The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Sixth Annual Collection

THE HOMUNCULUS: A Novel in One Chapter Reginald McKnight

Many, many years ago there lived a young artist, who, the people said, was full of great potential and great talent. What kind of artist was he? you ask, knowing full well that in our present age almost anyone from a computer programmer to an oil twiller to a grocery boxer is called an artist. Well, my friend, this young man was skilled in many, many things. First of all, he was a marvelous poet. Some say his poetry was on a par with the finest, most well-known poets of that day, though the young man was barely into his twenties when his third book of poetry was published.

He was an adept fiction writer, too. His short stories and novels were the talk of the entire Realm. His saddest stories could squeeze the heart like a great fist. The funniest could rattle the ribs and stop the breath. He wrote with a spare style that somehow cast arabesque shadows in the mind, causing his reading audience to ponder the depths of the soul in all its turns and bends.

It is well known even in our present age that he could sculpt and paint in such a wide array of moods, styles, themes, and patterns that he held the entire art world breathlessly wondering in what untrodden ground he would next place his intrepid, daring feet.

It is also said that he could sing and play lyre, lute, kleetello, guitar, dulcimer, fiddle, cello, and vibraphone. His voice rang with such power and clarity that his audiences (particularly the females) were said to be held in a sort of speechless rapture for days and days after one of his concerts.

He was also very handsome, kind, modest, soft-spoken, gentle, and honest. He respected his elders, was generous to his peers, fatherly to the young. He gave alms to the poor, cheer to the sullen, wisdom to the foolish, attention to the marginal.

But he was not happy.

You ask, my friend, why this wonderful soul, this light of the world, this one, who, as our people say, so clearly showed the “thumbprint of the Old One” was not happy? No one knew. Not even the young artist himself really knew, or at least he was unwilling to say. Those of a spiritual inclination said that it was his karma. That he was born an artistic genius on a plane in which he could neither quite fully express himself nor be completely understood. Those of a more skeptical persuasion—there were a handful—said that it was because of a deeply embedded but well-hidden vanity, and a lust for absolute power. They said that all he created, either consciously or unconsciously, he created to subjugate the minds and hearts of his audience and ultimately to make them his slaves.

But others said—though none had ever heard him confess this—that it was because he could not have the love of one woman: Nohla, the beautiful daughter of the kindly, humble miller, Rafkhan. They said that the two were in love for only one year, though in secret (Rafkhan had great hopes that Nohla would one day become a surgeon, and he would sooner lose his right hand than see his child's future fuddled by love), but then, quite suddenly, Nohla, either because she saw something in the young artist that was akin to what his detractors, those few skeptics, saw, or because she became convinced her father was right, ended the affair. All that we can say is that she carried some deep, unfathomable discomfiture in her bosom that told her she could no longer be with this man, and so she shattered his young heart.

Whatever the reasons, the young man stopped creating and entertaining before the year was over. He seldom left his home after a while, but sat inside for weeks and months on end, brooding and pacing. He let his beard grow long, let his countenance sour, and ate little. It has been said that his servants heard him sing from time to time, but only to himself, almost in a whisper, in a cracked, atonal voice. He admitted very few friends: his brother, Rhoe the Mighty, still, statistically, the greatest treadleback in the history of our national sport, and his close friend and neighbor, Azzizan. Neither Rhoe nor Azzizan could bear to see their young loved one in such pain and grief. But when they would ask him, “What ails ye, brother?” “What grinds thee, friend?,” all that he is said to have answered was, “Me? I’m just thinking. Just thinking, that’s all.” Then one day, after an evening of putting mouth to ear and ear to mouth in an alehouse not far from the young artist’s house, Rhoe and Azzizan decided they should persuade the young man to take a journey. After several weeks they succeeded.

