Aestival Tide (51 page)

Beside him Nefertity leaned to gaze out her window, then without a word placed her hand upon the Aviator's shoulder. Abruptly he sat up, glanced down at the beach, then back at Hobi. Still saying nothing he settled back into his seat; but the Gryphon immediately began to descend.

Hobi held his breath, waiting for the jolt when it landed; but he felt nothing, was stunned when the floor slid sideways beneath his feet and the airy steps unfolded. “Wait here,” the Aviator commanded, and climbed out.

Hobi crossed and uncrossed his legs. A gust of warm air shot up from the opening in the craft. If he slanted his head just right he could see one of the Aviator's booted feet and what might have been the ragged hem of a linen garment. Then abruptly the Aviator's grim form filled the opening. Hobi crouched back as the
rasa
climbed inside, carrying something in his arms. The nemosyne slid from her seat onto the floor, folding her long legs under her.

“Move,” the Aviator said sharply, shaking his head at Hobi. The boy hunched into a corner beside Nefertity. The
rasa
lay a slight figure on the seat where Hobi had been, then silently turned and went back outside. He returned after another minute, this time with an even smaller form that he set in Nefertity's seat. Without another word he slipped back into his place. The steps slid up and disappeared. With a heart-stopping rush they were airborne again.

When Hobi was sure the Aviator was linked with the Gryphon he leaned forward. In his seat lay a slender figure. At first he thought it was a boy, a boy with shaven head; then with a grimace he drew back.

A gynander. She was breathing heavily, with a slight rattle in her chest. As he watched she suddenly turned to one side and vomited a great quantity of water onto the floor.

Hobi leaned back hastily and turned to the other figure. A dwarf. With a spurt of elation he recognized him—Rudyard Planck, a friend of his father's.

“Rudyard!” he cried, pummeling the back of the seat. The Gryphon swooped in a long slow arc and he fell back. “Rudyard, it's me, Hobi—”

The dwarf stirred, groaning. Beside him the gynander whimpered, then suddenly shot up.

“Where are we—we don't know, let us go, please—”

Hobi fell silent, noticing her green eyes widen with terror as they took in the cramped curve of the aircraft, the dwarf coughing beside her, the nemosyne glowing like a corpse-candle in the back of the craft. Finally he said, “You're safe—whoever you are. At least as safe as we are.” His tone sounded defeated, and he pointed to the
rasa,
motionless in the front seat. “That's the Aviator—this is his Gryphon, there's no way out. I'm Hobi, that's Nefertity—”

The nemosyne nodded.

“—and I know Rudyard Planck, I think, and who are you?” He tried to sound polite.

The gynander shook her head. “We are Reive,” she announced, coughing and wiping seawater from her chin. “Reive Orsina.”

“Orsina?” Hobi sucked his breath in, then said, “I thought they were all dead.”

“We are alive.”

Hobi groaned: it was too much to ask of him, really, to survive a typhoon and then be polite to a lying morphodite. He closed his eyes, pretending he was asleep.

But in a few seconds he opened them again. The gynander was sitting with her face pressed against one small round window, staring transfixed at the ocean below and paying no attention to him whatsoever.

“Hobi Panggang,” the dwarf said hoarsely, as though noticing him for the first time. “Bel's balls, you look just like your father after a toot.” He reached out and prodded Hobi uncertainly with a damp finger. “Sorry to hear about that, Hobi, very sorry.” He turned to the nemosyne and said, “Rudyard Planck, odd circumstances.”

“Nefertity,” the nemosyne replied softly.

“Huh?” Hobi shook his head and wriggled across the crowded floor until he was beside the gynander. “What's out there, can you see something?”

Reive nodded, so excited the words caught in her throat. Her finger stabbed the gritty window specked with salt and dirt, and pointed to the luminous sea below. Hobi rubbed his eyes, looked down and then behind him.

