Other Worlds Than These

against the wood. I can spend a last few moments with her.

The mist won’t rise until evening. Still, I hear the water and think of oars. I keep very, very still, listening for the call. I don’t know why. I’d obviously never heard it before. Only whispers, easy to ignore.

I let Maggie learn to fight with a sword, learn to ride horses, like the princesses in the movies never did. Did I doom her, then? Made sure she heard the call, then left me? Or would she have found those things on her own, resented me for keeping them from her, and left me anyway? I don’t know.

She seemed happy. She seemed to be in love.

I am standing at the edge of the dock, toes hanging over the edge of the warped and weathered boards. The sun is setting. In moments, the mist will rise. I’ll call to her, as loud as I can I’ll call. Take me with you.

If she can’t stay here, maybe I can go.

A gray tendril swirls on the pewter surface of the water. I clench my hands. I step out.

An ancient, slender boat does not catch me, does not rise up to keep me dry.

I splash into ice-cold water, sink like a stone, gasp for breath and choke on water instead. Reflex takes over, because my mind is numb, startled at what I have done, because of course the boat wasn’t there, never would come for me, and what was I thinking? I thrash and kick, yet somehow I can’t find the surface, can’t find the air. The lake is a trap that has caught me.

Something grabs hold of me, takes my arm, a force pulls up. I try to grab it back, but my hands aren’t in the right place. Then, I touch air, then my face reaches air, and my mouth gapes open to suck in a breath. I sound like a bellows.

Hands pull at my shirt. I’m flopping like a fish in someone’s grasp. My back scrapes against the edge of the dock, then I’m sitting there. Dave hugs me close, clings to me. He’s shouting.

“What are you doing? What do you think you’re doing? I can’t lose you both, I can’t lose you too!”

He’s crying. I’ve never seen him cry.

I clutch his shirt in clawlike hands, to let him know I’m alive. He holds me, rocks me, and I curl up in his arms.

“I only wanted to see where Maggie went,” I say weakly.

He shifts, moving me away so he can look at me. He touches me, my face, my soaking hair. His eyes and nose are running, his whole face is wet.

“You think she killed herself,” he says.

My eyes widen. “No—oh God, no! She didn’t, I wasn’t trying—” But that’s what it looks like. I pull myself back into his embrace. I can’t explain it. Not now. “I think we’ll never understand what happened.”

“You’re shivering. Come in and sit by the fire.” He helps me stand, never lets go of me. My own true prince.

“We’re leaving in the morning, right?” I ask. Dave nods.

We reach the cabin, close the door, and shut out the night before the mist covers the water.

IMPOSSIBLE DREAMS TIM PRATT

Tim Pratt has won a Hugo Award for short fiction, and has been nominated for World Fantasy, Stoker, Sturgeon, and Nebula awards. His most recent collection is Hart & Boot & Other Stories. He lives in Berkeley with his wife Heather and son River.

Pete was walking home from the revival movie house, where he’d caught an evening showing of To Have and Have Not, when he first saw the video store.

He stopped on the sidewalk, head cocked, frowning at the narrow store squeezed between a kitschy gift shop and a bakery. He stepped toward the door, peered inside, and saw old movie posters on the walls, racks of DVDs and VHS tapes, and a big screen TV against one wall. The lettering on the door read “Impossible Dreams Video,” and the smudges on the glass suggested it had been in business for a while.

Except it hadn’t been. Pete knew every video store in the county, from the big chains to the tiny place staffed by film students up by the university to the little porno shop downtown that sometimes sold classic Italian horror flicks and bootleg Asian movies. He’d never even heard of this place, and he walked this way at least twice a week. Pete believed in movies like other people believed in God, and he couldn’t understand how he’d overlooked a store just three blocks from his own apartment. He pushed open the door, and a bell rang. The shop was small, just three aisles of DVDs and a wall of VHS tapes, fluorescent lights and ancient, blue industrial carpet, and there were no customers. The clerk said, “Let me know if you need any help,” and he nodded, barely noticing her beyond the fact that she was female, somewhere south of thirty, and had short pale hair that stuck up like the fluff on a baby chick.

Pete headed toward the classics section. He was a cinematic omnivore, but you could judge a video store by the quality of its classics shelf the same way you could judge a civilization by the state of its prisons. He looked along the row of familiar titles—and stopped at a DVD turned face-out, with a foil “New Release” sticker on the front.

Pete picked it up with trembling hands. The box purported to be the director’s cut of The Magnificent Ambersons by Orson Welles.

“Is this a joke?” he said, holding up the box, almost angry.

“What?” the clerk said.

He approached her, brandishing the box, and he could tell by her arched eyebrows and guarded posture that she thought he was going to be a problem. “Sorry,” he said. “This says it’s the director’s cut of The Magnificent Ambersons, with the missing footage restored.”

“Yeah,” she said, brightening. “That came out a few weeks ago. You didn’t know? Before, you could only get the original theatrical version, the one the studio butchered—”

“But the missing footage,” he interrupted, “it was lost, destroyed, and the only record of the last fifty minutes was the continuity notes from the production.”

She frowned. “Well, yeah, the footage was lost, and everyone assumed it was destroyed, but they found the film last year in the back corner of some warehouse.”

How had this news passed Pete by? The forums he visited online should have been buzzing with this, a film buff’s wet dream. “How did they find the footage?”

“It’s an interesting story, actually. Welles talks about it on the commentary track. I mean, it’s a little scattered, but the guy’s in his nineties, what do you expect? He—”

“You’re mistaken,” Pete said. “Unless Welles is speaking from beyond the grave. He died in the 1980s.”

She opened her mouth, closed it, then smiled falsely. Pete could practically hear her repeating mental customer service mantras: the customer is always right, even when he’s wrong. “Sure, whatever you say. Do you want to rent the DVD?”

“Yeah,” he said. “But I don’t have an account here.”

“You local? We just need a phone number and ID, and some proof of address.”

“I think I’ve got my last pay stub,” Pete said, rooting through his wallet and passing over his papers. She gave him a form to fill out, then typed his information into her computer. While she worked he said, “Look, I don’t mean to be a jerk, it’s just—I’d know. I know a lot about movies.”

“You don’t have to believe me,” she said, tapping the DVD case with her finger. “Total’s $3.18.”

He took out his wallet again, but though it bulged with unsorted receipts and scraps of paper with notes to himself, there was no cash. “Take a credit card?”

She grimaced. “There’s a five-buck minimum on credit card purchases, sorry—house rules.”

“I’ll get a couple of other movies,” he said.

She glanced at the clock on the wall. It was almost 10:00.