Pandora's Closet Part 26

"I must make them give Karen her feet back."

"Ah!" she exclaimed archly. "Well, finding them is one thing, and catching them, that's another altogether."

Elsa stuck her chin out as she had with her father. She did not have to say anything though. The old woman nodded.

"Very good," she said. "So. You must follow the path. It will go under a tree and over a stream. On the other side of that stream, you will come to a clearing where a great oak has fallen. There you will find a soldier with a red beard playing on a fiddle. Do not let him see you. After a time, he will call the red shoes and make them dance for him. They will not look as you think they might, and you must not be afraid."

"I will not be afraid."

Again, the old woman nodded. "Good. The soldier will make the shoes dance until they cry out, "Give us rest! Give us rest!" And the soldier will answer, "You will have no rest until I grow weary, and I never grow weary while I watch you dance!" You must cry 'Soldier, soldier, give me the red shoes!' He will answer you, " 'Little Elsa, Little Elsa, give me a dance!' Then he will play his fiddle, and you will dance."

"Then what do I do?"

"Ah. Then, my child, you will dance until you give him something he wants as much as the dance."

"What is that?"

But the old woman shook her heavy head and shrugged her humped shoulder. "That is what you must find, Little Elsa." Then she sprang down from the root and scampered into the forest, and she was gone before Elsa could draw her next breath.

Elsa sat there for a long time, listening to her own heartbeat and to the laughter of the crows. Then she gathered her empty cup and handkerchief and climbed down off the root. Elsa walked on. The woods grew darker, and the path grew narrower still. There was a place where a tree root arched over it like a doorway, and Elsa walked through. A stream cut it neatly in two with silver water and muted laughter. She jumped over it, landing unsteadily on her tired feet.

Ahead she saw a place that was gray instead of black. Gradually, her aching eyes saw it was a clearing, and she saw the black corpse of a tree lying like a fallen giant in the middle. Her breath seized up in her throat, and she left the path that was her only guide, and, one hesitant step at a time, she moved toward that gray place. The trees laid their branches on her head and shoulders, cautioning, trying to hold her back and turn her away. She had to push past them as she pushed past her brothers and sisters to see the parades in the streets. As she drew closer, something tickled at her nose, a strange smell she did not expect in such a place. Tobacco.

Elsa dropped down to her knees. Awkwardly, for she kept hold of Clarissa in one arm, she wriggled forward. The ragged hem of the tree trunk pointed toward her, and past it she could just see a man's black boots, and a brown hand, and a trickle of white smoke rising toward the gray evening sky.

Elsa made her decision. She crept carefully into the hollow of the great fallen tree. The worms and beetles paused in their work to see who this new neighbor was. The punk wood turned to powder as she touched it and showered down into her hair and eyes. She rubbed her eyelids, held in her sneezes and peered out through a slit in the bark that allowed her to see just a little slice of the clearing. But that slice held the soldier with his red beard wild and uncombed and his scarlet coat shining with gold braid.

The soldier sat on a stone, his legs stretched out and his black boots crossed. He puffed contentedly on a long-stemmed white pipe. Thick smoke poured from the bowl and from his mouth as it opened and closed, rising up as if it were what made the clouds that had gathered so thickly overhead.

After a time, he seemed to weary of smoking. He knocked out his white pipe against his black boot heel and tucked it into his coat. Then, from somewhere Elsa could not see, he took out a little fiddle and curving bow. He drew the bow across the fiddle strings and the music leaped up as merrily as the flames in her home's hearth. He set to playing at once. The swooping, soaring notes rang through the forest, making the air shiver. The tune he played was strange and sad and merry and frightening all at once. Elsa's feet itched at the sound of it. They were tired no more and wanted to be up and moving. Her ears strained to hear more. She clutched at Clarissa and bit down on her tongue. She tried hard to remember the other sound, the one that brought her here, the thump, thump, creak, creak of Karen's crutches and wooden slats on the kitchen floor. As she did, the tune did not call quite so loudly.

The soldier finished his tune with a flourish of notes, each higher and brighter than the last. He laughed, as if delighted at his own cleverness, and lowered the fiddle from under his chin.

