GUD Magazine Issue 3 :: Autumn 2008 Read online

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  Greatest Uncommon Denominator Publishing

  www.gudmagazine.com

  Copyright ©2008 by GUD Magazine on behalf of contributors

  First published in 2008, 2008

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  Greatest Uncommon Denominator Magazine

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  This magazine contains works of fiction. All people, places, and events depicted therein are fictional and not meant to resemble any actual people, places, or events unless otherwise specified.

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  Cover art: Steam Bat by Zak Jarvis

  More than a cover—to assemble your own Steam Bat model, see instructions on page 205.

  CONTENTS

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  Poetry's Yellow Warbler by Beverly A. Jackson

  For Daniel Tiffany

  Unwounded, feathered, safe, it rests—sans song, oblivious to sky or twig, with nest unknown.

  Caged in my hand, the downy chick sits still—save for a heartbeat flutter on my palm.

  A tiny clockwork tick? Its shiny beak held shut by springs or cords of sinew?

  Cleverness conceived by what? My own vein

  pumps its diesel behind a bloody maw,

  while plush pigs fly in squadrons. Bird tilts its head, a convex eye (a bead of glass?)

  entraps me in a conjoined stare. My hand unfurls, starburst of finger-puppetry ballet.

  A wondrous bit of engineering, that.

  Chick vaults and flies as chip notes soar in throaty song of freedom. My fingers curl again—this time around my own metallic fog.

  Yeats, God, and you may ponder toys while I gape that pigs, bird, and planes lift off the ground at all.

  Dragon and Gear by Shweta Narayan

  * * * *

  * * * *

  A Song, a Prayer, an Empty Space by Darja Malcolm-Clarke

  The Isiola monastery has sunk into the sea.

  That's what Bishop Dakar's letter said, but I didn't believe it—and not just because I'd have to blame myself if it were true.

  Yet seafoam gathers where tide-powered turbines once crouched, raising and lowering the monastery for a hundred years. Here, beyond the edge of Fachi, on the Algerian shore, sand whisks over my feet and waves crash on rocks in the empty bay.

  Surely Dakar's beseeching message was a ploy to get me back to Isiola after all these years—that's what I thought when another of his crag martins carried his words to me in Timkhi. I believed he had conjured the wildest story a reluctant bishop could manage: a tale of Isiola sinking and taking the desalination plant with it, and of a daemon, summoned by Hadez priests, ravaging prayer shrines all over Fachi. An absurd tale.

  But a true one after all; so says the empty bay.

  I turn my camel away from where the edifice of Egyptian stone once perched on hydraulic legs above the waves. Would that I had a seat on the steam camel, but it does not go easily here. The sands shift and devour its tracks. So I've had to ride this lumbering flesh that is spite incarnate. It's just as well; we make a good match at the moment, this camel and I.

  * * * *

  It takes all morning to reach Fachi, but at last it wells up out of the endless scorched dunes. Mud-brick buildings bask gold in a flourish of green. I draw my camel up to the Yahvist shrine at the city's edge, crouched between the first oasis grasses and palms—a humble structure capped with a low, pointed dome.

  Drawing up the hood of my monk's cloak, I slip off the saddle onto the hydraulic step-elevator beneath a palm tree. It lowers me to the sand beside someone else's beast. I tie mine in the sparse shade beneath another palm and duck into the narrow doorway.

  The building holds only the ornate rugs where people kneel to imbue coins with prayer and the shrine itself: a dome of pure gold, as wide as my arm is long, low to the ground and gleaming in the dim light. It's unchanged from when I last saw it, the night I fled for my betrayal of the Church. The broad porcelain dish beneath the dome is decorated with variegated geometrics and filled with prayer-imbued euchoi.

  I crouch over the dish where the coins glint bronze in the muted light. Even before I fled this place—because I had given bags of euchoi unpurchased from the Church to the poor of Fachi—there were more in the altar bowls than now. The Hadez, drawn here by the euchoi and the wealth they can glean from the city, are to blame.

  The emptiness of the dish is not all that's amiss. I thought my absence from the euchomifier all these years might diminish my ability to sense such things, but I feel something horrifically wrong with these euchoi. I kneel and glance around to make sure the place is vacant, then gather some into my cupped hands.

  Their emptiness washes over me, pulls me down like an ocean riptide, fills my mouth with imagined brine. Empty: they are robbed of their resonance, stripped of the essence of prayer. Finding them thus is akin to coming upon a merry crowd, then discovering their faces void of eyes and mouths.

  A gasp behind me makes me jump, and a few coins spill back into the bowl with a bright clatter.

  "What are you doing?” It's Sor Feerah, looking from the euchoi in my hands to me again, eyes wide. So Dakar did send someone to escort me.

  "You scared me,” I say. “Where were you? I saw your camel outside."

  "Put them down, Adan."

  "I'm still sanctioned to collect them. Dakar—Bishop Dakar—never revoked my license."

