The Urban Fantasy Anthology Read online

  “The Coldest Girl in Coldtown” by Holly Black

  Fifty-seven days ago, Matilda had been sober. She’d had a boyfriend named Julian, and they would dress up together in her bedroom. He liked to wear skinny ties and glittery eye shadow. She liked to wear vintage rock t-shirts and boots that laced up so high that they would constantly be late because they were busy tying them.

  Matilda and Julian would dress up and prowl the streets and party at lockdown clubs that barred the doors from dusk to dawn. Matilda wasn’t particularly careless; she was just careless enough.

  She’d been at a friend’s party. It had been stiflingly hot, and she was mad because Julian and Lydia were doing some dance thing from the musical they were in at school. Matilda just wanted to get some air. She opened a window and climbed out under the bobbing garland of garlic.

  Another girl was already on the lawn. Matilda should have noticed that the girl’s breath didn’t crystallize in the air, but she didn’t.

  “Do you have a light?” the girl had asked.

  Matilda did. She reached for Julian’s lighter when the girl caught her arm and bent her backwards. Matilda’s scream turned into a shocked cry when she felt the girl’s cold mouth against her neck, the girl’s cold fingers holding her off balance.

  Then it was as though someone slid two shards of ice into her skin.

  The spread of vampirism could be traced to one person—Caspar Morales. Films and books and television had started romanticizing vampires, and maybe it was only a matter of time before a vampire started romanticizing himself.

  Crazy, romantic Caspar decided that he wouldn’t kill his victims. He’d just drink a little blood and then move on, city to city. By the time other vampires caught up with him and ripped him to pieces, he’d infected hundreds of people. And those new vampires, with no idea how to prevent the spread, infected thousands.

  When the first outbreak happened in Tokyo, it seemed like a journalist’s prank. Then there was another outbreak in Hong Kong and another in San Francisco.

  The military put up barricades around the area where the infection broke out. That was the way the first Coldtown was founded.

  The Urban Fantasy Anthology

  © 2011 by Tachyon Publications

  This is a work of collected fiction. All events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form without the express permission of the publisher.

  Introduction by Peter S. Beagle © 2011 by Avicenna Development Corporation.

  Cover and interior design by Elizabeth Story

  Tachyon Publications

  1459 18th Street #139

  San Francisco, CA 94107

  (415) 285-5615

  www.tachyonpublications.com

  [email protected]

  Series Editor: Jacob Weisman

  Project Editor: Jill Roberts

  ISBN 13: 978-1-61696-018-6

  ISBN 10: 1-61696-018-3

  Printed in the United States of America by Worzalla

  First Edition: 2011

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  “A Personal Journey into Mythic Fiction” © 2011 by Charles de Lint. Previously unpublished.

  “A Bird That Whistles” © 1989 by Emma Bull. First published in Hidden Turnings, edited by Diana Wynne Jones (Greenwillow: New York).

  “Make a Joyful Noise” © 2005 by Charles de Lint. First published in Make a Joyful Noise (Subterranean Press: Burton, Michigan).

  “The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories” © 1996 by Neil Gaiman. First published in David Copperfield’s Beyond Imagination, edited by David Copperfield, Janet Berliner, and Martin H. Greenberg (Avon Books: New York).

  “On the Road to New Egypt” © 1995 by Jeffrey Ford. First published in Aberrations, 32.

  “Julie’s Unicorn” © 1997 by Avicenna Development Corporation. First published in The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche and Other Odd Acquaintances (Tachyon Publications: San Francisco).

  “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Urban Fantasy” © 2011 by Paula Guran. Previously unpublished.

  “Companions to the Moon” © 2007 by Charles de Lint. First published in Realms of Fantasy, June 2007.

  “A Haunted House of Her Own” © 2009 by Kelley Armstrong. First published in Twilight Zone: 19 Original Stories on the 50th Anniversary, edited by Carol Sterling (Tor Books: New York).

  “She’s My Witch” © 1995 by Norman Partridge. First published in 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, edited by Stefan Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg, and Martin H. Greenberg (Barnes & Noble: New York).

  “Kitty’s Zombie New Year” © 2007 by Carrie Vaughn. First published in Weird Tales, June/July 2007.

  “Seeing Eye” © 2009 by Patricia Briggs. First published in Strange Brew, edited by P. N. Elrod (St. Martin’s Press: New York).

  “Hit” © 2008 by Bruce McAllister. First published in Aeon, issue 13.

  “Boobs” © 1989 by Suzy McKee Charnas. First published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, July 1989.

  “Farewell, My Zombie” © 2009 by Francesca Lia Block. First published in Black Clock, Spring/Summer 2009.

  “We Are Not a Club, But We Sometimes Share a Room,” © 2011 by Joe R. Lansdale. Previously unpublished.

  “The White Man” © 2004 by Thomas M. Disch. First published in Flights: Extreme Visions of Fantasy, edited by Al Sarrantonio (Roc: New York).

  “Gestella” © 2004 by Susan Palwick. First published in Starlight 3, edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden (Tor Books: New York).

