Unpossible by Daryl Gregory Read Free Book Online

it is: unfamiliar, unknown.

    The little boat lies at the bottom of the empty seabed, abandoned midway between the shore and the island. Sandy mud sucks at his shoes. He walks toward the boat, past stacks of smooth-headed boulders and stinking saltwater puddles in the shape of great clawed feet. He walks under a sky the color of pencil lead.
    The island is shaped like a bowler hat. If not for the trees—a handful of curve-backed palms with outrageously broad leaves—and for the hunched figure silhouetted at the very crown of the hill, he’d have thought the island was huge but miles away. Instead he can see that it’s ridiculously small, like a cartoon desert island.
    He reaches the boat and rests a hand on the gunwales. The inside of the boat is an unmade bed, a white pillow and blue blankets and white sheets. Foot-shaped holes, human-size, stamp away from the boat toward the island. He follows them across the drained sea to the rim of the island, where his predecessor’s mud-laden feet begin to print the grass. The trail leads up the slope, between bushes tinged yellow and brown. Only a few of the palm trees are standing; dozens of others are uprooted and lying on the ground, or else split and bent, as if savaged by a hurricane.
    He climbs, breath ragged in his throat. The man at the top of the hill is facing away, toward the lightening sky. On his back is some kind of white fur shawl—no, a suit like a child’s footie pajamas, arms tied around his neck. The yawning hood is a wolf’s head that’s too small for his grown-man’s head.
    He’s huffing, making a lot of noise as he approaches, but the man with the wolf suit doesn’t turn around.
    When he’s caught his breath he says, "Beautiful, isn’t it?"
    Above them the sky is fitful gray, but across the vast, empty sea in the land beyond, sunlight sparkles on the crystal minarets of the Glassine Palace. A great-winged roc dangling a gondola from its claws flaps toward its next fare. The rolling hills beyond the city are golden and ripe for harvest. It’s all as he remembers.
    "Look at those wild things go," the man in the wolf suit says. Who knows what he’s seeing?
    The sun crawls higher, but the clouds above the hill refuse to disperse. He glances at the man in the wolf suit, looks away. Tears have cut tracks down his muddy and unshaven face. The wolf man’s older than him, but not by much.
    What did the woman in the house say? Not even the first one tonight.
    He nods at the man’s wedding ring and says, "Can’t take it off either?"
    The man frowns at it. "Left me six months ago. I had it coming for years." He smiles faintly. "Couldn’t quite stop making mischief. You?"
    "She died a few years ago." But the damage hadn’t stopped there, had it? He tilts his head, a half shrug. "Depression runs in her family."
    "Sorry to hear that." He slowly shakes his head, and the upside-down wolf’s head wags with him. "It’s a disaster out there. Every day like an eraser. Days into months, months into years—gone, gone, gone." The man in the wolf suit stares at him without blinking. "Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you were having a happy ending."
    "No." He almost grins. "Not even close." But was that true? He’d had a dozen happy endings. A score of them.
    Together they stare across the ocean of mud and squint into the brightness beyond.
    "We can’t get back in there," he says to the man with the suit. He’s surprised by his certainty. But he can’t imagine tracking that muck across the crystal streets. "And we can’t stay here." He rubs a hand across his mouth. "Come with me."
    The man doesn’t answer.
    "I could make you leave."
    The man in the wolf suit laughs. "Don’t you know who I am?" he says. "I’m their king!"
    "No," he says. "Not anymore." He grips the edges of the white fur and yanks it over the man’s head and off, quick as a magic trick. "I’m the king now."
    He runs down the hill holding the suit above his head like a flag. The man roars a