Strangewood (2 page)

Unlike most modern Fantasy that constructs either a
hermetically-sealed universe or enters another universe via a portal concealed
in this world, Christopher Golden locates his story in both the contemporary
and the Fantastic world and gives equal weight to both. Because his real
interest, his real subject, is
the imagination
, the true portal, the
primal mentalistic woods that demark the land between the contemporary world
and the Fantastic world.

What talent or distress is it, exactly, that divides writers
and their ilk from the rest of the population? Why do they seek such extended
recourse to the depths of the forest or to the rear of the flickering cave? Certainly
Christopher Golden knows that the human psyche in a state of distress can
construct almost any solution to its problems. Nothing is too wild or
incredible, and, as you are about to find out from this book, those close to
the furnace of the imagination can smell the ash and flame of the root and
branch of Strangewood.

Graham Joyce

Achill Island, August
2006

"Is it true? Is it really true?" shouted The
Boy, as he stared up into the green-blue sky above Strangewood.

"Yes, oh yes," replied Fiddlestick the dragon,
and he swooped and soared and looped and spun in figure eights above them,
making The Boy and all of his Friends very dizzy indeed.

"I should have known!" The Boy cried. "I
should have known this very morning! It's an absotively gorgeous day, too warm
for autumn — and it is autumn now, you know! Too warm for autumn, and I
should have known today was going to be something special! A day like no
other!"

The Boy watched Fiddlestick a moment longer, but it was
difficult to watch the dragon for long without getting a crick in his neck,
being as how the dragon was up in the air and such. Then The Boy whooped and
laughed, and did one of the cartwheels he was forever trying to teach Brownie
the Grizzly, without any luck.

Brownie laughed and tried a cartwheel anyway and fell
into a big, brown pile of giggling fur.

They were all laughing and dancing in the small clearing
behind Grumbler's cottage, which had been a sad place for a while, but was now
a happy place again.

There was a ringling jingling jangling noise, and The Boy
looked up happily to watch as Mr. Tinklebum appeared from the Winding Way and
ding-dong rang-ran into the clearing.

"He's right, Our Boy! Fiddlestick is right! Word has
been passed along by Clapper and Trumpet and so many others, along the Winding
Way all the way from the Land of Bells and Whistles! They've been seen, they've
been seen, coming down the Up-River. The Forest Rangers have confirmed
it!"

Mr. Tinklebum ran up to The Boy, his bell bottom tolling
with joy at every step. Laughing Boy yelped his hyena laugh, and Brownie
danced, and they could all hear the sing-song, scritch-scratch, wind chime
melody of Fiddlestick's tiny wings, beating the tune of flying music.

Gourdon Squashhead was the last to arrive. His autumn job
was to watch over the Big Old Orchard, to keep it safe from the Crow Brothers,
Dave and Barry. When The Boy saw Gourdon today, he cried out in pleasant
surprise, because Gourdon was not alone!

The Crow Brothers had arrived with Gourdon himself.

"Oh, indeed, this is a special day when the Crow
Brothers and Strangewood's only scarecrow can put aside their grudges,"
The Boy said. "We shall have a big party, now. A welcome home, please
don't go again party. A we've missed you terribly party. A house re-warming
party! Yes! Yes indeed!"

All of The Boy's Friends cried out in agreement. They
were excited at the prospect of a party, but what an occasion! To have their
old friends returning at last!

A moment later, as The Boy danced with Brownie,
Fiddlestick cried out from above.

"They're here, they're here!" he shouted down,
and the music of his wings picked up in tempo and volume.

"Quiet up there, I can't hear myself think!"
Gourdon yelled at Fiddlestick.

"That will be enough of that, sir scarecrow,"
The Boy chided him. "We're all a bit excited, don't you know?"

The Winding Way crinch-crunched from the shadowed forest,
and The Boy became nervous at first. Then he realized what the sound was: big,
booted feet and hoof-hands on dry autumn leaves.

"Helloooooooo!" The Boy shouted. "Grumbler?
Feathertop? We're here, all of us, waiting for you at Grumbler's cottage! Hellooooooo!"

