Alchemy and artifacts, p.29
Alchemy and Artifacts, page 29
Greusaiche said, “You were truly about to accept communism?”
Ar-Gceann rolled his eyes. “A loving, lovely woman like Angela is preferable, don’t you agree?”
Angel? His elven son with a human named… Angel? He spread his fingers on his knees and squeezed. Well, then.
“Yes, mo mhac, I’ll listen. You’ve learned more of this world than I can ever know.”
Thirteen days later, they collapsed in the parlor, warming themselves before a cheerful fire. Gifts poured from Inside to them, nectar from the shara flower good for the best dreams, butterfly powder for the Angel’s lovely face, silver and gold filigreed jewels imbued with joy and laughter. The three of them sat in the midst of the charmed glitter, drinking human beer and reliving the best moments, the unexpected second letter Khrushchev sent the day after theirs — how that had sent them scrambling! The shoes and message that deafened the Soviet submarine captain and his crew to the order to fire their nuclear warheads, an order later rescinded and denied. The delicious, slow turn of the Soviet ships away from Cuba, taking their deadly load of missiles back east with them. The delicately managed delivery of promises and agreements helped on by the leaders’ fresh willingness in the wash of relief and reaction felt by all but the most foolish hawks at the world’s bare escape from death.
“Red telephones, one at each end,” Angela said. “So they’ll always talk to each other, no matter how mad they get.”
Ar-Gceann glanced at Greusaiche (not his true name but do you think he’d let that be known) and saw a gleam of approval in his faither’s eye.
~ ~ ~
A gift from a loving citizen, that what it must be. They made him want to dance. And such a delightful touch, the sijo tucked in among the laces, its three lines filling his chest with happiness. The pudgy man in the bowl haircut strode alone toward the border between North and South Korea, black shoes shining in the sun. Smiling with happy sincerity, Kim Jong Un stretched his hand toward his once-enemy.
* * *
>>> Nuclear proliferation during the Cold War between Soviet Russia and the U.S. was terrifyingly definitive for my generation. We were on the lip of annihilation, caught in a game of political chicken between the Soviets and Americans. What artifact could epitomize that unreal era? Credit where it’s due, my husband Hayden suggested Krushchev’s shoe, which the colorful Soviet leader banged on his desk at the UN in order to disrupt debate on nuclear warhead positioning in Europe. Of course! And there’d have to be a fairy shoemaker. And a disaffected youth. The rest is history. Or my story, anyway.
Liz Westbrook
Liz Westbrook-Trenholm has published or aired mainstream and speculative short fiction in Prix Aurora-winning or nominated anthologies, The Sum of Us, (Laksa Media), 49th Parallels (Bundoran Press) and Shades Within Us (Laksa Media) and, most recently, in Over the Rainbow (Exile Press), with another tale coming in the August 2019 issue of Amazing Stories. Her story, Gone Flying, was long-listed for the Sunburst Award and won the Prix Aurora for best short form in 2018. She is a long-distance member of Calgary-based Imaginative Fiction Writers Association, and an at-home member of the East Block Irregulars writers’ group. She lives in Ottawa with her husband, writer and publisher, Hayden Trenholm.
If There’s A Goal
Michael Skeet
In loving tribute to the Silk Hat Toppers hockey team of Calgary, Alberta, circa 1950
The thing is, it should never have come down to a single goal. Shouldn’t have come down to the final game, much less the final minute of the final period. Al’s demon promised us.
Of course, what Al’s demon knew about hockey could be engraved on the point of a pin. After the pin had been stuck up his ass.
~ ~ ~
Friday night, the first of September 1972. Our last weekend before the start of grade eleven at Dr. E. P. Fleeber High School, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Earth. The three of us were in Al’s basement, the way we were pretty much every weekend. Two of us were staring at the symbolic circle on the rec room floor. One of us was horrified — that would be me. The other was trying hard not to laugh.
“Do you really think, Alan,” asked Lionel between suppressed snorts, “that a pentangle in a magic circle works if it’s made of masking tape stuck onto orange shag carpet?”
