“You’ve still got one question,” Wow reminded Nick. “I wouldn’t let it go to waste, either way.”
“So what should I ask?” Nick asked Wow.
“It‘s your daughter and your questions,” Wow said. “I’m just the medium, the go-between. The whole process gets a little… kerplunkety… if I interject too much of myself into the process.”
“Kerplunkety?” Nick echoed. “Is that supposed to be some kind of a technical term?”
“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m divining by gazing at smoke patterns inside a fish bowl,” Wow said. “Now, if you want technical, I’m pretty sure I’ve got a motorcycle repair manual around here somewhere… but I suggest you figure out your last question first.”
“Fine,” Nick said.
“If I went to a witch, and I wanted to find somebody, I think the very first thing I should like to ask is where they are,” Woe said, somewhat abstractly.
Nick stared, wondering why he hadn’t thought of that.
Of course, the most burning question had been the circumstances of her departure… and then Wow had said that bit about him being a concerned parent, so of course he’d asked about her condition.
“Um… where is she?” he asked Wow.
“In a car,” Wow said. “No… wait… she just got dumped out of it. She’s in a parking garage, underground. Somewhere… eastside, I think. Yes.”
“In an underground parking garage, somewhere on the eastside,” Nick repeated dubiously. “That’s what I spent my last question on?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t see anything that I recognize. The east is not my domain,” Wow said. “But that’s still more than you would have got on your own.”
“But you can find her,” Nick said, turning to Woe.
“Is that what I said?” she asked. “Hmm. Yes, I think I probably must be able to, or I wouldn‘t have said something like that.”
“Do you know if she’s alive?” Nick prompted.
“The only true knowledge is knowing that you know nothing,” Woe said. “I know that very well.”
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“The only true Knowledge is knowing that you know nothing.”
Oh how very, very true.
“Now, if you want technical, I’m pretty sure I’ve got a motorcycle repair manual around here somewhere… but I suggest you figure out your last question first.”
For some reason this makes me think of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
I thought of the same thing, exactly. And then I went off into an enormous tangent, which follows:
There’s a whole literary body of work from the ’50s and ’60s, the big beat generation writers from William Burroughs, Kurt Vonnegut, Jack Kerouac, through Hunter Thompson, John Crowley, and Neil Gaiman that deals with existentialism, zen, vision-quests, including but sortof wandering trippingly off from, but not entirely out of, the hardcore world we (collectively, who wish to stay outside the funny-house) recognise, into this surreality, and to me they seem so completely personal. Writers trying their hardest to do the one thing that’s so hard for writers to do-to write for themselves and just for themselves. And in the doing, not only do they set out to build their own realities, but they seem to somehow create their own audiences.
Mentioned ofcourse, because it’s this kind of work that-if anything-taps into “modern” magic, lays the groundwork for myths that can happen right here and now, in your life, without the portals and parlour tricks.
I love this kind of writing, because it’s phantasmagoria laid on concrete, economics, and radio. It’s fantasy with an internal combustion engine. Discordant, even to use words like “magic, fantasy, myth” because we’re not talking unreal wholecloth makebelieve. Things happen. Sometimes just because they do. Ascending, perhaps, out of a deeper reality. There should be a solid term for it, beyond constructs like “modern fantasy” or “urban myth”. It’s fantasy-next-door.
@TheHoneyBadger: I’ve seen the term “wainscot fantasy” used, as in, “Fantasy just behind the wainscoting.”
I have too, actually, now that you mention it…Term’s good in it’s way.
To me, this sort of “wainscoting” can be boiled down to it’s utmost purity in the Mary Poppins scene where they’re looking out over the rooftops of London, at all the chimneys and their streams of smoke. Doesn’t get grimier, marginal, or phantasmagorial than that.
You’ve managed, by the way, in Tribes and MU, not only to capture two of my favorite, rare flavors of theme, you’re writing at this amazing level of talent, creativity, and wisdom. Doesn’t cost me a dime, and I’ve paid a lot for authors I *knew* were mediochre.
So thank you.
heh. the house thing should have gotten me, but “the eastside is not my domain” is what made it clear
wow=witch of the west and woe=witch of the east, no?