.” He hefted another stone. “Trucks went flip and tumble, men started running and shooting.”

Keith tongued the hole in his memory. He recalled the dry, sandy heat, the painfully blue sky, climbing into the truck. Nothing after that, until he heard the woman’s voice. “And. . .I died?”

Tolliver nodded, gazing at him strong and steady, the stone unmoving in his hand. “You made it out of the truck, helped three of your injured boys out and to shelter, when you caught a bullet to the face.”

Keith put a hand to his unmarred nose. “I don’t remember any of it.” He wondered how his voice remained so calm, but like the swans who were men, he knew this was the way of things now.

“You may in time.” Whiz, skip, skip, skip, and down went the rock.

Keith looked at his hands, slowly turning them over, his wedding ring on his left ring finger, a slender platinum band, his mother’s wedding ring, on his right pinky. “So, you came for me because I died a hero?”

The swan shook his feathered head. “Not precisely.”

Keith frowned. “Then why?”

At that Tolliver smiled. “All soldiers move on when they die, it’s what happens when a body and soul find something worth fighting for, but there are some what take a bit of prompting to move on. That’s where we come in. We take them in for a time, let them rest a bit before going where ever they go.”

“Oh.” Keith looked at his hands again. “I mean, if I’m not ready to go, why am I dead?”

The swan raised an eyebrow. “Because it happened, it’s done, and now you move on. You’re one of them that tries to help no matter the cost. This time the cost caught up to you.”

Keith opened his mouth to protest and closed it again. He wished he could deny it or pinch himself and wake face down in the sand with a concussion and a bullet to the leg, but the wishes could not match the certainty in the swan’s eyes. “I’m afraid,” he said finally. “What do I do now?”

“Rest,” Tolliver said with a nod. “Life is hard, war is harder, so now you rest. Come a day, God willing, when there won’t be no more war, but until then there are going to be those who don’t want to let go just yet. Not everyone, though, I can’t think of many what want to die, but the ones who understand we got to help one another, and that war isn’t fought by gentlemen who take tea and biscuits between pulling the trigger.” He laughed, a wry, tender trumpet call. “Well, not us enlisted.”

Keith nodded. “Yeah.”

Tolliver stretched out, ankles crossed, hands behind his head, eyes closed. One of the colorful flocks whipped overhead, sunlight turning bright feathers to jewels.

“I wonder if I would have taken that humor with me when I got home,” Keith said when his thoughts collapsed from exhaustion after chasing themselves. He twisted his wedding ring on his finger. “I’ve done and said some pretty rough things.”

“Rougher than killing another human being?”

Keith closed his eyes. “No.”

“Then don’t let it haunt you. The jokes and words, they kept you alive when you needed it.” Tolliver turned his head towards Keith, and opened one eye. “Well, until the sand rat shot off your kisser, anyway.”

Keith snorted. He picked up a rock and skipped it over the water. “How did you die?”

“Threw a grenade out of the trench,” the swan said in a low, calm voice. “Nowhere to run, so I did my best. Guess I didn’t throw it far enough.” He opened his eyes and stared at the sun. “Suppose I could envy you, really. You died saving lives. I saved lives because I didn’t want to die. Let me tell you, took a right goodly amount of men and time to get to where I am now.”

What could Keith say to that? Nothing, so he did not try.

If it were a day, time would have passed to afternoon, but it was only time and all that passed. Tolliver rolled up and got to his feet, brushing grass from his hands. “They’re having a swim, which sounds good to me. Come on. Let’s get on back.”

They returned to the fire where the brown man and a darker brown man in green camouflage debated the virtues of soul music versus jazz, and the others swam and splashed naked in the lake. Piles of clothes and gear lay in a glorious scatter at the water’s edge, ending and beginning all at once. For the first time, Keith realized there were no weapons amongst the piles.

As they approached, the men nodded and called to the pair, and when the woman dressed in rainbow feathers appeared by the fire circle, the swans gathered round her with a ruffle of wings and shiver of tails.

