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Seanan McGuire
“Here,” announced Shelby, shoving the girl in our direction. “Demi
Santos. Music major at the community college. You explain. I’m going
to go twist the heads off some kittens.” She spun on her heel and went
stalking off again.
The brusquely-identified Ms. Santos shot us an
alarmed look. Jeff, trying to be helpful, said encouragingly, “Don’t
worry. Shelby very rarely twists the head off of anything.”
Demi Santos, officially abducted by crazy people, burst into tears.
We followed the target to the largest hospital in the city, hanging back almost half a block to keep her from noticing us as she staggered her unsteady way down the sidewalk. Our caution was born more of habit than necessity; she was deep into her narrative haze, moving more under the story’s volition than her own. We could have stripped down and danced naked in front of her and she would just have kept on walking.
“Why are we stalking this girl?” Shelby walked with her hands crammed as far into her jacket pockets as they would go, shoulders defensively hunched. “She’ll play out whether we’re here or not. We could go out, get dinner, and come back before the EMTs finish hooking her to the life support.”
“Because it’s the polite thing to do,” said Andy. He was a lot more at ease than Shelby, probably because the only thing Andy ever escaped was a respectable job. Shelby missed being a Wicked Stepsister by inches, and she’s been uncomfortable around ATI cases ever since. I can’t blame her a bit. I also can’t let her go, because nobody who hasn’t been the subject of a story can spot them before they get fully underway.
“She’s a seven-nine,” snarled Shelby, shooting a poisonous glare in Andy’s direction. Metaphorically poisonous; she never matured to the arsenic-and-apples stage of things. “You can’t do anything for them, short of putting a bullet in their heads. Even then, the dumb bitches will probably just get permanently brain-damaged on the way to happy ever after.”
“Gosh, Shelby, tell us how you really feel.”
The slim young woman we’d been following—beautiful in the classical seven-nine way, with her sleek black hair and her snowy skin—vanished through the hospital doors. If the story went the way the archivists predicted, her own Wicked Stepmother would be waiting inside, ready to hand her a box of poisoned apple juice or a plastic cup of tainted applesauce. That would let the story start in earnest. That’s the way it goes for the seven-nines.
That’s the way it goes for the Snow Whites.
Shelby shifted her weight anxiously from one foot to the other as we waited, looking increasingly uncomfortable as the minutes trickled by and the weight of the impending story grew heavier. Then she stiffened, her eyes going wide in their rings of sheltering kohl. “There isn’t a five-eleven anywhere inside that hospital,” she said, and bolted for the doors.
Swearing, Andy and I followed her.
*
Here’s the first thing you need to know about the fairy tales: they’re all true. Oh, the specific events may have only happened once, in some kingdom so old that we’ve forgotten it ever really existed, but the essentials of the story keep repeating over and over again. We can’t get rid of them. I’m sure they serve some purpose—very little happens without a reason—but it’s hard to focus on that when you’re facing a major beanstalk incident in Detroit, or a gingerbread condo development in San Francisco. People mostly dismiss the manifestations, writing them off as publicity stunts or crazy pranks. It’s better that way. Not many people have the kind of iron-clad sanity that can survive suddenly discovering that if you’re born a seven-nine, you’re inevitably going to wind up poisoned and left for dead, and that rescue isn’t guaranteed, since once you go inanimate, the story’s focus switches to the Prince. Poor sap.
We use the Aarne-Thompson Index to map the manifestations as much as we can, cross-referencing fairy tales from all over the world. Not every seven-nine has skin as white as snow and a thing for short men, even if Snow White is the best known example of the breed. Not every five-eleven is actually going to snap and start trying to kill her stepdaughter or stepsisters, although the urge will probably rear its ugly head a time or twenty. Like any rating system, the ATI has its flaws, but it mostly gets the job done, and it’s better than running around in the dark all the damn time.
Some folks say using the ATI dehumanizes our subjects, making it easier to treat them like fictional creatures to be dealt with and disposed of. Most of them have never put in any real hours in the field. They’ve never seen what it takes to break girls like Shelby out of the stories they’ve gotten tangled up in before the narrative consumes them. Me, I got lucky; I got my sensitivity to stories by being adjunct to one, rather than being an active part. My mother was one of the most dangerous ATI types.
