The Bread We Eat in Dreams

  “I told you,” she said as she sewed. “I didn’t want to muddle in Politicks—and there is always Politicks, even when folk promise it’s just a party, or a revival, or an exhibition of every kind of magic. I didn’t want to meet a Fairy boy or dance at Fairy balls. I only wanted to read my books and learn a bit of magic. Why couldn’t you have been a better King? Why couldn’t you have left that poor world alone? Why couldn’t you have been better?” She hit him with her fist and he did not protest. She had not hit him hard.

  By now, Goldmouth’s knees covered his face. He could not speak. A very neat seam ran across his nose. His eyes pleaded, but Mallow went on sewing up the King, stitch by stitch, into a package no bigger than her hand. The last of his astrological tattoos showed on the top of it, and she handed the whole thing over to the Red Wind to close away. Mallow’s skin dripped starry streaks of royal blood.

  The girl who would find herself, against long odds, Queen before dinnertime stood up and looked at her new friends, at her darling Leopard, at the glittering needle in her hand. Then she looked to the empty, hollowed-out city.

  “Well,” Mallow said, feeling a wave of powerful practicality break on her heart. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  How to Raise a Minotaur

  When I was young, I was a minotaur.

  I grew out of it, of course. You can hardly believe it now, I know, such an upstanding young woman, in a blue suit, with a briefcase. No one with a briefcase can have such a secret. And yet, my horns once pierced the dining room ceiling. You grew out of your obsessions with dinosaurs and primary colors. I grew out of shaggy, bowed legs and hooves like copper clanging. We are not so different.

  It is not easy to raise a minotaur. They break everything in sight, instinctively, compulsively. If there is a crystal dish on the table, a minotaur will seize it up and crush it to pieces in her teeth, weeping all the while, helpless to stop herself. It is her nature, and though you ought not to punish her for it, you will, and severely. She will look at you with huge, bovine eyes, uncomprehending, wanting so keenly to please you. That dark stare will sink you in misery, and you will buy her a lollipop. Thus, she will look for sweets after every act of destruction, nose your pockets for sugar, and you will want to hit her, because your amputee grandmother gave you that dish when you graduated from college. Maybe you will hit her. She will greet your slaps with those same cow-eyes, the same trembling, hairy jaw.

  Your friends and colleagues will, of course, question your sexuality. A child like that cannot have come from sweet, quiet Dan and Barbara, Caroline and John, Laurence and Janet. What, exactly, have you done to deserve such a changeling in your expensive, honest, Amish-built crib? Rumors will fly: Dan angered his boss by trading on company information on the stock market, and the CEO—faceless demiurge!—punished John with such feats of black magic as men of that order are capable of. Caroline fell in love with a mail-room cretin so hopeless that he could hardly manage the mechanics of mounting her. Laurence, pitiful man, fashioned a complex machine in his basement out of catalog parts so that Janet and her pre-linguistic paramour could achieve simultaneous orgasm, hermetic revelation, and explosive conception while Laurence turned the crank. You will have to answer these suburban accusations with aplomb, a smile, and a proffered cocktail. Your minotaur will be of no help to you as she sits in the corner and devours her dolls. The clock in the hall will tick; she will make plans to eat it later.

  In school, the minotaur will be unwelcome and unloved. There will be talk of transferring her to a special needs course. However, your minotaur, her pigtails arranged to hide growing horns, will not be unintelligent. That has never been the issue with such children. In fact, your minotaur will love to read, will devour, quite literally, whole libraries in an insatiable passion for books. She will need glasses by the time she is five, so fervent will her reading be. Of course this is not a generally accepted method of learning, but when your minotaur pipes up at breakfast and lists the attributes of cephalopods in alphabetical order, you will have no doubt of its efficacy. Unfortunately, third grade teachers are rarely so enlightened. When she is discovered with Tolkien halfway down her throat, weeping Elvish declensions, she will be put aside with the other difficult children, in a classroom with no sharp edges. You will be sad, but by that time your other children will be starting to show their talents, their bright blond hair, their eager, attentive faces that never contort in paroxysms of bovine pleasure.

