Read Online The Best of Lucius Shepard by Lucius Shepard - Free Book Online Page A

might have been fabricated for the child of an
emperor. Canopied by golden leaves, columned by slender golden trunks, carpeted
by golden grasses. The water beads were diamonds. All the gleam and glitter
soothed his apprehension; here was something out of a myth, a habitat for
princesses and wizards and dragons. Almost gleeful, he turned to the campsite
to see how the others were reacting.
     
    Once,
when he was nine years old, he had sneaked into the attic to rummage through
the boxes and trunks, and he had run across an old morocco-bound copy of Gulliver’s
Travels. He had been taught to treasure old books, and so he had opened it
eagerly to look at the illustrations, only to find that the centers of the
pages had been eaten away, and there, right in the heart of the fiction, was a
nest of larvae. Pulpy, horrid things. It had been an awful sight, but one
unique in his experience, and he might have studied those crawling scraps of
life for a very long time if his father had not interrupted. Such a sight was
now before him, and he was numb with it.
     
    They
were all dead. He should have guessed they would be; he had given no thought to
them while firing his rifle. They had been struggling out of their hammocks
when the bullets hit, and as a result they were hanging half-in, half-out,
their limbs dangling, blood pooled beneath them. The veils of golden mist made
them look dark and mysterious and malformed, like monsters killed as they
emerged from their cocoons. Dantzler could not stop staring, but he was
shrinking inside himself. It was not his fault. That thought keep swooping in
and out of a flock of less acceptable thoughts; he wanted it to stay put, to be
true, to alleviate the sick horror he was beginning to feel.
     
    “What’s
your name?” asked a girl’s voice behind him.
     
    She
was sitting on a stone about twenty feet away. Her hair was a tawny shade of
gold, her skin a half-tone lighter, and her dress was cunningly formed out of
the mist. Only her eyes were real. Brown heavy-lidded eyes—they were at
variance with the rest of her face, which had the fresh, unaffected beauty of
an American teenager.
     
    “Don’t
be afraid,” she said, and patted the ground, inviting him to sit beside her.
     
    He
recognized the eyes, but it was no matter. He badly needed the consolation she
could offer; he walked over and sat down. She let him lean his head against her
thigh.
     
    “What’s
your name?” she repeated.
     
    “Dantzler,”
he said. “John Dantzler.” And then he added, “I’m from Boston. My father’s....”
It would be too difficult to explain about anthropology. “He’s a teacher.”
     
    “Are
there many soldiers in Boston?” She stroked his cheek with a golden finger.
     
    The
caress made Dantzler happy. “Oh, no,” he said. “They hardly know there’s a war
going on.”
     
    “This
is true?” she said, incredulous.
     
    “Well,
they do know about it, but it’s just news on the TV to them. They’ve got more
pressing problems. Their jobs, families.”
     
    “Will
you let them know about the war when you return home?” she asked. “Will you do
that for me?”
     
    Dantzler
had given up hope of returning home, of surviving, and her assumption that he would
do both acted to awaken his gratitude. “Yes,” he said fervently. “I will.”
     
    “You
must hurry,” she said. “If you stay in the ayahuamaco too long, you will
never leave. You must find the way out. It is a way not of directions or
trails, but of events.”
     
    “Where
is this place?” he asked, suddenly aware of much he had taken it for granted.
     
    She
shifted her leg away, and if he had not caught himself on the stone, he would
have fallen. When he looked up, she had vanished. He was surprised that her
disappearance did not alarm him; in reflex he slipped out a couple of ampules,
but after a moment’s reflection he decided not to use them. It was impossible
to slip them back into the dispenser, so he tucked