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Fiction Complete
Phyllis MacLennan
(custom book cover)
Jerry eBooks
Title Page
About Phyllis MacLennan
Bibliography
A Contract in Karasthan
Good-by, Miss Patterson
Thus Love Betrays Us
The Magic White Horse with His Heart in His Mouth
Like Phoenix from the Ashes Newly Risen
A Day in the Apotheosis of the Welfare State
A Report from the Snith Digest
Good-bye, Miss Patterson
Turned Loose on Irdra (novel)
Phyllis MacLennan was born on November 14th, 1920 in Bethlehem, PA. She earned a B.A. in journalism from Hunter College and an M.S. in education from Hofstra University.
MacLennan was a talented multi-linguist and worked privately as a translator before serving in Military Intelligence during WWII.
In addition to being a published author of science fiction, MacLennan was a magazine journalist, licensed pilot, equestrian, diver, and actress of stage and screen. She called many places home throughout her life including Northern California, New York City, a horse farm in New Jersey and several years abroad in Panama.
A beloved mother and grandmother, MacLennan was also a world traveler and adventurer. As a lifetime lover of dogs, she was an active member of The Weimaraner Club of America for many years.
Phyllis MacLennan died on January 8, 2012 in South Carolina.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Novels
Turned Loose on Irdra (1970)
Short Fiction
A Contract in Karasthan, Fantastic Stories of Imagination, July 1963
Good-by, Miss Patterson, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1972
Thus Love Betrays Us, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September 1972
The Magic White Horse with His Heart in His Mouth, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1973
Like Phoenix from the Ashes Newly Risen, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1974
A Day in the Apotheosis of the Welfare State, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1975
A Report from the Snith Digest, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1980
Good-bye, Miss Patterson (revised version), Spooky Stories for a Dark and Stormy Night, October 1994
A Contract in Karasthan
On one side were the things of knowledge . . . on the other, the things of dream. There was no choice for one who had already in his heart, signed . . .
I WAS born with a caul, and we born thus enshrouded have the power of second sight, they say. Is that what it was that ailed me all my life, that made the world I dwelt in seem not to be the real one, but a prison? Inside my head I saw another land, enchanted, and knew it well. Its sights, its sounds, its fragrances were truer and more clear to me than those my grosser senses knew around me, and from my earliest boyhood I had waited for the moment when I could start my pilgrimage to that far place.
Have others dreamt the same, and been less fortunate than I? Life sets its snares for us, and we walk into them unknowing, not drawing back in time, until the noose has tightened about us. Then, though we struggle like netted birds, the time is past, the dream too far behind. “I will do this,” I said, “and then start out.” Thus the first trap is sprung, and it might have been for me as it has been for others, had not an agent of my dream reached out and saved me.
I met a girl. In a loud and crowded gathering she made an oasis of stillness, and summoned me with eyes deep and clear, yet veiled with the third eyelid of some secret knowledge. I had seen her dancing as I slept.
“I am Ysabel,” she said. “Why are you here?”
“It is only for a little while,” I stammered. “I will come soon.”
“Be careful. The contract waits, and only one is offered. Will you be there?”
“I will.”
“Then I shall look for you in Karasthan.” She went away and left no trace behind.
THE world I lived in had set its roots like fungus in my flesh. Tearing them out was painful, but I did it and began my search. No map, no atlas named the place I sought. Villages in Fiji, forgotten cities in Tibet, all these were listed; but never Karasthan. It would be far, I realized, for magic countries must be, and the voice I heard within me was all my guide to find it.
To follow a dream is hard. Hunger and pain and toil make it seem faint and dull its beauty, but how else can it be? This, too, is called for in the contract. I worked my way across the waters, polishing bright-work in the burning sun, sweating in engine-rooms of cranky ships that carried more than their share of vermin. I climbed over mountains, chilled by bitter winds, begging my way when need was—how generous the poor are!—and walked sometimes so long it seemed to me that I stood still and turned the earth beneath me, a treadmill for a fool. At last I found a clue, a sign to tell me that my goal was near.
It was in my mind to go to Madagascar. I had worked my way through the Gulf of Aden, and then, finding no ship, set out on foot along that hostile coast. Yes, even here, where the parched land scorches beside the unheeding sea, one may find villages, and bazaars, and simple folk who show respect to madmen. In such a place there was a story-teller, an old man, with the look of one who knew. He held the people spell-bound with accounts of wizards and unheard-of things. When he had finished, I went to him and offered him a coin.
“This, for a tale of Karasthan,” I said. He took it and walked on. I followed him, to a tiled courtyard where a miser fountain trickled its sparse treasure into a dusty basin. There he sat down and I beside him, waiting, to hear the words that silver bought for me.
