Wright's Sunken Cathedral

A short story by Dorian Wolfe

Originally published in the August 2022 issue of Utopia Science Fiction Magazine

The Chicago rails always directed spiteful tremors toward the Bellringer. After Frank’s visit to the statue, he had a ten-minute walk home. His joints were still rattled and shaky at the end of his walk, and he could barely jiggle the key into the new front lock. A new lock and an old brick house. What a pair.

Darkness had near-smothered his mind as he watched the statue; that gloom still hung about him, slowing his feet, making him feel like he was walking in water. The very concept of “home” depressed him today. Reminded him of what he was: a failure.

He opened the door, which creaked a warning. Any day now, it would crumble into black splinters like matchwood, leaving Frank pressing his hat to his chest and blinking like an idiot.

But the smell. Ah, Lilly was in the kitchen, making his favorite: eggs in prison. The buttery scent of toasted breadcrumbs soothed some of that dull ache in his chest.

Lilly hardly ever cooked anymore, but when she did, she hummed. She was humming all right, loud enough to be heard at the door (and maybe out into the garden): “By the Light of the Silvery Moon.” An inelegant tune, crass even, from an artistic viewpoint. But small enough a price to pay for eggs in prison.

Frank rubbed his shaking hands. “Sweetheart!” he called. The word came out scratchy, so he cleared his throat and tried again. “Sweetheart! I’m home!” He tugged off his gray Homburg hat, which the whirling winds had almost driven into his eyes, and hung it on one of the coat-pegs. He was shivering too much to take off his precious wool overcoat. He pulled it tighter around him instead, feeling a satisfying pressure as it just squeezed his ribs.

He was slipping off the first of his over-large black shoes when a strange noise slipped from the kitchen. A harsh note. Almost like a cat’s squeal.

Lilly, despite her poor taste in music, had a lovely hum (which had stopped. Odd—he hadn’t noticed), and a voice to make angels weep. That monstrous sound was definitely not Lilly. It was, however—he was impossibly certain—a living being.

He wouldn’t be entirely surprised if she were to take up with another man. Seemed to be just the run of rotten luck that was shaking him by the throat. Instead of bursting in there, fists waving, he stood there like a circus acrobat, midway into taking off his second shoe. His foot hung in the air like the breath of time, and both hands clutched the shoe. The gloom that the promise of a crunchy, savory breakfast had quickly banished, returned quite as quickly. Lilly was a good-looking woman, and he couldn’t forget it. And he—he was barely managing to pay the mortgage on their tired house.

“Lil-ly?” He dragged her name out as he forced himself to put his foot down. “Who’s in there with you, sweetheart?”

No response.

He sighed, ran his hand through his shaggy dark hair, and clomped his way toward the kitchen. His shoed foot stomped on the wood floor like an unmelodious bell.

The bells again.

He gave the kitchen door a shove, and the well-oiled hinges obliged. The blasting scent of the warm meat made him think he was walking into his idea of a sausage factory, with firm bundles of meat and discarded bits of casing and a prized mouser there on the floor…

He shook his head. There was definitely a cat on the black-and-white linoleum floor; it had just leapt to its paws. Calico. Fearsome little beast. It snarled at him, raising the corner of one lip to expose a shining fang. The hairs on its back were starting to bristle, almost doubling the cat’s size. Well, the feeling is mutual. Beast.

And there was Lilly, standing there, her finger in that perfect spot where her chin turned into a plump lower lip. Her eyes wide with a bit of nerves. Adorable. Much more adorable than any cat.

Trying to quash his own snarl, Frank pointed a finger at the cat. “I’m supposing this will be the other man, then.”

Lilly blinked.

“You know, I almost wish there was another man…” he glared at the wretched beast. Exactly what prompted heartburn with the appearance of even a shadow of a cat was unknown, but the fact remained: even the shadow of a cat was not to be tolerated.

“What have I told you about bringing animals into the house, sweetie? Especially cats?” He shoved his hands into his pockets. They were curling into taut fists far too easily. Not that he had ever hit her. Not that he would ever hit her.

“Aw, Frankie, don’t be mad! See?” She grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the kitchen. He wobbled on his socked foot all the way to the grand piano, a warm brown Bechstein. Lilly pointed at the lid. “See? He was right there, on top. Out of nowhere, nowhere at all.”

