Maiden, Mother, Crone
FANTASTICAL TRANS FEMMES
Edited by Gwen Benaway
Copyright 2019 Bedside Press
Cover art A by Annie Mok
Cover design A by Scott A. Ford
Cover art B by Alex Morris
Interior and cover design B by Relish New Brand Experience
Edited by Gwen Benaway
with additional edits by Emily Stewart & Tia Vasiliou
All stories, memoirs, and poems are copyright of their respective creators as indicated herein, and are
reproduced here with permission.
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in any sort of
retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher—or, in the case of photocopying
or other reproduction, a license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency—is an infringement
of copyright law.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Title: Maiden, mother, crone : fantastical trans femmes / Gwen Benaway.
Other titles: Fantastical trans femmes
Names: Benaway, Gwen, 1987- editor.
Description: Short stories.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190078669 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190078774 | ISBN
9781988715216 (softcover) | ISBN 9781988715285 (PDF)
Subjects: CSH: Fantasy fiction, Canadian (English) | CSH: Short stories, Canadian (English) | LCSH:
Fantasy fiction, American. | LCSH: Short stories, American. | CSH: Canadian fiction—21st—
century | LCSH: Transgender women—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PN6071.F25 M35 2019 | DDC 813.087660806—dc23
ISBN 978-1-988715-30-8 (MOBI) | ISBN: 978-1-988715-31-5 (EPUB)
Bedside Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada and the Government
of Manitoba through financial support received from Canada Council for the Arts and the Manitoba
Arts Council for this project.
BEDSIDE PRESS
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Table of Contents
EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION
Gwen Benaway
MOUNTAIN GOD
Gwen Benaway
FOREST’S EDGE
Audrey Vest
THE VIXEN, WITH DEATH PURSUING
Izzy Wasserstein
POTIONS AND PRACTICES
gwynception
FREEING THE BITCH
Ellen Mellor
THE KNIGHTING
Alexa Fae McDaniel
UNDOING VAMPIRISM
Lilah Sturges
I SHALL REMAIN
Kai Cheng Thom
DREAMBORN
Kylie Ariel Bemis
FAILURE
Casey Plett
PERISHER
Crystal Frasier
BIOS
Editor’s Introduction
GWEN BENAWAY
F
antasy was always my first literary love. I spent all of my childhood
reading paperbacks by Mercedes Lackey, Tanya Huff, Melanie Rawn,
and Robin Hobb. Stories of magic and romance were the one safe place in
my life, an imaginary home that I carried with me wherever I went. My
earliest heroines were the beautiful and powerful women that I found in
between the pages of fantasy books. I used to imagine that I could step
through a shimmering portal and appear in a fantasy land in a different body
and gender where adventure, spells, and love waited for me.
I never found that magical other world, but I did transition to become the
woman I always knew I was. Revisiting my favourite fantasy books after
my transition made me realize the many parallels between the lives of trans
femmes and fantasy heroines. While we don’t always slay dragons, there is
a magic and wonder about our lives. We often face enormous challenges
and terrible villains, but we continue to battle onwards. Yet despite these
obvious connections, our lives as trans folks are almost never reflected in
the fantasy books and stories.
I wanted Maiden Mother Crone to be a space for other trans women and
trans feminine folk to write fantastical short stories where trans folks were
the main characters. Between the pages of this anthology, there is a wide
range of fantasy genres and characters represented. All of the classic
fantasy tropes are here, but they are often reimagined in new and
compelling ways. Many stories are about love, community, and kinship.
Some stories look into a bleak future world while others imagine entirely
new worlds. Every story offers a different window into the possibilities of
trans femmes, imagining us as fearless warriors, revolutionary fighters, and
mercenary mages.
While reading the stories in this anthology, I was reminded of why I fell
in love with fantasy. Fantasy gives us the freedom to imagine different
stories for ourselves. The reality of our lives as trans women is never far
from the surface of our fantastical stories, but within their magical bounds,
we have the agency and capacity to change worlds. I hope that our readers
find the same wonder and joy within this anthology that I found in editing
it.
Miikwec,
Gwen
Mountain God
GWEN BENAWAY
T
he air was cool around her. She and Rais were in the foothills of the
mountains, a transitory landscape where the scrub brush of the plains
gave way to tall evergreen trees and dense under foliage. As they rode
closer, the temperature had steadily dropped from a blistering dry heat into
a cool and moist fog. Aoyas breathed in and felt her chest muscles constrict
underneath her leather armour. The air was getting thinner.
Rais rode beside her in silence. They had camped at the edge of the
foothills last night, sleeping underneath one heavy woolen blanket beside a
small creek. She knew Rais hadn’t slept well, haunted by his dreams and
kicking her in his sleep. The last few moons had been rough on both of
them. They had taken a small contract with a local Lord in Hakien out of
financial desperation. Mercenary jobs were plenty in the Occupied lands as
the local Lords and Ladies frequently warred with each other for regional
domination, but some jobs were better than others. The Hakien contract was
messy, as the Lord was fighting off a small farmer rebellion led by his halfsister, and it ended in a brutal midnight raid that made Aoyas’s stomach turn
to think of.
As a mage, she had been behind the main battle lines, casting light spells
to guide the Lord’s forces and occasionally casting fire on the rebellion’s
camps. Rais was mostly an axe fighter, but he was good on horseback and
knew his way around a heavy spear, so the Lord had insisted he participate
in the main charge. The rebellion had been on the verge of starving. The
Lord’s half-sister had been making gestures toward surrender in the days
before the raid. There’d been no reason for a slaughter, much less a
dishonourable attack on a sleeping camp.
Even from where she had been, Aoyas had heard the screams and seen
the Lord’s men chase down fleeing rebellion soldiers. It had been a vulgar
display of masculine pride and violence. The Lord had gleefully watched
the destruction of his half-sister’s forces but elected to stay safely back
while his army had murdered their way to a resolution. Aoyas hated him
and every noble like him with a fierce passion. When Rais had returned
from the raid, his armour soaked in blood and a hard, tight line etched in his
mouth, Aoyas had hated the Lord even more.
Rais didn’t talk about it and Aoyas didn’t ask. She just wrapped Rais in
soft arms every night, holding him through bad dreams and strange moods.
The trip into the mountains was a makeshift pilgrimage away from the
bloodshed of the past moons, a chance for them to reconnect and figure out
next steps. The Lord had been pleased with their service, giving a small
bonus which Aoyas had accepted with a barely hidden grimace. Killing
with her magic bothered her.
Magic was the most beautiful part of her life, a sweetness behind every
bad moment, and she hated despoiling it for petty noble cruelty. There was
no choice but to use her magic against others. If she’d stayed in the Imperial
Academy, she could have used her magic to cast high wards to guard cities,
light their streets, and purify their air. It had always been her dream to work
the highest magic in the Capital city. She loved the rituals and structures of
high magic, the obscure incarnations and the elaborate weaving of elements
together to produce perfect spells that lingered for decades. Her battle
magic, it’s small and violent applications of elemental force, always felt
rushed and flawed in comparison.
She was the first one in her family to attend the Academy. Growing up in
Lerani, the smallest Occupied land under the Empire’s control, meant
accepting a second-class life. Lerani was the last conquered region in the
Empire. The land had been seized in her great-grandmother’s generation,
but the last rebellion was only fifty years ago. In theory, Lerani citizens had
the same rights as any other member of the Empire, but in practice, her
homeland was barely administrated by the Empire. They sent the worst
governors to Lerani, underfunded all of its services, and drained its
resources to fuel the Empire’s more important regions.
Lerani hated the Empire with a passion that put the other Occupied lands
to shame. Her grandmother, a short woman with magic of her own, had
famously spat at Lerani’s governor and was publicly flogged for it. Aoyas
remembered how her grandmother wore her scars with pride, dramatically
wearing loose dresses that showed the raised marks along her back at every
public gathering. Lerani was not a land meant for Imperial overlords nor
were its people interested in the supposed benefits of being Imperial
citizens.
Even as a child, Aoyas had understood that her people had been
conquered and were living with invaders inside their own territories. She
still dreamt of Imperial high magic and living in the Capital city. Magic was
different in Lerani. It had no rituals nor any structure that Aoyas could feel.
Her grandmother had felt Aoyas’s magic blossom inside her when she was
barely six moons old and had tried to teach her traditional Lerani magecraft.
Aoyas didn’t understand it. She knew some Lerani spells, but she could
barely make them work even though she was considered a mage of some
skill in Imperial magics.
The Academy was supposed to solve all of Aoyas’s problems. It was
extremely rare for the Academy to accept Lerani students. There was a
quota set on how many mages from the Occupied lands could become
Imperial mages and once you left the Occupied lands, you were not allowed
back. The Empire may have been lazy, but it wasn’t stupid. Training its
conquered peoples in the magic that had conquered them was only
permissible if those trained never returned home. Aoyas had accepted that
reality, pushing through her interviews and scoring the highest in all of
Lerani’s students.
On the day that Aoyas left her family and homeland for the Academy, her
grandmother had turned away from her and called her a traitor to her
people. Perhaps she was right in the end, Aoyas thought as the sound of
Rais sneezing brought her back into the present moment. The Academy was
as bigoted as the Empire that it served. A Lerani mage might be accepted to
the Academy and excel, but they would be regulated to the secondary
magics and held back from true knowledge, never more than a servant to
the “true” Imperial citizens. The dream she had chased was an impossible
one, so she had left the Academy and sold her magic to survive.
Rais was an unexpected gift. They’d stumbled into each other at a tavern.
Both of them had been brand new to the mercenary life, trying to stay alive
for the first year of their contracts. The first year of any mercenary’s life
was the most lethal. If you lived through it, you were lucky. She and Rais
had been competing for the attention of another mercenary, a blond-haired
Imperial boy who smouldered with a quiet intensity. Somewhere between
flirting with him and downing cheap ale, Aoyas had realized that Rais was a
much more captivating match.
As a Marked woman, Aoyas knew her chances of attracting Rais’s
interest were low. The Empire allowed for citizens to change their born
genders and, if they could pay for it, buy the magics necessary to make their
genders visible in their bodies. Thankfully, Aoyas’s own magic was strong
enough to allow her to do it herself. She had started using the feminizing
magics just after hitting puberty, walking up to the Lerani Consulate and
requesting a gender change without her parent’s permission. Sheer force of
will had got her what she’d wanted and she had never looked back, writing
her new name in blue ink on the citizen registry in front of a bored Imperial
clerk.
Aoyas meant “winter star” in Lerani. There was some legend about the
winter star that her grandmother told the kids in her village, a long-winded
Lerani tale about the darkest night and the single silver star that graced the
highest point in the sky, but Aoyas just liked the sound of the word. As a
Marked woman, the Imperial term for those who changed their gender
identification and bodies through magic, Aoyas’s place in society was lower
than an Unmarked woman, but living as herself meant more to her than the
relative comfort of being Unmarked.
Rais didn’t care that Aoyas was a Marked woman. He was a child of the
Capital city, but Rais’s father was not an Imperial citizen. He came from
beyond the borders in a wooden sailing ship and disappeared back to his
homeland after Rais was born. Growing up with an Outworlder father, Rais
had learned to fight dirty to survive the casual hatred of the Empire. He was
fearless at heart, wearing his hair shorn to the scalp and refusing to conform
to the rules of Imperial life.
They fucked the night they met in an alleyway beside the tavern and
hadn’t stopped waking up together since. Their love was a soft whirl that
kept them alive. They had other lovers when the mood suited them, but
always ended tangled back up together. Aoyas didn’t trust anyone like she
trusted Rais. Their jobs constantly put them in danger and Rais’s dagger had
saved Aoyas’s life more times than she could count. In return, Aoyas
spelled Rais’s clothes to keep him warm and wove intricate protection
magics around her lover’s body.
A high pierced whistling ruptured through the silence of the foothills.
Rai’s horse started beside Aoyas and almost bolted from the sound. Aoyas
felt a sudden searing pain against her cheek and then saw drops of blood
fall onto her saddle. It happened so quickly that she missed the bandit’s
arrow as it swept past her and into the distance behind her. Rais was already
in motion, leaping off horseback into a low tumble with his twin axes in
hand.
Aoyas felt her magic flare around her, a tightening of pressure and air as
three men burst through the brush ahead of them. Their loose cloth tunics
and steel blades marked them as bandits as surely as the murderous glow in
their eyes. She couldn’t see the archer but Rais was already rushing toward
the men, fearless as always. Aoyas pulled her magic into a tight arc in her
hand, one luminous thread of Air and one smaller spark of Fire.
“Immolate,” she whispered under her breath, sending her magic coursing
toward the bandits. The sudden rush of yellow flames along their clothes
told her that her spell had reached them as Rais’s axes cut the first one
down.
More people to kill, she thought, and another beautiful morning ruined.
They reached the mountain village entrance by noon. The sun was burning
in a high arc overhead, but the shadow of the mountain peaks fell over the
land, trapping the wooden houses in morning mist and fog. Every house in
the village was painted in bright blues and greens. The village was the
terminus point on the trail from the Capital to the mountain range, a
meeting point of traders, travellers, and mountain folk. Just beyond the
village, there was a pass over the mountains that bridged two worlds, the
Occupied lands and the unconquered lands beyond.
The Empire wasn’t interested in the lands beyond the mountain village. It
had expanded westward as far as it wanted, signing treaties with the
mountain peoples under the threat of Imperial armies and then ignoring
them onwards. There was an Imperial Consulate in the village, but it was
just a simple thatched house with a single lowly Imperial clerk. There
wasn’t even an army outpost here. As far as the Empire was concerned, as
long as the village paid its taxes, it was on its own.
“Is your face okay?” Rais made brief eye contact with her when he spoke,
gesturing by pointing his lips toward her cheeks. The arrow had barely
broken skin, but the thin cut had bled for a while before drying shut.
“It’s fine. Not like I was winning any beauty contests before.” She
shrugged at him as their horses ambled through the village gates. “Do you
think it will scar?”
“Maybe? Keep it clean and let it air. You could get lucky.” Rais was
always like this—casual, unbothered, matter of fact. “When we get to the
inn, I can take a closer look at it. If you want.”
“If you don’t mind, I guess? I washed it quickly, but I hate to think where
that arrow had been before it found me. It’s not like those bandits were
worried about hygiene.” The bandits had been well equipped and more
organized than the usual highwaymen who preyed on the Imperial highway,
but infection from metal blades was always a risk.
“Okay. I’ll look at it, but after we eat? I’m sick of eating dry rations.
Reminds me of being in the army.”
“And we should probably report it to the Imperial clerk, just in case they
ever send a patrol out here and want to follow up.” She didn’t think anyone
cared about bandits in the mountains, but if enough travellers went missing,
maybe the Empire would send out a patrol. They cared about money and
keeping trade routes flowing even if they didn’t care about people.
Rais rolled his eyes at her. “If you like, m’lady.” His brief army service
had left him with a bitter distain for the Empire and all of its agents.
Aoyas had disliked his cynical practicality when they first got together,
wanting a partner who spent more time comforting her, but eventually she’d
come to appreciate it. His philosophy came from his life in the poor districts
of the Capital city, a world where no respecting Imperial citizen went. It
wasn’t that the poor districts lacked in beauty or softness, but everything
was measured against the reality of not having enough to spare. He didn’t
waste time with falseness or the Empire’s institutions.
As they followed the dirt road toward to the village’s inn, Rais pulled
ahead of her and rode in front. The villagers barely glanced in their
direction, used to strangers arriving off the road, but Rais had an annoying
protective streak. He wasn’t tall, but his wide shoulders and the obvious
confidence that he moved with marked him as a skilled fighter. People
didn’t often realize that Aoyas was a Marked woman, but there could be
trouble if they did. In theory, the Empire didn’t believe in any difference
between Unmarked and Marked women, but the reality of life for a Marked
woman was different.