  "After what you did,” she says from the doorway, “I wouldn't be surprised if Cardinal Aquiro himself revoked it.” The sunlight is bright behind her, hiding her expression in shadow. But the tone of her voice is enough. She was not one of the few who approved of how I helped the poor after the Hadez assassinated the Prince. I ignore the fact that she skipped my title just as I ignore her instructions and turn back to the euchoi in the dish. Collecting them has always been my right.

  "Next thing, you'll be telling me to call you Bishop again,” she says.

  "No, I assure you, I won't. Where were you?” I say again, a handful of euchoi burning their blankness into my palm.

  "I was ... down the way a bit. The shrines make me nervous."

  "Have anything to do with why these coins are empty?"

  "Welcome to Fachi as it's become in your absence,” she says. “The daemon scours the city shrines nearly every night now. Taking what prayers people can afford...."

  I turn back to her. “'Can afford?’ Have the Hadez raised the tax on the coins?"

  "They've raised it, and raised it again. And the price of water."

&nbs
p; "And the ones that can't pay the cost? How do they pray?"

  "Not by our giving out euchoi for free, if that's what you mean. The Church can't give away its livelihood,” she says, still silhouetted in the doorway.

  "Then their prayers can't be heard. They can't afford euchoi, and the ones they do buy the daemon takes away before they're brought to the euchomifier. How are they—"

  "Look,” Sor Feerah says. “The bishop sent me to make sure you make it to the monastery unnoticed. I'm not interested in hearing you defend your actions. You've made your mistake, and that's the way it is. Put the coins down. Let's go."

  Before I can reply, she vanishes into the sunlight.

  I return to the euchoi in the shrine. Repulsed by their emptiness, I nonetheless put several handfuls in my satchel and pockets—but not so many as to draw attention to the small number left. Already so few remain.

  Outside, Sor Feerah is waiting on her camel as I get on the step-elevator. As we head toward Fachi, she barely wastes a glance on me and instead begins to sing, probably so she won't have to speak to me. It's a choral song they never sang in Timkhi. I envy her lack of reserve. I was never taught to sing properly; I barely whisper in chapel.

  In place of joining her, I say, “How can you sing at a time like this? Don't you feel for these people?"

  Her eyebrows arc toward the veil covering her hair. “The people have learned to take comfort where they can find it, Frer,” she says. “You're the one who left the city.” She begins the song again.

  Outward-sloping building walls rise up behind a broad metal gate—a gate that wasn't there when I left Fachi two years ago. Sor Feerah stops mid-phrase, for waiting there are four Hadez guards dressed in white linen kaftans, eyeing us. My cloak shields my face and Sor Feerah is leading, but I take an anxious breath.

  "Yahvists. What is your business?” says one Hadez to Sor Feerah. The white of his kaftan is blinding in the sun.

  "We were at the shrine,” she says.

  "I was here this afternoon. He wasn't with you,” says another one, gesturing at me. “You went out alone."

  "He left for Isiola before me,” she says.

  "No, he didn't,” says the same man. “He didn't pass by this way this morning.” He turns to me. “Where are you from?"

  "I'm from here,” I say. “I didn't tell you, Sor Feerah. I left yesterday before twilight.” To the Hadez guard I say, “I prayed at the sunken monastery for my lost brothers and sisters all night.” I take a few euchoi from my pocket to prove it. He and another guard step forward to look at the coins. If they had any sensitivity at all, they would know these are as blank as a newborn's memory.

  "Where did you swear your oath of service, Frer?” says the first, trying to peer into my hood. I turn my head slightly as if I'm looking at Sor Feerah; it's enough to obscure my face.

  "Why, here in Fachi,” I say. A lie, but the Hadez nods. He signals two others, and they unlatch a large spring-powered lock binding the gate to a metal post. We press our camels forward. I try to look indifferent as I move past the Hadez guards into Fachi.

  Dust and sand swirl around the camels’ legs as the buildings grow ever closer to the street. The dark eyes of men and women in the narrowing street pass over us as they ease by. Each glance feels like the one that will recognize me and alert the Hadez.

  The passage opens out again, guiding us into the market: the heart of Fachi. Music pipes to me on a breeze. It's tangled with the subtle stench of many people living in close quarters. We reach a camel stall, one for animals of flesh and blood, not cogs and steam. Sor Feerah, ahead of me, goes to the hydraulic platform as the full market comes into view: tents with bright linens swaying; copper and brass mirrors, trays, teapots; cages of automaton budgies and crag martins; tall piles of hand-woven rugs; bags of incense scenting the air; camel saddles. Tears spring to my eyes as I slip from the camel onto the platform. I thought I would never see this place again.

  * * * *

  Our camels in the stall, we move into the market crowd. The cacophony of voices envelops me like a dune drifting over a tent at night. I sense in the commotion something amiss. It's in the set of people's mouths, the subtle cringe in their movements. The market is colorful, but it is not as I recall; it is not jovial, but nervous. Frenetic.

