Tim Pratt - Antiquities and Tangibles

The sun was still up, though it was shady under the canopy, and she went exploring, wishing she’d thought to bring a bottle of water or a sack lunch. But as Mr. Grinde had suggested, the streams ran clear and delicious, and delicious fruit—some she recognized, some she did not—hung from branches all around her. The ground somehow sloped so that she was always moving either level or gently downhill, even when she doubled back. There were animals, but nothing ominous—rabbits, squirrels, flittering birds. The woods weren’t silent, as she’d expected, but full of rustlings and bubblings and the song of wind over branches. When the sun went down and she grew tired, she stopped at the base of a tree and settled down on a mound of fallen leaves that proved surprisingly comfortable. It’s like a fairy tale wood, she thought, only not scary at all.

Over the next days and weeks she explored, and the woods had no edge. There were clear deep pools for swimming, trees she could climb, branches wide enough to sleep on, waterfalls of towering magnificence, bird trills more enchanting than any pop song, sunsets so dazzling they made her eyes water, flowers with scents to rival all man-made perfumes.

What there wasn’t was anything to do, besides admiring the admittedly glorious glories of nature. She read the magazine she’d brought to tatters, even though it was just a dumb fashion thing. Pissing and crapping in the woods didn’t appeal to her, either, and even though it only rained in late afternoon, and gently at that, she resented the lack of real permanent shelter, and also profoundly lamented the lack of pedicures, blueberry scones, episodic television, library books, cheeseburgers, high-speed internet, espresso, and vibrators, among other things. How had she been unhappy back in civilization, with access to all those hundreds, thousands, millions of small pleasures? What the hell had she been thinking? Coming to the Arcadian wood had been good in one respect—it gave her the realization that, crappy as her life might have been before, it was a lot better than living in the woods and wearing leaves because her real clothes got shredded by time and weather.

Worst of all, there was no one to complain to, no other human voices at all, and so she made her way back to the original Arcadian tree, crafted a number of axes by trial and error, and started trying chop the tree down. She wasn’t sure she’d ever manage it, but at least attacking the tree gave her something to do besides going crazy with loneliness.

“And I mean crazy, Mr. Grinde. I was telling rabbits about my childhood. I was talking to the moon. The creepiest thing was, I could sense intelligences there, sometimes I thought things were listening, but I knew they weren’t human. I don’t know if they were tree spirits or water spirits or animal gods or what, but they didn’t have any more in common with me than I have in common with a rolling pin, so I’m glad they never spoke up, really. I’m so happy to be out of there—yes, happy, I said it, though I know it’ll pass. The Arcadian wood is perfect for a weekend, lovely for a week, endurable for a month, but after that, knowing you can’t leave, at least not easily, that it’s a walled garden…no good. Not for me. I’m an introvert, but that doesn’t mean I don’t need any people. I just need the right ones, in small doses, at appropriate intervals. Nobody at all is worse than too many people.”

He passed her a damp rag, and she began washing the dirt from her face, and it was, really, a face he’d grown rather fond of.

“All right,” he said finally. “Why don’t you sit and have a drink and talk with me for a while?”

“As much as we’ve learned about happiness, you’d think we’d do better at finding it,” he said. They sat in a pair of rocking chairs, side by side, with a round table between them holding a sweating pitcher of iced tea and a pair of glasses; the ice came from the moon, which for him was closer than any grocery or liquor store, but it was quite pure. Mr. Grinde, who’d seldom seen the same person more than once—and never before more than twice—in all the many years since he took over the shop, was pleased beyond measure to have something resembling a friend, or at least a regular visitor. It helped that she was someone he could admire: a woman who’d devoted herself wholeheartedly to a probably hopeless quest—not unlike his own hopeless attempt to inventory the shop’s contents—and who’d given his own life a bit more purpose by enlisting his help in that quest.

“I don’t know.” She swirled the ice in her drink. “Philip Brickman, the scientist who discovered winning the lottery doesn’t make you happy? He committed suicide. Dedicating yourself to the study of happiness doesn’t mean you’ll find it.”

“Mmm. I hope the pursuit didn’t itself hasten his despair.”

“I’m not despairing yet,” she said, but she didn’t look at him when she spoke.

“Good. We haven’t even come close to the end of my list.”

“You’ve got more ideas?”

“Of course. There’s an equation I found that some experts use to calculate happiness. H = S + C + V. That means, basically, happiness equals your genetic set point, plus your circumstances, plus what you voluntarily change. Genetics are beyond us—at least, changing them is dangerous—but we can certainly continue to alter your circumstances and your voluntary behaviors. Eventually we’ll hit upon a combination that has the desired effect.”

She took a sip. “There’s refined sugar in this tea, isn’t there? Forget everything else—refined sugar is happiness.”

“Oh, good,” he said, deadpan. “Then my work here is done. I’ve got a five-pound bag of the stuff you can take home with you.”

“Ha. Seriously, though, if you’ve got more ideas, I’m willing to try. I’ve spent this long and done this much, it seems silly to give up now.”

“Good. I’ve got a little notebook where I’ve been writing possibilities as they occur to me…”

Over the next few years they tried many things. They tried world travel—a compass that could take her anywhere, instantly—which just led to unhappiness and disorientation in assorted faraway locales. They tried fame and art—with a violin once won from the Devil in a fiddling contest—that propelled her to the heights of musical stardom, but the sycophants and hangers-on and embezzling accountants and obsessed fans destroyed her enjoyment of the music, and was troubled by the fact that her abilities were magical, and not the result of personal accomplishment. They tried meditation—a prayer wheel that offered insights into the structure of the universe whenever it was set spinning—but she did not find the realization of her own fundamental insignificance in the incomprehensible vastness of creation to be particularly pleasant. They tried revenges, none lethal but all unpleasant, against everyone who’d ever wronged her—an opportunity for him to get rid of various cursed objects, though she brought them all back, of course—but she didn’t have the right temperament to take real and lasting pleasure in the suffering of others.

Eventually they just started trying things at random: a ring that made her invisible, a cloak that let her transform into a bat, a whistle that let her summon winds, a seashell necklace that enabled her to swim to any depth in the sea, with no need for air or worry about pressure. That one almost worked. She stayed gone for nearly two years, but when she returned, she said the sea was full of wonders, but it was cold and dark and there was no one to talk to, essentially the Arcadian wood all over again, only with squid instead of squirrels.

There were moments of happiness, even whole intervals of happiness, but eventually the engines of her joy brought with them darker consequences that tainted even the memory of the pleasures that had gone before.