“Of course it’ll work,” Al said. “And my name’s not Alan, it’s Alister.” Al had got strongly interested in magic over the last half of grade ten, though his interest in proper spelling remained as weak as it ever was.
“Then why hasn’t it worked?” That was me, being a pain as usual.
“I’m still fiddling with it,” Al said.
“You’ve been fiddling with it all summer and it’s never worked. And that was when you used chalk on the floor of your furnace room, which I think is the acceptable way of making a magic circle. Better than masking tape, anyway.”
“Maybe it doesn’t work because you don’t know what you want,” Lionel said. He stuck a hand into the back pocket of his jeans. “Every time we come over here, you’re thinking about a new thing to demand.” He pulled his hand out of the pocket and held it out to Al. “So I’ve got it worked out for you.”
We were all pretty serious about hockey. Well, Lionel and I were: Al was still looking for something to be pretty serious about. We’d known each other since we were eight, playing on a community-league team coached by Lionel’s dad. Al stopped playing after a couple of years; I lasted until I was thirteen and couldn’t keep up with the competition.
Lionel was the hockey genius; he’d gone on to star in Bantam, but then he’d hurt his knee. He was still trying to get himself back into playing condition that fall. Which was great as far as I was concerned: we spent more time with Lionel in 1972 than we had in a couple of years — or than we would once he started playing again. As for me, I was the information guy: you came to me if you wanted to know how many goals Dave Keon scored in the Leafs’ last Cup-winning season — 19 — or the original name of the Philadelphia WHA team — Miami Screaming Eagles. These days, of course, any fool who can spell Google can find this stuff in an eye-blink; in 1972 it was pretty impressive.
Well, it was impressive to the sorts of people I hung around with.
Lionel dropped the puck into the center of the pentangle. “Face-off,” he said. “Let the game begin.”
“What did you do?” Al’s voice went up an octave.
“There has to be an object the power lives in, right?” Lionel said. “So here’s our object, and I know what we’re gonna wish for.”
Al got pissy and said, “We do not have to have a damned puck. Who’s the expert here anyway?” He was mad enough that he made his desk-lamp wobble. As this was the only source of light in the basement it made the walls shimmer, and that made me a bit queasy.
“If reading a book makes you an expert, then you’re the expert, buddy,” said Lionel. “Hermetic Order of the Golden My Ass.”
Al’s eyes narrowed, and he opened his mouth. But it was a different voice that said, “No I don’t think an object is required.”
“Holy shit!” I think we all shouted at the same time, maybe in harmony. And I only just managed to stop from pissing myself. Judging from the smell, somebody else hadn’t acted fast enough.
The fourth person in the basement looked like some sort of beaver-toothed upper-class twit out of Monty Python. Or at least he would have if his skin hadn’t been the sort of green that glows. That green against the rusty orange of the shag carpet looked like one of my aunt’s Jello salads. Now I was really queasy.
“Avaunt, Chokmah!” Al yelled, waving at the green guy as if he was swatting mosquitoes. “As I have summoned you, so shall you do my—”
“Sorry, old chap — well, young chap. The name’s—” he kept speaking but whatever came out of his mouth wasn’t in either official language— “but I suppose you can call me Woodman. That was my name when I was mortal.” Mortal? I decided to look up who Chokmah was.
Al kept his head. “You’re here to do my bidding.”
“Oh, absolutely. Well, to the best of my ability, anyway.”
“The best of your what?” Al’s voice went up into that angry squeak again.
“The truth is, young chap, we’re rather busy at the moment. The really top-goers are all in Washington just now. Something about causing an election landslide. Though I gather the biggest problem is this Nixon fellow who did the summoning — his own worst enemy, I hear. Still, you shouldn’t give me too much trouble. You’ll be after the usual things, I assume.”
“No,” I said. I hadn’t really believed Al knew what he was talking about, but I’d thought about it anyway.
“No?” Al and Woodman said. “But it’s tradition,” Woodman said. “The love of the most beautiful woman, unlimited riches, immortality.”
“Those all sound good to me,” said Al.
