Anthology.The.Mammoth.Book.of.Angels.And.Demons.2013.Paula.Guran (40 page)

I laid the Angel out on the lumpy grass a little ways from the car and looked around. We were maybe a hundred yards from the highway, near a road that ran parallel to it. It was dark but I could still read the sign that had come through the windshield and split the woman’s head in half. It said,
CONSTRUCTION AHEAD, REDUCE SPEED
. Far off on the other road, I could see a flashing yellow light and at first I was afraid it was the police or something but it stayed where it was and I realized that must be the construction.

“Friend,” whispered the Angel, startling me. He’d never spoken aloud to me, not directly.

Don’t talk, I said, bending over him, trying to figure out some way I could touch him, just for comfort. There wasn’t anything else I could do now.

“I have to,” he said, still whispering. “It’s almost all gone. Did you get it?”

Mostly, I said. Not all.

“I meant for you to have it.”

I know.

“I don’t know that it will really do you any good.” His breath kind of bubbled in his throat. I could see something wet and shiny on his mouth but it wasn’t silver fireworks. “But it’s yours. You can do as you like with it. Live on it the way I did. Get what you need when you need it. But you can live as a human, too. Eat. Work. However, whatever.”

I’m not human, I said. I’m not any more human than you, even if I do belong here.

“Yes, you are, little friend. I haven’t made you any less human,” he said, and coughed some. “I’m not sorry I wouldn’t mate. I couldn’t mate with my own. It was too . . . I don’t know, too little of me, too much of them, something. I couldn’t bond, it would have been nothing but emptiness. The Great Sin, to be unable to give, because the universe knows only less or more and I insisted that it would be good or bad. So they sent me here. But in the end, you know, they got their way, little friend.” I felt his hand on me for a moment before it fell away. “I did it after all. Even if it wasn’t with my own.”

The bubbling in his throat stopped. I sat next to him for a while in the dark. Finally I felt it, the Angel stuff. It was kind of fluttery-churny, like too much coffee on an empty stomach. I closed my eyes and lay down on the grass, shivering. Maybe some of it was shock but I don’t think so. The silver fireworks started, in my head this time, and with them came a lot of pictures I couldn’t understand. Stuff about the Angel and where he’d come from and the way they mated. It was a lot like how we’d been together, the Angel and me. They looked a lot like us but there were a lot of differences, too, things I couldn’t make out. I couldn’t make out how they’d sent him here, either – by
light
, in, like, little bundles or something. It didn’t make any sense to me, but I guessed an Angel could be light. Silver fireworks.

I must have passed out, because when I opened my eyes, it felt like I’d been laying there a long time. It was still dark, though. I sat up and reached for the Angel, thinking I ought to hide his body.

He was gone. There was just a sort of wet sandy stuff where he’d been.

I looked at the car and her. All that was still there. Somebody was going to see it soon. I didn’t want to be around for that.

Everything still hurt but I managed to get to the other road and start walking back toward the city. It was like I could feel it now, the way the Angel must have, as though it were vibrating like a drum or ringing like a bell with all kinds of stuff, people laughing and crying and loving and hating and being afraid and everything else that happens to people. The stuff that the Angel took in, energy, that I could take in now if I wanted.

And I knew that taking it in that way, it would be bigger than anything all those people had, bigger than anything I could have had if things hadn’t gone wrong with me all those years ago.

I wasn’t so sure I wanted it. Like the Angel, refusing to mate back where he’d come from. He wouldn’t there, and I couldn’t here. Except now I could do something else.

I wasn’t so sure I wanted it. But I didn’t think I’d be able to stop it, either, any more than I could stop my heart from beating. Maybe it wasn’t really such a good thing or a right thing. But it was like the Angel said: the universe doesn’t know good or bad, only less or more.

Yeah. I heard
that
.

I thought about the waitress with no face. I could find them all now, all the ones from the other places, other worlds that sent them away for some kind of alien crimes nobody would have understood. I could find them all. They threw away their outcasts, I’d tell them, but here, we kept ours. And here’s how. Here’s how you live in a universe that only knows less or more.

I kept walking toward the city.