Usually the only work that Marked women could find in the Empire was
as courtesans or entertainers. Aoyas was a rarity, an educated Marked
woman with the mage gift. She could have capitalized on that privilege
more, choosing to pass as an Unmarked woman and hiding in the
Academy’s mage towers, but she loved the freedom of the road. Her father
was Lenari, but her mother’s people had come from the Empire when
Lenari was first conquered, so Aoyas looked enough like an ordinary
Imperial citizen to deny her Lerani blood.
She had never denied being Lerani or a Marked woman, even when it had
made her life harder. Besides, an Unmarked Imperial woman would have
never been seen in the company of a man like Rais. He may have had an
Imperial mother, but his father was an Outworlder and he didn’t look
anything like what an Imperial citizen was supposed to. It wasn’t just that
she travelled with him. Anyone who paid attention to them could see they
were intimate partners as well—it was visible in the way that Rais
sometimes reached across the space between them to rub her back or tuck
her long hair behind her ears.
As she watched Rais ride in front of her, she wondered if she loved him
or just felt obligated to him. His presence made her life on the road
possible. There were bands of mercenary women, but they often didn’t let
Marked women join their ranks. She was a brilliant mage, skilled enough at
high battle magics, but she wasn’t much of a close-range fighter. Without
Rais’s axe, she would already be dead a hundred times over. Of course, on
his own, Rais could never command the same rates as he did with her. Axe
fighters were common enough, but Imperial trained battle mages, even
Marked Lerani ones, were rare. Maybe that’s all that love is, she thought,
mutual indebtedness.
The village inn was similar to the standard inns that populated all of the
Empire’s towns and cities. The main building was a large double-storey
wooden frame with a high turreted roof. There was a narrow stable behind
the main building with a small enclosed courtyard. With the mountains
rising up above the village and the cool air flowing around them, it was
almost idyllic. The only difference between the village inn and the usual
Imperial Inns was the small shrine to the Mountain God in the middle of the
courtyard. Technically, the Empire had no official religion and tolerated all
faiths, but it was rare to see such a visible expression of belief.
Rais rode through the inn’s courtyard toward the stable and dismounted
behind the hitching post. His horse, a spotted gelding with a gentle
disposition, stamped his feet impatiently while Rais tied the lead to the post.
They’d been sleeping rough since they passed through the last town almost
two weeks ago, grazing the horses on the wild grasses of the lowlands.
Aoyas guided her mare toward the hitching post behind Rais. He reached up
to help her down even though she was perfectly capable of dismounting on
her own.
“Graceful as ever.” He gave her a smirk before taking the lead from her
and tying her mare up. “Can you handle the innkeeper on your own? ’Cause
I need to pay a visit to the latrines.”
Now it was her turn to roll her eyes at him. “I’m not completely useless. I
think I can handle a village innkeeper without adult supervision.”
“Is that what you are? An adult? I always figured you for more of a
spoiled academic brat,” he quipped at her before turning away to walk
toward the communal latrines behind the inn. Aoyas patted her mare and
Rais’s gelding for a minute before heading inside to secure lodgings within,
amused by the momentary flush in her skin from Rais’s teasing.
Innkeepers were important people in villages. They often formed the
landed gentry, upper class citizens with connections across the Empire, and
knew all of the region’s gossip. The innkeeper in the village was an older
man with a heavy build that suggested he knew his way around swordcraft
in his youth. She made eye contact with him as she stepped through the
inn’s front door and walked toward the bar where he was nursing a large
cup of mead.
He appraised her as she walked toward him. Aoyas could never tell if
people knew that she was a Marked woman from her appearance, but
judging from the way his eyes hardened, it was obvious that he’d decided
that she was not the kind of woman he wanted in his inn. Wait till he sees
Rais, she thought, internally steeling herself for the inevitable display of
prejudice.
“Silari.” She greeted him in the high tongue of the Empire. It was a trick
she’d learned because only the educated and upper class spoke the high
tongue. It didn’t mean that the innkeeper would be friendly, but it told him
that she was not a common mercenary. “Looking to book lodgings, and care
for our horses for a couple of days, maybe longer.”
He nodded at her. “Silari, kinas.” He returned her greeting in the high
tongue, adding the feminine title for mage. “Shouldn’t be an issue. We’ve
been fairly quiet since the bandits got more active on the south road.”
Aoyas nodded at him as she pulled out her coin purse to negotiate the
price of their stay. “We ran into some of the bandits on our way in. I haven’t
heard that this area was dangerous for travellers, so it was an unexpected
welcome.”
The innkeeper grunted back at her. “It’s dangerous alright. Ever since the
civil war in Neruados, we’ve been plagued by bandits. Figure it’s
mercenaries and soldiers from the losing side of the war who got a taste for
blood and don’t want to go back to farming.”
“Hmm. Yeah, we saw some of that war up close and it wasn’t pretty.”
Aoyas laid down three silver coins on the bar. It was more than she would
usually pay for a room in a tiny inn, but something told her to not barter
with this man.
His explanation for the bandits made sense to her. Often mercenaries on
the losing side didn’t get paid and needed to recover their costs somehow.
Given the Empire’s considerable disinterest in this part of the Empire,
bandit work was unlikely to result in executions or the Imperial Army
bearing down on you. A small village like this wouldn’t be able to raise the
funds to hire mercenaries to drive away the bandits or get a local Lord to
bother defending them.
“Odd choice for you to travel north instead of going back toward to the
centre. Can’t be much work for you. Magecraft isn’t called for much here.”
The innkeeper pocketed her coins in a single smooth movement and started
pouring her a drink from the communal ale barrel.
Aoyas breathed an internal sigh of relief. If he’d turned them away, it
would mean more rough camping in the cold mountain night. “We wanted
to take a break from fighting for a while. Thought the mountains would be
peaceful.”
“Before the war, they were. Now? It’s safe inside the village bounds, but
the pass and the roads leading in and out are unsafe for travellers. They
leave the village folk alone and our traders get around okay, but travellers or
anyone who looks to have some coin is in danger.” The innkeeper placed a
mug of ale in front of her as he spoke and then reached back for another
mug. “Same for your friend?”
The raised tone in his voice on the word “friend” was a question. She
could ignore it, but figured honesty was her best policy. “Sure. My partner.
He’s an axe fighter.”
The innkeeper shrugged at her and began filling the second cup. “Good
choice. A lady mage on her own or with another lady is asking for trouble.”
Aoyas wanted to tell him that “lady” mercenaries were just as capable as
male ones, but it was not worth it to start fights with the locals. Just then,
she heard the inn door open as Rais walked in. The innkeeper looked up at
him and then back at her. He raised his eyebrows at her.
“An Outworlder, eh?” The innkeeper set the second mug down beside
hers and walked off to talk to the other patrons, letting his disapproval
linger in the air. Aoyas wanted to snap back at him, to call him on his
bullshit, but making a scene wouldn’t help them out. It would mostly be for
her pride anyway. Rais didn’t need her to fight his battles for him,
something she had learned early in their relationship.
Rais stood beside her at the bar. He smelled of their horses and the sweat
of travel. “How did it go? Everything worked out?”
Aoyas gestured to the second mug. “All good. Some mild judgment, but
nothing I couldn’t handle. We’re all paid up.”
Rais lifted the mug to his lips and tried a little of the ale. He grimaced at
the taste but kept drinking. “We are a striking couple.”
“I hate it when people are assholes to you. Still, he did explain the bandit
problem. Mercenaries from the war trying to recoup some costs before
winter comes.”
“Great. We travel to the far reaches of the Empire and run into the same
folks that we were just killing.” He took a few more sips of the ale before
absentmindedly rubbing her back. “Do you think they could recognize us?”
Aoyas considered his question for a moment before answering, quietly
soaking in the warmth of his touch. “It’s possible. Mages tend to stand out.”
“So do Outworlders.” He wasn’t wrong. The innkeeper’s reaction was the
standard response, not a rarity.
“He said they have been leaving the village alone, so we’re probably safe
here. And I’m tired of sleeping on the ground so …” She let her words trail
off, hoping Rais would just agree with her.
He sighed deeply before replying. “I guess. Sometimes I wonder if I
should have fallen for an ordinary girl who ran a bookstore or something.
I’d sleep easier.”
Aoyas tried to control the sudden panic that flared in her body at his
words. He was probably joking, but there was always a small part of her
that wondered when he would get bored of her and find a new lover. An
Unmarked woman who could give him everything he wanted: babies,
security, an easy and comfortable life. Girls like her might be fun for a night
of experimentation, but not a lot of men stuck around for the next day. Rais
had stuck around for the past eight years, but sooner or later, she knew her
luck would run out. She wasn’t getting any younger.
He sensed her anxiety through his hand on her back, feeling the sudden
tightening of the muscles along her spine. “Hey I’m sorry.” He leaned in
closer to her as he spoke. “I was just joking. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“No, I know. It’s fine.” She smiled at him, trying to be reassuring. “Let’s
just see if we can find bath water and maybe spend the rest of the day
hiding in whatever room he gives us?”
“Yeah. I’d like that.” Rais dropped his hand down from her back toward
to her ass, gently squeezing it through her leather tights.
“Really? That’s your idea of romance? After eight years?” Aoyas rolled
her eyes at him and discreetly pushed his hand away from her body. “I’m
not some naïve farm girl or tavern wench that you can seduce with a sleazy
comment and a grope.”
He laughed softly at her and shrugged. “What can I say? I’m a simple
guy. If you wanted poetry, you should have stayed in the Academy.”
“No, I prefer this. And you. Weirdly, even if we get murdered in our sleep
by vengeful bandits in the middle of nowhere, I wouldn’t trade the past
eight years for anything.”
“Shit, lady.” Rais took a swill of the ale and swallowed before smirking at
her. “You got it bad.”
The innkeeper returning to show them to their room saved Aoyas from
having to come up with a witty reply. Sending Rais to grab what they
needed from the horses, she followed the innkeeper up the narrow flight of
stairs at the back of the inn. The room he placed them in was small, but
mercifully clean. It overlooked the small courtyard with its tiny statue of the
Mountain God. She could see Rais below in the stable, rummaging through
their travel packs and whistling to himself.
As she stood looking out at the courtyard and the mountains beyond, an
old prayer of her grandmother’s suddenly came to mind. It had been years
since she’d spoken in her ancestral tongue, but the words came easy to her
lips. She murmured it to the scene before her, saying the last words out loud
in the common Imperial tongue.
“Carry us home, mother, through all our journeys.”
The screams woke them before dawn. At first, the screams were high
pitched and distant, but they rapidly got more frantic and closer. Rais was
awake before she was, rolling from her side and grabbing his axe before
rushing to guard the door to their room. Aoyas flung herself up and ran to
the window overlooking the courtyard. An ugly red glow beneath her told
her that the village was on fire. From her vantage point, she could see a
swarm of shadowy men on horses riding closer to the inn.
“Fuck. The bandits recognized us.” Aoyas shouted to Rais. “We need to
get out of here now!”
“What about the villagers?” Rais turned from the door to face her. “You
just want to leave them to die?”
“No, of course not, but what are we going to do? We’re two people
against at least twenty of them!” She looked out the window at the men
rushing toward the inn. Their torches outlined the burning village houses,
sending wild shadows through the night. A few of the villagers had tried to
fight them and been slaughtered, but most were running from their houses
toward the mountain pass to hide.
“I’m not leaving innocent people to die for our crimes. I swear to all the
gods, Aoyas, I’m not living with it on my conscience.” Rais’s face was
locked into a steely determination but his eyes were soft. “I can’t just run
away.”
“I’m not leaving you here, Rais. You’re all I have.” She could hear the
hysteria in her voice, but she couldn’t help it. If they fought, they would die.
“Please. We have to run.”
“No.” He shook his head at her. “I love you, but there’s a difference
between killing people because it’s your job and letting people die in the
night because you’re a coward.”
“We’re mercenaries, Rais! An Outworlder, a Marked woman. Not
heroes.” The time for running was almost gone. If they ran to their horses
now, they might still make it to the relative dark and safety of the
mountains.
“No, m’lady. I’m sorry. I’m going out there. You can run or come with
me, but I’m not leaving these folks to die.” He opened the door to their
room and disappeared down the inn stairs, leaving her by the window.
It wasn’t a hard decision to make. She followed after him, reaching deep
into herself for the threads of magic that spoke of fire and death. She could
kill three men in close combat with her magic, but twenty was impossible.
This was the end. She would never see Lerani again or her grandmother.
Never wake again with Rais’s arm tucked around her waist. No more
magic, no wind through the pine trees, nothing but the infinite silence of
death.
As they rushed out of the inn’s door and into the main village road, they
passed the innkeeper and his family huddled against the inn’s back wall.
The innkeeper had an old broadsword in his hands, and his wife was
holding a hunting bow. Rais nodded at him as they swept past and he
nodded back. They would die tonight just as Rais and Aoyas would, but
they wouldn’t die without a fight.
The bandits were only a few houses away when she and Rais stepped into
the road. Rais stood in front of her, his axe balanced in his expert hands. He
was bare chested in the night air. They didn’t have time to put on their
armour, much less plan any strategy. This was going to be a fight run
entirely on instinct and training. Aoyas was wearing an old tattered tunic
that barely covered her thighs, but she had had the foresight to grab her
small ritual knife before rushing after Rais.
The bandits slowed down when they saw her and Rais in the road. They
pulled into a small group behind a man on a black horse with a heavy scar
running down his face. He laughed at her and Rais’s defiant poses.
“Here they are. The bastard Lord’s mage and his perverted lover.” The
scarred man’s voice was rough but well trained. He must have been a minor
noble before the war.
Aoyas wasn’t surprised that he called her by her birth gender, but it still
pissed her off. “Fuck you,” she said to the surrounding bandits, summoning
a small thread of flame into her raised hand. Rais stayed silent, focusing all
of his attention on the axe balanced in his hands and the enemies in front of
them.
The scarred man just shrugged at her before gesturing to the bandits
beside him. “Kill them.”
Then, before she had a chance to think or to look at Rais, it began. The
bandits rushed toward them in a torrent of sound and blades. There wasn’t
enough time to marshal her magical resources, just to react. She cast threads
of Air around Rais and herself in a loose circle before sending the spark of
Fire in her hand rushing along the narrow currents that she had spun. The
night air suddenly blazed in a sweltering rush of heat and light as her magic
took shape.
Her small Fire Storm kept the bandits back for a moment. Rais seized the
opportunity to go on the offense, rushing the nearest bandits and sweeping
them down with perfect arcs of his axe. Axe fighters didn’t have the grace
of swordsmen or spear fighters, but they did have tremendous killing force.
He crushed the windpipe of one bandit on a backswing before sending the
axe head deep into the stomach of another one.
It wouldn’t be enough. There were too many of them. The other bandits
were circling around behind them. They would rush Aoyas, killing her
before her magics could touch them, and then take Rais down like a pack of
wolves. She let the Fire Storm fade out as she readied another thread of
magic. This magic wasn’t Imperial nor Elemental. It was Lerani, rooted in
her Spirit and tied to something more powerful than even the land around
them.
As the next wave of bandits stepped over their fallen friends and ran
toward them, Aoyas pressed the tip of her knife deep into the veins of her
right wrist. A sharp pain washed over her as blood poured from her exposed
arteries. The thread of Spirit magic inside her flickered as her resolve
weakened, but then she heard Rais cry out. One of the bandits had scored a
deep cut on his right arm and he was bleeding. It would all be over soon.
Not tonight, she thought, I won’t let him die for me. She pressed the
dagger deeper and called the thread of Spirit fully into being. It roared
around her, drawing its power from her blood spilling onto the ground. The
air shimmered before her eyes for a moment and then the Spirit thread tore
out of her toward the bandits. It became a forked bolt of white lightning,
blasting into their skin and jumping between them.