The young artist took only a fortnight preparing for the journey, traveling throughout the Greater Realm to say good-bye to all his friends and patrons. Then, at last, he set sail for what legend calls the Land of Light and Dark. He was at sea for some three months, and during the entire journey kept himself in his cabin in much the same way he had kept to himself in his home. It was a journey without incident, for the most part. The crew on the ship were of the usual rambunctious sort, and often kept the young man awake nights with their perpetual revelry, pranks, and boisterous, bold talk about what they would do once putting down in the Land of Light and Dark.

The Land, as you know, is no more. It was swallowed by our oceans uncountable years ago. Our archaeologists have recovered, what? a few buttons, a chalice or two, a bronze slingshot? We know so little of the physical place. All we have are these stories, and who knows precisely how true they are. The Land is now a place more of mystery and legend than of history and fact. In it, we are told, were five of the eight known mysteries of the Ur-Realm. It was known to be a land of both bloodfreezing violence and beauty so profound that it is said the Old One actually slept there. With its winged people with the skin of polished obsidian who spoke only in proverbs, its diamond white rivers that cut through soil so rich that the meanest, bitterest seed would sprout into waxy green leaves and pulpy fruit, with its dramatic waterfalls, its infinite canyons, its smoke blue mountains, its caverns of gold and jade, its many curiously constructed beasts, who, it is said, spoke the language of the winged people, the young artist told himself that no other land could bring out in him what had been so deeply buried.

The first several months in this strange land went well for the young artist. He made many friends, ate strange and delightful foods, swam the diamond waters, drank sweet teas that made him dream of Nohla. He shaved off his beard and dressed in the fine, bright clothing of the obsidian people. He learned some of their language, which inspired in him sage thought. He let them carry him aloft and show him the world as only birds could see it. Things went well for him. His heart grew big again. And one morning he awoke in a creative flame. He began to write!

It had been so long since he had written anything that he took the cautious road and began keeping a journal. In it he wrote of everything he was seeing and doing and feeling. He devoted just as much time to describing, in detail, all the strange fruits and vegetables there as he did to describing the people and the geography. He also wrote of the things in his heart, of his dissatisfaction with his past work, his weaknesses as a human being, and his great love for Nohla.

His writing, steady, furious, impassioned, came to take up more and more of his time. He seldom ventured outside his house, and he spent less and less time with his friends. And on three occasions his friend N’Tho, a good man, a tall, intelligent man who’d saved him from the grip of a waterfall he’d ventured too close to in his first week in the country, rapped on his door and asked him, would he not care for a slice of yellow sunshine, a bowl of friendship, and a cup of laughter. And each time the young artist would smile and thank him, but say no. “Your land has . . . has, uh, set me afire, and the smithy’s best work is at noon.” And N’Tho would turn and leave, saying, “Is it true that when the bird finishes its nest it no longer cares whether the grass grows?”

“No, no, good friend,” would be the reply, “but the, uh, whispers of the heart are greater than the screams of the flesh.” And one, two, three times did he close the door on the retreating back of N'Tho.

It wasn’t long before he was virtually friendless, before, as we say in the southern region, his kitchen grew quiet. But he never noticed. His work had reached such a feverish intensity that not even he realized for the longest time that his journal had become first a novel, then a poem, then a prayer, than a chant, then a one-act play, an opera—it actually made sound!—a painting, a sculpture—and then— wonder of wonders—the thing became flesh! A miniature version of himself!

Of course, finally he did notice himself, but it did take a while, for his work still compelled him, devoured him, you might say, and—quite naturally his mind was rather distracted. But one day as he scribbled and chiseled and stitched upon the . . . text... we shall call it, he began to notice that his fingers were clutching his own throat, in a manner of speaking, and his thumbs were shaping his own, well ... it wasn’t a sentence anymore, he had to admit to himself. It wasn t a canvas or clay, it was—“My chin!” he said aloud. “Blessed Old One, I—”

“ 'Bout time you noticed, homes.”

“You’re me—”

“Uh-huh—”

“A little version of—”

“ ’At’s right.”

“Oh my.”

