Casserole Diplomacy and Other Stories (40 page)

Will waved from the docks, wearing civilian clothes. “Kate! Wait!” He leapt onto the ice floes, the pans, between the docks and the ship.

“Stop rowing!” I cried.

Will leapt from pan to pan, ignoring the danger. He clambered into the boat, took off his watch, and dropped it in the water. “My last piece of iron.”

I embraced him. “What made you change your mind?” I asked.

“Madoc convinced me,” Will said.

I looked at Madoc. Had he learned enough English from me to talk to Will? Or had he been a fraud, all this time?

Will saw my confusion. “No, not him. The man we met at Avalon? Madoc Monteith. Our son.”

It took a while for it to sink in. “How?”

He showed me the golden pendant he wore beneath his clothes. The stone was identical to the one he gave me, striations and all, but old and worn. My hand flew to my neck. Mine was still there!

“They did find another way back. Remember I told you about Paddy’s Broom, the other storm that comes around the same time as Sheila’s Brush? Our son came back through that gate, and gave me this as proof. It’s the certainty I need. Let’s face the future together, come-what-may.”

I understood.

Madoc hollered. Ahead, a rainbow halo appeared in the whiteness of snow and fog. The gate!

There was no turning back. Into the storm and into the future.

“Come-what-may,” I said, and kissed Will.

Originally published in On Spec
Spring 2009 Vol 21 No 1 #76

Dr. Tony Pi
is a linguist with a Ph.D. from McGill University. A 2009 Finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, he has met two purported amnesiacs in his career, which inspired this story. Visit
www.tonypi.com
for a list of his works.

Greg Wilson

A lot of my stories aren’t true, but this is a true story . . .

Once upon a time, there was a young puppet named Still. She wore black and white and eight shades of green, and had a happy, smiling face. Every morning, she went to school to study reading, juggling, arithmetic, and history. At recess, she and her friends chased each other around the playground pretending to be gargoyles. If the teachers weren’t looking, they tied bits of string to each other’s arms and legs and staggered around as if someone was pulling on them until whoever was pretending to be Key the Cutter set them all free.

Still’s favourite thing wasn’t school or games, though—it was her violin. It had been carved out of the same piece of wood as she had been, and she never went anywhere without it. She loved its sweet young sound, and played everything on it, from tingly little nursery rhymes to the slow song of the canals at night. She even took it to bed with her, so that she could sleep with her arms around it.

Her parents smiled at one another when she did that. Her father, Elbow, was a paper folder, and made the crispest, straightest creases you have ever seen. Her mother, Ramble, was a painter. Every day, puppets came to her and said, “I’ve just been given a very important job. Can you please give me a serious face?” or, “I’m feeling blue—can you please put a happy face on me?” Hour after patient hour, Ramble gave her customers the faces they wanted.

One day, Elbow brought home a big box full of old papers. “The mayor found these in the basement of City Hall,” he told Ramble and Still. “And she wants
me
to fold them all up so that they can be put away properly. It’s going to be a hard job. See?” He held up one of the pieces of paper. It was yellow around the edges, and crackly-stiff from having been damp and then dried out. “If I make even the slightest mistake, the paper might tear, or the crease might not be straight!”

“Well then, we’d better stay out of your way for a while,” Ramble said. She kissed his cheek. “I’ll go and grind up some lemon peel and amber for my paints. Still, why don’t you go up and clean your room?”

“All right,” Still said. Up the stairs she went. Her room was a mess. There were socks on her bookshelves, and books curled up asleep on her desk, and pencil shavings spilling out of her drawers.

“Hmph,” Still thought. “This will be a
lot
of work. I wonder where I should start?” She sat down on the bed to puzzle it out. As she thought, she tucked her violin under her chin and began to play.

“Still,” Ramble called. “Are you cleaning your room?”

“Ye-ess,” Still called back. She couldn’t put her books away until she moved her socks, but she couldn’t put
them
away until she tidied up the pencil shavings, and she couldn’t do
that
until she moved her books . . . As she thought, her fingers picked out a little tune on her violin.

“Still!” Ramble said loudly. Still jumped. Her mother was standing in the bedroom doorway, her shoe going
tap tap tap
. She hadn’t bothered to pencil a frown on her forehead, but Still could tell that she was exasperated. “Elbow needs to concentrate. If you want to play your violin, why don’t you go outside?”

“Can I go to Mister Leaf’s?” Still asked. “He told me last week that he thought I was ready for some special lessons.”
And music lessons are
much
more fun than cleaning,
she added, but only to herself.

Ramble’s shoe went
tap tap tap
a few more times. Then she nodded. “All right. But you have to clean up your room when you get home.”

“I will!” Still promised. She gave Ramble a hug, then clattered down the stairs. The front door went
bang!
behind her.

The sky was blue, and the air had that clean, damp smell that comes after rain. Still skipped along the cobblestone streets, playing little tunes as she went. She went straight to Mister Leaf’s house—except for one little detour to slide down a brass handrail in the park, and another to wave at a big passenger balloon that was taking off for the moon.