All save Tolliver. “Oh?” He frowned at the woman, and then his expression eased to a sudden awareness of mingled joy and pain. “Oh.”

Keith looked from Tolliver to the woman, at a loss. “What?”

“Do you accept?” she said.

That same awareness flooded his eyes when he looked to Tolliver, now staring at him with an expression of longing.

The other swans turned to him. One by one, they inclined their downy heads.

Keith turned to the woman, thoughts of his wife and children, of the men he’d lived and died for, reflected in her eyes. “For how long?” he said.

“That is for you to decide,” a voice, his own, said in his mind.

Keith bit his bottom lip until he could look at Tolliver without weeping. When he could: “At ease, soldier. You stand relieved.”

Tolliver smiled, and disappeared in a hush of feathers on the wind.

With his brothers, Keith stepped into the water and began to swim, a black reflection gliding behind him.

By the snack table, Burt continued to pick the pretzels out of the Chex Mix.

“Burt, we gotta talk, man.”

Burt sighed. He grabbed a cold St. Pauli’s Girl around the glass waist. “Sure,” he said, [...]]]> From the kitchen came a brittle CRUNCH, and then the expected “Ewww!”, followed by a rush of muted conversation.

By the snack table, Burt continued to pick the pretzels out of the Chex Mix.

“Burt, we gotta talk, man.”

Burt sighed. He grabbed a cold St. Pauli’s Girl around the glass waist. “Sure,” he said, and followed Warren out to the crowded balcony while the rest of the partygoers pointed and whispered. An African Brown Gooses followed close on Burt’s heels, the dewflap under its chin wagging as it pecked crumbs from the carpet.

Outside, two Roman Tufted Geese explored the ashtrays and overturned drinks. One of the geese paused, bore down, and laid an egg. Warren stepped around the egg, and turned to the guests gathered around the railing, motioning to the sliding glass door. “Listen, do you mind? A little privacy?”

The men and women hurried off the balcony without looking back, the last one sliding the door shut. Warren ran his hands through his hair before turning to Burt in the corner sucking on his beer. “Man, I’m sorry. I really thought this could work, but. . .” He spread his hands in apology.

“S’alright,” Burt said with a sigh. He took another drink. “You did your best.”

“I really am sorry, it being Christmas, but, I mean. . .” Warren gestured at the ground where a dozen or more eggs were crushed and smeared on the cement, and another half dozen pushed against the outside wall of the condo. As he did, a Canada Goose passed through the closed glass door as if it weren’t there and onto the balcony. “And that? What the hell am I supposed to do about that?”

Burt’s shoulders slumped. “Yeah, I know.” He finished his beer, and set the bottle on the table. “I’ll show myself out.”

Warren stopped him before Burt could walk back inside where partiers were trying to gather goose eggs in a four quart pot. “Hey, listen, you’re in no shape to drive. Gimme your keys. I can do that much at least.”

Burt stared up at him with blurry, red-rimmed eyes. Finally, he shrugged. “Whatever.” He fished his car keys out of his pocket. “Here you go.”

With a quick apology to his girlfriend, including a cross-my-heart-double-ice-pick-death promise that Burt would never, ever, *ever* be allowed back inside the condo, Warrren escorted Burt and the geese to the elevator. “Can’t we just, like, leave them?” Warren said.

Burt snorted and pressed the “Close Door” button all of the geese caught up with them; the doors closed. Like Christmas ghosts, the last two geese walked through the doors, and only then did the elevator car move.

In the parking lot, Burt held out his hand. “Come think of it, you may want to let me drive.”

“Fuck that,” Warren said, and unlocked the driver side door. He threw up his arms as three green parrots and a scarlet macaw flew out of the car. “Shit!”

“Told you,” Burt said.

As the birds screeched and squawked overhead, Warren gaped in amazement. “What. The. Hell?”