  Our pace is interrupted by an assembly of people around a tall red tent, beneath which stand strongmen of the Hadez. Behind them is a massive metal elephant similar in appearance to those from the forests and savannahs of the south. Its ears gleam silver and its trunk is a series of interlocked panels that shift with the beast as it lumbers forward. The hidden fire that burns in its belly turns water into steam.

  Only those with reliable access to water could afford such a wonder, only those who control the spring and—now that Isiola has sunk—Fachi's one desalination plant, in the Parliament house. I look from the marvelous elephant to the crowd and think of the water used for this thing instead of being given—or even sold—to Fachim.

  Only fear keeps them from rushing the Hadez right here and now: fear of the daemon, of thirst, of God not hearing their prayers. It's as good a strongman as the Hadez guarding the edge of the tent.

  "Let's get going,” I say to Sor Feerah, but my voice is lost amidst the din. I motion toward a narrowing passage.

  We're nearing the monastery at the center of Fachi when laughter and a scattering of notes rings off the mud walls—high phrases dancing around a low drone. We turn a corner and come upon a group of women, some standing in the shade and two others seated. Their heads are bare and their hair ornately plaited; they wear white trimmed with red or blue or green, and skirts dyed deep indigo. They are Tuareg, nomads from the south. One seated woman is singing, and the younger is playing the one-stringed imzhad cradled in her lap. A modest crowd has gathered to listen, and a basket has been set out for coins. This basket—even the Tuareg's very presence in Fachi—means their caravan has come upon hard times.

  The singing woman laughs, interrupting her song, then murmurs up to another woman. But the girl still marches the short bow across the instrument. The silver hoops in her ears and the amulet around her neck sway.

  I stop, for the way she plays unsettles me. Only in one circumstance have I experienced the feelings moving over her face: with the euchomifier.

  Sor Feerah calls to me. I nod at her, then surprise myself by taking one of the euchoi from my satchel and putting it in the girl's basket. I turn without acknowledging her thanks.

  Sor Feerah shakes her head in disgust when I reach her. “You still can't help yourself, can you?” she says. “You have to give euchoi away."

  "They have hardship, can't you see? We can't take money from people who need it for food. It's not right to make them buy prayer."

  "I know,” she says, and her voice softens unexpectedly. “It was kind of you. But doing that, you undercut the Church. It'll fall to the Hadez. That's not helping people."

  To that I say nothing.

  * * * *

  We reach the monastery, the other heart of Fachi that beats in tandem with the market. I feel a pang as I knock at the broad wooden door.

  A sor answers and looks past Sor Feerah to me, eyes widening. As we pass over the threshold, she vanishes down the corridor toward Dakar's quarters. The marble foyer, floor chipping and flaking at every crack, is wrapped in cool shadow. My eyes are still adjusting when the bishop appears before me, saying, “Adan. In Allah's name."

  "Dakar—"

  "I must admit I'm surprised you came back. At last, you've decided to heed my messages."

  "I can't tell you how sorry I am for these past two years, and the difficulties I created before I left,” I say.

  "I sent bird after bird—"

  "I know. I ... couldn't face you after dropping the diocese in your lap. After everything with the euchoi,” I say, not mentioning that I also couldn't bear to be reminded of the machine.

  Sor Feerah makes a soft noise of doubt. What if she tells Dakar about t
he coin I gave to the imzhad player? In the shadows of the foyer, her expression is inscrutable. “I couldn't wait for the Hadez to find me. I had to leave,” I plead.

  "You do understand that we can't buy water without the proceeds from the euchoi?” says Sor Feerah. “With Isiola gone, there's only the one source of desalinated water—"

  "And they will continue to raise the price of it,” says Dakar. “But Adan, you won't repeat the wrong you did before. This I know."

  "Dakar,” I say, “I am truly sorry I caused you hardship. But the people must be able to speak to God."

  "Would you have the Hadez take the monastery, then?” says Dakar, his voice rising, resonating against the stone. “Would you have us go bankrupt, have the monastery and the machine fall into their hands, and—?"

  "No. Of course not,” I say. “I wasn't saying that I'd do it again—no. Just that helping them pray wasn't wrong in itself."

  "Helping them pray is not. But being reckless is closer to wrong."

  That stings. All of a sudden, I want to tell him how, if I hadn't given out those coins, I could have stayed bishop in Fachi, could have kept the Hadez from sinking Isiola. Could have prevented all of this more than a year ago. Instead I say, smiling, “There was a reason I gave you the diocese. You are a wise man, Dakar."

  He grits his teeth. “Adan, once you were a good bishop. You could be that again."

  "I don't want the diocese back."

  "That's not what I meant, though I'd give it back to you in an instant. I meant you could return again to grace."

  Silence hangs around the three of us like a curtain, closing us in.

  "How did the monastery sink?” I finally say, to push the heavy folds back.

  He sighs, not at my question but at me. “We don't know. It should've stood five hundred years at least. The Hadez could have employed Egyptian magi, or called up some marine creature of dark, or the daemon running rampant could have done it. We don't know.” He holds his empty hands out before him.