"It is dull," he said, tapping the bow against his boot. "To play all alone. It is much better to have someone to dance to the music." Once more, he touched the bow to the strings and began to play. It was a schottiche he played, merry and sprightly, a song about swinging around and leaping up high and holding hands while you both spun together about the floor. It broke Elsa's heart to hear it in the wilderness where there was no one to dance to such a pretty thing, but she held herself still.

The red shoes came.

They crashed through the bracken, loud and clumsy. Once, they might have been shining leather with embroidered toes and gilded heels, but now they were black with blood. It spilled out of the horrible stumps of Karen's lost feet, severed so cleanly above the ankle. Elsa had thought Karen's feet would be worn away to bones by now, but they were not. The blood poured like a flood of tears, running down onto the forest floor so that the shoes and Karen's feet must dance in her own blood, without stopping and without rest, while the soldier played his merry tune about lovers spinning around the floor. The schottiche finished, and then came a polka, and a waltz tune, a reel from England, and a jig from Ireland. All the dances of the world were drawn down by the soldier and poured out so that the shoes must dance.

Elsa thought and thought. It was hard, because the soldier's tune kept pushing into her mind and filling it up so that her thoughts had to crowd around the edges of the music and could not come together to make ideas. She held Clarissa tighter and tighter. She watched the soldier's fingers fly on his fiddle strings and the bow dart back and forth. She watched the red shoes dance. The soldier laughed louder than the crows even, and there was so much blood.

You must give him something he wants as much as the dance, the old woman had said. Something he wants as much as the dance.

Then, an idea came to Elsa. She bent her head and whispered to Clarissa, who listened in silence, as she always did.

"Give us rest!" cried the shoes, the voice m.u.f.fled by blood and torn by exhaustion. "Give us rest!"

The soldier laughed, and Elsa saw that his eyes were as shiny and black as his tall boots. "You shall have no rest until I grow weary, and I never grow weary while I watch you dance!"

Elsa thrust her doll through the split in the fallen tree trunk and in the high voice she used to make Clarissa speak in all her games, she cried out. "Soldier! Soldier! Give me the red shoes!"

The soldier turned toward her, and she saw his black eyes shining with a merriment that cut through the air like lightning. He did not hesitate, not for an instant, in his playing. The tune changed seamlessly from one lively reel to the next.

"Little Clarissa! Little Clarissa!" The soldier called out. "Give me a dance!"

The doll twitched in Elsa's hand, and Elsa dropped her swiftly. Instead of falling to the ground in a heap as she was used to, Clarissa landed neatly on her own two white cloth feet. She lifted up the hem of her lace dress and skipped as merrily to the center of the clearing as if she were on her way to a birthday party. The doll danced up to the red shoes and back again, bowing politely and circling 'round them, her white feet treading in the fresh blood and soaking it up, becoming red themselves. Elsa wondered whether they ever be clean again.

But she had no time to mourn her doll. Now she had both hands free, and she could creep from the hollow tree and ease herself around the clearing's edge. The soldier played faster, and the little doll and the b.l.o.o.d.y red shoes danced together to his laughter and his music. His bow flashed and his fingers flew. He attended to nothing but the show in front of him as Elsa crept behind.

Then, quick as a cat, Elsa s.n.a.t.c.hed the bow from the soldier's hand and ran back to the fallen tree. The soldier stared at his k.n.o.bby hand for a moment, as if he could not believe what had just happened. In the middle of the meadow, the shoes hesitated, turning this way and that on their toes, and Clarissa stood, smiling, holding her hems in her hand, waiting patiently, as she always did.

"Soldier! Soldier!" cried Elsa holding the bow high. "Give me the red shoes or I will break this bow over my knee!"

To her surprise, the soldier threw back his head and laughed so hard it seemed he'd split stone and tree with the noise.

