When the Hero Comes Home Read online
WHEN THE HERO COMES HOME
EDITED BY
GABRIELLE HARBOWY AND ED GREENWOOD
When the Hero Comes Home
Copyright © 2011 Dragon Moon Press
Cover Art © 2011 by Scott Purdy
www.scottpurdy.net
“Introduction” copyright © 2011 Susan J. Morris
“A Place To Come Home To” copyright © 2011 by Joseph E. Lake Jr. & Shannon Page
“The Evil That Remains” copyright © 2011 by Erik Buchanan
“Full Circle” copyright © 2011 by Steve Bornstein
“Lessons Learned” copyright © 2011 by Peadar Ó Guilín
“Brine Magic” copyright © 2011 by Tony Pi
“The Legend of Gluck” copyright © 2011 by Marie Bilodeau
“One and Twenty Summers” copyright © 2011 by Brian Cortijo
“The Blue Corpse Corps” copyright © 2011 by Jim C. Hines
“Ashes of the Bonfire Queen” copyright © 2011 by Rosemary Jones
“Keeping Time” copyright © 2011 by Gabrielle Harbowy
“Scar Tissue” copyright © 2011 by Chris A. Jackson
“Coward” copyright © 2011 by Todd McCaffrey
“Nine Letters Found in a Muddied Case on the Road in Baden, Germany” copyright © 2011 by Xander Briggs
“The Once and Now-ish King” copyright © 2011 by J.M. Frey
“His Last Monster” copyright © 2011 by J.P. Moore
“Dark Helm Returns” copyright © 2011 by Ed Greenwood
“Mirror, Mirror” copyright © 2011 by Phil Rossi
“Knights and Beans” copyright © 2011 by Julie Kagawa
“Oathbreaker” copyright © 2011 by Erik Scott de Bie
All rights reserved. Reproduction or utilization of this work in any form, by any means now known or hereinafter invented, including, but not limited to, xerography, photocopying and recording, and in any known storage and retrieval system, is forbidden without permission from the copyright holder.
www.dragonmoonpress.com
WHEN THE HERO COMES HOME
EDITED BY
GABRIELLE HARBOWY AND ED GREENWOOD
CONTENTS
Introduction by Susan J. Morris
A Place to Come Home To by Jay Lake & Shannon Page
The Evil That Remains by Erik Buchanan
Full Circle by Steve Bornstein
Lessons Learned by Peadar O Guilin
Brine Magic by Tony Pi
The Legend of Gluck by Marie Bilodeau
One and Twenty Summers by Brian Cortijo
The Blue Corpse Corps by Jim C. Hines
Ashes of the Bonfire Queen by Rosemary Jones
Keeping Time by Gabrielle Harbowy
Scar Tissue by Chris A. Jackson
Coward by Todd McCaffrey
Nine Letters Found in a Muddied Case on the Road in Baden, Germany by Xander Briggs
The Once and Now-ish King by J.M. Frey
His Last Monster by J.P. Moore
Dark Helm Returns by Ed Greenwood
Mirror, Mirror by Phil Rossi
Knights and Beans by Julie Kagawa
Oathbreaker: A Tale of the World of Ruin by Erik Scott de Bie
About the Authors
About the Editors
Dedication
Though a hero may lose companions along the journey, they are never forgotten.
This book is dedicated to
Jennifer Rardin,
who should have lived long enough to participate in this adventure
and Adrienne (Dinny) Blicher, Gabrielle’s mother,
who should have lived long enough to read it.
Acknowledgments
There are many people responsible—directly and indirectly, deliberately and serendipitously—for the existence of this book, and not enough space to mention them all. Thanks to Alana Otis and the Ad Astra Programming Team, and Cameron Swift, without whom I would not have been in a too-cold room in Toronto in March, 2009 meeting Ed Greenwood for the first time. Thanks to Jennifer Brozek and Marty Halpern, who taught me everything I needed to know about anthologies, and to Kristen Nyberg for design inspiration. Thanks to Gwen Gades and Laurie McLean for believing in this vision and helping to make it happen. Thanks to all our authors for making this such a fun, rewarding process, for the wonderful work you’ve done and the friendships we’ve forged in the process, and to Ed for being the best possible companion on this journey. Thanks to my dad for believing in me, and to my husband Matt, who brings the stars within my reach. -Gabrielle
Thanks to Homer and to Harold Lamb, for breaking the trail. And to Gabrielle, for so happily walking it with me. -Ed
Introduction
Susan J. Morris
Heroes don’t dream of a hero’s welcome. Those who dream of being heroes might—but heroes are rarely those. It’s antithetical to their nature. Besides, every hero knows they can never come home again.
Heroes. They could as easily be called dreamers, idealists, or idiots. No mother wishes heroism for her child. Driven by demons of their past, heroes fight for abstract concepts like truth, love, and honor, and would risk life and limb for people they’ve never met. It’s not a very sane approach to a long life or happiness.
“I’m doing it for you,” a hero might say to his lover on the eve of battle, and he might even believe it. But she knows that’s not true, and deep in his heart, he knows it too. That’s just a fairytale told to justify the tears, the distance, and the blood.
