I said, “Gusdi nusdi? Is something wrong?”
“They laughed,” he said. He didn’t sound happy about it.
“They laughed,” I agreed. “They laughed as they have never laughed before, every one of them. Except for Otter, and no one has ever seen him laugh.”
I sat down beside him. “You did something fine tonight, Spearshaker. You made the People happy. They have a hard life, and you made them laugh.”
He made a snorting sound. “Yes. They laughed to see us making fools of ourselves. Perhaps that is good.”
“No, no.” I saw it now. “Is that what you think? That they laughed because we did the plei so badly?”
I put my hand on his shoulder and turned him to face me. “My friend, no one there tonight ever saw a plei before, except for you. How would they know if it was bad? It was certainly the best plei they ever saw.”
He blinked slowly, like a turtle. I saw his eyes were red.
“Believe me, Spearshaker,” I told him, “they were laughing because it was such a funny story. And that was your doing.”
His expression was very strange indeed. “They thought it comical?”
“Well, who wouldn’t? All those crazy people up there, killing each other—and themselves—and then that part at the end, where everyone gets killed!” I had to stop and laugh, myself, remembering. “I tell you,” I said when I had my breath back, “even though I knew the whole thing by memory, I nearly lost control of myself a few times there.”
I got up. “Come, Spearshaker. You need to go to sleep. You have been working too hard.”
But he only put his head down in his hands and made some odd sounds in his throat, and muttered some words I did not know. And so I left him there and went to bed.
If I live until the mountains fall, I will never understand white men.
If I liue vntil our Saviour’s returne, I shall neuer vnderstande Indians. Warre they count as Sport, and bloody Murther an occasion of Merriment: ’tis because they hold Life itselfe but lightly, and think Death no greate matter neyther: and so that which we call Tragick, they take for Comedie. And though I be damned for’t, I cannot sweare that they haue not the Right of it.
Whatever happened that night, it changed something in Spearshaker. He lived with us for many more years, but never again did he make a plei for us.
That was sad, for we had all enjoyed the Amaledi story so much, and were hoping for more. And many people tried to get Spearshaker to change his mind—Tsigeyu actually begged him; I think it was the only time in her life she ever begged anyone for anything—but it did no good. He would not even talk about it.
And at last we realized that his medicine had gone, and we left him in peace. It is a terrible thing for a didahnvwisgi when his power leaves him. Perhaps his ancestors’ spirits were somehow offended by our plei. I hope not, since it was my idea.
That summer Ninekiller’s daughter Cricket became Spearshaker’s wife. I gave them my house, and moved in with the Paint Clan woman. I visited my friend often, and we talked of many things, but of one thing we never spoke.
Cricket told me he still made his talking marks, from time to time. If he ever tried to make another plei, though, he never told anyone.
I believe it was five winters ago—it was not more—when Cricket came in one day and found him dead. It was a strange thing, for he had not been sick, and was still a fairly young man. As far as anyone knew there was nothing wrong with him, except that his hair had fallen out.
I think his spirit simply decided to go back to his native land.
Cricket grieved for a long time. She still has not taken another husband. Did you happen to see a small boy with pale skin and brown hair, as you came through our town? That is their son Wili.
Look what Cricket gave me. This is the turkey feather that was in Spearshaker’s hand when she found him that day. And this is the piece of mulberry bark that was lying beside him. I will always wonder what it says.
We are such stuff as Dreames are made on: and our little Life Is rounded in a sle
Elizabethan spelling was fabulously irregular; the same person might spell the same word in various ways on a single page. Shakespeare’s own spelling is known only from the Quarto and Folio printings of the plays, and the published poetry; and no one knows how far this may have been altered by the printer. It is not even known how close the published texts are to Shakespeare’s original in wording, let alone spelling. All we have in his own hand is his signature, and this indicates that he spelled his own name differently almost every time he wrote it.
I have followed the spelling of the Folio for the most part, but felt free to use my own judgment and even whim, since that was what the original speller did.
I have, however, regularized spelling and punctuation to some extent, and modernized spelling and usage in some instances, so that the text would be readable. I assume this magazine’s readership is well-educated, but it seems unrealistic to expect them to be Elizabethan scholars.
Cherokee pronunciation is difficult to render in Roman letters. Even our own syllabary system of writing, invented in the nineteenth century by Sequoyah, does not entirely succeed, as there is no way to indicate the tones and glottal stops. I have followed, more or less, the standard system of transliteration, in which “v” is used for the nasal grunting vowel that has no English equivalent.
It hardly matters, since we do not know how sixteenth-century Cherokees pronounced the language. The sounds have changed considerably in the century and a half since the forced march to Oklahoma; what they were like four hundred years ago is highly conjectural. So is the location of the various tribes of Virginia and the Carolinas during this period; and, of course, so is their culture. (The Cherokees may not then have been the warlike tribe they later became—though, given the national penchant for names incorporating the verb “to kill,” this is unlikely.) The Catawbas were a very old and hated enemy.
Edward Spicer’s voyage to America to learn the fate of the Roanoke Colony—or rather his detour to Virginia after a successful privateering operation—did happen, including the bad weather and the loss of a couple of boats, though there is no record that any boat reached the mainland. The disappearance of the Roanoke colonists is a famous event. It is only conjecture—though based on considerable evidence, and accepted by many historians—that Powhatan had the colonists murdered, after they had taken sanctuary with a minor coastal tribe. Disney fantasies to the contrary, Powhatan was not a nice man.
I have accepted, for the sake of the story, the view of many scholars that Shakespeare first got the concept of Hamlet in the process of revising Thomas Kyd’s earlier play on the same subject. Thus he might well have had the general idea in his head as early as 1591—assuming, as most do, that by this time he was employed with a regular theatrical company—even though the historic Hamlet is generally agreed to have been written considerably later.
As to those who argue that William Shakespeare was not actually the author of Hamlet, but that the plays were written by Francis Bacon or the Earl of Southampton or Elvis Presley, one can only reply: Hah! And again, Hah!
MOZART IN MIRRORSHADES
Bruce Sterling and Lewis Shiner
Bruce Sterling began publishing science fiction in 1976, and his first novel, the picaresque extraplanetary adventure Involution Ocean, was published the following year. Shortly after, he made his mark with a series of visionary short stories about bioengineering and prosthetic transformation set in his Shaper/Mechanist universe, which culminated in the novel Schismatrix. With the publication of Islands in the Net in 1988, Sterling came to be regarded as one of the most provocative writers in the cyberpunk medium, and confirmed his role as its leading prophet with his groundbreaking Mirrorshades anthology. His novels, which frequently focus on the cultural dislocation and social alienation that has come with the information age and computer revolution, include Heavy Weather, Holy Fire, and the satirical Distraction. His short fiction has been collected in Crystal Express, Globalhead, and A Good Old-Fashioned Future.