A Stranger in Paradise Read online

It took three tries and autographing a brown paper grocery sack to escape.

  The cabin was as Dale remembered: a mess. “I’m organized for a living,” he once told Irene. “I shouldn’t have to do it on my own time.”

  His disorderliness no longer annoyed her. “There are two kinds of people,” she told him, just before handing him the papers. “Those who are meant to be married, and those who aren’t.”

  Every wet towel left on the floor, every sticky patch on the counter was now a petty act of defiance. The McMansion in town and this place had been the marriage’s only significant assets. The house was too convenient to her office to sell; that meant he received her ancestral “summer home” in the settlement. It was give him the cabin or sell the house for cash to split.

  At least she wasn’t too stupid to learn. Her new fiancé was presented with a pre-nup. She seemed in no hurry, though, to remarry and let Dale off the alimony hook.

  Cold beer in hand, Dale plunked himself down in front of his laptop. Harald was still hanging from the wall, keeping his plan to himself. Hopefully the change of scenery would help the creative juices to flow. Harald, Harald, Harald . . . do something.

  Scratching erupted at the front door. He couldn’t truthfully claim to have been working, so this wasn’t exactly an interruption. It had to be the feral cat Irene had adopted, demanding table scraps. She’d called it Mr. Mittens, not that it cared. The one time she had lured it into the cabin, it went ballistic the moment she closed the door. After two broken lamps and a spilled trash pail—about ten seconds—she’d let it back out. By any or no name, the cat had a hell of a memory—Irene hadn’t been here in two years, and he never fed it. It kept returning, mangier each time he saw it.

  So what could Harald do? Shatter his chains? An implausible cheat. Bribe the guard? He had no money. Trick the guard? How?

  Damn. Without a brainstorm soon, he’d have to rewrite half the book. That was no way to make deadline. Escaping his crappy day job required that his editor love him. Missing another deadline would doom that concept.

  The clawing grew ever more frenzied. “All right.” He got up and opened the door. A bedraggled black-and-white cat yipped at him—what took you so long?—then sidled warily to the sagging corner of the porch on which Irene once left treats. “Eat what you find, Cootie Kitty.”

  It licked a dark spot on the planking. He was without clue what it had discovered. He didn’t at all care. “I’m going for a hike.” It followed him into the woods.

  The day had been clear and cloudless; the evening sky was a dark, rich blue. Through the trees to the west glimmered shades of red and pink and cerise never seen except in sunsets.

  A good thing about fantasy: He didn’t have to concern himself with viable ecosystems. He picked tree and shrub types at random from a landscaping book. More often he just made up plant names. For all his trips over the years into the North Woods, he couldn’t to save his life identify three types of the trees surrounding him. He walked among the nameless trees, the air redolent. A carpet of leaves and pine needles cushioned his steps. Gravity or habit led him downhill to the streambed that cut across a corner of the property. For most of the summer, it would be bone-dry. Today, it rippled and gurgled nicely. April showers. In Else, he thought inanely, the crops are beginning to poke out of the fields.

  Cootie Kitty darted into the underbrush after something. No loss. Harald on the wall. Couldn’t so much as move without angering the guard and being beaten. Couldn’t cleverly magic his way out of trouble, although many Else residents had such powers. Harald was from Earth, after all, transported through the unseen gateway into Else. Couldn’t be rescued, by the fair sorceress Melissandra, who was, in any event, herself in need of aid, or by anyone else—that would be jumping the shark. Couldn’t afford to have that: Dale’s plan for an accountancy-free future involved Harald’s presence in countless sequels to come.

  If the meager contents of Harald’s rucksack had even hinted at wizardry, he’d be dead already, not just chained to that wall. Past cover art notwithstanding, Harald was too scrawny to be a convincing warrior. That Harald seemed neither a wizard nor a warrior had the castellan, whose hospitality had been violated by Harald’s presence in an off-limits passageway, puzzled.

  The primitive society of Else allowed few other possibilities. Harald had tried to convince his captors he was an itinerant merchant. No sale. That left thief, spy, and runaway serf. None was a career choice that the lord of the castle would reward.