Frank sighed and passed his right hand across his forehead, flattening the mood-wrinkles that were just now popping up. He was tired, darn it, and… “D’you take me for an idiot, Lilly?”

She frowned and gave his hand a quick, hard squeeze. Harder than affection would strictly require. “That’s exactly what I don’t take you for, Frankie. So I do hope that when I’ve plucked up courage enough to tell you this ridiculous story—that’s what it is, ridiculous, and I’ll admit it—you’ll have the decency to believe me.”

“Well, you must have…you must have left the door open or something.”

“That’s where it gets really strange. Frank, I checked all the windows and doors, because of course I thought, why, that’s how it got in. All closed, all locked. Maybe…it’s from somewhere else. A heavenly sign.”

“Aha. Hm,” Frank said beneath his breath. “I wouldn’t say anything about heaven,” he added, louder. “Not when a cat is involved.” Frank slumped down on the piano stool, which creaked a warning.

“Is everything in this house going to collapse in the next five minutes?” His voice hoarsened on the last word.

Lilly winked and touched his arm. “I don’t know, but breakfast might burn in the next five minutes, unless we exert our most valiant efforts.”

#

With warm eggs and meat and bread warming his insides and sending soporific waves through his bloodstream, Frank was inclined to feel a little easier toward the cat, which Lilly had dubbed “Cheshire.” “Cheshire” had already become “Chess”, in fact—to Lilly. Frank called it “It”. Well, at the moment, Frank was feeling a little less like shoving It out of doors with a bristly broom and leaving it to fend for itself, like cats were supposed to. Allegedly.

“If you keep it in the kitchen, it can stay. For now,” he said, looking lovingly at the worn curves of his pipe, as he leaned back in his chair. The brown leather upholstery sagged, but it still hugged his bones nicely. Quality, there.

The light smoke from his pipe formed a sweet-smelling, jagged plume in the air. “Ahhh, lovely. Quite lovely…”

#

Singularly un-lovely: the Tenth Prelude. The outline of the Tenth Prelude. The ideas—darn it, ideas had left him long ago, and he had already promised everyone he would compose two sets of preludes. “Music you could’ve never imagined, my friends!”

Well, he couldn’t imagine it, either.

If he could take back all the ones he had already written, rip them from every thick-papered score his publishers had sent them out on, devour them from the memories of listeners, he would. It would be so simple: put four preludes in one set, five in another, and forget about the Tenth.

But that was quite the fancy, wasn’t it?

He caressed a set of random keys as he sat at the piano. White keys. Ivory. The piano was exposing bone to him. Not its own, probably an elephant’s tusks, but still, the idea matched his mood. He felt like a skeleton, skinless and fleshless. “Me too, ya lovely little keys. Me too.”

More important, he had made a promise to himself—silent, unknowing, barely acknowledged, but a promise all the same. To write a story in music about The Bells. No particular bells, really, just bells. Church bells, school bells, the bells of the Chicago Bellringer.

Now, there was a story. Arrienne LaRue: half-French, half-Haitian, three-quarters Paul Revere; all-halves-and-quarters crazy. Crazy enough to be memorialized with a twenty-foot cast-stone statue up by the big old courthouse. That was saying something.

As the tale went, an army of uniformed Russians suddenly appeared in the Chicago streets, in daylight so bright it hurt. 1850 it may have been, but the descriptions all agreed: these fellows were toting weapons that could spew hundreds of fragments of metal, all at once. Sounded an awful lot like a machine gun, to Frank. He wished there were more detailed descriptions. He could almost hear the hiss of hot metal as it plunged from the air into wood and plaster. A wonder the Great Chicago Fire hadn’t started right then.

Arrienne—Arry, as Frank thought of her after all these years—had leapt onto the back of the mayor’s horse, the harness of large silver bells that she always wore (and there were lots of stories about why she wore it, but hardly any seemed to agree) jiggling around her neck and chest and spooking the pampered mare into a gallop. The city had to be warned. The city had to be warned now.

For almost an hour, Arry raced through roads and alleys, warning, warning, warning. Then one of those shrieking fragments of metal took her down forever.

