Fiction River: Hex in the City (29 page)

Gou stood up on his pedals to stop his bike, then started pedaling backwards, backing up his cab.

He needed speed if he was going to do this right.

And if he crashed into the wall, well, that was the will of the gods.

“Hold on!” Gou called to his passenger. He closed his eyes again and slammed down as hard as he could on his pedals. The cab leaped forward, as if it were a living animal and not made of steel and rubber.

Gou kept his nose high, seeking the start of that scent. When the air grew sweeter, and it suddenly grew quiet, he turned abruptly and opened his eyes.

The peaked gate loomed ahead of him. Gou skidded through the turn and passed through the opening with barely an inch on his right side.

“Well done,” his passenger said.

Gou breathed deeply, feeling the peace settle into his bones. He was finally here. At last.

***

Gou waited in the train station, this time right outside the exit of the customs hall. He wore a better shirt now; white with a tiny red fox embroidered over the left pocket, as well as finely made black pants, and soft leather sandals. He carried a small whiteboard with the name of his client written on it, in Japanese kanji, Chinese characters, and English.

Just like all the other official licensed couriers.

It wasn’t difficult to spot his client through the sea of travelers pouring out of the door: She was cute, with freckles scattered across the bridge of her nose, and a stillness that ebbed out of her, quieting everyone who stayed for a while in her presence. She wore her long black hair back, hiding her overly large ears, with bangs over her broad forehead. She wore a simple white-and-purple striped blouse over a straight black skirt.

“
Liequan
,” she said, smiling, coming up to him.

“
Huli
,” he replied. It was part of the code of the family, as well as a greeting: Hound and fox.

Gou collected her bags, carrying them easily despite their weight, like all the other official couriers did. He politely asked about her trip, but that was all, her stillness affecting him too.

Instead of leading her out to the rows of limousines and state cars, though, Gou walked her across the broad concrete courtyard in the front of the station to the rows of pedal cabs. Gou’s company colors were brown and yellow, with real licenses and enough bribes that he could reserve the front parking spots.

The young woman clapped her hands with delight when she saw Gou’s pedal cab. “Papa arranged for you,” she said, settling into the back of Gou’s cab.

“Of course,” Gou replied. He’d learned a lot about his clients since that first trip on his own to
Huli Hutong
: They didn’t like automobiles, and merely tolerated motorbikes when they needed speed. They preferred old-fashioned things, like handmade brooms and rickshaws.

Once all her luggage was strapped in, Gou started off at a leisurely pace, letting his client enjoy the city. Cars along the wide road raced past them, as did students on their bicycles, their bells ringing merrily. Gou took his time, though. He no longer had to hustle, racing for just one more fare.

Gou actually no longer needed to pedal a cab himself, he could have hired one more rider, but he liked to pick up family members himself: It kept his patron happy, helped smooth out any bumps in their relationship. Plus, he’d met other, stranger beings this way, building his network, hoping to become the exclusive carrier to all the spirit creatures and their kind.

Later that afternoon, Gou would take the daughter on a tour, through the tourist hutongs, as well as the secret, hidden ones that only the fox fairies could find.

And a few, well-trained hounds.

Introduction to “
The Scottish Play”

Kristine Kathryn Rusch, our Benevolent Queen, really wanted to get this right, and girl did she. Of all the short stories she’s written for me over the years, “The Scottish Play” is my favorite. How could it not be, with witches, magick, ghosts, the theater, family tension, historical references, and London, the greatest city of them all? I absolutely see her as the main character, and imagined myself to be one of the sisters, probably Viola, although I’m probably more like the mother. Did I mention I have two sisters? They don’t have a bit of magick; I got it all, too bad for them. Kris has magick; she could easily write these Witches into future volumes.

Kris publishes several series at the same time, all under different names. She writes award-winning mystery as Kris Nelscott in the Smokey Dalton series, award-winning romance as Kristine Grayson, sf/romance as Kris DeLake, and has three series under Kristine Kathryn Rusch: the Retrieval Artist series, the Fey series, and the Diving series. For the first time in her career, all of the books in all of the series are in print. She's excited about that. The next Diving book,
Skirmishes,
came out in September; the next Smokey Dalton novel,
Street Justice,
will appear in March of 2014; and the next Retrieval Artist book shortly after that. Her standalone thriller,
Snipers,
appeared in July. She writes:

“When I heard Kerrie Hughes describe what she was looking for in this anthology, she stressed, ‘Hex. In a city. Hex. City.’ At the same time, I'd been watching a really cool PBS series called
Shakespeare Uncovered
. The first episode featured Ethan Hawke, searching for the real MacBeth. I saw the Patrick Stewart version of
MacBeth
in London in 2007, and the play gave me nightmares. Bad ones. I have seen almost every Shakespeare play in a professional production, and while I've enjoyed them, none upset my subconscious like
MacBeth
. It really is one of the creepiest things ever written. And quite prescient. Somehow Shakespeare, London, theatrical superstitions, and magic all combined in my head at that moment to give me ‘The Scottish Play.’”

The Scottish Play

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

408 Years Ago
…as I usually picture it from my book-lined office in one of those pseudo-Gothic buildings at Yale. And no, I’m not telling you which one. I’m just sharing the way I think of these things when I’m sitting at my antique desk, littered with books about The Theatre and The Theater, depending on the snob level and the side of the Pond the author lives on.

