Fantasy Magazine Issue 30, September 2009

Table of Contents

The White Part of the Apple by Emily Tersoff (fiction) The Good Window by Lisa Hannett (fiction) Tending the Mori Birds by Caroline M. Yoachim (fiction) The Girl in the Green Sequined Dress by Berrien Henderson (fiction) Images of Anna by Nancy Kress (fiction) The Moon Over Tokyo through Leaves in the Fall by Jerome Stueart (fiction)

Author Spotlight: Lisa Hannett Author Spotlight: Berrien Henderson Author Spotlight: Nancy Kress Author Spotlight: Jerome Stueart

About the Editor © 2009 Fantasy Magazine www.fantasy-magazine.com The White Part of the Apple Emily Tersoff

They found her on the playground. It was October, and the ground was cold. There was a yellow leaf stuck in her hair, which spilled like black ink over the mulch. Her dress was white. Her face was white, covered in ice, and it frosted her eyelashes. Her lips were purple until one of them wiped her face with a cloth and then her lips were red, red like falling leaves, red like ripe apples, red like blood. They picked her up and took her home. For a while there was a sort of wet shape in the mulch, just enough to show that a snow girl had lain there for a while. But then the wet evaporated and the wind blew and you would never know that anyone had braved the cold to go to the playground that day.

***

They are tall. They are small. They are seven. She is their in-between girl, and they take care of her until she thaws some. Then she can move, can see, can get up and cook spaghetti. She does not clean, except when she needs dishes to make her dinner. Sometimes she plays solitaire. Sometimes she plays music. Sometimes she thinks they are not there at all, and she is still frozen, dreaming while she waits for the sun to come and melt her away. Sometimes she goes to the school and the boys and girls there say You are beautiful and You are lovely and I want you for my very own. Sometimes the boys and girls scare her and she runs away, back to her cards and her piano and her dreaming. She is not to look in mirrors, because mirrors tell secrets and lies. She looks anyway. The mirrors tell her nothing. She already knows she is a snow child. She knows she is a skeleton child. She can feel it for herself, see her own cold, bony hands.

***

She knows who the woman is. She does not tell them later, but she knows when she lays her fingers on the doorknob, she knows when she opens the door, she knows when she lets the woman lace the corset onto her, what will happen. She knows when she faints. She knows who, and what, and when, and where, and why, but she does it anyway. Later, when she is breathing again and they hover over her like hallucinations, she thinks, How silly. Even if I didn’t know, what sort of teenager wouldn’t be freaked out by some woman selling corsets door-to-door? But she thinks perhaps they don’t know these things. After all, they probably aren’t real.

***

The woman comes the second time. This time she does not even give the woman time to knock. Yes, I will buy a comb. Yes, please comb my hair for me. For a moment she has a mother, gently combing her hair, and she can pretend that the comb isn’t poisoned, that the woman loves her. They wake her again. Why didn’t they let her sleep? She was having such a lovely dream.

***

The woman comes the third time. Power in threes. She thinks the woman is silly, to poison the red part of the apple. She would rather eat the white, white and pale like her skin, but she knows what is expected. She knows what will make the woman happy. For her stepmother’s smile, she will play along. She will take the bait.

***

She sleeps. She is ice.

***

Coughing. Coughing and there’s something blocking her mouth, something else lodged in her throat. She gasps, chokes—her mouth is no longer blocked and she rolls over, coughs and coughs until her throat clears and she can sit up, can take deep breaths and try to figure out what the hell is going on. There is a young man. He is going to bring her home, going to make her his queen. Her stepmother is overthrown, he says. She doesn’t have to be afraid anymore. She couldn’t breathe because there was a piece of apple in her throat, because he tried to breathe for her and woke her up. She thinks he’s creepy, this stranger out of nowhere. She doesn’t want him. She wants her mother. She wants to be ice. She lets him take her back, though, to the seven. He speaks with them, so perhaps they aren’t hallucinations after all. He stays for a few weeks. She teaches him how to play kings in the corners (like solitaire but not, and two people can play), heats up leftover spaghetti in the microwave. He teaches her how to fold paper cranes and play the penny whistle. She melts a little. Melts a little more the next day. Her hair stays black, but some of the red in her lips moves to her cheeks, and she smiles more. Her fingers stop looking like sticks covered in snow and start looking like fingers. She agrees to go back with him.

***

He holds her hand at the execution. She cries when they put the red-hot shoes on the woman, when they make her dance and dance until she falls down and doesn’t get up again. She tells him it didn’t hurt when the woman tried to kill her. He looks at her with sad, sad eyes, and kisses her forehead. He tells her the woman was a cruel queen. He tells her that the woman hurt the people, that they needed this revenge. He tells her he didn’t have a choice; they wouldn’t have stood for anything less.

***

Nighttime, and her crying wakes him. He sits up next to her, holds her in his arms until she starts hiccupping, until she can speak. She cries away the last of the melted ice, and then she looks at him and says, I don’t know what to do now. He leans her against him, whispers into her hair, I don’t know either. But I am here. I love you. She wraps her arms around him. He is warm. She whispers, I love you, too. And they sit that way for a long time.

Up until third grade, Emily Tersoff wanted to be a paleontologist when she grew up. During a reflective period that school year, however, she decided that perhaps she liked being able to spell “paleontologist” more than she liked the idea of actually being one, and decided to be a writer instead. In 2003 and 2004 she attended Alpha: the science fiction, fantasy, and horror workshop for young writers, and her story “Stay With Me” received an honorable mention in the 2008 Dell Award. In 2009 she graduated from Bard College, where she studied literature and theology. Next semester she will begin studying to be a Cool Young (Adult) Librarian at Simmons’ Graduate School of Library and Information Science. This is her first publication. The Good Window Lisa Hannett

The tape measure recoiled into its pocket-sized case with a satisfying snap. Ned smiled, wiped flecks of nail polish from the tape’s metal tip, and slid it back into her knapsack. Today had been a long time coming. Too long. Her toenails had lengthened more than 3mm since the last good window day. They had nearly grown bare in the dark interim, leaving the slightest crescent of colour on the tips of her toes. Cerulean blue, speckled with white polka dots. She celebrated the good days with brilliant toenail polish—but until today, the view hadn’t been worth the paint. Not more than an hour earlier, a wedge of geese had flown past her window. What a sight! Now Ned was dying to get at her collection of nail varnishes. She’d packed a few bottles in her knapsack—they nestled at the bottom like bubbles of promised pleasure, beside her tape measure and a fossilised rain shower (over 250 million years old!)—but Tantie would kill her if she stopped to repaint her nails now. The sun broke through the clouds, gilding Ned’s face, as her matronly aunt accused her of lying. “Don’t be wicked, Ned,” Tantie May said. “There are no geese outside. You know that full well. Be a good girl, now; it’s almost time for us to leave—” “Call me Lavinia,” Ned said. “Please, Tantie. It’s such a lovely name. And I’m not fibbing, I swear.” Ned’s wordwind fluttered in V-formation around her, spilling little white lies in its wake, immediately retracing its path to cross them out. Words swirled through her hair, pale tendrils lifting as paragraphs tornadoed above her head. Ned pinched the slowest phrases between her fingers, popping them into her mouth before they could escape. “We’ve been over this, Ned,” Tantie said, her own wordwind buzzing with ferocious energy, spinning tales of naughty children, bottomless pits, and rotten cheese as she spoke. “I will not call you Lavinia. Or Clarissa. Or Enchantée. Your name was set down in ink the day you were born. And that is that.” “But they made a mistake,” Ned cried, wishing she knew who had recorded her name—it was meant to be Nell—dooming her with their atrocious penmanship. “Yes, Ned. They made a mistake. Just as you did when you thought you saw geese outside.” Shaking her head, Tantie shooed her wordwind toward the bedroom door, swiftly following it. “Your ’wind must’ve obscured your vision, dear. It has been known to happen.” Turning away from her aunt’s disappointment, Ned stepped up on her school chair and peered out the window. The bedroom door clicked shut behind her. Let her leave, Ned thought. Outside, the sun was wavering. Although it had gleamed for much of the day, its light now pulsed feebly, consumed by a familiar shade of grey. The street was deserted. Their paperwork had been stamped with official seals, and likenesses of Ned and her aunt had been inscribed— with ink—into small leather booklets. Ned thought her picture looked funny. All the artist had wanted was to capture an impression of her face, serious and close-up: Ned thought she looked naked without a wordwind tap- dancing across her shoulders. Tantie had applied for this set of transport passes more than once. More than once the applications had been rejected. But today the sun shone on them for the first time in 3mm. And then their passes arrived in the morning chute. The train departed for the ’port in less than an hour. They’d finally been given leave to go. And there had been geese, even if Tantie hadn’t seen them. Ned was sure she’d never hear the end of it if she made them miss the ship, after all Tantie had done to book their passage. So she wiggled her half-polished toes into thick-soled treaders, tried not to think how much better they’d look tipped in fuchsia. A day like today definitely warranted fuchsia varnish, but that bottle had already been boxed up and sent to Mamie’s. Stepping out of her room, Ned made sure to avoid the ladder propped up against the wall in the hallway. They weren’t taking it with them—Ned had insisted. Tantie had rolled her eyes, her wordwind merging with Ned’s, listing lullabies and recipes for candy as they negotiated. But Ned’s mind wouldn’t be changed, no matter how sweet Tantie’s words were. On the bad window days, the ladder inevitably got positioned near the bathroom. The men would ascend its length, disappearing into the ceiling, frightening Ned when she really needed to go. The men’d sit up there non- stop—sometimes for weeks—knocking around, repairing the machines they kept in the air shafts. The machines that caused such a ruckus Ned couldn’t concentrate on her schoolwork. The ones that generated the finely sifted ash that drifted to the ground outside her window, that spoiled her view with washes of red and charcoal. The ones that made anxiety drench her pants while she avoided the bathroom. Outside, ghostly green flashes would explode on the horizon whenever the men were around, bright enough to make Ned blink. Sirens would sound in the distance. Too far away to know from which direction they came. Ned would have to draw the curtains as emergency signs switched on in the tenements a block over. Those were the bad window days. Ned knew she and Tantie were in for it whenever the ladder came out. There was no way it was coming with them to Mamie’s.

***

Tumbleweeds of ash and newspaper scuttled along behind Ned and Tantie as the pair hurried toward the train station. You know it’s a fuchsia kind of day when people are comfortable enough to sleep outside, Ned thought. Bodies dressed in coverall suits, faces hiding behind faded chip packets and litter, were strewn across benches or collapsed beside tree stumps. Their legs bent in foetal position, their arms draped uncomfortably across eyes. Ned adjusted her aviator goggles, pulled her hood strings until the world seemed almost entirely cut off. Good thing the sleepers’ve got the sense to cover their eyes, Ned thought, carefully tying a double-knot beneath her nose. But where were their wordwinds? Even sleeping people were surrounded by words, whether dream words concocting incredible falsehoods over pillows, or magnetic words landing on slumbering figures like flies. “Is it naptime out here, Tantie?” Ned asked, her voice muffled behind the thick canvas of her hood. “Should we wake them from their siestas? What if they miss the train? Then they’ll never be able to leave.” Tantie didn’t reply, but her wordwind launched into a parable about dogs and wounded children. That was so like her, Ned thought. Tantie’s mouth remained firmly set. Her grip on Ned’s hand was firmer still. The train timetable skidded across Ned’s restricted view when the station appeared on the horizon. Tantie’s strides grew longer, the pressure she exerted in dragging Ned along increasing as their goal appeared. “Slow down please, Tantie,” Ned said, as she stumbled to her knees for the third time. Her treaders were covered in soot; the palms of her hands were lacerated and imbedded with chips of gravel and shrapnel. Don’t worry, Ned wanted to say when Tantie pierced her with an anxious gaze. That train never runs on time— but her lungs were aching with heavy air. Loosening her hood just enough to poke her mouth out, Ned kept silent, breathed deeply. She didn’t want to lie to Tantie. How could she know about the trains? She hadn’t been outside in weeks. The station was deserted when they arrived. Ned was overjoyed—maybe they’d get the whole train to themselves! Her wordwind painted pictures of spinning tops, magpies building nests out of rusty cogs, and dented fob watches. Tantie flicked at a haywire word, sent it ricocheting off Ned’s goggles. “Take those things off, Neddie,” Tantie May said. “They’re ludicrous.” In response, Ned clutched the goggles’ rims, pressed them further into her eye sockets. “Trust me, the fée have been gone for years,” her aunt said, taking hold of Ned’s hand. “None of them will steal your eyes. Promise.” Why did fée creatures always go for the eyes, Ned wondered. Maybe it’s because they wanted to see more clearly in our world, or maybe it gave them some advantage in theirs? Maybe they sold them on the black market, exchanging eyes for babies’ livers and fresh pumpkin soup? Tantie shook her head as Ned’s wordwind transcribed her suspicions across the air. Ned pretended she wasn’t looking when Tantie tucked the worst of her worries into a back pocket. Removing her gloves, Tantie worked at the knot in Ned’s hood strings until it released, then pushed the hood back from her face. Tracing a rough finger along Ned’s smooth cheek, Tantie stretched the goggles upwards on their elastic strap. Ned squirmed as her aunt unveiled her grey eyes, making them a target for bloodthirsty fée. Brown eyes would be so much better than grey, Ned thought. Brown is a much less troublesome colour, since the fée seemed to like grey the best. And everything was grey nowadays, except for Ned’s toenails. The pair of filth-encrusted lenses dropped to the ground, forgotten, as an iron engine billowed around the corner, chugging toward the station on elegant puffs of steam.