Not five minutes after Arry died on an unpaved street—probably coughing dust to the end, thought Frank, wincing—a man (or maybe a woman) in an odd red coat appeared from the same clear air as the soldiers and, with a wave of the hand, dismissed the army and their machine guns into cold invisibility.

Futuristic technology. A harness of bells. A man who conducted an army like a puppet-master.

Wouldn’t Frank just…just love to have the talent to come up with a story like that.

#

Eight o’clock in the morning, mid-week, and It had been there for two days. It had just maneuvered out of the kitchen and to the piano stool, and announced Its presence with a yowl that made Frank’s heart and eardrums flip and stretch at the seams.

Now Frank was outside, seizing a well-earned breath of air, while Lilly dealt with the emergency.

Voices approached. By the sound, a couple was strolling down the winding sidewalk that eventually ran past Frank’s house.

That was odd. At eight, most people on the sidewalks were scurrying along, racing, not enjoying an extended chat.

“Enjoying” wasn’t the right word here. The couple was a few feet beyond a maple tree that blocked Frank’s view with tender, unfurling leaves. But though Frank couldn’t see them, he could hear them.

“I didn’t mean to, you can’t blame me, this is so unfair,” squeaked the woman’s voice.

“One more mess-up like that, you pitiful rabbit, and you’re fired. You can be replaced, you know. It’ll be awesome, from my point of view. I have my job to do, you have your job to do, you don’t do your job and we’re quits. You do your job and we’re cool.” The man’s voice was almost pleasant. Satiny. With some rather odd slang rolling off his tongue…Frank couldn’t imagine calling Lilly a “rabbit,” even in their worst quarrels. Perhaps the stranger was from back East.

“You said that before!”

“And you keep mouthing off at me. How’d I get stuck with such an incompetent rabbit, is what I want to know.”

The maple branches parted, casting the soft scent of sap into the air, and Frank looked. He would have pretended not to be staring, except…

There was no woman anywhere in sight. The man was talking to someone invisible (albeit very, very audible). Not much masculine about the man except his voice, and even that matched his looks: a total dandy. Well, more like a Mad Hatter. The fellow probably had a room reserved for him at the loony bin. “You’re not the one who has to fix all your messes,” the man continued.

The man’s top-hat was a dull burgundy, matching his suit jacket—impeccably tailored, except for the fact that it fell, whispering, almost to the knees of his dull-burgundy pants. His shoes were also dull burgundy. In short, the man’s clothes looked as though they had been poured out of a bottle of red wine; the man himself looked as though he had been poured out of a milk bottle, with a full helping of cream. His hair, midway to his waist, was lightning-white with the barest hint of gold, and his face looked…exsanguinated, that was the best word.

He turned toward Frank.

Frank dropped his eyes, much against his inclination. He couldn’t afford to get into a fight with some loony. And this one had a mighty-looking black cane, topped with a circular glass sphere stuffed with golden gears and clockwork.

“Ah, Mr. Wright, I presume?”

Frank dared a quick glance. The man—the Hatter—was squinting at a thin strip of paper gripped in the thumb and index finger of his left hand. But he saw Frank’s “quick” glance, and his eyes locked on. Frank couldn’t look away.

The Hatter smiled. His face became unexpectedly gentle. “Looks like it came right outta a fortune cookie, doesn’t it?”

Fortune cookie? “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m afraid that Chicago is not entirely familiar with your language. Are you from Boston, perhaps?” Frank mentally grimaced—why had he said anything to the Hatter? Of course his long-practiced politeness would slip in at exactly the wrong moment. Now was the right moment for slamming the door in the Hatter’s face.

“Ah. Yes. After your time, actually. But. Are you Mr. Frank Lloyd Wright?”

Frank hesitated. His feet were light, ready to flee, but his mind…there was a story here. The Hatter didn’t seem aggressive, and besides, he was slender. Frank could probably take him in a fight. Probably. Frank’s upper-arm strength was no more than average, but years—decades, more like—of piano performance had given him fingers of steel.

Then the woman’s voice squeaked again. “I told you, yes, that is Mis-ter Frank Lloyd Wright!”

And the Hatter said, “Yeah? I don’t exactly trust your judgment at the moment.”

The woman wasn’t there, at all. Frank swallowed.