  It will not be long before she starts demanding youths and maidens. This, obviously, will present a logistical problem. My advice is to begin with dolls. This will forestall the inevitable. The small minotaur hardly knows what she begs for—it is a desire, a demand which comes from her deepest marrow, her protoplasmic self, her most regressed and atavistic heart. She will be satisfied by plastic and cornsilk and eyes that slide open when the head is tilted. She will rip off their heads in disturbing ways and line her bed with their bodies. You will try counseling, but the Adamic language that you have learned to understand will not be greeted with warmth or empathy by a board of professionals. Best to keep up a steady supply of dolls while such placebos suffice.

  With puberty, all things become more difficult. Girls will be girls. One day you will go to tell her to come down to dinner and open the door on the football quarterback entangled in her sheets, an expression of horror and need on his face, which will be buried between her brown, vaguely furry breasts. Parts of him will be in her mouth—she does not yet really know what she wants to do with these youths, much as a dog who finally catches a cat will often just stare at it in confusion. His head did not come off easily, so your minotaur made do with the rest of him. Next week it will be the chess club, all seven of them, kneeling around her in awe, straining towards her, hoping she will chose them to kiss, to taste, to swallow. Of course the quarterback will never tell anyone that he laid a hand on the freak from special ed, and the chess club admits to no acquaintance who cannot master the Lasker-Bauer combination, so for awhile, at least, you will be safe. Until she starts bringing home cheerleaders.

  With these girls, the minotaur will be shy. They are everything she is not: shining examples of soccer prowess, after-school activities, 4-H club, even an academic decathlete or two. Girls who love horses, the color pink, boyfriends with red cars, ice cream, getting into college. Your minotaur will ply them home with promises of community service credit, a note on their record about working with the developmentally disabled. In her room she will gawk at them, ask them to pet her, to love her. They will not understand, and will bring her a drink of water or ask her to work extra-hard on her multiplication tables, unable to comprehend her lectures on calculus and probability. When they hug her goodbye, the minotaur will be quite dizzy. Eventually, when one is too beautiful for her to bear, your minotaur will bite her. Perhaps on the shoulder, perhaps on the hand, or the knee. She will not bite hard, at first. The 4-H girl will recoil, but then remember her teacher’s advice not to be shocked at anti-social behavior from such a problematic child. The next time will be harder. Your daughter will know such a thrill when her teeth first touch flesh—something like what you felt the first time you tasted vanilla, ran a mile, held your first child, had an orgasm, all together and all at once. A terrible rightness will fill her blood. The tips of her fingers will tingle, like the first time she ate a book. She will try to cover up her act with a kiss, like the ones she gave the boys. Most of the girls will not understand. Maybe one, maybe two will kiss her back, ashamed but excited, and your minotaur will find other ways to taste those girls—but it will not be as good as biting, and she will know she is not like any other girl, even the girls who are not like other girls.

  If you are a perceptive parent, or very well read, you will come to a decision. If you are not, well, you have my pity. You and your spouse will sit down to the kitchen table amid bank bills and health insurance policies and half a pork roast and say to each other: what else can we do? You will draw up plans: plumbing, ven
tilation, waste removal. The trouble is that, whatever her teachers think, your minotaur is clever, so very clever. It must be a maze, then, you will say to the new cabinets. So that she will not be able to find her way out. You will hollow out your basement, install track lighting, walls, steel doors. Tell the school administration you are sending her to a special institution in Switzerland. They will understand, of course, and clasp your hands with moist eyes. You will build her a bookshelf, its contents carefully rationed. Nothing on demolition, or architecture. A few Greek plays, because you have a sense of humor, after all. Her favorite toys. Her dolls. And the day you lock her in you will tell her you love her, that you only want to protect her. You will hug your child for the last time, and slide the bolt shut.

