She nods, and in her nod is forgiveness for my failures. In her nod are the redwoods and the coast of California, the logs with the mushrooms under them in the woods in Washington, the way we lay on our backs looking up at the meteor shower one August in the desert, the way she told me she loved me at four in the morning, and then made me scream, the way she said she was no longer a tourist but a resident, the way she let me put my ring on her finger and put hers on mine, and the way we held hands as we slept.
I’ll take this dream, if it means I get to hear Tania naming the world all over again, and beside her, my kid, naming too, rhyming back to her, singing the words for grass and leaves, singing the words for dropping out of a band and staying dropped, singing the words for love and for choosing to stay where you live instead of running back into a place made of light and drift. They’re singing the words for saving this place.
Eron Chaos is before Tania, standing in his electric suit, his teeth clenched, black tears running down his face. My wife stands in front of him. I’m terrified she’s on her way back to Adriftica, but if I was born for anything I was born to run lucky in the world of rock. Maybe I was born to lose her. It was worth the loss, the love.
“Titania,” he whispers.
“Oberon,” she replies. She takes his hands in hers. She looks into his eyes.
“I lay no claim on you,” Tania says. “Release yours on me.”
My son is beside her, and I see him reach for his father. Eron picks him up, this child whose voice—I know from experience—can call down bald eagles, whose laughter can make banks of flowers bloom in the dark, whose first steps made a ridgeline in our backyard, whose first meal caused every field in a hundred miles to fill with food ready to harvest. He holds my son, and my son laughs.
In spite of myself, I see the resemblance, my child too handsome for humans and too strange for kindergarten. I see how he might, one day, strut across a stage singing, strumming a guitar and bringing a revelation. I see how he might be exactly what his other father is, but better.
“He’s my child,” Eron says. “All I want is time.”
I know the expression on Tania’s face. We’ve had enough arguments over the years. My love has a temper. She is also fair, when she feels fair.
“Summers,” she tells him. “Let him camp in the bower. Take him spinning with the spiders and singing with the songbirds.”
He looks at her for a long moment. Then, at last, he nods to his band. To Mabel, whose fingers twist into his. To the drummer, who vibrates with a rhythm only he can feel. To the bassist and to the van, which shakes itself like a horse ready to gallop.
“Summers,” he says, and kisses his child. “That means you must bring summer back.”
Tania moves her hands and trees begin to bloom.
Eron Chaos does a slide on his knees with his guitar, and then he’s gone into the green. One by one, the rest of the band disappears, ending with the drummer, whose wings are spread fully as he departs.
The city is all kids, all around me.
Here she is, this woman I’m still married to, naming the pain, singing the words for fixing the things that are broken. Here she is, standing in the center of nowhere, this rock & roll queen who came from under the hill. My wife and son are stamping their feet and spitting syllables, and around them, all around them, the children look up and start to learn the words for fixing the bright and broken world.
There was a concert here, in the snowy dead of the night. After it was finished, the children who came to it walked out across the country, and as they walked, they sang the melody beneath their breath, shifting water into ice and smog into air, a song that called to the ghosts of bees and the bones of birds, a song that brought back summer and winter to the world, a song that sang the seasons back into balance.
You know, and I know, if there’s rock, there’s gotta be roll. If there’s a place beneath, this must be the place above, where we stand in an audience listening together, where we sing along to the songs we know.
And then we go to the hotel together, trundle bed and a queen-size, coffee and champagne, me and my family. Our son goes to sleep with his lullaby. I hold my wife in my arms, and she holds me back, as tightly as she holds the world.
. . . we see
The seasons alter. Hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,
And on old Hiems’ thin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set. The spring, the summer,
The childing autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries, and the mazed world,
By their increase, now knows not which is which.
And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension.
We are their parents and original.
—William Shakespeare,
Titania, A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
Act II, Scene I
TEAM FAIRY
* * *
BY MARIA DAHVANA HEADLEY
I’m a Gemini, born on June twenty-first. Solstice, midsummer, cusp, that particularly notorious fairy moment? All of it. This means I want things mutable. Robots are not as mutable as fairies, by nature (or, I guess, by tech-nurture), which is why many robot stories are about robots gaining mutability. Fairies, on the other hand, are inherently made of wildness, unpredictability, and dazzle. In the case of this story, since my theater geek high school days, I’ve had a fondness for the section of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that deals with how a custody battle between Oberon and Titania changes the climate of Earth. It seemed ripe for a contemporary version. It’s always fun to put magic into our real world, and even more fun when the magical people are as complex and inept as we are, when their inability to speak to one another creates the same sort of love disasters we’ve all experienced here. I like the flaws and raging egos of Fairy, the epic injured hearts, the glittering talents. I like it wild.
TO A CLOVEN PINE
by Max Gladstone
Close the jaws. Close them now. Close them before it’s too late.
You want to know why? You want the full story, O Self? I’ll spin you a tale in the seconds we have left, I’ll parse my computation to narrative, I’ll filter you the numinous and then you’ll understand.
When it starts, I hear no screams.
I hope you won’t mistake me, O Self—that’s good. Sort of.
Why? Dearest Self, we’re on the run: Callie, Miri, the old man, and me. The Witch chases us, her million million mites spread across space like an enormous clutching hand. She casts spells through those wicked sharp-edged metal bugs, and seeds snares for us on every channel. She pleads, wheedles, commands in assembly code. Stop, the Witch says. Stop, for a second, and let me slide my claws into your guts.
Self, we know how her claws feel inside us, and none among us is eager to accept her invitation.