Don't ask M. Rickert

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.Don’t Ask by M.RickertMary Rickert’s first collection of short stories, Map of Dreams, garnered some nice reviews over the past year and it is currently a finalist for the World Fantasy Award.Her new story is a fantasy that might make you forget the women who run with wolves and make you think of the children instead.* * * *When the lost boys returned with their piercings, tattoos, and swagger, we rejoiced and greeted them with balloons, bubble gum, chocolate chip cookies, and bone-crunching hugs, which they did not resist.Only later did we realize that this was one of their symptoms, this acquiescence, not a sign of their affection for us, though we do not doubt their affection.How could wolves slope through town, unseen, and steal our boys from bicycles, from country roads, from the edge of the driveway, from our kitchen tables, dank with the scent of warm milk and soggy cereal; from our arms—wasn’t it just yesterday that we held our boys close and sang them lullabies? How could they be taken from us?Yet they were, and we wept and gnashed our teeth, tore our hair and screamed their names into the dark.Through the seasons we searched for them so thoroughly that even in our dreams we could not rest and often awoke to find dewy grass stuck to the soles of our feet, dirt beneath our fingernails, our hair matted by the wind.We continued to search even after the Sheriff, with his hound dog face and quivering hands, said he would never stop looking but couldn’t keep meeting with us and the very next day we woke up and no one waited at the door with pots of coffee and boxes of sticky, bright-colored doughnuts, and we sat at our kitchen tables and listened to school buses pass, not even slowing down for the memory of our sons.But why speak about sorrow now that our boys have returned? They are home again, sleeping with hairy feet hanging over the edges of little boy beds, wearing the too small T-shirts, the split pants that reveal their long bones and taut muscles which quiver and spasm while they dream.Of course we realized that in the years our boys were gone they had grown, this was the hope at least, this was the best possibility of all the horrible scenarios, that our lost boys were growing in the wolves’ den and not slaughtered by them—so yes, we are happy, of course we are, but what is this strange sorrow we discover in the dark? Why can’t we stop weeping during this, the happiest of times?* * * *Years before our boys returned there was the return of the famous lost boy, stolen from the end of his driveway, the wheels of his blue bicycle still spinning when his mother went to the door to call him in for dinner and saw the bike there but did not immediately comprehend it as a sign of catastrophe.He was missing for eight years, and was a hero for a while, until he started committing petty crimes in the neighborhood.The famous lost boy, a man now, explains that he has been observing our behavior and the behavior of our sons.We cannot help but feel squeamish about the whole thing, we are uncomfortable with the notion that, after everything that happened, we have been studied and observed and did not know it.We discuss this in whispers in the high school auditorium, where the famous lost boy has come to speak.The therapists have their theories but we assume only one person has the truth and we are eager to hear what he can tell us about all our suffering, because, we say, nodding our heads and hugging ourselves in the cold auditorium, this happened to all of us.“No,” the famous lost boy (now a grown man with long, stringy hair) says.“It didn’t.”We have been advised by therapists and counselors, experts beyond the meager fourth grade education of the famous lost boy (by the time he came back, he was too angry and unruly for school) not to ask what happened.“They will tell you when they are ready,” the experts say.We ask them if they want maple syrup for their pancakes, what show they’d like to watch, what games they’d like to play.We spoil them and expect them to revel in it, the way they did before they were taken, but oddly, in spite of all they’ve been through, and the horrors they have endured, they behave as though our servitude and their eminence is a given.Yet, sometimes we ask a question, so innocent, “chocolate chip or peanut butter?” which they respond to with confusion, frowning as if trying to guess a right answer, or as though unfamiliar with the terms.Other times they bark or growl like angry dogs being taunted, but it passes so quickly we are sure it’s been imagined.* * * *The famous lost boy wants us to give him our sons.“You can visit whenever,” he says.What is he, crazy? What does he think we are?“You don’t understand them.Nobody does [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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