Rais leapt back from the fray as soon as her lightning struck out. He ran
toward her, but she was already falling. Spirit magic was stronger than
Elemental. When the Empire had invaded her homeland, they’d discovered
just how powerful it was when their high wards failed and lightning fell on
their armies. But like all great powers, it had a terrible price paid in blood.
Her life for a spell felt like a fair trade when it meant that Rais would
live. She wondered what he would do without her as she felt her head slam
into the ground. Just before the infinite dark took her, she saw the remaining
bandits turn back and flee from the village. Their leader, the scarred man,
lay dead beside his horse in a pool of blood and scorched flesh.
The last thing she heard was Rais’s voice saying her name and then, from
some distant place she barely remembered, the sound of her grandmother’s
laugh echoing around her like a soft summer rain.
Light came back slowly. She tried to stay hidden in the dark as long as she
could, chasing the remnants of her grandmother’s presence, but the light
kept growing around her. Soon she could feel her body again, the roughness
of the bedding against her skin and the coarseness of the straw mattress.
Voices came next. She heard people talking in the distance and could feel
their heaviness of their spirits. Finally, the dark abandoned her completely
and Aoyas had no choice but to wake up.
She opened her eyes. Sunlight streamed from the small window in their
inn room. She was alone. The room was stuffy and smelled of sickness. She
tried to rise up in bed, but it hurt too much. Looking down, she could see a
large white linen bandage wrapped around her wrist. It was blood stained
but looked fresh. Someone was taking care of her.
“Rais?” Her voice cracked as she spoke, momentarily dropping down into
a deep pitch that she hadn’t used since childhood. “Is someone there?”
He might be dead. I could have survived but maybe they killed him. Fear
raced through her body, sweeping away whatever comfort she felt at finding
herself still alive. Tears rushed to the corners of her eyes, but she stifled the
panicked sob that swelled in her throat. Before she could think of what to
do next, she heard steps outside her door. She reached for her magic but
found nothing. It was gone, completely dried up from her last spell.
“Aoyas?” Rais opened the door gingerly, almost as if he didn’t believe
that she had really called out for him. “Are you awake?”
“Hey.” Her voice cracked again. She coughed, trying to clear the dryness
out of her throat. Rais stepped into their room and came to sit beside her on
the bed.
“Hey.” His voice was gentle as he reached out and brushed a strand of her
hair behind her ears. “You’re alive, I guess.”
“I think so.” She looked into his eyes, the same brown eyes that caught
her attention so many years ago. “And so are you.”
“Yeah.” Rais shrugged as he took her hand into his. “We’re both alive.”
“What about the bandits?”
“Either dead or run off. The villagers think we’re heroes. They want us to
stay for the season in case the bandits return, but they can’t pay us.” He
squeezed her hand softly before smiling at her. “I know it doesn’t make
good business sense, but would you be okay if we said yes to that?”
“You want to stay in an isolated mountain village with me for no pay?”
Aoyas raised her left eyebrow at him. “Did the bandits hit your head a lot or
something?”
Rais laughed before replying, “No. It just sounds nice.”
Aoyas stayed quiet for a moment, savouring the familiar warmth of his
hand in hers. She noticed that the breeze from the open window smelled of
wild roses and mountains. “You must really love me, huh?”
Rais squeezed her hand again, much tighter than the first time. He cleared
his throat and wiped his eyes with his sleeve before answering her.
“Yeah. I really do.”
Forest’s Edge
AUDREY VEST
I
t is a small village, in a valley at the base of a range of jagged mountains
at the edge of a dark forest far far far away in the north. Cold houses
built on cold earth beneath a thin grey sky. Wolves that howl in the
darkness. A wind that whispers ceaselessly in numb ears. It talks of old
things in dead tongues—buried lords, whose rotting corpses lie forgotten in
damp tombs; mounds of ash gone to flower; and castles ripped apart by
time, their bones ground to dust and blown away.
The villagers say the woods there are a gateway to Fairy; they say that to
walk beneath the forest’s laden boughs is to embrace death (or worse); they
say that at night if you peer between the wide trunks you might catch a
glimpse of the strange lights of the fey kin’s midnight banquets and hear the
distant music of their laughter, and that if you do not run then and douse
your head in cold water and burn sage and lavender and breathe the smoke
deep into your lungs, that you shall fall under their spell and be drawn back
to them and eat their food and spend forevermore in a daze at their grand
tables.
Dark falls early in this country, and from the little windows of the village
houses seeps the glow of oil lamps and candles and hearth fires over which
hang pots of fragrant soups made rich by the blood of that month’s
slaughtered cow.
One building smoulders hotter than the rest, and inside it a woman with
dark hair pounds a length of metal until its glow has faded all to naught.
She picks it up with tongs and nestles it among the coals of the furnace.
Sweat runs down her back. When the metal is bright again, she takes it and
hammers it here and bends it there, and when it’s finished, she dips it in a
vat of oil and wipes her brow with a soft rag while the metal hisses in its
bath. The woman sighs then, strong as a bellows. Her name is Denya. She
has spent her life here, thirty years of long winters and pale springs that
never bloom to summer but instead die unripe and wither beneath early
snow.
There comes a whimpering from the corner of the forge, a frail sound like
a dog too sick or tired or old to bark. Denya ladles broth from a pot hung by
the furnace into a wooden bowl which she takes to the corner, to her
daughter, Eliya, who lies curled in a nest of blankets atop an old straw
mattress.
Denya sits by her daughter’s side and brushes a lock of hair from her pale
cheek. Eliya’s skin is cold, despite the heat of the forge. She shivers at her
mother’s touch and Denya draws her hand back.
“My darling,” she says, “my dearest,” and her daughter’s eyes flutter
open, her irises as pale and grey as the late sky.
“Will you drink some now?” Denya asks and Eliya nods weakly.
Denya lifts her daughter’s head and brings spoonfuls of thin broth to her
lips, which the girl drinks slowly, as though the labour of swallowing is
almost more than she can bare. When the small bowl has been emptied,
Eliya’s eyes close again and Denya lays her back against her pillow and
pulls the blankets close around her once more.
It has been three weeks like this. Three weeks of Eliya shivering in the
forge while her mother sweats, of Denya watching her daughter grow thin
and weak, eating nothing and drinking only broth and murmuring fitfully in
her sleep at strange dreams whose contents Denya can only guess at. Denya
is afraid. The village hangs now at the end of autumn—any day now the
first snows will begin in earnest, and the air will come alive with the biting
malice of deep frost, and the sun will shine less and less through the haze as
the black jaws of winter close around them. Denya fears that she will watch
her daughter wither to nothing. That she will be left alone to bury her
behind the forge in the frozen earth beside her wife’s empty grave.
Such is the truth of life here, the hardness of it. Death is a fox lurking in
the garden, waiting for the weak or wounded, for the old, the young, the
tired or sick. Most die in ordinary ways and are buried in the little cemetery
by the old church where the villagers all gather on Thursdays to pray and
make offerings to the spirits of their dead.
Some few, though, die unseen. They vanish from their homes in the night,
and in the morning some trace of them is found by the forest’s edge—a
slipper, a scarf, a tuft of cloth caught on a bramble. They are the dead who
must be forgotten, for they are cursed. They have no headstones in the
churchyard, no offerings and prayers. To speak of them is sinful. To
remember them, dangerous. Better to forget them outright, lest you yourself
fall prey to their folly and wander where no human ought.
Denya smooths her daughter’s hair and frets. She looks at the empty
ground beside her, where Bren should be kneeling with her. When she
closes her eyes, Denya can almost see her wife’s face turned toward their
daughter, her mouth drawn in a frown, her brow knit with fear. Bren would
catch her staring and turn, and their eyes would meet and grow cloudy, and
they would force wan smiles they didn’t feel and clasp their hands together
and squeeze tightly.
Eliya moans faintly. Denya stands. She unties her apron and pulls her
jacket on and wraps Eliya’s blankets around her and takes her up into her
arms. Eliya is small for a girl of seven, and made feather-light from her
wasting. She stirs, and Denya whispers softly to soothe her, and she carries
her daughter from the forge out into the cold evening. They walk through
the village, past Falstom’s beer house, the sound of laughter rich in the air.
At the far edge of the village Denya takes a path along the base of a wide
hill, and they come eventually to Maro’s cottage.
It is an old, round building of grey stones. The door is rough against
Denya’s knuckles when she knocks. Maro opens the door and peers out at
them from beneath her wrinkles, and she frowns and draws them in and
latches the door behind her.
“Lay her there,” Maro says and Denya settles her daughter into Maro’s
bed.
The cottage is a single room whose walls are lined with shelves full of
jars and bottles and wicker baskets. Dried herbs and flowers hang in neat
bunches from the rafters, and the air is almost as hot as the forge. Denya
shrugs off her jacket and holds it nervously before her.
“She still isn’t better,” Denya says.
Maro harrumphs and shuffles to the hearth, where she pours two mugs of
pungent tea from a kettle.
“Warmth and soup, I told you,” Maro says and hands a mug to Denya.
“Nothing else for it but that.”
Denya puts her mug down on the table. “There must be something.”
Maro shakes her head and takes a long sip of tea.
“She’s skin and bone,” Denya pleads. “She can barely move, she sleeps
all day and talks in her sleep, and even in the forge she still shivers!”
A pot over the hearth begins to bubble over, and Maro shuffles over to
stir it and move it to the edge of the fire.
“Nothing I can do for her,” she says.
Denya says, “Please,” and takes a step toward the old woman.
Maro sighs and runs a hand through her short, wild hair, her back still
turned to Denya.
“You can work magic,” Denya begs. “How is there nothing?”
“Not magic!” Maro snaps. “I brew potions, that’s all. I fix flesh. Always
something to be done for flesh. Her sickness is in her spirit.”
There are tears in Denya’s eyes now, and they spill free and run down her
cheeks and drip onto the worn floorboards beneath her. Maro watches and
twists her thin hands together, and she looks away from Denya when the
woman begins to sob.
“What can I do?” Denya asks between her ragged breaths. “How do I
save her?”
Maro refills her mug and stares into it. “Broth.”
Denya makes an anguished sound and sinks to the floor.
Maro sits in a chair at her table. She says “Broth,” softly, and then louder,
“fey broth.”
Denya’s breath catches. She straightens.
“From the forest?”
Maro nods, her eyes fixed intently upon a beetle slowly ambling along
the edge of her table. “Only that will warm her. She has been in the woods,
I think, and has caught a chill there. I am sorry.”
Denya stands then, and looks to Maro’s window. Outside it is full dark,
the sky black and moonless.
“Take these,” Maro says and offers Denya a lamp and an iron dagger.
Denya takes both and dons her jacket, and she kisses Eliya on her
forehead. Maro comes over to them and cuts a lock of Eliya’s hair, which
she fastens to a length of cord that she ties around Denya’s neck.
“To remind you,” Maro says.
Denya wipes the tears from her eyes. She takes a last look at her daughter
and then she steps out into the night. Her jacket is heavy, but as she walks
east toward the forest the cold begins to worm its way inside her. She has
forgotten her scarf, and her gloves, and the air is heavy with the weight of
coming snow.
At the wood’s edge she stops. The trees are dark and thick and gnarled.
She has been here before, once as a child on a dare with her friends, and
then again three years ago when she found Bren’s necklace hanging from a
low branch the morning after she vanished. There had been a bird higher up
in the tree, crying out it’s lilting, tuneless song. She stood by the forest’s
edge and stared into its gloom, her mind a wheel spinning madly, every
muscle in her tensed and aching. She might have screamed, then. Might
have clutched the necklace tight and rushed in after her wife, if the
neighbors who’d come to help her search hadn’t laid their hands upon her
shoulders and pulled her away. As they half-dragged, half-carried her back
to the village, the bird followed, and every morning for three months Denya
woke to the sound of it singing outside her window. Her sobs were never
loud enough to drown it from her ears.
Eliya had been too young then to understand what had happened. She had
not wept for her mother, not like Denya had. Only later did Bren’s absence
become real to her and then Eliya grew quiet and took to writing Bren’s
name in the dirt when she practised her letters.
Denya’s breath comes in white puffs before her. She grips the knife tight
in her shivering hand and walks forward to the edge of the trees and past it,
and the stillness of the forest wraps around her like a quilt of lead.
The lamplight is pale and weak. She treads carefully over roots and fallen
branches. In deeper, deeper, every step a transgression. The air grows
warmer. There is a smell of old rot; musty leaves and dead wood gnawed by
worms and old moss hang like tattered banners from high boughs. She
walks and looks and strains her ears, but all she can hear are her own
footsteps, and there are no lights in the distance to guide her way.
Now she comes to an oddity, a place where the trees give way to a little
clearing, though the canopy is still thick above so that the place has the
feeling of a large room. The ground within is flat, hard earth, and it is warm
here, and the lantern seems almost to glow brighter when Denya steps
inside. The air smells sweeter. There is a sort of bed made of clean moss
near the edge of the clearing, next to a tree stump upon which sits a golden
cup and a glass pitcher of water with rose petals. The scene is wrong
somehow, though. Too large. The cup is as big as her head, she can see that
now, and the pitcher larger than her chest, and the bed is long enough again
by half for even the tallest men of her village, and there are footprints in the
dirt, long and bare, with four toes.
Denya hurries from the clearing. She stumbles once or twice, glances
back and sees nothing, though she cannot shake the feeling that there are
eyes watching her from the darkness just beyond her light.
More trees, more than can be counted, old and nameless and wild. And
now there is a light ahead, a glow that draws her like a moth, and Denya
hurries forward and staggers out into a glen of grass and stone. There is a
stream, and flowers, and the colours of it all are brighter than she has ever
seen. Behind her the canopy is alight with the fiery glow of sunset, and she
can feel the heat of it against her skin.
It begins to rain warm, sweet water. Denya looks up. There is blue above
her, dusky and soft as periwinkle. She tastes the drops with her tongue, and
she spreads her arms wide and laughs.
There is a path from the glen, wide and straight and lined with silver
lanterns whose flames are warm and inviting. Denya starts down the path.
Her steps are eager; before her there is a blueish glow, and behind her the
sun has set, and there are stars above her, and there is music in the air
pulling her forward, a lilting song whose notes excite her even as they raise
the hairs upon her neck. She comes eventually to a place where the trees
grow thinner, and there are lights among the branches and in the air around
them, and the ground is soft with moss and creeping thyme, and there are
long, low tables laden with platters and bowls of food and pitchers of drink,
and the air is warm as summer and fresh as morning dew.
And the people—the people! Tall and slender, with silver hair and sharp,
pretty features and clothes that look spun from spider silk, so fine and
shimmering and strange are they. Some sit at the tables on cushions and talk
and laugh high, thin laughs, while others dance in circles with each other as
the music rushes on from some unseen place.
A woman comes before Denya and smiles with a flash of white teeth. Her
hair is short and looks soft as down, and she wears silver piercings in her
nose and ears and lips the like of which Denya has never seen.
“Welcome, Beauty,” the woman sings in a gossamer voice.
Her eyes fall to the dagger Denya still clutches in her right hand, and the
fey woman’s eyes narrow and darken, and she says, “You will not need that
here, Beauty. There are no wolves in our country to bite your pretty flesh.”
Denya slips the blade into her belt and the woman smiles again.
“You must be weary,” she says and takes Denya by the hand. “Come, sit a
while and revive yourself.”
The woman’s hand is soft against Denya’s calloused skin. It is cold, also.
Denya shivers.