He silently disrobed, put out his candle, and went to sleep. When he awoke the next morning, his mind felt clear, and he chuckled, thinking to himself that perhaps he had been working too hard. He decided to get up, wash, have a large breakfast, and spend the day visiting his friends. But as he reached for his robes he saw his little self sitting on the edge of his writing desk, eating a page of his journal. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

The homunculus shot his black beady gaze at his maker. “You mean what am I doing?” he said.

“Who are you? What are you? Where did you come—”

“What it look like I’m doing, fool?”

“That’s my journal! Stop that, you—”

“But I’ma tell you something, brother. You got to cut down on the salt. See, when you bending over your work, hacking away like you do, you be sweating all over these pages. But other than that they pretty good.” The young artist looked at the little creature, and he could not help but be torn between a number of emotions: anger, fear, astonishment, and, perhaps most discomforting of all, admiration, for the little man was perfect in every way that the eyes could discern. Black eyes and black hair, white teeth, sharp jawbones, powerful arms, long fingers, seamless skin, a spine as straight as a shaft of light. He was magnificent, and were it not for the little man’s crude language, and most especially, were it not for the fact that the little one was eating his journal by the fistful, the artist would have liked to sit the chap on his knee and study him. But the very fact that the homunculus was eating his journal kept all action at bay, impelled the cycle of these emotions.

Finally, however, as the little man reached for the third of the eight-hundred-eighty-eight-page manuscript, the young artist possessed himself enough to clutch the finger-sized arm of this literary gourmand. “Do you mind?” the young man said.

The homunculus looked him up and down. He arched an eyebrow. “Yes I do, man. Lemme go.”

“You’re making a mess of my journal.”

“Well I admit I ain’t got good table manners, but I’ma still eat this thing.” “Like Hatsax you will!” And the young artist grabbed the pitcher near his bed and smashed it down where the homunculus stood. But as you might guess, it was in vain, for the creature had disappeared.

The young artist spent the better part of the day overturning his rooms in search of the creature s hole or portal or whatever it might be the thing had come through. He ordered his servants to keep the place clean and to make sure that the doors remained shut and that the window screens were kept in place. Nevertheless, he found nothing. Exhausted, stiff with anger, he gathered himself enough to brew a cup of tea and sit down to write. He wanted to rewrite those first two pages of his journal. But this was a problem because the last several months of work had flown with such momentum that there had simply been no time for him to stop and reread what he d written. He’d no idea where to begin. “I remember something about fruits and vegetables . . . and people, yes, people with wings, and Nora, my love.” Nora? he thought. No, it was Noah, or Nova, or . . . Really he was not sure, and it occurred to him that he was too long out of touch with those things that had moved him, lo those months ago, to journey to this land and rediscover his creative embers. “Yes,” he said, “first thing tomorrow I will visit my old friends the What’s-Their-Names and that nice tall fellow whose life I saved when he ventured too close to the falls, and I’ll see those people and talk to them or something. Perhaps they can explain this nonsense.” He drank one last cup of tea and went to bed.

A warm yellow light leaked into his bedroom and crept up his sheets. He opened his eyes, then aimed his hearing at what he’d dreamed was the sound of frying fish. He sniffed the air, half expecting his nose to fill with the sweet smell of ocean pod or peacefish or tin-shells. But he could smell nothing. And the frying sound, he discovered, was not the sound of fresh fish bubbling in hot oil but the sound of crackling paper. “It’s back,” he hissed.

The little artist licked a finger, then licked another. “Morning, blood. Thought you wasn't never gonna get up. ”

The young artist hurled the sheet off his legs and sprang to his feet. “What are you doing to me?”

