Tag Archives: Fiction

Winner, with 67%: “Try to reason with the golem.”

“You do not belong in the forest,” said the golem. “You must turn back now, or else you must die.”

Dyriel took a long breath, remembering what her mother the Duchess had always said about negotiation: If you can see yourself through their eyes, you are halfway there. What must she look like, a tired, sweating, seventeen-year-old girl, wearing breeches like a boy, covered in the dust of the road, wandering into someone else’s territory?

She drew herself up to her full height – admittedly, this wasn’t much – and tried for that elegant poise her mother so easily managed.

“I have no wish to violate the pact with the tree peoples, or any other law. I will disturb no one. I am here on business.”

“What business?” Like a mountain crashing down.

She gambled that she could be more persuasive if she didn’t lie. Besides, who knew if golems had the truthsight? “Personal business. I need to find the hermit Amagoso, who lives in the forest. He’s the only one who can help me.”

The golem stiffened – if such a thing was possible for a creature of living stone. Carved eyebrows narrowed over huge round eyes. “What business can be so important that you must disturb the holy seclusion of Mafti Amagoso Lecruscio? You want a philter, I suppose, to make some brawny lad fall in love with you?”

Dyriel ground her teeth in anger. “My brother, Lord Danson, was captured alive at the Battle of Ellsworth, and will be executed this very night if my father doesn’t agree to the Baron’s terms. This he will never do.”

“And what has any of this to do with a simple hermit of the forest?”

Simple? He didn’t sound so simple a second ago when I was disturbing his ‘holy seclusion.’ “Amagoso has deep powers. The tree peoples know this, and I know it, even if most in the castle don’t believe. I believe in my heart that he can save my brother.”

The golem seemed to be considering this when she heard the tramping of hooves and the clatter of weapons. Half a dozen of her father’s mounted soldiers pulled up sharply, and their captain came forward. “Dyriel,” he demanded, “by order of the duke, you will come back with me now.”

“No one from Glenhaven Castle may take arms into the forest,” said the golem, placing himself in front of Dyriel.

If the captain was intimidated by the living stone giant, he didn’t show it. His blue-and-white tabard stirred with a sudden wind. “We’ll be happy to return to the castle, and take our swords with us,” he said evenly, “just as long as this troublesome girl comes with us. And I would not call it wise to stand between the duke’s soldiers and his daughter.”

The captain’s men set their hands on their swords as the golem boomed a reply. The situation was spiraling rapidly. She had to do something quickly – but what?

Dyriel ran down the dirt path, lungs heaving as she pushed herself ever deeper into the forest. Each step took her further from home, from her family, from the comforting strength of Glenhaven Castle. She’d been running for – how long? The first rays of sunlight had begun creeping through the branches around her, so it must be at least an hour now. Her throat burned, and sweat glued her long black hair to her skin, but she dared not slow down.

She was on a mission.

No signs of pursuit so far. Her governess wouldn’t be awake yet, and everyone else would be too busy with the war effort to pay her absence any mind. She guessed she had half a day, at least, before they’d finish hunting the castle grounds and send out a search party.

And when that happened…

Her stomach turned. Her father, the duke, had fallen under such a grim mood lately. She didn’t know what he would do.

Dyriel ran faster.

These thoughts so distracted her that she didn’t see the golem till she had almost run into it. She cursed, jumping back.

She had never seen a golem in real life before, though she’d heard the stories. The creature was vaguely man-shaped, but twice as tall as any man she’d ever met. It was a massive, moving statue, its flesh and armor alike made of rough gray granite. It was unarmed – as if it needed a weapon – and it watched her with strange, inhuman eyes as big as apples.

For the space of three long, ragged breaths, Dyriel and the granite giant merely looked at each other, still and silent. Then, in a voice like an avalanche, the golem spoke.

“You do not belong in the forest.”

“I’ve as much right to be here as anyone,” she managed, more bravely than she felt. She glanced around quickly, weighing her options. Turning back was useless; there were no other paths. Outrunning the golem would be impossible, as she’d heard from the stories: its massive bulk belied the speed in those six-foot strides.