Mister Leaf’s house stood next to a little square park full of trees and benches. It was a nice part of town. There were no glass rats creeping half-invisible across the stones to gnaw on her legs, or pirates in red and gold lurking in the bushes, waiting for a chance to bundle her up inside a roll of carpet and smuggle her onto a ship and haul her halfway across the ocean to sell her to a pride of lions so that she could scratch them under their chins when they were finished hunting. It was a nice house, and a nice summer-sunshine day. There was no way Still could know that it was going to be the worst day of her life.

A single drop of rain went
plop
on the cobblestones. Another drop plopped beside it, then another. “Oh, bother,” Still said crossly. She didn’t mind the rain (although Ramble always made sure that she got herself completely dry, so that she wouldn’t warp), but it put her violin out of tune. She looked up at the fat, gray clouds, then ran
tik tik tik
across the cobblestones and rang Mister Leaf’s doorbell.

A moment later the door opened, and a deep, warm voice said, “Why, what a pleasant surprise! Please, please, come in.”

Mister Leaf wore blue and orange and a polka-dot hat. He had black curls painted on his forehead and a big smile painted on his face. His eyes were made of tiger-orange topaz. They were so friendly, they almost seemed to shine.

He stepped out of the way and waved her in. “To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?” he asked.

“My father has some very important work to do,” Still told him as they went upstairs to the music room, “so I was hoping that I could get a special lesson.”

“Ah,” her teacher said. “Very good. Very good. But look, your violin is wet. Here, you should dry it off.” He took a tea towel from on top of the piano and handed it to her.

Still brushed a few drops of water off her violin, then handed the towel back to Mister Leaf. As she did so, their fingers touched, and his eyes suddenly seemed to sparkle.

Still felt as though she had a blush painted on her cheeks. She turned around to face the window and tucked her violin under her chin. The rain was darkening the red bricks of the houses across the street. “Shall I start with scales?” she asked.

“Of course,” Mister Leaf said. “And remember, not too fast. The most important thing is to hear the music as you play it.”

Still played a G scale, then a B scale, and then a C-sharp scale, which was the hardest scale she knew. Mister Leaf nodded his head to help her keep time, and said, “Good, good,” or, “Slow down—try to smooth the notes into each other.”

“Very good,” he said when she finally finished. “Now, would you like to play a song for me?”

“If you’d like,” Still said. She laid her bow on her violin’s strings and drew it down. The sound was as sweet and as thick as chocolate syrup, but as clear as the purest ice. She closed her eyes and played a slow, sad gypsy waltz.

When she was done, she opened her eyes. Mister Leaf had stepped forward, so that he was standing just inches away from her. “Ahhh . . .” he breathed. “That was beautiful. May I try?”

“Try what?” Still asked.

“Your violin—may I play it?”

“Oh my,” Still said. Her clockwork seemed to be whirring double-time inside her. “I—I’ve never let anyone else play my violin before,” she said. “I don’t know if I should.”

“I’ll be careful,” Mister Leaf promised. “We can keep it a secret if you want.” He held out his hand.

Suddenly, Still felt guilty. He was being so nice, giving her an extra lesson like this. What harm could it do?

“Here,” she said impulsively, holding it out to him. “But please be careful.”

Mister Leaf took the violin and bow from her. He gazed at them for a moment as if they were the most precious things in the world. Then he brought the violin up to his cheek and laid his cheek against its bottom side. “It’s perfect,” he whispered. “The varnish . . . the polish . . . It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

Suddenly he turned the violin right side up and tucked it under his chin. He thrust the bow across the strings.
HRING!
He pushed the bow back across the strings, then drew it down again,
HWAH-HWING!

“Wait, stop!” Still said. “You mustn’t play so hard!” But Mister Leaf didn’t listen. He began to fiddle furiously, faster than Still had ever seen anyone play. The bow flew back and forth across the strings. The violin sang, then shrieked, then howled as he played high notes and low notes, chords and
pizzicato
and trills that ran from one end of the scale to the other.

“No, wait, stop! Stop! Oh please, stop!” Still cried, but Mister Leaf just played on. Still grabbed his arm and tried to pull the violin away from him, but he was too strong. Faster and faster he played, until suddenly the strings went
PLINK! PLINK! PLINK!
He had cut right through them!

But even then Mister Leaf didn’t stop. Before Still’s horrified eyes, gray wisps of smoke began to rise from the body of the violin. He was playing so fast that the violin was catching on fire!

It must have been the smell of smoke that made him stop, because there is nothing that puppets are more afraid of than fire. Mister Leaf raised the bow with a flourish. Then, to Still’s horror, he began to chuckle. The chuckle turned into a laugh, and the laugh got bigger and bigger. “Ah hoo hoo hoo,” he chortled. “Ah hee hee hee. Oh, th-th-that was fun! That was
fun!
”

As he laughed, Still began to cry. “What have you done?” she wept. “What have you done to my violin?”

Mister Leaf laughter subsided. He blinked at the violin. “Oh my,” he said softly, “what’s this?” He peered at the violin as if he had never seen it before, then pushed it back into Still’s arms.

“You broke it,” Still sobbed, clutching the violin in her arms.