Through the small windows on the other side of the Gryphon he could glimpse green, shivering blades of green and blue as they soared above the coast and the setting sun speared the sides of the craft. Then, looking back through the window where Reive pointed he could see the ocean, so tranquil now that it all seemed a dream—Ucalegon, Araboth, the evil margravines, his father and mother and Nasrani, everything but that endless sweep of turquoise a dark and fitful dream from which he had just awakened. He might almost fall asleep again, now, with his head resting against the cool glass, only someone was jostling his elbow and crying in a shrill voice, “Look!
Look!—
”

—and pointing to where something moved through the gentle swells, something that even from here he could see was ponderously huge and dark. Only there wasn't just
one;
there were four of them, and they seemed to be playing, great clumsy things somehow taking to the air of this new green world just as he was, twisting in impossible arabesques as they swam in and out and between each other—

“—he was right,” Reive was babbling as the Gryphon banked to the west and she craned her neck to see the last of them, four vast creatures leaping and crashing back into the sea with a bellow they could hear even from this distance; “he said they were waiting for him, he said his sisters would come and they did, oh, they
did!
”

And wondering, Hobi pressed his face close to hers against the glass, watching the great whales until they were gone, swallowed like the rest by the sea.

Elizabeth Hand (b. 1957) is the award-winning author of science fiction and fantasy titles such as
Winterlong
,
Waking the Moon
,
Black Light
, and
Glimmering
, as well as the thrillers
Generation Loss
and
Available Dark
. She is commonly regarded as one of the most poetic writers working in speculative fiction and horror today.

Hand was born in San Diego and grew up in Yonkers and Pound Ridge, New York. During the height of the Cold War, she was exposed to constant air raid drills and firehouse sirens, giving her early practice in thinking about the apocalypse. She attended the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, where she received a BS in cultural anthropology.

Hand's first love was writing, but many Broadway actors lived in her hometown of Pound Ridge, and by high school she was consumed with the theater. She wrote and acted in a number of plays in school and with a local troupe, The Hamlet Players. After college, writing stories became her primary interest, and the work of Angela Carter cemented that interest. Hand realized that she wanted to create new myths and retell old ones, using a heightened prose style.

Hand's first break came in 1988 with the publication of
Winterlong
. In this novel, Hand explores the City of Trees, a post-apocalyptic Washington, DC. The story focuses on a psychically enhanced woman who can read dreams and her journey through the strange city with her courtesan twin brother. The book's success led to two sequels:
Aestival Tide
and
Icarus Descending
. All three novels were nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award.

Beginning with the James Tiptree, Jr. Award–winning
Waking the Moon
, Hand wrote a succession of books involving themes of apocalypse, ancient deities, and mysticism.
Waking the Moon
centers on the Benandanti, an ancient secret society in modern-day Washington, DC. that also appeared in
Black Light
, a
New York Times
Notable Book.

In 1998, Hand released her short story collection
Last Summer at Mars Hill
. The title story won the Nebula Award and the World Fantasy Award. Most recently, she has published two crime novels focusing on punk rock photographer Cass Neary—the Shirley Jackson Award–winning
Generation Loss
(2007) and
Available Dark
(2012).

When Hand isn't writing stories of decadence and deities, she divides her time between the coast of Maine and London, with her partner, UK critic John Clute. She is a regular contributor to numerous publications, including the
Washington Post
and the
Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
.

Hand is the oldest of five siblings in a very close-knit family. This photo shows them in 1967, on one of their camping trips to Maine and Canada. All five kids, then under the age of ten, shared a canvas tent with their parents. From left to right: Brian, Patrick, Elizabeth, Kathleen, and baby Barbara. “Maine imprinted on me during this time, which is why I've lived there for the last twenty-five years,” Hand says.

Hand in her driveway with her beloved family dog Cindy shortly before leaving for college in Washington, DC. “Note the skirt, made from a pair of massively embroidered jeans; my favorite red velvet beret, which my mother gave me for Christmas and which disappeared under dark circumstances a few years later; my Mom's suede jacket (I added the denim cuffs); and needlework belt with my initials on it, made by my grandmother Hand. You can't see them, but I was also wearing my lace-up Frye boots.”

In her journal, Hand once wrote, “I am being haunted by a town.” The town was Katonah, New York, which she transformed into Kamensic Village, the setting or background for much of her fiction. This photo from 1975 shows the train station where characters Lit and Jamie Casson make their escape at the end of the novel
Black Light
.

Hand recalls: “In 1976, I was hitchhiking in Putnam County, New York, with my friend Katy. A guy our age picked us up, we drove around and hung out for a few hours, and he then dropped me back at my parents' house in Pound Ridge. It was only after I got home that I realized I'd left my journal in his car.