Songs of Love & Death

except that he was here, a man in her bed.

He took her hand, her left hand, and slid a ring onto her third finger. “My pledge to you, dear heart.”

Martha raised her hand and saw a complex ring of gold, set with small, smooth stones.

“I’ve carried that for years, love, as I sought my marrying maid. Come, let me love you now.”

He gathered her into his arms and kissed her, and there was all the magic she remembered from that other kiss, so long ago, a day ago. Heat and sparkles danced through her and this time she felt no need to resist. Shyly, she kissed him back. Her hands encountered his skin and she laid her hands on him, uncertainly but with growing pleasure.

She moved against him, her whole body twining with his so they seemed one. Especially when he raised her nightgown high, then took it off. She stared up at the bed canopy as he put hands to her naked breasts. And then his mouth. But then she was lost to anxiety and swept up into his passion, her need building so that when he thrust inside her, she cried out as much in satisfaction as in pain.

The pain was short and soon forgotten. The pleasure built until she thought she’d die of wanting more. Until it came, and she didn’t die, but ended up hot and sticky in his arms, laughing softly at the splendor of it. “So that,” she said, “is magic.”

He chuckled into her hair. “If it’s magic, it’s a magic available to everyone, love.” He nuzzled and kissed her there. “Thank you, my dear, my darling, my marrying maid. We will be gloriously happy—”

But Martha suddenly sat up. “Mother!”

Laughing, he pulled her back down. “Someone’s already been dispatched to bring her here safely on the morrow. The explanations may be delicate, but I think she’ll be mollified by our wedding.” He cradled her face. “Any regrets?”

Martha shook her head. “None. This is right and true.”

“We’ll follow faery’s rules and all will be well, and when our son is of marrying age we’ll work with him to circumvent Oberon’s wiles.”

A distant look came into his eyes, and Martha said, “What? More trickery from them?”

He focused on her again. “No, love. But I’m aware of the gold now. After the kiss, it was a whisper, and all I’ve found is nearby pieces. Now, it’s a symphony on the air, a choir in my mind, from near and far. Tomorrow, will you come with me to find lost gold?”

She snuggled into his chest, also hearing this new, sweet song. “I will, husband. And right merrily.”

Carrie Vaughn

Bestseller Carrie Vaughn is the author of a wildly popular series of novels detailing the adventures of Kitty Norville, a radio personality who also happens to be a werewolf, and who runs a late-night call- in radio advice show for supernatural creatures. The Kitty books include Kitty and the Midnight Hour, Kitty Goes to Washington, Kitty Takes a Holiday, Kitty and the Silver Bullet, Kitty and the Dead Man’s Hand, Kitty Raises Hell, and Kitty’s House of Horrors. Vaughn’s short work has appeared in Jim Baen’s Universe, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Subterranean, Wild Cards: Inside Straight, Realms of Fantasy, Paradox, Strange Horizons, Weird Tales, All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories, and elsewhere. Her most recent books are Voices of Dragons and a new Kitty novel, Kitty Goes to War. She lives in Colorado.

In the clever tale that follows, she demonstrates that the line between dreams and reality can be a thin one—and that sometimes it’s hard to tell if you’ve crossed it.

Rooftops

The wires were obvious, strung with LED lights that switched on the moment the hero launched upward, illustrating the fact that no one had yet figured out how to get a real flight-capable superhuman to act in a play or movie or anything.

“Well?” Otto Veck, acclaimed director, looked at Charlotte.

The stage was a mess. A chain-link fence formed the backdrop, supposedly suggesting the shadows of a forest. A pile of stuffed black garbage bags made a castle shape. A woman in a white bustier, panties, fishnets, and a black garter with a cute little bow clinging to her thigh lay at the foot of the tower of trash as if she had just thrown herself off it, to her death. Nearby another body lay, a twisted man dressed in a three-piece suit with a tire iron sticking out of him, suggesting a sword at the end of a duel. The hero, a handsome man with a clean-shaven face, wearing an alluring amount of leather, had been kneeling beside the woman, hand to his chest, overcome by the wretchedness of the world. Then he flew away, straight up into the rigging overhead, vanishing into the heavens.

The scene was supposed to look a mess, but it didn’t match the picture Charlotte imagined. She winced. “Can we make it a little more… I don’t know… pretty?”

Otto tilted a thoughtful head, as if regarding the stage from a slightly different angle. It was Marta, the actress, who sat up, appalled. Fred, who played the fiendish villain/bureaucrat, stood and set aside the tire iron as he stretched muscles and groaned. Harry, who played the tragic hero too late to save his lover, but not too late to exact revenge on the fiendish villain/bureaucrat, slowly descended, hanging passively in his harness as the stage crew lowered him back to earth. Out of character now, he looked tired.

“Pretty? You want this to be pretty?” Marta said. “What happened to the terrors of modernity? There’s nothing pretty about modernity.” She had her hands on her hips and glared with the air of an offended artist. The truth was, she looked good in the lingerie and knew it, and was probably afraid that “pretty” meant putting her in a floor-length gown.

Charlotte thought she had said something along the lines of wanting to recast classic gothic narratives as a vehicle for alienation—the terrors of postmodernity expressed as the sublime. They had the terrors of postmodernity down pat but seemed to be missing the sublime.

The last dress rehearsal was a little late to be rethinking the project. Was it too late to cancel the whole thing? It had all seemed so much more clever when she wrote it.

“Never mind,” she said. “It’s fine. It’s all fine.”

“Maybe the lighting,” Otto said, trying to be helpful. “More of a halo effect upstage.” He put on his headset. “Bob, is it too late to change that last lighting cue?”

She sat in her squishy velvet seat in the middle of the house and pondered. This was supposed to be her big break. Her jump from the bush leagues to the big-time, with a director like Otto, an award-winning actress like Marta starring, in a theater that didn’t seat its audience in folding chairs. Charlotte couldn’t help but feel that her career was already over.

Her phone rattled, and she dug in the pocket of her jeans for it.

The screen showed Dorian’s text: “Wrk late, won’t make dinner, sry, make it up to you.”

She quelled her disappointment and instead decided to admire Dorian’s dedication. An up-and-coming assistant DA like Dorian Merriman didn’t win cases like the one against the Midnight Stalker by going on dinner dates with struggling playwrights.

Otto and the three actors were all looking at her, and she might have blushed.

“Everything okay?” Otto said.

“Fine,” she said, putting her phone away.

“Are we done, Otto?” Harry said.

“We’re done. Call’s at five tomorrow.” Otto and the actors disappeared backstage.

Part of her wanted to curl up right here for the next twenty-four hours, until it was all over. Maybe she could sleep through it.

Instead, she found her coat and bag and went to catch a bus home. It was early summer, still daylight, still warm. She could have walked the whole way, scuffing toes on the sidewalk and thinking of everything that could go