“Who
“Investment banker,” the broker said.
Doug dropped Kell off and took the cab the rest of the way back to the office. Tom had just gotten back, beaming, with celebratory lattes. “What’s this for?” Doug said.
“We need to order new photos for Tudor City,” Tom said, and showed them the little video clip off his camera phone. Doug squinted at it. The wall was still moving, but—
“Are those
“Twenty-three varieties, some of them endangered,” Tom said. “I used the catalog from the exhibit at the Museum of Natural History.”
“Wow,” Doug said. “Tom, this doesn’t call for new photos; this calls for a relisting.”
They clinked latte cups, then Jennifer shrugged into her coat. “I have to get to Hunter College. Community Board Eight is having a review meeting for a proposed new building next to the Oryx.”
“Is Angela still yelling at you about that?” Doug said. “You want me to talk to her? We told her before she bought, there’s pretty much no such thing as a protected view.”
“No worries,” Jennifer said. “We’re getting a Fair Housing protest in. There’s a sponsor apartment on the thirteenth floor that would be facing the new development; they’re selling it to the vampire. They’ll have to keep the new building below that height.”
She stopped short with her hand on the door, though, as a thundering knock hit, and then another. She glanced back at Doug and Tom, then shrugged and pulled it open.
A giant horse was standing outside in the hall gazing down at them, nostrils flaring, a thin trail of smoke rising from them. Glowing red flames shone in its eyes. There was a dent in the office door where it had knocked with a front hoof. People were sticking their heads out of other offices down the hall to watch.
“Hi,” the pooka said. “Marvin said you could help me.”
“Marvin?” Tom said, under his breath.
“The vampire,” Jennifer said.
The pooka nodded, mane flopping. “I’m looking for an apartment.”
They all stood and considered. Jennifer suggested after a moment, “Maybe a ground-floor unit?”
Tom said, “Or a place with a good freight elevator? There’s the Atlantica.…”
Doug eyed the hooves. Parquet and hardwood were definitely out. Marble tile, maybe. He looked up at the pooka. “So, tell me, how do you feel about Trump buildings?”
The Bricks of Gelecek
BY MATTHEW KRESSEL
Matthew Kressel’s fiction has appeared in
We were not city folk. We lived beyond all borders, where the onyx sands merged with raven skies, where the desert beasts came to die and even the hated demons of Fintas Miel dared not tread. Out here, the stars twirled in strange orbits, the sun weaved drunkenly by day, and the wind blew steady, slow, and forever. They called this place the Jeen. I called it home.
Always in fours we came to your cities. The sand blew us into flesh, and we walked like men through your iron gates and your tented marketplaces. Dust fell from our fingertips, our feet—the dust of decay, of aeons, of ash. We touched your fruits and your doorposts. We patted the heads of your children and shook the calloused hands of your husbands. You smiled at us.
Within hours came the winds, the decay, the screams. Pits formed in the streets where we had stepped. Your statues rusted and blew away. Your houses fell to kindling. Your children vanished like whispers.
By dawn there was nothing left but a hole in the earth. And those who had carried thoughts of this vanquished city and its people found a blank spot in their minds, a void where once there were men.
We did this for pleasure. And of our name? We had none. For who remained to name us?
Sometimes I grew bored with the sundering of cities. Sometimes I wished to be away from my brothers and their boasts of desolation, so I wandered the desert under the drunken sun to entertain myself with the mysteries of the Jeen. The constant winds carried strange sounds on their wings: the dying whispers of aged widows, the murderous thoughts of jealous cuckolds, the suicide’s cry of regret as the soul fled the body. The voices spoke of objects and forms, but always their true concerns were intangible things: regret, shame, love, despair, the gamut of human emotions. I listened eagerly, for the voices spoke of a world beyond my own, a world I could never touch without destroying it.
I floated over the twinkling sands, when I heard a small voice, like a flute echoing off of a mountain. It cried out to the ineffable, “What am I?” And its sound was music, sweet and innocent, without rue for things come and gone or the dark cynicism heard often in men.
The sound danced above me in crimson wisps, like lingering campfire smoke. It zigged and zagged, hopped and paused, catlike, across the desert. The song haunted me for some reason I could not fathom, so I pursued.
The sun skipped across the sky as I followed the music, until the Jeen was long behind me. A thousand camel skeletons and their unfortunate riders lay wasted on the sands below, and still the voice sang.
A large city crested the horizon. Birds squawked in monstrous flocks above its thousand spires, and towers hugged its center like beggars waiting for handouts. On the heels of the city, just before the sand devoured all, was a small house. The smoke belching from its chimney reeked of ram’s bladder and hoof spice—a sin offering to the goddess Mollai.
A girl sat before the house and sang as she fumbled with toy bricks:
Her words had the resonant pluck of a zither. Then I understood. Her song had entwined itself in the smoke of the sin offering, and the winds had carried her plea out over the desert to my ears. And the words, they stirred something deep within me that I could not name.
“Hello,” she said to me. “Have you lost your caravan? Are you thirsty?”
I had not intended to be seen. I had unwittingly collected myself into human form.
But she was unmoved by my words. “Who are you then?”
And I had the same question: Who was this girl who stood firm before the winds of annihilation? “Who taught you that song?” I asked.
“That’s mine,” she said shyly. “I wrote it.”
“
“Why? A girl can write song,” she said firmly.
“Of course,” I said. “But your song is … different.”
