Naked City: Tales of Urban Fantasy

I backed away as the shock of her words consumed me. Always, when I destroyed cities, my destruction was total, complete. I had never been selective in annihilation before. It had never occurred to me that erasing her father would erase Agna, too. An alien feeling welled up inside me as I stepped out into the sun. It was … there was only one word for it—loss. A thousand linens snapped angrily in the wind. I walked the streets in a daze. I don’t know how long I wandered before I heard a voice.

A beautiful voice. It sang.

I followed the song around a corner, into an alley overgrown with weeds. A cat hissed at me and ran away. The voice came from a doorless building, and I crept inside. Half-finished canvases crowded a large studio, and the air was heavy with the reek of paint. Majestic cities adorned the canvases; some I recognized as cities I had sundered.

At the far end of the studio, a young woman danced her brush over a canvas while she sang:

“On the dark side of morn, the workers lie waiting.

Sunrise to sunset, their backs break in toil.

From out of the desert come caravans sweating,

Burdened with legumes, rich hemp seed and oil.”

“Agna!” I shouted. “You’re alive!”

The girl turned to me, but her face was not Agna’s. Her eyes were too green, her nose too buttonlike, her face too round. Not Agna, but a stranger.

Startled, she said, “Who are you?”

But her voice—that was Agna’s. “You won’t remember me,” I said.

She dropped her brush. “No! I’ve dreamt of you! Sometimes I dream that I lived another life, with different parents, in a different house. I was a builder of cities and a weaver of thread. Then a ghost came along and erased everything. I thought it was just a recurring nightmare. But that ghost had your face.”

“I’m sorry, Agna. I didn’t know.”

“Agna? That’s the name my dream parents called me. My name is Dina.”

“It’s a beautiful name,” I said, stepping closer.

“Stay away from me!” she said.

“I’m not here to hurt you, Dina. I only came to hear you sing.”

“Why?”

I pointed to her paintings. “These cities, why do you paint them?”

“The architects buy them. They tell me my drawings inspire them.”

“But why do you paint them?”

“I don’t know … they come to me…”

“In vision, when you sing.”

“How do you know that?” she said. “Who … what are you?”

“I am the no thing of the deserts beyond form and the sunderer of civilization. I and my brothers have destroyed these cities. I had forgotten them all. But your songs bring them back to me. I have the very same question for you, Dina. What are you?”

She looked sick. “It was real, wasn’t it? My other life. There were too many details, too many feelings. I had a difficult life, yes, but I had dreams and aspirations. And you destroyed all of that, didn’t you?”

“But you’re not dead. Don’t you see?” I said. “I couldn’t erase you from history. You spring back like the cities I and my brothers sunder.”

“You’re disgusting,” she said. “You destroy as easily as I create.”

“Perhaps, but for once in my life I want something else.”

The winds gusted outside, knocking over a few canvases. I heard the rasp of sand blowing against stone, and a familiar shudder of ecstasy coursed through me.

“A sandstorm,” she said. “I have to close the windows.”

“No,” I said to her as I stepped out into the sun. I knew him before he spoke, not by the way he walked, nor by the tailor of his clothes, but by his indifference toward all things. He gave a beggar a coin and patted him on the shoulder. He dragged his hands along the walls of a portico. He stepped up to me and paused. Every move was filled with emptiness.

“Hello, Brother,” he said.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded.

“I could ask the same of you. What business have you here in this flesh suit of yours?”

“You must leave!” I said. “Before you destroy this place.”

“It’s too late,” he said. “Our brothers have decided that your sojourn here shall end. We followed you to this city. Four of us walk inside these walls now, spreading oblivion. We love you, Brother, and when this city falls, you will return to us and be the soul we remember.”

“I don’t want to go back! Not yet! Please, listen to one of her songs! Look at her paintings! Then you’ll understand why I’m here!”

“There’s nothing to understand. There’s nothing at all. That’s the sole and final truth.” My brother smiled and fled the alley, patting a boy on his head as he turned the corner.

“Agna—Dina, come on! We have to go!” I shouted. I reentered the studio. But Dina had vanished.

“Dina! Where are you?”

I found a small door in the back. It led up a small, curving stairwell to a storeroom on the second floor. When I opened the door, Dina jumped out and stabbed me in the chest with a putty knife.

I pushed her away and pulled out the knife from my chest. There was no blood. When I dropped it to the floor, the blade shattered.

She pounded on me with her fists. “Go away! Go away!”

“Dina, Dina! Please, you must listen to me! My brothers are destroying this city as we speak. We have to go now, or you’ll be killed!”

“Get away from me! I’d rather die!”

I grabbed her. She was small and easy to contain. I lifted her over my shoulder, and she beat me as I carried her down the stairs, through the studio, and out onto the streets.

She screamed for help. So I gagged and tied her with sackcloth.

I took the back alleys and least-crowded streets and fled the city as quickly as possible, making sure that neither I nor Dina’s bound body touched a thing. She cried, but her voice was muffled by her gag.

“I know you think I’m cruel,” I said. “But I do this for your own good. I’ve figured it out, Dina. I know what you are. Whereas I am the sunderer of cities, you are their genesis. Your songs, your visions, your dreams—they are the impetus that creates new ones. I destroy cities with my touch. You create them with your song. We are kindred. If you die, then in a way, so do I.”

I found a black horse tied up beside a tent on the outskirts of the city and stole it before its owner could stop us. I spread Dina before me, and we rode deep into the desert. After several hours, she stopped struggling, so I took off her gag.

“Water…” she mumbled.

I found a canteen slung around the horse and gave it to her.

After drinking several large gulps, she said, “My family, friends, my paintings. Will they all vanish?”

“I’m sorry. But you can create new ones.”

“Do you think it’s that easy, that I can just start over in a new city, as if nothing at all has happened? Everything I know is going to die.”

The horse grew tired as the sun set behind a dune, so I dismounted. I untied her hands as the stars winked to life above us.

“If you flee,” I said, “by the time you get back to your city, it will be dust. No one will remember it, not even you.”

“Won’t I vanish too?” she said. “I was born in that city.”

“I erased your father. It changed you, but you were born again as someone else. I think you are a seed that can’t be destroyed.”

“Then why bring me all the way out here?”