  The next morning—not that, in the bowels of the dungeons, prisoners could distinguish day from night—would bring efforts to obtain a more convincing explanation for Harald’s trespass. Most of Else’s brawny aristocracy correlated veracity with the level of pain being inflicted on the speaker. Volunteering that he was, in fact, a spy would not spare Harald.

  Something green and cricket-sized flitted past Dale, circled him quickly three times, then flew off. Cootie Kitty bounded by in chase, ears flattened aerodynamically to its head.

  The troll only knew no one knew who or what Harald was.

  What if Harald pretended to cast a spell? Something the troll couldn’t possibly recognize a word of, couldn’t know was fake? Say, “Jabberwocky” chanted in pidgin German. In fear and desperation the troll tried to stop Harald—to stuff a rag in his mouth, knock him out, whatever. That gave Harald the opportunity to grab the guard. Our hero looped slack chain around the troll’s muscular neck, pulled it tight until the troll lost consciousness, took the keys. . . .

  It could work. The woodsy scenery often did that for Dale. “Ta ta, Cootie Kitty.” He turned uphill for the cabin, Harald’s escape plan finally clear in his mind’s eye. Another flash of the big green bug, and the scruffy tuxedo cat bounding after it.

  “Let that be,” he yelled after the cat. “It could be my muse.” He was still chuckling when he reached the cabin.

  Neither repeated shuffling laps around the block nor a meander through the neighborhood park yielded any ideas. Harald was almost reunited with Melissandra, and together they could quest for wyggrl root. Ogres were susceptible to a potion concocted from wyggrl and dried troll sweat. The guard’s sweaty jerkin was a serendipitous memento of Harald’s brief captivity.

  Stalling wasn’t as bad as powering down the laptop altogether. Dale Googled himself: sometimes a favorable review or chat-room praise was motivating. He found, to his surprise, a terse but appreciative mention of how Far Treasures illustrated and extended the rich cultural heritage of Cayce County. That, it turned out, was the locale of his cabin. Who knew?

  On his next weekend foray, Dale stopped at the library. Its cultural heritage might be rich; Cayce County was evidently not. None of the public records were computerized. (There are ten kinds of people, he thought. Those who get binary, and those who don’t.)

  In dust-covered, mildewed stacks, on brittle, yellowed old newspapers, he found more than a dozen enchanted-forest articles. Elves. Trolls. Ogres. Tripe for tourists, of course, like haunted English castles, or the vampire tours in New Orleans. The articles cited ogres the most frequently; the descriptions read like hairless Bigfoots. Bigfeet. Whatever.

  Evidently his trolls and ogres “looked” something like Cayce County’s trolls and ogres. Whose didn’t? Were Tolkien’s orcs that unique? Or maybe he’d somewhere encountered mention of the local folklore, and his subconscious had made use of it.

  Still sneezing from the dust, he drove the final stretch to the cabin. He felt optimistic about finishing a first draft of Hidden Treasures this weekend. Once Melissandra realized—somehow—that a spell had been cast over her, a spell that made false her visions in the enchanted pond of Y’thrl, she and Harald would be reunited. The final pieces would fall into place.

  There are two kinds of people in my head, he decided: conscious and subconscious. The latter was almost certainly the better writer.

  The beer tasted c
onsistently superior at the cabin, to the credit of a nearby microbrewery rather than any subconscious trickery. It was raining buckets tonight; Dale delegated to alcohol rather than to a woodland stroll the unfettering of his imagination. The first bottle didn’t quite do the trick, so he popped the top off a second. And a third. And a fourth.

  He woke with a start. No spell does just one thing.

  He insisted on rules in his created universe. No spell does just one thing was his magical analogue to equal-but-opposite reactions. So what else would a false-vision-inducing spell do?

  Unexpected motion caught his eye. A hint of green at the open window, something half obscured by the billowing drapes. False visions at the pond balanced by true sight where none could be expected? He imagined a glow of approval, a delicate buzzing of gossamer wings. Was his subconscious that impressed by the rich cultural heritage of Cayce County? Or his subconscious on beer?

  Hmm. True sight where none could be expected. Melissandra saw a thing she knew she could not possibly have seen. From that she doubted her visions of Harald’s death. With that suspicion, the spell would break. . . .

