And Other Stories (9 page)

"Oh, no," said the shoemaker. "My
wife said she would die if she did not have a taste of camel stew.
She asked me to go to the neighbors and beg them for one
bite."

"But instead you went to buy meat
of your own?" asked Haroun al-Rashid.

"Oh, no," said the shoemaker. "I
went to my neighbor and said that my pregnant wife had not eaten
meat in weeks and could he spare a bite for her? He began to cry.
He said, 'My friend, you do not smell camel stew. We have not had
any food in our house for weeks. To keep my children from starving,
I went into the market and bought an old donkey skin for a penny
that we are boiling for soup. I am sorry that I have no camel stew
for your wife. May God grant her wish soon.' So I went back to my
home and dug up the coins I had saved for the Haj and gave them to
my neighbor." The shoemaker shrugged. "God willing, someday I might
make the Haj."

Haroun al-Rashid nodded. "God
willing, someday I might make the Haj, too."

The Thief of
Dreams

Will Shetterly

A tiger dreamed of gazelles running
free across the plains. Then the tiger woke, its dream gone. It saw
a gazelle and leaped upon it to make the gazelle its
breakfast.

A serpent dreamed of a city
overgrown by the jungle. Its walls were strong, and its wells were
full of cool, clear water. A child came. The serpent told it, "I
guard this city for you and your people. Take it, grow strong, and
help others."

Then the serpent woke, its dream
gone. A child passed nearby, walking toward the city. The serpent
sank its fangs into the child's ankle.

A king dreamed of a leader who
lived like her people in a simple home with simple food and helped
them build schools and hospitals.

Then the king woke, his dream gone.
A servant brought his breakfast on a tray of gold. As his ministers
advised him to raise the taxes to keep the army strong, he told
them, “I had a dream. It’s gone now.”

“It was stolen,” said
the servant.

Everyone looked at her, but the
king only said, “By whom?”

“The Thief of
Dreams,” said the servant.

“I must catch this
thief to get back my dream,” said the king. “I will post a reward.
I will send out my troops. I will have my wisest counselors learn
who steals dreams.”

The servant said, “Only you will
know your dream. You must seek it yourself.”

So the king, alone and on foot, set
out on his quest.

On the plain, a tiger leaped upon
him. As its jaws closed around his throat, the king cried, “Tell
me, before you kill me, did you steal my dream?”

The tiger said, “No. But I have had
a dream stolen."

“Our dreams were
taken by the Thief of Dreams,” said the king. “Let’s seek the thief
together.”

“Agreed,” said the
tiger, so they set out side by side.

In the jungle, a serpent struck at
the king. As its fangs touched his skin, the king cried, “Tell me,
before you kill me, did you steal my dream?”

The serpent said, “No. But I have
had a dream stolen.”

“I have also had a
dream stolen,” said the tiger at the king’s side.

“Our dreams were
taken by the Thief of Dreams,” said the king. “Let’s seek the thief
together.”

So the king, the tiger, and the
serpent searched the world.

Years passed, and the tiger
died.

More years passed, and the serpent
died.

Even more years passed. The king,
old and ill, met a stranger. After telling his story, the king
said, “The tiger, the serpent, and I wasted our lives pursuing the
Thief of Dreams. What did we leave behind?”

The stranger said, “In the plains,
the gazelles run free. In the jungle, a child found a city with
strong walls and good wells that has been brought alive again. And
in your land, the people made your servant their leader. She helped
them build hospitals and schools.”

The king knew the stranger then.
“You stole our dreams!”

The stranger touched the king’s
hand and, as the king died, said, “No. I gave them.”

Black Rock
Blues

Will Shetterly

1

He’s running above the sun-splashed
ocean, leaping from cloud to rainbow and back again, grinning
because no one can catch him, when someone walks up beside him,
smiles in the smuggest way, and says, “Wakey-wakey.”