“The duke’s authority does not carry here. The tree peoples have honored the pact for over a century. If the duke seeks to spread his war to their borders, we will teach him otherwise.” But even as he said this, the giant frowned, as if doubting whether a lone girl in the forest could be a harbinger of war.

“My father – ” she began.

“You do not belong in the forest,” it said again. “You must turn back now, or else you must die.”

I descend the basement steps and cross the wide carpeted floor. On either side lie piles of CDs, power tools, old computer equipment, notebooks: orphans of the organized house above. Toward the far wall sits a pair of mismatched pillow cushions, one atop the other, each too thin to serve its purpose alone.

The cushions are a battleground.

I sit on them cross-legged as I do every day, taking in the wide white expanse of the basement wall, marred only by a few black smudges and the occasional outlet. I take out my cell phone, set an alarm for 15 minutes from now, and lay it on the carpet beside me. Then I take a moment to compose thoughts, to get in the proper frame of mind. Usually I talk to myself:

Although you’ve done this many times, you are not an expert. Zen mind is beginner’s mind. Don’t be proud. Be grateful for your life, for the chance to do this. Relax. This is not about you.

The last statement is a lie, but it’s also true. It’s a lie because Zen meditation is about transforming your mind, achieving enlightenment, releasing yourself from fear and uncertainty and suffering, and what could be more selfish than that? It’s also true, because enlightenment only comes by giving up the sense of self. More precisely, This is about you letting go of you. But precision isn’t useful right now.

I dwell on none of this. Rather I settle myself on the cushion, put one foot over the opposite thigh in a half-lotus position, straighten my back and shoulders, and place my hands together on my lap with thumbs pressed lightly together. The position is less important than the focus of getting and staying in position.

I take a deep breath, look straight forward at the wall, and begin.

The first few minutes are always rocky: fidgeting, scratching an itch, listening to the noise of the radon pump, mind bubbling with miscellany. The two enemies in the beginning are distraction and fatigue, and I know them well. But I must not let my lapses bother me, because that’s distraction, too. Instead I hold fast to my method: eyes open but unfocused, I breathe in, breathe out, shorter at first but longer as I continue.

With each breath I think of the word mu, which is my koan, my Zen riddle with no rational answer. What is mu? Hundreds of koans exist, some simple and relatable, others obscure and strange. Mu is the most common. They are all the same anyway. It is not enough to empty the mind of distraction, nor is it enough to repeat the word mu in your mind like a mantra. The mind must engage with the koan actively, looking into it, pulling it apart, relentlessly trying to understand that which cannot be understood.

The early moments pass, the small ripples of the mind fade, and I enter a place of stillness and silence. It is not perfect: small thoughts still flit across my consciousness here and there, the sound of the radon pump still occasionally intrudes. I am not yet skilled enough to transcend all this completely. But mostly I am in stillness and silence, gazing at but not really seeing a wide white wall, gripping mu as strongly as I can with my mind. Eventually I release even the word and focus only on the wordless, idea-less idea of mu itself. This last step is not sanctioned by the masters in the Zen books I’ve read, but I do it anyway. It feels right, and the scientist in me says I should experiment.

The stillness deepens, the wordless mu settles into all the places in the brain where thoughts raced constantly before. My head feels physically strange: sometimes light, sometimes twisting with other sensations I can’t explain. These feelings are signs that I’m making progress, but they are distractions, too. Focus.

Focus.

My phone buzzes. Another fifteen minutes have passed without revelation, without enlightenment. But I have traveled again to the place of deep silence, to the high stillness that remains when all else melts away.

Tomorrow I will try again.

Ashagari the Star awoke from a long, long sleep.

She stretched out her fiery tendrils, savoring the sharp frost of the Void, so different from the hydrogen womb she half-remembered from her dreams. She had grown vast. In her restless greed she had devoured her children, small rocky creatures that they were, and now her face flushed red, ripe with their energy. Her own hydrogen was mostly gone, though she still burned hungrily what remained, shimmering around her helium core.

Ashagari looked around her.

She looked past the whirl of comets and ice in her orbit, familiar ghostly retinue, and searched the numberless heavens. All the other stars seemed superior to her, in one way or another. The little yellow stars still hummed with youthful vigor, while the white dwarfs fairly scowled at her in disapproval. And all the other giants like her, red and blue both, seemed somehow brighter, more beautiful, than herself. She had no companion, as many of them did. Flying alone through the night, she cast about for anyone who might be friendly.

