Ellen Datlow - The Beastly Bride

“And what happened to Raleigh?” Kate sat down on her top step, her chin in her hands, her tail curled around her side. “One day you wound him up too tight, and something deep down inside of him snapped?”

“No, no. Truth to tell, I just set him down one day and forgot all about him. I found him in a box, years later. And he just wouldn’t play anymore. I turned the key, and nothing happened. I kept him around, ever since, but. nothing, of course. I took him to a toy shop once, to see if I could get him fixed, but the man said he’d have to cut Raleigh open, and I couldn’t do that.”

“May I see him?” Kate asked. William slowly walked forward, through the midst of the faded carnival posters, and gently laid the little lion in her hands.

“You know,” he said, “I thought, that night, I might give him to your grandmother. But she’d already gone inside the tent. I’m sure she could have gotten one of her own, of course, but. ” He shrugged. “I was twelve.”

Kate gently turned Raleigh over and over in her hands. “Those carnival games were all rigged,” she said softly. “Grandmother told me. The balls were full of sawdust, and the bottles were nailed down.”

“Maybe I really wanted that lion.” William chuckled. “Maybe I just believed I could do it.” He reached into yet another pocket and brought an ancient yellow baseball up into the light. He tossed it from one hand to the other. “Maybe I switched the balls. This one has lug nuts in the middle.”

“What don’t you have in that coat?” Kate asked.

“The devil’s three golden hairs and a cure for cancer. I’ve got just about everything else, though.”

Kate smiled and held Raleigh out for William to take back. William shook his head.

“No,” he said. “He’s most of why I came by. He’s always been your grandmother’s, really, at least to my mind. So that pretty much makes him yours.”

“Thank you,” Kate said, and she hugged the little lion tightly.

“Not at all,” said William. He touched the brim of his hat, and turned away.

“Black Widow’s act,” she said, and he stopped. “It was pretty simple. She could swallow a four-inch-long tarantula and bring it up again, alive.”

William shuddered. “That’s it?”

“Well, she could do some other things, too, but they were too much for the show. And you don’t want to know, even if you think you do.”

“Ah, well. I suppose that’s what I get for spending my dime on milk bottles instead of on the show.” He walked back down the walkway, but stopped on the curb. He half-turned back. “So your grandmother’s name was Kate, too, then?”

Kate’s tail twitched. “And my mother’s. It’s a popular name in the family.”

William tipped his hat one last time. “You have a good rest of your Halloween, Miss Kate.”

As quick as a big cat pouncing, Kate jumped down from the porch and ran up to William. She pressed her dime into his palm and whispered, “One more ticket to see the show.” She smiled. “Save it this time.”

“Thank you much,” said William, closing his hand tightly around the little coin.

“Good night to you, William Wildhawk,” said Kate over her shoulder as she walked back to her house, her tail swishing.

“Good-bye,” said William Wildhawk. Kate ran lightly up the stairs and inside, shutting the door behind her.

For a long time, the old, old man did not walk down the road. He stood beneath the streetlight, looking at the dime flashing in his hand: purple-white, when it reflected the halogen lamp above his head; blue, when he tilted it to catch the moonlight. And then there was another light caught in the coin’s face, a warm and golden light that he hadn’t seen in years, the kind of light you could only get from old, old bulbs, like the ones over a carnival midway. He looked up and saw that warm light flashing inside Kate’s house. She passed by a window, and she waved to him, a flourish of fingers matched by a flourish of her tail, and then the curtains fell closed, and the lights went off.

As William turned away, he thought he could hear music playing from somewhere far away: a simple music-box tune, somehow both jaunty and sad, the sort of tune you might hear at the end of a long, cold night as the sky grows blue, just before the sun rises.

He held the dime tightly, and shoved both hands deep into his pockets. “Just one thin dime”—he chuckled—“to see the show.” And he walked slowly toward home, humming the little tune to himself as he stepped into the shadows.

STEWART MOORE has spent more time onstage than is really good for him, as Kate the Lion-Tailed Girl could tell you. He has worked as an actor, a lighting designer, a director, and a playwright. He has also been a legal proofreader, which is a good deal less interesting, and is a husband and father, which is considerably more interesting. His work has been published in Palimpsest and The Encyclopedia of Early Judaism .

Currently, he is pursuing a doctorate in the study of the Hebrew Bible, but no, he doesn’t know the meaning of life — yet.

When I lived in Manhattan, I worked nights and would often walk home in the early morning hours through Central Park. One of my routes would take me through the zoo when the only things moving would be the seals, swimming around and around and around in their tank. and, if I arrived just in time, there was the Delacorte Music Clock. At 8:00 A.M. precisely, a bronze penguin would chase a kangaroo chasing a goat chasing a hippo chasing a bear. All the while, a calliope would play — usually a treacly, tinkly round of “Frère Jacques” or “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

One morning, the little windup animals started up their round as I passed by, and they played the saddest song I’d ever heard. I have no idea what the tune was, and though I can almost hear it again now, it slips away from me. Being at that time young enough to think myself old, I imagined an old, old man, holding a windup toy that once, long ago, had played a sad, sad song, but now only sat in silence. It was the sort of tune I associated with the carnivals of my youth (even then a dying breed): cotton candy, carousels, and freak shows.

Kate leaped up onto the stage immediately. After that, it was only a matter of typing.

Salim shaded his eyes from the blazing sunlight that burnished the desert a copper color. His horse panted as it plodded through the shifting sand. It was his own fault that he was here, Salim thought angrily; his fault that he was wandering across the desert in search of his rebellious spear.

That morning, the emir, his father, had called together Salim and his two older brothers. “My sons,” he said, “you have grown into strong young men. You are excellent hunters and your spears never miss their aim. It is time now to marry the brides I selected for you many years ago when you were first born. Go to the home of the woman chosen for you and drive your spear into the ground before her door to let the family know the time has come.”