***

The ’port was a blur. A thoroughfare for travellers, all on outbound ships; but also a marketplace for storytellers, plucking snippets from each other’s wordwinds while they waited to depart. Ned raised her hood, tried to capture her words beneath its insufficient shelter. She wouldn’t have anyone stealing her thoughts in this place. No way. Preoccupied with confining her wordwind, Ned took small notice of her surroundings as she was ushered toward the ship. Artificial breath mixed with the scent of too many bodies, uneasiness filling the unfamiliar space with its pungent aroma. A cacophony of wordwinds eclipsed the ’port’s humming lights as the crowd ebbed and flowed between the entrance and their departure gates. Ned blocked her nose, wished she hadn’t lost her goggles. There were bound to be fée creatures here, she reasoned. Neither her words nor her eyes would be safe until they were both on the ship. At the gate, guards carrying bayonets scanned wordwinds for signs of trouble, looking for bold statements or those that dripped red onto the passengers’ luggage. Ned passed through the archway unhindered, but Tantie was asked to step aside for closer inspection. “Tantie,” Ned cried. “What’s happening, Tantie? I can’t go by myself! I don’t know where to go.” She caught a glimpse of the massive ship out the ‘port window. It reminded her of a picture she’d once seen of a catfish. Only this one was humungous—a fish fit for a giant’s breakfast—and made entirely of wood and steel. Its wings stretched beyond her line of sight. And somehow she was meant to walk straight into its mouth and sit in its belly while it flew. Her knees buckled with relief when the guard returned Tantie’s satchel, nodding her through the gates. “Hush now, Neddie,” Tantie said, clumps of black words raining into her handbag while she scooped Ned up from the floor. “No need to make a spectacle,” she breathed. “You’ll be all right.” Her face was stern, but her arms quivered while she held Ned close, carrying her onto the ship. The window beside Ned’s seat was shaped like the lozenge Tantie had given her to suck on while the ship took off. It was smaller than the window in her room at home, but big enough to take her breath away. An army of clouds began waging war on the ship as soon as it soared upwards. Yet the loss of sunlight didn’t diminish the glory of Ned’s good window day in the least. It added drama—it added flair!—to the pantomime being enacted beneath her. Tiny fires dotted the landscape below, shining like rubies scattered across a bed of smoking grey. Ned reached a hand out to the glass, tried to grasp one of the glowering embers between her fingertips. Her wordwind framed the window pane, asking “Who is the fairest?” as flashes of lightning shot up from black tubes on the ground, chasing the ship across the sky. “Have you ever seen anything so beautiful, Tantie?” Ned whispered, her face aglow with ambient light. “No, dear,” Tantie replied, her eyes fastened shut as if she were dozing. Tantie’s knuckles whitened as she clutched the arms of her seat, her wordwind clunking around like the men in the ceiling, shedding stories of sorrow and loss. “Will there be views like these where we’re going, Tantie?’\” Ned asked, completely absorbed by the good window’s spectacle. The ship shuddered through a stubborn cloud, briefly surfaced into a painfully bright vista of blue and white. Ned gasped, clapped her hands with delight. The sky had coloured itself to match her toes! She was so glad she hadn’t repainted them after all. Tantie swallowed hard as the ship dropped rapidly, enveloped once more by rampaging clouds. “If we’re lucky, Neddie,” she said, “you’ll never see anything like this again.” Ned nodded, but hadn’t heard a word Tantie had said. She brushed her wordwind away from the window, vied against her own imagination for a better vantage. Had those naughty fée swapped her eyes with tricksy ones that would get her into trouble with Tantie May? She didn’t like being thought a liar. She rubbed her eyelids, stretched them as wide as they’d go, and pressed her face to the glass. No, she realised. Her eyes were just fine. But Tantie would sure feel bad about not believing her, Ned thought, as she watched a distant ‘V’ fly in the ship’s direction. “Look, Tantie! It’s the geese,” she said, jubilant with vindication. “I told you they were real.” Tantie squeezed her eyes shut as the ship reverberated with the sound of shot clanging off metal. Incoherent prayers spun around her head, then expanded to include Ned in their embrace of benedictions and regrets. Tantie’s wavering words raced upwards and back around the ship’s cabin, mingling with the other passengers’ encyclopaedic entries on monsters, nightmares, and survival techniques. Babies cried, spilling alphabet jumbles into the mix. The air sizzled with electric uncertainties. With exclamations of horror, both verbal and written. Careering sharply to the left, their vessel’s flight path turned back on itself like a broken elbow. Plumes of smoke swelled from its undercarriage. “Look,” Ned repeated, pointing at the battle geese descending upon their ship. Yellow and red starbursts bloomed from their metallic wings as the flock glided closer. Echoing bursts projected skyward from below as earthbound creatures answered the birds’ colorful calls. “Don’t be scared, Tantie. I won’t let anything happen to you. Promise.” Wait ’til I tell Mamie about this, Ned thought. How lucky we are to see all this up close! The ship plunged through a chequerboard of orange and red. Ned’s wordwind floundered, turned green. The turbulence upset her stomach. Tantie clasped Ned’s hand, drew her head to her breast. “Don’t be scared, Tantie,” Ned said as her aunt’s wordwind fell like a veil before her eyes. Ned waved her aunt’s skittish words away, gently. Turned back to the events unfolding outside her window. Hills festooned with blackened trees seemed to dart upwards, drawing the ship down, until the clouds were once more far, far above. The ship plummeted with wondrous speed. Ned sat still, riveted to the view. Her wordwind latched on to Tantie’s, lost some of its shine in the process. “‘Don’t be scared,” Ned repeated while the earth rushed up to meet their ship. “Don’t be scared.” Lisa Hannett lives in Adelaide, South Australia. Her short fiction is forthcoming in On Spec, Fantasy, and AntipodeanSF and has recently appeared in the Canterbury 2100 anthology. Lisa is a graduate of the Clarion South Workshop. When she’s not writing fantasy, she writes reviews for Australian Book Review and The Adelaide Review. She hopes to complete her PhD in medieval Icelandic literature before she is older than her subject matter. Tending the Mori Birds Caroline M. Yoachim

Prem sucked in just enough air to mumble curses as he exhaled. Every day it was harder and harder to force his tired old body up the stairs. He was grateful for the cool breeze when he finally reached the roof. Orange light from the setting sun spilled through the railing, casting sideways shadows like prison bars on the dusty ground. A Mori bird waited for him on the railing, its claws wrapped around the wood. The dying light accentuated the patch of red feathers at the base of its slender neck, the only color on an otherwise black bird. A bloody- throated Mori bird, harbinger of death. It smelled like licorice. From the wire cages to his right, other Mori birds cooed to welcome their returning friend. Prem approached the bird and picked it up. The black feathers had absorbed the day’s light and were warm in his hands. A folded slip of paper was tied to the bird’s leg. It held only a name, Kurec. The bird stretched its wings and flew around the rooftop in a circle before returning to his hand. Prem put the bird into a cage and leaned up against the railing. In the alley below, men and women wrapped in brightly colored silks hurried home from the market. He had seen Kurec from this rooftop many times before, his walk had been slow with age, but he had worn the bright yellow of sunshine and life. Now he would walk no more, for the Mori bird had brought his name, and Prem had read it. He looked down again at the paper. Kurec was so old that the name was written not by Prem’s hand, but by his father’s. Across the alley, yellow lamplight streamed out from a second story window. Prem told himself, as always, that he shouldn’t look, but he stretched himself farther into the alley to get a better view. The grain of the railing pressed through his shirt and into his skin. Most people would not have found his neighbor beautiful. Her skin was the color of spiced coffee, laced with scars that cut across her back. The scars were lighter, like cream, whipped to the surface sometime in the darkness of her past. Prem imagined that she tasted like the strong brew—bitter coffee sweetened with sugar and spiced with cardamom. She was missing part of one foot. When she walked she wobbled slightly to the left and had to correct her course with each step. But her eyes were dark and deep, and there were places where her skin was still soft. The triangle of skin above her collarbone called to him. He longed to run his fingers down her neck and let them come to rest in that small patch of skin. Tonight, water dripped from her hair and trickled down her body, flowing in the space between the scars. She’d been swimming in the river, and now her entire body cried as if to mourn Kurec’s death. She dried herself with a white towel, never once looking up at him. Did she know he watched? Did she care? He tore himself away from the railing and ladled water from a barrel into the dishes in the bird cages. The Mori birds required little care; it was the emotional burden of the birds that taxed him. So much responsibility weighed down on his shoulders. If he did not read the birds, the dying could not die. Decades ago, Father suffered for seven days before Prem gathered the courage to go and face his first bird. Father had refused to let anyone else read the name, had insisted that Prem would be the one to take on his curse. The memory still stung. Prem was not like his father, he could not inflict his pain on another. Certainly not a child. He’d sent away his wife and their three sons years ago. Driven them away with his bitterness. Protected them. Now he was always alone, here on the rooftop, surrounded by the darkness of his birds. He glanced down at the slip of paper, now wrinkled from being crushed in his sweaty hand. At least Kurec was old, and not a child. He went back to the railing and saw that his neighbor had wrapped herself in vibrant red fabric. Her scars were hidden, and her eyes sparkled. Her lightness warmed him, and he made his way back down the stairs.

***

The next morning, Prem stood at the bottom of the stairs. The climb was daunting, but he could hear one of the Mori birds screeching, so he pushed himself upwards one step at a time. His heart beat fast in his chest, and his breath came in shallow gasps. He paused for a moment a few steps from the top and leaned against the textured stucco of the wall. His pulse slowed a little, and he continued to the roof. During the night the birds had lost some of their darkness. At dawn, the birds held the promise of life. Near the center of the wall of cages, one of the birds called to him. Scree, scree. The sound was quieter now; the bird could see that he’d come. He opened the cage, and the bird flew out and perched on the top of his head. Its claws tickled his scalp. He let the bird guide him through the alleys and narrow roads to a building on the far side of town. When he drew close he could hear the wailing of a newborn baby. A man, the child’s father, let him in. The child was a girl. Once Prem was inside, the Mori bird hopped down from his head and perched on the bed where the mother held her newborn. Prem pulled out a slip of paper and a section of string. “She is our third child,” the mother said, “We name her Tejala.” Prem wrote the name down, and the Mori bird flew to his arm when he was finished. He folded the paper in half and wrapped it around the bird’s leg. “Tejala. May her bird fly far and lose itself in the forest,” Prem said. The words were ritual, but he meant them. He wished that the birds would stay in the forest forever. He took the bird to the doorway and released it. It flew off to the East. “And your bird as well,” the father replied. “Will you stay for coffee?” Prem shook his head. He was tired, but he preferred to rest in his own home. The man had only offered to be polite anyway. “Thank you, but no.” The man pressed two gold coins into Prem’s palm. Payment for his services. He set out across town. It was late in the morning now, and the sun pounded down on him, cooking his flesh until sweat oozed out. When he neared his house, he saw his neighbor kneeling in her garden. She was beautiful there in the dirt, peaceful. Her fingers plucked the weeds from the earth, kicking up dust that settled onto the perspiration of her skin, coating her in a thin layer of mud. Prem took a step towards her and opened his mouth to speak, but then thought better of it. He passed her in silence, and went into the shade of his house to rest.

***

Two nights had passed without birds on the railing, but on this night Prem had a heavy heart as he climbed the stairs. His legs were heavy, resisting each step. Before he even reached the top, he smelled the licorice scent of the birds, stronger than usual in the cool air of dusk. He hated the smell, and wondered if death would taste like licorice when it came. The sky was the deep blue of an ocean at midnight, and the stars began to cut through the darkness as points of light. He was late. Three Mori birds perched wing to wing on his railing. His heart sank. Today he would take his comfort first, before he read the names. The dying could wait at least that long. He shooed the birds aside and leaned over the railing. Across the alley, light poured out from her window, but she was not there. Was one of these birds hers? She was his only spark of light against the black feathers of his Mori birds. He looked back at the birds, at the scraps of paper tied neatly to their feet. He didn’t know his neighbor’s name, hadn’t wanted to know, had avoided the knowledge. A girl in a dream should have no name. Prem looked back to the window, but she still did not appear. Tonight he was alone with death, and one of the names on his cursed Mori birds might belong to her. He couldn’t bear to read them; he couldn’t take that chance. He wanted her, the reality and not the dream. Perhaps she sensed his wish. When he turned, she was there, standing at the top of the stairs with tears in her eyes. How had she known to come? Was it just that she had seen the birds, on the railing so late? He studied her face, searched her eyes for any sign of sickness. Maybe she knew it was her time, and she had come to say goodbye. “They’re waiting.” Her voice was raspy and low, as though her throat were full of sand and the sound had to force its way through. “Yes.” Three people were waiting to die. Did her voice always sound that way, or was she sick? His heart ached at the thought of losing her. Her eyes were flat, out of focus as if she was gazing into the distance, and her breath was shallow and quiet. He couldn’t bring himself to read the names. She saw him glance at the birds and walked to the railing. After studying the birds for a moment, she took one into her hands. She read the name it carried. Somewhere, someone died. It was not her. She removed the name from the second bird. Another death. Was it peaceful? Prem held his breath and waited for her to read the final name, but she did not. She put the bird back into its cage with the name still attached, unread. “When you’re ready,” she said. Prem reached out to her. She was his dream, and she gave him the strength to bear his sorrow. He could not leave her like this, dying, but never dead. It would be so cruel, so heartless. The bird, her bird, stared at him from its cage. It was her cage, too. She had given him the key and become his prisoner. Could he release her? He went to her, held her in his arms as he had done in his mind so many times. He ran the tips of his fingers down the side of her neck till they rested above her collarbone, and the skin was as smooth as he’d always imagined. “I don’t even know your name.” “Serenya.” The name made her real to him. It made her scars ugly because her past was ugly, but her imperfections made her beautiful. Serenya knew the pain the birds brought, but she came to him tonight and bore the burden of death. He kissed her forehead, her neck, the exquisite triangle of skin he’d admired for so long. She pressed her face against his shoulder, crying. He wished he could hold her forever, console her, but there was only one thing he could do to take away her pain. He brought out the bird, took the paper from its leg. The bird flew a slow circle around the rooftop before landing on Serenya’s arm. He looked down at the slip of paper and saw, not her name, but his. Death didn’t taste like licorice. It tasted like Serenya’s skin—coffee and spice with sweetened cream.

