Lawless Lands: Tales from the Weird Frontier Read online

  Your hand in mine, my name in yours, our love upon a cloud.”

  The boy had talent, and no denying. He was a jewel in this forsaken land. That was how I justified it, to Sera and to myself. Clara joined me on the porch while he sang. She wore white lace, her dark hair down, satin shoes on bare feet, as demure as a girl could be, a counterpoint to Sera. Her eyes were the same color as Dennis’s, her features as delicate, almost like they was made for each other. Which I suppose they were.

  When he finished, she clapped. The smile that touched his lips was almost enough to make me forget what I’d seen in his face moments before.

  “Good day, Clara,” he said, breathless.

  “That was beautiful, Dennis. Will you sing me another later?”

  He looked my way.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I won’t be listenin’.”

  “Well, then, I just might.”

  She spun a little circle, like a child too excited to speak, then held out a hand for him.

  As they hurried past me into the building, I sat back in my chair and scratched Dem’s head. “You two have fun,” I called after them, pulling my hat low and pretending like I was going back to sleep.

  It was late afternoon when Dennis finally left. I should have been cross—too much time for one song—but truth was I felt a little bad and so I didn’t fuss at him as he left, or the girls after. Still I didn’t expect I’d make any more sales the rest of the day, and I wasn’t happy.

  It’s funny. Sometimes the best deals are the ones we don’t see coming.

  She arrived as the sun angled low over the mountains, shading valleys in purple and blue, stretching shadows across the scrub. She sat a dappled gray, her hair white beneath her broad-rimmed hat, her green eyes as bright and fresh as new spring leaves. She wore chaps and a duster that was as ageless as she was. As she clicked her tongue at her mount and swung herself out of the saddle, I glanced back at the Musaeum.

  It was a general store now. She needed supplies, I guess: food, ammo, maybe something of a feminine nature. Sera appeared at the door in a plain gingham dress.

  I stood, and Dem scrabbled to his feet as well, ears raised, tail swaying in a tentative wag.

  “Evenin’,” she said in a voice like gravel underfoot.

  Maybe she needed tobacco.

  “Good evening.”

  She approached slowly, scanning the building, the scrub around it. “Still open?”

  “Always open. Something in particular you’re tryin’ to find?”

  “This and that. I’ll know it when I see it.”

  “Well, come on in and look around.”

  Her smile was more leery than friendly, but she didn’t hesitate. Sera opened the door for her, and she stepped past both of us into the store. I noticed she carried a six shooter on her belt.

  I circled behind the counter and watched her. Sera remained at the door. The woman orbited, picking up an occasional item, turning it over in her hands, and returning it to its shelf. After a few minutes of this, she sauntered to the front of the store, empty-handed.

  “There’s no prices on anything.”

  “That’s right.”

  Her smile didn’t reach her emerald greens. “That mean it’s all free?”

  I laughed. “We operate on a sort of barter system.”

  “Barter.”

  “No cash. You pick out what you want and you pay with a song, a poem, a story. You got anything like that?”

  “I’ve got stories. Twenty years in the saddle, you bet I’ve got stories. Question is, what are you gonna do with them?”

  “If there’d been prices like you were lookin’ for, would you have asked me what I was gonna do with the money you gave me?” I didn’t give her time to answer. “Of course not. We keep the stories for as long as we can. We enjoy them. Some time later, we let ‘em go.”

  For the first time since arriving, she seemed unsure of herself.

  “You write poems?” I asked, gentling my voice. “Maybe make up songs as you ride?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  I waited, knowing she had to have something. Everyone does. There ain’t a person alive who don’t create. Words, tunes, images. Hell, an astute thought given voice with eloquence can sustain a man for days.

  “How ‘bout a recipe? Something you make on the trail that no one else knows?”

  She shook her head again. “Beans, mostly. Sometimes a jackrabbit on a spit. Fancier fare doesn’t sit right with me. At least not out here.”

