Neil Gaiman - Stories - All-New Tales

Sunny peered down from her window. “Do you need help?” she called to me.

I could see right into the creature now, and it was grim-like those fairy tales where the sisters get their toes chopped off and the bad guys get pecked to death by crows and even the little mermaid has to walk on razor blades for the rest of her life for daring to fall in love…Except that I knew Sunny had got the Disney version instead, with all the happy endings in it, and the chipmunks and rabbits and the goddamned squirrels (I hate squirrels!) singing in harmony, where even the wolves are good guys and no one ever really gets hurt-

I gave her a sarcastic smile. “Yeah, wouldya?” I said.

“Okay,” said Sunny, and pulled the drapes and stepped out onto the balcony.

And then something very weird happened.

I WAS WATCHING HER from the alleyway, my arms pinned to my sides now and the ephemera straddling me with its overcoat spread like a vulture about to spear an eyeball. The cold was so intense that I couldn’t feel my hands at all, and the stench of the thing made my head swim, and the rain was pounding into my face and my glam was bleeding out so fast that I knew I had seconds, no more-

So the first thing she did was put her umbrella up.

Ignored Arthur’s desperate commands-besides, he was still wrestling with the second ephemera. His colours were flaring garishly; runelight whirled around them both, warring with the driving rain.

And then she smiled.

It was as if the sun had come out. Except that it was night, and the light was, like, sixty times more powerful than the brightest light you’ve ever known, and the alley lit up a luminous white, and I screwed my eyes shut to prevent them from being burnt there and then out of their sockets, and all these things happened at once.

First of all, the rain stopped. The pressure on my chest disappeared, and I could move my arms again. The light, which had been too intense even to see when it first shone out, diffused itself to a greenish-pink glow. Birds on the rooftops began to sing. A scent of something floral filled the air-strangest of all in that alleyway, where the smell of piss was predominant-and someone put a hand on my face and said:

“It’s okay, sweetie. They’ve gone now.”

Well, that was it. I opened my eyes. I figured that either I’d taken more concussion than I’d thought, or there was something Our Thor hadn’t told me. He was standing over me, looking self-conscious and bashful. Sunny was kneeling at my side, heedless of the alleyway dirt, and her blue dress was shining like the summer sky, and her bare feet were like little white birds, and her sugar blond hair fell over my face and I was glad she really wasn’t my type, because that lady was nothing but trouble. And she gave me a smile like a summer’s day, and Arthur’s face went dangerously red, and Sunny said:

“Lucky? Are you okay?”

I rubbed my eyes. “I think so. What happened to Skól and Haiti?”

“Those guys?” she said. “Oh, they had to go. I sent them back into Shadow.”

Now Arthur was looking incredulous. “How do you know about Shadow?” he said.

“Oh, Arthur, you’re so sweet .” Sunny pirouetted to her feet and planted a kiss on Our Thor’s nose. “As if I could have lived here this long and not have known I was different-” She looked at the illuminated sky. “Northern lights,” she said happily. “We ought to have them more often here. But I really do appreciate it,” she went on. “You guys looking out for me, and everything. If things had been different, if we hadn’t been made from such different elements, then maybe you and I could have-you know-”

Arthur’s face went, if possible, even redder.

“So, what are you going to do now?” she said. “I guess we’re safe-for a while, at least. But Chaos knows about us now. And the Shadow never really gives up…”

I thought about it for a while. And then an idea came to me. I said: “Have you ever thought of a career in entertainment? I could find a job for you with the band…” I wondered if she could sing. Most celestial spheres can, of course, and anyway, she’d light up the place just by stepping onto the stage-we’d save a fortune on pyrotechnics…

She gave that megawatt smile of hers. “Is Arthur in the band, too?”

I looked at him. “He could be, I guess. There’s always room for a drummer.”

Come to think of it, there’s a lot to be said for going on the road right now. New people, new lineup, new places to go-

“That would be nice.” Her face was wistful. His was like that of a sick puppy, and it made me even more relieved that I’d never been the romantic type. I tried to imagine the outcome: sun goddess and thunder god on stage together, every night-

I could see it now, I thought. Wild-re, on tour again. I mean, we’re talking rains of fish, equatorial northern lights; hurricanes, eclipses, solar flares, flash floods-and lightning. Lots of lightning. Might be a little risky, of course.

But all the same-a hell of a show.

YOU ASK ME IF I CAN FORGIVE MYSELF? I can forgive myself for many things. For where I left him. For what I did. But I will not forgive myself for the year that I hated my daughter, when I believed her to have run away, perhaps to the city. During that year I forbade her name to be mentioned, and if her name entered my prayers when I prayed, it was to ask that she would one day learn the meaning of what she had done, of the dishonour that she had brought to my family, of the red that ringed her mother’s eyes.

I hate myself for that, and nothing will ease that, not even what happened that night, on the side of the mountain.

I had searched for nearly ten years, although the trail was cold. I would say that I found him by accident, but I do not believe in accidents. If you walk the path, eventually you must arrive at the cave.

But that was later. First, there was the valley on the mainland, the whitewashed house in the gentle meadow with the burn splashing through it, a house that sat like a square of white sky against the green of the grass and the heather just beginning to purple.

And there was a boy outside the house, picking wool from off a thorn-bush. He did not see me approaching, and he did not look up until I said, “I used to do that. Gather the wool from the thorn-bushes and twigs. My mother would wash it, then she would make me things with it. A ball, and a doll.”

He turned. He looked shocked, as if I had appeared out of nowhere. And I had not. I had walked many a mile, and had many more miles to go. I said, “I walk quietly. Is this the house of Calum MacInnes?”

The boy nodded, drew himself up to his full height, which was perhaps two fingers bigger than mine, and he said, “I am Calum MacInnes.”

“Is there another of that name? For the Calum MacInnes that I seek is a grown man.”

The boy said nothing, just unknotted a thick clump of sheep’s wool from the clutching fingers of the thorn-bush. I said, “Your father, perhaps? Would he be Calum MacInnes as well?”

The boy was peering at me. “What are you?” he asked.

“I am a small man,” I told him. “But I am a man, nonetheless, and I am here to see Calum MacInnes.”

“Why?” The boy hesitated. Then, “And why are you so small?”

I said, “Because I have something to ask your father. Man’s business.” And I saw a smile start at the tips of his lips. “It’s not a bad thing to be small, young Calum. There was a night when the Campbells came knocking on my door, a whole troop of them, twelve men with knives and sticks, and they demanded of my wife, Morag, that she produce me, as they were there to kill me, in revenge for some imagined slight. And she said, ‘Young Johnnie, run down to the far meadow, and tell your father to come back to the house, that I sent for him.’ And the Campbells watched as the boy ran out the door. They knew that I was a most dangerous person. But nobody had told them that I was a wee man, or if that had been told them, it had not been believed.”