"You are too late, little Elsa," he cried when his laughter was done. "Karen has given herself to G.o.d, and G.o.d has taken her away." He snapped his bony fingers and pointed to the middle of the air. It seemed as if the world split open, and Elsa saw the streets of her city. She saw a wagon drawn by a single black horse wearing a black plume. All her brothers and sisters walked behind. In the wagon was a coffin. She knew without knowing how that this was a true thing she saw, and her heart broke in two. The hand that clutched the bow trembled a little "It was all for nothing, you silly child," said the soldier while the tears began to run down Elsa's face. "Give me my bow, and take your doll." He snapped his fingers again, and Clarissa fell to the ground, nothing more than a doll in a pink dress and ribbons, her feet horribly stained by her naughty mistress who let her go play where she should not. "Go home. Pray on your knees for things that you can understand, and leave the red shoes to me. If you are a good girl, you will never have to see them again."

Suddenly Elsa felt smaller than she ever had. The music had brought all the world and time into this clearing, and they watched her with the bow held high in a silly game. The red shoes still stood beneath their coating of gore with the hideous stumps of Karen's abandoned feet thrusting out of them. Karen had not lost her feet. She'd given them away with all her pride. Given them to G.o.d, and G.o.d had taken them. The old soldier was only doing his duty, like the executioner. She had not understood, because she was a little girl and nothing more. Her hand trembled again.

"No!" she said, stubbornly. "It is not right! It is not a proper story! Give me the red shoes or I will break this bow over my knee."

"Elsa, Elsa." The soldier folded his arms and shook his head, just as her father did when he thought she was being silly. "Do you think I need a bow to make music?" He snapped his fingers once more, and the fiddle's strings trembled, though the instrument lay on the ground. They trembled and they shivered and the music began again. It swirled and looped, catching at Elsa's mind and tugging at her heels. Beside her, the red shoes began to dance again, hopping and gliding, all the blood making a scarlet train behind them.

Elsa's arm fell to her side and the bow slipped from her fingers. The music s.n.a.t.c.hed and pushed at her, and she did not know what to do. She looked down at Clarissa with her red stained feet, and felt tears p.r.i.c.kle again at her eyes. She had come all this way, and done all these things, and she did not know what to do anymore.

You will put on the shoes, and you will dance, the old woman had said. Elsa swallowed. Her throat was dry as dust. It was the only thing she had not done yet. The only thing, the last thing.

She straightened her shoulders and stuck out her chin. "Soldier, soldier!" she cried out as loudly as she could. "Give me the red shoes!"

The soldier laughed again, a low chuckle that made the ground tremble. He raised his hand and the fiddle strings stilled and the world was so silent that her ears rang.

"Little Elsa, Little Elsa," the soldier said, and his voice was a wolf's growl. "Give me a dance."

Elsa crossed the clearing to the red shoes that waited still in the silent world. She lifted them from Karen's feet. The blood smeared all over her hands. The feet lay on the forest floor, white and forlorn, ridiculous things without their owner. But the thing begun could not be stopped, and Elsa stepped into the red shoes. It seemed the world swept 'round her, and for a moment she saw the shoes as they had been, the gleaming red satin and embroidery and shining gold heels. She saw what Karen had loved, the love of beauty, of something that was her very own, and for that she had been taken away to die.

"Such pretty shoes!" laughed the soldier in his low, dark chuckle. "They fit so tightly when you dance!"

He did not move his hand, he did not blink, but the fiddle strings shivered and the music began again. The red shoes, weeping out the remnants of Karen's blood, began to move, taking Elsa's feet, and the whole of Elsa, with them.

Elsa danced.

She turned and swayed, she kicked up high and spun. She held out her arms for the partner who was not there. She danced, and the blood-Karen's blood, the shoes' blood-ran down and darkened the forest floor. She saw herself, a skeleton in rags dancing through the dark forest and up the streets of the town so that people shut their windows against her and murmured prayers as they would against a ghost. She saw her mother weeping by the fire for her daughter whom she thought dead.

The soldier laughed, and the music drawn down from the sky and up from the roots of the world played on, and in her mind she heard the weeping of the shoes.

Her legs were already tired, and tears threatened. The soldier laughed, and his voice was the crows' voices. The music played harder, twirling her around and pulling all the breath from her lungs. But the blood in the shoes, Karen's blood, slipped between her stockings and the shoes-and the shoe did not cleave yet. Not yet. She had a moment, a moment only and she had to do something.

