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

I heard a voice: Be still, my son. The voice of my grandfather.

I was slipping away from the bear’s grasp.

Into a circle of cold blue light.

In the circle stood Aki Ishii. He was naked. His body was completely covered in tattoos: strange concentric designs like Neolithic pottery. His long black hair streamed in a wind that seemed to emanate from his lips and circle around him; I felt no wind. Smoke rose from a brazier, fragrant with tobacco and honey.

“Tunkashila . . .” I murmured. I crawled toward him. Clutched at his feet in supplication.

The bear reared up at the edge of the circle. In the pale light I saw him whole for the first time. His face still betrayed something of Mayuzumi; his body still contained the portly outline of the magnate; but his eyes burned with that pure unconscionable anger that comes only in dreams.

“Be still,” said Aki Ishii. “You may not enter the circle. It is I who am the shaman of the bear people. You cannot gain true power by taking men’s souls; you must give in equal measure of your own.”

And then I saw, reflected in the wall of ice behind us, miragelike images of Molly Danzig and Esmeralda O’Neil. They were half human, half cave painting. They too were naked and covered with tattoos. They had become Ainu, but I saw that they were also my people . . . they were also the Greek goddesses. . . Molly, who had fled from her home and herself and sought solace in the arms of strangers, had been incarnated as domesticity itself; Esmeralda, whose diplomatic career belied her bellicose nature, had become the goddess of war. What was I then? There was only one goddess left: the goddess of love.

But I was incapable of love, because of what my father had done. I hated him, but he was the only man I had ever loved.

Three musical instruments materialized in the smoke of the incense burner. Molly plucked the shamisen of domestic tranquility out of the air; Esmeralda seized the war drum. One instrument remained: the phallic bamboo flute of desire. I took it and held it to my lips. Of its own accord it began to play, a melody of haunting and erotic sweetness. And the drum pounded and the shamisen sounded . . . three private musics that could not blend . . . until we faced the bear together.

“My son,” said Aki Ishii softly, “you must now reap the fruits of your own rage.”

The bear exploded. His head split down the middle and the mingled brains and blood gushed up like lava from a volcano. His belly burst open and his entrails writhed like snakes. The drumbeats were syncopated with the cracking of the bear’s spine. Shards of tibia shredded the flesh of his legs. Blood spattered the ceiling. The walls ran red. Blood rained down on us. Each piece of the bear ate away at itself, as though dissolving in acid. The smoke from the brazier turned into a blood-tinged mist. And all the while Aki Ishii stood, immobile, his face a mask of tragedy and regret.

I didn’t stop playing until the last rag of blood-drenched fur had been consumed. Small puddles of blood were siphoning into the snow. The images of my dead friends were swirling into the mist that was the honey-tinged breath of Aki Ishii, shaman of the bear people. Only the eyes remained, resting side by side on an altar of snow. Aki nodded. I put down the flute and watched it disappear into the air. I knelt down and picked up the eyes. They were hard as crystal. The cold had marbled them.

“I’m sorry,” Aki said. The light was dimming.

“Are you going to kill me?” I whispered, knowing that was what an apology presaged.

“I’m not going to take anything from you that you will not give willingly,” said the snow sculptor. He took me by the hand. “The war between the dark and the light is an eternal conflict. Dr. Mayuzumi wanted what I wanted . . . but his magic is a magic of deceit. He was content with the illusion of power. But for that illusion, he had to feed on real human lives. This is not really the way of bear people.”

“The dead women—”

“Yes. I planted a piece of those women into the snow sculptures. We made love. I captured a fragment of their joy and breathed it into the snow. Dr. Mayuzumi devoured them. They were women from three races the Japanese find inferior, but each race had done what the Ainu have not done—they have fought back—the blacks and the reds against the white men, the whites against the Japanese themselves. That was what made him angry. Our people have had their souls stolen from them. By stealing a piece of each of the three women’s souls, tearing them violently from their bodies in the moment of death, he sought to give himself a soul. But a soul cannot be wrested from another person; it is a gift.” He took my other hand. And now I saw what it was that I had feared so much. I thought I had locked it up and thrown away the key, but it was still there . . . my need to be loved, my need to become myself.

“Now,” said Aki Ishii to me, “you must free yourself, and me.”

I held out the bear’s two marble eyes. He took one from me. We each swallowed an eye in a single gulp. It had no taste. It was like communion. And then he kissed me.

We made love as the light faded from the cavern, and when we emerged from the wall of ice, the statues were whole again, and the goddess of love had my face; but the face of Paris was still blank.