The Man Who Stole the Moon

Tanith Lee

Tanith Lee’s stories of the Flat Earth are based in a mythology of her own brilliant devising. Above her Earth is the rather uninteresting Upperearth, where indifferent gods do little more than think and sleep. Below are two realms: Underearth – ruled by Azhrarn, Prince of Demons –– and Innerearth, where Uhlume, Lord Death, keeps dead spirits for a thousand years. Obviously, in our context we are most interested in Azhrarn and the demons he rules. The Vazdru are beautiful demons similar to their prince; they can transform themselves into animals. The rather dreamy (and equally beautiful) Eshva serve them. The Drin are ugly, dwarfish craftsmen. All three types of demons tend towards making mischief amongst the humans of Earth. In “The Man Who Stole the Moon” we meet both Yulba, a Drin who expects an unnamed but no doubt questionable reward in exchange for assisting a trickster thief, and the Prince of Demons himself.

Several tales are told concerning the Moon of the Flat Earth. Some say that this Moon, perhaps, was a hollow globe, within which lay lands and seas, having even their own cool Sun. However, there are other stories.

One evening, Jaqir the accomplished thief rose from a bed of love and said to his mistress, “Alas, sweetheart, we must now part forever.” Jaqir’s mistress looked at him in surprise and shook out her bright hair. “You are mistaken. My husband, the old merchant, is miles off again, buying silk and other stuff, and besides suspects nothing. And I am well satisfied with you.”

“Dear heart,” said Jaqir, as he dressed his handsome self swiftly, “neither of these things is the stumbling block to our romance. It is only this. I have grown tired of you.”

“Tired of me!” cried the lady, springing from the bed.

“Yes, though indeed you are toothsome in all respects. I am inconstant and easily bored. You must forgive me.”

“Forgive you!” screamed the lady, picking up a handy vase.

Jaqir ducked the vase and swung nimbly out of the high window, an action to which he was quite accustomed, from his trade. “Although a deceiver in my work, honesty in my private life is always my preferred method,” he added, as he dropped quickly down through the vine to the street below. Once there he was gone in a flash, and just in time to miss the jar of piddle the lady that moment upended from the window.

However, three of the king’s guard, next second passing beneath, were not so fortunate.

“A curse upon all bladders,” they howled, wringing out their cloaks and hair. Then, looking up, they beheld the now no-longer mistress of Jaqir, and asked her loudly what she meant by it.

“Pardon me, splendid sirs,” said she. “The befoulment was not intended for you, but for that devilish thief, Jaqir, who even now runs through that alley there toward a hiding place he keeps in the House of the Thin Door.”

At the mention of Jaqir, who was both celebrated and notorious in that city, the soldiers forgot their inconvenience, and gave instant chase. Never before had any been able to lay hands on Jaqir, who, it was said, could steal the egg from beneath a sleeping pigeon. Now, thanks to the enragement of his discarded lover, the guard knew not only of Jaqir’s proximity, but his destination. Presently then they came up with him by the House of the Thin Door.

“Is it he?”

“So it is, for I have heard, when not in disguise, he dresses like a lord, like this one, and, like this one, his hair is black as a panther’s fur.”

At this they strode up to Jaqir and surrounded him.

“Good evening, my friends,” said Jaqir. “You are fine fellows, despite your smell.”

“That smell is not our own, but the product of a night-jar emptied on us. And the one who did this also told us where to find the thief Jaqir.”

“Fate has been kind to you. I will not therefore detain you further.”

“No, it is you who shall be detained.”

“
I
?
” asked Jaqir modestly.

But within the hour he discovered himself in chains in the king’s dungeons.

“Ah, Jaqir,” said he to himself, “a life of crime has taught you nothing. For have the gods not always rewarded your dishonesty – and now you are chastised for being truthful.”

Although of course the indifferent, useless gods had nothing to do with any of it.

A month or so later, the king got to hear that Jaqir the Prince of Thieves languished in the prison, awaiting trial.

“I will see to it,” said the king. “Bring him before me.”

