Ellen Datlow - The Beastly Bride

“Tell me where you’re going.”

“Tomorrow’s lessons are on the road. I’ll learn to talk with ibises and challenge monsters.”

“Yes, daughter.” Papa smiled. “But help me upstairs before you go.”

In the tower library, Papa instructed Odile on how to work the heavy mechanism that lowered the wappentier’s cage for feeding or recovering the eggs. The wappentier shuddered, and its musty smell filled the room.

“When the time comes, search the highest peaks.” Papa unlocked the latch with a white quill and swung the door open. The hinges screeched. Or maybe the wappentier cried out.

Her heart trembled inside her ribs, and she pulled at her father even as he stepped back.

The wappentier stretched its wings a moment before taking flight. It flew past them — its plumage, which she had always imagined would feel harsh and rough, was gentle like a whisper. The tower shook. Stones fell from the window’s sides and ledge as it broke through the wall.

Odile thought she heard screams below. Horses and men.

Her father hugged her then. He felt frail, as if his bones might be hollow, but he held tight a moment. She could not find the words to assure him that she’d return.

Outside the tower, she found the king’s carriage wallowed in the moat. The horses still lived, though they struggled to pull the carriage free. After years of a diet of game meat, the wappentier might have more hungered for rarer fare. There was no sign of a driver.

She waded into the water, empty of any swans, she noticed. The carriage door hung ajar. Inside was empty. As she led the horses to land, Odile looked up in the sky and did not see the wappentier. It must no longer be starved. She hoped the king was still down in the cellar smashing eggs.

She looked back at the tower and thought she saw for a moment her father staring down from the ruined window. She told herself there might be another day for books and fathers. Perhaps even swans. Then she stepped up to the driver’s seat and took hold of the reins and chose to take the road.

STEVE BERMAN has gone on several nocturnal owl-watches. He falls asleep before he catches even a glimpse of his favorite bird. His novel, Vintage , was a finalist for the Andre Norton Award. He has edited the anthologies Magic in the Mirror-stone, So Fey , and Wilde Stories . He roosts in southern New Jersey.

His Web site is www.steveberman.com.

Blame the ballet. I had been asked to review a performance of Giselle by the Pennsylvania Ballet. My mother had always wanted to see a live ballet, and so she accompanied me to the old Merriam Theater. We both thought the experience was magical. There were moments when the ballerinas achieved a step that looked as if they floated across the stage. I knew I wanted to write something based on the experience.

Conveniently, I had been researching Swan Lake when Ellen and Terri sent me the invitation to submit to this anthology. Sadly, there’s no pointe work in “Thimbleriggery and Fledglings.” Maybe another day, another tale. But the role of Odile, the infamous Black Swan of the ballet, needed to be revisited. I wondered why she went along with her father’s schemes. Not every girl wants a prince or even a crown.

I owe another maternal figure for holding my hand through the writing. Ann Zeddies proved she’s a remarkable reader, the best of friends for any writer. Odile’s story might have been far more tragic if not for Ann’s insight. A debt of thanks to Kelly Link, as well, for one night telling me the secret: sleight of hand is no different from sleight of word.

Doyle Mixon and I were hanging out beneath the bleachers at the Crescent Creek High football field, passing a joint, zoning on the katydids and the soft Indian summer air, when a school bus carrying the Taunton Warriors pulled up at the curb. Doyle was holding in a toke, his eyes closed and face lifted to the sky; with his long sideburns, he looked like a hillbilly saint at prayer. When he caught sight of the team piling off the bus, he tried to suppress a chuckle and coughed up smoke. The cause of his amusement — Taunton had three monstrously fat linemen, and as their uniforms were purple with black stripes and numerals, they resembled giant plums with feet.

One lineman waddled over, his pod-brothers following close behind. “You guys got a problem?” he asked.

Doyle was too stoned to straighten out and he kind of laughed when he said, “We’re fine, dog.”

Standing in a row, staring down at us, they made a bulging purple fence that sealed us off from the rest of the world. Their hair had been buzzed down to stubble, and their faces were three lumpy helpings of sunburned vanilla pudding. Tiny round heads poked up between their shoulder pads. They might have been some weird fatboy rap act like that old MTV guy, Bubba Sparxxx.

“What’s so fucking funny?” a second one asked, and Doyle and I both said, “Nothing,” at about the same time.

“We got a couple of stoners, is what we got,” the first one said, showing Doyle a fist the size of a Monster Burger. “Want to trip on this, freak?”

I kept my mouth shut, but Doyle, I guess he figured we were safe on neutral ground or else he simply didn’t give a damn. “You guys,” he said. “If beer farts were people, they’d look like you guys. All bloated and purple and shit.”

The third lineman hadn’t said a thing — for all I knew, he might not have possessed the power of speech; but he could hear well enough. He yanked Doyle upright and slammed an elbow into the side of his jaw. All three of them went to beating on us. It couldn’t have been more than ten seconds before their coach dragged them off us; but they had done a job in that short time. Doyle’s eyelid was cut and his lip was bleeding. They hadn’t gotten me nearly as bad, but my cheekbone ached and my shirt was ripped.

The coach, Coach Cunliffe, was a dumpy little guy with a torso shaped like a frog’s and a weak comb-over hidden beneath a purple cap. “Son-of-a-buck!” he kept saying, and pounded on their chests. They didn’t even quiver when he hit them. One said something I was too groggy to catch and the coach calmed down all of a sudden. He took a stand over us, his hands on hips, and said, “You boys intend to make a report about this, I expect we got something to report on ourselves. Don’t we?”

Doyle was busy nursing his eye, and I didn’t have a clue what Cunliffe was going on about.

“I was to search your pockets, what you reckon I’d find?” Cunliffe asked. “Think it might be an illegal substance?”

“You lay a hand on me,” Doyle said, “I’ll tell the cops you grabbed my johnson.”

Cunliffe whipped out a cell phone. “No need for me to search. I’ll just call down to the sheriff and get him on the case. How about that?” When neither of us responded, he pocketed the phone. “Well, then. Supposing we call it even, all right?”