“Sssssseeeeeellllect m—” While the arch speaks I take John’s knife from his belt and cut him a new smile. And before the blood comes I’m off, sprinting toward the Nuban. I’m still quick, but less so as I reach him and stab the first of his guards through the eye. I twist the blade as I pull it free, grating over the socket. The Nuban breaks the second man’s face with the back of his head.
I chase Greb down. He runs although he has the bigger knife, and he thinks I’m as old as thirteen. My arm aches to stick John’s blade into the man, to sink it between his shoulders and hear him howl. But he sprints off a drop in the half-light before I reach him. I stop at the top and look down to where he sprawls at broken angles.
Returning to the arch, I take slow steps. The rain comes in flurries now, weakening. The cold is in me at last, my hands numb. The Nuban is sat upon a rock by the bone pile, checking his crossbow for damage. He looks up as I draw near. It’s his judgment that matters to me, his approval.
“We failed.” He nods toward the arch. “Maybe the Builders have been watching us. Wanting us to do better.”
“I don’t care what they think of me,” I say.
His brow lifts a fraction, half puzzled, half understanding. He puts the crossbow across his knees. “I’m as broken a thing as my gods ever made, Jorg. We keep bad company on the road. Any man would look good against them.” He shakes his head. “Better to listen to the arch than me! And better to listen to neither of us.” He slaps a hand to his chest. “Judge yourself boy.” He looks back to his work. And more quiet, “Forgive yourself.”
I walk back to the arch, stepping around the corpses of the Select. I wonder at the ties that bound them, the bonds forged by the arch’s judgments. Those bonds seem more pure, more reasoned that the arbitrary brotherhood of the road that binds me to my own band of rogues, links forged and broken by circumstance. A yard from the arch I can see my reflection warped across the Builder-steel. The arch called “fail” for me, condemned me to the bone pile, and yet seconds later I was Select. Did I validate myself in the moments between?
“Opinions are well and good,” I tell it. I have a rock in my hands, near as heavy as I can lift. “Sometimes it’s better not to speak them.” I throw the rock hard as I can and it slams into the cross support, breaking into jagged pieces.
I set a hand to the scar left on the metal.
“FAILure to connect,” the arch says.
And in the end the arch has the right of it.
My daughter, Maya, has loved and lost many cats. There was Boyboy, who went out one rainy Massachusetts night and never came back. In all likelihood, his was a grisly demise. Girly died of a heart attack at a vet’s office in Colorado Springs. A couple years later, the suave and debonair Dolphino felt called by the wild and disappeared into it. And then Melio, that scrappy street kitten from Fresno…let’s just say that Melio went to Maine. That’s no place for a Californian. We now have two very alive cats, Percy and Mungo. We’re doing our best to keep them that way.
Maya had a bond with each of these lost pets. I will never forget the wail of grief when she heard of Girly’s death, or the glazed look in her eyes that lasted for weeks after Dolphino disappeared. They’re sad memories, but they’re ones that will forever be part of the childhood she’s now growing out of fast.
Shawn Speakman asking me to contribute a story to his anthology coincided with the run-up to Maya’s thirteenth birthday. Prompted by him, I came up with a story that in many ways is for my daughter. I gave it to her on her birthday, a handmade version that I bound myself. And then I offered it to Shawn as well. Kind guy that he is, he accepted it.
Expect no mad sorcerers, warrior princesses, or fantastical monsters in this story. This one is about a ghost cat named Michael Stein. He’s a clever cat, one that doesn’t let his unfortunate death stop him from giving an amazing gift to the girl he loves.
— David Anthony Durham
ALL THE GIRLS LOVE MICHAEL STEIN
David Anthony Durham
“I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” Michael Stein said.
“Indeed,” Pax sighed. “It breaks my heart. She just has to get through it, though. They always do, eventually.”
“But look at her!” Michael Stein said. “She’s…” He couldn’t think of the word. “She’s…”
“Inconsolable?” Pax offered.
The her was Lucy, and she did indeed look inconsolable.
She lay on her bed, crying. It had been three days since the incident, but she hadn’t gotten any better. Her parents tried to soothe her. They let her miss the last few days of middle school, saying the summer would just have to begin early. They even proposed getting a new kitten.
Michael Stein had been a bit put out by that, but he had nothing to worry about. Lucy wouldn’t hear of it. The very suggestion ripped a sob of grief out of her. She refused to leave her room. She refused to take her friend’s phone calls. She wouldn’t read any of her detective books. She wouldn’t even look at the shelves with the cat books, of which she had quite a collection. Usually, she spent hours each evening drawing feline forms in all their glory. Not anymore.