After his long study of music, Frank had an almost supernatural ability to pick out the source of a sound. The sound was coming from the Hatter’s…hat.

Frank tried to imitate the Hatter’s pleasant smile. “Are you a ventriloquist, sir?” he asked. “Perhaps with a carnival?”

The man’s light-grey eyes flashed. The edges of his lips curled into a frown, and Frank took a hopping step back, his hand stretching toward the cool doorknob and the safety of his house. Cats weren’t so bad, really. Not so bad at all.

“And why do they always have to ask me that, ah, Hattie?” said the Hatter. He yanked off his hat and set it upside-down on the pavement. It sounded as if a sandbag was landing.

Frank’s eyes grew as large as the dog’s eyes in the story of the tinderbox. A full-grown…something…popped out of the hat, landed on the sidewalk, and crouched defensively over its paws.

The creature’s shape and size were that of a standard-issue rabbit, but its furry coat was bright purple, red, and green. Like a marbled bread baked for a madman’s holiday.

Frank’s eyelids, stretched to accommodate the now saucer-sized orbs within, rather ached. He thought, for a half-second or so, that he must be dreaming. Then he remembered his usual dreams, how dull, drab, even tacky they were. His mind simply didn’t have the talent to concoct a story like that of the Chicago Bellringer. Or the story of…whatever was going on right now.

Chicago Bellringer. A man in an odd red coat. It…wasn’t possible, the fellow didn’t look a day older than twenty-five and all that had happened sixty years ago, but…

“Have you and your, umm, pet—”

“PET!” the creature screeched. “My dear Mis-ter Wright, I am an employee. Properly unionized. Salary and benefits.”

The Hatter tapped his cane on the pavement. It sounded brittle, as if the whole thing was made of glass. “Another word out of you, Hattie, and you’ll be unemployed before you can blink.”

Frank found that his feet were aching, and he rose on his tiptoes for a moment of relief. Then he cleared his throat. “Sir, when was the last time you and your employee visited Chicago?”

The Mad Hatter raised his eyebrows and ran his long, long-nailed fingers over the cane’s clockwork knob. The sound was pleasant, if a bit eerie, rather like a glass harp. “Ah. About the calendar year 2045, I would guess. It’s difficult sometimes to keep track. Did you have something particular in mind?”

Frank sighed and shook his head. If he asked did you turn an army invisible in 1850?, he would be complicit in the madness he was now witnessing.

“But look here, Mr. Wright. We’ve a problem to take care of.”

“Yes, we do.” Frank’s hand finally began turning the doorknob. A call to the police was but a moment away.

“It seems Hattie sent you the wrong cat.”

Frank’s hand lurched on the knob. The knob let out a final, sighing creak, and plunged from the door with a crackle of wood, thudding into the young green of the lawn and leaving a splintered hole through the door.

#

Steaming coffee, with two heaping tablespoons of sugar, began to knit together Frank’s fractured nerves. Frank, after inhaling the wondrous caffeinated fragrance and downing his cup, leaned back against his chair, curling his fingers in the folds of the sagging upholstery. Mad Hatter, on the other side of the round mahogany table, perched at the very edge of Lilly’s chair. He clutched his cup as if it could catch him unawares and shatter. The calico cat, It (apparently Its real name was Melisandre, but that was too pretentious a name for a cat), crouched at Mad Hatter’s left foot, and Impossible Hattie lounged at his right.

After a long final sip, Mad Hatter set his cup on its wooden dish. The sound of porcelain on wood was a happy, domestic one. That was to say: it was a sound completely out of place here. Frank rubbed the back of his neck.

“Ah, Mr. Wright. The cat.”

Frank shrugged to strip a bit of the tension from his shoulders. This whole business was too much. “The cat,” he muttered. Then, louder, he added, “You said Hattie sent me a cat?” He cleared his throat. “The…rabbit…sent me a cat.”

“Precisely.” Mad Hatter picked up his cup again. Gingerly. Maybe he thought it was a tiny, flowered teacup. Frank snorted. That fellow was crazy enough to think anything.

“You know, I never asked for a cat,” Frank said. He clasped his hands between his knees and drummed the floor with his heel.

“That isn’t the issue. The issue is, Hattie sent you the wrong cat. I’m here to correct the situation.”