Caroline M. Yoachim is a writer and photographer living in Austin, Texas. She is a graduate of the 2006 Clarion West Writers Workshop, and her fiction has appeared in Fantasy Magazine, Talebones, and Shimmer. Her website is carolineyoachim.com. The Girl in the Green Sequined Dress Berrien Henderson

1

Mack Day studied the Fun Grabber machine in the corner while he sipped his coffee. One of the toys—a plastic and plush dancer in a green sequined dress— blinked at him. He blinked back, wondering if it was one of a handful of cutesy motion-activated electronica. His daughter had liked those the most. After all, it was only 50 CENTS TO PLAY. “Help me, please,” mouthed the doll, shivering. Her brunette hair, streaked with chic touches of purple, caught the light just so. The glitter embedded in her little faux- rouged cheeks spangled. “Please,” she silently aspirated. No, he thought, though it had nothing to do with previous encounters with animate dolls. He squirmed in the booth seat. His left foot moved heavily, and the old phantom pains returned like an old friend with a bad attitude. The doll’s eyes pleaded. He sipped more coffee. “Renee?” he said to the part-time waitress. The high schooler came over. “Yes, sir, Mr. Day?” He thumbed some money. “For the meal and coffee.” “Tip in there?” said Renee. “A good waitress oughtn’t ask that,” said Mack. “Mr. Day, I’m a great waitress.” “And confident.“ He took a last sip of coffee, then grabbed his briefcase. Just before he closed the lid, he looked at an old photo in there of his wife and daughter smiling back at him from some hazy, gray distant place frozen in the crinkled celluiod of the photograph. He gave them a tight-lipped smile. Turning again to Renee, he said, “As usual, thanks.” “Enjoy grading those papers.” “Urmp. ‘Enjoy’ is a relative term, to be sure, with this batch.” He eased out of the booth and limped away after saying bye to Renee and Clint the cook. The doll watched him through the double-view of the Fun Grabber’s Plexiglas and the plate glass of the Breakfast All Day restaurant. Her plastic eyes with their cerulean irises convicted Mack Day’s back though she had no plastic tears to shed.

*** 2

He lived only four blocks away in an old Victorian style home in a series of blocks the local preservationist society decided actually needed little preserving. Once home—his left foot gave him holy hell—he left the briefcase on the little table in the foyer. A grandfather clock ticked hollow reminders at him as his steps tried their best to echo off the hardwood floor. Past the old family photos on the buffet. Checking the answering machine (nothing there). Into the kitchen and to the cabinet above the microwave niche for something for his foot. He laughed at the thought, but he removed his shoes and looked down, slipping off his loafers and cursing the left foot that looked like a prop off some robot movie. He dreaded going to bed because the pain would persist, maybe blunted, like now, just like— Nevermind. Forget it. He went to the cabinet and opened the brown bottle with its rolling refill and told himself it was for the phantom pain. But aren’t all pains phantom? A helluva note when something that’s just not there anymore decides it still hurts. He doled himself a tablet and chewed it, letting the bitter pharmaceutical mystery spread against his tongue, under his tongue, down his throat, and into the branching wonder of his bloodstream so much faster for his having chewed it. No. Twofer, he told himself, chewing another one. He didn’t have to be at work until lunch tomorrow.

***

3

A T-bone isn’t just a steak. It’s a log truck with shitty brakes and a Honda Accord. A mangled ankle and foot. A pair of graves, one smaller than the other. Two rooms that stay closed. Photos covered in dust you’re never going to clean. A half-day teaching position so you don’t go batshit crazy, but at least there’s the group health because your foot can only be so screwed up as opposed to the stumps on the inside that just won’t heal.

*** 4

Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays—the routine was simple. Work those days and grade Humanities papers Monday through Wednesday, World Lit. papers on Thursdays and Fridays. Go to Breakfast All Day for double grits and two eggs over well. “Routine can be salutary,” discovered Mack Day for a one hundred fifty dollar co-pay at the local mental health clinic—the summation of time much like his signature on the check.

***

5

So, for the next two weeks, he sat somewhere else in the restaurant but couldn‘t shake the feeling of being watched—of being truly watched—by the doll in the green sequined dress. “Hey, Clint. Where’s Renee?” he asked the cook, who reminded him of Powers Boothe. “Dance recital,” said Clint. He slung together chicken-fried steak slathered in gravy with an asparagus- and-mushroom omelet on the side. “Oh, good for her,” said Mack. He watched the short- order genius at work and allowed a tic of smile to touch the corner of his mouth. He got up to pay at the register. How long had it been since he’d done that? The Fun Grabber stood on the oblique corner from him—right in a natural line of sight. He saw a little plastic hand against the Plexiglas. There were new plush whatzits in there, and the doll had shifted so that a purple bear sat on her torso. Her legs, as before, were still buried in the miscellany of generic pirates and ninjas and superheroes and clear plastic boxes with shiny plastic jewelry inside. “Thanks,” he told Clint. “No problem.” Mack Day took his change, pocketed most of it, went over to the Fun Grabber, and clunked in fifty cents as offering to the machine. He grabbed the joystick. The claw dangled and shuddered with each concomitant jerky movement of the joystick. Before he could press the red button, the digital timer ran down, and the claw dropped in preset punishment into the plastic-and-cloth wonder below and got nothing. He saw the little smooth-palmed hand drag on the Plexiglas. Somewhere was her head. No mouth to pantomime speech; of that he was glad. “Always wanted to try my luck at one of these,” he lied to Clint, who gratefully wasn’t paying attention because he had more orders going in some rather amazing short-order symphonic movements. Mack made it through another dollar’s worth of attempts and got lucky. He was nowhere near the doll. Into the drop chute fell a dragon, its skin a mysterious, iridescent, magical polyester. He put it in his coat pocket as the little dancer’s hand moved again; he wasn’t sure if it was a laudatory wave or a wave good-bye. He knelt and could see her face, shadowed by the bear. He thought he saw a smile. When Mack left, Clint was still putting together interesting culinary motifs for a call-in order—heavy on the omelets and some massive coronary of a burrito—and saw no other patrons. Only the doll‘s hand.

***

6 Time is relative and can be shut off. Einstein never posited that, but he never lost people he loved nor his foot to a too-tired driver. Clocks can be unplugged. Snooze buttons can be hit. Doors can be shut. Thresholds can be marked against passage. These are the passives that receive Mack Day’s life. He does not recall how long he had stood in front of the door with the crystal knob like a jewel. All the interior doorknobs have been replaced—years now— with generic brass knobs, but not this one, which is “the biggest diamond full of rainbows.” Such a big metaphor for a little girl, Mack had thought at the time. Prevailing upon him, she had kept it. Mack grabs the knob. Time is relative. Dust covers the posters and vanity and desk and bureau. The bed is still unmade. In one corner, arrayed amid various pillows—for should not she have had extra pillows for comfort and security?—sprawls a gathering of stuffed animals. He places the iridescent dragon on the bed; it points its snout at the door as though on sentry detail. Or maybe looking for cup-thieves. Mack flips down one corner edge of the comforter. He trails a finger through the dust on the bureau. He pauses to study the picture frame there, too, the one of his wife and daughter—a copy of the same photo all worn and crinkled and housed in his briefcase. He could almost touch his wife’s brunette hair, almost take a knuckle and caress his daughter’s cheeky face. He loves this particular photo, the way the light caught their eyes. Still has it held captive. Time, he tells himself, is relative. The dragon flickers its tongue at his back to offer concurrence. Mack shuts the door.

***

7

The weeks drew on, and Mack became progressively busier by virtue of spring semester’s drawing to a close. That meant being inundated by the last of the tests and term papers and final exams. His office kept him from most of his trips to Breakfast All Day except for coffee. He began to understand why ennui hit retirees, why depression snuck up on formerly able-bodied folk. Work was diversion, home a place to sleep and eat and shower and keep clothes. “Been missing you around here, Mr. Day,” said Renee one evening. “Been missing myself,” he said, tapping the attaché case and setting an essay back inside. “A necessary evil though a timesink.” “Tell me about it. I just turned in a research paper for American Lit/Comp,” she said. He drank some coffee. “Do tell.” “e.e. cummings and ‘since feeling is first,’” said Renee. “Felt sorry for my teacher.” “For the quality of your paper?” She laughed. “No, sir. For my teacher’s having to grade six classes’ worth of research papers.” With a sheepish grin, Mack gestured at his briefcase. “Only the venue changes, I’m afraid. Core classes are just high school accelerated, pretty much.” He shut the case and took the ticket from Renee and paid and tipped her. “Hope you get good marks for Mr. cummings.” “Thanks.” She took the money and put it in the register while pocketing her tip. “Skipping the Fun Grabber?” “Long day.” He said. “You know, the claw’s tension can be loosened, so even if you latch onto a toy, it’s unlikely you’ll get it.” “Guess the house wins in the long run, eh?” “Suppose so.” The doll spied him from behind the shadow of the purple bear. “You know, when it’s slow—and that’s rarely—Clint and I have little contests to see who can get a toy within two plays. It’s usually a bust. But the other day, some kid got that ninja with the grappling hook for an arm,” said Renee. “First try.” “Fluke,” humphed Mack. “Sour grapes,” said Renee. “Touché.” “Hey, Renee, you going to work or jaw?” said Clint. “I’m dealing with a tipper, here,” she said. “I’m dealing with an upstart right there,” he said, pointing at her with a spatula flecked with bits of scrambled egg. “You two enjoy the rest of your shift,” said Mack, offering a half-hearted grin and turning around to leave.

*** 8

The doll dances. Light spangles on the green sequined dress, and Mack claps his hands. He is the only one present at this impromptu recital, held in Breakfast All Day, whose floor space is bigger and accommodating some bunting and a snack table and a banner. THANK YOU FOR COMING! CONGRATULATIONS! YOU MADE IT! The vague pronoun references, he thinks during a tiny window of lucid dreaming, seem wholly apropos. Free of the machine, the doll peacock struts a few steps, then executes tip-top pirouettes, and her glissades defy the devilish fricative forces of the linoleum. The purple bear, still stuck in the Fun Grabber, pushes his snout to the glass, and even his licorice eyes glitter under the lights. His stitched up mouth works hard—but not hard enough—to offer the doll encouragement. He waves his paws to no avail. He pounds the glass. Still she dances as though in some eerie Zen state. The purple bear notices Mack Day, and Mack notices the bear and raises his coffee cup. Then he notices the strain on the stitching of the purple bear’s mouth—how the seams look ready to rip. Then comes a blink and a flitter-flutter of flickering lights in the diner—Where are Renee and Clint and the regulars? Wouldn’t they appreciate the doll’s newfound freedom?—and a storm blows up. Mack tries to sip some coffee. The lights flicker again. The Fun Grabber shudders, and the purple bear rocks inside. The other toys—the dumb ones—don’t care in their apathy after so long unnoticed. The claw zips back and forth on its track guide as the bear regains tenuous footing. Mack spills coffee on his chin and shirtfront. The sky outside darkens considerably, and he hears tink-tink-ta-tink-ta-tink sounds. Now the doll stops, her mouth a perfect O of shock, already wide eyes impossibly wider. “Look out!” she mouths, still mute though free of the machine. The doors whip open from the gusts of wind off the storm. The air begins to crystallize, frost forming. The doll freezes in mid-stride and topples over as a ribbon of shadow streams inside and wraps her up. “No!” thinks Mack. He rises from his corner booth and falls. His left foot, whose prosthetic is somehow melted to his other pantleg, won’t work, and he squirms forward. Pairs of hands reach down, plucking up the doll and swirling and skirling in the diner in a maddening gyre. They exit. The doors slam shut so hard the glass shatters. Mack reaches for the doll as she suffocates in the puffy dark of the ribbon of shadow. “Please!” she mouths as two more faces frame her own. Mack squeezes his eyes shut and screams at the faces in the shadow. But only silence comes. The bear he understands now. Along with the coffee on his chin and shirt. His own mouth is stitched shut.

***

9

Mack stayed late at work for appointments with his World Lit. students to conference on their research papers. He entered some marks in his book, went over some notes, then gave himself an hour to grade some unit tests: Baroque and Rococo for Humanities and The Wounded and the Maimed in Arthurian Legend for World Lit. before leaving. The college had the hum of habitation gone stale with night classes; the night crew of janitors were out as footnotes to another day in the halls of academe. Outside it was nice and temperate. He headed down the twisty walkways of campus, then to the town’s Euclidean-proper sidewalks and on home. A spot of coffee would be stellar. Maybe another go at the Fun Grabber. Who knew? Two blocks away he entered the well-manicured “other” historic section of town. He did like the landscaped medians on the streets here, though. Fireflies were out, flickering arcane bioluminescent code as a few joggers appeared in pools of streetlamp light, then became shadows again. As he crossed the street, he heard tandem screeches and rent-metal noises. Half a block back a truck had crashed. Mack headed that way; this wasn’t the busiest street, especially for such a bucolic neighborhood this time of night. It was a delivery truck, a longbed with removable aluminum rails. The thing it had carried lay in several chunks of sheet metal and broken Plexiglass while the driver crawled out the cab. “Here, easy,” said Mack, helping the man. “Wouldn’t reflective tape be nice for night-joggers?” said the man after a string of curse words. He flipped out a cell phone and dialed 911. Mack waited. Shaken and stirred, the driver stayed on the line. Then Mack studied the wreckage. Its guts lay in a plush amorphous pool of stuffed toys and chunks of claw machine. The Fun Grabber. “That is one helluva mess,” said the driver, whose long day just got much longer. “Sure is.” “If it were daytime and kids saw that, could you imagine?” “Not at all,” said Mack. He thought of the doll. In the jumbled viscera of toys on the asphalt in the low street lighting, he couldn’t make out much. The police arrived along with the obligatory, precautionary ambulance. A witness report was filed. The driver and cops thanked Mack for his Good Samaritan- ship, and along he moved.

*** 10

From the coverts of crepe myrtle limbs, she watched the scene unfold. Then she watched Mack go over and pick up the briefcase and with a pronounced limp start back home. Plastic eyes gleamed as stiff-yet-not-stiff plastic limbs moved. With a surreptitious swing down from crepe myrtle branches, she let the night absorb her in a ribbon of dark between cyclopean streetlamps.

***

11

The question of going to Breakfast All Day resolved and absolved itself of any Fun Grabber issues. Mack wondered if Renee and Clint had had one last go and thought it would’ve been nice to have joined them. Once home his bones reminded him how tired he was and him how used to the evening coffee he’d become. He set the briefcase on the table and went on to bed. He was so tired that he didn’t even remove the prosthetic left foot. Sleep invaded Mack—dreamless sleep while a wakeful dream roamed somewhere on the fringes of the house.

***

12

The door opens, and the hardwood floor cannot betray the intruder. Ice-blue eyes peer around, and a tight plasticized smile forms. A smile of relief.