“I’ll wait for you forever,” the lover might answer, and she may even believe that, too. Though he knows it to be false. Oh, she’ll cry when he leaves, and there will be talk of a hero’s welcome. Of feasting, dancing, drinking, and finally settling down with a couple of pigs and kids and a patch of beans. Staring up at the night sky, drunk with the stars and the innocence of youth, it’s easy to believe that Romeo’s night will outlast the dawn.
But make no mistake—when you become a hero, there is no turning back.
The moment you leave, your home is frozen in time. You may treasure the unchanging faces of your family and friends in letters and photographs. But you will not be there when your son says his first word, or your daughter falls in love for the first time. You will not be there when your mother is dying, or your loved ones are in need. You will not be there for their joys and sorrows, to comfort them, to celebrate with them, and to protect and serve them as you protect and serve everyone else.
That sacrifice will make you stronger. No one appreciates love more than those who have lost it. Those who fight, fight with some hope of regaining it—when all the fighting is finally done, when the threat is banished and the demons who drive you to heroism are banished along with it.
But some things, once seen, can never be unseen—and they mark the eyes of those who bore them witness.
When you return, unheralded, your face will have been forgotten or rendered unrecognizable, and your deeds will have been reduced with distance, time, and the absence of threat. People will flinch when you walk by, because every scar is a reminder that the world contains more than white picket fences. And at night, when you are forced to relive what you have seen, no one will hear you scream, because every nightmare is proof that you belong to another world now. An uncomfortable world filled with pain and sacrifice, where good does not always triumph and every victory comes with a price.
You will not be able to dismiss your world so easily, but if you continue to insist it exists, you will be held to blame for the disruption it causes. T
he problem is that you are part of the problem. Murderer, victim, and hero—all exist in the same world, bound by ties of blood far stronger than those of birth. Like consumption, it’s a problem of containment. If they can contain the problem, their world is most likely to go back to normal the fastest.
Eventually, you will find you have more in common with those you save than those you come home to. So when the day comes that someone else is in trouble, and they look at you with need in their eyes, with no one but you to hear them scream, you will find that you cannot turn a blind eye the way the rest of the world does.
So you will pick up your blade again, and it will be as though it never left your hand. You will scrape off the rust, buckle on your armor, and start back down that road again. The only road left to you.
But you won’t be leaving home, because that town wasn’t your home anymore. Not since the day you left and became a hero. A hero’s home is in their heart.
This book is not an easy book to read. We want to believe that a hero’s sacrifice is worth it. That if we were a hero, we would be appreciated, loved, and welcomed back to a life that is just like it used to be, only better. But we are never told that a hero doesn’t just risk their life when they battle their dragon—they also risk losing the life they led before they became a hero.
Whether the heroes in these stories succeed or fail in their quests, their lives are irrevocably changed by them. None of them expect the form their homecoming takes, and very few eventually find the welcome they wished for—or have the faculties to appreciate it.
Savor these stories. Whether you’re reading about the only surviving soldier of a war struggling to return to a home that doesn’t exist anymore, a rebel leader who has lost everything she fought for and must start from scratch, or a hero who has fought for her village her whole life only to retire into without ever being known for her deeds, every one of these stories touches on the humanity of the hero. Each story reveals a different kind of battle the hero must fight, and the different demons that drive them on. We learn what they love so much that they will abandon it in order to save it—and to save themselves. We learn what compels them to sacrifice everything to fight for what they believe in. And we learn whether it was worth it.
A Place To Come Home To
Jay Lake & Shannon Page
Baba O’Riley had made her way home, back from the dead. That’s what the other kids had told her, anyway. It might even have been true. She still didn’t remember much. The past was a gray curtain like the fog on Divisadero early in the morning. Shapes, movement, even flashes of color. But no definition, no detail.
The future was…Well, the future was whatever she made of it. The problem was, she didn’t know how to make anything. Some mornings her hands surprised her simply by still being attached to the ends of her arms.
Being dead had significantly interfered with her prospects, it seemed.
The cop who’d handled her exit interview from SFPD’s bod squad shop down in the Mission District had been more than kind about things. A middle-aged woman who could just as easily have been Baba’s mother. How the hell would she know?
“Really, honey,” Detective Sergeant Carole Candelaria had told her. “You did very, very well. You’ve got to remember that.”
What kind of name was that, anyway? Sounded like a porn star, Baba had thought, then wondered how she knew that. Of course, the other kids had been making fun of her name for days, down in the tanks.
“I’m sure I did, ma’am,” Baba replied. “But I still don’t remember much.” For that value of ‘much’ that equaled ‘diddly squat.’
Candelaria sighed. It was a weird sigh, sucking air in through her teeth with her lower lip scrunched under. Like she wanted to bite somebody. Her silvered-blonde bob waved slightly as she tapped her chin. “Look…We’re not supposed to tell you much.”
Confidentiality. Trauma. All kinds of reasons. The social workers were always down in the tanks talking about that stuff. “That’s easy for you to say.” O’Riley knew her voice was sullen, and found she didn’t care. “You know who you are. What you did. Do. Whatever. You know what you had for breakfast last week.”