Complete lunacy. “Fine. Suppose your brightly-dyed rabbit—”

“This is my natural fur, thank you—”

“—really sent me a cat. What makes it the wrong cat?” Frank glared at Mad Hatter. “And who are you, anyway?”

Those gray eyes flashed again. Frank found himself, to his chagrin, half-burrowing into his chair. The fellow didn’t own Frank. It wasn’t as if Frank needed to flinch at the least change in his expression.

“I am the Manager. That is all you need to know.” Mad Hatter drew his long, white nails across the table’s border. Scritch. “A cat, Mr. Wright. A cat is a guide to its owner. Consider this cat.”

“I’ve been considering it for the past two days,” Frank muttered.

But Mad Hatter plunged on. “This cat’s owner exists in the same dimension as you do; he is, in fact, a well-known architect here in Chicago. You may have heard of him: Achille-Claude Debussy.”

Debussy. Yes, a genius! The architect behind the elegantly simple style of housing now rushing into vogue. If Debussy had shown his abilities twenty years ago, perhaps he would have designed this very house.

But if that had been the case, the Wrights would have been living somewhere else. They couldn’t afford a Debussy.

Frank nodded. “I have heard of him. Yes.”

“Good. However, he is not the Achille-Claude Debussy I intended to place you in contact with. He is, in fact, of no use to you, and thus, neither is his cat.”

He waved his right hand. The cat—It—Melisandre—disappeared.

“Hey!” Frank yelled, half-rising from his chair. “You can’t just take away my cat with a snap of your fingers!”

Mad Hatter fluttered a hand in dismissal. “Your cat, suddenly, mm? As a matter of fact, she is not your cat, and even if she was, I can take a cat away with a snap of my fingers. I proved that beyond a reasonable doubt, I should think. She is now in the happy arms of her owner, from whom I had indeed removed her with a snap of my fingers.” He leaned forward, squeezing his bony knees with his hands. “You see, the Achille-Claude Debussy I intended to—well, let’s call him your Debussy for short. Your Debussy lives in Frahnce. In another dimension. He is a composer, much like yourself, and has prepared a composition: La cathédrale engloutie.” Mad Hatter cocked his head at Frank, like an oversized bird. “His Tenth Prelude, Mr. Wright.”

A chill shot down Frank’s spine. “You’re suggesting that someone from another universe has succeeded where I have failed.”

“Dimension, Mr. Wright. And yes. So I want you to copy Monsieur Debussy’s composition. Exactly. To the last note.”

Frank’s face heated. He swept his hand under his chin to catch the beads of sweat that had to be pouring down, but felt no moisture. “Artists take inspiration from one another. We do not cheat. Just in case you haven’t figured it out, ‘copying something wholesale’ is the very essence of cheating.”

Mad Hatter shrugged a mighty shrug. A perfume with a scent akin to jasmine floated from the swishing edges of his coat. “The composition will be yours in this dimension. Debussy’s in his own. Fair enough, right?”

Frank licked his lips. “I won’t. It’s not right. I’m not going to go about stealing from another univ—dimension, and that’s that.” He flicked an imaginary bit of dust off his knee. “So you can go on to your next magical errand. Goodbye.” He gave a sharp nod.

Mad Hatter smiled a smile as brittle as his cane. “Ah. You don’t have a choice, Wright. The matter’s not in your hands.”

Before Frank could choke out an answer, Mad Hatter waved his left hand. A sound like thunder crashed in Frank’s ear, followed by a smell of ozone, sharp and bright. Mad Hatter, accompanied by his dainty leporine friend, was gone.

Seated in his place—with eyes as saucer-wide as Frank’s had been—was a man. The very copy of Achille-Claude Debussy, the architect, except that this one had a more conservative haircut.

Frank and the Debussy-doppelgänger stared at each other for a silent minute. Then the D. D. opened his mouth, shut it, licked his lips, opened his mouth again, and ventured, “Mais monsieur…”

“Uh…I don’t speak French…”

With a second thunderclap, one that Frank thought would decimate his already-sore eardrums, a cat appeared in the room.

This cat was an exact copy of It-Melisandre, except for an extra spot of black by the nose.