  “Maybe a drawing, or some other—”

  “I have a journal,” she said. “I can read you something from that.”

  I smiled. “Perfect.”

  She nodded, turned on her heel, and left the store. Sera cast a glance my way, her expression flat.

  The woman returned a minute or two later carrying a worn, leather-bound volume. She entered the shop again, stared first at me and then at Sera. At last she held out the journal.

  “No!” Sera said, as if the woman had reached for a hot pan.

  I warned her with a glare, pivoted to the woman. “Better you read us a page or two. Wherever you like. Just open it up and start.”

  She flicked another gaze at both of us, shy like Thomas’s grandpa, reluctant as Dennis. But she opened the journal, cleared her throat, and began.

  “As I ride, I am aware of rhythms, cadence, song, dance. The beat of hooves, the sway of my body in the saddle, the whisper of the Rio Grande. Warblers trill, unseen and secretive, and wrens answer, more bold than their cousins. As afternoon deepens, coyotes yip and yodel.

  “Melody lures and embraces, teases and sustains. It is ubiquitous. Some speak of the loneliness of the trail. In towns, I am asked why a woman, well read and sophisticated, would choose solitude over companionship, open land over hearth and home, risk and uncertainty over the protections I might be afforded by ceding my autonomy to a husband. How, I am asked, could I exchange the culture of ‘normal’ life for something so empty and primitive? I want to laugh. I would not know where to begin my explanation, and so I offer none…”

  I finally stopped her after five pages. I wanted more. Sera did, too. I could tell. The woman’s rough voice was as comfortable as old boots, as hypnotic as a waterfall.

  But fair’s fair. I didn’t imagine she’d be buying much, and I wouldn’t take more than was my due. I could see, as she turned the pages in her journal, that the ones she’d read were now blank. I don’t know if she noticed or not. She didn’t say a word about it. When I told her she could stop, she closed the cover, tucked the journal under her arm, and browsed the store.

  A few over-ripe apples, some jerky, a pouch of tobacco, and an old issue of the El Paso Times: that’s what she got for her trouble. I threw in an extra apple, some bread, and a small flask of Tennessee whiskey, just because. As I say, fair’s fair.

  She was out the door and back in the saddle with plenty of daylight to spare. I watched her go from the door.

  Sera lingered by the counter.

  “Wound up being a good day,” she said, breaking a long silence.

  “I guess it did.”

  I faced her. The Musaeum had changed back to its usual form. Dusty shelves lined every wall, floor to ceiling, all of them overflowing with scrolls and sheaves of parchment, volumes frayed and new, drawings, paintings, and daguerreotypes—portraits and landscapes both.

  New pages—the poem, song, and journal entry we’d added today—rested at the top of a haphazard pile on the standing desk, which was no more ordered than the shelves. I should have fixed up the place. It needed cleaning bad enough, and I’d been meaning to for a long time. But something stopped me. Maybe I knew what was coming.

  I went back outside and fell into the rocker. The chair creaked. So did the porch. Demetrius lifted his head again but didn’t tap his tail. Maybe he knew, too.

  Sera let me be. She could read my moods and probably figured I’d come around before long. Any other evening, she woul
d have been right.

  I sat until the sun dipped below the western horizon, watching a riot of color burn down low in the sky. The instant the sun vanished, I felt a frisson of power at my back, vibrating like a plucked string on a lyre.

  “Tole.” Sera’s voice, taut as a telegraph wire.

  I stood, turned. My rifle leaned next to the door. I left it there and walked inside. Sera still stood by the counter, as if she hadn’t moved since I went out. Three other women stood near her. Tall, olive-skinned, with shimmering black hair that hung to their waists, and eyes as dark as pitch. They were identical, and beautiful, and as remote as stars. They wore robes clasped at the neck with golden brooches, each jewel more valuable than everything I had.

  “Ptolemy.” Hearing my true name spoke in the cold, clear voice of the first one, Melete, sent shivers through me. And not in a good way.