The shoes whirled her around again, and she saw the bow where it lay beside Clarissa. She saw Clarissa's b.u.t.ton eyes gleaming, up black as those of the old woman in the woods. She thought she saw the ghosts looking on, she thought she saw Karen, dancing all alone, lost in the darkness, her only hope the axe and death.

Dancing alone.

Dancing alone to music that she could not hear but that would not ever stop.

Little Elsa, Little Elsa, give me a dance!

The shoes did not yet hold her, not all the way, not quite.

She had two steps that were her own, two, three, one more, enough to cross the clearing and grasp the soldier's crabbed hand with her little b.l.o.o.d.y one.

"Soldier, soldier!" Elsa cried out. "Here is your dance!"

The blood stuck his hand fast to hers, and the dance that swirled around her pulled him to his feet, catching him up in its current and drawing him in. Elsa s.n.a.t.c.hed at his other hand and held it up.

Father was a clergyman, but he did not fear the dance as some did. Elsa knew the schottiche and the polka. Elsa knew jig and reel. Elsa also knew the dances that every child knows, the twirling and the jumping, the high laughter that comes from moving fast and free. All these dances Elsa danced, holding tight to the soldier's hard, calloused hands while he gaped at her, moving clumsily in his tall black boots. But he couldn't stop. The blood held them together. While she danced, he must dance.

"Let me go!" he screamed.

"How can I let you go?" Elsa asked as she skipped round the clearing, swinging their arms. "I am only a foolish little girl who does not understand. How can I be stronger than all the dances you know and the red shoes you've put on my feet?"

The soldier threw back his head and howled until the smoky clouds shook. Elsa twirled them around, the music and the roar of her blood singing in her ears. She did not try to stop. She danced him up the line and down again, and he howled once more, and she spun them around. Her breath was going. She was so tired. She must dance. She must not falter. For while she danced, he must dance, and he knew it. He had asked for this dance that they now danced together, little girl and red-bearded man.

His dance, her dance.

His choice, her choice, and all the music of the world to spin them 'round.

"Take the shoes!" he cried out. "Take them! I give them to you, only let me go!"

With that, all the strings on the fiddle broke at once, a terrible, twisting cacophony that knocked Elsa backwards. She fell onto the earth, skidding through the leaves until she rolled to a stop beside Clarissa and the bow. Her feet were still. She heard the crows calling to one another, but she heard no music and she heard no weeping, and the soldier scowled at her and s.n.a.t.c.hed up his broken-stringed fiddle and was gone.

After a little time, Elsa picked up the bow and her doll. Wearing the red shoes, she walked from the clearing to the path. The hump-shouldered woman waited there, her black eyes shining. Elsa had no more food, so she gave the old woman the fiddle bow. The old woman laughed loud to receive it and lifted Elsa onto her humped back and carried her from the woods to the executioner's house. The executioner met her at the door and embraced her with his strong arms. He gave her soup and black bread and water to wash herself with and walked her home.

Her mother and father scolded her and wept over her. Mother bleached Clarissa's feet white again, and Father bought her a new pair of black shoes and made her learn twelve whole psalms and stay inside for two weeks.

When she was allowed out again, Elsa wore the red shoes to church, and the lions smiled at her, and the angel fluttered his wings and lifted his nose in the air. But in the shadows Elsa saw Karen, clothed in white as the angel was. Karen stood on her own feet and smiled.

After that, Elsa did not wear the red shoes except for dancing, and when she danced she felt as if their freedom poured out over the world as a blessing, like music, like love.

When she could dance no more, Elsa gave the red shoes to her daughter, and she to hers.

And that, Elsa knew, was a proper story.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS.