She was a four-ten: a Sleeping Beauty. She was in a deep coma when my twin brother and I were born, the misbegotten children of the doctor who was supposed to be treating her injuries and wound up taking advantage of her instead.
She slept through our birth, just like the stories said she should. We didn’t pull the poisoned needle from her finger when we tried to nurse; we pulled her life support cable. Mom died before the ATI cleanup crew could figure out where the narrative energy was coming from, leaving us as orphans. Under normal circumstances, the narrative would have slammed us both straight into the nearest story that would fit. The cleanup crew didn’t let that happen. In a very real sense, I owe them my life, or at least my lack of singing woodland creatures.
Most of the subjects we deal with are innocents, people who wound up in the wrong place at the wrong time and got warped to fit into the most convenient slots on the ATI. Others are born to live out their stories, no matter how much damage that does to the world around them. It’s not a choice for them. It’s a compulsion, something that drives them all the way to their graves.
Shelby was almost to the hospital doors, running hell-bent, with her head slightly down like she was going to ram her way straight through any obstacles. Andy had settled into a holding pattern about eight feet behind her, letting her be the one to trigger any traps that might be waiting. It wasn’t as heartless as it seems. As the one who came the closest to being sucked into a story of her own, Shelby is not only the most sensitive—she’s also the most resistant. She could survive where we couldn’t.
“Shelby!” I bellowed. “If it’s not a five-eleven, what is it?”
She didn’t have time to answer, but she didn’t need to. She came skidding to a stop so abruptly that Andy almost slammed into her from behind, both of them only inches from the sensor that would trigger the automatic door. Those inches saved them. I could see the people in the lobby through the glass as they started falling over gently in their tracks, all of them apparently sinking into sleep at the same moment.
I let momentum carry me forward until I came to an easy stop next to Shelby and Andy. “Great,” I sighed. “A four-ten.”
I hate Sleeping Beauties.
*
The cleanup crew cordoned off the entire block surrounding the hospital, buying off the inevitable media and local police with stories about a natural gas leak. “Radon gas,” said Andy to a dewy-eyed reporter who looked like she had six brain cells to knock together, all of them devoted to keeping her from falling off of her stiletto heels. She was nodding gravely in time with his words, making me faintly seasick. Andy can be damn convincing when he wants to be. “It’s invisible, it’s scentless, and—” He stepped forward, moving in for the kill. “—it’s deadly.”
The reporter took an unconscious step back, dewy eyes widening even further. “Where did it come from?”
“Natural caverns, ma’am,” said Andy. “Don’t worry. As long as we can keep this area clear of civilians, we’ll have this all cleaned up in a matter of hours.”
The reporter nodded, thrusting her microphone into his face as she recovered her composure enough to start asking inane questions. I turned my attention from Andy to Jeff, head of the on-site cleanup crew.
“It’s not really radon gas, is it?” I asked. Stranger things have happened once a four-ten shows up on the scene. As long as people fall down and don’t get up again, it falls within the borders of the story. The narrative doesn’t care how little sense it makes.
“No,” said Jeff. I let my shoulders start relaxing. “It’s a new strain of sleeping sickness that’s somehow managed to hybridize itself with the H1N1 flu.”
I stopped relaxing. “You’re saying we have an airborne Sleeping Beauty?”
Jeff nodded. “Her influence is confined to the hospital right now, probably because the vents were closed when she went fully contagious, but eventually, it’s going to start spreading. It’ll have to. It needs to get bad enough—”
“—to attract a Prince,” I finished grimly. “Some opportunistic son-of-a-bitch out to nail a Princess for the sake of a payoff. I hate Princes. The goddamn things are worse than rats.” I froze, considering the implications of that statement.
“I don’t like them much either, Henry, but I don’t see how else we’re going to stop this story.” Jeff gave me a sidelong look, frowning. “I don’t like that look on your face. What are you thinking?”
“Get me Shelby,” I said, my own gaze swinging toward the hospital. “I have a job for her.”
