C.S.E. Cooney - Bone Swans: Stories

This collection is dedicated toJohn ONeill and Tina Jens.

Picture me sitting in a small used-book shop with a banana cream pie onmy lap. The young man reading at the lectern has given us a short-shortstory that is certainly publishable and has now launched upon one thatthat is not. We have had the poetry that suggests a poor article inReaders Digest cut up into uneven lengths, and the heart-wrenchingpersonal memoir of the sister of a soldier killed overseas. And others.You know.

The readers are kept in order by Claire Cooney, a startling young blondewith a smile capable of lighting up a good sized theater. At last shereads herself, a poem that rhymes and scans and grabs you from theopening line. The hero is a disfigured corpse floating down a citysewer, and it is funny when it is not horrible. (And sometimes when itis.) She chants it, and her voice is clear and musical. I couldnt beprouder of her if I were her father.

I met Claire when my friend Rory Cooney brought her around to see me.His daughter wrote, he explained, and he felt she had talent. Would I bewilling to coach her a bit? I read some short pieces she had written andpromised to do it. She was eighteen at the time.

Most writers begin by imitating some favorite writer, H. P. Lovecraftimitating Lord Dunsany for example. Theres nothing wrong with that,provided the beginner grows out of it and finds his or her own voice. IfClaire began by imitating somebody, she had already grown a long way outof it at eighteen. She wrote pure Claire Cooney. (Try to define thatwhen youve finished the stories in this book.)

She is in love with literature AND the theateryes, both at the sametime. She had a double major in college and has had a double major inlife. She has played Rosalind in a professional production of As YouLike It, and I wish I could have seen it. If there was ever a girlcreated by God to swagger around on stage with a broadsword pushedthrough the knot in her sword belt, Claire is that girl. The one time Ihave seen her in a play, she was a South African whore; she was good inthat role, too, and gave me the impression that she would be good in anyrole that did not require her to die coughing up blood.

What did she learn from me? Nothing, really. There is a select type ofstudent, rare but invaluable, who will certainly succeed if not run downby a truck. You help yourself instead of helping them, putting an armaround their shoulders and making them promise to say you taught themall they know. I have had two of those, and Claire is one. I tried. Iexplained to her that there is no money in poetry anymore.

She continues to write poetry anytime she feels like it. Its all good,and some of it is great.

I explained that though writers learned to write by writing shortstories, the money was in novels these days.

Claire insists she has a secret novel she is grinding away at; meanwhileshe shows tourists through an aquarium, answers casting calls, and penspoems. Not to mention short stories starring cunning were-rats. And onrare occasions, she writes e-mails to me.

I explained the business ofwell, never mind. You get the picture.

Alsothis one actually tookI introduced her to science fictionconventions. To the best of my memory, her first was Readercon. (Alwaysstart at the top.) Claire, Rosemary, and I lived in greater Chicago inthose dim, far-off days. Readercon, as you may know, is always held inor around Boston.

We drove.

It used to be that Rosemary would spell me at the wheel. By the time wedrove to Boston, she was unable to walk more than a step or two andcompletely incapable of driving. So Claire spelled me, letting me forthe first time ever ride in my own back seat. She would, Im sure, haveworn a chauffeurs cap, had I had wit enough to obtain one.

Doubtless you know that once upon a time, the very best carsmy fatherremembered themhad run by steam. The chauffeur did not drive them; hestoked the fire under the boiler. Now I was the chauffeur in theoriginal sense, stoking our fire by encouraging Claire, praising herskill at the wheel, and so forth. Giving her confidence, too, by keepingthe road atlas open on my lap and explaining that soon we would leavethis federal highway and enter the other interstate. Claire held ourspeed between fifty and fifty-five, so that our progress resembled thatof a barge on a canal. I was tempted to climb out a window and ride onthe roof, ducking for low bridges like the passengers in the song, butthough that might have been fun, it would almost certainly have resultedin the loss of the road atlas. I remained inside.

Claire did lots of other things, too. When I was locked in an elevatoron the first floor of a large motel, and Rosemary marooned in herwheelchair on the second, Claire served as go-between, running up anddown the stairs to check the condition of the elevator and report toRosemary.

When we got to Readercon, Claire discovered a coven of witches andjoined at once. (Keep Halloween in Your Heart All Year long!) She fitright in, and before the con was over, the witches were boasting abouttheir new member. Nobody had smartphones then, but Claire and I hadbrought our cell phones. Claire, I should explain, pushed Rosemaryswheelchair from time to time and was able to accompany and assist her inthe ladies room. On one occasion, Claire and I held a long conferenceby cell phone before I discovered that she was around the corner, aboutfive short steps away.

Perhaps you feel that I have told you too much about the author in thisintroduction and not enough about the stories in this book. All right,lets take up a favorite of mine, The Big Bah-Ha. Perhaps you knowthat you and I live in the Milky Way galaxy, an immense whorl of stars.You may also know that for years astronomers have wondered whether ourown stars orbiting planets were unique. Did other stars have planets,too? A few said yes and many more no. But no one actually knew; it wasall guesswork.

Science fiction (and religion) sided with the minority, the scientificworld in general with the majority. Without evidence, it was foolish toassume that anything existed. To assume that things as large as planetsdid was the height of folly.

Now we have a little hard data, and it would appear so far that planetsare the rule, not the exception.

Lets think about that. The number of stars in our galaxy is enormous,almost infinite. And yet our galaxy is only one of many. We continue tofind new ones, and it may well be that their number is infinite ornearly.

Enter Claire. If there are so many galaxies, and so many stars in eachof those galaxies, almost every imaginable race must also exist. Whatabout a race similar to our clowns? A race wearing oversized shoes andrubber noses. Why, there are stranger customs right here on Earth! Weknow, then, what their society would be like, but what about theirreligion? And what if their religion were true?

God is infinite.

That was the day the sky went dark.

No eclipse was scheduled on the priests calendars to spur the ferventinto declaiming the last days. No dust storm had blown up from theBellisaar Wasteland, spinning the air into needle and amber andsuffering all unwary walkers the death of a thousand cuts. No warning.

Just the dark.

Outside the gates of Rok Moris, a white sun blazed. Rattlesnake basked.Sandwolf slunk to fit inside the meager shadow of a sarro cactus.