She titled the story after the poem, "Under the Round Tower," and though she knew that it wasn't going to become the novel that McClelland and Stewart were waiting for, at least it would be something. Choosing a cassette from the stack on her desk, she stuck it in her Aiwa, pushed the play button on the deck, and returned to her typewriter. As the soft sounds of Vaughn Williams's "The Lark Ascending" drifted from the speakers, she began to work up the opening scene of her story.
Debbie Mitchell was planning to spend her lunch hour picking out a new outfit for herself in the shopping concourse below her office. Bill had just asked her if she was free tomorrow night, and if so, did she want to go out for dinner with Rick Kirkby and himself. Debbie agreed readily enough. Having spent last night with Chris Stone— who was as wearisomely me-Tarzan-you-Jane as Andy was fawning— she was in the mood for someone like Rick.
She could tell at a glance that Rick was the kind of guy who thought mostly about himself, but that didn't worry her. He was also the kind of guy who, in making sure he was having a good time himself, livened things up for whomever he was with. She was as tired of being followed around by puppies as she was of this whole bed-as-jungle scene. Rick would be straightforward, and that suited her fine. About the only pressure she could foresee with him was if they were going to bed, and when.
Something black to set off her hair would do, she decided, tight at the hips and breast, with a slit along the side— mid-length; sexy, but not overtly so. She was going to let Rick make the opening moves.
Ben pulled up at the pumps at the BP station, shut off his engine and watched Mick approach from the garage, wiping his hands on his coveralls.
"Hey, Ben. How's it going?"
Ben grinned as he stepped from the cab. He leaned against its door while Mick worked the pumps. "I just took the longest, most boring drive out to the airport that I've ever taken. I mean, this guy would make Joe Clark sound exciting."
Mick laughed. "Ah, the joys of working with the public. Warms my heart through and through. You working tonight?"
"Not if I can make the rest of my rent today. Why?"
"Some friends of mine are doing an opening set at Barrymore's tonight— thought you might want to check it out. The sound's by yours truly."
"Loud?"
"Well, the guitars are all plugged in…."
"How punk
are
they?"
Mick ran a hand across his Mohawk. "Well, I'm the punkest guy in the band, and I'm only on the soundboard. These guys play ska, Ben. You know— like fast reggae. Like the Beat and the Specials."
"I'll give you a call around suppertime, okay? I didn't sleep so well last night so I might crash early. How much do I owe you?"
"Sixteen even. Anyone ever tell you that you sleep too much?"
"Anyone ever tell you that punk died when the Pistols packed it in?"
Mick shook his head. "Died? Fuck, it's just starting to kick in, Ben."
By late afternoon, all Cat had to show for her efforts was a wastepaper basket heaped with crumpled twenty-pound bond stock. The Selectric in front of her was silent, the paper in it as virginally white as when she'd rolled it into the machine. She felt like pitching the typewriter through the window. Everything she wrote had all the awkward charm of those
Wind in the Willows
pastiches that she'd written when she was eleven. ("Mouse felt Very Important at that moment, because Badger had asked
him
to help with the decorations….")
She was supposed to be a professional, a writer who'd been described by one critic as producing work that "… flowed effortlessly across the page." Oh, really? These days her writing was more like a wooden crate bouncing down a long flight of stairs.
She tried to tell herself that it wouldn't all come back in one day. These things took time. She had to work at it little by little. But though all that made sense in its own way, it ended up sounding like just so many well-intentioned platitudes, empty of comfort. Surely to God she could produce one or two pages of readable manuscript after a day at the typewriter? She had never had any patience with writers who complained of being blocked. You just sat down and did it. Only now… now…
She could remember a time, not so very long ago. The Otherword stars shone down on the henge atop Redcap Hill. Inside the hill the gnomefolk were partying and up to their tricks, but outside, where the fairy thorn stood midway between the base and crest of the hill— and midway between the faint sounds of revelry that came from underfoot and the silence of the night skies above— Cat and Tiddy Mun sat, knee to knee, listening to Kothlen spin the beginning of a new tale.
