Stone Mattress: Nine Tales(19)

“We’re thrilled to have with us today someone who, you could say, is the grandmother of twentieth-century world-building fantasy,” says the Borg Queen. “C. W. Starr herself, the creator of the world-famous Alphinland series. Should I call you Constance, or Ms. Starr? Or how about C. W.?”

“Whatever you like,” says Constance. For it is indeed Constance, though much diminished. She’s wearing a silver-threaded cardigan that hangs on her loosely; her hair’s like disordered egret plumage, her neck’s a Popsicle stick. She peers around her as if dazzled by the noise and lights. “I don’t care about the name or any of that,” she says. “I only ever cared about what I was doing, with Alphinland.” Her skin is oddly luminous, like a phosphorescent mushroom.

“Didn’t you feel brave, writing what you did, back when you started?” says the Klingon. “That whole genre was a man’s world then, yes?”

Constance throws back her head and laughs. This laugh – this airy, feathery laugh – was once charming, but now it strikes Gavin as grotesque. Misplaced friskiness. “Oh, nobody was paying any attention to me then,” she says. “So you couldn’t really call it brave. Anyway, I used initials. Nobody knew at first that I wasn’t a man.”

“Like the Bront? sisters,” says the Klingon.

“Hardly that,” says Constance, with a sideways glance and a self-deprecating giggle. Is she flirting with the purple-skinned, veiny-skulled guy? Gavin winces.

“Now she really does look tired,” says Reynolds. “I wonder who put that awful makeup on her? They shouldn’t have used the mineral powder. How exactly old is she, anyway?”

“So, how do you go about creating an alternate world?” says the Borg Queen. “Do you make it up out of nothing?”

“Oh, I never make anything up out of nothing,” says Constance. Now she’s being serious, in that ditzy way she had. This is me being serious. It had never convinced Gavin at the time: it was like a little girl wearing her mother’s high heels. That seriousness, too, he had found charming; now he finds it bogus. What right has she to be serious? “You see,” she continues, “everything in Alphinland is based on something in real life. How could it be different?”

“Does that go for the characters too?” says the Klingon.

“Well, yes,” she says, “but I sometimes take parts of them from here and there and put them together.”

“Like Mr. Potato Head,” says the Borg Queen.

“Mr. Potato Head?” says Constance. She looks bewildered. “I don’t have anyone of that name in Alphinland!”

“It’s a toy for children,” says the Borg Queen. “You stick different eyes and noses onto a potato.”

“Oh,” says Constance. “That was after my time. Of being a child,” she adds.

The Klingon fills the pause. “There’s a big bunch of villains in Alphinland! Do you get those from real life too?” He chuckles. “Lots to choose from!”

“Oh yes,” says Constance. “Especially the villains.”

“So for instance,” says the Borg Queen, “Milzreth of the Red Hand is someone we might meet walking along the street?”

Constance does the thrown-back-head laugh again; it sets Gavin’s teeth on edge. Someone needs to tell her not to open her mouth so wide; it’s no longer becoming; you can see that she has a couple of back teeth missing. “Oh my goodness, I hope not!” she says. “Not in that outfit. But I did base Milzreth on a man in real life.” She stares pensively out of the screen, right into the eyes of Gavin.

“Maybe some old boyfriend?” says the Klingon.

“Oh, no,” says Constance. “More like a politician. Milzreth is very political. But I did put one of my old boyfriends into Alphinland. He’s in there right now. Only you can’t see him.”

“Go on, tell us,” says the Borg Queen, smiling fit to kill.

Constance turns coy. “It’s a secret,” she says. She looks behind her, fearfully, as if she suspects there’s a spy. “I can’t tell you where he is. I wouldn’t want to disturb, you know. The balance. That would be very dangerous for us all!”

Is this getting out of hand? Is she, perhaps, a little crazy? The Borg Queen must think so because she’s cutting this off right now. “It’s been such a privilege, such an honour, thank you so much!” she says. “Boys and girls, a big hand for C. W. Starr!” There’s applause. Constance looks bewildered. The Klingon takes her arm.

His golden Constance. She’s gone astray. She’s lost. Lost and wandering.

Blackout.

“Wasn’t that great? She’s so amazing,” says Naveena. “So, I thought maybe you could give me some idea … I mean, she practically said she wrote you into Alphinland, and it would be really a big thing for me – for my work – if I could figure out which character. I’ve narrowed it down to six, I’ve made a list with their different features and their special powers and their symbols and coats of arms. I think you must be the Thomas the Rhymer character because he’s the only poet in the series. Though maybe he’s more of a prophet – he has the second sight as his special power.”

“Thomas the what?” says Gavin coldly.