  More sensation of approval. A sudden gust streamed the drapes far into the room—and pinned a cricket-sized green something to the copper-mesh screen. His first impression was of a woman crossed with a dragonfly.

  Before there could be a second impression, something dark with a forked tail and light underbelly swooped out of the night. It flew off with his muse in its beak.

  Mewing and scratching roused Dale the next morning. Cootie Kitty’s insistence was, this one time, welcome. Stumbling to the front door, he had faint recollections of an insane dream. Folklore, beer, and antihistamines were evidently a potent mix. For an instant, it was as though he had seen his muse. That was a hoot and a half.

  If whatever bug he thought he remembered seeing eaten were his muse, he needed to get adopted pronto by a new critter. He vaguely remembered coming up with a way for Melissandra to know she was under a spell, vaguely being the operative word.

  Most of a case of beer remained in his refrigerator—more than enough cold ones to reproduce last night’s buzz. Hopefully that was also enough to reconstruct the plot gimmick he needed.

  Harald performing magic.

  Dale sat up with a start, the words in his mind’s ear no mere whisper. Of course Harald from Earth didn’t perform magic. But trapped in a world where magic truly worked, where the brightest minds had turned to the study of enchantment, Harald knew more science than the natives. He did tricks that confounded the mightiest of wizards, because they were accomplished without sorcery. Dale smiled: With a supply of duct tape, Harald might rule Else.

  Harald performing magic. Yes, that could be the incongruity Melissandra needed to remember seeing to recognize that a spell had been cast over her. For Harald had entrusted his secret origin only to his beloved. The sorcerer who had ensnared her couldn’t possibly know . . .

  Harald stood atop the proud battlements of the Alabaster City, the fair Melissandra at his side. Purple and red pennants fluttered in the freshening breeze. Imagery of Else, like many he has envisioned before—but somehow clearer. And superimposed above it all was something more. Something inchoate. A yearning?

  Motion outside the cabin window caught his eye: a bird. He was little better at recognizing birds than trees, but it might be the one that ate last night’s . . . mystery bug.

  There are two types of people: those who recognize reality, and those who don’t. Fighting reality was almost always, he told himself, a losing battle.

  Still, he couldn’t bring himself to call last night’s visitor an elf.

  * * *

  “Powerful and compelling.” Dale never tired of the cover quote. It wasn’t one hallucinatory reviewer’s deranged opinion, either. Dale’s editor had declared himself blown away by the ending of Hidden Treasures, enough so to fight for and win the first advertising budget ever for one of Dale’s novels.

  Even more gripping reading, Dale thought, was the advance check he’d gotten for another sequel. The Xerox of a check—it hadn’t taken him long to cash that puppy. The used furniture was gone from his apartment. The old laptop, in truth more luggable than portable, had been replaced by a sleek new model. He had a great line in mind for the climactic scene of Seductive Treasures. The ogre fell down the winding stairway one step at a time, just like anyone else.

  Unfortunately, that sentence was all Dale had.

  On the drive to the cabin, he found himself wondering if any athlete truly believed that lucky underwear made him run faster or swing a bat with greater precision. There are two kinds of people, he told himself: those in control of their lives, and those who have lost their marbles. He found himself uncertain, unusual as it was for him, in which category he belonged.

  Seductive Treasures unfolded quickly in the serene quiet of the woods. Weekend after weekend, he took notes on the small wooden deck behind the cabin. The trim laptop was convenient; the cooler at his side was always well-stocked. Night after night he dozed in the hammock, awakening with fresh ideas, new characters, plot twists clear in his mind. More than once he spotted the same fork-tailed bird perched in a nearby tree: about eight inches long, a glossy blue-black with a lighter belly. By now he knew it was a female purple martin. They ate dragonflies, among other things.

  At the rate things were going, Dale would wrap up the new manuscript by its end-of-year deadline. But would he continue at this rate? Although it surely made no sense, he dreaded the purple martin’s inevitable winter migration—and was terrified of injuring the bird were he to try to capture it. My good luck charm, Dale kept rationalizing to himself—

  Until, in a streak of black and dirty white, Cootie Kitty shot up a tree trunk, leapt, and brought down the purple martin in flight.