She is led to a table and made to sit upon a crimson pillow, and a glass of
rosewater is poured for her, and there is a plate before her of fresh bread
and sweet butter and ripe berries and cream. Denya looks at the food while
the short-haired woman sits beside her and smiles. An act of
encouragement. A granting of permission to indulge. Denya spreads butter
onto a piece of bread, slowly, as though she were in a stupor. Something
pricks at her, a thought, a memory. Broth. She has come for broth, and there
is a reason for it she cannot quite recall.
“Do you have any soup?” Denya asks. Her voice is rough and weak, as
though she has not spoken aloud in days.
The short-haired woman smiles. “You’ve a craving, Beauty?”
She claps her hands and a human boy brings her a bowl of soup. The
broth looks thick and nourishing, and it is full of bright, tender vegetables.
Denya takes up her spoon and holds it. She does not dip it to the bowl.
“You may eat, Beauty,” the short-haired woman says. “It is good and
hearty, just what you need to sate your hunger.”
Denya puts the spoon down.
She says, “I am—” and falters.
The woman’s features have grown bland now, and vacant. She has lost
interest, Denya thinks dimly, and feels a pang of guilt, of embarrassment,
and yet at once she is also relieved.
“Eat when you wish, then,” the woman says and stands and is gone so
suddenly it makes Denya’s head spin.
There are other fey at the table, but they don’t seem to notice her, or else
they don’t care. Denya looks at them, and there is something cruel now
about their pale faces, a sense of patient hunger she had not noticed before.
One face near the far end of the table flashes brighter than the rest—a blond
woman with rosy skin. She is familiar, somehow, and Denya frowns and
grips the edge of the table.
And she remembers—her village, her childhood, her friends, and Bren
chief among them. And then a muddling as she ages, a wrongness. She is
fourteen and her father takes her to Maro’s cottage and the old woman gives
her a bottle of white powder and another of blue and tells her they will
change her and ease the disharmony between her body and her mind. She
takes a spoonful of each every morning and grows and blossoms and is
right again in her skin, and her name is Denya, now, after her grandmother,
and …
Bren. Her eyes, blue and close. Kind as her kisses, her touch. They dress
in white, and smiles, and there is music for them. And then blood—too
much blood on the sheets, and Denya’s heart beating so fast and fearful
while Maro holds her hands between Bren’s legs to catch the baby. Eliya,
they name her. Eliya, their angel, their light. And Bren leaves them, leaves
her daughter and her wife and goes into the forest like some lost child, and
then tears, and time, and the ache of Denya’s arms as she strikes hot iron
until it is a twisted lump and she throws it against the wall and weeps on the
ground by her anvil. And then … and then something. Then the reason for
all this, why she came here.
Eliya. Her cold cheek.
Denya’s hands are white and shaking. She lets go of the table. Bren is
staring at her with a look of dim confusion, and Denya goes to her and
kneels beside her wife and draws her close. Their arms wrap around each
other, as urgent and awkward as when they were seventeen and first
admitting their love. Holding her had felt like hunger, then. Now it is like
home, like safety, all warmth and comfort and rightness.
“Bren,” Denya says as her tears fall hot upon her wife’s shoulder. She
says it like a prayer. As though a name itself could be salvation.
She pulls away smiling, but Bren’s eyes are still unfocused.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Bren says, but her tone is uncertain. “We
get so few visitors here.”
Denya’s breath catches in her throat. On the table in front of Bren is a
half-eaten slice of bread, a cup of water with faint marks from her lips upon
the glass.
“No!” Denya cries and the dread inside of her is like ice.
Bren looks confused, almost frightened. In a panic Denya leans forward
to kiss her. Bren’s lips are soft and yielding, familiar, warm. Denya reaches
up, cups her wife’s face in her hands while Bren leans toward her into the
kiss. One of Bren’s hands comes gently to the nape of Denya’s neck,
stroking her skin.
But it is wrong, somehow; Bren’s movements feel eager, but shy,
hesitant. All at once it is like kissing a stranger, and Denya pulls away
crying.
“What’s wrong?” Bren asks. “Did I upset you?”
The cold inside of Denya spreads further, deeper. It is in her bones, her
heart, its barbed tendrils clawing at her mind. Bren’s face becomes blurry as
Denya’s eyes well up with tears.
“It’s me,” she pleads. “Don’t you remember?”
“I’m sorry,” Bren says. Her voice is wounded, confused, and she shrinks
back dejectedly.
Denya sobs. She leans toward her wife again, but this time she takes the
strand of Eliya’s hair from the cord around her neck and presses it into
Bren’s cold hand.
“Your daughter, remember?” Denya says through her tears. “She’s sick,
she needs you—I need you!”
Bren stares at the lock of Eliya’s golden hair, the same shade as her own,
which has grown long in the years since she left them.
She says, “Daughter?” and Denya’s heart swells, but then Bren looks up
and says, “I think you must be confused. Here, won’t you drink something
to calm yourself? Some wine to ease your sorrow?”
Denya cries out, an anguished, whimpering sound, and she pulls away.
She stands, her body shaking and weak.
“What’s wrong?” Bren asks. “Won’t you stay with me?”
Her words tear at Denya. She longs to say yes, to stay, to wrap her arms
tight around her wife and never leave. But already she can feel her mind
growing dull again as the magic of this place gnaws at her memories, her
purpose. If she stays, she will be lost and Eliya will die. But if she leaves
now, if she turns away …
Bren’s features quiver on the edge of heartbreak. Even like this, some
part of her must remember, must cry out for her beloved. A few tears spill
free from her storm-grey eyes and run down her soft, perfect cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” Denya sobs. “I love you, Bren.”
Denya turns her back on her wife. She picks up the soup and walks with
bleary eyes back down the path from which she’d come, and as the fairy
music fades behind her she hears a new harmony caught up in its melody,
the distant, familiar sound of a woman crying.
The glen is dark when Denya reaches it, and the stream has frozen and
the air is cold, and as she hurries forward the first flakes of snow begin to
fall about her.
The trees close around her again. She has lost her lantern somewhere—
perhaps she dropped it before, or at the table—and so she stumbles through
the dark and almost drops the bowl when she trips over a root and falls hard
against a wide trunk. Denya leans against the tree for a moment, panting.
She can hardly see. Her face has grown cold, and her head throbs, but her
hands are warmed by the bowl of soup, and she steadies herself and
straightens.
There comes a sound from someplace near, an infant’s wail.
Denya steps cautiously toward the crying. There is a baby on the ground
in the middle of the clearing, small and naked, and just past it an old man
sits on a stump with his arms folded.
“She’s hungry,” the man says. “She’s cold.”
Denya kneels before the baby. “Where did it come from?”
“Mother left her,” the old man says with a tilt of his head. He has long
grey hair and dark eyes and a thick beard of long whiskers that clump
together like dried twigs.
“Poor thing,” he says pleasantly. “She’s so hungry.”
Denya swallows. The infant’s wailing claws at her, and she feels an
aching in her breasts. When Eliya was born and Bren almost died, Maro
gave Denya a potion that made her own breasts swell with milk, and though
she had not carried her, Denya nursed her child all that first month while
Bren recovered from the birth.
The ground is hard against Denya’s knees. The pain in her head has
grown almost blinding from the cold and the sound of the baby’s cries.
The man says, “She needs broth. Hot broth, to warm her.” Denya’s heart
skips and she looks up just as the man lunges for her neck with taloned
hands.
She staggers back. The infant is gone and in its place there is only a large,
smooth stone. The man stands—too tall, too thin—and lunges for her again.
Denya draws her dagger and slashes wildly at his reaching arms. He shrieks
like a cat and leaps back into a crouch.
Denya runs. She drops the dagger and grips the bowl in both hands,
trying desperately to keep the soup from sloshing out onto the ground. She
bursts out of the forest and into the empty land beyond. There is snow
falling, light and soft, and already there is a fine dusting of it all across the
ground. Denya stands heaving for a moment, trying to catch her breath.
There is a cracking sound behind her, and she whirls. A figure steps out
from the shadows of the forest, pale and thin. Her golden hair is full of
leaves, and her clothes are dirty and torn.
Denya stares. She is trembling, her breath still heavy and uncertain.
“Denya?” Bren asks and Denya cries out and runs to her wife and hugs
her tight with one arm.
“Is this real?” Bren asks. Her breath is hot against Denya’s ear, and they
both begin to cry.
“It’s real,” Denya weeps. “I’m real. I’m here.”
“It was like a dream,” Bren whispers. “I couldn’t wake up. I couldn’t …
couldn’t remember you.”
They stand for a time wrapped close together, breathing each other in,
sharing their warmth. When they kiss this time it is like waking, and their
bodies move in the old, familiar rhythms of their love.
Denya is the first to pull away. She takes Bren’s hand, still wrapped tight
around the lock of Eliya’s hair, and the two hurry back toward Maro’s
cottage. The old woman must hear them coming, for the door opens before
Denya can knock and the two rush inside. They kneel beside her daughter
and Denya lifts her head and helps her drink the still-warm broth from the
bowl of fairy soup. When Eliya has had a few sips, her eyes flutter open and
she takes a long deep breath. Denya puts her hand against Eliya’s cheek.
“My light,” she says, her voice thick with tears. “I found your mother.
She’s home!”
Eliya looks up to where Bren kneels wide-eyed beside Denya, and the girl
coughs and begins to cry, and for the first time in too long her cheeks warm
beneath her mothers’ hands.
The Vixen, With Death Pursuing
IZZY WASSERSTEIN
T
he river roars past me on its way down from the mountain, fed by a
long winter and a rain-soaked spring. It is a white foamed torrent,
radiating a cold so profound that I can feel it, even though I stand ten yards
away. I force myself to take deep breaths. The cold is so sharp that it hurts
my lungs. The scent I’m following is ahead of me, past the fury of the river.
I have no choice but to cross, or Ravenna will die, and many others with
her. The revolution needs me to succeed, so the fight against the Clenched
Fist can continue. But, I need Ravenna.
I pace back and forth along the bank, seeking the best way across and
gathering my courage. I have seen the masked soldiers of the Clenched Fist
march in lockstep and pull children from their parents’ arms. I have seen
two pyromancers duel, leaving a whole block scorched to glass. But the
river reminds me what true power is. I am awed before it.
Water does not usually frighten me, but this is a ferocity I have never
encountered, a torrent that would, if I slipped or misstepped, sweep me
away to my death, drowned or broken against the rocks.
The wind shifts, and my nose twitches. With my enhanced senses, I smell
it: the stench of corruption, of plague. The pestimancer pursues me, to
ensure my failure, Ravenna’s death, and the revolution’s collapse. He is
disease incarnate, and I’m nobody, not truly a revolutionary even though the
pestimancer’s masters would not agree. All I have against that is my fear for
the woman I love and a bit of vulpemancy.
I call on what little of the fox-magic I dare use, adding a bit of confidence
to my sharpened senses. The magic flows through me like a shadow on the
edge of sight, like a flash of orange disappearing into a hedgerow. It
steadies me, blunts the sharp edge of panic, but I’m still only a human
woman, far clumsier than any real fox.
I take two sharp breaths, tug nervously at the strap of the pouch looped
around my neck, and take my best option: a line of rocks jutting from the
water, mostly dry. I step toward the river and feel a chill run through me.
The cold of the water or my own fear? If I fall, I would freeze almost as fast
as I’d drown.
I force myself to move, to dart across on the balls of my feet. My instincts
may be partially a fox’s, but my body is very much human, and though my
phantom tail delights Ravenna, it does nothing to help with balance.
Halfway, one of the rocks turns under my foot. I sway, try to balance, but
my momentum carries me forward and I feel myself falling. I leap to the
next stone, waver, then crouch, fighting back vertigo. I force myself to stop,
to breathe. The river rushes past me, indifferent. Even the stone that nearly
killed me shows no sign of my passing.
I reach the far side and feel immediately exposed along the riverbank. I
can’t help but imagine the pestimancer watching me. When I close my eyes,
I still see him looming over Ravenna, her eyes rolled back, her tongue
lolling, while bloated flies buzz about him, and the air reeks of his taint. I
still see the moment when he turned and fixed the dark pits that should have
been his eyes on me. His voice was like tar pulling at bare feet:
“The Clenched Fist will not be defied. Behold the power of devotion—”
I push the memory aside, and dart into the forest, but I can’t help but look
back, and something rises through the trees, like heat off summer streets,
like an oil slick: miasma. He still pursues, and his power grows. I do not
know how he keeps himself intact, how little of the mage must remain now
that he has given himself so completely over to his art.
There aren’t many of us true mages. Anyone can do small stuff—light a
candle with a bit of pyromancy, push themselves through a sleepless night
with fortimancy. But true power, and true risk, comes by following a single
path. If a mage follows their path too far, embraces their subject too fully,
they become what they study. Some magical tomes were once
bibliomancers, and they say that thunder is the scream of a fulmenancer.
Most people lack the desire and focus to pursue one kind of magic, to
give up cantrips for deep understanding. And most of us mages are careful.
I know better than to rely too much on my magic. I like life in my human
body, thank you kindly, and only use enough magic to get by. I never
dreamt of doing more with my art. Until I met Ravenna, until my world
unsteadied.
The pestimancer, though, shows no fear, seems to revel in what he will
become. He has embraced his power fully. That level of devotion awes and
terrifies me. He will stop at nothing to see me fail.
The smell I seek is on the wind, the root-and-musk scent I pray leads me
to the arbouromancers, and I run after it, hoping to put distance between
myself and my pursuer.
I follow the scent further up the foothills. Gardrun City is only a few
hours from here, nestled in the valley, but the forest plays strange tricks
with sound, so that I can’t hear the city-noises at all. Everything in the
forest is far quieter than the city, and each crack of a branch or bird call
feels ominous.
Up in the hills the trees are a mix of evergreens and flowering trees
whose white branches are only beginning to bud with spring-green leaves.
Everywhere I look, nothing but trees, undergrowth, rocky outcroppings.
Without fox-senses I would be hopelessly lost. I should call on more power,
but I’m already risking as much as I dare.
When at last I reach the source of the smell, I stand blinking, despairing.
The forest here doesn’t look any different from the rest, at least not to my
city-dweller’s eyes, and there isn’t so much as a footprint to suggest the
passing of anyone. The smell is here, but it is strange, alien—
You have brought pestilence here, human. I whirl around, seeking the
source of the words, but I can see no one. You have violated this sacred
place. The voice—or is it voices?—sounds like the rustle of leaves, but
also, somehow, like the wind whipping through a tunnel. Quiet, yet
powerful, multifaceted. Relief floods me, and the tight grip of fear on my
heart eases.
“I didn’t bring the pestilence,” I say, trying to sound like Ravenna would,
confident and unyielding in the face of danger. I try not to sound like the
woman who wants to dart back to her warren, who for months was too
afraid to attend rebel gatherings. “I hate it as much as anyone.”
It seeks you, human, the voices say. Even now it brings sickness and
blight to the forest. Do not pretend this is not your doing.
Knowing the mages are here somewhere, I take in my surroundings anew.
Some of the trees here aren’t old growth, like the rest—they are shorter,
younger, grouped in a circle. A circle with me at the middle.
“I’m trying to cure the plague, not spread it,” I say, unable to keep the
urgency out of my voice. Even if the pestimancer may have struggled to
find a place to cross the river, he cannot be far behind. “The sooner I can do
that, the sooner he’ll be out of your forest.”
What do we care for the problems of your city, human? The voices ask.
You come here, cut trees, cloud the air with filth. You care nothing for us.
I had thought they would want to help me, but now I sense the depths of
their anger. The tightness in my chest redoubles. A fox would be clever, I
think, would adapt.
“I need an herb,” I say. “Purple, shot through with veins of yellow. They
say it cures blood-lung.” If it still exists. “Once I have it, I will go, and the
pestimancer will follow me and leave you in peace.”
Silence. I keep going, desperate to find the words to win them.