“Is you stupid? Take a scope at y’self, boy. I’m here ’cause you here. But yo, what kinda ink you use on page eight, homely? It’s giving me serious gastronomies. ”

As though he were alone, the young man snapped his fingers, and said, “It’s the tea! Of course, the tea! Oh, Blessed the Old One be! That’s it, yes, that’s it and I swear it off forever.” He snatched up his clothes and dressed himself on the way out of the room, thinking these thoughts: “What I do first, you see, is go see my friends and have them over to my place. If they see no Little Me—and they won’t— I’ll know for certain that it was the tea I’ve been drinking, not to mention the strain of working, the poor diet, the dearth of sunshine and exercise and fresh air. Oh my dear friends, oh my dear Nolna, you shall soon have me again.”

The poor boy. Had he paid closer mind to the culture of the Land of Light and Dark, he would have known that to refuse a slice of yellow sunshine, a bowl of friendship, and a cup of laughter three consecutive times, without indicating to the friend that he should return before the new moon, is to flatly refuse the friendship forever and always; he would probably, at the very least, have invited N’Tho in for a minute or two. Too bad he did not. For that whole morning, door after door pushed at the heels of the young artist, until it became clear to him that he had somehow become anathema to the winged people. He walked home with stooped shoulders. “Well,” he said to himself, “at least I’ve still got Nonah.” But it soon occurred to him that he could not conjure an image of her face, and as he turned the knob of his door he finally admitted to himself that he couldn’t remember her name. “But it must be in my journal,” he thought, and dashed to his studio. He found his little self, with a round, full stomach and closed eyes, snoozing atop his much-reduced manuscript. “You little spawn of Hatsax! You Old-forsaken pup of a scuttlerat. You oily-lipped, foul, cretinous do—”

The little one shot up from his supine position and backed himself against the wall. “Yo, man, ice'n up yourself. You buggin, homeboy.” But the young artist would have no more. He grabbed his letter opener and lunged at the little beast. Of course, he missed. “Look, man,” the homunculus said, scrambling atop a lamp, “chill. All that salt you done layed down on them pages gonna kill me before you do. Your stuffs getting harder to eat every five minutes. I’ma be honest with you, man. Page sixty-three I simply could not get past my soup coolers.”

The young artist hadn’t realized he’d dropped the letter opener till he heard it clatter to the floor. “You’ve eaten sixty-two pages?”

“Sixty-five if you don’t count page sixty-three. Th’ew that one away.” The homunculus reached into his pocket, pulled out a tiny pipe, a tiny book of matches, lit the pipe, took a long deep puff, blew the smoke in the young artist’s face, shook out the match, and squinted one black eye at his maker. “So, what you writing about, boy?” he said.

“You mean you don’t even know?”

The little one slipped the matchbook back into his pocket, shuffled his feet a bit, and said, “Well, not really, but I am what I eat, I guess you could say.”

The artist dropped into a chair and hung his head low. What was the use of fighting? he thought. He was clearly insane. His friends had abandoned him; it was probably too late to begin reading his work now, for if he could not remember his old love’s name or the color of her hair or the shape of her smile, what was the use in fighting? This little version of himself, whether he be real or illusory, was, it seemed, all he had. The two of them sat till the sun began to cast its orange light in through the southern windows of his studio. The only sound that could be heard was the hiss and burble of the little one’s pipe. Suddenly, the homunculus spoke. “Tell me something, Skippy,” he said. “Whycome you never stopped to read what you wrote?”

The artist shrugged and sighed. “I don’t know, exactly. Fear, perhaps? It’s everything I’ve ever wanted to do, I’ve ever wanted to say. It’s my whole life. It’s about my lovely What’s-Her-Name. It’s. . . rather it could be—could have been, anyway, the greatest work ever created. Old One! There is something wonderful about it. And . . . and even if no one had ever liked it, why, even if no one had ever even read it, I know in my heart that it’s changed me. It’s done something to me. How all this has happened—how it resulted in you, I mean—I don’t know, but I have just known it was a great work. So great, perhaps, that I knew that even I wouldn’t be able to understand it. ” He let his head fall to the back of his chair, but kept his eyes on the little one. The little one sucked on his pipe, grimacing every now and then, but let several minutes go by before he said, “You hongry?”