“What the hell?” I asked, punching his shoulder. Hard. “Didn’t you ever watch ‘The Twilight Zone?’ Or ‘Alfred Hitchcock’?” Al’s face showed me he knew the episodes I was talking about. “The wishes never pan out the way you want them to.”
“Not precisely true, that,” said Woodman. “Though all wishes do have consequences. The bigger the wish, the bigger — well, you know.”
“So, then what do I want?” Al asked.
“What we want,” Lionel said, “is to walk all over the Russians, starting tomorrow night.”
“Beg your pardon?” Woodman asked. “The Russians?”
“The Summit Series,” Lionel told him, the way he’d tell my little sister. “Canucks versus Commies. You know — world supremacy in hockey.”
“Hockey?” Woodman asked. “Are you sure?” His greenish face wrinkled up in concern — made him look like a disgruntled cabbage. “In my experience, hockey is played on grass by girls. Homicidal girls. A free piece of advice: if anyone ever offers you a friendly match against a school called St. Trinian’s, run away.”
“We’re Canadians,” Lionel said. “Hockey is what we’re about. On ice. Even if September is too early.”
“It’s just,” said Woodman, “well, this is most unusual. Are you really sure about this?”
I gave Woodman the stink-eye. “How stupid do you think we are? Do we really care if Evelyn Kirby swoons over us? And you’re going to give us an unlimited amount of lunch money? Or we’ll be trapped in grade eleven forever? No to all of that.”
“So let’s just make it simple,” Lionel said. “Canada wins. The Russians don’t win a single game. Now let’s send out for Chinese.” He crossed his arms, defying anyone to question him. Woodman disappeared, leaving only a fart-smell behind. The only question I had wanted to ask was, Why bother? Everyone says we’ll win eight straight anyway. But then again, I never really believed in that hocus-pocus stuff.
~ ~ ~
It didn’t even take twenty-four hours for the wish to go wrong. I watched Game One with my family, and it was as if we were trapped in our seats: it was midsummer hot in the Forum that night, and Team Canada played like they were all still up at the cottage, waiting for the next beer to show up. The final score was 7-3 for the bad guys, and next day it was like Premier Lougheed had died or something.
Things did not get better after that. Yeah, we won the next game, in Toronto on Labor Day, but only by pounding the crap out of the commies, which might be part of hockey but isn’t the game I like, not really. The win cost me a couple of days, in a way, because on Sunday morning I’d started wondering how we could have screwed up such a simple wish, but after the win in Toronto I stopped thinking about it. And the tie in Winnipeg I could ignore because the ice was so horrible it screwed up both teams. Lionel was right: September really was too early in the year for hockey.
Then came Game Four. We were in Al’s basement again ‘cause it was Friday night, and they played in Vancouver so the game started late. We moved our Saturday Chinese take-out to Friday for the occasion. But we didn’t eat much. Nobody had an appetite.
“Jeez,” Lionel said at one point. “Why are they booing their own guys?”
“Maybe because,” I suggested, “our guys suck out there?”
Al giggled at the dirty language. Then he frowned. “I have to get that Woodman guy back here,” he said. “He’s doing it all wrong. He’s screwing up everything.”
“Not Woodman,” I said, stabbing a deep-fried chicken ball and smearing it in the movie-blood sauce, then pushing my plate away. “It’s us.”
“Us?” Al asked in his offended-chipmunk voice. “We haven’t done anything. You saw it, Ted: I got Woodman here! I bounded him to my command!”
“Bounded?”
“But why us?” Lionel asked. He took a vicious bite out of an eggroll. “Much as it pains me to agree with Al.”
“Because that’s always the way it works. We made the wish; somehow we screwed it up. Woodman’s giving us the worst possible interpretation of what we asked for. I just can’t remember what we said that night. Can either of you?”
Silence.