“The Clenched Fist unleashed this plague. They’re destroying everyone
who opposes them. Once they have total control of the city, how safe do
you think you’ll be?” I’m gambling that they didn’t leave the city because
they were happy about its banners, mailed hands grasping at tightly-bound
sticks, nor the men who carried them. “You must remember what the
Clenched Fist can do, even though you’re trees now.”
We are tree now.
I blink. “What?”
We are tree now. One life, one shared experience, one organism. Unity.
The trees, rooted together, each only one outgrowth of the same being. Each
“tree” is just one limb of a single organism. The mages studied trees so
fully, and with such unified purpose, that they became a tree. I’m amazed
and baffled by their focus.
“I’m not leaving without the cure,” I say, and plant my feet as firmly as
I’m able. Can they feel that, through their roots beneath the soil?
Foxes have their uses, they say.
I don’t know how they know my art. Maybe trees can smell animals, after
a fashion?
But they are quick, brief-lived, heedless of the damage they cause. We are
no friends of theirs.
Do I imagine it, or do I hear an estrangement in those last words, as
though there is still some lingering disagreement between them, between it?
Can an organism be at odds with itself? I think of the contentious rebel
meetings, the coalition Ravenna was barely holding together even before
the pestimancer’s attack.
“Please,” I say, “The one I love is dying.”
A hesitation. Some part of this entity wants to help me. I can feel it.
You bring harm for your own selfish ends, like all animals, the tree says at
last. You lack perspective. You lack roots. Look: the plague-bringer comes.
Leave this forest, or we will show him where you are.
Terror like a spike shoots through me, and I see that they are right—from
the hills below me, his miasma rises.
My fingers tighten to fists, and I feel my ears pulling back, though on my
human features it no doubt looks ridiculous. I push back the urge to run, and
fight instead.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I say. I think of Ravenna and know there is no
tree in the world I would not raze to see her safe. “I wonder how much
harm he’ll do to you in destroying me?” I struggle to keep the tremors out
of my voice. “Are you vulnerable to his magic, I wonder? One tree, one
illness—”
ENOUGH. The branches whip around me, snap and clatter angrily,
though I feel no wind. Agitation? Debate? There is silence again, and I
wonder if they have some means to attack me. I force myself not to look
back, not to imagine how near my foe is. We will tell you the way. But you
are banished forever from this forest, vulpemancer. When your petty wars
destroy the city, do not come fleeing to us. We will make you pay.
I can feel the hatred in their words, like the fury of dogs who have lost a
trail. It means nothing to me. I’ve seen what true hatred is, the void in the
shape of a man.
The tree tells me what I need to know, and I run, still fighting the urge to
look back.
The spot they’ve directed me toward is far up into the foothills, and as I go
the undergrowth thins and the ground becomes steeper, dirt and rocks
shifting under my feet. Up this high, most of the trees are evergreens.
There must be humans who explore this forest, hunters and foragers,
probably even hermits living solitary lives among the trees. But I neither
see nor smell signs of other humans as I go up and up, stopping
occasionally to orient myself by the jagged edge of the outcropping that
guides my way. The day is growing late, the trees’ shadows lengthening.
Each time I orient myself, I can’t resist looking back, dreading what I
might see. I do see it: a rustling of tree—branches, a sickening shimmer. I
don’t smell anything, though the wind is rushing past me down the hill,
robbing me of any advantage, making my nose useless.
I turn and run, run until I’m panting. I don’t think he runs. He doesn’t
need to. He’s implacable, like the course of a disease.
Now not even vulpemancy dulls my terror. Pestilence is far older than
either human or fox, older than mammals. I don’t want any of this. I hadn’t
even wanted to go to Ravenna’s gathering. I’d helped the rebels build
warrens, scouted for them a few times, small uses of my magic that helped
them and kept me out of the worst danger. I thought that would be enough,
that I could love her without becoming entangled in her cause.
When I finally did attend one of the gatherings, it was (why else?) for
love. That was the night the pestimancer attacked.
A few hours before the gathering, Ravenna and I had climbed to the
rooftops of Gardrun’s old town, settling in to watch the sunset, the warm
light breaking over the squalor of the tenements around us, the laundry
snapping in the twilight wind. The cobblestones far below us were
gleaming rose and gold. I fell in love with my city once again.
And there, beside me, was Ravenna, her head against my shoulder, her
fingers laced through mine. As the revolution grew, and with it the fury of
the Clenched Fist’s response, she felt the constant necessity of showing a
strong face, to be the leader they all needed. Only when we got away could
she relax, let me hold her.
“I should be making plans for tonight,” she told me.
“The gathering is five hours from now,” I said. “Can’t we just enjoy the
moment?” It was a mistake to remind her that she was what I cared for, far
more than her rebellion. That I was just a coward who needed vulpemancy
because of the depth of my fear.
“Are you sure you won’t come?” she asked, her fingers playing over
mine, her words a whisper in my ear.
I flicked my phantom tail at her, ran my free hand up her leg. “You sure
know how to charm a girl,” I said, joking, but of course it was true. What
could be more foolish than to fall in love with the Clenched Fist’s most
wanted?
I’d thought I had my life measured, you see. I’d keep my head down,
avoid trouble with the Fist, dedicate myself to careful study of my magic.
And then one day, all I wanted to study was her.
“Hmmm…” she said, shifting, brushing her hand over my cheek, her eyes
meeting mine. “I understand if you won’t come,” she said. “It’s just…”
She was so rarely at a loss for words that it worried me.
“It gives me strength, to see you. To know that I’m not alone. That you’re
with me.”
What else could I do?
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, yes, I’ll go. Now can we please—”
And her lips were on mine.
Six hours later, I stood in the front of the room as Ravenna spoke. On her
lips, revolution sounded so necessary, so inevitable. How could I not love
her? How could I not begin to believe, in spite of myself, that the rebels
would triumph?
Then, without warning, the pestimancer was among us. I saw the grottos
where his eyes should be as Ravenna choked, as she vomited blood. I stood
transfixed as the others fled around me, some of them coughing red mist.
They too had been infected, but it was Ravenna who took the full brunt of
his wrath. I witnessed his power, terror, commitment.
Now he’s coming to finish me off, to ensure Ravenna will die, her lungs
drowning in her own blood, one death among many, a warning to anyone
who thinks of rebelling.
I can do nothing but run, and so I do, for what seems like hours,
scrambling up the rocky scree, lost in fear and memory. Then I see it, the
flash of purple, in the deep shade of an overhang. The herb. The cure. I
approach cautiously, thinking of sleeping serpents or spring-hungry bears.
Nothing moves. There’s a single leafed tree among the evergreens—if the
flowers had been any higher, I doubt even the arbouromancers would have
known where to find it. The flowers cluster together in the shade, many of
them. I scramble to the plants, carefully gather many of the delicate blooms,
leaving the rest to grow. I hope they will thrive.
When I turn around, the pestimancer is behind me. He stands at the edge
of the clearing, his head and torso wreathed in a shimmer as if soap bubbles
made of filth. His fingers blur at the edges, and carrion flies buzz
incessantly around him. A gold amulet hangs from his neck, incongruous.
“The rebels should have sent someone else,” he says with that tar-voice. I
sense him staring at me, though I see no eyes in the caverns of his face. A
tilt of the head, then a rasping that I think is meant to be laughter. “You’re
no rebel, just a coward. I saw it in your eyes when I broke her.”
He doesn’t move closer. He’s been gaining on me all day, and I’m
exhausted from the climb. I can’t outrun him for long.
“You don’t need to do this,” I say.
“Need?” he says, and I glimpse what I think are teeth. “This is why rebel
trash will always fail.” He raises his arms. He is twice my size, and the
shrubs around him are already wilting in his presence. “All the strength of
the Clenched Fist is mine, for my loyalty is … complete.” He grimaces, and
I know that before long the last of what is human will burn off, and he will
be disease itself in form and function. It will be too late to help me, to help
Ravenna.
I grit my teeth, press my ears back. He’s right. I’m no revolutionary, just
a terrified mage far from home.
“You can’t escape,” he says, and flips open the amulet. A compass, the
needle pointing directly at me. “You like it? A navimancer was … kind
enough to make it for me. The rebels were careful. They would never have
let a lock of their hair fall into my hands. You, though … she was foolish to
desire you.” I feel like he’s torn a hole in me. I don’t know how he’d got
ahold of a lock of my hair, but I know it was my fault, all of it. I’ve killed
the one I love.
“Come to me, girl,” he says, his smile a nightmare come to life, “and I
will make it quick.” He takes a step forward.
I crouch, my breath coming in shallow gasps, and call on the only power
available to me, the last thing that’s left. I give myself completely to the
fox-magic. It crackles around me, sharp, keen-eyed, hungry. A moment
later I’m shrinking, fur spreading across my skin.
It all happens in a few moments. He lunges at me, moving fast for a
human. But already I have fox-instincts, fox-quickness. My old clothing
loosens, falls from me. The strap of my pouch with the herb tucked inside is
looped around my neck, safe on four legs as well as two.
The pestimancer has closed half the distance, more than half. The reek
makes my fur bristle. I dart away, and he is after me quickly, silent again,
and tireless.
I run down the hill, faster and far more sure-footed than ever before. The
magic knows my fox form, or my body knows the magic. Yet still I can hear
him close behind. To my new ears no human is silent, not even him.
As a fox, I can outrun him, but to what end? He can track me, follow me
back to my den, to my Ravenna. He will never stop.
The arbouromancers won’t help me, and I won’t bring the pestimancer to
their clearing. I don’t wish them harm, and I fear their wrath. I run a long
circuit around them, my foe ever behind me.
I know what I have to do. I do not run as fast as I can. He stays on my
trail, gaining slowly. My timing must be perfect, or all is lost.
The day has fallen into night, but darkness is comfortable for me now, the
cold wind no trouble. I slow further, making sure I know where I am. He is
very close behind me now. I drag one hind leg, as though it is injured. He is
almost upon me when I reach the river.
It is different under the sliver of moon, different with my new eyes. A
dark, churning thing, silver-toothed like a hungry maw, but still cold,
indifferent.
I cross, exposed to his gaze in the moonlight, still visibly favouring the
leg. It isn’t a difficult trick. I’m small and swift and clever, and I know just
how to do it.
The pestimancer advances. I limp into the darkness of the treeline, and
turn to watch. He strides forward, so large, so determined, so close to his
goal. His power is undeniable, but still he has human flesh, human weight,
human weakness. The treacherous rock gives way under him. Wordless, he
totters, over-corrects, falls, is swept down and down and down. Disease is
ancient magic, and terrifying, but the river stretches long and fast. As he is
battered, shredded, pulled under, does he know its magic is far older and
more primal?
I watch the river until I am sure he is gone. Even in death, he will cause
harm, polluting, killing, spreading the suffering which is his power. But the
river will sweep even that out to sea.
There is no further time to waste. I run on, not changing form, though
each minute I am a fox makes it less likely I will be able to change back. I
do not know if I can save Ravenna, but I will reach her much faster if I stay
a fox. The forest smells different now, ancient, many-layered, powerful.
And above all that, the transient scents of small animals darting about. I
would love to hunt them, to sate myself on mice and voles, but I run on.
Soon Gardrun City rises before me, and the forest behind closes off to me
forever. I don’t know if I’ll be able to return to my human form, or if I am
forever a vixen now. I don’t know if I can save the woman I love. Fears
flood me, human fear and fox fear, but I push ahead, swift, sure-footed.
Potions and Practices
GWYNCEPTION
T
he tavern held a stench of spilt beer and various piss, with an undertone
of fecal matter drowned out by a thick smoke of various incenses and
grasses, opium, tobacco, marijuana, and burning cedar from the nearby
wood, and as well foul gossip.
Violet was ill from the anxiety of her last kill. Falling through the doors,
she descended the steps into the establishment. The Brimstones ambushed
her four gallows March back. They’re a cult that sought the death of her
kind, the Outlier. Doing the least harm meant one slit throat. Ill now,
burning with the confrontation in her, she entered the ancient gathering
point for the first time.
A day’s stubble on her square face, she wished she had time to put a
blade to it. Her dark hair in tight braids tied behind in a messy bun, and her
light brown skin was wet from the rain. The fur coar she wore was drenched
and dripping on the floor. It had been made from the hide of a cross
between a nocturnal bird and a bear, a creature originally from the frozen
lower reaches that had evolved into something spiritual and everywhere.”
From the scrying, her summoning would be an aged alcoholic woman,
with greyed-out skin with bluish blemishes, her skull covered in grey wisps.
The women would be to whom Violet would have her goals met. Still
feeling anxiety, Violet felt she could vomit any moment. Still feeling
anxiety, Violet felt she could vomit any moment but spotted her
summoning. The woman looked nothing like her viewing. She looked out
of place among the dank of the tavern, her face pale white, a grey halo of
hair and a green cloak glimmering under a candle. That’s when a group of
ragged anthropomorphs materialized alongside a time shifter before Violet’s
view of the matriarch. The time shifter was laughing, displacing the group
with the emotion.
Violet approached the booth hidden in corner, the Lady greeting her as
the one known as Violet Rage.
Violet put forth the question:
“You’re Zywqhh?”
“Hush yourself darling … I’m no threat to someone as low as you.”’ She
sipped a dark liquid. “And you’d have to get the pronunciation right to have
any respect.”
“You have a job that needs being done,” Violet began. “I can do violence
or be a rogue if need be. More of a muscle, I like stealing as a challenge.
I’m not very good in social arenas.”
“What do you know of other worlds?”
“I know of the three worlds.”
“I asked what you know of other worlds.”
“They exist and there are more than the three.”
“Do you want the job?”
“I need compensation first.”
“What do you want.”
“The elixirs.”
“You’re shifting?” the matriarch gasped. “I can’t share those.”
“I cannot do your job then.”
“Take my sleeve. We will speak.”
“Pardon my rudeness.” Violet felt suddenly horrid. “I must…”
She leaned to her left over the floor and retched. The old woman across
covered her mouth feigning being unaffected. When Violet was at last
simply dry-heaving she took the sleeve of the ancient priestess.
The room around them dissipated, then disappeared.
Violet’s consciousness shook into awareness.
“We didn’t travel the Ocean?”
“No … ” The old woman paused. “I have a direct channel to the cursed
rock you call home.”
“Ah.” Violet was unable hide her shock.
“You know you could live here somewhere out in the lower reaches
possibly. I could return the favour of your labour by connecting you with a
community.”
“Wait …” Violet’s breath shook. “I want the potions … and what of my
other?”
“You’re persistent. So much the outlier.” The matriarch undid her cloak,
placing it on a rack materializing next to them. They were floating in a void
expanse as a room was appearing. “You don’t really know your nature as an
outlier, do you? You’ve consumed some of the spin from the world you’ve
been inhabiting. I’m surprised you even know of worlds outside the three at
this point.”
“I’m sorry I’m not sure if I know what you’re talking about.”
“As an outlier, you’re literally an outlier. You have no others because you
don’t exist.” The old woman let out a sharp laugh. “Not to put you through
too many shocks. As an outlier you’re from where we’re going. That’s why
I wanted you for the job.”
“Pardon? What if I want to stay where we’re going then? You gift me the
elixirs and I return to this outer world.”
“To live in the nonreal?” The priestess sat forward on a chair leaning on a
dark staff. “No outlier ever likes their home world when they return and
find it for its bankruptcy. I will connect you with this garrison I know well.
They’ll take you in. If you’re going to be in my home, I’d ask you take off
your weapon. I can show you to your room where you can keep it while we
conspire the adventure.”
The Lady’s words had the effect of triggering pathways in Violet’s brain
she long hadn’t connected—something about the tone and content.