I am an Elizabethan scholar, among other things, and I know real magic too, and still, this vision comes in mixed clichés.

Just saying I know better, okay?

So…

408 Years Ago:

(Or maybe 421 or maybe even 418. I mean, really, how do you know when a man made a deal with the Devil. If, indeed, he did make a deal with the Devil. And not just the Devil’s helpers. Or his handmaidens, as the case may be. Anyway…)

These three women are hanging out in their hovel in London. Because for some reason, witches can’t afford more than a hovel, even though they have more magic than anyone else, which makes no sense to me and never has. Anyway,
they’re hanging out and some young playwright with the ear of the Queen shows up, believing they can give him magic powers. I mean, come on. Really?

But it’s my imagination, and it’s untamable, at least on this. Maybe because the images came into my head so young, before I knew about Elizabethan politics and Guy Fawkes and the Tower of London and beheadings and—

Anyway:

Three women. Witches. Standing around a cauldron. There had to be a cauldron, because Shakespeare describes it later in the Scottish Play and everyone from Bugs Bunny to
The Simpsons
have parodied it. The women circle the cauldron and they give Shakespeare magic powers.

Or they don’t give him any powers at all.

I’m betting on
don’t
, given what happens later.

He goes away with a sense of magic, the supernatural, and all of its dangers. He writes somewhat subversive plays about kings and abdications and strong women and hidden loves and even though he criticizes the monarchy, still the monarchy lets him perform.

Scholars believe the Scottish Play’s witches were added to flatter King James the First, Elizabeth’s successor, who wrote a book on demonology, called, of all things
Daemonology
. But I know there’s more to it than that. I know, because of family lore.

Because I’m descended from those witches.

Because I’m still carrying on their tradition.

I mess with the theater, but only in a good way.

Or so I would like to believe.

***

Of course, it would be the Scottish Play that tested those beliefs. The Scottish Play, for you Philistines who don’t know, is
Macbeth.
It’s safer to call the thing the Scottish Play because of the curse.

Everyone knows about the curse, or should. To say the name of the Scottish Play in a theater—any theater (and that includes movie theaters, Philistines)—invokes a centuries-old curse that will destroy someone or someones associated with that theater. Technically, to say the name of the play and
to quote from it outside of rehearsals for the Scottish Play
invokes the curse. But that distinction often seems to get lost in translation.

Theoretically, there are ways to neutralize the curse. They include turning around three times, spitting over your left shoulder, and quoting from one of Shakespeare’s “lucky” plays like
Hamlet
or
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
(“If we shadows have offended…”). Simplistic answers to a simplistic problem, because the problem isn’t with the name of the Scottish Play. The problem is with the play itself.

I avoided entanglements with the Scottish Play for years; mostly because I figure anyone stupid enough to a) stage the play and b) call me to fix whatever has gone wrong is beyond help. They have to pretend not to believe in magic, and then call in magic when the curse rears its ugly head. They want that cake. They want to eat it. And usually, they want me to save a multi-million dollar production that should simply be abandoned.

I say no. Then they find someone else. The play’s run is plagued with bad luck. The story of the play’s production usually appears in articles about the curse of the Scottish Play, and then becomes part of theater lore.

Except this last time.

This last time, I went to London’s West End because the idiots in charge hired my mother.

And killed her.

***

To say my mood was foul as I approached the Lancaster Theatre in the West End really doesn’t do justice to just how dark my mood was. If someone were using the over-the-top visuals of horror movies to backlight me, thunder and lightning would trail in my wake.

It was midnight and the moon was almost full, albeit hard to see in the bright lights of the 21
st
century city. That’s the thing about London: It is a modern city. Yeah, sure, it’s filled with nooks and crannies of the past butted up against the present, but it’s always been that way. That’s part of the problem.

The Lancaster Theatre was a case in point. A rebuild on top of a rebuild, the Lancaster first appeared in the West End in the late 18
th
century, and burned down at least three times. Two of those fires took place after cannons fired on stage in productions of
Henry VIII
. Even the Globe burned after cannon fire from
Henry VIII
, proof of Shakespeare’s displeasure with John Fletcher’s so-called collaboration.

Despite the pictures I found online, I did not expect the Lancaster that was waiting for me. The online photos made the Lancaster seem like a 1970s monstrosity, all glass and chrome, with too much red in the seats and on the carpet.

Apparently I had missed a remodel, because now the Lancaster looked like a proper British theater of the movie-magic type—a roundish exterior suggesting a 17
th
century origin, lots of wood (fake I hoped), and solid oak doors that should have kept the riff-raff out.

I was the riff-raff, at least on this night. I didn’t go under the marquee, advertising the upcoming opening of
Shakespeare’s Macbeth!
(as if someone else had a Macbeth to perform) with Edward Burton, one of the greatest stars of stage and screen, a man who (fortunately) got his start in the Royal Shakespeare Company.

I stopped in front of the posters, staring at Burton’s craggy face twisted in confusion and fear as he held a bloody knife. He looked appropriately Macbeth-like. I double-checked the names of the other players, seeing a solid group of Shakespeareans mixed with some up-and-comers. Not even the director was new.

This production should not have had troubles, not in filling the seats nor in behaving properly during rehearsals for the accursed play. The magic here should never have flared, and it definitely shouldn’t have caused the death of my mother.