Out from the shadows between the trees stepped a cranky
looking dwarf wearing a green felt fedora. By his side was a happy little pony
whose head was tufted by a sprig spurt splotch of lime green feathers.

"Grumbler!" The Boy cried with pleasure,
rushing toward the dwarf. "Feathertop!" he shouted gleefully, opening
his arms wide.

"You've finally come home!" The Boy said
excitedly. "You've both finally come home to the Wood!"

Grumbler the dwarf stopped at the edge of the clearing. With
his eyes narrowed and his mouth in a twist they all remembered well, Grumbler
looked past The Boy at the cottage he'd once lived in. He glanced around at the
others, who smiled and sang and danced a jig for him. Grumbler looked at
Feathertop, who whinnied and looked back at Grumbler.

"I'm so glad you've come home," The Boy said,
calmer now, but just as happy.

"Well," Grumbler replied, his voice a bit
deeper than The Boy remembered. And much colder.

"It isn't as though we had much of a choice . . .”

—an excerpt from
Fly
Away to Strangewood

by TJ Randall. The last,
unfinished
Strangewood
story.

There was no fanfare to announce the moment when Thomas
Randall's life began to change. No dramatic storm, no sudden enlightenment or
shift of fortune.

It simply happened, much like the mundane act of turning a
light on, yet without even the sudden illumination to mark the event. And
Thomas himself did not even notice that anything had changed.

But
everything
had changed.

The waitress clinked a sweating bottle of Dixie Crimson
Voodoo onto Thomas Randall's table at Live Bait, where he waited for his agent
to arrive for their late lunch meeting. According to her name tag, the waitress
was named Beverly. She was an extraordinary black woman with chocolate skin and
a metal bolt through her tongue that flashed when she thanked him for her tip. Something
so sexy about that.

Then again, all the waitresses at Live Bait — and
waiters too, for that matter — were sparklingly good-looking. There was a
myth about New York, and Los Angeles as well, that every waitress was an
actress or a model. One particularly sluttish woman in L.A. had even proudly
introduced herself to Thomas as an "AMW."

Naive fool, he'd asked, "What's an AMW?"

She'd bestowed upon him a particularly condescending smile
and chirped in
Clueless
tones, "Actress, model . . .
whatever!" Then she'd laughed, a self-conscious cackle that tossed her
hair back and made her breasts heave just enough to confirm their impossible
roundness. Impossible, that was L.A., all right.

Which was why, after the first animated film from Disney, entitled
simply
Adventures in Strangewood
, Thomas had moved his family back to
Westchester County, New York. Mission accomplished.

On the other hand, he didn't really have a family anymore.

Thomas wiped several beads of condensation off the neck of
his Crimson Voodoo. He loved that ale mainly because he loved New Orleans,
where it was made. Part of him wanted to live in New Orleans, but it was just
too damn hot down there, and too exotically alien. Manhattan was his town. Dangerous,
yes, but since he lived in Westchester, Manhattan's dangers seemed more exotic
than risky. Thomas also preferred the Northeast because, simply put, he needed
seasons, a sense of time passing.

"Can I get you another?" Beverly asked.

"Hmm?" Thomas replied, then looked down to see the
bottle of Crimson Voodoo nearly empty.

"All this heat," he observed, and waved a hand
over the bottle. "It must have evaporated."

They grinned at one another, and Thomas agreed that, yes, he
would have another beer. He was thirty-two, divorced from Emily less than six
months, and the father of one son, Nathan, who was five. Beverly the waitress
was barely old enough to drink — if that — sexy as all get out, and
flirting with him. It wasn't any serious flirting. Thomas wasn't an idiot. But
it was a pleasant kind of energy passing between them, and he enjoyed it just
for that.

The second bottle of Crimson Voodoo replaced the first. Beverly
put it down precisely where the other had sat, as if the small ring of
condensation were a bulls-eye. Thomas moved the bottle. Maybe just his way of
keeping count, marking the passing of the first dead soldier. For a moment, he
watched Beverly move, admired her athletic build, the black shorts and
sneakers, the white socks and tee, even the dirty little green apron. She was
curiously unadorned for a New York woman, particularly one who wanted to be a
model or an actress.