“I’m sorry … your ladyship … how far have we travelled?” Violet was
short of breath. “I feel an exhaustion I have never known. You’ve told me
things I’m not sure about. I had my guard up with you and it’s now gone.”
“Slow yourself outlier, slow … hold … yes slow your breaths … focus on
my words … we’ve travelled two centuries give or take.”
For a moment Violet was a floating consciousness above an immense
forest. She felt as if she was moving and time was blurring.
Violet then awoke in a comfort she never knew before. Violet was
wearing a long, hooded cloak in a colour she only vaguely remembered
from her dreams. She was in a dimly lit, modest-sized bed, a canopy
walling her in. Through the grey, silvery fabric Violet focused on a candle.
She imagined the flame in her mind. She focused until she was completely
absorbed by the vision of the flame. The light getting brighter, she moved
the curtain aside.
Violet could now see a chamber, bare except for the bed, night stand, and
candle. Exhaling she fell into the bedding, the sheet a pale sky blue, the
blanket the vaguely familiar colour. Violet decided to name it star shower
and leave it at that. She focused on the situation at hand. She was hungry,
and in her anxiety, she’d forgotten to even inquire as to what the job
entailed.
She questioned how desperate she really was, pushing her transition this
far. Would she even have come if she knew she’d be travelling centuries
across the Ocean? The old woman did not exactly guarantee the elixirs.
Violet had gained audience with a Gatekeeper of the Realms , mother to an
entire element, here. Violet assumed she was in the Blessed Realm, the
loved realm, the world that the ancient formers shaped with an
unconditional warmth and care and hope.
Violet felt a distinct presence of oak coming from the door—but not from
any world she knew. She fumbled with the latch, which then opened with
no sound. There was a luxurious warm hallway that defied explanation. It
was far from symmetrical. Her shadow was against the wall, which met the
floor at an inward incline and rounded curve. The walls were a pale yellow
shade which reminded her of a certain flower with petals that had flecks of
red that could be ground down into a rather pungent spice. It was of some
island or moon left of yesterday … or was it some dream? The ceiling was a
pattern of circles connected in triangular formations and strange illegible
symbols.
Her olfactory sense alerted her to the covered tray on a lower table next
to the door. It smelled like her third spring of training with an old friend. It
smelled like hope and home and aromas that became a synthesis of inner
visions of fields and strangely dressed folk gathering and singing.
That’s when the shadow she unconsciously thought was hers decided it
would walk away from the situation. The shadow wasn’t hers in the first
place. She chastised herself for being so unaware.
She stooped slightly with her knees bent and noticed a note as she picked
up the tray. The script was beautiful of course, which was expected, Violet
had to attune her mind to the key she noticed between the centre two lines.
Visualizing the key twisting until she figured the right alignment, she
hummed and breathed strangely.
The note unlocked and spoke in her mind: Don’t mind the rogue, they
don’t speak too much. I believe, if my insight is still working these days,
you will find this food enjoyable. I am attending to matters currently and
will meet you at the beginning of the waning of the first moon. We’re only a
night into the second moon’s dance, so you’ll have time to study up. The
library to your left a half-gallows should suffice for the study needed in the
meantime. I trust you not to poke about much further elsewhere. My rogue
shall show you the grounds and attend to your every need.
Still tired that morning, she fell back into sleep after eating. Once again,
she saw the immense forested area, felt life beneath it—as if an entire
population of beings existed there.
Violet learned she was residing in a villa built half way up into the side of
a smaller mountain. Over the next three months that followed, Violet spent
time in the library and in a room for meditation that displayed the sun’s
greeting and the passing of the two moons. She learned to communicate
with the rogue whose form was always and only a shadow. The rogue led
Violet around the grounds over time, showing her various things. At times it
seemed the rogue would betray themselves and show emotion. Sometimes
the rogue would lead Violet somewhere when their form would shiver or
vibrate and then she’d be led somewhere else. There were baths built into
the lower levels and Violet suspected the villa went deeper into the earth
than the Lady would want her to know.
Violet would sometimes meditate with the rogue nearby and spend her
focus on trying to feel out the rogue’s energy. In a way it just felt good to
feel the presence of someone else, her life as an outlier was always marked
by loneliness. She had to be careful though. She knew that the rogue could
probably sense this, and she didn’t want there to be any suspicion of her
intent. She needed to know where the rogue was. She intended to do exactly
that poking about which the matriarch warned against doing.
The rogue would sometimes express a lot for a voiceless shadow. Violet
learned much of what she only knew as the cult of Zywqhh. In the Blessed
Realm, where they were gaining greater dominance and control, that term
was very rarely known, they were more commonly simply referred to as the
Glowing Ones or, more formally, the Opal Monarchy. It was only
throughout the past half-millennia that the Glowing Ones began creating a
larger and rigidly organized set of alliances with a multitude of realms with
the goal of further spreading resources and mutual aid. Of course, the
Monarchs were quickly growing in their dominance and control and making
decisions with mass impact for good or for ill. The collection of realms
represented mostly by self-governance were falling under control of the
Monarchs. This was achieved, Violet learned from the rogue, who often
failed to mask certain details, through means that were far from ethical.
Time and time again Violet travelled in her meditations or in her sleep. It
wasn’t always the forest that appeared to her beckoning with intrigue. She
sometimes visited nightmarish realms that reflected her inner turmoil—
lands scorched of life, places of ruins, fields of mass battle and death. Other
times she visited a city she couldn’t recognize and was surrounded by noise
and transports that indicated no source of what pulled them. There was
poverty, she witnessed, and riches all in the same panorama.
The Lady returned one evening without warning. The rogue appeared in
Violet’s room, which was completely out of character. Following the
anxious shadow from hall to hall, Violet passed many a strange sight until
they were in a grand ritual room that screamed with its size and its
emptiness and its lack of windows and its elaborate architecture and
symbolism, a room Violet would come to know.
Unusual for a room of such a nature, there were two shabby and ruinedlooking couches in the very centre facing each other. There was a table
covered by all kinds of paraphernalia and so many empty bottles of crafted
glass.
The matriarch was beyond any sense of inebriated, and probably not
completely just from alcohol. There were other drinks and there was also a
pipe, a tin, and a mirror.
“You know I was inducted in this room a scant ten millennia ago? We
moved our ceremonies to a larger facility in the upper provinces six or
seven millennia past, give or take.”
“It was about four or five millennia past I decreed a wider policy on the
induction of new daughters. A more inclusive policy.”
“You could become a daughter. I could work around your whole …
nonexistence.”
“You desire the elixir.”
Violet didn’t know what to say. She was tired as she hadn’t slept well the
previous night. She’d been in one of the gardens the entire night reading up
on the ability to go through solid matter.
“What of the job? Are we still doing the job?”
The Lady decided it would be in her best wisdom and for the benefit of
securing of a job properly done that Violet would begin undergoing training
without induction. It was something that Violet had to keep to herself. The
Lady told her of another library and that she could explore as much of
certain subject matter as possible. She gave Violet a list of strict rules and
made her swear she would pay strict attention to the her guidance and
instructions.
She spent months that grew into years of waiting and learning and
waiting and studying and practising under the Lady. The Lady would
disappear for many a passing of the two moons and then return abruptly.
Violet would spend some mornings on the two couches as if she were one
of the Lady’s close confidantes or sister, drinking tea and speaking of
endless gossip and lore that expanded the three realms. Violet learned so
much more of the cursed realm that she called home. The matriarch didn’t
speak much of the forsaken lands. The job entailed going to an outer world
beyond the far reaches and knowledge of the average commoner. This
world apparently was Violet’s home, a world she had forgotten as she
transitioned through life. Violet learned of her own nature as an outlier,
apparently all this information necessary for the job. She learned of her
nonexistent existence. How her being wasn’t really being. She should think
more of herself as an idea or concept that comes out of a conversation
between two people or possibly a group of people, something that was
missing that those people shared that needed to be filled. This sort of
abstraction had been given form or became form but never really ceased to
be its original emptiness. The matriarch said at times the outliers were born
out of negation or as a reaction. They would simply cease to exist outside of
the context that gave them their apparent existence. Though thought to be
rare for an outlier to escape their original context, their original home world
or realm, there had been an infinite number, continuously and exponentially
growing, of outliers who had escaped their original context.
The Lady would stop every so often in her elaborations and reassure
Violet that the knowledge was all very necessary for the job. She also
would tell her never to share any of it with anyone living, dead, existent, or
nonexistent. The actual details of what they would be doing in Violet’s
home world were always shirked out of the conversation and Violet began
to suspect the matter was deeply personal for her royal majesty.
Violet began to understand the original image she saw of the Lady, the
one visibly aging into decay, ruled by an addiction and its accompanying
possession of the liver. Something about that image scared Violet. It took a
while for the actual details of the job to come to the surface, and Violet was
correct in her growing suspicions. The matter was of a deeply personal
nature for the high priestess. It concerned some of the Queen’s daughters;
closer daughters that she held much love for. They’d been disappearing
over the passing years and the mystery went on for quite a while, the old
woman said, until it was found they were being abducted. Someone
witnessed an abduction of three of the daughters at once. The matriarch
sipped her usual drink and continued speaking and not really looking
anywhere except out toward somewhere Violet couldn’t see.
The details worsened as the abduction occurred at a celestial embassy
where the matriarch had sent them to petition for renegotiation of a treaty
between three elements. There was a political scandal that followed. The
matriarch had to put down a rebellion from within her own ranks over the
lack of answers that could be produced on the matter. A faction rivalling for
control of the realm, a cult formed between time shifters and an element
simply known as the Glance, was initially blamed. It was believed they had
been committing atrocities ever since the incident in retaliation for the
accusations. The matriarch said she hadn’t been on good terms with the
faction for quite some time.
It was one early morning before sleep was even had that the old woman
broke down weeping a real ugly cry. She finally admitted all the details and
that she knew of the source of the abductions a long time before anyone
else. Violet was headed to an outer world where the captor was forming a
stronghold of power. This captor was snatching up the Queen’s daughters to
consume energy and life force toward said end.
Violet believed the old woman when she broke down telling Violet these
heavy and personal things. Violet was holding the old woman in her arms
while gently comforting the her. Between her gasps for air and utterances of
words and slipping into other languages and tongues Violet didn’t know,
she finally spoke clearly.
“I know the stealer of my daughters.” She breathed in a sigh. “I can only
admit a close intimacy with the being. I’ve of course never met them
because of the consequences of such a meeting. Whoever they are, they are
my very other, whoever I would have become if I ever was formed in the
womb of the cursed realm.”
Violet let the woman go. The Lady got up and collected her royal green
velour shawl and left with no words.
The rest of the morning that followed was empty of sound for both the
matriarch and the outlier. After Violet woke from a short rest there was a
static feeling to the air within and without the mountain villa. Outside there
was a dry heat, and everything looked on the verge of dying.
Violet decided to take one last walk through a nearby forested area. She
quickly drew herself to a place where she meditated frequently, away from
the presence of the matriarch. Violet came here to pretend that the whole
matter of her being here wasn’t real and she was just passing through this
wood from one life to another.
She sat on the ground and focused her mind into the places she found
herself escaping frequently. She met many people in these travels she
thought of as dreams. She couldn’t find anyone who knew of the three
worlds or the cult of Zywqhh. She felt comfort in her ability to summon
universes from some distant beyond.
When she returned to the villa, the sun was beginning to touch the
horizon. The rogue greeted her and immediately directed her to the ritual
room.
The matriarch had tea and set out a meal for the two of them; potatoes
and hard-boiled eggs and a root vegetable that originated millennia past in
the forsaken realms. It was a bit strange for the matriarch’s usual tastes.
Violet sat on the opposite couch, breathed in, exhaled, and smiled, unsure
what to expect.
“We used to cook this meal before the final test before a daughter’s
induction … an old inside joke that developed into quite the tradition
actually,” the old woman spoke. “Eat up, I’ve decided you have prepared
yourself well enough for the adventure … you will be leaving tonight. I
cannot follow you of course. However, my rogue will be shadowing you.”
They ate the meal in silence.
Afterward, Violet went to her room now located in her own wing and
gathered what she needed. She decided to wear a heavy woolen cloak over
leather armour the matriarch had the rogue fetch her. Her hair was loose of
braids except for one tucked behind an ear, the rest pulled back in a pony
tail. She belted her weapon to her side. It felt different after so many years
of not wearing it endless nights and days. While she tightened the bindings,
she silently prayed, something she hadn’t done in many long centuries.
Violet felt the presence of the rogue approaching and uttered a last
syllable and ended it with a long exhale of breath. The rogue led Violet to a
wing she knew led to the lower depths of the villa, how far down she
couldn’t guess.
The matriarch was wearing a cloak of green, as she turned away on the
back there was an accented embroidery of a serpentine goat in that colour
Violet had named star shower. The matriarch began leading the way down a
narrow hallway and spoke.
“The shrikikadian were interesting creatures from the forsaken lands now
come to symbolize intuition and sowing of mischief,” the Queen remarked.
“Not many know that latter meaning, and I felt safe enough to adopt the
image as my seal.”
The Queen’s slippered feet were questionable on the smooth stone steps
they began descending. There was no railing, but she walked down as
serenely as she possibly could, Violet following down the narrowing path
that delved further into the mountain. They went around now in a spiral
deeper and deeper. Round and round. The tunnel seeming narrower and
narrower. Violet sensed the matriarch was becoming dizzy and reacted just
as the old woman fell. Violet sort of slipped but caught herself just as she
caught the priestess. Violet looked into the old woman’s eyes and read only
fear. After an uncounted amount of silent walking, they came to a simple
unadorned room, somewhat larger than the common dining room. There sat
in the middle two cushions and a tall star shower candle. The Queen took a
seat upon one cushion and assumed a regal posture.
Violet was collecting herself. She wrapped her cloak around her as she
dropped herself down on the opposite cushion, the candle between them.
She listened vaguely as the matriarch began instructing Violet as to how to
conduct the meditation to travel. The room apparently was directly
connected to the outer world, and there needed to be visualized specific
imagery for the rogue to accompany Violet. She didn’t care though. Violet
was slipping into an altered state of reality and consciousness. She could
already feel the distant outer world, already felt a vague familiar feeling of
a home she had forgotten.
A dawn light came through the humid air and spoke upon the branches of
the trees and trembled down onto a maidenhair fern. Small and trembling,
the fern had a glow about it, barely grown but still thriving with that force
toward life.
It was two thirds into the passing of the third moon. Violet fell upon the
spot, her breath ragged. She happened upon a clearing of grass. There were
flowers a vibrant shade of star shower. At first Violet didn’t notice the
maidenhair, though she sensed something.
A voice spoke what felt like a greeting, warm and welcoming, comforting
and calming. Violet knew it was what she was seeking, what drove her here.
The voice then came across in a strange grammatical structure, it seemed to
be a question, asking Violet who she was, but it drove deeper than that.
“I am Violet.” She spoke unsure. “An outlier.”
A silent moment of thought passed.
“I suspect we are similar, you and I, and I’ve been told many a time I am
an outlier.”
Violet was unsure, this was all very strange. She didn’t know who she
was talking to. They didn’t speak in vibrations in the air. They spoke in her
heart. This couldn’t be the high priestess’s other.
“Would you like to—just sit for a while?”
Violet took in her breath then exhaled as she lowered herself to the
ground and sat. She took in the presence of the entire place but focused on
the fern. She felt the fern approach her consciousness—she nodded her
head—she then felt the fern passing through the different parts of her brain
and pressing deep into her mind and soul. She centred herself and held back
from reacting in what she knew would be tears she hadn’t poured in many
years. The fern then exited her mind and Violet exhaled and spoke.
“You know the feeling in the air?” Violet asked. “Somewhere where
there’s a vortex of magic—places of gathering?”
“You seem to have run from those places.” The fern replied.
