Robin Hobb - The Inheritance and Other Stories

Similar waves rise and fall in our genres. Steampunk gives way to urban fantasy. Psychic romance alternates with alternate history. Of course, our genre is probably the only place where we feel free to mix tropes and trends freely. I am sure that an urban steampunk fantasy that involved a psychic tracking down lost lovers in an alternate history setting could do quite well. One could even toss in a werewolf and an alien, and many readers would not find the mixture too heady.

For me, the most fun of working with an overworked topic is trying to burnish away the barnacles and rust to find the solid true core of story at the middle. When anything becomes a stereotype or a cliché, there is one sure truth about it: at the core of it, there is something vital, something that speaks so strongly to all of us that we return, over and over, to try to grasp completely the lesson it is trying to teach us.

This is my effort to knock some of the rust off a cliché and look at it from a slightly different perspective.

Josh was working with a hammer and chisel, cutting out just enough wood from the oak posts to make the gate hinges set flush when the rental sedan came inching slowly up the drive. Its tires crunched softly over the gravel; other than that, it was near silent, the driver letting the car almost idle up the lane. Arizona plates. Well, someone had driven a long ways to visit Mrs. Reid. Josh watched it for a moment, then went back to his work. Her guest was none of his beeswax; the visitor would be for the home owner, not him. He was just the handyman, finishing up the final work on her yard project, just as he was the handyman for a couple dozen other owners of rural cottages.

But of them all, Mrs. Reid was the oddest. Strange lady. The little cottage at the end of the winding lane looked almost exactly as it had when she’d bought it. Usually, when some rich lady bought up one of the cottages, the first thing they did was gingerbread it up. Fresh paint, a patio, a hot tub, and a privacy fence. Those were the standard changes he made for new clients. But not Mrs. Reid. He picked up a Yankee screwdriver, inserted a small bit, and jacked two pilot holes into the post. The only real changes she’d wanted him to make were out here in the yard. But that was none of his beeswax either. The customer got to say what she wanted done and how she wanted it done. No matter how strange the requests. He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his cuff and then tried the hinge in its place. Perfect. He’d have it done by dark.

He was reaching for the screws and screwdriver when the man spoke behind him, startling him. “I’m looking for a woman named Doria. She goes by Doria Simmons. Does she live here?” He had a deep voice, and the softness of his words seemed intentional. The slight sibilance sounded like bad-fitting dentures.

Josh turned to look up at him. The short, stocky man standing over him had gotten out of his car quietly, not even shutting the door behind him. He was an old man, at least in his seventies and more likely in his eighties. The coarse curls of his hair had gone to gray, and there were deep furrows in his brow. A small silver cross on a silver chain rested snugly at the hollow of his throat. It looked odd on a man of his size and years. He lugged a heavy canvas satchel like a workman’s tool bag, but he didn’t have the physique of a man who worked with tools anymore. His shoulders were rounded, curling in toward his chest, and the veins and tendons stood out beneath the age spots on his hands. He just looked old, old and tired. But he also looked determined, in a mean old man sort of way that put Josh’s hackles up without him even thinking about it.

Josh shook his head. “No sir. This is Mrs. Agatha Reid’s cottage. She only moved in a couple months ago. Maybe someone named Simmons lived here before. I wouldn’t know. People who buy these little cottages off the beaten track usually like to keep to themselves. It’s not my place to ask a lot of questions, you know. I’m just the handyman.”

The man’s eyes had narrowed at the woman’s name, a wince almost of pain. It deepened the lines around his mouth and the ones in his brow. “Reid? She’s using the name Reid?”

“That’s the lady that lives here, yes sir. I don’t know about her ‘using’ that name. It’s the only name I know her by.” Josh positioned the hinge, licked the point of the screw, set the point of it into the pilot hole, and then pushed it in with the screwdriver. He leaned against it, pushing hard as the screw bit into the wood. Josh had expected the man to leave. Instead, he stepped closer.

“The woman I’m looking for used to be married to a man named Reid. Adam Reid. She might still be using his name.”

“Well, she told me she was widowed. So Reid might have been her married name. She never told me her husband’s name. I think it still makes her sad to talk about him.” He positioned another screw and began working it in.

The man didn’t reply directly to that. Instead, he leaned over Josh in a way that the handyman resented. He hated working under someone’s scrutiny. That had been one pleasant thing about his job. Mrs. Reid slept days and worked nights. He’d only seen her when she’d given him the carefully written directions for what she wanted done, and the times when she’d given him money for his work and to buy materials. Nice working for a person who didn’t ride him all the time. Even nicer working for someone who paid cash up front.

Now the old man spoke his opinion. “That’s a pretty fancy gate you’re putting up there. Lots of ornamental crosses in the ironwork. But what’s that shiny stuff threaded all through the scrollwork?”

“Lady wanted it done that way. Mrs. Reid wanted all the iron pickets topped with crosses, and the gate to match.” Josh answered reluctantly. It wasn’t good business to talk about his customer’s foibles. Folks who moved this far away from even a little town like McKenna usually valued their privacy. And he valued their business. There wasn’t much else going in McKenna for a jack-of-all-trades.

“That wire looks like it’s real silver.” The old man leaned closer, peering at the wire without touching it. Then he turned his head slowly, following the gleam of the silver wire as it snaked the full length of the fence. It was real silver wire, ordered through the jeweler in town. Mrs. Reid had told Josh to run it in and out of the close-set pickets for the full perimeter of the fence. He’d thought it a terrible waste of her money and told her so. He’d warned her that someone might just see and decide to help themselves to it. She’d insisted, and the customer was always right. He’d done as she’d asked. He just hoped that it would make the young woman feel a bit safer. She was a pale, sickly sort to begin with, and her eyes were all full of sorrow, as if she were pining away.

“And is that garlic planted all along the fence?”

“Yes sir.” Josh was feeling more than a bit irritated and less inclined to talk by the minute. He’d promised Mrs. Reid that the gate would be ready by tonight. She’d been looking forward to the completion of this project for weeks. A substantial bonus was riding on it, and this fellow was delaying him.

Now the man had stepped back to regard all of Josh’s careful handiwork. As the old man’s gaze traveled along the fence, his hand touched the silver cross at his throat. “Crosses worked into the ironwork of the gates, and each wooden picket is a cross at the top. And Saint-John’s-wort and wolfsbane planted all along the outside of the fence.”

“Yes sir. That’s what the lady wanted done and so I did it. You and I might think it’s a bit silly, but it’s her fence and her yard, so she has the right to have it as she wants.” Josh stood slowly, stretched the kink out of his back, and then stooped to pick up the heavy iron gate. Real wrought iron and heavy as all get-out. She could have had one that looked just like it for a fraction of the cost. She’d insisted on cold iron.