So Jaqir was brought before the king. But, despite being in jail, being also what he was, Jaqir had somehow stolen a gold piece from one jailor and gifted it to another, and so arrived in the king’s sight certainly in chains, but additionally bathed, barbered and anointed, dressed in finery, and with a cup of wine in his hand.

Seeing this, the king laughed. He was a young king and not without a sense of the humorous. In addition, he knew that Jaqir, while he had stolen from everyone he might, had never harmed a hair of their heads, while his skills of disguise and escape were much admired by any he had not annoyed.

“Now then, Prince of Thieves, may a mere king invite you to sit? Shall I strike off your chains?” added the king.

“Your majesty,” said one of the king’s advisers, “pray do not unchain him, or he will be away over the roofs. Look, he has already stolen two of my gold rings – and see, many others have lost items.”

This was a fact. All up and down the palace hall, those who had gathered to see Jaqir on trial were exclaiming over pieces of jewelry suddenly missing. And one lady had even lost her little dog, which abruptly, and with a smile, Jaqir let out of an inner compartment in his shirt, though it seemed quite sorry to leave him.

“Then I shall not unchain you,” said the king. “Restore at once all you have filched.”

Jaqir rose, shook himself somewhat, and an abundance of gold and gems cascaded from his person.

“Regrettably, lord king, I could not resist the chance to display my skills.”

“Rather you should deny your skills. For you have been employed in my city seven years, and lived like the prince you call yourself. But the punishment for such things is death.”

Jaqir’s face fell, then he shrugged. He said, “I see you are a greater thief, sir, than I. For I only presume to rob men of their goods. You are bold enough to burgle me of my life.”

At that the court made a noise, but the king grew silent and thoughtful.

Eventually he said, “I note you will debate the matter. But I do not believe you can excuse your acts.”

“There you are wrong. If I were a beggar calling for charity on the street you would not think me guilty of anything but ill luck or indigence. Or, if I were a seller of figs you would not even notice me as I took the coins of men in exchange for my wares.”

“Come,” said the king. “You neither beg nor sell. You thieve.”

“A beggar,” said Jaqir, “takes men’s money and other alms, and gives nothing in return but a blessing. Please believe me, I heap blessings on the heads of all I rob, and thank them in my prayers for their charity. Had I begged it, I might, it is true, not have received so great a portion. How much nobler and blessed are they then, that they have given over to me the more generous amount? Nor do they give up their coins for nothing.

“For what they buy of me, when it is
I
who steal from them, is a dramatic tale to tell. And indeed, lord king, have you never heard any boast of how they were robbed by me?”

The king frowned, for now and then he had heard this very thing, some rich noble or other reciting the story of how he had been despoiled of this or that treasure by the nimble Jaqir, the only thief able to take it. And once or twice, there were women, too, who said, “When I woke, I found my rings were gone, but on my pillow lay a crimson rose. Oh, would he had stayed a while to steal some other prize.”

“I am not,” declared Jaqir, “a common thief. I purloin from none who cannot afford the loss. I deduct nothing that has genuine sentimental or talismanic weight. I harm none. Besides, I am an artist in what I do. I come and go like a shadow, and vanish like the dawn into the day. You will have been told, I can abstract the egg of a pigeon from beneath the sleeping bird and never wake it.”

The king frowned deeply. He said, “Yet with all this vaunted knack, you did not, till today, leave my dungeons.”

Jaqir bowed. “That was because, lord king, I did not wish to miss my chance of meeting you.”

“Truly? I think rather it was the bolts and bars and keys, the numerous guards – who granted you wine, but not an open door. You seem a touch pale.”

“Who can tell?” idly answered pale Jaqir.

But the king only said, “I will go apart and think about all this.” And so he did, but the court lingered, looking at Jaqir, and some of the ladies and young men came and spoke to him, but trying always not to get near enough to be robbed. Yet even so, now and then, he would courteously hand them back an emerald or amethyst he had removed from their persons.

Meanwhile the king walked up and down a private chamber where, on pedestals of marble, jewel-colored parrots sat watching him.

“He is clever,” said the king, “handsome, well mannered and decorative. One likes him at once, despite his nefarious career. Why cast such a man out of the state of life? We have callous villains and nonentities enough. Must every shining star be snuffed?”