“The scents of communal campfires haunt me some nights. Thinking of
people I’ll never see again. I have to hide though—I don’t even exist in
some people’s eyes.”
There was a moment of pondering from the fern until it then spoke.
“And yet you do. Your experience is unique unto yourself, but you are
not alone.”
“You have an infinite fractaling of selves and others out there.”
“You are spirit, you are strength, you are resilience, you are resistence.”
“You must continue your story,” the voice spoke. “If we meet again you
shall know me as the passerbyer.”
Violet then found herself in the dank and the stench of the tavern where
she was first summoned.
A flood of conversation came upon her.
“For one thing outlier, you have only me to rely upon to pass in this
world as anything acceptable, proper or existent.”
Violet had her hands on her temples staring down at the dank of the table.
So many empty glasses as empty words were being continuously poured
into her mind.
“I will gift you the elixirs and your existence, but you must deal with my
two others. I have unravelled the location of my other in the forsaken lands,
I’ll spare the details of their involvement with—Are you listening?”
Violet sensed gruff voices coming from the opposite corner near the
kitchens. They couldn’t see her through the crowd—she focused her mind
there and knew them to be three Brimstones sharing drink and conversation.
She tuned into the conversation until it was as if she were sitting at the
table.
“He isn’t right—He—” An aggravated voice.
“We’ll get to—!”
“No but he—!”
“I know. Killed Stoke.”
“Just listen to Beam!” The third man pounded his fist on the table.
A quiet among the three men made the noise of the crowd more
pronounced. They each sipped their drink. The third man then inhaled from
a gnarled cigarette.
“We finally heard from the Glance.” Beam spoke. “We have a mutual
enemy it seems and can get sway on the deal we were working.”
“What’s this fop—what’s his name?”
“He’s called Violet Rage.”
There was flash as if a storm came in from the steps leading outside of
the tavern.
Violet then found herself in a forested area with the matriarch.
“No dear there, you must see the worlds known as the three are simply
the starting point for certain groups and certain realms existing in the
Ocean.” The matriarch spoke as she knit, sitting on a low rock.
“This has what to do with my nature?”
Violet had memory of hours of conversation.
“Our relation to our reflections rests in our vantage point and not all share
the same view of the three worlds. Some reflections shoot out like a spiral
into infinity, like a force driving toward life beyond the shambolic waves
and crashes that are life. You must see yourself outside the view of the three
worlds to find yourself in the place you want to be.”
Violet was suddenly alone near a river, she could hear its sound, she
could sense its presence.
Lightning cracked, a force surged forward filled with passion and energy
and decision.
Violet was back in the overpowering stench of the tavern, hearing the
dysphoric croaks of the high priestess. She was disoriented and not sure in
which realm she was floating and which other of the high priestess, the
matriarch, the Gatekeeper of the Realms was speaking. Violet broke the
silence.
“I cannot do this, I cannot go forward with the plan, whatever it is that
you’ve concocted, I’m moving on. You’ve drawn blood from me, putting
me through tests, your scolding growing ever more present in my mind.”
Silence.
“You know too much to quit now,” the matriarch spoke. “What about the
elixirs?”
“I know enough for what I need.”
Violet got up from the table at the back corner of the emptied tavern. The
bar patron sitting on a stool glanced her way. She ascended the steps out of
the establishment. The coals of the fire were dying. A shadow followed her.
Freeing the Bitch
ELLEN MELLOR
“A
nd you’re certain that this person is going to be willing to help us?”
Sindy looked down at the dwarf standing in front of her and
sighed inwardly.
“Put it this way, Kai,” she said. “If this woman isn’t happy with the four
of us breaking her out, she can just stay where she is.”
Harrumphing and tugging at her beard, Kai turned away from Sindy and
stomped out of the clearing into the darkness of the forest beyond.
“Why we need another human with us, I don’t know … One’s enough
…” she muttered as she departed, ensuring that what she said was just loud
enough for Sindy to hear.
The other two, who were sitting on the other side of the fire watching the
roasting venison to make sure it didn’t burn, giggled and nudged each other.
“Having fun?” Sindy asked, letting flames play between her fingers as
she looked at them, half-smirking herself.
“Loads,” said Mirabella as she settled herself against Farielle.
It was then Sindy’s turn to harrumph and excuse herself. She knew better
than to get in the way of the halfling and her elvish girlfriend having some
alone time.
It was dark in the forest, which was hardly surprising considering it was
the middle of the night, but it surprised Sindy how very dark it was. She
really wasn’t used to it. In Merivale light had always shone—the town
mages saw to that. So leaving there and striking out on her own had been
quite a shock. But, her mistress had insisted. “It’s the only way,” she had
said. “It will toughen you up—I’ve gone far too easy on you,” she had often
added—usually after clipping her around the head for some mistake that
Sindy had made,which may or may not have been real. Sindy wasn’t
exactly certain how coming out into the wilderness where nobody knew her
when she had been growing up, nobody judged her for her choices, and
nobody ever referred to her as a boy was meant to be in anyway tougher
than staying in Merivale, but her mistress had decreed it as the final part of
her training, and so she had to do it.
To be fair, if she hadn’t met up with Farielle, Kai, and Mirabella, she
might have found things a little harder, but her mistress never said that she
couldn’t travel with others. Farielle made hunting and foraging look
ridiculously easy. Kai could pretty much hold her own against anything or
anyone that decided that a group of young women (although Kai’s age was
really hard to judge—Sindy thought that all dwarfs looked as if they had
been born middle-aged and just got older from there) was an easy target.
And Mirabella was literally able to charm anyone who could hear her play
her lute. And if all that failed, then Sindy was capable of launching a
fireball that would, at the very least, knock any prospective attackers out of
their boots. She may still have a few things to learn, but her inner fire and
determination had meant that she had been able to do stuff with flames from
very early in her training.
Whispering a word, a flame burst into life in the palm of her hand as she
wandered forward, vaguely in the direction that Kai had taken. Sindy was
not entirely sure if conjuring the fire was a good idea, not for any practical
reason but more because the flickering light made the shadows move in a
way that unnerved her. She was just debating whether or not to extinguish
the flame and if that would mean returning to the camp and interrupting her
friends when she discovered that the fire was also not really very good for
actually seeing her way either.
Stepping on something she thought was a root, she was shocked when it
twisted and jerked away, sending her crashing heavily to the ground, breath
knocked from her body. Her burning hand slammed flat on the ground into
a pile of tinder-dry leaves. She stared at them for a few moments, trying to
catch her breath, fascinated by the way they twisted and flared in the fire.
Her brain had just kicked into gear and she was scrambling to her feet,
looking around for something to put the flames out, when Kai jumped into
the flames and started to stamp them out.
“Come on!” the dwarf shouted. “Help me.”
For the next couple of minutes, the two of them jumped around, as if
taking part in an elaborate dance as they stepped on and scrubbed their feet
over every single spark that settled on the ground.
At last, appearing successful in their attempt to avoid setting the forest
alight, they collapsed against a tree, Kai rubbing her leg where her friend
had stepped on it.
“What in Her name were you doing?” Kai asked.
“Same as you,” Sindy replied. “Going for a walk.”
“Using a fire in a forest that hasn’t had any rain for weeks?”
“Not all of us are able to see in the dark!” Sindy heard her voice getting
louder and hoarser as she grew annoyed with her friend. It was an anger that
was fuelled at least in part by the certain knowledge that Kai was right.
“Then stay where you can see then!” Kai half-shouted back, her own
annoyance rising in response to her friend’s.
Sindy pushed herself to her feet and started to set off into the forest once
again. She didn’t get far though before she tripped over an actual root and
ended up sprawled on the ground once again. When she didn’t immediately
get up or even say anything, Kai hurried over to her, anger forgotten as
concern for her human friend overtook her.
In the few seconds it took Kai to reach her friend, Sindy had managed to
turn over and curl up into a ball.
“Sindy?” Kai said gently. “Are you okay?”
“It’s not fair,” Sindy said, her voice muffled by her arms folded in front
of her face.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m useless,” she said. “I don’t have your abilities, I can’t see in the dark
and … and …”
Although Sindy couldn’t say it, Kai knew what she was saying. It was a
feeling that she often had herself and she knew that Farielle often felt the
same—not that Kai would ever get the elf to admit it. She always had to be
so bloody perfect. Mirabella was lucky. She only had to worry what people
would say about a halfling girl chasing other girls, not whether they would
or not they would think she was male.
Putting her arms around Sindy, Kai drew her into an embrace, saying
nothing, just letting her friend feel her presence.
After a few minutes, Sindy pulled away from her a little, rubbing her
nose.
“Your beard is ticklish,” she said.
“I’m so sorry,” Kai replied with heavy sarcasm.
The two girls looked at each other, warmth and understanding flowing
between them.
“I guess those two are kissing and cuddling again?” Kai said.
“Probably,” Sindy replied. “You know what they’re like.”
“I just don’t get it. Why do they want to do it?”
“I guess … because it’s nice? Because they like each other? Don’t you
want to find someone to kiss and cuddle and … you know …”
“Not really. I mean, I guess that finding somebody to be with would be
nice but … other than that? No … Why would I? It’s not as if I could ever
have a baby. So why would a gkran be interested?”
“Gkran?” Sindy asked.
“A dwarf … a dwarf ‘man.’”
“You know, for love and companionship and support.”
“I’ve got that with you and Mirabella and Farielle. When they stop
kissing and cuddling. And that’s more than enough for me,” Kai explained.
“I really don’t want to be with a gkran if it means I have to stop being with
you three.”
Sindy pulled Kai close to her and kissed her on the cheek.
“You’re so sweet,” she said.
Kai shrugged but couldn’t stop a smile from showing.
“Come on,” she said, letting Sindy go and climbing to her feet. “Let’s get
back. Those two will have probably let the venison burn again.”
As Kai pulled her friend to her feet, Sindy asked “If a dwarf ‘man’ is a
gkran what do I call you?”
Still holding Sindy’s hand, Kai paused for a moment and then shrugged
again. “Kai,” she said.
Suddenly, the silence of the dark forest was shattered by a screeching
roar. Spinning around, they saw a huge shadow pad forward into the
clearing, its eyes a-glitter. Stubby wings fluttered on its back as if in
anticipation of dinner. Opening its beaked muzzle once again, it gave out a
second scream that was half bird-cry and half beast-like growl.
“What in all the hells is a bloody chamrosh doing out here?” Kai said.
“Run!”
Running through a forest was difficult even in the middle of the day.
Sindy had already proven quite comprehensively that she had problems
walking through a forest during the night. So, running through a forest
during the night? That was never going to happen. Sure enough, she had
barely moved twenty steps when her foot found something, she didn’t know
what it was—an uprooted root or a sticking up stone or a rabbit out for a
late evening stroll—and frankly, at that moment, she didn’t care. But for the
third time in quick succession, she found herself measuring her length on
the leaf-litter.
The chamrosh leapt forward as Sindy rolled over onto her back and raised
her hand. A gout of flame burst from her hand and enveloped the beast’s
head and back, the feathers on its wingtips lighting up like candles.
Crashing to the ground just in front of where Sindy lay, the chamrosh
screamed in agony, flailing around. Finally, it staggered to its feet and
stumbled blindly back into the forest, setting light to everything around it as
it knocked into trees and bushes.
Sindy stared at the path of destruction it was setting, shock rendering her
incapable of thought. Kai, who had finally realized that she had lost her
friend and turned back to help her, found herself equally lost for words.
Instead, she just held her hand out and pulled the human girl to her feet.
“I think it could be time to leave,” Kai said.
Afterwards, when they had time to stop and get their breath back and work
out what they had done, none of them could agree on the details about what
had happened next. Even with a human and a dwarf careening into the
middle of the campsite screaming at the top of their lungs, it took a few
moments for Farielle and Mirabella to react to their presence. They were
very involved with each other. But, once they realized what was happening,
they were all on their feet and away, sprinting through the forest, aware of
the roar of the flames growing louder behind them. Occasionally they had
to dodge this way or that as the fire suddenly seemed to roar up to them on
one side. On a few occasions they almost looked as if they were going to be
surrounded, but one of them would spot a rapidly narrowing path or—once
—they even leapt through the flames as they grew in intensity.
Eventually they reached the edge of the forest and came to open plains.
Pausing, they turned and looked at the growing conflagration from which
they had so narrowly escaped. It was impressive.
“What in all the hells happened?” Farielle asked.
The dwarf girl and the human looked at each other and then back to their
companions.
“Well … you see …,” Kai started and then stopped, unsure of what to tell
them. She was pretty much incapable of telling a lie, but at the same time,
telling the whole truth just seemed to be impossible without essentially
blaming Sindy for the whole thing.
“There was a chamrosh,” Sindy said quickly. “It was terrifying. We only
just got away.”
She paused and looked back at the forest which was now burning fiercely.
They were just far enough away that they were able to avoid the sparks
being thrown off by the flaming trees, but even so, the grass was starting to
smoulder.
“Where are we?” Sindy asked. “Farielle? Can you work it out?”
Farielle looked around and then looked up at the sky. Stars twinkled
through the smoke.
“We’re actually quite lucky. We didn’t completely double back on
ourselves. We’re probably about ten leagues further south than we should
be, but we should be okay, I think.”
Picking up her bow, Farielle pointed in a direction that led away from the
trees.
“That way,” she said.
As they walked off feeling the heat from the fire fade away and the chill
of the night increase, Farielle paused.
“Hang on,” she said. “How did a chamrosh set everything alight?”
Kai and Sindy just kept walking.
It wasn’t a massive hill. If someone were to set off immediately after
breakfast, they would be quite capable of reaching the summit in time for a
mid-morning snack. In the grand scheme of things, it was actually quite
dull. But two things made it stand out.
Firstly, it was the only hill around for quite some distance. It stood alone
in the middle of grasslands. The nearest cover was a forest that stood a
couple of leagues away. If, once their mid-morning snack had been
consumed, someone were to stand up and look around, they would be able
to see a long way all around them and see if anyone was approaching.
Secondly, there was a huge timber wall that encircled the whole thing at
its base. At one point on that wall a gate stood, higher than the wall that
surrounded it and even more foreboding and threatening. Up on top of the
hill stood a large tower.
All of this implied very strongly that any walkers and/or snackers who
were theoretically resting and surveying the countryside from a vantage
point on top of the hill would be more likely to be surveying their own
intestines rather than anything else. Nhurthr the Orc King wanted people to
know that he was in charge, and this hill gave a very strong impression of
exactly that.
The four women lay on the ground, hopefully hidden by Farielle’s skill at
camouflage and by a small dip in the ground.
“So, what’s the plan again?” Mirabella asked, her voice tense with
anxiety. She hadn’t been entirely certain of her own part in the endeavour
before, but now, seeing the reality of where they were heading, she was
terrified almost out of her wits.
Farielle held her girlfriend’s hand as Sindy explained what they were
going to do one more time. Sindy kept her voice steady and tried to project
her own confidence but, if truth be told, seeing the hill fortress had rather
unsettled her as well. But they needed to get this woman, and this was the
only way to do it.
Once the human girl had finished explaining, Mirabella shook her head
and sighed.
“I think we’re deeply mistaken, and I think we’re all going to either die
horribly or join the Bitch in her cell”, she said.
“I still can’t believe that we’re going to try and save someone who
seriously calls herself ‘The Bitch,’” Kai said.
“She knows where the Staff is and without her we have no way of getting
to it. So, we need to rescue her. Otherwise, the Orc King gets it and then
we’re all in trouble,” Sindy said. “It may look like a long shot, but I know
that when we’re together, there is nothing we can’t do because we are
amazing women.”
Kai made a throwing up noise.
Glaring at the dwarf, Sindy said, “Let’s go. It’s now or never.”
