Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers

Blood seeped from his wounds, staining the bedsheets. He leaned over to look at the body of the woman. There was a need to know she had not been mutilated. Some subconscious impulse to make sure her previously unblemished form had not been further disfigured by the falling segments of mirror, some of them shaped like scimitars.

She was gone. Her corpse was gone. The space on the floor where she should have lain was simply covered in splinters of glass.

Looking around him at the walls and up at the ceiling, he could see no evidence of hidden recesses from which people might have viewed.

“What?” cried Walt, distressed. “What is this?”

Frantically he began searching through the shards, thinking the woman’s body might be underneath. As he moved the broken slices of mirror around he discovered parts of her shattered image still captured in the glass. Sobbing hysterically, he began to piece her together again, like a puzzle—a pretty brow here, a small breast there, a piece of thigh—and gradually he began to reform her. She was cracked of course, a flawed image, but she remained just as beautiful under the faults and fissures.

Once he had her complete face, she opened her eyes, looked out at him, and smiled a sweet smile.

“Oh, God!” cried Walt. “You’re still alive in there.”

At that moment the door began to open. A high wind suddenly rose from nowhere. Glass began swirling, whirling around the room in a blinding blizzard. Faster and faster flew the shards, until it was as if he were in the vortex of some mighty storm, whose snowflakes were deadly slivers of obsidian. He put his arms around his head to protect himself from the hurricane, but the blast around him did not touch. It showered debris against the bare walls and ceiling. As the fragments flew into the walls and ceiling, they refitted like a self-making jigsaw, until finally the wind died and the mirrors were all back in place, with not a crack to be seen.

“Christ help me,” moaned Walt.

Gradually he unfolded his arms, uncurled himself from the fetal position. Looking down he saw that his earlier wounds had miraculously healed, that there were no cuts or abrasions. It was as if he had never been lacerated in the first place by the falling glass. He was clean in every part.

An oriental man walked in, smiling. The same man Walt had met earlier. He had a drink in his hand. Giving it to Walt he looked around him and his grin grew broader. He shook his head, looking about him.

“All over so soon? You finish quick. You want to go again? Only two hundred dollars this time. Extra-extra-special. Only two hundred. You want?”

Walt whimpered and hugged his knees to his chest.

Midnight Express Michael Swanwick

EXCUSE ME. THIS CAN’T be right.

Yes?

According to this schedule, we arrive at Elf Hill Station at 8:23 P.M. and after a half-hour layover, the train departs exactly two hundred years later.

Quite right.

But that can’t be!

Is this your first time on this route?

Yes, my company is expanding into new markets. I’m a commercial traveler. I used to cover Indiana and Illinois.

Well, that explains it. I take it this is your first visit to Faerie? No previous travel experience in the Noncontiguous Territories—Grammarie, Brocielande, Arcadia, et cetera?

Well… no, but I’ve done a lot of traveling, and I’ve got an excellent record. I won the Daniel L. Houseman Sales Cup three years running.

Most impressive. An obviously intelligent man such as yourself, then, should have no trouble comprehending the chronologically liberated nature of the night lands, as we like to call them.

I beg your pardon. Chronologically liberated?

That’s what I said. You’ll have noticed that physical travel here is particularly dreamlike, that an hour can be spent rushing furiously past a small pond, that a hundred miles can go by in the wink of an eye. That’s because you journey not only physically but temporally—back, forth, sideways in time. Much of the governance of the Territories is managed in that way. Which is a good thing, given how fey most of the officials of Oberon’s court are. I doubt they could deal with matters in a more straightforward manner.

Phew! You’ll pardon me for feeling dizzied. Things don’t work that way where I come from.

That’s not entirely true. There are owls.

Owls?

Owls are continuously flying back and forth through time. It’s their nature. That’s why they have that short labyrinthine name: the circle, the recomplication, the straight line. It’s also why they’re nocturnal. Ambi-chronology is so much easier when nobody’s looking.

Then that’s why it’s still night, even though we’ve been traveling so long?

I said that you were intelligent! To differing degrees, it’s always night here. Don’t worry about Elf Hill. You’ll make up the time later. Or earlier—fourth-dimensional grammar is so boring, don’t you think? I trust you have a Baedeker. You’ll want to study it carefully.

I see, I will. Well. That clears things up quite a bit. Thank you.