“Rice Chex, probably,” Candelaria said absently. She focused on O’Riley once more, from wherever her attention had briefly wandered. “It’s the Scrags. We have to keep the public calm about them.”
The bod squad had been getting busier, she’d been told down in the tanks. Ten years ago, no PD in the country had such a detail. Now it was one of the biggest units within SFPD. “You can’t keep a secret forever. Not when you’re discharging a couple dozen of us a week.”
“No one listens to street people.” A strange, pained expression crossed Candelaria’s square, not-too-pretty face. “That’s where most of you wind up. Shouting at lamp posts.”
“I’m no shouter.” O’Riley sank further into her fatigue jacket. Had she ever really owned such a thing? Before?
Candelaria whistled another of those sucked-in sighs, then jotted something down on a torn bit of paper and passed it to O’Riley. “I know you don’t know what you did. Odds are you never will.” She closed the girl’s fingers into a fist around the scrap, crushing it amid skin and a sheen of sweat. “But you’re the reason my daughter’s still walking around. You’re a hero, Baba. You deserve more than this. And I haven’t told you a thing.”
Finally O’Riley woke up to the fact that the detective sergeant hadn’t been distracted. She’d been weeping. It was like seeing a teacher cry in class.
Baba stumbled out of the anonymous police building, not even remembering to pick up her starter pack or the fifty-dollar food voucher in its neat little fake credit card.
***
That night she crashed with some krusties in a sheltered nook that harbored a grease trap and a pair of dumpsters behind a row of restaurants on Valencia Street. The kids hadn’t even bothered to rough her up. Just a bit of name calling.
“Yo, Gray, you good luck or bad?” one had said—a girl with shoe-polish black hair and an antique house key driven through the little bit of skin between her nostrils. Like a Victorian cannibal or something. Her striped tights were dirty, maybe bloody even, and her leather skirt and top looked like vinyl to O’Riley.
Still, sleeping in a group was safer than sleeping alone. She wondered how she knew that, too. “I ain’t no luck at all,” she replied.
“No good, no bad, none,” said another one. A dark, grubby boy wrapped in sports jerseys.
“None. No one.” She had nothing to offer. No skunk, no food, no cash.
They’d let her into the crowd, even given her a pity slug off the bottle of Crown Royal one of the kids had boosted from the bodega up the street. She didn’t eat, though, not until 2 am when the scraps started coming out and the kids had needed to scramble away for a little while. Not too long, not too far, or they’d lose their place.
***
Even in the summer, San Francisco was stupid-cold. The krewe of krusties had moved off shortly after dawn, leaving her behind. The kindness of the night before—such as it had been—evaporated with the morning dew. Baba O’Riley was hungry, hard-pitted hungry in her gut like she hadn’t been since…since…
Since before.
Before.
A dangerous concept. The social workers had warned them about spending too much time thinking about ‘before.’ “You’re back, accept it. Enjoy it. Every one of you is a success just by being here breathing, with color in your cheeks.”
“Then whu-whu-why they call us Grays?” someone else had asked, voice dull and lifeless.
The answer hadn’t mattered. She’d tuned out the discussion. Most of the rest of kids in the tank were droolers and mumblers already. Baba had been one of the few who could still focus. Could think past the easy patter of the counselors and cops.
Such as that was.
She chased a mangy orange cat off a bench at a tiny neighborhood playground and dug Detective Sergeant Candelaria’s scrap of pa
per out of her pocket. It was an address. 190 Parnassus, #1, it read in the woman’s crabbed handwriting.
Parnassus. Cole Valley neighborhood, O’Riley thought. It was weird, how the things in her head that weren’t so much about her seemed to be coming back. Places, streets, old movies, even books she’d read.
But her? Home, parents, school, boyfriend? Or girlfriend?
Nothing. Like she’d been eaten alive, and spit out dead to start over.
Cole Valley she figured she could find. San Francisco just wasn’t that damned big. Seven miles square. Baba O’Riley started walking. It wasn’t like she didn’t have the time, after all.
***
Over in the Castro, she got shouted down and chased away for being a Gray. Even gay people had to hate someone, it seemed. O’Riley wasn’t sure how they could tell, but then, she wasn’t sure of much.
She climbed the impossible hill of 17th Street above Market. The yuppie moms stared at her, steering their jog-strollers away. Or maybe they were yuppie nannies. She couldn’t really tell the difference, and the yuppie dads were probably screwing them all anyway. Uranus Terrace made her giggle, wondering why the Castro hadn’t relocated up there.
Then it was down into Cole Valley and wandering toward Parnassus. The day had warmed up a little, enough that she didn’t feel corpse-cold inside the oversized jacket. She thought maybe she should be able to see the ocean in the distance, over the flatlands of the Sunset, but the view vanished in high fog, or low clouds, or both.
O’Riley wondered why the cops and their pet social workers down in the bod squad didn’t do more for the Grays. The survivors. Whatever she was. ‘Revenant’ was the word she’d seen on one social worker’s yellow tablet, glimpsed across the table during an encounter session.