  “Long has it been since last we saw you,” Mneme said.

  Aoidi’s gaze raked over me. “You look old.” She had always been the most capricious of the three.

  “You haven’t changed, any of you,” I said, trying to sound like I wasn’t surprised to see them. On some level I wasn’t. But my voice shook anyway.

  “We never do.”

  “Time cannot touch us.”

  “Nor mortals. Not even one with your talents, meager though they are.”

  Aoidi smiled, joined an instant later by her sisters. Strains of a tune I’d never heard echoed in my mind. A verse took form in my thoughts. I had no talent for either music or poetry, but these three could fire even my imagination.

  Melete studied Sera, appraising her like she was livestock. “You know us, Serapeum?”

  Mneme regarded her as well. “Perhaps she has heard our names.”

  Mischief glimmered in Aoidi’s dark eyes. “Or perhaps he has kept her in the dark, lest she flee this place.”

  Sera lifted her chin. “I know who you are.” She sounded less scared than I had. “You’re the Muses.”

  “She does know. I am Melete, which means Practice, in your tongue.”

  “I am Mneme. Memory.”

  “Song. But I prefer Aoidi.”

  “What is it you want with us?” I asked. “Why are you here?”

  Frowns twisted their perfect faces.

  “Rude.”

  “He speaks from fear.”

  “And well he should.”

  I wanted to deny it. No man likes having his courage questioned. But they were right. I was afraid. Of them, of why they might have come, of what they might do. No one in his right mind seeks the attention of goddesses.

  “You’re welcome here,” I said, trying to mollify them. “Always, of course. But it’s been a long time, and I wasn’t expecting—”

  Melete cut me off with a flick of her fingers. “We come with grievances. You have violated ancient law.”

  “You have broken with custom and tradition,” Mneme said, “to the detriment of all.”

  “We will have satisfaction.” Aoidi drew herself up to her full height. “Or you will suffer the consequences of your trespass.”

  “But I haven’t—”

  “The name of your establishment is an affront, and a presumption.”

  “It dishonors the true Musaeum.”

  “You, of all men, should know better.”

  “The Musaeum was mine,” I said, none too wisely. “Its purpose—”

  “Its purpose did not belong to you.”

  “Ever.”

  “You created it for us. You dedicated it to us. If it belonged to anyone, it belonged to the three of us.”

  Aoidi took a step in my direction. It was all I could do not to cower and back away.

  “But you know this, as well,” she went on. “Unlike us, you are much changed, Ptolemy, and not for the better or wiser. You take and you cheat, and you turn art—”

  “And knowledge—”

  “And memory—”

  “Into commodity, which they were never meant to be.”

  I couldn’t deny it, not without lying. And lying to these three was as tricky as it was foolish.

  “Is it Tole who’s changed?” Sera asked, surprising me, and also the Muses, judging by their expressions. “Or is it all of us? This world isn’t the same as the one that honored you with the Library.”

  The Three glared at her until Sera dropped her gaze, her cheeks robbed of color.

  “There is some truth in what she says,” Melete admitted, her tone grudging.

  “The ideal of Alexandria has faded with the centuries,” Mneme said, the words heavy. “It pains us, and yet it is undeniable.”

  Only Aoidi seemed unbowed. “All the more reason for us to remain vigilant. The world can change. Mortals can change. But we remain constant. We preserve what is deserving, be it song or thought or principle. The Musaeum has long since fallen, but its mission will not be lost.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “That’s what I have in mind with this place.”

  “This place is an appendage.”

  “An echo.”

  “An abomination. And yet it serves a greater good.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that at all. “What greater good?”

  “Your methods have grown questionable.”

  “You have lost your way.”

  Aoidi made a vague gesture with her hand, encompassing the entire room and all it held. “But still your harvest has been impressive. We would take what you have collected and reposit it where it belongs.”