  “The Coldest Girl in Coldtown” © 2009 by Holly Black. First published in The Eternal Kiss: 13 Vampire Tales of Blood and Desire, edited by Trisha Telep (Running Press: Philadelphia).

  “Talking Back to the Moon” © 2011 by Steven R. Boyett. Previously unpublished.

  “On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks” © 1989 by Joe R. Lansdale. First appeared in Book of the Dead, edited by John Skipp and Craig Spector (Bantam: New York).

  “The Bible Repairman” © 2005 by Tim Powers. First published as The Bible Repairman (Subterranean Press: Burton, Michigan).

  “Father Dear” © 1983 by Al Sarrantonio. First appeared in Fears, edited by Charles L. Grant (Berkley Books: New York).

  CONTENTS

  Introduction by Peter S. Beagle

  Mythic Fiction

  Introduction: A Personal Journey into Mythic Fiction

  Charles de Lint

  A Bird That Whistles

  Emma Bull

  Make a Joyful Noise

  Charles de Lint

  The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories

  Neil Gaiman

  On the Road to New Egypt

  Jeffrey Ford

  Julie’s Unicorn

  Peter S. Beagle

  Paranormal Romance

  Introduction: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Urban Fantasy

  Paula Guran

  Companions to the Moon

  Charles de Lint

  A Haunted House of Her Own

  Kelley Armstrong

  She’s My Witch

  Norman Partridge

  Kitty’s Zombie New Year

  Carrie Vaughn

  Seeing Eye

  Patricia Briggs

  Hit

  Bruce McAllister

  Boobs

  Suzy McKee Charnas

  Farewell, My Zombie

  Francesca Lia Block

  Noir Fantasy

  Introduction: We Are Not a Club, But We Sometimes Share a Room

  Joe R. Lansdale

  The White Man

  Thomas M. Disch

>   Gestella

  Susan Palwick

  The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

  Holly Black

  Talking Back to the Moon

  Steven R. Boyett

  On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks

  Joe R. Lansdale

  The Bible Repairman

  Tim Powers

  Father Dear

  Al Sarrantonio

  Introduction

  Peter S. Beagle

  I wish I could remember what writer or politician it was (we used to have remarkably literate politicians, even Republican ones) who said, “I am not an animal-lover. To me, an animal-lover is an animal who is in love with another animal.”

  In the same way, my main notion of urban fantasy is fantasy that takes place in an urban. Which to my mind—conditioned by years of Pogo and Dr. Seuss—is what’s left when your favorite Sunday turban has gone one too many times through the wash.

  But more seriously…

  Jacob Weisman, Tachyon’s publisher, has selected me to co-edit this book and to write this introduction because I have an affinity for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and because I once wrote a story called “Lila the Werewolf.” That story, written long before the term “urban fantasy” would have meant anything to anybody, was about a New York werewolf, and the man who loved the werewolf, pursuing her late at night down mean, moonlit city streets. (I haven’t included that story here because it wasn’t written in the same spirit as the stories you’ll find in this collection. Instead I have chosen to include a somewhat more recent story of my own involving another of that narrator’s unusual girlfriends.) But as a subgenre, as a kind, as a trope, I still think that urban fantasy’s most important distinction is that it isn’t The Lord of the Rings: that is, it doesn’t happen in a comfortable rural, pre-industrial setting where people still ride horses, swing swords, quaff ale in variously sinister pubs, and head off apocalypses and Armageddons that would make a Buffy episode look like a tussle in a schoolyard. Not that that’s a bad thing…

  What I am clear on is that, while I wasn’t looking, urban fantasy has become so vibrant, and has evolved so rapidly, that it has emerged as a distinct marketing category, often with its own section in the bookstore. Because of that rapid growth the term means different things to different generations of readers. There have, in fact, been three distinct subgenres of urban fantasy: mythic fiction, paranormal romance, and noir fantasy. Elsewhere in these pages Charles de Lint, Paula Guran, and Joe R. Lansdale, all greater experts than I, will explain these to you in more depth then I will here.

  The first popularization of the term urban fantasy (later rechristened by Charles de Lint and Terri Windling as mythic fiction), appearing in the mid to late 1980s, was used to apply to the work of writers such as de Lint, Emma Bull, Windling, and Will Shetterly, who wrote contemporary stories in which myths and fairy tales intruded into everyday life. Just about every generation of writers with a natural bent for the fantastic vision, from George MacDonald to Robert Nathan to Fritz Leiber, has been redefining fantasy as long as I’ve been reading the stuff, but there was a more concerted approach employed by the first generation of urban fantasists. Speaking for myself, I’ve never based whatever it is I do on any particular theoretical structure, other than “it seemed like a good idea at the time.” These guys were thinking about it.

  And then there was Buffy.