He observed her. Writers are like stalkers in that way, he
thought self-consciously, and not for the first time. He was watching her too
closely, too carefully. And so he forced himself to look away.

His gaze drifted around the small restaurant area, perhaps a
dozen unsteady tables in use by
employees
. That's how Thomas always
thought of them. They weren't his employees of course, or the restaurants, but
they were somebody's. Manhattan at one P.M. on a weekday was little more than
one huge business lunch. Find a hip yet cheap place to eat, all the better.

Live Bait fit the bill. The little Cajun restaurant was at
Twenty-Third Street and Madison, a neighborhood with more than its share of
publishing houses. A trendy spot for editors, agents, and writers to run into
one another, by accident or design.

Past a bar crowded with people drinking lunch, and probably
not there on business, was a wide glass picture window ornamented with reversed
neon beer signs. Reversed to Thomas, of course. They were perfectly readable
from the steaming, sun-drenched sidewalk of Twenty- Third Street.

Thomas watched people walking by, ties loosened, jackets
off. Those who didn't have such dress codes wore as little as legally possible.
One woman walking her dog had on a bikini top and what seemed to be a silk
scarf instead of a skirt. Thomas didn't even blink, and only the tourists
turned to see her as she walked by. It was Manhattan, after all.

It was a hot Friday in July and not even the lightest breeze
stirred the stagnant air in the canyons of New York City. When the sun dropped
behind the Flatiron Building, long, cool shadows would insinuate themselves
across the sidewalks, stretching fingers into the street itself.

For now, there was only the glare.

Then, blocking the glare, a silhouette, a shape, a woman.

"I hope you haven't been waiting long."

Thomas blinked several times, forced his eyes to adjust. The
silhouette resolved into his agent, Francesca Cavallaro. Attractive, yet
diminutive, she was possessed of an immutable resolve and an air of confidence
that gave her a much larger presence than her size would warrant.

She had fire, Thomas always thought. He'd liked that in her
from the first. It had served both of them well.

"Nope, waited for you before ordering," Thomas
revealed. "But I know what I want. The jambalaya is excellent here, you
should try it."

"I'm in the mood for fish, actually," Francesca
said. "If they have blackened catfish, I'm sold."

"You may be in luck," he told her as she picked up
a menu. Then, after a moment, "I don't want to rush you, but we're going
to have to be fairly quick. I've got to pick Nathan up from school."

Francesca's blue eyes rose over the top of the menu to
regard him tenderly. She had long hair, dyed an almost natural red, and blue
eyes that reminded Thomas of a marble he'd had as a boy; just one, and he'd
lost it the spring he'd turned seven. But he never forgot.

"How's that going, anyway?" she asked.

"Seems to be working out," Thomas replied. "I
get my work done during the week, and play with Nathan on the weekend. The best
of both worlds, actually, considering how Emily and I get along these days. Which
is to say, not at all."

This answer seemed to satisfy Francesca, for she glanced
idly around in search of the waitress.

"How's the new one coming? What's it called?"

"
Fly Away to Strangewood
," he reminded her.
"It's the one where Grumbler and Feathertop finally come home."

Francesca brightened with that.

"God, TJ," she said. "The kids have been
screaming for that for about three years, right? That'll make you a mint."

"Us," Thomas reminded her, brushing his fingers
through his thick scrub of short dark hair. "It'll make us a mint. And
please, Frankie, don't call me TJ. You know I hate that."

"Sorry," she lied. Then the waitress came, and
when he glanced at her tag, Thomas realized he'd forgotten her name. In the
space of less than five minutes, it had been lost to him. He chided himself,
and the failings of the human mind, and ordered his jambalaya.

"Another Voodoo?" the waitress asked.

"Just Coke this time," he requested. "With a
lime."

As Francesca ordered, Thomas slid down a bit in his chair. It
was as rickety as the table. He wore fresh blue jeans and new sneakers, a
well-made short-sleeve shirt with three buttons at the neck. He was
comfortable. Anytime he began to have misgivings about the things he felt he'd
given up creatively, the spark, the heart of his work, Thomas reminded himself
how fortunate he was.