  “No!” I croaked the word, unable to draw breath, my heart frozen in my chest. I looked from one to the next, searching their faces for any hint of mercy. “Please. I’ve worked so hard for all of these. They’re everything to me.”

  They considered me the way parents would a misbehaving child.

  “This is our decree.”

  “In keeping with what we have always been, and what you once were.”

  “The moment you began to think of these things as your own, they became something other than what they are supposed to be.”

  My knees buckled. I reached for the desk, held onto it as I sank to the floor.

  “Wait,” Sera said. “You might not like his methods, but he always trades for what he brings in. He never takes a thing.”

  “Your point?” Melete asked.

  “What does he get?” Sera’s gesture recalled Aoidi’s. “You’re going to take all of this. But he’s worked for it, earned it. So what does he get?”

  “Another presumption! You ask us to treat knowledge as a good, just as he has.”

  “That is not who we are. You would have us barter, and thus make us less than what we have always been.”

  “He has violated laws that span millennia. He is fortunate that we choose to spare his life. You are fortunate as well. Do not test us further, mortal.”

  Sera started to say more, but I caught her eye and shook my head. She was a fine negotiator, but she was out of her depth with these three. Just as I was.

  “Still,” Melete said. “We might make a small concession.”

  “Acknowledgement of a task well accomplished and a goal that lives on.”

  “Yes,” Aoidi said. “We will take what is here, but we will also permit you to continue your trade, provided those who give do so freely and you agree that all you collect will be given over to the common good.”

  Sera huffed a dry laugh. “So, in other words, you’re willing to tolerate him treating all this as a commodity, as long as he gives it all to you.”

  “So long as we keep him from accruing art and knowledge as he would wealth, it is not a commodity.”

  Mneme nodded. “In this way, he can continue to honor the tradition of which he was so vital a part, knowing he does so with our blessing.”

  “But he has to change the name,” Aoidi said. “This is not the Musaeum. There is only the One, and it burned long ago.”

  Melete shared a look with her sisters. “Those are our conditions.”

  “They
offer balance between what we were and what your world has become.”

  “Agree, and you can continue to gather what you love. Refuse, and you will be nothing.”

  The Muses didn’t wait for me to answer, knowing what I would say, understanding that I couldn’t resist. They grasped each other’s hands.

  “Farewell, Ptolemy, Serapeum. Heed us.”

  “Remember what we have told you.”

  “And do not think to cross us. Either of you.”

  A wind swept through the building, raising dust and grit until I had to shield my eyes. It lasted several seconds and then died away, as sudden as it had come, leaving us in the dark. Alone.

  Sera knelt in front of me, a shadow among shadows. But she found my hand with hers. Her fingers were warm. Mine must have been cold as snow.

  “You all right?”

  I nodded, only to realize she couldn’t see me. “I suppose so.”

  I stood, groped over my desk for a candle and a match. Finding them, I struck a flame to the wick and raised the candle to see.

  The shelves were empty. All of them. There wasn’t a shred of paper left in the place. Everything was gone. And I remembered none of it. Not a word.

  “Damn,” I whispered.

  Sera stood. “Could have been worse.”

  There was no arguing the point. We were alive. My eyes stung, and I could barely swallow past the fist in my throat.

  “We start again tomorrow,” Sera said. When I didn’t answer, she leaned forward, forcing me to meet her gaze. “Tole? We start again tomorrow. You hear?”

  “Right,” I managed to say. “Tomorrow.”

  “Dennis will be back. You know he will. And there’ll be others, too. There always are.”

  Yes, it was true. I took a breath. Another. We’d be all right. There would be grandpas again, and journal writers.

  “We’ll need a new name,” she said.

  I wanted to argue. I wanted to shout to the hills that the Musaeum was mine and would be forever. I could call it whatever I damn well pleased. But I knew better.

  Do not think to cross us . . .

  I shook my head. “I can’t think of one now.”

  “That’s all right. We don’t have to decide tonight.”