"The daughter of the King of Burndale Yellow had a silver cup," Kothlen said, "and in that cup she meant to catch the moon."
His voice was resonant and clear, his eyes turned dreamy-gold in the starlight. At Cat's side Tiddy Mun squirmed, delighted that the elflord was beginning a new story. His eyes were wide as saucers and he bit at his lower lip in anticipation, holding Cat's hand tightly in his own.
"Do we like her?' he asked. "The princess?"
"Shhh," Cat said, but Kothlen smiled.
"That you will see," he said.
"But what was her name?" Tiddy Mun wanted to know.
Cat and Kothlen exchanged knowing looks. The little gnome was always like this at the beginning of a tale— unable to contain either his curiosity or excitement. The proper unfolding of a tale, each event following the previous like the measures of a dance, didn't hold the same meaning for him as it did for them. He wanted to know it all. And to know it all at once.
"Her name was Alyenora," Kothlen told the little man, "and she was as fair as a rowan in bloom. Well loved she was by all the folk of Burndale Yellow, well loved by all save Hovenden the witchman who lived in the Old Wood with a one-eyed raven and a wingless dragon."
Tiddy Mun shivered and gripped Cat's hand more tightly.
The next morning when she woke, Cat had begun
The Moon in a Silver Cup.
The words had come flowing effortlessly through her— not Kothlen's tale, exactly, but without his tale, the story she was writing would never have come. As it took shape on the paper, it became not so much Kothlen's telling, nor her own writing, but some magical combination of the two. And as the tale was a dance, so her fingers danced on the keyboard of her IBM, pausing only long enough to take out a page and insert a fresh one, five to six hours a day, seven days a week, until the manuscript stacked beside her typewriter was a half-inch thick, and then… then she stopped dreaming and the dance stumbled to a halt, the magic fled, and—
Ripping the blank page out of the Selectric, Cat crumpled it into a small ball, flung it at the already filled wastepaper basket, and stomped out of the room. What she was going to do was go for a walk. She might never try to write another word. She might never go into that room again. She might never come back home again.
Lysistratus hungered once more, the pleasures of the previous night already forgotten. But the thought of faring out into the streets by day, snatching what dreams he could, as much a scavenger as the winos he'd fed from last night, was distasteful. If only the dreams he stole could give him more than sustenance and longevity, if only they could render him immune to death— to a bullet, a knife, or a simple accident. Then he would not have to exercise such caution as he did. He could stride amongst mankind like the superior being he was.
Instead he had to remain a scavenger— like the jackal that the African rootmen named him when they drummed their magicks and drove him from their veldts and jungles; like the ghost death that the Australian bushmen named him when they drove him away with their ritual shouts; like the lone wolf that the Inuit shaman named him when they used their chants and drum magic to drive him south from their frozen wastes; like the buzzard that the Hopi shaman named him when they raised their ghost winds and drove him north from their deserts.
The strong dreamers cast him forth because he was no match for them— he didn't have their physical brawn, nor the mystic power to withstand their devil-castings. But the strong dreamers no longer ruled this land— not as they had when he'd first visited it in previous centuries. He had returned because the men of the cities ruled now. They were weak dreamers; that very weakness was what kept them from discovering what he was and casting him forth as their aboriginal cousins had. But it left him with a constant hunger.
If only they could all be like Cat Midhir. Powerful dreamers, blind to his existence. He wondered if perhaps she could be bred….
He turned his gaze to a small painting of the Kikladhes that hung on the wall of his living room. The islands were washed by the same Aegean waters that hid Poseidon's palace from the eyes of man. Andros. Myconos. Southern Thera. Though he'd not been born there, he still thought of them as home. Ancient strongholds of dream.
Coarse-dreaming Turks had driven him out once. He had needed to wait four hundred years for the rebellion that allowed his return, only to be driven out again when the Nazis pounded their hard-heeled boots into their soil. Those arrogant Nordic dreamers had been gone forty years now, but he no longer thought of returning. That time might come, but not until he was stronger. Not until he was no longer a scavenger. Not until he need never be forced into exile again.