  Years later, when guests come for cocktails and quiche, you will play loud music with a deep bass to drown out the thumping of her fists against the ceiling of her maze, the floor of your living room. You will play something with violin to cover her screaming. When folk ask: didn’t you used to have a daughter? You will say: I don’t know what you mean. We have two sons. That’s all we’ve ever had. Every year on her birthday you will put a cake on the landing. Maybe—I wouldn’t want to speculate—once in awhile, every seven years, say, you’ll send down a girl who loves horses, or a quarterback.

  But I stand before you today—do not lose hope. My people are accustomed to this treatment. We do not blame you. I have forgiven my mother; I have forgiven my father. Your child will forgive you. Every minotaur must meet her labyrinth. It is inevitable, like oracles, or cancer. It is possible, just possible, that after you die quietly in bed, your grandchildren all around you, and only a few of them heavy-browed and dark, with glazed eyes and their hair too carefully arranged, as if to hide something, that realtors will come to assess your property. They will open all the doors and windows, air out the hallways. Of course they will discover the basement. They will marvel at the craftsmanship—what love, they will say, what love was put into this thing! And they will slide the steel bolt aside. With flashlights they will venture down the stairs, and one of them—maybe his name will be Thomason, maybe Thaddeus, maybe Theresa. He will realize quickly that he needs help, and unwind a long clew of measuring tape behind him as he ventures into the concentric circles you built for her, so long ago.

  And he will find her, standing in the center of the place, near the boiler, naked, tall, her hair long and matted and greasy. She will still be young—the lifetimes of minotaurs are long. Her legs will be thin, but they will be legs. Her skin will be so pale, without the sun, but there will be no fur. Her horns, though, those will not have gone. She will need to wear hats for the rest of her life, like mine. She will be holding a book and reading it, the usual way, even in the dark. She will have met her labyrinth, and passed through it. And she will step forward, toward Thomason or Thaddeus or Theresa, and she will say very clearly and calmly, in a deep, sweet voice:

  “I promise, if you take me with you, I will be a good girl.”

  The Shoot-Out at Burnt Corn Ranch Over the Bride of the World

  The End

  I don’t know much about the beginning, but in the end it was just the Wizard of Los Angeles and the Wizard of New York and the shoot out at the Burnt Corn Ranch. They walked off their paces; the moon seconded New York and the sun backed up Los Angeles and I saw how it all went down because I was there, hiding under the bar in the Gnaw Hollow Saloon with my fist between my teeth. Now you may call me a coward and I’ll have to wear that, but I’m a coward who lived, and that’s worth a drink if it’s worth two.

  Robert and Pauline

  Now, as I recollect it, the Wizard of Los Angeles sold his name for a pair of Chinese pistols, a horse the color of a rung bell and a crate of scotch the likes of which, god willing and the dead don’t rise, you and I will never taste. I hear that scotch has no label. I hear it tastes like a burning heart. I hear it’s served at the Devil’s own table, distilled by Judas Iscariot and aged in a black bull’s skull.

  The Wizard of New York traded her name for a train she could fit in her pocket, a horse with two hearts, a dress like the fall of Lucifer, and a satchel of tobacco combed out of Hades’ own fields, dried on a rack of giant’s bones. New York was always the better haggler, and that’s a deal you only get to make once.

  You gotta do something about names, see. Gotta get rid of them, double fast. Can’t get too far in the game with a name someone could just call you, out in the open, like Robert or Pauline. People like that, you can find them on a map. You can book them tickets and put a tax on them. Robert and Pauline couldn’t of done what those two did. Robert and Pauline have a nice little spread out Montana way. Pauline’s butter is just the sweetest you ever had. Robert never breaks his word, that’s just the kind of guy he is.

  Come on. That ain’t how it runs. The Wizard of New York don’t churn her own cream.

  Anyway, at least they both got horses out of it.