*
“You’re insane,” announced Shelby, folding her arms across her chest and distorting her skull-and-crossbones T-shirt graphic into something that was less pirate, more Picasso. “I’ve always known that you were going to go over the edge one day, but this is worse than I thought it was going to be. I just figured you’d start talking to bunnies and singing into wishing wells.”
“Be as nasty as you want, Shelby; that won’t change what I’m asking you to do.” I met her eyes as calmly as I could, trying to ignore her digs at my borderline seven-nine status. I had all the hallmarks—a dead mother, a redheaded brother, and a deadbeat father who tried to claim custody over the protests of his flaxen-fair trophy wife—but I dodged that bullet years ago, and Shelby knows it.
“What makes you think this is going to work?”
“It’s a pathogenic Sleeping Beauty this time. The story’s trying to buck us off its trail. That’s fine, because if it’s a disease, it falls under the ATI index for ‘vermin,’ and if the problem is vermin, we can resolve the story with another story.”
“So you want Shelby to find you a four-forty?” Andy shook his head. “I know you don’t like the four-tens, but don’t you think this is reaching a little?”
“It’s reaching, all right, but Henrietta’s right,” said Jeff, abruptly. We all turned to look at him. Our resident archivist had his index open, propped on one arm, with his finger anchored midway down the four-forty column. “There’s a reported variation here where the four-forty killed the village that refused to pay him by piping the Black Death into their houses while they slept. Pipers can control disease. The narrative supports it.”
“Then it’s settled,” I said, firmly. “We’re going to give it a try. Shelby, you’re our fairy tale-detector. Go do your job. Find me a Pied Piper.”
“I fucking hate this job,” she snarled, and turned to go.
*
The containment team estimated that the hospital would be able to contain our Sleeping Beauty—confirmed by headquarters as Amanda Connors, age seventeen, daughter of a fairly prominent local family that had also been reported as inexplicably asleep—for approximately six hours before the contagion started to spread. They were close. The people nearest the hospital began slumping gently over approximately five-and-a-half hours after our four-ten went inside, marking the first cases outside the hospital walls.
“If Shelby’s not back soon, we’re going to need to look at pulling our men back,” said Jeff, watching as Andy continued his attempts at crowd control. “We can’t afford to have an entire team fall asleep for a hundred years. The strain on personnel would be unbelievable.”
“She’ll be here,” I said. “God, I hate Sleeping Beauties.” Why that story, out of all the possible stories, should have the sort of staying power it does is beyond me. Centuries of helpless girls, half of them rotting away years before their Prince could come. It makes me sick.
“I know,” said Jeff. “Look, Henry—”
Whatever platitude he’d been preparing about hating the story, not the subject, was cut off as Shelby came storming back up the street, managing to stomp at a pace most people can’t manage when running. She was hauling a frail-looking slip of a teenage girl along by one arm. The girl was clutching a concert flute in one hand, and her expression was distinctly alarmed.
“Here,” announced Shelby, shoving the girl in our direction. “Demi Santos. Music major at the community college. You explain. I’m going to go twist the heads off some kittens.” She spun on her heel and went stalking off again.
The brusquely-identified Ms. Santos shot us an alarmed look. Jeff, trying to be helpful, said encouragingly, “Don’t worry. Shelby very rarely twists the head off of anything.”
Demi Santos, officially abducted by crazy people, burst into tears.
*
It took Andy, a can of Diet Pepsi, and fifteen reassurances that we weren’t going to let Shelby anywhere near her head to get Demi calmed down. I stayed out of the way, waiting for her tears to dry. I am not one of nature’s more reassuring people, and we didn’t have time to send Shelby for another Pied Piper. The contagion was continuing to spread, and if Demi wasn’t up for the job, the entire city was at risk of an extended, unplanned naptime.
“Henry, I think you can come over now,” called Andy. He straightened, giving Demi an encouraging smile. “We’re mostly settled.”
“Good.” I walked over to the small cluster of people, offering Demi my hand. “I’m Henrietta Marchen. I’m assuming they’ve given you a basic rundown of the situation?” She sniffled, nodding. “Good, that saves time. I need you to pipe the rats from as far away as you can manage, get them into the hospital, pipe the sickness into them, and then pipe them into the sewers to drown. Think you can do that for us?”