Finally she noticed a dim, blue-tinged swirl of light, hazy as a cloud but shining with its own fire, who moved less than the others and seemed therefore calmer, perhaps even kinder. She signaled this creature in the language of stars, which all of them know from birth, twisting her rays into polarized patterns and pulses that no man can hear or transcribe. But what she said, roughly, was simple enough: I am Ashagari, the Red. Who are you?

She knew the other was far away, so she waited a long time for her message to get there, and a long time more to get a response (though of course time is different for stars than it is for you and I). But the other never answered.

Ashagari tried again, and waited again, and still nothing. But it seemed to her that the other was closer now, its bluish glow a little brighter. Meanwhile the other stars kept up an endless chatter, and she found many of them friendly enough – certainly closer and easier to talk to. But she never forgot the other, who still seemed to be coming closer – but slowly, slowly.

Now Ashagari was growing old, her hydrogen exhausted, and she burned helium alone in her shrunken core. The other, who had once seemed so distant, now loomed silent and massive in her sky. She knew what this creature was, and why it had not answered. For the one she had signaled was not a star, but a whole galaxy, a radiant web of a hundred billion others like herself. Closer it came, and closer still, reaching out arms of brilliant gas to her own mother galaxy.

And now – at the end, or rather, what seemed to her like the end – she cried out one last time to the luminous being she had hopefully called to that first time, long, long ago.

The other never answered, only wrapped her all around in a wordless embrace; but that too was an answer, of a kind.

“Dr. Gimmel?”

“Welcome, Michael, welcome. Please sit down.”

The two men entered Dr. Gimmel’s little office. Gimmel shut the door and settled into a large, grandfatherly leather chair, studying his guest. Michael Avey took his seat, folding his hands primly on his lap. He always wore the same suit: cheap, gray, threadbare, but exquisitely pressed.

“Of course this is very unusual,” said Michael. “I know you’d prefer to meet Mr. Jones personally to discuss his condition. Psychotherapy by proxy isn’t exactly what they trained you for, eh? Mr. Jones would prefer that as well. But of course, a man in his position…any hint of psychological weakness, even a rumor he was seeing a therapist…well, you understand.”

Dr. Gimmel frowned, upsetting a great gray mustache. He set aside his notebook and leaned forward confidentially.

“You’ve explained this before. What I’m still trying to understand is the exact nature of his condition. Tell me again about his symptoms. He feels…?”

“He feels anxious, mostly. So much responsibility, so many people depending on him. You understand. A man in his position…”

“Yes.”

“Sometimes his hands shake so much he can’t even sign his name. I’ve watched it happen. He has his secretary do it. Dr. Gimmel, if you could prescribe some small dosage, something mild to get him through the rough spots without interfering in his critical decision-making capacities…”

“He must have a great deal of faith in you. Letting you represent him like this.”

The hands parted, exploring the question. “Yes. Yes, I believe he does.”

“And I have great faith in you as well. I believe the two of us can make real progress.”

Michael grimaced, looked down. He smoothed his pant legs. “I am irrelevant, Doctor. Mr. Jones…”

“Michael, this is the fifth time we’ve met. I know there’s something you want to tell me. Why don’t you go ahead?”

“Mr. Jones would prefer – ”

“Michael, is there something you want to tell me?”

Michael Avey was visibly sweating now. He wiggled his shoulders, settling the suit jacket. Thin lips moved, but said nothing.

“Michael. You represent yourself. Do you understand? There is no such person as Mr. Jo – ”

“NO!” He leaped from his seat, turned away, leaned heavily on the back bookcase. For a long minute, neither man spoke, and the only sound was frantic breathing, gradually growing calm again.

Finally Michael turned again. His face was tight and pale. “This is very difficult. Very difficult. You understand, of course. A man…” He swallowed. “A man in my position…”

Dr. Gimmel nodded encouragingly. “I understand, I understand. Have a seat, Michael. Tell me about yourself.”

“You’re angry.”

“Yes.”

“I can tell when you’re angry because your nose turns the color of an overripe rutabaga.”