He says, “G’way,” and pulls the
sleeping bag over his head.

The smug walker is a beautiful
young woman with skin the color of the deepest sea and hair the
color of the darkest night. She’s naked. Street would like that if
her smile wasn’t so annoying. She says, “Time to wake up,
trickster.”

He sits up fast, thinking
something’s terribly wrong if he has a visitor in his hideaway, but
at least the smug walker from his dream will be gone.

Only she’s not. She’s in his room.
Or, to be precise, she’s in a storage room at the back of the
Dupree Building that’s full of cartons of Hi-John’s Good Luck Lawn
and Garden Spray. She’s wearing a blood-red jacket and purple jeans
and low gray boots, and her head has been shaved and her skin is
only as dark as a plum, but her smile is at least as annoying in
reality as it was in the dream. She looks remarkably familiar for
someone he’s never seen. Maybe it’s just that her smile reminds him
of someone, but he can’t remember who. He wants to say something
clever. What falls from his lips is, “Hunh?”

Her smile gets even more annoying.
“Yes.  You were always loveliest in the morning.”

He blinks three times. She refuses
to disappear like the dream, so he says, “Wha—  Who’re
you?

She shakes her head. “Now, that’d
be telling, wouldn’t it?”

He wants to get out of his sleeping
bag because he doesn’t like looking up at her. But when he found
this room, he arranged the cardboard boxes so six formed a bed and
two made a table and four made a chair with a back and a footstool.
His clothes are on top of the remaining stacks across the room.
“What do you want?”

“And that’d be
telling, too.”

He frowns, then sees that this poor
girl is trying to play the player. He grins and stretches. “What’d
you call me?”

Her smile falters. She says, “All
right.  You get one.  Trickster.”

His grin is so wide he has to crank
it down for fear of hurting his face. “Well, now and then, I
s’pose.” He points at his clothes. “I’m putting those on.” He
points at the door. “A lady would wait outside.”

She points at the window. “While a
two-bit grifter takes the back door? My thought is not.”

He stands and tries not to shiver
as he walks across the cold concrete floor. “O ye of little
trust.”

She taps the side of her head. “O
me of much smart.”

He tugs on gray silk boxers, but
leaves his socks off because there’s no way to put them on without
the annoying girl seeing the holes in the heels. “They call me
Street.”

“Unless they’re
looking for a light-fingered fool or a punk to run a cheap-ass
scam. Then they ask for Trickster.”

“And when they ask
for you?”

She hesitates, then shrugs and
says, “Oh.”

“Mystery
woman.”

She smiles. “That, too.”

“Oh!” He has to
laugh. “They call you O!”

“Now I’ve given you
two.”

He nods. “O’Riley. Odegaard. Oprah.
Eau Claire. Open Sesame. Oh, what a pain.”

O shakes her head. “Wasting time,
T.”

Street frowns as he buttons up a
black guayabara. “So, O, how’d you find—” Her smile makes him hear
himself, and he gets the grin back to say in time with her, “That’d
be telling, wouldn’t it?” He puts one leg into his tan chinos. “You
didn’t tell the cops—”

“Of course
not.”

He pauses with the chinos half on.
“You’re all right, O.  Y’know, if you snuck in hoping for some
quality time with a fine young fellow like myself—”

“I told Bossman
Sevenday.”

With one leg halfway into the
chinos, Street looks at her instead of what he’s doing and falls,
landing hard on his hands. “What the—” As she laughs, he pushes
himself up, jerks up his pants, and glares at her. “Why would
you—”

“Things’ve been too
easy, T. You need some spice in your life.”

He yanks his belt tight, grabs a
turquoise silk jacket, and steps into dark red loafers. “What’d I
ever do to you?”

She smiles cooly.

He gives her a mocking smile in
return and says, “That’d be telling, wouldn’t it?”

O nods. “They’ll be here in two
minutes.  We better take the fire esc—”

Street frowns. “We?”

