Orson Card - Maps in a Mirror - The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card

Nixon’s face went kind of sad. “Then maybe it would be kindest of all if you simply wished for me to lose every election I ever tried. Keep me out of Congress, out of the vice-presidency. Let me be a used car salesman.” And he smiled a twisted, sad smile.

Siggy reached out and touched the man’s shoulder. “Maybe I should,” he said, and the boy behind him made another soft sound.

“But no,” Nixon said. “You wanted to save America. And it wouldn’t make any difference to keep me out of government. If it hadn’t been me, it would have been someone else. There would have been a Richard Nixon anyway. If they hadn’t wanted me, I wouldn’t have been there. If Richard Nixon hadn’t existed, they would have made one.”

Siggy sighed. “Then I don’t know what to do,” he said.

Nixon turned and looked out over the water. “I only did what they wanted me to do. And when they changed their minds, they were surprised at what I was.” The beach was cold and damp between waves. The breeze from the land carried the air of Los Angeles with it, and it made the beach smell slimy and old. “Maybe,” Nixon said, “there’s nothing you can wish for that will save America. Maybe there’s nothing you can do at all.”

And the noise the boy made was loud enough that Siggy at last turned to look at him. To his surprise, the boy was no longer standing up. He was sitting cross-legged in the sand, bowed over, his hands gripping each other behind his neck. His body shook.

“What’s wrong, Son?” Nixon asked. He sounded concerned.

The boy looked up, anger and grief in his face. “You,” he said, and his voice shook. “You can call me Son.”

Nixon knelt in the sand, painfully as if his leg hurt, and touched the boy’s shoulder. “What’s wrong, Son?”

“His brother was killed in Vietnam,” Siggy said, as if that explained anything.

“I’m sorry,” Nixon said. “I’m really sorry.”

The boy threw off Nixon’s hand. “Do you think that matters? Do you think it makes any difference how sorry you are?” The words stung Nixon, clearly. He shuddered as if his face had been slapped.

“I don’t know what else I can do,” Nixon said softly.

The boy’s hand shot out and grabbed him by the lapels of his suit, pulling him down until they were face to face, and the boy screamed, “You can pay for it! You can pay and pay and pay—” and the boy’s lips and teeth were almost touching Nixon’s face, and Nixon looked pathetic and helpless in the boy’s grip, flecks of the boy’s spit beginning to dot his cheeks and lips. Siggy watched, and realized there was nothing that Nixon could do that would pay it all, that would give the boy back what he had lost, realized that Nixon had not really taken it from the boy. Had not taken it, could not return it, was as much a victim as anyone else. How could Siggy, with a single wish, set it all right? How could he even up all the scales?

“Think, idiot,” said the fairy godmother. “I’m losing patience.”

“I don’t know what to do,” he said to her.

“And you’re the one with the plan,” she answered contemptuously.

The boy was still screaming, again and again, and Nixon was weeping now, silently letting the tears flow to join the spittle on his face, as if to agree, as if to make it unanimous.

“I wish,” said Siggy, “for everyone to forgive you, Mr. Nixon. For everyone in America to stop hating you, little by little, until all the hate is gone.”

The fairy godmother danced in his mind, waving her wand around and turning everything pink.

And the boy stopped screaming and let go of Nixon, gazed wonderingly into the old man’s eyes at the tears there, and said, “I’m sorry for you,” and meant it with all his heart. Then Siggy helped the boy to his feet and they turned away, leaving Nixon on the beach. The world was tinged with pink and Siggy put his arm around the boy and they smiled at each other. And they headed back to the cab. Siggy saw the fairy godmother flying away ahead of them, north and east from San Clemente, trailing stars behind her as she flew.

“Bibbity bobbity boo,” she cried, and she was gone.

They called their country the Beautiful Land, and they were right. It perched on the edge of the continent. Before the Beautiful Land stretched the broad ocean, which few dared to cross; behind it stood the steep Rising, a cliff so high and sheer that few dared to climb. And in such isolation the people, who called themselves, of course, the Beautiful People, lived splendid lives.

Not all were rich, of course. And not all were happy. But there was such a majesty to living in the Beautiful Land that the poverty could easily be missed by the undiscerning eye, and misery seemed so very fleeting. Except to Kiren.

To Kiren, misery was the way of life. For though she lived in a rich house with servants and had, it seemed, anything she could possibly want, she was deeply miserable most of the time. For this was a land where cursing and blessing and magic worked—not always, and not always in the way the person doing it might have planned—but sometimes the cursing worked, and in her case it had.

Not that she had done anything to deserve it; she had been as innocent as any other child in her cradle. But her mother had been a weak woman, and the pain and terror of giving birth had killed her. And Kiren’s father loved his wife so much that when he learned of the news, and saw the baby that had been born even as her mother died, he cried out, “You killed her! You killed her! May you never move a muscle in your life, until you lose someone you love as much as I loved her!” It was a terrible curse, and the nurse wept when she heard it, and the doctors stopped Kiren’s father’s mouth so that he could say no more in his madness.

But his curse took hold, and though he regretted it a million times during Kiren’s infancy and childhood, there was nothing he could do. Oh, the curse was not all that strong. Kiren did learn to walk, after a fashion. And she could stand for as much as two minutes at a time. But most of the times she sat or lay down, because she grew so weary, and her muscles only weakly did what she told them to. She could lift a spoon to her mouth, but soon became tired, and had to be fed. She scarcely had the energy to chew.

And every time her father saw her, he wanted to weep, and often did weep. And sometimes he even thought of killing himself to finally wipe away his guilt. But he knew that this would only injure poor Kiren even more, and she had done nothing to deserve injury.

When his guilt grew too much for him to bear, however, he did escape. He put a bag of fine fruits and clever handwork from the Beautiful Land on his back, and set out for the Rising. He would be gone for months, and no one knew when he would return, or whether the Rising would this time prove too much for him and send him plunging to his death. But when he returned, he always brought something for Kiren. And for a while she would smile, and she would say, “Father, thank you.” And things would go well, for a time, until she again became despondent and her father again suffered from watching the results of his ill-thought curse.

It was late spring in the year Kiren turned eleven when her father came home even happier than he usually was after a trip up the Rising. He rushed to his daughter where she lay wanly on the porch listening to the birds.

“Kiren!” he cried. “Kiren! I’ve brought you a gift!”

And she smiled, though even the muscles for smiling were weak, which made her smile sad. Her father reached into his bag (which was full of all kinds of wonders, which he would, being a careful man, sell to those with money to pay, not just for goods, but for rarity) and he pulled out his gift and handed it to Kiren.