“Yes.”

“Well, I think my PR manager should project a calmer presence.”

“Noted.”

“Now hold on, don’t tell me. I’m going to try and guess the reason you’re angry.”

“Guess quickly, Nigel, new reasons are arriving.”

“Is it because I didn’t call you on Tuesday?”

“I recite a special prayer of gratitude to Our Savior Jesus Christ every time you fail to call me.”

“Is it because I sometimes experience involuntary, but not entirely unsatisfying, lucid dreams concerning the late Amelia Earhart?”

“What? No. What?”

“Is it because, at approximately 4:00 yesterday afternoon, I convened a press conference to announce that NigelCorp would cease production of integrated processors and convert its factories entirely to the manufacturing of rhinoceros hygiene accessories?”

“You’re getting warmer.”

“Is it because I thereafter led a live Sumatran rhinoceros, emblazoned with the NigelCorp company logo, onto the stage, and serenaded it with my own rendition of Paul Anka’s ‘My Way,’ in violation of federal copyright law, the Washington Convention, and basic human decency?”

“You are now extraordinarily close.”

“Is it because the rhino took a dump on the inside of your Volvo convertible?”

“Five guesses, Nigel. That’s quicker than usual.”

“I try.”

“You don’t.”

“It’s important in these situations to find room in your heart for gratitude concerning the blessings you still retain. Consider the remarkable happenstance that the rhino oriented herself so as to defecate entirely inside your Volvo whilst remaining entirely outside the same. It could have been much worse.”

“Nigel, right now I’m struggling to find room in my heart for oxygenated blood. You know why I’m here.”

“You want an apology?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“You want a new Volvo?”

“You’re getting warmer.”

“You want a new Volvo, and also, eight million dollars?”

“Three guesses that time. I’ll note it in my journal as a new record.”

“I’ll make the arrangements.”

“Thank you.”

“Gratitude is good for the soul, isn’t it?”

“Go to hell, Nigel.”

“I’d rather stay here. See if you can get it delivered.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

“The problem with lemurs,” said Dunston, “is they’ve got no financial skills.”

“Mm-hm.” I scribbled in my notebook.

“Take this fellow.” Dunston clicked his PowerPoint and stretched five twiggy fingers toward the next slide, which hovered ghostlike on the far wall of my little office. Dark patches encircled the lemur’s orange eyes. Creepy. “Seems a solid enough chap, yes? Five years old, prime of his life. Would you care to estimate his total retirement savings?”

“Mm?”

“Zero, my friend. Absolutely bupkis. This primate is a drain on his family and society. When it comes time for him to leave the workforce: disaster. A tragedy positively on the order of Lear.”

When you’ve been a grants officer for as long as I have, you get a nose for which projects really deserve funding, and which are just wasting your time. A keen unteachable instinct, more art than science. Some proposals are instant wins: you can see it as soon as they walk in the door. Others have potential, but need coaxing. Still others are a flat-out waste of your time.

And then there was Dunston.

I raised a finger, interrupting him. “Point of order.” It didn’t make sense, but it sounded smart and I liked saying it. “When you say, leave the workforce…”

“But of course. The average lemurian retirement age is seventeen, which, I might add, is a travesty in itself, but the central conundrum – ”

“What work, precisely, are they doing?”

The dusty mahogany clock on the corner of my desk counted six loud tocks in the ensuing silence. Dunston’s face turned a remarkable white, a singular purple. He sputtered: “Of all the thoughtless, insensitive, stereotypical, b-b-bourgeois…”

“What do they do, friend?”

“The nerve of – ”

“Masonry?”

“Bigot!”

“Retail?”

“Fascist!”

“Actuarial science?”

He drew himself up to a crotchety six foot six and glared a glare that can only be described as Morgothian. “By the power invested in me by the Strepsirrhine Society of Greater Antananarivo, I hereby name you Anathema to the lemur community, and overall a very disreputable sort of person entirely!” Which is the first time anyone has said that particular sentence in quite a while.

After he’d stormed out, I extended a pinky and depressed the blue button on my phone. “Martha?”

“Yeah.”

“Cancel my three o’clock, will you? I’ve developed an intense pain under my left eyebrow.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve been called a bourgeois fascist, Martha.”