***

13

Mack lay awake a minute or two listening to his house. The ceiling fan tick-tick-ticked its revolutions. But he’d come awake knowing he had to wake. A twinge of phantom pain and definite irritation vexed him, and he realized he’d gone to sleep with his prosthetic foot on; he’d need it to get up anyhow. He went down the hall to the kitchen but never made it. He stood at the door with the crystal knob (“the biggest diamond full of rainbows”). From the cased opening in the hallway, he could just see into the foyer through the living room. His hackles rose when he saw his briefcase open; once on the table, it stayed there and stayed shut. The stack of papers lay within, but the wrinkled photo was gone. Going over, he then saw his front door cracked open and went to shut it and call 911, but then he saw a bit of glitter in the light entering the foyer. There on the hardwood floor lay a green sequin. Mack straightened and went cold. He had set the briefcase down to check on the driver of the wrecked truck. But still— He turned the knob. The iridescent dragon stood at the foot of the bed. The comforter was rearranged, neatened, and straightened with the doll in the green sequined dress at one of the pillows. Mack watched her sleep and chided himself for an old habit that percolated through his fatigue and confusion and wonder as he watched for the rise and fall of her little plastic chest. With much effort the dragon turned its head to consider Mack, who stared from him to the doll, to the bureau. Mack made himself look there, really look there for the first time in a long time at the photo in its silver frame. He didn’t want to feel them again, to reach out; that was already happening again inside. He put the single green sequin in the dust at the base of the frame and went over to the bed and sat there. He caught the doll endeavoring not to notice him and pretending to sleep as she tucked the folded-up photo from Mack’s briefcase under the pillow. “It’s all right now,” he said. Her head turned, the brunette curls whispering over the cloth of the pillowcase. “Thank you,” she mouthed, then with a flutter closed her eyes. Mack noticed a dimple in the plastic near one corner of her mouth, then left the bedroom and made sure to leave the door cracked as he made his way back to his own bed and found some dreams he’d lost once sleep returned. The last thought rolling through his mind before he drifted off was that, yes, tomorrow would be as good a day as any to do something a long time coming. Dust.

Berrien C. Henderson lives with his family in southeast Georgia. He was born in a small town and currently lives in a farming community; deer and turkey have been known to wander through his yard. A small cadre of common house geckos earn their keep by eating the bugs on the carport and front porch. Both Berry and his wife teach—high school English and sixth grade English, respectively. He has a son and daughter, and they both answer to Thing 1 and Thing 2. Ever elusive free time he spends with family, and late in the evening or late at night, writing speculative fiction and poetry. His writing can be found in Kaleidotrope, The Shantytown Anomaly, The Journal of Asian Martial Arts, Clockwise Cat, and Behind the Wainscot. Forthcoming auctorial ventures include work in the Hatter Bones anthology (ENE Publishing), Drollerie Press, Star*Line, and Clarkesworld Magazine. He has been nominated twice for a SFPA Dwarf Stars Award Images of Anna Nancy Kress

The morning was turning out to be a bust. The first client wanted to pay with a personal check, which I’ve learned to not accept. She had no cash, credit card, or ID. The second client had cash but turned out to be a thirteen- year-old kid who wanted a “really sexy picture” for her boyfriend. No way: session cancelled. The third client was late. “The electric bill is overdue,” Carol said conversationally. She rearranged her table of cosmetics, hair extensions, and earrings, none of which needed rearranging. Carol was easily bored. I was easily panicked. Not a good business combination, and Glamorous You was barely hanging on. In Boston even the rent for a small, third-floor walk-up is expensive. Carol riffled idly through the hanging rack of negligees, gowns, and filmy scarves for clients that don’t bring their own stuff. Glamorous You doesn’t do cheesecake: no nude, bra-and-panties, or implied- masturbation shots. The costumes are fun but not raunchy; the negligees are opaque. I’m good with lighting, and Carol is a whiz at make-up and hair. We make our customers look more desirable than they’ll ever look in real life, but still decent. That’s why the electric bill was overdue. “What’s this client’s name again?” I said. Carol consulted her booking calendar, which featured a lot of white space. “Anna Somebody—here she comes now.” The door opened. “Hello,” the client said. “I’m sorry I’m late.” I blinked. We get a lot of older women, although not usually this old. Maybe fifty, fifty-five, she had a brown pageboy considerably darker than her gray eyebrows, twenty extra pounds, and a sagging neck. But that wasn’t it. She just wasn’t a Glamorous You type. Brown slacks, baggy white blouse, brown tweed blazer, all worn with gumball-pink lipstick and small pearl earrings. She looked like she should be heading up a grant-writing committee somewhere. “Anna O’Connor,” she said, holding out her hand. “Are you Ben Preston?” “Yes. Nice to meet you. My assistant, Carol.” “Hi, Carol.” She had a nice smile. Looking closer, I could see the regular features under the wrinkles, the good cheekbones, the nice teeth. This woman had been attractive once, in a bland girl-next-door way. Didn’t she realize how much time had passed? She did. “Let me tell you what I’m after here, Ben. I’m not young or gorgeous, and I don’t want to pretend I am. I just want to look as good as a fifty-seven-year-old can without looking like beef dressed as veal. Or sending your camera into mechanical heart failure.” She laughed, light and self-mocking, without strain. I liked her. “I think we can do that, Anna—may I call you Anna?” “Please.” “We offer three settings: a bed, arm chair, or wind machine against an outdoor backdrop. Which would you prefer?” “The armchair, please.” No surprise there. While I set up the shot, Carol did prep and they picked out a costume. When Anna emerged from the dressing room, I was agreeably surprised. Carol had darkened Anna’s eyebrows, shadowed her eyes, exchanged the kiddie-pink lipstick for a rich brown-red. Her hair had lost its helmet look and had some volume and swing. Anna had chosen not the Victorian gown I’d expected but rather a floor-length, emerald-green robe that skimmed over waist and hips but revealed her still- good cleavage. She looked terrific. Not like a model, of course, nor youthful, but still feminine and appealing. “You look great,” I said, glad to mean it for once. “I think that’s mostly due to Carol,” Anna said, with that same light self-mockery. She seemed at ease in her own ageing skin. No rings on her hand, and I wondered whom the negligee photo was intended for. “All right, if you’ll just sit in or stand by the arm chair . . . however you feel comfortable. You just—hold it!” She was a natural. All her poses were sexy without being parodies, and her refusal to take herself seriously came through in her body language. The result was sensuality as light-hearted fun. As I shot her from several different angles, I enjoyed myself more than I had photographing younger, prettier women. We bantered and laughed. When the shoot was done and Anna had changed back into her own clothes—but had not, I was glad to see, washed off Carol’s make-up—I broke my own rule and asked her. “And the picture will be for . . .” “Boyfriend,” she said, embarrassed. “That’s such a silly word at my age, but all the other words are even sillier. Beau? Main squeeze? Gentleman caller?” She pantomimed an Edwardian curtsey and laughed. “Well, he’s a lucky guy,” I said. Carol stared at me. I never got personal with clients—too much chance for misinterpretation. But Anna was old enough to be my mother, for Chrissake. “Will he come with you to choose the shot? Or is the photo a surprise?” “A surprise. Besides, he lives in Montana. We met on-line.” My good mood collapsed. I’d wanted this to be something positive. But she was just one more older woman being strung along by some Internet Lothario getting his rocks off by feeding on attention from lonely and desperate women. Best case scenario: He hadn’t asked her for money. Yet. “Ben, it’s not like that,” Anna said, looking at my face. “I’ve met him in person. He’s visited here twice. You’re sweet to be concerned, but I can take care of myself.” “Right,” I said. “So you’ll come back Thursday to see the proofs.” “See you then.” When she’d paid me and left, Carol said, “Lighten up, Ben. Not every woman is as stupid as Laurie was.” I turned away. Since we had no more clients booked for today, Carol left. I went into the darkroom and developed Anna’s pictures. And just like that, reality fell apart. ***

Film is not digital. There’s no chance to lose bytes in the bowels of a computer, to merge files, to have information corrupted by malfunctions or cosmic rays or viruses. Film is physically contained on a discrete roll. The images may be blurry, overexposed, underexposed, red-eyed, unflattering, partial, or missing, but there’s no way they can be of someone else entirely. Anna’s twenty-four pictures included three women about her own age, ten children, two teenage boys, and nine shots of the same older man. He was gray-haired, lean, and handsome, a brown-eyed Paul Newman. I stared at the photos in baffled shock. What the hell had happened? I had never seen any of these people before, had no idea how they had turned up in my camera. Nothing made sense. Fear slid down my spine, viscous and greasy as oil.

***

In the end I hid the photos, called Anna, and told both her and Carol that I’d screwed up and ruined the shoot. Carol ragged on me without mercy. Anna agreed to another session, no extra charge, a week from Saturday morning. In between, I shot a trashy-looking woman—teased red hair, black leather bustier—who was a happily married mother of two, and a patrician blonde beauty who, I suspected, was a hooker. I shot two giggly eighteen-year-olds who said they wanted to be models and who hadn’t the remotest chance of succeeding. I shot a pretty, sad-eyed young woman who wanted a glamorous picture to send to her soldier husband deployed in Afghanistan. A hundred times I pulled out the Anna-photos-with- no-Anna, and never came close to solving the mystery or mentioning it to anyone. What was I going to say? “Your pictures seem to be of several other people—are you a multiple personality? A witch? A mirage?” Give me a break. When Anna arrived for her second shoot, she seemed subdued. The shots in the green negligee still looked good through my lens, but they lacked the fresh zest of the first session. That’s the difference between professional models and amateurs: The pros can fake freshness. Off camera, that’s not always a desirable quality. I wasn’t as light-hearted, either. In fact, I could barely keep my mind on the raw shots, so tense I was about what they might develop into. After Anna and Carol left, I went straight to the darkroom. Twelve shots of the older man, eight children, two pictures each of one of the teenage boys and one of the middle-aged women. Some of the children were seated at a table, drawing with crayons. The teenager scowled ferociously. All the backgrounds were out of focus. No shots of Anna. I stared at the negatives until I couldn’t see anything at all.

***

I followed her. Her phone number was on the client- contact sheet. I fed it into an on-line reverse directory and turned up an address in Framingham, one of those peculiar Boston suburbs that’s upper-middle-class along bodies of water and working class everywhere else. Anna lived in a modest, well-kept bungalow on a maple-shaded street. Saturday afternoon she spent at a local community center. Saturday night she met two women—not those in the pictures—for dinner and a movie. Sunday she took the MTA into Boston and viewed an exhibit of art deco jewelry at the Museum of Fine Arts. Monday she went to work at the Framingham Public Library. I photographed her parking her car, entering the restaurant, leaving the movie theater, buying a ticket at the museum, even standing behind the reference desk helping an after- school gaggle of noisy teenagers. Each time I developed the pictures right away. None of them were of Anna. Increasingly, the settings weren’t even there. Her house was blurry, and so was the restaurant. The theater marquee was a blur. The museum had become a vague outline, and the library picture showed only the faint suggestion of the reference desk, behind which stood the scowling teenage boy. Each subsequent set of photos showed increasing haze, a pearly incandescent glow, although the people recurred sharply. If anything, they were too sharp, as if over time they were taking on knife- edged properties, almost able to slice right through the photographic paper. Yet at the same time, parts of their bodies—a shoulder, a back, the top of a head—seemed weirdly obscured, as if receding into deep and inexplicable shadow. None of it made any sense. All of it scared me. It finally occurred to me to Google™ Anna, who had a surprisingly large on-line presence without actually posting anything herself. She turned up in other people’s blogs, in small-town newspaper articles over two decades, in the proceedings of ALA conferences, in the Alumni Notes of her college. She ran childrens’ programs at the community center. She organized disaster-relief drives. A show of her paintings had hung on the walls of a local bank. She was the person that friends turned to in times of trouble. Why had such a woman—gregarious, kind, pretty, bright—never married, never had kids? One blogger wrote: Dinner last night with Anna O’Connor. If she can’t find the right guy, what hope is there for the rest of us? To which someone had added the comment: Some people are just too picky. Deluded overage romantics, still hoping for a soulmate. Bitch. But correct? I could see in Anna the outlines of a life both brave and sad: filled with useful activities but still feeling itself somehow displaced. Not a skilled enough painter for a commercial art gallery. More intelligent than most people—she’d graduated magna cum laude from Northwestern—but not ambitious enough for big-time academe or for a corporate career. Lots of friends but with no one really close, and thus lonely underneath. I knew many people like that, including me. Until she met this Montana guy on-line, who turned her into the hopeful, sexy woman who’d come to be photographed at Glamorous You. I gazed again at the baffling, terrifying photos that couldn’t exist, and then I drove back out to Framingham.