Kevin J. Anderson has more than twenty million books in print in thirty languages, including Dune novels written with Brian Herbert, Star Wars and X-Files novels, and a collaboration with Dean Koontz. He just finished the sixth book in his epic s.p.a.ce opera, "The Saga of Seven Suns." He and his wife, Rebecca Moesta, have written numerous bestselling and award-winning young adult novels. An avid hiker, Anderson dictates his fiction into a microca.s.sette recorder. Research has taken him to the deserts of Morocco, the cloud forests of Ecuador, Inca ruins in the Andes, Maya temples in the Yucatan, the NORAD complex, NASAs Vehicle a.s.sembly Building, a Minuteman III missile silo, the aircraft carrier Nimitz, the Pacific Stock Exchange, a plutonium plant at Los Alamos, and FBI Headquarters in Washington, DC. He also, occasionally, stays home and works on his ma.n.u.scripts. Visit his websites at: www.wordfire.com and www.dunenovels.com.

Science Fiction/Fantasy author Linda P. Baker's internationally published novels are The Irda and Tears of the Night Sky, with Nancy Varian Berberick. Her short fiction has been published in several anthologies, including Dragons of Krynn, The New Amazons, and Time Twisters. Linda credits her mother, Lena, and sister, Lisa, for the genesis of "The Opposite of Solid," because they reinfected Linda and her husband, Larry, with the auction bug, begetting the question: "What if I bought something at an auction that...?"

Donald J. Bingle is a frequent contributor to short story anthologies in the science fiction, fantasy, horror, and comedy genres, including the DAW anthologies Time Twisters, If I Were an Evil Overlord, Furry Fantastic, Fantasy Gone Wrong, Slipstreams, All h.e.l.l Breaking Loose, Renaissance Faire, Sol's Children, Historical Hauntings, Civil War Fantastic, and Earth, Wind, Fire, Water: Tales From the Eternal Archives #2. He is also the author of Forced Conversion, a science fiction novel set in the near future, when everyone can have heaven, any heaven they want, but some people don't want to go. His latest novel, Greensword, is a darkly comedic eco-thriller about a group of misfit environmentalists who are about to save the world from global warming but don't want to get caught doing it. He is cursed with a long commute to his day job as a securities attorney, but he is blessed with a lovely wife, Linda, and two rambunctious pooches: Mauka and Makai. Don can be reached at www.orphyte.com/donaldjbingle.

Yvonne Coats is originally from Dubois, Wyoming, a town where the wintering bighorn sheep outnumber the humans about ten to one. She now lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a city with more people than the entire state of Wyoming -lots less snow, though. She shares s.p.a.ce with her smart spouse, Mike Collins, and their rotten cat, Magpie. Her stories have appeared in small-press magazines and in anthologies Treachery & Treason and Turn the Other Chick. Yvonne was shortlisted for the first James White Award in 2000. When not writing, she enjoys gardening, knitting, lifting weights, and trying to learn j.a.panese.

Keith R.A. DeCandido (www.decandido.net) first introduced the characters of Torin ban Wyvald and Danthres Tresyllione and the world of Cliff's End in the 2004 novel Dragon Precinct. They've also appeared in the short stories "Getting the Chair" (Murder by Magic, 2004), "Crime of Pa.s.sion" (Hear Them Roar, 2006), and "House Arrest" (Bada.s.s Faeries, 2007). Keith's other short fiction can be found in Amazing Stories, Did You Say Chicks!?, Farscape: The Official Magazine, Furry Fantastic, 44 Clowns: 11 Stories of the 4 Clowns of the Apocalypse, The Town Drunk, Urban Nightmares, and various Doctor Who, Marvel Comics, and Star Trek anthologies. He's also written a great deal of fiction in the media universes of Star Trek, World of Warcraft, Starcraft, Doctor Who, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Marvel Comics, Serenity, Farscape, Andromeda, and tons more. He lives in New York City.

"Ancestral Armor" is Kitsune and Asano's fourth short fiction appearance (with other stories published in Battle Magic, Historical Hauntings (both available from DAW Books), and 100 Crafty Little Cat Crimes). John Helfers has published more than three dozen short stories in anthologies such as Millennium 3001, Liftport, Time Twisters, and Places to Be, People to Kill. His media tie-in fiction has appeared in anthologies for the Dragonlance and Transformers universes, among others. He also writes nonfiction, including a comprehensive history of the United States Navy and a critical look at the impact of culture on military operations in the collection of essays Beyond Shock and Awe, edited by Eric Haney. Recent novels include the YA ill.u.s.trated novel Thunder Riders and Shadowrun: Aftershock, co-auth.o.r.ed with Jean Rabe.