  Hypnotism!

  Dale shuddered, the word thundering in his brain. Hypnotism! A non-spell spell. His head was spinning, whether from a six-pack of beer—or the shock of seeing the purple martin slain. Not five feet away on the deck lounged Cootie Kitty, licking a paw, studying him closely. Its eyes glowed. Hypnotism! A post-hypnotic suggestion implanted in the guard captain of Y’thrl.

  Clear as a bell was another concept: home. Somewhere, the Alabaster City sparkled in the sun. Faint music, of flutes and lyres and instruments he could not name, wafted on the breeze. The waxing and waning of voices in the bazaar. This one understands. I am going home. Cootie Kitty trotted past him toward the woods. Toward the downward slope that led to the creek, where his imagination always seemed the most potent.

  There are two kinds of people: those who learn from experience, and those who don’t. Dale could learn. He’d learned that the larger the animal, the clearer his visions. And that he, on his own, had no imagination.

  He lunged at, toppled over Cootie Kitty. It hissed and clawed as he caught it. Squeezed it. I want to go home! demanded the voiceless voice in his head.

  It stopped fighting when he broke its neck. His mind protectively blanked. When awareness returned, his stomach was painfully distended. A few bloody bones and scraps of black-and-white fur surrounded him. I want to go home! bellowed a recess of his own mind. Home, it was clear, lay downhill, through an invisible pathway above the now-dry streambed.

  Home was Else.

  But the deepest impression, that which filled Dale with guilty joy, was the recognition that memories of four epic adventures of the very real Harald and Melissandra were now his.

  So absorbed was Dale in his typing that he did not consciously notice the swelling vibration of the cabin floor. “Stretching forth his arms, the loose sleeves of his wizard’s cloak gaping, the great wizard Y’mrrl set the whole castle to shaking. ‘You will now die, Harald,’ intoned the wizard. ‘You will now . . .’ ”

  The cabin door disintegrated into a cloud of splinters. A hideous, slobbering giant, its muscles rippling, stooped and en
tered. Rage and determination were etched on its face. There was no doubt in Dale’s mind the creature was from Else. There was no mistaking the joy in his mind’s inner mind.

  Dale’s final thought as the ogre seized him, was, “There are two kinds of people. Those who eat and . . .”

  BETTER THE DEVIL YOU KNOW

  I have this theory about pick-up trucks: Non-farmers who drive them either are—or aspire to be—named Bubba.

  Imagine then, if you will, my gut reaction on the day I arrived at my office in my shiny new Porsche convertible to discover a battered old pick-up truck in my reserved parking spot in the underground garage. For the full effect, imagine the accompanying audio, complete with a goodly supply of short but time-honored Anglo-Saxonisms. The truck had West Virginia plates.

  It was raining, naturally. My umbrella was at home, since I normally drive directly from one garage into another. I had to park at the furthest edge of the outside visitors’ lot. I tried to run between the drops; that worked about as well as it ever does. Picture me sopping wet by the time I was inside. This time, imagine a few of those colorful and anatomically improbable expressions for which sailors are so famous.

  Steam was rising from my ruined suit and my ears with about equal intensity when I reached my office. In my reception area, to my amazement, stood Bubba himself. About six-foot sixteen, bib overalls, plaid flannel shirt, size thirteen shit-kickers . . . who else could it be? The last crop to be successfully grown in West Virginia had long since turned to coal, so I was reasonably sure that—despite his get-up—my visitor couldn’t be a farmer. Only the momentary pause while I searched for a totally devastating remark allowed Bubba to get in the first word.

  “Golly,” he began. (Really, I’m not making this up.) “You look just like Cheryl said.”

  Cheryl is my ex. Somewhere during our courtship, in a rumpled moment when I was otherwise very distracted, she’d mentioned having relatives “out East.” I’d pictured old money—not a gene pool unchanged since her trilobite ancestors. Or was that troglodyte? Science isn’t my thing—but that will become only too evident anon. Whatever, Bubba had a claim of acquaintanceship; it would be unseemly to blast him where he stood.