***

“Ben! What are you doing here—did you come to bring me the replacement pictures? You didn’t have to do that.” She came down the stone steps of the library, the last person to leave. Eight o’clock on a warm September night and sunset was long over. In the bright floodlights from the library, Anna looked both tired and tense, like a person who’d spent the day carrying loads of bricks up flimsy ladders. She wore another librarian outfit, brown pantsuit and sensible shoes, and her pink lipstick had been mostly chewed off. “No, I didn’t bring the proofs. I have to talk to you about them. Will you come have a drink with me?” “I don’t think that would . . . Oh, why not. Is something wrong? Do you need to talk?” “No. Yes. Is there a bar close by?” She didn’t know. Not a party girl. I found a fake Irish pub on Route 9, called her on my cell, and she joined me in a booth in the back. I’d already downed a double Scotch on the rocks. Another sat waiting for Anna. She took a sip and made the face of someone used to white wine. In the gloom of the pub, she looked old and strained. “Okay, Ben, what’s this about?” How do you blurt out that existing photographs— tangible, physical objects—can’t possibly exist? I was going to sound like a psychotic. Or a fraud. Can’t take flattering pictures of a client? Pretend she’s not there. I said, “The pictures of you are coming out . . . odd.” She flushed. “I know I’m not very photogenic—” “No, it’s not that.” She had absolutely no inkling. I would have bet my eyes on it. “Then what is it?’ “The photos are . . . blurry.” “Blurry?” “Yes.” I couldn’t do it, I just couldn’t. “Very blurry. It’s my fault. I’m here to refund your deposit.” “But . . . you have a terrific reputation as a photographer. I checked.” I shrugged. Her mouth tightened. “Oh, I see. I look ridiculous, don’t I? A woman in her fifties posing for a glamour shot. And you don’t want to embarrass me by saying so.” “No, it’s not that at all. I just—” “Anything else here?” the waitress said. She wore a silly white apron with green shamrocks on it. I ordered more doubles. When mine came, I seized the glass as if it were a tree in a tsunami. We sat in a heavy, unpleasant silence that stretched on and on. And on. Anna finished her first drink and made strong inroads on the second. Nothing I could think of to say seemed right, or even possible. Finally Anna made a sudden movement. I thought she was getting up to leave, but instead she said, “How much do you think a person should change herself for love?” My answer was instantaneous and violent. “Not at all! Nothing!” She peered at me, eyes a little unfocused, and I realized that Anna O’Connor could not hold her liquor. But if her inhibitions were in decline, her perceptiveness wasn’t. “Who was she, Ben?Your wife?” “Ex-wife.” If it had been anyone else in the world, I wouldn’t mention Laurie. I hated to talk about her, even with Carol, although Carol knows the whole story because she and Laurie were friends. But I was desperate to keep Anna talking until I heard something—anything!—that would make sense out of those photos. And I don’t hold my liquor all that well, either. “Tell me,” Anna said. Pain always turned me angry. “Not much to tell. My wife and I had some problems. Nothing big, or so I thought. Then she met a guy in a chat room. She had an affair, she left me, and he left her. She wanted to come back to our marriage, and I said no way. It was good and she broke it. The pity-me note she mailed me said she was tired of trying to be somebody she couldn’t. Well, I can’t be somebody I’m not, either. I couldn’t ever trust her again. End of story.” “I’m so sorry.” From Anna it didn’t sound perfunctory or condescending or phony. “You said ‘It was good’ but your marriage must have been troubled before she even met the other man.” Laurie had always said it was troubled; I’d thought it was mostly fine. She said I was “never emotionally present,” but didn’t all women say that? All the ones I’d known said it. I feel like I’m always pursuing you, Ben, and never the other way around, and I don’t like it. I scowled at Anna and tried to push away all memories of Laurie. As usual, it didn’t work. Anna said gently, “Why didn’t you let her come back? It looks to me like you still love her.” I snorted. “I told you, I won’t change who I am. And I don’t take sloppy seconds.” “That’s a terrible thing to say, Ben! She’s not a whore, just somebody who made a mistake. Maybe somebody who needs you.” “I’m not the Salvation Army, Anna.” I knew how my comments sounded. I also knew how much I needed to sound that way, especially to myself. Tough. Beyond caring. Anna said, “My guess is that maybe you need her, too.” “You don’t know anything about either of us!” “No, I don’t. I’m sorry to pry.” “Then don’t!” I thought she’d leave then. Instead she said, “What really happened to my photos?” I stared across the table. The original set of proofs were in my messenger bag. Pissed at her now, I took them out. The weird thing was that after the first shock, she didn’t seem surprised, or at least not surprised enough. Her forehead crinkled like a topographical map but her eyes didn’t register all that much disbelief. She studied the kids, the teenagers, the adults, the handsome older man. I saw that she knew them. “That’s him, isn’t it?” I said. “Your boyfriend.” “Yes.” “How did he—” “I don’t know. I was thinking about him, about all of them . . . I don’t know.” “Are you saying that I shot a pictureof what was in your mind instead of—” “I don’t know!” She stood, so quickly that she knocked into her second empty glass, sending it skidding across the table. She didn’t pick it up. “It’s late I have to go to work tomorrow thanks for the drink don’t worry about the—” “You can’t drive, Anna. You’re drunk.” Apparently that didn’t take much. She made a despairing little noise and lurched toward the Ladies’. When she returned, her face was wet and a cab waited outside. That was the last time I ever spoke to her. But I went on shooting her, whenever I could get away from Glamorous You. I photographed Anna outside her house, outside the library, with friends, on the playground at the community center. Maybe she saw me, maybe not. Certainly she never acknowledged me. Anna hurrying across the street to her parked car— but the negative showed another woman, younger and in tears. Anna blinking in sunlight on the library steps—but it became the graying older man and the library was a dark blur. Anna on her porch, both porch and house a swirl of black, Anna replaced by three small children. I studied the photographs in my darkroom, in the kitchenette of my unkempt condo, in the middle of the night. Let it go,Laurie used to say, about so many things. But I couldn’t let this go. I kept looking for clues, trying to put it all together, shooting yet more film. I spent time —a lot of time—on line, delving into Anna’s public life, looking for photos. I found them. Then Anna disappeared.

***

I don’t know when he told her the truth, no more than I know anything else that transpired between them. The first chat-room encounter, the first emails, the first phone calls. Probably he told her how isolated he felt in Montana. Probably he told her how isolated he felt in this world, and at first she had no idea that the hackneyed phrase could have a double meaning. Maybe he told her why he was in Montana, of all places. Or not. And she told him about her own version of loneliness, because that’s what all lovers tell each other. Just as all lovers say that finding each other is a miracle, an unlooked-for gift from what maybe isn’t such an indifferent universe after all. They each say that they would give up so very much to be with the other. Cheat on a marriage, leave a spouse, then regret bitterly their own stupid actions and promise the moon and stars for another chance. How much do you think a person should change for love?The answer in all the self-help books is: Don’t. The lover is supposed to accept you just the way you are, unconditionally. But when Anna asked me that, she didn’t yet know the full truth. She suspected something, that was clear not only from the anxiety and tension on her face, but from the photographs themselves. In each set of shots, the people got sharper. I found most of those people in jpg files, in blurry newspaper photos, in blog postings, in yearbook shots. The teenage boys were her troubled nephews; Anna had gotten one an after-school job at the library. The women were her newly widowed younger sister plus two of Anna’s friends. One had been laid off from her job but was now rehired. The other had broken her leg. The children were all from the community center, disadvantaged kids for whom Anna volunteered her time. Only Montana Man had no on-line photos. What was he? Why was he alone in Montana, without others of his kind? By choice, or as the result of some unimaginable catastrophe? I would never know. The only image I would ever have of him was from Anna’s mind, as he somehow changed her from the inside out, changed her fundamental relationship to the world as I understood it. While she let him do it. The pictures tell the story—but not the pictures of the people. It’s actually the backgrounds that matter. In the first one, my studio is only slightly blurred. With each subsequent shoot, the backgrounds—how Anna saw this world—got hazier, became nothing but shadows. Then the shadows turned into black miasma, as Anna struggled with her decision. The last several roles of film are like that. Except for the very last photograph. She saw me, that time. It was early morning. Dressed in the dreary brown pantsuit, she came out of her house, stood on her porch, and smiled at me where I waited in my car, camera raised. She even posed a little, as she had done that first day in the studio. Her smile was luminous, suffused with joy. Then she went back inside and closed the door. The developed shot shows a woman dressed in some sort of gauzy robe, wings spread wide from her shoulders, skin lit from within. Her tiny silver horns catch the dawn light. Her tail wraps loosely around her body. She is beautiful. But, then, she always was. What makes me unable to stop looking at the picture, what makes me so glad for her, is not her beauty. It is that, finally, the images in Anna’s mind are not of all those other people she can help but of herself, happy. He did that for her. He—whatever the hell he really is—gave her herself. That’s what Anna wanted me to see, on her porch that last day: What can happen when youchange for someone else. “Can” happen. Not “will.” No guarantees. I frame the photo but I never hang it. I redouble my efforts to pick up clients, which makes both Carol and the electric company happy. I spend too much time at the fake Irish pub, sipping and thinking, and then thinking some more. And eventually I pick up the phone and call Laurie.

Nancy Kress has won four Nebula Awards, for “Out of All Them Bright Stars,” “The Flowers of Aulit Prison,” “Beggars in Spain,” and “Fountain of Age.” “Beggars in Spain” also won a Hugo. Nancy won her second Hugo in 2009, for the novella “The Erdmann Nexus.” In addition, “Flowers of Aulit Prison” garnered a Sturgeon, and the novel PROBABILITY SPACE won the 2003 John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Nancy’s fiction has been translated into nearly two dozen languages (including Klingon). Nancy’s most recent book is STEAL ACROSS THE SKY (Tor, 2009). You can read more about Nancy’s upcoming project and appearances at www.sff.net/people/nankress. The Moon Over Tokyo through Leaves in the Fall Jerome Stueart

Yumi’s husband was the eleventh person she text- messaged the night his plum wine won gold at the Tasters Guild International. She typed, “Gold. Marconi’s.” This was 9 p.m. He wouldn’t show up. Marconi’s bar was crowded, with small lamps at every table illuminating faces from below. On the karaoke stage pink, white, and yellow lights colored the singers. She’d come with her husband’s coworkers, both her own age, but she felt guilty of the garishness. She could see it all through her husband’s eyes, and this was why he wouldn’t come. She remembered where she and Masato used to sit, and how he sang, “I see trees of green, red roses too,” how he closed his eyes, put his hand out over the crowd. Now, he’d close his eyes if she told him how much fun she still had here. On stage, Taro sang “Wake Me up Before you Go- Go” and made the two women cheer every time he found melody. He got into it, charging the edge of the stage, his flat blocky face exploding with emotion. He loosened his tie. He cocked his hips. The women laughed and clapped. Yumi knew what her husband’s excuse was, that he didn’t come because he was strengthening the evocation in the wine. But the wine was fine. It did win an award. Maybe he wouldn’t want to see them like this. She stood up suddenly in the middle of Taro’s song, and cheered. Though it was their celebration, they weren’t allowed to drink Masato’s wine. Time-Wines weren’t served in public places, moreso to protect the customers from theft and date rape and the establishment from lawsuits, but every staff member who knew about the Kuri no Yumi label celebrated their win tonight with “normal” drinks on the house, the kind, of course, that could leave you wasted and riding home in a cab—so Yumi wondered what the difference was anyway. That night, Yumi ripped out a steely version of “Don’t Stand So Close to Me,” pointing the microphone out the neon-lit front window on every open beat in the song.

***

Yumi got home around midnight, knowing he wasn’t there either. She flipped on a long—neck angled black lamp, casting a warm brown glow on the wall. She dialed his cell, wanted to wake him up, but he didn’t answer. She sat on the sofa under the lamp, slipped off her shoes. They thumped on the floor and the silence afterwards bothered her. It bothered her everywhere. “Miss you,” she said brightly into the phone. It wasn’t the first thing she’d thought of, but it would keep the peace. Their house had lost color over the last few years as Masato’s tastes had changed. He had the living room painted brown, put up framed, bleached bamboo rugs on the wall. She thought they looked more like framed Frosted Mini-Wheats. On the walls, traditional Japanese paintings—a goose landing over reeds, a snow scene— had replaced the smoky pastels of jazz scenes they’d had there for years. She found him adding pieces to the house, slowly replacing “her juvenile tastes.” The only piece left of hers, the only one he’d kept, stood on a table beneath one of the Mini-Wheat rugs. It was a red ceramic bull painted with purple and green flowers, something he’d picked up for her in Mexico in a shop when she had her head turned looking at a wall of wild, wooden masks. He’d returned later to pay for it. It was home when they arrived. Ten years later, staring at its loud redness, he said, “It goes with nothing we have.” “It goes with me,” she said. It stayed underneath a track light like a performer. She wanted to drink his wine. She took out a lotus glass, smaller than a traditional sake glass, designed for perfect full evocation. She opened the wine cabinet in the dining room. The bottles were clear, the plum wine a golden color with four or five green plums nestled at the bottom. These were the wines he’d made for her: Borrowing the Chair at the Jazz Café which recreated their first moment together, and Return to Grandfather’s Home with Yumi, a wine with a specifically long evocation, nearly seven minutes of transport. He didn’t particularly like the second wine anymore, not since he’d come to San Francisco, since he’d discovered his grandfather’s shame after the War. Letters from his grandfather in Japan to the American educational authorities in Japan found their way into the hands of a collector of Japanese Occupation ephemera, and now lay bound by twine in a safe. Masato paid more than he could afford for his grandfather’s shame. She remembered the mistake she made when she’d told him that this collaboration wasn’t that significant. “So he rewrote the history in some children’s textbooks. It happened,” she said. “You wouldn’t have known about it if you hadn’t read about it in a book. It’s history.”“Yumi.” He looked at her, gravely. “That is the whole point.” After that he never spoke about his grandfather anymore, and he certainly never was willing to return to his house, not even in a wine. He wanted to destroy the whole batch. She wouldn’t let him because in that wine, Masato told her he loved her. And she hadn’t heard that in person in a long time. When she drank them, he was there beside her for seven minutes at least—he said the damn words. “And the damn words,” she said, mocking him, “are the whole point.” Tonight, she opened Moon Over Tokyo because she wanted to see. Taro had pointed out that the judges had missed the flicker. “It’s a full-on smudge,” Kichi said. “He’s not finished with the evocation.” “The judges said nothing about the soldiers! They totally missed the details.” Yumi didn’t care about the American soldiers, what she cared about was the flicker, the image of someone coming over the Togetsukyo Bridge. Probably a woman. He obsessed over that last detail. Only Taro got him to enter the umeshu, the plum wine, The Moon Over Tokyo Through Leaves in the Fall, because they needed something in the competition. He could work on further evocation for himself. The wine was already good. It had a seven minute transport, fully realized evocation, sound, visuals, smells—what more could one character add? He relented. She poured the umeshu into a lotus glass. She looked at the painting on the dining room wall of two figures balanced on separate clouds, the woman reaching down. But you couldn’t see the figures in this light, just her own reflection, the reflection of a young woman in the house of an old man. She drank the wine. The judges remarked on many things about Moon Over Tokyo—not the least of which was the body, the bouquet, those subtle notes of hickory, the smell of sweet liqueur—but they bowed down and worshiped the entire transport from the first moment to the last. Yes, yes, the transport was amazing. Around her now was her husband’s best work. 1947, Tokyo. Dusk in Rikugien Park, north of the city, the pond reflecting the harvest moon, the drooping pines, their branches in the water, and she could walk down to the edge of the lake, hear yama-gare sing tzu...tzu...tzu flitting their chestnut bellies and black caps among the branches of the matsu pines—for a full seven minutes. Peace. Masato Nakashita was skilled at giving peace, yes, at least to most people. She turned her eyes to the bridge that arched over a lily pond, the moonlight dappling the wooden planks, the trees, the ground beneath. Who was Masato trying to re-create? The figure came from behind the taster, so you might not notice it if you didn’t turn. It came across Togetsukyo Bridge, blurry, unsustained, a flicker on the perfect image of dusk in the park. She could glimpse the figure only for a moment, a smudge, perhaps a woman. The figure moved quickly, sped up unnaturally from the edge of the bridge to where every taster would stand in the evocation, as if it were a sketch of something not yet finished. You are a problem, she said to the figure. To the judges, perhaps, it meant nothing, but to her it was something her husband cared about. It was frightening how fast the image came at her, how it seemed to smear everything else around it.

