Dean Wesley Smith - The Last Garden In Time's Window

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The Last Garden in Time's Window

Dean Wesley Smith

Dean Wesley Smith has sold over twenty novels and around one hundred short stories to

various magazines and anthologies. He's been a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula Awards, and has

won a World Fantasy Award and a Locus Award. He was the editor and publisher of Pulphouse

Publishing, and has just finished editing the Star Trek anthology Strange New Worlds II.

THE sun beat through the window over the sink, making the small main room of the trailer feel

degrees too hot. In my memory, as far back as being a young boy, this trailer always felt hot and stuffy.

In the summer, Grandma and Grandpa never opened the doors. In the winter, the gas stove just put out

too much heat for the tiny eight-by-twenty trailer.

I turned and blocked the door open, then threaded my way past my grandfather's stuffed armchair

to the small kitchen and forced open the window there. A faint summer breeze took some of the heat, but

left the smell of my grandparents. The lingering odors of his cigars, her perfume, were embedded in every

pore of the space.

It was almost as if they were still there, Grandpa in his chair, Grandma in the small kitchen behind

his chair. She always did all the talking when I visited, asking me about work, about which woman I was

dating. Except for an occasional grunt or laugh, Grandpa had very seldom made a noise or spoken an

entire sentence to me.

I stood near the dark gas heater, trying not to touch anything. I didn't want to accidentally trigger a

memory spell. Dirk, my master, had told me a dozen times to be careful, repeating it over and over right

up until I got on the plane. He didn't think my magic was ready to be used or controlled without his

watchful eye. I was just an apprentice and I should damn well remember that.

I did think about his warning, but now standing in my grandparents' old trailer home that sat tucked

back in a shabby trailer park in Boise, Idaho, I was having trouble caring. This was a different world, far

more distant than the thousand miles that separated me now from the world where I learned to control

my magic with Dirk in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Boise was where I grew up and where I now had to try to understand what happened to my

grandparents. Why I had stared at two caskets side by side at the funeral today. Oh, I knew the "how" of

their death. The police said the gas stove had finally leaked, filling the trailer and killing them while they

slept. A neighbor had noticed the smell and called the fire department.

But I just couldn't bring myself to believe it had really happened. Not after all these years of the two

of them living in this trailer. An accident like that wasn't something they would ever allow to happen, no

matter how old they got. Or at least that was what I wanted to believe.

After the service at their graves, I had thought about calling Dirk, asking him to come and help me,

but I knew what his answer would be. He would smile and shake his head, his perfectly-combed hair not

mussing. I could almost hear his voice say the words, When you are ready, you can find the answer to

their deaths. But first you must learn the control and the discipline of your magic.

More than likely he would have been right. I had learned to trust the guy who looked like a golf pro

in his Izod shirts and golf slacks. Dirk seemed to know everything there was to know about magic. He

was rumored, among the other apprentices I was on-line with, to be one of the most powerful magicians

in the world. Considering there were thousands of full magicians around the world and thousands more

apprentices like me, that was saying something.

But sitting in my grandparents' old, tiny trailer, I didn't much care or want to listen. Something had

taken the two most important people in my life from me, and I was going to find out what.

I stood, and without touching anything, tried to really look at the trailer around me, to see if anything

was missing or out of place. One big armchair that had been my grandfather's sat in the center of the

room, another smaller one on the other side of the gas stove had been Grandma's place. A tiny,

blanket-covered couch under the room's one window had always been for guests. I remembered sitting

on that couch a thousand times. The space was so small that half the time I had to keep my legs tucked

under me to keep from kicking Grandma.

Behind Grandpa's chair was a tiny kitchen, beyond that a bathroom I could barely even turn around

in, and then a bedroom taken up completely by a queen-sized bed. A closet with a few drawers was

across from the bathroom and what few clothes the two of them had were still hanging there.

I hesitated before pulling the drape aside and going in to the bedroom where they had died. I still

didn't understand how they could have lived like this. My single dorm room in college had had more

room. Yet they never seemed to be hurting for money, and had no desire, even during the days I had

worked for Microsoft and had a ton of money, to take my offer of moving them to a house. Grandma

had just smiled every time I had offered, patted me on the hand, and said, "We're fine here, dear. We

have more than enough room. Thank you."

So after a few years I had quit offering, then when the magic started to show itself, Dirk appeared

at my door in Seattle, took me under his wing, told me that what was happening to me wasn't my

imagination, or a deadly disease, and convinced me to move to Scottsdale to train and learn control. He

flat-out told me that I had hidden magic talents and Microsoft was no place for me.

So I quit and went with him.

Now, six months later, a day after my thirty-fifth birthday, both my grandparents were found dead

on their bed.

I took a deep breath of the stuffy air and carefully pulled aside the curtain that sheltered the small

bedroom. Two indents were clear on the bed. One short and not very deep: Grandma. One a little taller

and smashed into the mattress: Grandpa.

The police were not talking to me at all. The paper had said they had died of unknown causes

which were under investigation. But the trailer had been open for me to come and go as I wanted. And I

saw no signs of an investigation, no police tape, nothing. Clearly the police thought they died of some

old-age thing and didn't care.

But to me nothing made sense. Granted they were both in their late eighties, but both were healthy

and active.

I stared at the two body marks for a moment, then turned back to the front part of the trailer. If I

was going to discover what killed them, I would have to start slow and move carefully and remember

every ounce of magic training Dirk had given me so far.

I moved so that I stood in the middle of the tiny living room and faced my grandmother's chair. Then

spelling the word "d-i-s-c-o-v-e-r," I sat down.

For me, magic always started with a tingling in my fingers that quickly ran up my hands into my

head, making me so dizzy that I had to close my eyes. It was what had sent me to the Seattle hospital half

a dozen times, and what Dirk said had led him to me. He told me that after a few years of practice, the

"ignition effects" as he called the tingling and dizziness, would go away.

I closed my eyes as the tingling raced up my arms and into my head.

Then it was gone, much quicker than normal.

I found myself in a wonderful-smelling kitchen. I knew, intellectually, that I was actually still sitting in

Grandma's chair in the trailer, but around me was a massive kitchen that was all white and stainless steel.

Someone had been baking and the smell of cherry pie filled the air. Through the kitchen window I could

see blue sky and pine trees.

I walked around the room, not touching anything. The place looked familiar. The table and six

chairs against one wall covered by a checkered red-and-white tablecloth finally gave me the clue. This

was a vastly expanded version of my grandmother's kitchen back in their old home. They had owned the

home for forty years before selling it and moving into the small trailer. I could remember, as a kid, sitting

at the kitchen table while Grandma baked. Clearly, my magic had brought me back to one of my own

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TheLastGardeninTime'sWindowDeanWesleySmithDeanWesleySmithhassoldovertwentynovelsandaroundonehundredshortstoriestovariousmagazinesandanthologies.He'sbeenafinalistfortheHugoandNebulaAwards,andhaswonaWorldFantasyAwardandaLocusAward.HewastheeditorandpublisherofPulphousePublishing,andhasjustfinishedediti...

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