Hart & Boot & Other Stories Read Online Free PDF

forests to the torch. As the trees burned, the souls burned, and sorcerers screamed across the continent.” He clucked his tongue. “Then, for a time, it was fashionable to hide your life in the head of a toad, but toads are stupid, and often get eaten, or die. I was always smart. I hid my life well.”
    “I know,” Zealand said.
    “But I’ve forgotten where I put it.” Grace looked up from his wine, into Zealand’s face, and for a moment it was clear he’d forgotten who Zealand was. “I’ve forgotten so many things. It’s hard to know which things are worth remembering, when you don’t have a soul.”
    “I know,” Zealand said again.
    “I used to be a giant.” Grace looked wistful. “Before I was a man. I broke the spines of mammoths in my hands. But I’ve forgotten how to be a giant, and I don’t want to be a man. I only want to die.”
    “I know,” Zealand said, for the third time. Three times was usually enough to make Grace stop going over the usual elusive reminiscences again. “Where should I look next, do you think?”
    “Look for what?” Grace said, blinking his beautiful eyes.
    “Come, then,” Zealand said. “I’ll take you home.”
    ***
    Some weeks later, after another pair of fruitless searches for Grace’s life, Zealand crunched through the snow-covered sand on the shore of Lake Tahoe. The water was still and blue, and though there was no wind, the cold was bitter and penetrating, making the inside of Zealand’s nose burn with every breath. A woman stood on the edge of the water, a long black scarf hanging motionless down her back, her thick down coat the red of arterial spurt.
    “Are you Hannah?” Zealand asked.
    She turned, the lower half of her face covered by the scarf. “Mr. Zed?” she said, her accent British and precise. Her eyes were the color of the water, almost the color of Archibald Grace’s own, which made sense, as Hannah claimed to be Grace’s daughter. When she’d first contacted him, Zealand had been suspicious, partly because Grace’s apparent sexual preference made the presence of offspring rather unlikely, but upon further consideration it was understandable that someone as old as Grace would have tried various partners and sexual permutations, probably many times over. Hannah had known things about Grace that Grace barely remembered about himself, and Zealand was reasonably certain her claim was true.
    “You told me you know the whereabouts of your father’s life,” Zealand said. He was still fascinated by her eyes, so like Grace’s.
    “I do. I’ll take you there, but you have to do something for me first.”
    “I’m not prepared to wait,” Zealand said. His tone was polite, but the menace was implicit.
    She laughed, harsh and hyena-like, quite unlike her urbane voice. “Father has lived for epochs. Another day or two won’t matter.”
    “Nevertheless, I want you to tell me now.”
    She pulled the scarf down. Below the eyes, her face was inhuman, with two holes covered by membranous flaps where her nose should have been. Her mouth was lipless, filled by a score of two-inch-long interlocking incisors. She resembled nothing so much as a deep-sea fish, one of those horrors fishermen occasionally pulled up in their nets, and Zealand recalled Grace’s claim to have spent years living beneath the sea. When Hannah spoke again, her mouth did not open, and Zealand realized that her human voice was a magical contrivance, not something born of her own vocal cords at all. “My father is almost a god, and my mother was the mistress of black oceanic caves. I will decide where we go, and when.”
    Zealand drew a pistol and fired a shot, blowing off Hannah’s right knee. She screamed, this time opening her mouth, and it was an inhuman, gurgling sound. She fell to the sand, throwing her head back into the snow, her monstrous teeth spreading apart, her long tongue lolling out as she shrieked. She had a bioluminescent bulb on the end of her tongue, glowing a