***

Yumi tried to make the present as important to Masato as the past. But then time had always been between them. At twenty-five years younger than Masato, she was a mere thirty-five. He would turn sixty this year, a birthday he dreaded. “Sixty is an unfortunate label. Age is only good for wine.” She felt obliged to say he didn’t look sixty, but then felt like she might be seen as covering, and by covering, admitting that he indeed looked sixty, so she said, “We don’t have to remember the day.” “Good,” he said quickly. He seemed shocked at himself for saying it. “There were other days,” he told her, “more important things to do than watch a man grow old.” He’d only begun to look old recently. Ten years ago they both looked young, and no one could really tell that he was that much older. You could say that Masato’s eyes and hair started giving him away a few years ago, but she knew that there was no aging like the aging of attitude. Overnight, he didn’t want to sing karaoke at the bar, go out to parties with her, left her watching television by herself. He started scolding her for her behavior—she laughed too much, too loudly, that she was in her thirties, and should act more like a lady. He didn’t approve of her short skirts, her white school-girl tops. He didn’t want her moving with the fashions. His tone of voice at the mirror in the morning sounded more like her father than her husband. “Do you have to spend all night out?” he asked. The irony was that he now spent his nights at the winery, though she had tried to curb her own social schedule. Lately, she’d become used to letting her arm extend to the edge of the mattress, her fingers curling around the edge, spreading her body out to cover the whole bed. She tried to get him to talk about the wine, especially this wine, Moon Over Tokyo. “I’m not sure what will survive the fermentation. We will see.” “I’m just interested. I’m not trying to steal a secret.” He’d look at her, as if she were a child. “I don’t have any secrets.” But he was very busy. Orders for Time-Wines, or piku wines, as they first started to be called, had exploded. Wines that evoked specific thoughts, specific vignettes, were marketable, he said with a smile. “As long as one can find the right moment, something universal and healing.”

***

Yumi had a list drawn up of the kinds of scenes she wished recreated. She wanted the day of their wedding, but he said it was not commercially viable. True, The First Time We Made Love at My Apartment in Yokoshuma wouldn’t be a wine she would be willing to share with the staff at the winery. But maybe the Absence of Tourists During the Rain at Inokashira Koen, when he made her run through the fallen cherry blossoms to the lake, when she fell and skidded, and he pulled her by her feet to him; or Drinking Chocolate Shake, New York City Under the Saffron Gates in Central Park, where the fabric of the art installation came loose and swung for a day and people let their bodies become works of art as the saffron draped them in the wind and just their shapes remained, how he thought they were like people fighting to be seen. Couldn’t he fit these in between these more difficult, historical evocations? Why not shoot for 2005 instead of 1947? Who remembered that anyway? Tonight, she felt like creating a wine that evoked a crumbling feeling, and the ticking clock, and the traffic sounds outside, and maybe a long list of expletives in her voice. Drink that. But Yumi was not skilled in making wines. She was a travel agent. So there’d be none of that shit. She’d have to wait until he was finished with the wine to understand who it was he was trying to make.

*** Weeks later, Yumi still had the image on her mind, that flickering woman on the bridge. She found herself mulling it over even as she sold vacations to Guadalajara to couples who couldn’t afford anything but love. Masato seemed happier. He did come home two or three times a week. He said, “The wine is coming along. I’m very proud of it. I think,” and he stopped at the stereo, played Ornette Coleman on low volume, a good sign. “I think it’s important.” He looked at her. “It must be important,” she repeated from the empty couch where she curled into the pillows. But important was obviously not what he meant. In his soft house slippers, he padded to her, from light to light. He sat down across from her. The lamp softened whatever features of his face she thought had hardened, made his blue polo shirt vibrant. She waited for him to go on because it looked like his thinking face, his fingers around his mouth, his eyes squinted. She prodded him. “You’ve worked on it too long for it not to be important.” He didn’t open his eyes. He was thinking. “I’m not sure—,” he started and then stopped. Saxophone and drums in the background, low murmurs of music. She heard the clock ticking again, tried to focus on him, let him see that she was ready for whatever he wanted to share about the wine, about its importance. She saw his eyes relax, his fingers relax around his mouth, his brow smooth. Finally, she thought, he was relaxing. Then she saw his lips purse and a bubble of air puff out. He had fallen asleep in the chair. She watched him. Having him asleep in the chair was better than having him somewhere else, and she watched his eyes flutter, the same kind of fluttering you might get when you drank umeshu-piku. He looked around somewhere under those lids, maybe he saw someone there as well. Her hand lay near his on the arm of the chair. She hadn’t touched his yet, and touching it now would wake him, so she kept her hand close enough to feel, like a cup of coffee, his live body radiate heat, and the saxophone pulsed behind them. His eyes fluttered and she knew he wouldn’t notice her presence at all.

***

She made a tofu stir fry for the staff later that week on her day off. She took it down to the winery, tried to focus on Taro and Kichi, who were thrilled to see her. She joked with them, and tried to stay bright. She didn’t want to reveal that at night the figure on the bridge ran at her, threw itself across her other dreams, too, even erased them. They sat around a work table. Other staff went off for lunch, leaving the four of them together. Masato noted aloud Yumi’s ingenuity, thoughtfulness ,and hospitality as she served them. She could see he was proud. She looked around for bottles in preparation. She glanced over their heads as she laughed at their stories. She talked about “new things” in her work or her house or anything that might start them discussing “new things” in the wine. They did not talk about the wine, except to say that a new batch of Moon Over Tokyo had been set to ferment. Now, they waited. They had begun another wine: Sunlight through Cherry Blossoms. Taro thought this would be a hugely popular wine. They took his own memories of walking with his girlfriend in Japan earlier that spring. He was very honored to supply the base. Yumi almost forgot that Taro had a girlfriend who looked into his flat blocky face for love. She lived in Japan; Yumi treated Taro as if he were single. “Did you sing to her?” Kichi asked, glancing sideways for his response. The two women laughed. Some tofu dropped from Yumi’s mouth and it made the three of them laugh harder. She looked at Masato. He continued eating, reading a chart on his lap. Yumi told Taro that she looked forward to seeing his girlfriend, experiencing his beautiful memories. “It is nothing like Moon Over Tokyo,” he said, grinning. Yumi glanced at Masato. “It’s not as important...” she said. Masato looked up. He said evenly, “You don’t know what is important.” He wasn’t unkind, just straight- forward. He corrected himself. “Very few of us know what is important. Walking along with the girlfriend through cherry blossoms makes a nice scene, a good wine. But sometimes we must strive for more.” He noted each of them in his glance, cleared his throat and looked back at his papers. “Sometimes,” Yumi began, “I think we forget what’s important, though we’ve seen it before.” He looked up and after thinking a moment, nodded. “Still, nothing in your collective experiences has any real weight. You have music and you have laughter and you have fun, but now you are part of something bigger, something you are creating that will be important.” He breathed in, held his breath, smiled, and slowly let it out. “It is never too late to learn. And change.” Taro and Kichi nodded. “Yes, yes,” they said. Yumi smiled and seethed. She began carefully. “Please tell how the images of Taro’s time with his girlfriend are different, and less important, from the moments in Moon Over Tokyo. I want to know and learn about importance. I’m very interested and intrigued by what you say.” She nodded purely for effect. His eyes watched her. She trembled inside, kept humility on her face, tried to erase confrontation. Placate, placate, placate, she thought. It keeps peace. Still, the question might draw out— “It will be most apparent when the wines are completed. I think then, young Yumi, that you will understand the weight of difference.” He nodded and stood, bringing his bowl back to her. His face came close to hers as he bowed, but his eyes did not look down at the floor. They stayed locked with hers. “We must continue. Thank you, Yumi.” Kichi and Taro stood and brought her their bowls.

***

It was December and Yumi convinced Taro to let her taste the wine. Umeshu was at the half-way point, the toge, a point where they could check and see how the fermentation process and the piku were combining, how the images were layering, if there was good evocation and transport already. It would be an unfinished wine, though, because harmonics did not become sealed into the wine until the fermentation process was complete. And sometimes the wines did not come out the way you planned. “Hmmm.” Taro considered like a teacher. “He doesn’t like anyone outside of the staff to sample the wine before it is finished.” Yumi begged him. She started singing with him over the phone, “Why don’t they do what they say, say what you mean. One thing leads to another....” He laughed on his end of the phone. “Oh, Taro,” she sighed. “You are very funny.” He sighed, saying, “I’m very busy, Yumi. I don’t know.” “Taro.” She sensed he was moving out of the pink, yellow, karaoke memories. “I want to learn about importance.” She sounded as serious as Masato, almost mimicking his cadence. She imagined his face thinking on the phone, weighing how much trouble he might get into. “You can’t drink it here,” he said, “but if you come I’ll have a sample ready for you.” She went to the winery and when she saw Taro she wondered what it was like to be his girlfriend. Did he truly sing to her? Did he take her out to parties? What did they do for fun? She would have a chance to see at least Akina, his girlfriend, in the wine. “Will Sunlight Through Cherry Blossoms have you in it at all?” He gave her a small vial that she placed in her new pink purse with anime characters running across the leather. “We only used my memories. Nakashita-san thought that one man’s memories would be able to pull all men into the evocation easily, since there was space for each man.” “Yes,” Yumi said, but she thought how sad it must be for Akina to only see herself in the memory.

***

By now she was convinced that Masato was somehow having an affair with an older, more sophisticated woman and she believed strongly that this woman would be reflected in the image of the woman on the bridge, if truly it were a woman on the bridge. At home, the afternoon sun was high and showed through the skylight in the dining room. San Francisco traffic buzzed and hummed in the distance. A breeze came through the window. A silver bowl of apples on the kitchen island reflected her body in wide strips. She poured the contents of the vial into the lotus glass, looked straight ahead, lifted the glass and drank. The park at dusk. She turned immediately to Togetsukyo Bridge. Other people walked about the park now so it was more difficult to find the figure he would have been creating, and there was no rush of the body now. He’d synced it with the rest of the evocation. She watched, aware of time passing. It was a woman. She wore a yukata, a cotton kimono, with maple leaves on the sleeves, which meant she was unmarried. She saw Yumi, or appeared to, as she would see any winetaster. The woman was young, beautiful, but she walked in that older way, her shoulders drawn in, her head down, her eyes flashing only to the sides, occasionally to the subject she walked towards. There was a simple beauty in this that Yumi found herself liking even more than she thought, this being the object of attention, the reason the woman came from the bridge. In the midst of all the other people milling about, one direct line flowed straight to her, pulling an important event closer and closer. This was already an improvement over the peaceful scene of Moon Over Tokyo Through Leaves in the Fall—it had an event, an urgency. The woman pulled her hands from her kimono. She began talking but there was still no sound. Yumi tried to make out the words. The expression on the woman’s face was flirtatious, demure. She wanted you to follow her. And the images did. When the woman turned her back and started to return to the bridge, Yumi found herself walking along beside her. Again the woman was talking. Her bright red mouth moved, her eyes darted and connected with Yumi’s as if with a needle’s precision. Then the woman blurred, smeared across the park’s landscape, and smudged away and there was a strange pull, a yank from the middle of Yumi’s stomach, and then Yumi was back, alone and frustrated, in her kitchen. She threw the lotus glass into the sink where it broke. She felt like one of the people who first tried the piku for memory loss because every memory of herself and Masato came back to betray her. She cried standing, holding herself up by her hands flat on the counter of the kitchen island and sobbed. She sniffled and opened her eyes. At least she was not maddened from the memories. She hoped that the feelings would just disappear. They did not. She found them creeping up on her as she created perfect travel arrangements for happy couples at work. She kept the feelings low in her belly, feeling them seep upwards in her chest at times when couples would look at each other or talk in that coded way couples have—in those unfinished sentences, those looks, and when the couples reached out and took each other’s hands, a subtle unconscious gesture, Yumi turned to her computer to find a better deal for them.

***

She could not confront Masato about this, even though her instinct told her that he loved the woman on the bridge. She was old-fashioned, she was demure, she was quiet, she was painted up like a geisha. Masato was in love with history, with the past. And there was really nothing Yumi could do about that. I am a modern woman, she told herself. At one time, he loved me because I was modern. At one time he loved the new things, the modern. Somehow, living with her in the house he had changed his tastes for more than just art. Over the next six months she thought about what she might do. Options. She could become the woman he wanted. She could leave him and find someone younger. She didn’t think he would be changing anymore. He’d settled into his final personality. She continued having lunches with friends, talking at breezy cafes about books and movies and going to her friends’ baby showers and wedding showers and walking in the parks by herself at dinner. It was in a small park that summer when she saw something happen that made her decide to confront Masato. There was a black dog running through the park with a red leash flying behind it like a scarf. His tongue was out, his legs raced across the grass. She laughed when she saw him and she laughed more when she saw the young couple running after the dog, calling, “Shiloh, Shiloh, Shiloh, come back.” The man and woman were both young, in their twenties, and they ran as hard as they could, both racing for Shiloh, the man ahead of the woman. They called out directions to each other: Go that way, head her off by the bush; I’ll take this path and meet her around the lake; she’s headed towards the ice cream vendor! Yumi watched as they tried to catch her. The dog looked joyful. The couple did not seem worried. They laughed. Shiloh tangled herself up in children, playing with them and knocking them down, and licking their faces until the couple found her again. At that moment, Yumi burst into tears, not knowing quite why at first. She moved under a tree and hid her face with her arm.