Lysistratus smiled to himself as he slipped on a lightweight tan raincoat and went out into the drizzle, his moment of moody introspection forgotten. Only the small-minded would complain in his situation. Eternity was his, wasn't it? And all of mankind's dreams.
On a day like this the library would be a good place to visit. The museum. A shopping mall. Anywhere that a weary soul might close his eyes for a dozing moment.
Cat had walked off her anger by the time she reached the Glebe. There was still a dull ache inside her, where something that needed expressing could find no vehicle of expression, but there was nothing she could do about it. Standing in front of The Merry Dancers Old Book and Antique Emporium, she looked up and down Bank Street, wondering what she was doing here. It was going on six and everything that wasn't already closed would be closing soon.
She didn't really want to have dinner alone in one of the restaurants that had sprung up in the area over the past few years. On the other hand, she didn't want to go home just now either. She decided to go over to the House of SF. If they were still open, maybe she could pick up a book. That would give her something to do tonight. She wasn't going to spend another evening sitting in front of the tube, and she wasn't going to stare stupidly at her typewriter all night either.
The "Come in, We're OPEN" sign was still in the window when she arrived, and she hurried up the stairs before Peter could change his mind and close. She wouldn't keep him long. Just a book and she'd be off.
The House of Speculative Fiction— on the blue-and-white sign outside, the sounds "eff & ess eff" were added to the name— took up the ground floor of a half-double on Fourth Avenue. The store itself was in what had once been the living and dining rooms of a ground-floor apartment, while the kitchen, complete with stove, fridge, and sink, doubled as a makeshift storeroom. Beside the sink was a narrow stairway that led to the apartment upstairs where Peter lived. There was also a broader stairway at the front of the store, giving access to the second floor, but Peter rarely used it.
He could be found behind the low counter everyday except for Thursday nights and Saturdays, when the other owner, burly Rodger Turner— who worked for the federal government five days a week— took over. Yet even at those times Peter was generally about. He looked up now as Cat burst in, and grinned when he saw who it was.
"How do, Cat. Long time no see. Where've you been keeping yourself?"
Now that she was here, she wished she hadn't come. She liked Peter Baird. He was a fairly handsome man with short light-brown hair, not tall but taller than she, with hazel eyes that were quick and warm. He was one of the few people Cat felt comfortable with, but right now, after his effusive welcome, she realized that she wasn't up to any sort of extended conversation. She didn't want to seem rude, but—
"Are you okay?" Peter asked.
Oh, God, she thought. How long have I been standing here like a dope, not saying anything? She quelled the sudden urge to bolt out the door— because how would she explain
that
later?— and tried to find a smile. By the look on his face, she wasn't being very successful.
"I'm fine," she said. "Really. I've just been having one of those days."
"I know what you mean. But at least you're doing something productive with your time instead of being cooped up in a place like this all day, twiddling your thumbs while the drizzle does its damnedest to keep customers away. Say, how's that new book coming?"
Cat's lower lip began to tremble, and all the past few months' losses and pressures swelled up inside her. I'm not going to cry, she told herself. A real cat wouldn't cry.
But she burst into tears.
Peter had long enough to think, Oh, shit— what'd I say? Then he was up and around the counter, steadying her by one arm as he led her back to his chair. He left her there for the time it took to turn the "OPEN" sign to "Sorry, We're CLOSED," lock the front door, and return to hunch down beside her.
For a moment he stared helplessly at her, but when her sobs grew louder, he drew her head down to his shoulder. He didn't say anything about everything being okay, or Hey, come on now, realizing that neither had much meaning. If everything were okay, she wouldn't be crying. Instead he just held her until the sobs dwindled into sniffling. He fetched her a Kleenex that she accepted gratefully, though she wouldn't meet his gaze.
"God. I feel so… stupid," she said after she'd blown her nose.
Peter shook his head. He switched off the store lights to take away the glare, knowing she'd feel more comfortable if she didn't think he could see her too well. The room was lit by the light in the storeroom/kitchen, throwing her face into shadow.