So what did I do?
While Lucy dressed for work this morning, I played with our infant daughter, Megan, tossing her into the air and catching her again, blowing bubbles into her stomach while she pulled my hair and giggled until she got the hiccups.
When Lucy came in, I tossed the baby in a high arc across the room to her. Megan tumbled in a perfect backward somersault in the air. Lucy went dead white. She snatched Megan out of the air and hugged the child to her chest.
“Nice catch,” I said.
“Don’t you ever,” Lucy said, her voice all husky and dangerous, “ever do that again, Desmond! Not ever.”
Then she stomped out, taking Megan with her.
What the hell? I’d known there was no chance whatever that Lucy would miss. She’s a professional. My trusting her to catch the love of my life, the apple of my eye, Daddy’s little girl, was, I thought, a pretty big compliment. Lucy didn’t buy it. In fact, she didn’t even let me explain at all, said instead, oh shut up, Desmond, just shut up, and off we went to work, silent, stewing, our hurt feelings like a sack of broken toys between us.
Now she’s not speaking to me. It’s going to be a long day.
The buzzer sounds, and I move into the next box. I do my duty with the broom, and when the buzzer sounds again I replace the catcher. The cat here is a howling orange monster, and I have my hands full. When the animal is this fresh, the tossing technique looks a lot like volleyball. You don’t want to be too close to the thing for very long.
By the time Lucy takes her place across from me, I’ve established a rhythm and am even able to put a little spin on the cat now and then. I have to hand it to Lucy. She catches up quickly, and soon we have the animal sailing smoothly between us.
The animals go through stages as we toss and catch them. First defiance, then resistance, followed by resignation, then despair, and finally death. This one is probably somewhere in the resistance stage, not fighting wildly, but watching for an opening to do some damage. I put one hand on the cat’s chest and the other under its bottom and send it across to Lucy in a sitting position. Not to be outdone she sends it back still sitting but upside down now. Maybe the silly positions have done the trick. Whatever. I can feel the animal slip into the resignation stage.
I toss the cat tumbling head over heels, a weak howl and a loose string of saliva trailing behind it. Is Lucy ever going to talk to me again?
“Okay, I’m sorry,” I say, giving in to the idea that I might never know exactly why I should be sorry.
I see tears come to her eyes, and she falters, nearly drops the cat. I want to go to her. I want to comfort her, but it will be some time before we’re both on a break at the same time, and I see suddenly that it will be too late by then. It simply won’t matter anymore.
My replacement comes in and sweeps up. Then the buzzer sounds. I step aside.
Lucy isn’t crying anymore.
I reach for the door.
THE MANTICORE SPELL
Jeffrey Ford
Jeffrey Ford is the author of the novels The Physiognomy, Memoranda, The Beyond, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, The Girl in the Glass, and The Shadow Year. His short fiction has been published in three collections: The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, The Empire of Ice Cream, and The Drowned Life. His fiction has won the World Fantasy Award, the Nebula Award, the Edgar Allan Poe Award, and Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and two sons and teaches literature and writing at Brookdale Community College.
Ford has said that his use of the Manticore as the center of a story was influenced by his having read a number of old and modern bestiaries, and by the Pre-Raphaelite paintings of fantastic creatures: harpies, unicorns, mermaids, and the Sphinx. In addition, his fellow teacher and author—William Jon Watkins, a sort of wizard in his own right—had just retired. Watkins taught Ford so much about writing and teaching, two strange, chimerical beasts, that he was given a place in the story as well.
The first reports of the creature, mere sightings, were absurd—a confusion of parts; a loss of words to describe the smile. The color, they said, was a flame, a hot coal, a flower, and each of the witnesses tried to mimic the thing’s song but none could. My master, the wizard Watkin, bade me record in word and image every thing each one said. We’d been put to it by the king, whose comment was, “Give an ear to their drollery. Make them think you’re thinking about it at my command. It’s naught but bad air, my old friend.” My master nodded and smiled, but after the king had left the room, the wizard turned to me and whispered, “Manticore.”
“It’s the last one, no doubt,” said Watkin. We watched from the balcony in late afternoon when the king’s hunters returned from the forest across the wide green lawn to the palace, the blood of the Manticore’s victims trailing bright red through the grass. “It’s a very old one,” he said. “You can tell by the fact that it devours the horses but the humans often return with a limb or two intact.” He cast a spell of protection around the monster, threading the eye of a needle with a hummingbird feather.
“You want it to survive?” I asked.
“To live till it dies naturally,” was his answer. “The king’s hunters must not kill it.”
Beneath the moon and stars at the edge of autumn, we sat with the rest of the court along the ramparts of the castle and listened for the creature’s flute-like trill, descending and ascending the scale, moving through the distant darkness of the trees. Its sound set the crystal goblets to vibrating. The ladies played hearts by candle light, their hair up and powdered. The gentlemen leaned back, smoking their pipes, discussing how they’d fell the beast if the job was theirs.
“Wizard,” the king said. “I thought you’d taken measures.”
“I did,” said Watkin. “It’s difficult, though. Magic against magic, and I’m an old man.”
A few moments later, the King’s engineer appeared at his side. The man carried a mechanical weapon that shot an arrow made of elephant ivory. “The tip is dipped in acid that will eat the creature’s flesh,” said the engineer. “Aim anywhere above the neck. Keep the gear work within the gun well-oiled.” His highness smiled and nodded.
A week later, just prior to dinner, at the daily ritual in which the king assessed the state of his kingdom, it was reported that the creature devoured two horses and a hunter, took the right leg of the engineer’s assistant and so twisted and crumpled the new weapon of the engineer that the poison arrow set to strike the beast turned round and stabbed its inventor in the ear, the lobe of which dripped off his head like a lit candle.
“We fear the thing may lay eggs,” said the engineer. “I suggest we burn the forest.”
“We’re not burning down the forest,” said the king. He turned and looked at the wizard. Watkin faked sleep.
I helped the old man out of his chair and accompanied him down the stone steps to the corridor that led to our chambers. Before I let him go, he took me by the collar and whispered, “The spell’s weakening, I can feel it in my gums.” I nodded, and he brushed me aside, walking the rest of the way to his rooms unassisted. Following behind, I looked over my shoulder almost positive the king was aware that his wizard’s art had been turned against him.