“There is a story that sailors tell of an island that floats in the sea. Hiding itself in a cloud, it drifts and sends out the dreams that ensnare the souls of those it has marked for its own. There be sorcerers, crouched like spiders, watching the web they have woven over the world, feeling the threads go taut at the touch of their victims, drawing them in with enchantments so mighty few men can resist them. Whatever one craves of delight is imagined to be there, and he who is caught by them goes of his own will to that island. The cloud parts for him and all is fair to his eyes, for they love beauty and they have much skill in building palaces, of marble and fine stones all cut like lace. And they have gardens there like none upon this earth, of flowers they have stolen from Paradise, with such perfumes men drown in ecstasy. There too are maidens marvelously beautiful, but it is said that they are puppets, moving at their masters’ whim, who may be broken but who cannot die, for they have never lived. And other treasures have they, such as spendthrifts dream of. There rare and costly things are heaped unguarded, so common to these wizards they scarce look at them. Yet none can steal them, for none can leave that island through its encircling cloud unless its lords permit.
“When the one who comes has seen all this, and thinks to profit from it, his soul is fat and sweet. Then do they seize him and by their black arts suck out his essence, for it is their meat, and what is left of him becomes a beast and they do chain it with others of its kind in holes beneath the earth.
“As I have told thee, thus is Karasthan.”
I SEARCHED his eyes and knew he lied. There was no pity in him, only envy. Had he, too, dreamed the dream? Had it abandoned him? No matter. He had told me where to search.
That night I stole a boat and put to sea. Three days and nights I followed wind and currents, leaving the land behind, neither afraid nor joyful, only certain my goal was close at hand. On the fourth day the wind died, and I seemed to float adrift in time. The water I had brought to drink was gone. I had not eaten and my head was light. I lay down in the bottom and, staring into the empty sky above me, I made my mind a blank so no awareness of heat or thirst could reach me. I cannot tell how long I lay thus. A coolness on my skin told me that there were mists about me, a strange phenomenon upon those brassy waters. I raised up on one arm and looked into a sea of whiteness. Fog thick enough to drink had swallowed me. Only a tiny circle of black, oily water lapped at the boat and seemed to urge it forward.
For the first time, I trembled. This was no dream. I could not pinch myself and spring awake in some bright noisy city where the hazards were such as I could cope with. What stubborn folly, what deluded flight from the real world I lived in had brought me here? Death crouched in the bows and stared at me.
“Go back, or go on,” a message came to me. “Choose, for the time is now.”
They did not coax me. They sent no visions, made no promises. My head was clear from fasting. Mist on my skin had eased my thirst. Accounts and balances: what was I to weigh? The things I knew against the things I dreamed of. On one side, a heap of baubles like cardboard blocks for children: garish without, empty within; to be stacked and counted, traded and measured—trifles to judge a life by. Against these, a spider thread of hope. What had I really sought, beyond the beauty? Others who saw with eyes like mine, those who had met the contract, and who knew something beyond my knowing at this moment. There was no choice. Without that hope I died, no matter what befell my body.
Sighing, a zephyr breeze puffed out the sails and guided me to Karasthan.
My boat slid through the fog, and glided for
I sat down at a table laid for me with bread and fruit and wine. I ate, and then awaited Ysabel. She made her entrance riding upon an elephant. He knelt, she slid down from his neck, and came to me.
“I was on the mountain when you landed. . . . Your contract starts tomorrow.”
“Mine ends when yours begins,” the elephant’s thought spoke in my head.
“Must I be an elephant?”
“What will you choose?”
“A cat?” I ventured.
Ysabel gestured. On the table before us a leopard posed, all black and sleek like carven ebony. He gazed at me with citron-colored eyes, then poured himself upon the ground. Slouching away, he turned to smoke and vanished.
“Proud, treacherous, and cruel,” judged Ysabel. “These are no lessons you need learn. Such forms are for the weak.”
“Shall I become a bird, and sing to you?”
“Not to me alone. . . . I like your choice. You are not lovely now, but we will make you into such a bird as none have ever seen, glorious as a peacock, yet with a voice sweeter than nightingales’. You will give much pleasure.”
Smiling, she left me. The elephant stayed near, nodding his head and swaying from side to side as to some secret music.
“Yours was a strange shape to wish,” I commented.
“Not so strange,” he answered in my head. “As a man, I am small. Smallness spoiled my thinking.”
None spoke to me aloud, but silent welcomes met me everywhere. When I had rested, I walked about the city, to recognize the landscape of my visions. Here was a garden I had sat in once, here were the very blossoms, and the music of the windbells chiming. Beyond this garden, a pavilion I thought of as my own, for I had shaped it to my heart’s desire in many nights of dreaming. When evening came, I found my way to an old cellar, vaulted and walled with stone, and here I dined on meat and saffron rice while dancing girls of ivory and gold performed for their own pleasure more than mine.
The night passed singing.
