Stories: All-New Tales

“They’re from a very old and honorable tree,” he said. “You will never taste a sweeter fruit. And when you eat of it, you will be filled with ideas. Yes, even one such as you, Quirinus Calvino, who barely learned to read.”

“I don’t want it,” I said, when what I really wanted to tell him was not to call me by name. I could not bear that he knew my name.

He said, “Everyone will want it. They will eat and eat and be filled with understanding. Why, learning how to speak another language will be as simple as, oh, learning to build a bomb. Just one bite of the apple away. What about the lighter? You can light anything with this lighter. A cigarette. A pipe. A campfire. Imaginations. Revolutions. Books. Rivers. The sky. Another man’s soul. Even the human soul has a temperature at which it becomes flammable. The lighter has an enchantment on it, is tapped into the deepest wells of oil on the planet, and will set fire to things for as long as the oil lasts, which I am sure will be forever.”

“You have nothing I want,” I said.

“I have something for everyone,” he said.

I rose to my feet, ready to leave, although I had nowhere to go. I couldn’t walk back down the stairs. The thought made me dizzy. Neither could I go back up. Lithodora would have returned to the village by now. They would be searching the stairs for me with torches. I was surprised I hadn’t heard them already.

The tin bird turned its head to look at me as I swayed on my heels, and blinked, the metal shutters of its eyes snapping closed, then popping open again. It let out a rusty cheep. So did I, startled by its sudden movement. I had thought it a toy, inanimate. It watched me steadily and I stared back. I had, as a child, always had an interest in ingenious mechanical objects, clockwork people who ran out of their hiding places at the stroke of noon, the woodcutter to chop wood, the maiden to dance a round. The boy followed my gaze, and smiled, then opened the cage and reached in for it. The bird leaped lightly onto his finger.

“It sings the most beautiful song,” he said. “It finds a master, a shoulder it likes to perch on, and it sings for this person all the rest of its days. The trick to making it sing for you is to tell a lie. The bigger the better. Feed it a lie, and it will sing you the most marvelous little tune. People love to hear its song. They love it so much, they don’t even care they’re being lied to. He’s yours if you want him.”

“I don’t want anything from you,” I said, but when I said it, the bird began to whistle: the sweetest, softest melody, as good a sound as the laughter of a pretty girl, or your mother calling you to dinner. The song sounded a bit like something played on a music box, and I imagined a studded cylinder turning inside it, banging the teeth of a silver comb. I shivered to hear it. In this place, on these stairs, I had never imagined I could hear something so right.

He laughed and waved his hand at me. The bird’s wings snapped from the side of its body, like knives leaping from sheaths, and it glided up and lit on my shoulder.

“You see,” said the boy on the stairs. “It likes you.”

“I can’t pay,” I said, my voice rough and strange.

“You’ve already paid,” said the boy.

Then he turned his head and looked down the stairs and seemed to listen. I heard a wind rising. It made a low, soughing moan as it came up through the channel of the staircase, a deep and lonely and restless cry. The boy looked back at me. “Now go. I hear my father coming. The awful old goat.”

I backed away and my heels struck the stair behind me. I was in such a hurry to get away I fell sprawling across the granite steps. The bird on my shoulder took off, rising in widening circles through the air, but when I found my feet it glided down to where it had rested before on my

shoulder

and I began

to run back up

the way I had come.

I

climbed

in haste for

a time but soon

was tired again and

had to slow to a walk.

I began to think about what

I would say when I reached the

main staircase and was discovered.

“I will confess everything and accept

my punishment, whatever that is,” I said.

The tin bird sang a gay and humorous ditty.

It

fell

silent

though as

I reached the

gate, quieted by

a different song not

far off: a girl’s sobs.

I listened, confused, and

crept uncertainly back to where

I had murdered Lithodora’s beloved.

I heard no sound except for Dora’s cries.

No men shouting, no feet running on the steps.

I had been gone half the night, it seemed to me but

when I reached the ruins where I had left the Saracen

and looked upon Dora it was as if only minutes had passed.

I

came

toward

her and

whispered

to her, afraid

almost to be heard.

The second time I spoke

her name she turned her head

and looked at me with red-rimmed

hating eyes and screamed to get away.

I wanted to comfort her, to tell her I was

sorry, but when I came close she sprang to her

feet and ran at me, striking me and flaying at my

face with her fingernails while she cursed my name.

I meant

to put my

hands on her

shoulders to hold

her still but when I