“Melisandre!” the D. D. shouted. Then: “What are we doing here?” That last sentence had not a trace of an accent.

Frank forced a trembling smile onto his face. “Well, I have an idea about that. I’ll explain as best I can. Beautiful English, by the way, beautiful.”

The D. D., for some reason, bent his head to look at his natty ice-blue bowtie, then at his equally dapper (but all black) coat, slacks, and shoes. Finally, he turned a puzzled gaze on Frank. “Beg pardon, sir, but what is an english?”

Frank made his smile stay on his face. After a moment he managed to pull his face into a more human semblance. He gulped and said, “What is an English?” Oh, fine work, Frank. As intelligent sounding as a gorilla.

The D. D. folded his hands on one knee, making the fabric of his slacks rustle. “Precisely so, sir.”

Frank scratched a sudden itch on his scalp and drummed his heel on the floor. “Well…it’s a language. My language. The American lang—”

“English!” the D. D. exclaimed. “You think I am speaking English!”

Frank folded his arms and, with a smug smile, said, “Precisely so, sir. Well, I don’t just think it. I know it.”

It was the D. D.’s turn to gape. “You’ve been speaking perfect French this whole time!” he said at last. Not said, actually. More like yelped. These French truly were excitable folks.

“No,” said Frank in the calm tone he’d use on Lilly when she was hysterical. “You see…” And suddenly, he saw. “I heard you speaking French—until the cat arrived.” He turned to squint at the cat, which was licking the pads of a front paw. “Cat as translator. Fascinating.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Frank snorted. “Well, let’s have a little talk. Mister…”

“Debussy. Claude Debussy. Call me Claude.”

“That’s what I thought. You the composer?”

Claude, narrowing his eyes, tapped his fingers on the leather upholstery of Lilly’s chair. His fingernails were tame and short. “You seem to know about me, sir, but I am at a disadvantage…” His voice trailed up and off.

“Ah, yes, of course. Frank. Frank Lloyd Wright. Also a composer, here in Chicago. United States. According to some clown in a red suit, we may have a composition or two in common.”

Claude remained silent and pursed his lips under his frizzled mustache.

“We’re not from the same world,” Frank added.

“Whatever is going on here?” Lilly’s voice grew rapidly larger as she approached them, one hand on her hip, a few wayward strands of her dark-brown hair tumbling into her eyes. The scent of her sweat mingled with that of the tea she used to cleanse her hair, and Frank’s heart leapt toward her. A beacon of sanity.

At the same time that Frank said, “Why, I thought you were in the attic, sweetheart,” Claude said, “Lilly?! What are you doing here?”

And at the same time that Frank said, “Oh, you know my wife,” Claude said, “What are you doing with my wife?”

Oh. Oh dear.

When Mad Hatter had arrived, Lilly had clattered her way to the attic like a somnambulist. Now it seemed she had her own part to play in this…mess.

“As I was explaining, Claude,” Frank said, rubbing his suddenly sweaty fingers together, “you’re in a different universe now. Lilly is my wife here. And apparently, I’m supposed to exactly copy your Tenth Prelude and make it mine. In this universe.”

Claude muttered something about never going to that café again, despite the glories of its fluffy, savory brioche. “Suppose that I have been moved to another universe. Complete lunacy, but nothing is beyond the realm of possibility. Even lunacy. Now, why exactly should I hand over my composition to you? For you to take credit for it, as I understand?”

Frank wilted in his seat. “That’s what I wanted to ask him.”

“Him?”

“The clown behind all this mess. See, I’m a lot like you. Except I was creating my own Tenth Prelude. It was to be about bells. Apparently, yours is about a cathedral—”

“But sir! Mine is overflowing with bells. This is truly a most marvelous coincidence.” His eyebrows furrowed again. “Most marvelous indeed.”

“Yes, well. Mine is…a disaster, I’m afraid. Every time I write a few notes, I scratch them out again within minutes. I’ll be honest with you: I desperately need to finish the project, but I’m getting nowhere. All of a sudden, this strange…man demands that I finish mine by copying yours.”

Claude sighed, closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Please believe me, Claude. You see yourself that something very odd has happened—”

“I believe you, Mr. Wright.”

“Frank, please.”

“Frank. I believe you within the context of this dream.”

