Mitchell Smith - Moonrise

"Maybe pretend it was Sunrise-humans the Boston people made," Nancy said, spearing an onion on her knife, "- and that Persons were the first on Lady Weather's earth."

"Acting the wish," Baj said, "is the magic they try here, as if belief must someday make it so." He ate a spoonful of potato. "I think they give us this food as savages leave meals for the ghosts of their dead. We're not perfectly real to them, don't belong in their true time." He ate another spoonful of potato. "- We may be acceptable, unless we ask questions, or stay too close… or too long."

There was uproar from a long table a pebble's toss away. Two bearded soldiers, in stained and muddy gray, sat with their wives and many children, all merry… red-faced and laughing at something the taller soldier had said.

"… But will these Believers let us go?" Nancy ate another onion from the point of her knife, white teeth nibbling. "You two philosophicals might consider that, and remember stolen children, and the ruined things that marched their rolling box. – Every Jesus. That woman is showing her bare ass! You see her butts beneath those so-short pants?"

"Could be summer dressing, this far north, to try to hold the warmth a little longer. More wishful magic…" Baj looked around him, leaning on the town's creation to imagine centuries away. "These people make as perfect an as if as possible, so reality must follow… How Lord Peter would have loved to see this."

Nancy bit into a large piece of mutton, sliced her mouthful free with a close pass of her knife. "And are they too stupid," she said, chewing, "to notice it hasn't worked? That Lord Winter still steps down from the Wall?"

"Oh, then," Richard said, "they believe they haven't pretended well enough."

"And so…" Baj took another chunk of meat, cut it again, and gave a portion to Errol – who settled with it under the table. The mutton was aged rank, sharp as ripe cheese. "- And so, likely each year these people must try harder, make what they hope are better copies of Warm-time things, and live exactly as they suppose those ancient people lived."

"Fools," Nancy said.

"- Until," Richard said, and belched, "it becomes necessary to kill any nearby Robins – who do not copy WT ways, and so spoil everything."

"They're not going to let us leave." Nancy gripped her knife's handle so her narrow knuckles whitened. "And you're talking and talking."

"We're all frightened, dear." Richard glanced at the people eating around them. "But when males are frightened, they must pretend not to be. Still, I do think they'll let us leave."

"Yes," Baj said. "May insist on it. There were no Persons in Warm-times."

Now, only Errol was eating. It seemed that with first hunger over, fear took its place.

"Yes?" Nancy still gripped her knife. "And so they'll let us go? Then answer this, Richard. Do their sweat-slaves act the Warm-times with them?"

"Those destroyed men," Baj said, "I think they've made into only engines."

"Every Jesus…" Nancy showed sharp teeth. "We should have come north the way we went south last year, and never traveled east to this Pass."

"Then we'd never have seen this -"

"And never seen burned Robins, either, Who-was-a-prince!"

"… There's something else you might see," Richard said, "if you look, without making a show of it, over to the west. Then higher."

Baj did, casually as he could, and saw only a speck, darker than the sky's sunny blue, tracing its slow way above the horizon.

Nancy glanced once, and quickly. "Is she coming here?"

"No," Richard said, "- she won't. That would get us killed."

"She's everything they wish were not…" Baj took care to look away, across the grass square, where the row of small wooden buildings stood. Intended, certainly, as Warm-time's store-department, a money bank, and littler shops and offices. Several were painted in tiny rectangles, as if made of baked red brick… The town's physician (scientific as possible) would have his place in that row of buildings. And the marshal-policeman also an office, with a prison cell at the back – and perhaps a false chair-electrical, with a poisoned needle in its frame to cause the correct shaking dying.

There was a small pole, striped red-and-white, set outside the fourth small building along the row. Baj saw one of the serfs, blind, naked but for boots, standing sexless and silent beside it, turning the pole with his hand so it slowly spun, the red-and-white stripes spiraling endlessly up.

Nancy sheathed her knife; her hand was trembling. "Patience is what they wish were not?" Hot yellow eyes. "Aren't we three also wished… not?"

"We four," Baj said. "And if they hadn't just burned the Robins defending this dreaming, then they might be burning us."

"Oh, no. Burning us, Baj. But not you, who are as they are – a Sunrise-human and in love with wonderful Warm-times, when there were no Persons." She looked around her. "This, I think, is your dream as much as theirs."

"Perhaps. But I wouldn't burn people for it." Baj had spoken too loudly. A woman at a table nearby raised her head, startled, as if at a sound mysterious.

"Keep your voices down." Richard looked at a last piece of mutton on his platter, but appetite gone, didn't eat it.

"No, Baj," Nancy said, "you wouldn't burn the tribesmen, or cut the sweat-slaves and take their eyes. But still you wish there was no cold, no Ice-wall… wish there were no Persons made with little bits of this animal or that added in them. Wish there was nothing new since everyone (so very long ago) smelled like owls, had ugly hot little houses and women who showed everything, and mechanical wars and were assholes!"

"Talking too loud," Richard said.

"Nancy… I only understand them."

"It's the same thing!"

"It is not!" And to Errol, who hearing anger, scrambled from under the table. "Stay and be still!"

"You two are attracting these people's attention," Richard said, "- which we do not want."

"- And these Sunrisers, Baj," Nancy said, "these Believers and Burners so dear to you, do you think they have guest-honor? That because we 'apparent' ones have been given food, and eaten food, they won't decide to make engines of us?"

"What I think," Baj said, and gripped Errol's arm to keep him sitting still, "- what I think is that you need to speak more quietly."

"Ah. A Sunriser commands! The true-human, the Prince has spoken, and we're to wag our tails and obey!"

Several people near them now seemed puzzled by some odd disturbance, and turned to look this way and that.

Nancy drew a breath to say more, might have said more – but Richard, humorous as if it were all in play, reached over, took her by the nape like a kitten, and gripped her into silence before he let her go.

Then he stared at Baj. "I'm tired of this conversation," he said, quietly, "- which is dangerous, and not even about what it's about. Do you understand me, Prince?"

Baj said, "Yes, sir," since that seemed wise.

There was only the pleasant noise of others, enjoying themselves around them.

Then Nancy said, "Uh-oh." The second time she'd said it.

The young man who had welcomed them was walking toward their table, pausing to speak with others on his way… He came to stand by Baj, and looked down, but at none directly. "Some have heard what might be questions, here," he said.

"Questions of each other, only," Baj said, "- not of what is real."

The young man seemed to consider that. "… Always an interesting experience," he said, "if not lingered on, to stand near temporal error. Innocent error, of course, though still not to be allowed for long." He looked at Baj. "Did you know – by the way, my name is Louis Cohen – but did you know that all things are made of trembling tinies? Both the real, and the only-seeming? Did you know that?"