“Yeah.”

I pressed the button again and studied the northeastern corner of the room.

It was only Wednesday.

The first time I did this was fun, so let’s try it again. I’ve got less than forty minutes to write this story, start to finish, before I have to go to work. And, go!

* * *

The sound of the fires of the storm, the sound of the winds and the fires of the storm, surges and sighs in its familiar rhythm as I stride across the village square. I am a sun, and the fires circle me, small blazing planets each one of them. I have not been to this village before, but villages are all the same. They all know how to burn.

They have mostly gone, these people, fled to other places as they mostly do. Only a few screams remain and these are distant, receding on my periphery. Villages are all the same. I would stop if I could the fury of the fires, the way they wash away markets and homes, recede, and then like the tides surge back again in the pull of my gravities.

I would stop if I could. The fires obey me. But I obey another, and his gravities tug me to his orbit, and I have my storms and he has me. And the villages, they burn.

They are all the same. But not this one.

The opposite of fire is not ice nor water nor earth nor wind nor leaf but dark, and the deeping dark grows silently in the village square, not surging or sighing but only existing, being the absence of the light of the fires of the storm. The dark like the fire has its masters and orbits, and I know that tonight is the night I will die.

They call them shadows, these creatures that eat the fire, but they are wrong. A shadow is what appears when you stand before a fire.

When a fire goes out there is only dark.

I smile and sigh and make myself ready at the heart of the winds and the fires of the storm.

Thanks, everyone, for the comments and suggestions on yesterday’s post about how I’ve fallen out of love with writing (at least temporarily). A lot of the comments revolved around a common theme: don’t worry so much, and get back to what you really love about writing!

Jo Eberhardt put it like this:

But stop being so hard on yourself; stop trying to create something great. Sit down and write a poem about a buzzard waiting for a cowboy to die, or an ode to toilet paper, or a plan to take over the world using only a radish, a jar of pickles, and a paintbrush.

In that spirit, I’ve decided to write a story – right now, in the forty minutes I have before work, with minimal time to worry or revise.

And, go!

* * *

Rain slashed the concrete, soaking me under my windbreaker, rattling everywhere like the end of the world. The street was deserted – almost. I could just see him through the storm, electric eyes shining blue.

“Mark!” I called.

An old joke: ‘Mark’ was short for ‘Automaton Mark VII,’ an absurdly retro name for the highest-tech gadget in the world. He had laughed at that joke before, a human-sounding noise I could never quite unravel.

But he didn’t laugh now. He just watched me, long arms at his sides. Waiting.

“Mark!” I advanced, one slow step at a time, shivering as the water seeped through my tennis shoes. “Come home, buddy. This thing with Sharon, I’m sorry, it isn’t going to work. She doesn’t love you, Mark, she loves the spotlight. Loves having her face on magazine covers with headlines about the first interspecies romance. You have to let it go. I really am sorry.”

Too direct. I swallowed. I was terrible at this kind of thing: delicate words, broken feelings. Six years at BU had taught me to pick apart themes in medieval Asian poetry, but not to do anything useful in particular – except spend my dad’s money, on the highest-tech gadgets in the world.

Even so, I knew I shouldn’t have mentioned Sharon. Not yet.

Mark’s answer was clear in spite of the rain. His mouth moved, but the sound came from somewhere in his chest. His voice didn’t sound robotic at all – whatever that means – it just had an unplaceable accent, like he was from some nonexistent country between Sweden and Iran.

“I’ve already broken it off with Sharon.”

I blinked. “Then why…”

“I never said I loved her.”

He crossed the distance between us in long, swift strides. His plastic white face was neutral as always, a mask hiding God knows what, but he put his hand on my shoulder.

That was new.

“Yes, you did. You said – ”

“I said I was in love.” The blue lamps dimmed in his eyes, a deliberate but mystifying gesture. “I didn’t say it was with her.”

The hand fell away. He was gone before I could answer.

I swore and ran under the awning of a nearby tavern, trying to get warm.

* * *

Well, that was fun. Obviously it’s not very polished due to the time crunch, but I guess that’s the point, isn’t it? Maybe I’ll try this again sometime.