Which is when the storage room door
swings in as if it was kicked by a mule. The mule is a huge man so
tall that he has to duck when he steps inside. His T-shirt says,
“Looking for someone to hurt.”

O says, “They would be
early.”

Street wrenches open the storage
room window. “Come on! If—”

A little man in a dark red suit
drops onto the fire escape with a friendly smile and a large
pistol. “Tut, tut, my tricksy.  A gent pays his bills afore
making his departure.  And it’s true you’ll be making the big
departure soon, but Bossman Sevenday’ll have what’s his first, now,
won’t he?”

2

Mr. Big and Mr. Small don’t offer
answers, so Street doesn’t ask questions. They drive from the
Dupree Building in Flashtown to the country homes of Hillside while
Big and Small sing Tin Pan Alley songs in perfect harmony. O
follows the black limousine in a small silver roadster with the top
down. Street thinks she must be working with his captors, but he
can’t figure out why she was acting more like audience than actor,
and he doesn’t like thinking about her. So he joins Big and Small
on the choruses, and he smiles as they wince whenever he goes off
key.

They pass many walled homes before
Mr. Big turns toward a high gate like gleaming ivory. It swings
back at their approach. The limousine rolls over a long white
cobblestone driveway and stops beside a bone-white mansion. Small
leaps out to open Street’s door, saying, “If you’d be so kind, my
tricksy.” Street feels safer staying where he is, until Small nods
at Big and adds, “The kindness is for my compatriot. He must clean
the car if a guest is reluctant to leave it.”

Big grins sheepishly, and Street
leaps out.

O parks her roadster beside the
limousine and walks over to them. For the drive, she added racing
goggles and a white scarf. She pushes the goggles up on her
forehead. Street thinks she’s the finest thing he’s ever seen, then
wishes he hadn’t thought that.

“On with the show!” O
calls, waving the others toward the back of the mansion.

Street asks, “Do I get
paid?”

Big says in a very gentle voice,
“Oh, you should hope you don’t, Mr. Trickster.”

O leads, and Big and Small follow,
and Street sees no choice but to be escorted around the mansion. In
the back, a man lounges by an enormous pool, drinking a pina
colada. He wears a black top hat, smoky round glasses, a black
Hawaiian shirt printed with silver skulls, gray pinstriped surfer
shorts, and black flip-flops. He looks up and laughs. “Trickster!
O! So very good to see you!”

Street, knowing who this must be,
says, “And I couldn’t imagine anyone better to see me, Mr. Bossman
Sevenday, sir. I’m just afraid there’s a teensy
misunderstanding—”

“A misunderstanding?”
says Bossman Sevenday. “When Trickster is involved? Oh, no. How
could that be?”

As Bossman Sevenday and Big laugh
heartily, Small whispers, “He’s not happy, my tricksy. You should
make him happy.”

Street desperately wants to do
precisely that, and has no idea how. He looks at the swimming pool,
an elongated hexagon, then looks closer. It’s the shape of a
coffin.

Bossman Sevenday laughs harder and
says, “You like my pool, Trickster? You may swim in it anytime.
Some people like it so much, they go in and never want to
leave.”

Street swallows and says, “I love
your pool, Mr. Bossman Sevenday, sir. But I was thinking how happy
I would be if I could do something for you. Whatever you liked. All
you’d have to do is tell me what you wanted, and I’d be on my way
to do that this very second, Mr. Bossman Sevenday, sir.”

Bossman Sevenday stops laughing and
says, “The rock.”

“The rock?” Street
says.

Bossman Sevenday nods.

“That’s it?” says
Street.

Bossman Sevenday nods
again.

Street looks at O. She says, “He
wants the rock.”

Street says, “Of course he wants
the rock! I’ll go get it now.” He begins to back out of the yard.
“Mr. Bossman Sevenday, sir, I’m very, very grateful for the chance
to get you a rock. I mean, the rock.”