***

She drove to the winery that afternoon. Her husband had been working feverishly on a new set of wines. She did not see him on the floor of the winery, so she walked past Taro and Kichi to his office. They called out, “He doesn’t want to be disturbed.” I am his wife, she thought. I disturb him all the time. She walked into his office, a small room with a shoji screen hiding a small sink, and a desk with no pictures on it. His coat draped over the chair, but he was not there. Taro was behind her. “Yumi, he wanted to be alone in the Piku-ma.” The room of memory, where the piku was stamped, where it was copied for every bottle of plum wine. She turned and looked at Taro; his eyes had aged. She could tell. The edge of his voice had gotten older. She said, “He’s not alone, Taro. We can be honest about that.” “What?” Taro said as she pushed him to the side and walked to the piku-ma. The piku-ma had warnings on the sides of the doors about the delicate process, the possible contamination. She did not knock. She tried the handle and went in. Masato stood with his back to the door. He leaned down over a microscope. The room was blue like sky all the way around. He looked up suddenly. “Yumi?” She closed the door behind her. He sighed as if destiny had been decided for him, or a decision at least. Five bottles of wine sat on a white table in the center of the room. To the left, the brain-scanning equipment, what gathered the images—as far as she knew. There was a black elastic cap hanging from wires. On the right of the room, other computers and imaging equipment. She didn’t understand it. She just knew that this was where the woman came from. This is where she lived. This is where Masato stood now with his arms open, walking to the table. He picked up a bottle and pushed a lotus glass towards her side of the table as she walked towards him. “I want you to see my masterpiece.” He opened the bottle. “Moon Over Tokyo Through Leaves in the Fall has changed a bit. We have renamed this Another Tokyo in Fall Twilight, 1947.” He grinned. This other woman had made him younger, Yumi thought. He poured her a glass. “Try it for me. I want you to see something special.” He held the glass out to her. She shook her head. “I didn’t come to drink the wine.” He sensed her uneasiness but insisted. “Drink the wine first and then we can talk about anything you want to talk about.” She shook her head again. “Masato.” “Yumi, it’s important to me. Please, for me. Drink the wine.” But she didn’t want to meet the woman who could speak now. Oh, she had already imagined all the phrases, the sweet ways that a geisha could talk to a man, what she might be saying to Masato, and now, where she might be leading him, and what was that pull in her stomach? Would there now be a physical reaction to Time-Wines? Was he creating the wino-version of a cheap thrill? Was this the new direction of piku? Or was this a new product for Masato to enjoy? In his hand, the lotus glass quivered. What was he doing with such a young woman anyway? She set her purse down on the table. “I don’t want your wine,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. Why was it that she felt as if she were asking her father for greater privileges? She flushed with embarrassment. Masato lowered his hand. “I wanted to share with you something important to me, Yumi.” “I already know the evocation. I’ve seen her.” He looked puzzled. “Her? I don’t understand. This is the first set of bottles opened with the new wine. It’s very changed from Moon Over Tokyo, though that was obviously the base.” “I tried the wine in December, at toge.” He frowned. “It was unfinished. I wanted you to see it when it was finished.” “I don’t want to see it at all now.” He was silent. “Did you notice the soldiers?” “I noticed the girl, the geisha.” “Of course, that is the main selling point. But did you notice that there weren’t any soldiers around? Did you watch the edges of the evocation?” He lifted the glass again to her. “Try it now. See what I’ve created here. It’s a ten minute transport.” “Tell me who she is and why you created her?” He still seemed lost. As if he didn’t know what she was talking about. “She’s a geisha,” he said, lowering his arm again. He sighed, probably the clearest sign of guilt. He was no doubt remembering the images of this affair. “Is she also a real woman, someone you know here in San Francisco?” He set the glass on the table, took a few steps back. “I was hoping you would understand,” he said. “Well, I’m doing pretty good for a kid, I think,” she said. He looked at her. Boy, did he look old now and caught and guilty, and just a little bit angry. But she was angry too now, she could feel it rise up into her cheeks, into her fists. He said, “You have missed the whole thing. How can one person see the same images as another and miss the point? We are like two people who have come to a mountain and I am breathing in the greatness of the view and you are looking at the hardship of the trail down. Our memories will diverge there, and I can’t give you feeling, no matter how hard I try.” He walked to the computer screen and opened a file. She felt ignored, and so she repeated her inquiry. “Who is she?” A picture came up on the screen of an old man, Masato’s grandfather. “Junro Nakashita helped create a Japan that never was.” She waited for him to come back to the real issue. He distracted her with history lessons and stories. “I’m not interested in your grandfather—.” He nodded. “Nor in anything that doesn’t have a movie tie-in, that doesn’t sell you a purse or shoes, or something that doesn’t have a musical soundtrack. I know. It’s a weakness in you. But now you will listen for a moment and even if you do not understand what I will tell you, I will have said it and given you the picture of the mountain.” He talked for a long time about Junro and how he collaborated with Americans to rewrite Japan’s history during the Occupation. He stood for a while, and then he sat for a bit and she stood for awhile and then she got tired because the shoes she’d worn were not good for standing in and she knew that eventually he would have to talk about the geisha, so she sat down. He waved his hands a lot in front of him and she noticed how wrinkled the backs of his hands and wrists really were. When did that happen? “I had a chance then,” he said in what she thought was his conclusion. She was tired, and upset and it was taking everything she had to keep all the tears in. “A Japan that could have been,” he said. “The soldiers aren’t there, Yumi. I erased them. The American presence isn’t there. I erased that. For ten minutes there is no Occupation, and I can build from there. I can create a whole series of wines that lets someone experience this new-old Japan. I don’t know how it would have been different. I can only think of ten minutes at a time. But one day, I will think of twenty minutes and then an hour.” He paused. He was all caught up in himself, wide hands, wild eyes, eyes that reminded her of times he looked in her face and loved her. She didn’t want a wine to say it for him again and again—she wanted those eyes and those words for her now. “Is she here in San Francisco? Did we move here because she is here?” She tapped her heels on the floor. “Yumi!” he yelled at her and rushed at the table. “I am talking about something important! I’m reimagining history.” She stood up now, backed away from his face. “I’m talking about important too. Where are you? What do you do at night? Why are you so concerned about the past? I’m going to grow old too waiting for you. Why are you making women in the wine? I don’t care about history. I don’t care about Junro. It’s in the past. Why are we here in America if you hate America so much...” “I don’t hate America. You’re not listening to me. I can’t explain it well. But there is something new and wonderful about being there in that park in 1947 and being free.” She thought of the dog, the couple, how they raced after Shiloh, how they cared enough to pursue and not get distracted, to not give up, how they planned, how they ran around every obstacle to get back to her. How they wanted something and ran to get it. He lifted the glass again. “Just for a moment. See this other world.” She took the glass from him and threw it on the floor where it shattered and spilled. “That’s what I think of your other world. You can’t even live in this one.” She turned her back on him, crying, crying and wanting to make it through the door before he saw that she was weak and young.

Jerome Stueart is a graduate of the 2007 Clarion Workshop, San Diego. His work has appeared in Strange Horizons, On Spec, two Tesseracts anthologies (9 and 11), and other magazines and journals. He worked this summer for the Arctic Institute of North America as a communications specialist—which meant interviewing cool scientists at their base camps in the Arctic. And some summer nights, he performed in a vaudeville revue. He lives in the Yukon Territory and teaches a fantasy writing workshop for teens. Author Spotlight: Lisa Hannett T.J. McIntyre

What inspired “The Good Window”?

I’d had a few of the story’s elements kicking around in my mind for a while, but a flight I took from Tasmania home to Adelaide last year was the catalyst I needed to bring them all together. Basically, we had just taken off and the plane had made a really sharp turn—so sharp that all I could see out my window was vibrant green grass, dense forests, and sparkling waters. No horizon, just ground. And since Adelaide’s been experiencing intense drought for years, Tasmania’s lush landscape came as a shock. It was such a contrast to what I’d gotten used to seeing at home! So, since I generally tend to think morbid thoughts at the beginning of my flights, I looked out at this gorgeous view and thought, ‘If the plane crashed right now, this would be the last thing I saw. Apart from the plummeting towards death part, that wouldn’t be half bad.’ Once the plane righted itself, I started thinking about how our perspectives—literally, what we see when we look out at the world—influence the way we experience life. From there it was a quick step to: What if a character’s world view was mostly based on what she saw outside her window each day?

In “The Good Window”, Ned’s toenail polish is an important image. Why toenail polish? What does this image mean to you? What color are your toenails today, and why did you decide on that color? Inquiring minds want to know...

First of all, because toenail polish is whimsical and colourful. It serves no purpose, really. It’s a quick way of making yourself feel just a little bit different than you were before. I used to watch my mom do her nails when I was a kid (her colours were always so glamorous!) and she graciously turned a blind eye when my sisters and I started painting our nails black, navy blue, fluorescent orange, hot pink. As I grew older, I’d paint my toenails when I was getting dressed up for special occasions, or I’d treat myself to a pedicure when I was on holiday. Then, as the toenail polish would inevitably grow out, I’d look down at my feet and be able to judge how long it was since I’d been to that party, or had been to Singapore, or whatever. I wanted Ned to enjoy something frivolous even though her world is fairly bleak; but also realized that to her the nail polish was a treasure. It seemed fitting that she’d use her precious polish to commemorate moments she felt were special. (My toenails are unpolished at the moment! Oh, the horror! But I’m going to Cairns for a wedding next week, which is definitely a deep burgundy affair.)

What exactly does “The Good Window” represent?

At the risk of sounding coy, I don’t think I can say exactly what it represents. I think that to say precisely what any story ‘means’ is very limiting. But, broadly speaking, people might think this one’s about how we experience our individual worlds, how we cope with traumatic events (like wars), what we do to remember things, the way our knowledge is shaped by subjective experiences, the end of childhood—the list could go on. And, to some readers, it might not be about any of these things. I’d much rather have people come up with their own interpretations instead of prescribing any meanings to my stories.

“Wordwinds” are a key element in the world described in your story. Concerning the protagonist, one sentence explains “Ned thought she looked naked without a wordwind tap-dancing across her shoulder.” What do “wordwinds” signify and why are they so important to your characters in this world?

Wordwinds are people’s innermost thoughts, insecurities, and feelings exposed. The world in which Ned lives is in the middle of a global war, and has been for generations. This war has had both a physical and an emotional impact on its inhabitants: one way this is evident is in the genetic mutation that causes wordwinds. Adults, like Tantie, generally learn to control their thoughts (some are more adept at it than others, which I explore in other stories set in this world) so their wordwinds are less revealing. Children, like Ned, are generally more imaginative and less inhibited, so their ‘winds can often get the better of them. In this story, wordwinds are important because they can reveal what people are ‘really’ like, what they’re really thinking. In other stories, these features can be manipulated and used as weapons—for good and evil purposes.

At one point, Tantie says to Ned, “Your name was set down in ink the day you were born. And that is that.” Ned isn’t happy with this; the story indicates she often asks Tantie to call her other names. Why, if it was a simple typo, can her name NOT be changed? What larger implication might Ned’s desire for a new name indicate towards her mental view of their world?

The world in which Ned lives is shrouded in grey; grey buildings, grey fallout, grey clothes, grey eyes. But Ned herself isn’t. She’s a dreamer looking for brighter things. Even so, her dreams aren’t unlimited: they’re still tethered to mundane things, like her name. Changing her name is perhaps an attempt to change her reality, to make it more closely resemble her inner world. As for why her name can’t be changed: I imagine that, in a world where words are floating around people’s head, constantly changing, flashing in and out of view, and being manipulated, a medium that sets these words down and makes them stable would be highly valued. Held in reverence, even. It would be very simple to change a typo, but for these people that would essentially make writing as inconstant and unreliable as wordwinds. Of course, we know that writing is just as subjective as wordwinds are—but these people are clinging to any semblance of permanence they can get. Ink, in their minds, is eternal. I read on your blog that “The Good Window” is one story in a larger cycle. How many other stories do you plan to set in this world? When did you decide you would want to write more stories in this setting? What led to this decision?

Yes, I am working on a larger story cycle set in this world. At the moment, I’ve got eleven stories in various stages of (in)completion, which includes “The Good Window”, and I imagine the final collection will have another couple added to that total. I think I decided to write a larger body of work set in this world before I’d even finished writing “The Good Window”—there were so many things to be done with wordwinds! What if a person can’t read? Is brain damaged? Is blind? Speaks a different language? Lives in a dark tunnel? What are the limitations of these ‘winds? What else can they do? In this collection of interconnected stories, characters take wordwinds to another level: for instance, in one story they are used as weapons of mass destruction; in another they are responsible for a postman’s murder; and in another they leave the protagonist mute and helpless in a foreign land. But the wordwinds won’t necessarily appear in every story in the cycle—the war with the fée has led to other mutations that have had a profound effect on the way human beings exist and interact, and I am exploring those at the same time.

What does the future have in store for L.L. Hannett? Are there any upcoming publications you would like to mention?

The future will see me writing, writing, writing. I’ve got a few stories in the pipelines at the moment and one coming out in On Spec in the near future. I’m working on completing the (as-yet-untitled) “Good Window” story cycle, but I’ve also started working on my first fantasy novel, The Familiar, which is a tale of schizophrenic witches, lunatics, and steampunk Puritans. And my conscience obliges me to mention that at some point I really should put my PhD out of its misery. . . So watch this space. Author Spotlight: Berrien Henderson Rae Bryant

“The Girl in the Green Sequined Dress” conjures feelings of loss, hope, unrequited desire behind plexiglas. How did you come to write this story of a doll and her man?

Summer before last, my wife had to have some minor surgery. While she was recovering and dozing, I eased out to the Huddle House on the corner for some breakfast in the afternoon. Nearby stood, yep, a claw machine stuffed with toys and whatnottery. The thought of one of them wanting to escape and motioning for help struck me, and I took the stereotypical next step: I began the story on the back of an old receipt I found in my pocket. From there I had to put Mack Day in the position of being totally alone and bereft in order to keep the narrative lens on him and inject enough surreality through him. The poor guy’s messed up but dealing with the loss as best he can, and in such cases transference is an easy—or natural —next step for a victim of any kind of trauma.

Your stories often take on an experimental structure that adds pacing and interest to the prose. Do you prefer experimental to mainstream prose styles?

I have to default to one of Elmore Leonard’s ten rules for writing: “Try to leave out the part the readers tend to skip.” If I revise and it bores me, then it better leave the draft. That darling’s going to have to be killed. Now, Leonard’s advice in and of itself had nothing to do withthe experimental or the mainstream, but his advice helps mestay focused on keeping things pared down as far as I think I can manage. I think that if an episodic narrative could be deemed experimental, then I’m a sucker for the episodic, even in miniature with the short story form. Many of my short stories, too, aren’t roughed out from an outline other than the barest of notes, and I approach the storytelling intuitively. If that makes it seem experimental, hey, that’s great. I just prefer the mode that works for the given story at the time, really.

Tell us, you sleep with a dragon at home, don’t you?

That’s only when Lovely Wife wakes up in a grump- tail mood. The following quote stopped me when I was reading, and I could not help but imagine myself in Mack Day’s position standing outside this door. "He does not recall how long he had stood in front of the door with the crystal knob like a jewel. All the interior doorknobs have been replaced—years now—with generic brass knobs, but not this one, which is 'the biggest diamond full of rainbows.' Such a big metaphor for a little girl, Mack had thought at the time." And suddenly, the protagonist’s mannerisms and interests in the sequined doll take on layers of meaning already planted, hitting the reader on multiple levels and “realities,”something practiced by Cheever, Gogol, Woolf, and so many other magical realists through the ages. With whom do you most closely associate yourself? Do you have a favorite magical realist muse or writer in general?