Belle Holder is a beginning author, yet quite good for a beginner, and she loves animals. She has a pet mouse, Lighting, whom she writes about a lot; and she hopes to become a lawyer, an agent, or a farmer who uses scientific research to grow incredibly good crops. "Another Exciting Adventure of Lightning Merriemouse-Jones" is her second published short story. She and her mother are members of Persephone, a women horror writers organization.

Nancy Holder has sold approximately eighty novels and more than two hundred short stories, articles, and essays. She is currently working on Athena Force: Disclosure, due out in August 2008. The Rose Bride, a fairy tale retelling, is out now.

An unreformed tomboy, Jane Lindskold came late to her appreciation of the magic of clothing. However, she is now a complete convert and can occasionally be glimpsed wearing satin and embroidery. She has written most of her eighteen novels and over fifty short stories while wearing battered jeans and T-shirts. Her most popular character, Firekeeper (the protagonist of six novels, beginning with Through Wolf's Eyes), often wears very little and prefers not to wear shoes unless absolutely necessary. The characters in the stand-alone novels The Buried Pyramid and Child of a Rainless Year also have clothing issues. Lindskold is currently involved in a new series, one that has immersed her in an appreciation of Chinese lore... and clothing. You can get a look at her at her website, www.janelindskold.com.

Louise Marley is a recovering opera singer who now writes science fiction and fantasy full time and teaches a creative writing cla.s.s at Bellevue Community College in Washington State. She is the winner of two Endeavour Awards, has been a Nebula, John W. Campbell, and Tiptree nominee, and was a Clarion '93 graduate. Her work has been published by Ace, Viking, Puffin, Asimov's, SciFiction, Talebones, and others.

Joe Masdon grew up in Macon, GA, and graduated from Oglethorpe University in Atlanta in 1988. He moved to North Carolina in 1995, pursuing a woman that he caught and married in 1996. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2004 with a Master's Degree in accounting. He has managed to get two short stories published and is always glad to hear from Jean Rabe when she is working on a tight deadline. He and his wife Sherrie live in Elon, NC, with their two children, Jonathan and Robert.

Rebecca Moesta is the author of twenty-eight books and numerous short stories, including the award-winning Star Wars: Young Jedi Knights series and two original t.i.tan A.E. novels, which she co-auth.o.r.ed with husband Kevin J. Anderson, and a Buffy the Vampire Slayer novel, Little Things. With Anderson, she has written an original young-adult fantasy series, Crystal Doors, for Little, Brown. In comics, she has worked with Anderson on the hardcover Star Trek: The Next Generation graphic novel, The Gorn Crisis from Wild-storm and Grumpy Old Monsters from IDW. Moesta is the daughter of an English teacher and a nurse, from whom she learned, respectively, her love of words and her love of books. Moesta, who holds an MBA from Boston University, has taught every grade level from kindergarten through junior college and worked for seven years as a publications specialist and technical editor at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Chris Pierson has been a writer since he was a kid up in Canada. He has written seven novels for the Dragonlance series: Spirit of the Wind, Dezra's Quest, The Kingpriest trilogy (Chosen of the G.o.ds, Divine Hammer, and Sacred Fire), and the Taladas trilogy (Blades of the Tiger, Trail of the Black Wyrm and Shadow of the Flame). In addition, he has been published in Dragon Magazine and in the anthologies The Dragons At War, Dragons of Chaos, Rebels & Tyrants, and Time Twisters. During the day Chris works as a game designer for Turbine, and has been involved in the Asheron's Call series, Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach, and Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar; he also writes and edits game material for Wizards of the Coast and Sovereign Press. He lives in Boston with his wife and fellow movie addict, Rebekah.

Judi Rohrig is just an Indiana housewife with a computer in her kitchen. Her fiction has been published in Masques V, Furry Fantastic, Dreaming of Angels, Extremes V, and Cemetery Dance Magazine, and her essays have been published in On Writing Horror, Personal Demons, and The Orbit #2. The former editor and publisher of h.e.l.lnotes was honored with a Bram Stoker Award in 2005 and the Richard Laymon Award in 2001. Visit her online: www.judirohrig.com.