~ ~ ~
The series shut down for a couple of weeks while everybody went to Moscow (Team Canada by way of Sweden). So for a while things were normal — no, seemed normal. I didn’t realize that they were still screwed up until the Friday night before the first of the exhibition games in Stockholm. The student council sponsored a Welcome Back Dance in the gym, and for some reason I went. I didn’t normally go to dances; instead I hung out with Lionel and sometimes Al, and we played Avalon Hill wargames or something so we could stay awake long enough to watch the softcore pornos on the local access cable channel.
I’d been leaning against a wall for maybe ten records when I realized: Evelyn Kirby was standing against the opposite wall, and had been there as long as I’d been at the dance. She hadn’t gone onto the floor with anybody. Not once. I looked closer; she had a strange sort of look in her eyes. I couldn’t figure out what it was.
Of course I couldn’t figure out what it was. I was a sixteen-year-old male, for chrissake.
And then, before I knew what I was doing, I was circling around the gym. Hugging the walls. Walking up to her. Asking her to dance. I’m not kidding, this really did happen before I knew what I was doing, because if I’d been aware for even a second I’d have stopped. I don’t think I had ever asked a girl to dance before then.
She said yes. And it was very nice, and she was every bit as pretty close up as she’d ever been from a distance. Not gorgeous or exotic the way beautiful girls are in the movies, just — pretty. Soft curls in her hair, soft curves pretty much everywhere. Soft, full lips that smiled wonderfully. Easily the most beautiful girl in school. The song was “Long Cool Woman” by the Hollies. I thought that was appropriate. It was also fast enough that I didn’t have to worry about touching her.
When the song ended, I didn’t know what to do next. So I just said “Thanks. Gotta go.” And I practically sprinted back to the opposite wall, grateful that I wasn’t dancing to Al Greene’s “I’m Still in Love”, which is on the slow side however gorgeous a record it is.
When I got back to my spot against the wall, I realized I was feeling pretty pleased with myself. My heart-rate was in triple digits, but I thought that maybe I might have learned something here. Maybe girls were easier than I’d thought. Maybe there was more to life than two professional hockey leagues in North America. I was thinking about possibly trying again with some girl who wasn’t quite as out of my league when I saw Evelyn Kirby moving. In my direction. In fact, to me. Yikes.
Didn’t have a chance to think anything else, because she stopped about a foot away from me, hauled off and smacked the side of my face. With enough force to drive the zits off my chin and splatter them against the wall. “That’s for what you said about me,” she said in a voice so quiet it guaranteed nobody else would know what I’d done to deserve the smack. She turned around and stomped right across the middle of the floor; I closed my eyes and tried very hard to become invisible. “The Five Man Electrical Band informed me that not only was she right, she always had been.”
~ ~ ~
It was after second period the next Wednesday that I figured out what was going on. At Fleeber they played music over the PA for the time between periods, making a school-wide version of musical chairs: the idea was that if you were still in the halls when the music stopped, you were Out. The office owned the grand total of three 8-track tapes, so for three solid years we were either confused by the Moody Blues, irritated by Tom Jones, or appalled to the point of vomiting by Lawrence Welk.
So I was jog-trotting from English to the jaunty sounds of “Lovely to See You” — Moody Blues, On the Threshold of a Dream — because I needed to hit the can before Math, when a hand grabbed my upper right arm. Hard. Next thing I knew I was in the boy’s room, but being there was no longer my idea.
“Guess what? It turns out I’m out of cash for lunch today,” said a guy who looked like an inflated Steve Reeves and sounded like Truman Capote on Day Eight of a week-long bender. “And you’re going to help me, right?”
It was Pebbles Posluszny. Well, he was Rock to his friends; we called him Pebbles when we were very, very sure he wasn’t listening. Pebbles played Front Four on the Senior football team. Really. Not only could he play all four positions, he was wide enough he could play them all at the same time. How a guy the approximate size of the Columbia Glacier had a voice like Bruno Gerussi’s baby sister was a constant amusing mystery to us. Just now, though, he wasn’t being all that funny. Nor all that gentle. I suppose in his own way he was being nice: he could have just held me upside-down by my ankles and shaken me until all my money had fallen out. Instead he just held me by the throat with one hand while he rifled my pockets with the other.
