Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 7: March 2014 Read Free

managed a shy, desperate smile. “Yes,” she said, knowing what else he reckoned to buy with that—willing, and hating herself, and desperately afraid that he would walk away, tonight, tomorrow. She did not know men. She had no idea what she could say or do to prevent his leaving, only that he would when someday he recognized her madness.
    Even her parents had not been able to bear with that—visited her only at first in the hospitals, and then only on holidays, and then not at all. She did not know where they were.
    There was a neighbor boy who drowned. She had said he would. She had cried for it. All the town said it was she who pushed him.
    Crazy Alis.
    Fantasizes, the doctors said. Not dangerous.
    They let her out. There were special schools, state schools.
    And from time to time—hospitals.
    Tranquilizers.
    She had left the red pills at home. The realization brought sweat to her palms. They gave sleep. They stopped the dreams. She clamped her lips against the panic and made up her mind that she would not need them—not while she was not alone. She slipped her hand into his arm and walked with him, secure and strange, up the steps from the park to the streets.
    And stopped.
    The fires were out.
    Ghost-buildings rose above their jagged and windowless shells. Wraiths moved through masses of d e bris, almost obscured at times. He tugged her on, but her step faltered, made him look at her strangely and put his arm about her.
    “You’re shivering,” he said. “Cold?”
    She shook her head, tried to smile. The fires were out. She tried to take it for a good omen. The nightmare was over. She looked up into his solid, concerned face, and her smile almost became a wild laugh.
    “I’m hungry,” she said.
    ***
    They lingered over a dinner in Graben’s—he in his battered jacket, she in her sweater that hung at the tails and elbows: the spectral patrons were in far better clothes, and stared at them, and they were set in a corner nearest the door, where they would be less visible. There was cracked crystal and broken china on insubstantial tables, and the stars winked coldly in gaping ruin above the wan glittering of the broken chandeliers.
    Ruins, cold, peaceful ruins.
    Alis looked about her calmly. One could live in ruins, only so the fires were gone.
    And there was Jim, who smiled at her without any touch of pity, only a wild, fey desperation that she understood—who spent more than he could afford in Graben’s, the inside of which she had never hoped to see—and told her—predictably—that she was beautiful. Others had said it. Vaguely she resented such triteness from him, from him whom she had decided to trust. She smiled sadly when he said it; and gave it up for a frown; and, fearful of offending him with her melancholies, made it a smile again.
    Crazy Alis. He would learn and leave tonight if she were not careful. She tried to put on gaiety, tried to laugh.
    And then the music stopped in the restaurant, and the noise of the other diners went dead, and the speaker was giving an inane announcement.
    Shelters … shelters … shelters.
    Screams broke out. Chairs overturned. Alis went limp in her chair, felt Jim’s cold, solid hand tugging at hers, saw his frightened face mouthing her name as he took her up into his arms, pulled her with him, started running.
    The cold air outside hit her, shocked her into sight of the ruins again, wraith figures pelting toward that chaos where the fires had been worst. And she knew.
    “No!” she cried, pulling at his arm. “No!” she insisted, and bodies half-seen buffeted them in a rush to destruction. He yielded to her sudden certainty, gripped her hand and fled with her against the crowds as the sirens wailed madness through the night—fled with her as she ran her sighted way through the ruin.
    And into Kingsley’s, where cafe tables stood abandoned with food still on them, doors ajar, chairs overturned. Back they went into the kitchens and down and down into the