  The much-deserved success of Buffy the Vampire Slayer meant that vampires, werewolves, and demons of all varieties—including the sort who were either as tormented about what they were as any teenager or as forlornly anxious to fit in—were suddenly fictional legal tender once again. A second wave of urban fantasy overtook the first: paranormal romance, in all of its dark, tawdry, and dysfunctional glory. These creatures of the night knew exactly what they’d become, and were at least half-aware that they were symbols and metaphors for the American experience. Our heroine, walking through the empty subway station, is no longer the meek shrinking-violet of previous generations. She is precocious, athletic, sexually aware, and regards kicking demonic ass, in Buffy’s words, as “comfort food.” (Okay, granted, Twilight and its sequels represent a decidedly reactionary backward step into the virgin-perpetually-at-physical-and-sexual-risk mode that began with in the eighteenth century with Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa, but this too shall pass…) Around the time you have cheerful werewolf heroines running radio call-in shows—as in Laurel K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series—something has definitely changed.

  The third generation of urban fantasy, noir fantasy, hearkens to a call for more realism, as exemplified by the novels of Charlie Huston, whose private-eye vampire detective is more profoundly worn down and plain weary than anyone Raymond Chandler ever envisioned. Think of one of Jim Thompson’s or David Goodis’s characters on a bad day, but with fangs. (Regrettably, Charlie Huston doesn’t write that sort of material at shorter length, but I can strongly recommend his novels.) Noir fiction has been making inroads into fantasy and horror for many years. One need only look at Joe Lansdale’s anthology Crucified Dreams (also published by Tachyon Publications) to see a map of the stories that lead from the works by masters of the craft like Harlan Ellison to the newer writers included here.

  Urban fantasy counts on familiarity with mythology, fairy tales, and the earliest horror tropes like vampires, werewolves, and warlocks—in the same way that science fiction relies on faster-than-light drives and sentient robots—as shorthand to pull the reader through familiar territory quickly without wasting precious time. In old horror stories the tension built up slowly as the characters were drawn toward what the reader already knew would happen. A proper urban fantasy hero is always ready to grab a stake or a silver-bullet clip, and stalk down that dark alley, or into that dank sub-basement where red eyes glower from far corners, at a moment’s notice. Or, when necessary, to be the thing behind those red eyes…to be, in the words of the bitter inversion of the 23rd Psalm that came out of the Vietnam War, “the meanest mother” in the Valley of Death.

  This is not The Secret History of Fantasy. In that book, the previous anthology I edited for Tachyon, I gathered together a group of writers, all close to my heart, who were at once carving out new directions in fantasy while at the same time following in a tradition that owed little to the specter of J. R. R. Tolkien, or at least to those following slavishly in his footsteps. This was daring, auspicious work that took its joy in the telling, fiction that played with the very underpinnings of our genre, fiction that reveled in its own audacity and took itself seriously, without being ponderous or exclusionary about it.

  The stories in this anthology represent the other side of that encampment—raw, consciously commercial fiction, feeding an unquenchable hunger for walks on the wild side, blending and shaking up familiar themes until they are transformed into something new and meaningful.

  In this collection you will find a number of wonderful stories, some deeply provocative, others played for camp. You will be purely delighted by some of them and profoundly disturbed by others—I should be rather disappointed if it were otherwise. But you will not be bored.

  A Personal Journey into Mythic Fiction

  Charles de Lint

  My journey into mythic fiction began early, with the books that I read as a child. Because my dad was a navigator for a surveying company, we moved around a lot. I didn’t grow up or go to school with the same kids in the same neighbourhood, so I never felt the home roots that most children acquire.

  While I often resented being the new kid on the block, in later years I came to appreciate what a mind-opening upbringing it was. It was also a time when I learned to amuse myself since books and my own imagination were the only entertainments I could take with me. Fairy tales and Enid Blyton’s books and, later, The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame gave me my love of both story and illustrated books. As I got older, I devoured all the Tarzan and John Carter of Mars books in my father’s library. When I reached my teens, I began to
write.

  I already appreciated mythology and folklore from my early years, but in my late teens I became totally enthralled by writers such as William Morris, Lord Dunsany, James Branch Cabell, Katharine Briggs and Colin Wilson. I spent my teen years reading everything esoteric that I could get my hands on. I was also intrigued by world religions, as well as by divination systems such as the I Ching, runes, etc.

  There wasn’t a great deal of fantasy fiction available but fortunately my appetite for fiction went beyond fantastic literature. Mainstream, westerns, mysteries, detective novels…anything with strong characters and a good story appealed to me.

  I also developed a passion for music. This was the time of Beat poets and musicians like Bob Dylan, Donovan, The Incredible String Band. As a listener and as a musician, I developed an abiding love for Celtic music, which also happened to contain a great deal of myth and folklore.

  During my teens and twenties I wrote reams of poetry and hundreds of songs, some of which contained fantasy elements. In the madness that comes with youth, one night I burned almost all of this in a magnificent bonfire. Ah, the drama and folly of it all.

  By the late seventies I had evolved into writing stories and novels. When I first started out, I wrote high fantasy because that’s what I thought fantasy had to be. My first few novels (not all of which were published, thankfully) were definitely influenced by Tolkien. My wife MaryAnn, while editing one of these early works, said, “You read all kinds of fiction. You should try this in a contemporary setting.”