Michael A. Stackpole is an award-winning author, game and computer game designer, and poet whose first novel, Warrior: En Garde, was published in 1988. Since then, he has written thirty-six other novels, including eight New York Times bestselling novels in the Star Wars line, of which X-wing: Rogue Squadron and I, Jedi are the best known. Mike lives in Arizona and in his spare time spends early mornings at Starbucks, collects toy soldiers and old radio shows, plays indoor soccer, rides his bike and listens to Irish music in the finer pubs in the Phoenix area. His website is www.stormwolf.com.

Peter Schweighofer lives in Virginia, and is primarily known for his writing in role-playing games, including work done on the Star Wars RPG, The World of Indiana Jones, and the Men in Black Roleplaying Game. His fiction also appears in such anthologies as Alien Abductions, Far Frontiers, and Historical Hauntings.

A. M. Strout was born in the Berkshire Hills, mere miles from writing heavyweights Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, and currently lives in historic Jackson Heights, New York (where nothing paranormal ever really happens, he a.s.sures you). His first novel, Dead to Me, will be published by Ace in 2008. He is the cocreator of the faux folk musical Sneezin' Jeff & Blue Racc.o.o.n: The Loose Gravel Tour (winner of the Best Storytelling Award at the First Annual New York International Fringe Festival). In his scant spare time, he is an always writer, a sometimes actor, sometimes musician, occasional RPGer, and the worlds most casual and controller-smashing video gamer. He currently works in the exciting world of publishing-and yes, it is as glamorous as it sounds.

Kelly Swails is a Clinical Laboratory Scientist by day and a writer by night. She and her husband, Ken, live in Illinois with three cats named Kahlua, Morgan, and Moonshine. She never wears earrings.

Elizabeth A. Vaughan is the author of Warprize, War-sworn, and Warlord, the three books that make up Chronicle of the Warlands. She believes that the only good movies are the ones with gratuitous magic, swords, or lasers. Not to mention dragons. At the present, she is owned by three incredibly spoiled cats and lives in the Northwest Territory, on the outskirts of the Black Swamp, along Mad Anthony's Trail on the banks of the Maumee River.

Timothy Zahn has been writing science fiction for more than a quarter of a century. In that time he has published thirty novels, more than eighty short stories and novelettes, and four collections of short fiction. Best known for his eight Star Wars novels-the latest, Star Wars: Allegiance, was recently published-he is also the author of Night Train to Rigel and the young-adult Dragonback series. The Zahn family lives on the Oregon coast.

Sarah Zettel was born in Sacramento, California. Since then she has lived in ten cities, four states, and two countries. She started writing while still in high school and has never stopped. To date she has published twelve novels, as well as a series of short stories and opinion essays in a variety of genres. She currently lives with her family in Michigan. When not writing she gardens, plays fiddle, practices tai chi, and reads lots and lots of picture books to her son Alexander.

[1] The annotations, provided by miss Belle Holder ID_ftn1 [2] "Mom, my name should come first. B comes before N. I am a published author now, so let's play by the rules."

ID_ftn2 [3] "Mom, that's great. I'm tired. I'm going to bed. Here are some interesting facts about lizards: some lizards live for as long as twenty years. Did you know that? Probably not."

ID_ftn3 [4] To wit: "But do remember this, Gentle Reader: Lightning Merriemouse-Jones was destined for greatness."

ID_ftn4 [5] When Belle was five years old, an approaching woman came to a dead stop approximately two feet in front of her. The lady's eyes widened with admiration, and she bent down to address Belle in that singsong voice which some adults use when addressing children: "Oh!" she said. "You are such a beautiful little girl! Look at those big blue eyes! Have you ever thought of becoming a fashion model when you grow up?"

Whereupon Belle replied, "Actually, I would like to be an entomologist."

ID_ftn5 [6] N.B. from Holder the Elder: This may not be too surprising, as Cheddrick M-J was an admirer of the writings of H.G. Wells, and spent many an evening chewing upon the tomes of the esteemed author.