In the morning I went back to the plaza. Ysabel waited there, the elephant beside her. She handed me a cup of amethyst, deep as the years are long.
“Drink,” she commanded; and I drank. . . . THE END
Good-by, Miss Patterson
Miss MacLennan initially demurred offering any biographical information (except that she had a novel published by Doubleday) on the grounds that it was all too routine. She later admitted to being an instructor in Military Intelligence for two years as well as a licensed private pilot, thus recognizing her responsibility to hard-pressed blurb writers and restoring our momentarily shaken confidence in the protean capabilities of our contributors.
MISS AGNES PATTERSON’S fifth-grade glass sat rigid under the Gorgon eye of their teacher, waiting to be programmed into the next item on their tightly organized schedule. Motionless, backs straight, hands neatly folded on their desks, faces careful masks of respectful submission, they seemed Unaware that it was the last day before Easter Vacation, with school almost out and spring waiting for them beyond the open windows. The trees now lightly smudged with pink, the call of carefree birds, the rich warm smell of moist earth and new growing things seemed to hold no charm for them. Not one so much as glanced outside. Apart from discipline, there was something on the window sill that they could not bear to look at: an empty hamster cage.
The cage awaited no new occupant. It was simply there, to remind them of their failure in their nature study project—a frippery of modern education that Miss Patterson had never quite approved of. The committee appointed to care for the little beast had forgotten to take it home with them over the Christmas vacation, and their teacher, seeing in this oversight a heaven-sent opportunity for a stern lesson on Responsibility, had left the animal to the fate its thoughtless guardians had abandoned it to. When they came back after their holiday, they found it dead, lying on its back, eyes closed, mouth open, stiff and cold. Miss Patterson’s vivid description of the torments the hamster must have suffered as it starved and thirsted to death had left most of the children in hysterical tears. One thing was sure: none of them would turn his or her eyes in the direction of that reproaching cage, no matter what marvelous events might transpire beyond the window. They sat, subdued, fully under control. When their teacher cracked the whip, they would jump.
All except Corinna.
Defiant little witch Corinna? She sat in the corner like a cat wandered in on a whim, watching what went on with a cat’s inscrutable smoldering stare, or turning her attention inward to mysterious thoughts of her own. She had a reputation as a troublemaker. She had been transferred from room to room all year as teacher after teacher refused to cope with her. Her parents had been called, but they refused to discuss the problem like good parents. They said that their daughter went to school because the law required it, and let the law make her behave, if it could. It was no concern of theirs.
She had been in Miss Patterson’s class for little more than a week, and though she had as yet done nothing overt, in her mere presence the group was beginning to disintegrate. The children were restless, uneasy, like sheep who scent the wolf. Her contempt for the activities in which they spent their days was obvious. She refused to answer questions when called on, did no homework, turned in blank papers; and with her example before them, the others were beginning, ever so slightly, to get out of hand.
Miss Patterson was not disturbed. She had been dealing with troublemakers for twenty years, and she knew how to break them. Her methods were not subtle, but they were effective; and Corinna had put her most effective weapon to her hand by turning in an arithmetic test with nothing on it but her name. Miss Patterson returned the tests and addressed her pupils in a voice like honey on a razor’s edge.
“Elephants have giant brains, and so all those who had perfect papers are elephants. Stand up, elephants, so we can see you. . . . My, we have a lot of elephants, haven’t we? . . . Alice have little brains and don’t pay attention, and so they make mistakes, but they can squeeze by . . . Stand up, mice! . . . Fleas are little tiny parasites with no brains at all. They’re really stupid. We don’t have any fleas in our class, do we? . . . Oh-we do have one? Corinna didn’t get one single answer on this test! She couldn’t answer any of the questions! Stand up, Corinna. You must be a very tiny flea indeed!”
She smiled triumphantly, and looked to see Corinna crushed.
“If I’m a flea, you’re an old bat.” It was unthinkable that such impertinence could be. Stunned, helplessly conscious of her mouth gone slack, her burning face, Miss Patterson sat paralyzed. Transfixed by Corinna’s eyes, fierce and yellow and soulless as a hawk’s, she know-how could she not have known before? How could she not have seen what she now saw so clearly?-this was no child like other children.
“You are a bat,” Corinna repeated ominously, her witch’s eyes grown huge and luminous. She glided forward, reached the desk and slid around it like a snake. Behind her, suddenly aware, bonded with her, strengthening her with their united wills, the children converged on their teacher. They gathered around her desk, all of them staring. . . .
. . . Did they grow larger? Was it she who shrank? They loomed above her, glaring down with savage joy.
Agnes Patterson fluttered off her chair and scuttled away between their feet, screaming for help in a voice too shrill for human ears to hear. The children, shrieking their triumph, raced after her, chivvying her from corner to corner, striking at her as she dove past them. Help came at last, brought by the pandemonium in the room-Mr. Morgan from across the hall.