Demi stared at me. Finally, in the tone of one who was just starting to catch up with the rest of the class, she said, “You people are insane.”
“Probably,” I agreed. “We fight fairy tales for a living. Whether that’s the case or not, my proposal is a simple one. I think you’ll like it.”
“What’s that?” asked Demi, with natural, understandable wariness.
I smiled. I know how creepy I am when I smile. Whoever came up with “skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood” really wasn’t thinking. “Pipe the rats into the hospital, and we’ll let you leave.”
*
Demi Santos—age nineteen, only two years older than our Sleeping Beauty—lifted her flute to her lips, blowing an experimental note. According to the records Jeff produced, she was a natural musician. She didn’t have her first lesson until she was sixteen, by which time she was already good enough to play with any symphony orchestra in the world. That’s a characteristic hallmark of the Pied Pipers. No matter how poor their beginnings, they can always play their chosen instruments better than they have any right to.
“I still think you people are crazy,” she muttered, and began to play.
It was a light, frothy classical piece, something that sounded like it should be accompanied by harps and followed by polite applause. Instead, it was accompanied by the manholes on the sides of the road beginning to rock in their sockets, and the sound of Shelby’s shrill, indignant scream.
And the rats came.
The manhole covers were shoved aside as a flood of gray and brown bodies boiled up from the sewers, surging seamlessly into the streams of rats pouring similarly out of the alleys on every side. Shelby’s scream was repeated, just before a pack of squirrels came stampeding from the direction of the park, joining their cousins in the assault on the hospital. Even a few of the local pigeons got into the act, making up the aerial branch of the vermin assault force. The blended mass of squirrels, rats, and pigeons slammed into the hospital’s automatic doors, overwhelming the sensors and stampeding, scampering, and soaring their way inside.
Demi’s playing had stopped somewhere in the middle of the onslaught, her flute dangling forgotten in her hands as she stared at the hospital doors. It didn’t matter whether she played or not; at this point, she’d given the instructions to her army of vermin, and they were going to do what she told them to do.
“I always knew pigeons were just rats with wings,” commented Andy. Shelby—stomping up with scratches on her cheeks and forehead, probably from standing in the path of the squirrels—just glared at him.
“Did I do that?” asked Demi, sounding stunned.
I glanced to Jeff. He nodded.
“Yes, you did,” he said, stepping over and taking her by the elbow. “Now, we’ve prepared a musical selection that should allow you to pipe the virus into the rats, and from there, it’s a pretty standard descending trill to get them to commit mass suicide. Come on. I’ll get you another soda, and we can go over the sheet music—” Still talking, he led the unresisting four-forty away.
I stayed where I was, watching the hospital doors. Rats and pigeons occasionally flashed by in the lobby, briefly visible through the glass. Andy touched my shoulder.
“They’ll wake her up,” he said. “No Prince. No kiss. Just a disease scare and a major reduction in local pest control business for a while.”
“I know.”
“She’ll probably never even know what happened.”
“I know.”
Shelby interjected, sourly, “But we’re going to have to figure out what the hell we’re going to do with a live Piper. She’s started her story now. Either we defuse her or we bury her in a shallow grave somewhere off the Interstate.”
“I know what you’re voting for,” I said, and turned away from the modern-day castle where a silly little girl who’d pricked her finger on something she shouldn’t have been touching was sleeping through the day that she’d been born for. “Besides, there’s a third option.”
“What’s that?”
“We hire her.” I smiled a little, without amusement. “Who doesn’t dream about fairy tales coming true?”
Shelby eyed me with something close to respect. “Sometimes I think they got our index numbers reversed,” she said.
“Sometimes, so do I,” I replied, and turned to follow Jeff’s route to the control center, where our little four-forty would be preparing for the performance of a lifetime. There’s one thing the Brothers Grimm got very, very wrong:
There’s no such thing as “ever after.” That would require that the story ever end.
END
Copyright © 2009 by Seanan McGuire
www.seananmcguire.com
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