Geoff Ryman - Was

"He was the Substitute," said Dotty, as if Bill should have known. "Frank Balm."

Heritage was at the door, holding it open. "Substitute for what?" Bill asked, walking backward. Her face had gone immobile. "Dotty? Substitute for what?"

She just kept smiling. She was gone. Bill was just at the door when he heard the answer to his question.

"For home," Dotty whispered.

Bill took all of this home to Carol, and Carol was disturbed. What she loved in Bill was his normality. She had been trained to confuse that with virtue. What Bill was involved in now was nothing to do with normality.

"I don't want to hear any more," she said, flustered. "It's a lot of babbling from some crazy old woman."

"But it's like it isn't crazy," he said. "It's like it makes a certain kind of sense."

"Oh, Bill! Can't we just forget it?"

There were so many things to be done. Christmas was coming up, and Mrs. Davison was going to spend it with Carol's family. After all, they were all going to be one family soon. And everybody in Waposage always had everybody else in for Christmas. That meant a cold hard clean of the house, and then Christmas decorations, and lights up along the eaves, maybe a Santa on the roof if you were really public-spirited, and taking relatives on long drives around the town and villages to look at the lights. And presents! Near enough everybody who came to the house had to have a present, not to mention all the stuff you had to get for Christmas morning. And after that, not two months later, there was the wedding.

So why was he getting all wrapped up in some old lady? Because he's a nice boy, that's why. But that kind of niceness could get you down, if it went on too long, and that kind of niceness opened up a door that led to God knows where. That kind of niceness scared Carol to death.

So they went about all their business, going from store to store, Carol's arm in his, finding presents for brothers and sisters and cousins. Bill got a bit worked up about what to get his mother. He felt bad because he was leaving her at home, well, he would have to once they were married, but he wanted to get her something especially nice. Carol helped. She especially devoted herself to finding Mrs. Davison the perfect gift. "I think I've got it," she said. "A home permanent kit!"

He was a man and didn't understand. "Look," Carol explained patiently. "She doesn't have one, and I know she likes going to the beauty parlor, she always just sits back and relaxes when she comes in. But every woman likes to think she can get her hair up for something special if she can't get into the parlor. And look, this is a real good one. Comes with full instructions, rollers, the whole bit."

Bill really didn't seem to understand what a great present it was.

"I'm just worried it might make her feel more alone," he said. "You know, staying in with her hair in rollers and no one to take her out."

"Look. We'll get her the home permanent and something else. Hey, wait, I got it. A new dress for the wedding! Mrs. Harris just made her one, didn't she? She'll have her measurements. Oh, come on, Billy!"

"Okay, okay, you win," he said, smiling and holding up his hands.

"Trust me," said Carol.

They picked up some stocking stuffers for the kids, and perfume for her mother, and went on to the hardware store for some new drill bits for Daddy. They passed the bookshop. "Hold on," said Bill.

"Since when," asked Carol, following, "have you been interested in books?"

Bill wasn't. In fact, he had never been in a bookshop and felt very uncomfortable going into one. But the book was in the window.

"That book in the window," he asked, after waiting for ages behind people at the counter. "Is that the book they based that movie on?"

"The one on TV? Yup," said the salesgirl and waited.

"Could you get it for me?" he asked, helpless.

"Um. It's just over there," she replied, pointing. "I got to work the cash register."

"Oh. Sure."

He really did feel out of place, but he found the book. Carol rejoined him, with a few books for the relatives and the kids.

"You're buying that?" she asked him. Her mother was a librarian. "That's supposed to be a real bad book for kids. None of the libraries will stock it. They don't even list it in the guides and things."

He turned the book over in his hands. "Is it dirty or something?"

"No. But the fantasy is unhealthy. Bad for the little ones."

"Well, it isn't a present for a kid."

"Who is it for, then?"

"It's for Dotty."

Carol felt fear. "You're buying that old mad lady a Christmas present?"

"Somebody's got to," he said.

He bought her The Wonderful Wizard of Oz . He looked at the name on the cover and felt that strange prickling again. Frank Baum. She had mentioned him. Did she really know him? Or was that too much of a coincidence?

"How's my girl?" Bill would ask Dotty in the mornings, when he arrived.

"Oh, just fit as a fiddle," she might reply. And then they would talk.

"I just realized," Dotty said one morning. "You boys call us Angels, don't you? I used to make angels. Wilbur and me."

He understood now that Wilbur was a childhood friend. He also understood that Wilbur was often with her.

"Has Wilbur come by again?" Bill asked.

"Oh he comes and sets a spell, just like you do," Dotty told him. "He used to set all day by the road, just waiting to see who would happen by. Sometimes God did."

Bill was thrown for a moment. He coughed. "Anybody else come and visit?" he asked.

"The Good Witch," she said. "And the Bad Witch."

He felt the prickling again. That was in the book. He'd read it. Most of it.

"They're the same person," she confided, in a whisper.

"Are you a good witch or a bad witch?" he asked.

"Oh, I'm not a witch at all. I'm Dorothy Gael from Kansas. And that's not East, and that's not North, and that's not South, and that's not really even West. Kansas is nowhere at all."

"Right where everyplace else meets."

"Meets right here," she said, and tapped her own head.

Bill found he was piecing her world together. She had at some point obviously read the book and found it so much like her life that it got wound up in the strange world she lived in. There was, as far as he could gather, this other place she went to when she got the stare. And in that place she was happy, with lots of old friends, all together there. She only got mad when someone tried to pull her out of it. He knew better than to talk to her if she was too far lost in the stare. Or if reality had been too far pushed under her nose, and she wanted to go back to the place she called Was.

And sometimes poison would jet out of her, as if from a wound.

He said hello to her one morning. "Why you talking to me?" Dotty demanded. "You must have something better to do." She shrugged herself deeper down into her own embrace.

"I'm just visiting."

"Go visit somewhere else. I know what you're after. All you men are just the same."

Then she said, "You'd pig-back Christ on the cross given half a chance."

"Dotty, there's no call to talk to me like that."

"You wanna see? You wanna see? You wanna have a good look?"

She said it in hatred. She started to pull her dress up. "Go on, then have a look at a poor old lady."

Bill backed away. You had to make sure people saw you weny nowhere near her. For legal reasons.

"You know you do it to children. Go on. Look at a poor old lady You can't hurt her anymore with that thing of yours. Go on!"

Bill had to walk away. He knew his face was white and he could feel his hands trembling. He had been shaken in the depths of his purity. She had been made so bitter! Bill could not imagine what could make anyone as full of bile as that. Except that it seemed to him that it must have come from something terrible that was done to her.