“Calling birds.” Burt moved around the car and took the keys dangling from Warren’s limp fingers.

The goose egg bombs and strafing runs from the calling birds passing through the car like smoke, had Warren almost ready to forgive Burt’s driving. Almost.

“I am never driving with you again,” he said, prying his fingers off the dash.

Burt belched. “Heard that before.”

They got out of the car, the occasional vehicle their only company at the far end of the apartment parking lot. “What the hell has gotten into you?” Warren said. He swore and skipped a step to avoid a goose egg. There were now six Canada Geese milling about, passing in and out of cars, looking for tasty bits on the ground. “Is there something you’re trying to tell me?” A goose honked at Warren and laid an egg at his feet.

“Kind of a long story.” Burt headed towards the stairs, crushing the occasional egg with impunity on his way. “Okay, not really, but come on upstairs anyway.”

At the second floor, Burt turned left and headed to his apartment at the end of the walk. He paused, key ready for the lock, and looked at Warren. “You ready?”

Warren nodded, shook, bobbled his head. “No.”

The first thing they noticed upon opening the door was the potted pear tree in the middle of the entry, a tiny dun partridge nested in its leaves. Burt pushed the pot over with the toe of his boot and walked past. Huffing and clicking, the partridge hopped up and down the length of the trunk.

Inside, two dun and gray birds cooed complacently on the top of a bookshelf covered with smears and pools of white. Two Maran hens strut and clucked under the coffee table. Warren thought he heard a third chicken somewhere, but could not find it. The geese, now three Canada Geese, two Atlantic Branta, and one Lesser White-footed Goose, meandered about as they cared to, laying eggs every dozen steps or so. Two clothes baskets filled with legs sat by the laundry nook. The place smelled of feathers, must, and bird shit.

Warren followed Burt into the kitchen, pointing back over his shoulder. “Those are turtle doves, aren’t they?”

“Yup. Wanna beer?” Burt opened the refrigerator.

“Um. . .sure.” Warren watched one of the Brants pass through the kitchen wall on its way to the bedroom. His left hand closed by reflex on the cold can, his right opened it, and he had it half gone by the time he thought to blink. “You weren’t kidding when you said you had a bird problem.”

“Nope.” They wandered into the living room, where Burt set three eggs on the floor and made himself comfortable on the couch. “Take a load off.” He motioned to the easy chair piled with eggs by the TV.

Warren compromised by perching on the arm of the chair. “So, is there something you want to tell me?”

“I’m cursed.”

“No, seriously, I can take it.” The third hen, a Faverolles, and how he knew that Warren couldn’t rightly say any more than he could explain the clarity of species knowledge for the others, came out from behind the TV stand and wandered down the hall.

“I am serious.”

Warren looked closely at Burt. “Cursed.”

Burt sighed and shook his head, then leaned his head on the back of the couch. “Do I look like the kind of guy to take up urban farming?”

Warren sipped his beer without tasting it. “No,” he said after some thought, “but cursed is, that is, being cursed is -”

“Pretty fucked up?”

Warren nodded. “Yeah.”

Burt took a pull from his beer. “Do you remember Mala?”

“The blonde pixie cut?”

“That was Amanda.”

Warren pursed his lips in thought, then nodded. “Mala. Yeah, yeah. Wasn’t she the one with dark hair and some serious -” He cupped a hand in front of his chest.

Burt nodded. “That’s the one. She took off last week.”

“That sucks, and right before Christmas, too. I was wondering why I hadn’t seen her around.” Warren peered over Burt’s shoulder. “Hey, that goose just swallowed a bone. Shouldn’t you -?”

Burt stared at him. Parrots babbled and cawed from the kitchen.

Warren took another sip. “Yeah, right. Sorry. You were saying?”

The goose in question walked into Burt’s chair an Atlantic Brant and out the other side a Snow Goose.