  A Coupla Rules

  You mighta heard it said that New York is where they make good magic and Los Angeles is where they make bad magic. Well, I don’t know about that. I never been to either place. What I want to say is there’s no one to root for here, okay? Those two chose to play the game. They didn’t have to. They couldof had babies and grown oranges or beets or whatever the hell people grow when they aren’t circling a scrap of black dirt in the middle of nowhere like they’ve got a clock for a heart, set two minutes til. You might be tempted to say well, New York is cold and hard and I don’t care for that in a woman, or you might say Los Angeles is all illusions and unreal bullshit, and I don’t care for that in anyone, but the Burnt Corn Ranch don’t care about your sniffing and side-choosing, and it don’t care about nobody else either. It’s always been there, and it’ll be there when whatever walking hamburger is left clears out.

  There’s a coupla rules.

  Everybody’s gotta have a second. That’s good sense—the kind of arsenal these kids bring with them is music for four and six hands, if you get me. They hafta agree on a judge, too. Cheating don’t come into it.

  It’s not always New York and Los Angeles. This has been going on awhile. This bit here is just the endgame, where the board is mostly clear, and every piece who mighta hid you has got itself killed or sacrificed and every move comes naked and grave. I remember when the Witch of the Mississippi shot the Baron of Nebraska in the eye with a glass flintlock she got off the corpse of a drifter with a diamond in his tooth. Probably somebody’s second, poor fuck. When she fired the thing, it filled up full of hot green fire. Smelled like licorice. Weren’t even a year ago New York hunted down the Hag of Florida, cut her up with a bowie knife blessed by the Pope of the Hudson, baptized in gin and olives and christened What Did I Just Say.

  Fed Florida to her alligator friends piece by piece. They cried, but they ate her anyway.

  There’s different sorts of ways to get rank in this business. New York has to be born there, and Brooklyn and Queens don’t count, neither. If I remember it correct, she has to be born there, and her mother dead in childbirth, foot can’t have touched grass nor mud, hand can’t have sewn nothing nor cooked nothing, and she can’t ever have finished a novel, but she’s got to have started three. No more, no less. Los Angeles has to come from somewhere else. He’s gotta be in pictures, naturally, but never a lead, only in the background, at best maybe a line or two. His daddy’s got to have died while his momma was with child, he can’t everof et Old World fruit, can’tve been baptized nor shriven, foot can’t have touched the sea, hand can’t have touched the color red.

  The rules look stupid on purpose. That’s how folklore works, on a fool’s own engine.

  Still, sometimes there’s more than one bastard stumbled into the conditionals, and then there’s what you might call attractions to shuffle it down. New York wants to be a woman. The Bishop of Wisconsin wants to be a little boy with black hair. That sort of thing.

  Motion across the board goes from the edges toward the cent
er. Used to be a rule about collateral damage, but that seems beside the point now. Hardly anybody left here but us chickens.

  And then there’s the prize. Didn’t I mention? That’s me. Hunkered down behind a bar with bourbon showering down on my hair and glass exploding in slow-motion.

  I’m the Bride.

  The Devil’s Mare

  I suppose you want to know how it got to this. Truth is I don’t know. I wasn’t born til the players were on the stage. That’s kind of the point of me. I was born at Burnt Corn Ranch on the summer solstice and I came out of a pinto mare just as human as you like. Maybe you don’t like too much, and that’d be about right. Back then Burnt Corn were run by Tincup Henry and his girl name of Ashen. When she was a skinny little cough of a thing her mother said she whored with the Devil and ate of the bread of Dagon. She locked that girl in the barn with the new lambs and lit the whole thing on fire. Possible she knew what was coming, possible she was crazy. Ashen’s eyelashes and eyebrows and all her hair burnt off before her brother Cutter (who happened to be the Duke of Maine, but he didn’t know it yet) run out in all the stink of burning wool and beat the flames off with his own hands.

  Ashen probably had a name before her skin went grey like that. Probably a nice, fancy one like farmers give their daughters when they hope for better days. But dead girls get new names, and Ashen just wasn’t the same before she went into that barn as when she came out. And it ain’t just about her being bald and hairless as a worm forever. Her momma run off and her daddy drunk himself into nothing. But when Tincup married her, well, you never saw anything like that wedding table. Loaves of bread like wheels on a cart and a cake like a house of sugar. Ashen didn’t say nothing.