Frank groaned. Darn it, if only this were a dream.

“Don’t be sad, Frank. Whether or not I believe this is a dream—whether or not this is, in fact, a dream—my actions are what you need to serve your purpose, yes?”

Frank nodded. He realized, to his dismay, that he was beginning to stroke Melisandre’s coarse fur, gently, methodically. He put his hand on his lap and tucked his thumb into his belt. “So you’re willing to help me, then? All right, let me copy it, and we’ll be quits.”

“Oh, no, Frank. Not so easily.” Claude looked out of the fogged window beyond the table. “I will help you. But hand over my entire composition? That’s too much to ask.”

Frank reached for his cup of coffee, hoping for a rich, bitter sip, only to find that the cup was dry. He had finished it with Mad Hatter. “What in all universes are you suggesting, Claude?”

Claude shrugged. “I will share part of my composition with you. The rest, is up to you.”

Frank cracked an uncertain smile as he re-settled himself in the chair’s softness. “Splitting the difference, eh?”

Claude stared out the window again. Even with the window closed, the glass seemed to breathe the cool, floral scents of spring. “Are you familiar,” he said in a voice that sounded half in a dream, “with the legend of Ys?”

“Ys? No.” Frank leaned forward. He wasn’t sure what “Ys” had to do with their current dilemma, but he loved legends. Perfectly fascinating. Perfectly…distracting.

“Very well.” He turned to face Frank again, and his eyes snapped with energy. “Here it is, in brief. The land of Ys—near France, of course—was drowned beneath the sea for the evil of its inhabitants. But still, when the morning rises, sometimes the bells of its great cathedral can be heard, rising from a momentary rent in the waters.” He paused. “My Tenth Prelude is drawn from the legend, you see. The bells, the cathedral. There are, of course, other legends of drowned lands; but the legend of Ys and its bells is peculiarly French.”

“Lovely story,” Frank said after a breathless pause. “Eerie, just a bit mysterious. I like my legends that way.” He let his own eyes be drawn toward the window. It seemed, at first, as if a multitude of madly-colored rabbits crowded the sidewalk, but he blinked, and they were gone. In their place were shouting children. Some, mostly the older ones, were wheeling clunky bicycles; others ran beside them.

He turned back to Claude. The chair’s leather squeaked as he moved. “But what does your story, wonderful as it is, have to do with our current predicament?”

“It isn’t an American story, is it?”

Frank nodded. His eyes widened. “You’re suggesting creating a version that is uniquely American?”

“Why not?”

American. With a unique regional flavor, perhaps tied to the waters of Lake Michigan. Not a bad idea. Not at all. “Why not indeed?” His fingers tapped on his thigh like they couldn’t wait to start composing. “You know, I like you, Claude. You’re my lucky break.”

Claude smiled. “My dear Frank, I hope you still feel that way a few months from now. I have not a penny for rent.”

Exhilaration pumped an excess of energy into Frank’s veins. He shrugged as he jumped up from the chair. “Hey, when a loony Manager of universes pops a fantastic guest on my door, I guess I’d better make do. Yessir. Lemme see your composition in action, eh?”

Claude followed Frank. The thick heels of his shoes made squelching sounds on the floor’s tired wood. “Only if you promise to add uniquely American elements. Perhaps some motifs from—what’s that song? ‘The Light of the Silver Moon’, or some such thing.”

Frank stopped mid-step. “That one? In my opinion, it’s a pretty sad excuse for a song.”

“What a shame. I think it’s quite charming.” Claude sighed.

Frank snapped his fingers. “Actually…maybe I can transform it. Make it into real music.” He resisted the impulse, the outrageous, irritating impulse, to start humming that…song. “Say,” he added. “I can’t wait for you to see my Bechstein, it’s a dilly of a thing. Then we can have some sweet coffee before we really settle down to work.”

“Ah, coffee. Excellent. Make mine without sugar, if you please.”

About the Author

Dorian Wolfe, a cat-toting spec-fic author and former concert pianist, focuses her writing on the intersection between the imaginary and...more of the imaginary. Her short fiction has appeared in Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, Cosmic Horror Monthly, The Orange & Bee, and other venues. Find out more at https://dorianwolfe.wordpress.com.

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