“Anyway, it got pretty ugly. She said things, I said things, she said I didn’t respect her cultural needs, and she split. Then Saturday, she calls me saying she thinks I need to learn a lesson about generosity and thoughtfulness, maybe that will set me straight.” The Faverolles hopped onto Burt’s chest; he pushed it off. The bird flapped a few feet and came to rest on the dining room table piled with pizza boxes and Chinese take-out containers. “The next day, what to my wandering eyes should appear but a God damn partridge in a pear tree when I’m getting ready for work. Scared the beejeezus out of me when I came out of the shower. I nearly broke my fool neck.”

Warren cringed. “Dude.”

Burt finished his beer, crumpled the can, and threw it at the turtle doves on top of the bookcase. The birds flew twice around the room before displacing a Camelot Macaw on top of the bedroom door. “Tell me about it. I called in sick on Saturday because the damn thing kept following me around the house.”

Warrens eyes widened. “Excuse me?”

Burt nodded, twisted around to look over both shoulders. “I don’t see it. Probably in the bedroom.”

Warren could see nothing from his perch, so he moved carefully around the yolk stains on the floor to the bedroom. The pear tree, complete with partridge and pot, stood at the foot of the bed. The macaw had temporarily claimed part of the foliage for itself. “You were right.”

“Thought so.”

Realizing he had finished his beer, and feeling the need for a second, Warren made his way into the kitchen. “You want another beer?”

“Sure.”

A Greylag Goose sat in an open utensil drawer. At Warren’s approach, it stepped out of the drawer and waddled away, leaving an egg nestled amidst the spatulas and potholders.

Warren opened the refrigerator. “There’s bird shit all over in here, man.”

“The fridge?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, the chickens like to check things out in there sometimes.”

Warren carried the beers back to the living room, passed one to Burt. “So, what are you going to do?”

Burt downed three swigs in short order. “I don’t know, man, I really don’t.” He looked and sounded like a kicked dog. “I haven’t been to work in nearly a week. Clarkeson called yesterday asking what was up. I told him I had a family emergency.”

“It’s not that bad. I mean, it’s not like they follow you everywhere.” Warren paused. “Right?”

Burt slouched further into the cushions. “The tree and chickens tend to stick close to home, but you saw what happened with the others.”

Warren put on his best buddy smile. “At least you have the rings. That’s something.”

Burt nodded. “Yeah, they’re not so bad when they show up on my fingers or in my pockets. Not real gold, though.” He finished his beer.

“Where do they. . .? Never mind.”

Burt made a sound somewhere south of a laugh. An African Gray Parrot perched on the stereo mimicked the sound perfectly. Burt threw the empty can at the bird, and began to cry.

“Aw, c’mon, man, no.” Warren got Burt some toilet paper, and they sat together without touching until Burt’s tears stopped and the hens had made off with the tissue. “Have you tried, maybe, calling Mala?”

“She won’t answer. Hasn’t returned my calls. Won’t answer when I knock.”

Warren did some figuring. On the off chance he was wrong, he checked the date on his phone. “Listen, hey, um. . .do you know what day it is?”

Burt shook his head, wiped his nose on his sleeve.

“You’re on the sixth day of this Christmas thing, right?”

Burt nodded.

“And there are only twelve days of Christmas.”

Another nod.

Warren checked his calendar a final time. “Today is the tenth, well, eleventh now. There are fourteen more days until Christmas, and only six more days of the song. What happens then?”

Burt rubbed his face with both hands. “No idea. I don’t got that much room in my apartment.”

Warren held up his phone. “Maybe I can call her for you.”

From the bathroom came the splashing of water, and the trumpeting of swans.

Knowing Jill would love a few shots [...]]]> I saw the monk reading on a bench at the mall, and from the inattentive scurry of the holiday shoppers, I could tell I was the only one. How they missed those saffron robes I have no idea, but they did, and I was, Merry Kwanriistmaskah and all.