Rae, you ask a tough (and flattering) question. I’d associate (or default) to Marquez. Loves me some Marquez. And one of my favorite short stories is Gogol’s “Diary of a Madman.” Other than them the muse would be muses. Right now I’m in a Cormac McCarthy mood. Just rounded out the Border Trilogy and am reading The Orchard Keeper and have Suttree waiting after that. Huge fan of The Road, No Country for Old Men, and Blood Meridian. For guilty pleasure reading, I’m a Louis L’Amour man. And got to have some Hemingway.

What’s in the works for Berrien Henderson this year?

Keeping the butt in the chair and keeping the short story inventory rolling while wrapping up a novel. Not writing and not contributing to the community isn’t an option for me at this point. It’s too much fun, too gratifying, and I’ve learned so much from the writer friends I’ve met over the past couple of years.

With Farrago’s Wainscot shutting its doors this fall, what plans do you have in terms of editing?

Ah, that’s a bittersweet question . . . being a part of Farrago’s Wainscot has been at once eye-opening and just plain ol’ fun. I’ve felt honored to have been a part of the whole lit/weird mode FW offers and am looking forward—and hope others are as well—to what the current editorial line-up will be contributing via Farrago’s F.M.I. Blog. In many ways, it’ll be a natural evolution from what the audience got out of Farrago’s Wainscot and Behind the Wainscot. And then some. Author Spotlight: Nancy Kress Rae Bryant

I must ask, do you have a set of wings and a tail?

No, but I wish I did.

In “Images of Anna” Ben follows Anna: "I photographed her parking her car, entering the restaurant, leaving the movie theater, buying a ticket at the museum, even standing behind the reference desk helping an after-school gaggle of noisy teenagers. Each time I developed the pictures right away. None of them were of Anna." Is Ben the quintessential male foil of feminist, post-contemporary literature? Look, admire, stalk but don’t presume to touch?

Well, I hope not. I am certainly a feminist, butI wouldn’t like to think that post-feminism excluded male- female touching. Yes, Ben does stalk Anna—but the circumstances are unusual, to say the least.

When the “others” replace Anna’s photographic images, several speculative motives come to mind, but as a woman—mother, wife, sister, daughter—I couldn’t help but laugh and think, yes, the day can fill itself easily with the thoughts of others.Anna’s final image, a perception of herself at last,is resonant. Is this the female Odyssey? To seek the final destination within?

I think that “seeking our final destination within,” obtaining an accurate image of our potential, is the human Odyssey, not solely a female one. However, Anna finds this only through interaction with others. I believe deeply that humans are social animals and that we can work out our best selves only through contact with others. This goes against the American ideal of rugged independence, but I think all those ruggedly independent Gary Coopers out there actually depend on others far more than they’re willing to admit. And at the end of the story, Ben, too, accepts that he needs others—however imperfectly his love might have behaved in the past.

What does 2009 hold for you? Upcoming projects and appearances?

I am GOH at MileHiCon in Denver this year, which I’m looking forward to quite a bit. Currently I’m writing a YA fantasy, which is new ground for me.

If you could design your perfect day, the day that would outshine all others, would you write or would you do something else? And are you willing to share what that “something else” would be?

I would still choose to be a writer. I think I have the best job in the world. Not that it doesn’t have its frustrations—but what job does not? You can, incidentally, floow those frustrations on my blog, at nancykress.blogspot.com. Author Spotlight: Jerome Stueart T.J. McIntyre

What was your inspiration for “The Moon Over Tokyo Through Leaves in the Fall”?

As hokey as this sounds, I had a dream. In the dream, my friend and former political science professor accepted the award for a wine he created, “The Moon Over Tokyo Through Leaves in the Fall.” I remember him coming to the front where the three or four judges stood around a table showcasing his wine. I woke up and wrote down the name of the wine because I thought it was so evocative. The name made me “see” the moon over Tokyo even though I never got transported to Tokyo in the dream. In essence, then, the story begins where the dream left off— after winning the award. The meat of the story—the relationship between Matsui and Yumi—was inspired a bit by my own struggle of approaching middle age—enjoying life but also seeking relevancy, quick.

There have been many controversies over the years relating to writing the “Other” or writing with a voice outside of one’s own natural experience. “The Moon Over Tokyo Through Leaves in the Fall” is written from the point of view of a modern Asian-American female. Did this create a challenge for you? What steps, if any, did you take to verify the authenticity of your voice in this piece? What tips do you have for other writers out there working on pieces where they are writing from the perspective of the “Other?”

Hmmm . . . This is a hard question for me because I think every character you write about is an “Other.” I do understand the argument, that writing something completely different from you is more challenging. But unless you are writing memoir, the characters have completely different childhoods, desires, relationships— all the characters, not just the POV one. So they all take a lot of work to understand and “get right,” so to speak. But if someone wants to write a character which is “other” I wouldn’t stop them. Instead, I would encourage them to stretch themselves. I certainly don’t immediately identify with, or always find accurate to my experiences, the white, rural, college-educated, religious gay male characters I find. And I don’t always want to write that character. I would hate to stop someone else from writing them though. So I think that’s my first tip: Feel free to be whoever you need to be for the story, without holding yourself hostage to criteria. Criteria can turn into stereotype. I remember once writing a poem about Theodore Roosevelt surviving the Amazon River. A fellow writer said that I had no albino catfish in the poem and that it was a weakness. If I didn’t mention them, I would be called on the authenticity of place. Even worse may be the authenticity of race or gender or sexual orientation—since we are multi-faceted people. I go back to my first statement: Everyone in your story that isn’t yourself is an “Other” . . . and you are required to be careful with all of them. I think writing a nasty, mean, selfish gay character might be an accurate representation of one particular person, and might make a funny character, but I would trust that character more in the hands of a gay man who knows the consequences of pushing a bad stereotype in a culture that seems to want to believe the stereotype, than in someone else’s hands. I tried hard to be sympathetic to both Matsui and Yumi equally—showing their flaws, their desires, and hopefully helping a reader side with both at different times. So, not that you have to always treat your Other characters with kid gloves, but that you make everyone understandable and as authentic as a human being as you possibly can through research, and through infusing them with your own flaws/desires. I infused Yumi with some of my own doubts about my relevancy/impact on the world, my own relationship experiences, the sometimes clash of cultures I find with people older than me. The story doesn’t have my exact experiences, but the shades of feelings are right, the tone is right, the need to be loved and validated is right, I think. Run the draft through a close set of writerly friends to check for bias. I did run this through Clarion 2007 in San Diego, past a rigorous group of fellow writers, half of them women, who had some questions about the way I wrote Yumi, and I followed their advice. Not that a character can’t make bad decisions, or have perceptible flaws, only that they should be unique, individually motivated and free from OBVIOUS bias. Be open to learning what it’s like to be someone other than you. It’s really difficult to shed Jerome in order to take on Yumi or Matsui, but I try. Like an actor taking a role. I think if we only wrote within our experience we’d really limit our stories, and ourselves. I remember once writing from the perspective of my brother, and I learned a lot about what it felt like to have to make some of his decisions. The story moved radically away from my brother’s actual deeds, but the writing process allowed me to feel empathy and understanding for him in a way I had never felt before writing about him. The process allows a writer to “put themselves in someone else’s shoes” and that’s good, both for the writer —who learns something outside him/herself—and the reader—who doesn’t have to put up with a bunch of main characters who are sci-fi movie buffs. Viva l’Other!

You seem very knowledgeable concerning the minutiae of certain Japanese tradition. For example, you wrote: "She wore a cotton kimono, with maple leaves on the sleeves, which meant she was unmarried." What steps did you take to research your story?

I took representing Japanese culture very seriously, and tried to do my homework. I read a lot about Japanese culture. I think one of the books was actually called Modern Japan. And I did some internet searches for people who were blogging about Japan, visiting Japan or those who talked about Japanese Culture—and I looked up traditional kimono wearing in Japan. I wanted to get the past right, but also what the trends were right now— so that a story set slightly in the future, as this one is, would still have some connection to things people might recognize. Again, Clarion helped round out some of my first attempts—especially since I completely messed up the gender of different Japanese names (Thank you Julie!!). I also read a very good research article on what happened in Japan following WW2, especially the rewriting of Japanese textbooks, which I found fascinating and which became the core of the story—how people rewrite histories for you. And this became not only the literal rewriting of Japanese history that Matsui’s grandfather is responsible for in the story, but also Matsui’s rewriting of history in the wine, and really, Matsui’s and Yumi’s rewriting of their relationship with each other. I also read a great book on Science in Japan, especially on women in science professions, and a book about the life of Yukio Mishima, an author I really liked —as well as his book, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea. And, of course, many hours researching how wines are made, plum wines in particular, and the correct Japanese terminology. Your story revolves around the central idea that through the delicate art of making wine, one can capture memories and images to create a kind of virtual reality. Why wine?

Well, wine was in the dream. But too, wines are advertised as marking events in our lives. We open them for special occasions anyway...and this version of wine just preserves the occasion itself. I figured this was a natural extension of their role in society, celebration, and in memory.

A span of years separates the couple in your story. Matsui fell in love with Yumi because of her modernity, a trait she feels he grows to resent as he begins embracing the traditions of his roots. Yumi, the protagonist and central point of view of the story, feels left out as Matsui embraces and tries to recreate his past through his wine. What is the bigger gulf growing between this couple—the years themselves or their differing values? Or are the differing values and the separation of years both part of the same gulf?

I think you’re right—it’s a combo of both. The gulf in their shifts of values, comes out of, and is complicated by, their age difference. They’re in different stages in life— which aren’t incompatible, but they trigger in this story a downward spiral of response/reaction—especially in Yumi. I think for a while Matsui enjoyed Yumi because of the vitality that a younger person can give, but after his brush with his grandfather’s past, his need to leave a legacy, his need to be relevant became stronger— especially as he realized that he was growing older. And therefore, Yumi’s modern lifestyle, with its separation from the past, its move towards the “next” thing happening, seemed frivolous and selfish because it left out what he considered important—it left out him. Age differences aren’t responsible, though. Lots of people have wonderful relationships with age differences —but it takes a lot of work if the two people make their age difference a divide. Yumi and Matsui critique each other’s generation, each other’s age . . . which just exacerbates the problem. In this relationship they seek a validation that extends to their whole realm of differing experiences and differing generations. Yumi’s embrace of everything new, and her disinterest in the past—except for her own past—can seem like a rejection of Matsui himself, and the culture he now wants to recreate. Matsui’s sudden rejection of his own tendencies towards spontaneity, fun, modernity, feels like a rejection of Yumi—which is only compounded by his new obsessions with the past, with becoming more traditional, and with doing something important and wide-reaching. It’s a tragic and ironic miscommunication. She actually wants to preserve their marriage; he wants to do something new and important—but they just can’t seem to see the other person’s interests as anything but a devaluing of their own.

I’m going to let your character, Matsui himself, ask the next two questions. Without giving anything away, at one point in the story, Matsui asks: “How can one person see the same image as another and miss the point?How does this happen?”

We are such different people. Fascinating. We love the differences in the people we love, but we also long to be understood. I wish I knew how miscommunication happens—and how to prevent it. I’m guilty of it all the time. I read several books by Deborah Tannen, That’s Not What I Meant and You Just Don’t Understand, which highlight how different communication styles can affect relationships. People can talk about salad dressing and really be referring to their relationship—or sometimes they’re just talking about salad dressing and someone reads into it. Matsui also has another angle with this question: he has hardened his point of view into the “right” point of view. So the “point” of his question there implies that only one view is correct, or favored, and that Yumi’s different perspective is wrong. Maybe if we talked about our points of view more with each other and listened more, we might not have as many misinterpretations of moments...

Matsui asks: "Very few of us know what is important. Walking along with the girlfriend through cherry blossoms makes a nice scene, a good wine. But sometimes we must strive for more?" Do you agree or disagree? As writers, is it not our responsibility in some ways to “strive for more”?

Yumi’s right in her argument that love and enjoying the moment (which is the whole point of the wine, ironically) sometimes trump trying to build a legacy. I think as a writer, though, I feel obligated to create something that lasts. Something of quality, something of “importance,” to leave a memory in a reader’s mind of my story. I strive for the balance—and even more as a writer, since I’m obligated to write about life experiences for characters who are “living” life. I need to be accurate. The “strive for more” part for writers should be the lengths to which we go to tell our stories, and practice our craft. And it should also make us see time differently too. If I found myself just hanging out, doing nothing, always having plans and never fulfilling them, I’ve wasted time. If, on the other hand, the striving to do something important makes me neglect the moments of joy, love, intimacy, with another person or people, then I’ve given up life for a legacy—or for duty. So, I’m stuck right now in the transition between just following my passions, and suddenly looking around and trying to forge a career at 40, or trying to do something “important.” I’ve flirted with another degree—a more relevant one, like Environmental Energy Policy—that might net me a better job, bigger pay, more security, and help the world. I believe strongly, though, that writing can change the world—it’s done it before. So maybe I’ll stick with writing stories and not energy policy.

So, what’s next for Jerome Stueart?

I got a lot of interesting material from my summer at the Kluane Lake Research Station working for the Arctic Institute of North America. I’m working on expanding that into a novel. A story of mine comes out in the vampire anthology, Evolve, next spring, and I’m working on getting a few more short stories and articles accepted this year, some of which center on my immigration to Canada. And now, up north, we gear down for the Winter, a nine month cold snap filled with friends, festivals and lots of snow. About the Editors

Cat Rambo lives, writes, and teaches by the shores of an eagle-haunted lake in the Pacific Northwest. Her 200+ fiction publications include stories in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld Magazine, and Tor.com. Her short story, “Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain,” from her story collection Near + Far (Hydra House Books), was a 2012 Nebula nominee. Her editorship of Fantasy Magazine earned her a World Fantasy Award nomination in 2012. For more about her, as well as links to her fiction and information about her popular online writing classes, see www.kittywumpus.net.

Sean Wallace is the founder, publisher, and managing editor of Prime Books. In his spare time he has edited or co-edited a number of projects, including two magazines, Clarkesworld Magazine and Fantasy Magazine, and a number of anthologies, including Best New Fantasy, Japanese Dreams, The Mammoth Book of Steampunk, People of the Book, Robots: Recent A.I., and War & Space: Recent Combat. He lives in Germantown, MD, with his wife, Jennifer, and their twin daughters, Cordelia and Natalie.