“No.”

“I’m hongry. You mind?”

The artist shrugged. The homunculus chuckled softly, took the pipe from his mouth, and knocked out the ashes on the artist's desk. “Yep,” he said. “Look like to me this great work a yours is just about finito, buddy-bud. Ain⁷ no sense in letting it go to waste. Sure you don’t mind?”

The young man made no reply.

“So,” said the homunculus, “you writing this here thing for the love of some woman, huh? And then he turned to, gobbling, smacking, chewing with great heat. Well, said the young artist, in a voice that could have been no more hollow had he spoken into a bucket while standing in the middle of a prayer chamber. “Well,” said he, “at first I didn’t think so. I never admitted it to myself, but the more I wrote the more it seemed so. But then the work itself became the thing. And I—” Out the corner of his eye he noted the flurry of movement as the little one fed himself. The leaves of the manuscript flew in a haze of motion, and the arms and hands of the homunculus appeared to multiply by twos and fours, so frenetically did he propel them. And by increments the little thing began to grow. At two hundred twenty-two pages he’d doubled in size, at four hundred forty-four he’d quadrupled. By now he was half the size of his maker. But the artist began to notice something more unsettling than this: The little man looked enormously uncomfortable; his arms seemed to move by themselves; every dozen pages or so he would feverishly glance up at his maker. His eyes seemed to say, stop me, why don’t you! He looked nauseous with panic, but still he ate in a hail of movement. Finally, he was swallowing the eight hundred eighty-eighth page. He looked precisely, exactly, undeniably like his maker, inch for inch, whisker for whisker. The only differences between the two men were that one sat in a chair, the other on the desk, and one looked astonished and bemused, the other queasy and gray. The queasy one said, through trembling lips, “Y-you better read this motherfuh-fuh, man, ’cause—” Too late. He folded over as if cut in two, and vomited the entire manuscript, unchewed, unwrinkled, unripped, unsoggy, with the force of an unknotted water balloon. And he shrunk at a rate faster than he’d grown. And he disappeared in a puff of blue smoke. And he didn’t come back.

The young artist began reading what he’d written almost immediately. Including page sixty-three. He never gave his double another thought. He read unceasingly for eight days and eight nights, one hundred eleven pages per day. When he finished, he floated the eight hundred eighty-eighth page onto the floor and sobbed till his temples pounded and his throat clamped nearly shut. He had taken no food and water for a week and a day, and, of course, fell gravely ill. He plunged into a well of sleep. A great fever swept through him, so great it was that it touched off a tremendous fire in his rooms, a fire which neither burned him nor even woke him. But all his work was lost.

On the ninth day he awoke and found his rooms whole, and cleaner than they had been in months. The doctor, whom his servants had called eight days before, felt his forehead, shook his hand, and wished him well. His chambermaid brought him a hearty meal of rice and sauce, fruit and vegetables. The next morning he made arrangements to return home. He packed all his possessions but searched in vain for his work. He moved the furniture this way and that way, but could find nothing.

He returned to the Realm and rented a small room near the Central Square. And he learned that during the one thousand seven hundred seventy-six days he had been gone, it had come to pass that his work was no longer regarded as the great thing it once had been. Other talented young artists had replaced him in the hearts of the people. But this did not perturb him. He had read his work, and he knew.

He spent the rest of his days working with Rafkhan the miller (whose daughter, they say, became a great impresario somewhere in the Outer Realm; Rafkhan never spoke her name from the day she left, so it never was remembered to the artist). He listened to the music of singers and composers, and studied, with admiration, the literature of the most popular writers and poets of the day. He visited museums. He bought inexpensive art, when he could, and decorated his room nicely. He married a young woman who had never heard of him. He raised seven sons and daughters. He took hardly any salt at all in his food.

He died at the age of one hundred sixteen, neither a happy man nor a sad man.