Knowing Jill would love a few shots just like that for our week after Christmas spread, I took a chance that he wouldn’t go anywhere, hurried out to my car, grabbed my camera bag, and braved a second run through the crowds to reach him. I was in luck. He hadn’t moved. I approached with personal deference, and a professional eye. “Excuse me?”

He looked up and smiled. Thai or Cambodian, I decided, bald, tiny, in that eternal span of age between sixty and six-hundred, and wrinkled in all the ways that spoke of a life lived at peace with itself. “Yes?”

His smile was contagious, or perhaps it was a pause in the insistent Christmas carols. I presented my card: Olivia Miller; Photography, Portraits, Every Day Life. I reiterated everything on my card, finishing with , “And I wondered if I could take a few pictures of you reading, Brother, um. . .?”

“Choon,” he said with a slight bow of the head. “No title, not any more. Choon.”

He looked like southeast Asia, and sounded like southeast Chicago. “Choon, then.”

His smile widened.

I stepped back and unzipped my case, considering light, posture, and a dozen other things.

“If you will allow me to present you with a thank you gift when you are through,” he finished.

That stopped me in my tracks. “Pardon?”

At that he laughed, high and musical. I thought of waterfalls and eastern temple bells. “A gift,” he said. “Nothing too ostentatious, I promise.”

I frowned. “I’m sorry. I don’t have any cash on me, and I only wanted a couple of shots.”

The monk settled back in the bench, hands in his lap. “Certainly.”

Okay, was I supposed to pay him or just take pictures? When he didn’t make a move to hold out a hand or credit card machine, I figured everything would be okay, and got my camera ready. I put my case on the bench beside me.

I expected to defend my position from the crowd, but they moved around me without a hitch, as if they didn’t want to get tangled up and miss out on a sale of shoes that doubled as pocket watch key protectors or some such. The holidays were a drag; they brought me down, and down, and down. If it didn’t involve guilt, it took money, and as a self-employed photographer, I had plenty of the former and none of the latter.

“What are you reading?” I said to fill the relative silence of checking light and exposure.

“The Five People You Meet In Heaven,” he said, resting his fingertips on the open pages.

I’d heard about the book, but hadn’t read it. “Is it any good?”

“There are many things to consider,” he said.

I laughed and took a step back, almost backing into a young woman on the stairs, but she continued chattering on her cell phone and moved out of my way, as fluid as you please. “Okay, then. Keep reading. I only want a couple of shots.”

Choon lowered his attention to the small red book and, honest to Groucho Marx, began to read..

When you ask a model to do something specific – read a book, open a box, look out a window – too often they only mimic the action and don’t embody it. Choon didn’t happenstance glance at the page, he found the line where he left off and pick up reading from there. There’s no other way to say it, he inhabited the act of reading. That fast, the book became his world. I could tell, and so could the camera.

All told, I probably shot fifteen frames, maybe three minutes tops. Jill was going to have a field day with these, and I might even see a bonus on my next check. When I finished, I sat beside Choon and went through the shoot, a courtesy for his kindness. He seemed fascinated, leaning in close for a better look. “You have a wonderful sense of perspective and angle,” he said.

I shrugged. “Patience, practice, and more patience.”

Choon touched the side of my camera the way he had touched the pages of his book. “Of course. It is the knowing eye.”

If he said so. I packed up my camera and checked the time. “Thanks for sitting for me. I really appreciate it.”

“You are most welcome,” he said, bobbing head bobbing. I prepared to stand when he added, “Please. Your gift.”

Right, right. He had something for me. “Sorry. I forgot all about it. Really, you don’t have to -”

“Please. You would honor me with your acceptance.”

He didn’t offer up any guilt, but I took an extra helping. It looked like the shoe sale would have to wait a few more minutes. “Sure.”

Using what looked to me like a braid of dark hair for a bookmark, Choon set the book aside and produced a small muslin bag from his robes, maybe the size of one of those bags of Christmas coal candy. From this he pulled a simple golden ring which he pressed into the palm of my right hand. “For you.”

I frowned, closing my hand enough to flip the ring over. I picked it up, a simple gold band, no markings or designs, no karat mark inside, but with the depth of color and heft that made me think it was sold gold and not plated. “Oh, no, I couldn’t.” I shook my head and tried to hand the ring back.

“I have five rings. Yours is the third.”

That made no sense. Something from the book, maybe? “It’s lovely, and I appreciate the thought, but I can’t accept it.” I gave a little laugh. “It’s worth, oh, I don’t know, more than I can afford.”

Choon sat perfectly still, hands in his lap, a still pool of serenity in the ebb and flow of the crowds. “Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you’re not really losing it. You’re just passing it on to someone else.”

I frowned. “What?”

The little man in saffron yellow smiled, and gestured to the little red book. “Wisdom from the book.”

So the whole third ring business must have come from the book, too. Feeling odd and a little uncomfortable, I set the ring on his knee. “I’m sorry, but I can’t. I mean, I didn’t do anything to deserve this.”

“You did,” he said. “You asked to take my picture.”

Scratching the back of my head beat out wringing my hands in frustration. “But that was paying attention to you, which is bad since you’re Buddhist and all, right?”

“No, you were attentive to the moment. The third ring is now yours.”

“Oh, come on.” Why was I arguing with him? Why didn’t I just walk away? “This isn’t a Christmas present. You’re not even Christian.”

“Neither are you.”

Good point. I was agnostic, flirting with atheism at this time of year, really. His calm assertion ruffled my feathers. “And?”

He bobbed his head. “You are here as am I.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Everything and nothing,” Choon said, and inclined his head.

Nut brown eyes watched me, took in everything about me: my ponytail; my lack of make-up because I woke up on the run; my second-hand sweater with the missing third button from the top. The river of people flowed around us, our bubble of calm, and I had a terrible thought, one of those thoughts that clawed its way up from my belly and caught hold of the breath in my throat.

Did that woman pushing the stroller see us and then look away, or had she not noticed us at all? What about the guy in blue with the green backpack, and Sears bags on his arm? Had he meant to move around us, or was he compelled to do so without realizing we were there? Did they see us? Only a few minutes ago I thought it odd that I was the only one to notice Choon sitting on the bench with a book on his lap. A book about dead people.

“Are you. . .?” I swallowed and tried again. “Are you. . .dead?”

He shook his head once. No.

The next question clung to the back of my throat, and I fought not to ask. “Am I?”

Choon stared at me.

I began to shake, thoughts of those things I knew I shouldn’t have done through the years crowding my chest, every doubt or nuanced bit of anger. The monk stared at me in compassionate silence. “Say something. Please.”

He leaned close to me and, in a whisper, said, “Do not speak unless it improves on silence.” He looked left and right. “Which is long hand for no, I don’t think you’re dead.”

My bones turned to water and I all but collapsed into him. I had the sudden urge to piss my pants.

Choon allowed me to lean against him for a time before carefully shifting away so straightening looked like my idea. I felt light headed, nauseated, hot and cold, miserable and giddy. If I’d been more physical, I would have slugged him. “I, uh, wow.”

Choon inclined his head. “You’re welcome.”

I felt fire in my cheeks. “I don’t know what to say. You must think I’m an idiot.”

“I have come to recognize there is no reason to wait until one’s death to recognize those who make a difference in one’s life.” Choon collected the pouch and book, stood. For such a small man, he took up all of my vision, a precise moment of awareness, consciousness, with a shaved head and slender hands. He pressed those hands before him and bowed from the waist. “A pleasure making your acquaintance, Ms. Olivia Miller.”

Like a fish coming to the surface of the water, or a leaf falling from a branch, he joined the crowd. The ring sat on the bench beside me. I picked it up, ready to give it back, but the monk in saffron robes had blended with the crowd and was gone.

I stood at the top of three shallow stairs, alone, one of five, and not alone at all.