“Can I think about those options for a minute?” Kai said, grinning as she
hefted her axe in both hands. “Okay, I’ve thought about it. Let’s go and get
this woman. She’d just better be grateful.”
Mirabella slid her lute from her back and plucked a few strings, making
sure the tuning was just right. It was a beautiful instrument—the body was
made of many different shades of wood intricately crafted together in a
beautiful swirling design while the soundboard was enamelled in dark blue
with silver stars picked out. If you stared at the soundboard for any length
of time it almost seemed like the stars were moving, the whole image
seemed to draw you in until you almost felt like you were falling into space.
Mirabella was justifiably proud of it and never let anyone else touch it.
When they rested, if she wasn’t spending time with Farielle, eating,
sleeping, or actually playing her lute, she would invariably be found
polishing it or tuning it or even just holding it, gazing at the soundboard.
She also pulled out some cotton wool from her backpack and handed it to
her friends.
“Put that in your ears when I tell you,” she said. When they had taken it,
she looked at them all one by one.
“Are we ready?” she asked.
They all nodded in affirmation, despite looking more nervous than she
had ever seen them before.
“Let’s go then. But if we all die before we even get through those gates,”
she said, “don’t blame me.”
As they got closer to the hill, Mirabella nodded to her friends. They fell
back a little and pushed the cotton wool into their ears. Farielle nocked an
arrow and kept scanning the area. Mirabella’s skills wouldn’t matter at all if
someone was too far away to hear and chose to use them for target practice.
The halfling took up her lute and started to pluck a tune.
It seemed that nobody was too worried about four young women strolling
up to their front gates. Presumably, if anyone had seen them, they thought
that either the band had a reason to be there or they would be soon turning
up on the dinner menu. The fact that one of them was playing an instrument
probably didn’t hurt their apparent harmlessness.
Reaching the gates, Mirabella changed the tune slightly, slowing it down
and slurring the notes together. Even through the padding in their ears, the
other three could feel a certain heaviness in their limbs.
“Hold it right there, girlies,” the guard said as they approached. “Jus’ who
do you—”
His question was cut off by a huge yawn that allowed the four women to
get a closer look at his huge jutting incisors than they may perhaps have
desired. They also got a gust of his foul breath in their faces. Farielle
blanched at the stench and looked like she wanted to throw up.
“Good afternoon,” said Mirabella. “We’d like you to let us in please.”
“Wha? Wha’d you mean? Let y’in?”
“Yes please,” she said, radiating sweetness and light while her fingers
nimbly played, almost seeming to move by themselves with no conscious
input from the rest of her. “And then we’ll get out of your way and you can
have a nice … long … snooze. Won’t that be nice?”
“Snoozh … Tha’s a nice ideee …”
“Snoozing is the best thing in the world. Just curling up and letting the
worries of the world disappear,” Mirabella continued. “I love to have a nap
in the afternoon. So, if you let us through, you can get right on and have
one. Nobody will disturb you.”
Turning, the orc stumbled to the wicket gate set into one of the two
massive doors. Pulling a key from a pouch on his belt he tried to fit it into
the lock. Missing, he tried again and a third time before giving up and
letting it drop. He leant against the door beside the gate and slowly
crumpled to the ground. Even before he had settled all the way down, a
snore escaped from his mouth.
Sindy stepped forward and picked up the key, going to pull out the cotton
wool from her ears as she did so.
“Not just yet,” Mirabella told her, realizing as she said it that speaking
was pretty much pointless. Instead, she just held her friend’s hand away
from her head. Getting the point, Sindy nodded and left the cotton wool
where it was, turning to the gate and sliding the key home.
Pushing the gate open with her foot, Mirabella changed her tune once
again. This time, it swirled and faded in and out. At the same time as she
strummed, she kept a steady beat on the face of the lute. Standing directly
in front of Mirabella, Sindy felt the beat wash over her, her heart
immediately following the sound. She turned around to talk to … Who was
she talking to? There was no one else here. Was there? She had a memory
of something or someone, and she knew there had been a reason for the
cotton wool in her ears, but she couldn’t for the life of her remember what it
was.
She nearly screamed when a tall, slender elf girl seemed to appear out of
nowhere and grabbed her arm, dragging her back from the gate. As soon as
she stepped forward and behind Mirabella, sight and memory flooded back
to her. Her knees went shaky, and she would have fallen to the floor if she
had not been held by Farielle.
The elf had a worried look on her face, but Sindy, shaking her head to
clear the last rapidly fading feels of muzziness, stood properly and indicated
that she was fine.
As Mirabella stepped through the gate, the other three followed, staying
as close as they dared to her, and quickly crossed the inner courtyard,
carefully stepping around the orcish soldiers on duty. Kai gripped her axe,
but at the same time, her beard shook as she shivered with fear and
trepidation. If just one single orc was able to overcome Mirabella’s playing,
they could be in deep trouble.
Reaching the far side of the courtyard, they stood before a dark tunnel
opening that led into the hill. Looking at each other, they grimaced in
acknowledgement of what they were about to do and then passed out of the
sunlight into the shadows within.
It was the darkest place that Sindy had ever been. A couple of years
previously, she had been very ill after eating fungi that she knew she should
never have touched. During her recovery, she had had fever dreams where
she had been stumbling down an endless corridor, strange noises emanating
from all around. Now, stumbling through those passages, slowly working
higher and higher up inside the hill, crouching in side passages and rooms,
trembling as unseen but loud and stinking orcs went past, when she
wondered whether she had actually left those dreams. If the last two years
had really happened—working up the courage to tell her parents that they
had a daughter rather than a son; their acceptance of her—once her mistress
had spoken to them; her mistress’s herblore that had allowed her body to
blossom into femininity; and, finally, her journeying with her friends. It was
only the firm grip that Farielle had on one arm and Kai had on her other
hand that reminded her that this was real. It was nightmarish but it was real.
Some indeterminate time later, they paused. From somewhere ahead, a
faint grey light filtered down. Although after the agonising darkness they
had endured, it seemed to Sindy that it was the brightest, most beautiful and
welcome light she had ever seen.
Unfortunately, the illumination it provided only showed a damp, dismal
corridor with several doors set into either side. Every single door was open
except for one that was held shut with a heavy iron crossbar that bit deep
into the rock on either side and was held in place with a huge padlock.
Mirabella handed her lute to Farielle and stretched her fingers. Playing
for that long had made them cramp up, but she needed them limber for the
next task ahead of her.
“Could you give me some light, please Sindy” she said. “I can’t do this
with just my dark sight.”
Sindy pulled out a torch and, speaking a single word, caused it to burst
into flame.
Rummaging in her pack, Mirabella pulled out a set of lock picks and
carefully set to work. It wasn’t a complicated lock, relying on heaviness
rather than subtlety to prevent it being opened, and as such, it didn’t take
long before there was a click and it fell into the halfling’s outstretched hand.
“Let’s hope we’ve got the right place,” she said as she twisted the
crossbar around and pulled on the door. As it opened it released a gust of
stinking, sour air from inside that made all four of them cough and blink
their eyes clear of tears.
The other side of the door was not a pretty sight. The cell inside was
barely wide enough or long enough to hold the cot that was its only
furnishing, and a stench arose from the hole in one corner. Until the door
opened and let in the light from the torch, whoever was put inside must
have lived in complete darkness, for however long they were allowed to
remain alive anyway.
The current occupant was pressed against the far wall, holding a plate as
if she was going to use it to defend herself. Or, judging from her size and
the way she rushed forward when the door was halfway open, to attack. She
slammed the door open the rest of the way and brought the plate smashing
down on Kai’s head before stopping, gaping at the sight of four young,
decidedly non-orcish women standing before her, one of them shaking her
head angrily to dislodge the shattered clay remnants from her helmet.
“Who the hells are you?” she said, her voice rusty with disuse.
“We’re here to rescue you,” Sindy said.
“You four?” she replied, disbelief evident in her voice.
“We got this far didn’t we?” Kai said, her ears still ringing from the blow.
“I guess so. Unless Nhurthr is trying something …”
“Seriously,” Farielle said. “You think that he would have the wit to come
up with something that would require four non-orcish girls? How much
intelligence does it actually take to become king of the orcs?”
“Wait? Girls? I just see three boys dressed weirdly and one halfling girl,”
the woman said.
The sound of Kai’s axe blade dropping to the floor echoed back and forth
along the corridor.
“You know what?” she said. “I could have been insulted back in
Hjammerhild. Forget her. Put her back into her cell and let’s get out of here.
She’s not worth the trouble.”
“We need her,” Sindy said. “If we are going to find the Staff we need her.
We don’t have to like her.”
“No worries there,” Kai muttered. “It’s obvious that her name is
accurate.”
“You’re going after the Staff?” the woman said. “Maybe I will just stay in
there. Nhurthr may be stupid but he isn’t suicidal.”
“Or maybe he just doesn’t know that you know where it is.” Sindy said.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Farielle said. “But I don’t think that we should stand
around here for too much longer. I think someone may have heard Kai just
then.”
“Hells,” the woman said. “Okay. We’ll discuss what you are later. How
are we getting out of here?”
“Yeah. Later. Like there’s anything to discuss,” Kai said, although as she
said it, she also lifted her axe into a position of readiness.
As she spoke, a shout came from back down the passage.
“That’s the only way out, isn’t it?” Mirabella said.
“What about your lute?” Sindy asked. “Can’t you make us invisible or
put them to sleep again?”
“They know we’re here. It only works if they aren’t on their guard
against us,” Mirabella said
“Damnation,” said Sindy. “That’s going to make things a little more
complicated.”
“When you came in here, didn’t you have a plan for getting out again?”
the woman asked.
“Yes,” said Sindy. “But it rather relied on the orcs not knowing we were
here.”
“Because that always works.”
At that moment, an arrow zipped out of the darkness and embedded itself
in the door above Kai’s head. All five of them scrambled to get behind the
door. Farielle unlimbered her bow and returned fire. A scream showed that
she was more accurate than the orcs.
“This is going well,” the woman said.
“Shut up,” Sindy said. “Let me think for a moment.”
The woman went back into her cell and sat against the wall.
“Goddess, you really are a bitch, aren’t you?” Kai said.
“Haven’t you heard? I’m not a bitch. I’m the Bitch.”
“Fine. Whatever.”
“Will you two please be quiet,” Sindy said. She stood, staring at the walls
of the cell.
“Whatever you are doing, can you please hurry it up?” Farielle said. “I’m
rapidly running out of arrows.”
Her gaze fixed on the wall furthest away from the door, Sindy spoke,
seemingly ignoring Farielle. “Kai?” she said, “You’re good with stones and
rocks. Is there a weak point in this wall?”
For a brief moment, the dwarf considered making a clever comment
about stereotypes but, probably wisely, decided that this was not the best
time for it. And anyway, Sindy wasn’t wrong. Kai wasn’t just “good” with
stones and rocks. She was brilliant with stones and rocks and she was very
proud of her abilities. It may not have been very “girlish” for her to know
this stuff—only gkran were allowed to learn the ways of stonecraft—but
she had always been very, very good. Her father had been so proud of her
and talked confidently of her future status in the mines. That was when he
had spoken of her, of course. She was certain that her name—neither the
one her parents had given her when she had been born nor the one she had
taken when she had revealed her true self to the mine—was ever spoken in
her family any more. She suspected that they would both be noted in the
lore books as names of ill repute and never given to another dwarf ever
again.
Pulling a smallish pickaxe from her belt, she went up to the wall and
examined it, tapping a couple of spots here and there.
“I’ve got five …” There was a brief pause. “… Four arrows left,” Farielle
said, sounding more than a little worried.
The Bitch held Kai’s axe in one hand, tossing and catching it as she
prepared herself. Mirabella had pulled her sword from its scabbard. There
was a time for lute playing and there was a time for stabbing and slashing.
She was pretty sure she knew which was which.
Kai tapped a spot again and then once more before she struck as hard as
she could, embedding the head of the pick deep into the wall.
“There,” she said simply.
“Good,” Sindy said. “Right, all of you, get back. Maybe into another cell
if you can.”
“What exactly are you going to do?” Kai asked.
“I’m not completely sure … Can you make that hole a bit bigger for me
though?”
Kai dug away at the weak spot making the hole larger.
“I’m down to my last arrow. We’re all going to die. Just thought you
should know that,” Farielle said.
“Get back. Take cover,” Sindy said. Lifting her arms, she started to chant,
quietly at first but growing louder as she continued. As she spoke, the torch
in her hand grew brighter until suddenly it exploded in a gout of flame and
sparks, leaving her holding a column of bare fire burning by itself.
The other four looked at one another and ran as one across the open
passageway into an open cell opposite, pulling the door shut behind them.
The orcs, seeing this and utterly failing to understand the meaning of the
growing light from the cell into which they had placed the Bitch, judged
this to be their moment of triumph and ran forward screaming.
They reached the cell just as the final syllables of Sindy’s spell fell into
place, launching all the energy she had been gathering at the spot that Kai
had indicated. The cell wall held for a moment before cracking and
exploding outward. A backwash of super-heated air rolled out of the cell,
scouring the corridor clean. Where a moment before there had been a crowd
of orcs all jostling for position, now there was nothing apart from a few
scraps of twisted, molten iron.
For a few moments, everything was silent apart from the pinging of
cooling stone. Then, with a creak and a crunch, the door to the cell in which
the four women had hidden themselves was shoved outwards, falling from
it’s now twisted frame to the floor. They looked out, across the passageway
and into the cell opposite. The doorway now framed a view of the clear blue
sky. A breeze blew in, caressing their faces, already helping to dispel the
smell of the inside of the orcish stronghold.
“What did she do?” Mirabella said, awed and slightly terrified.
“Where is she?” Kai asked.
The Bitch pointed. “There.”
Apparently entirely unharmed apart from a profound lack of
consciousness, Sindy lay in the middle of the cell, a light coating of ash and
dust covering her from head to toe. As Mirabella got closer to her friend,
she saw that, actually, Sindy wasn’t entirely unharmed. The palm of her left
hand, the one in which she had held the torch, was red and blistered.
“You’re going to need this,” The Bitch said, handing Kai back her axe
before moving past the halfling and, not entirely ungently, picking up Sindy.
She looked tiny in the larger woman’s arms.
“We need to go. We’ve still got to get away from here,” she added.
Scrambling through the hole, they found themselves standing about
halfway up the hillside. The force of the explosion had wrecked much of
the hill around them, and rubble had even showered down and smashed
open part of the surrounding wall. They didn’t need any discussion to hurl
themselves headlong down and out onto the plains. Even without any
obvious signs of pursuit they didn’t stop until they reached the edge of the
forest.
Once under cover of the trees, they stopped and almost fell to the ground.
Even Farielle was covered in sweat.
“We can’t rest for long,” Mirabella said. “Come dusk they will have
trackers out after us.”
“That’s if they bother,” Farielle replied. “They can’t think that anyone
survived that explosion. Surely they will be more worried about patching up
that hole?”
“We can’t take the chance. We have to keep moving. We need to get
Sindy to a healer.”
“Yeah, this one’s too valuable to let die. I mean, if he wakes up, I’m
going to have to think about keeping him around,” The Bitch said with
admiration evident in her voice.
Kai wheeled around and shoved the flat of her axe head underneath The
Bitch’s chin.
“Before we go any further—and this is not open for any conversation or
discussion either now or in the future—she is a woman. Her name is Sindy,
and you do not refer to her as ‘him’ or ‘he’ or anything else like that. If you
have a problem with that, then you have a problem with me, and that really
will be a problem.”
“Hey … whoa there …,” The Bitch said, holding her arms up in total
surrender. “It’s no problem at all. Not for me. I’m sorry—I really didn’t
realize. I’ve been told more than once that I must be a man. I know how
horrible it is. She’s a woman. You’re all women. And really capable ones at
that. I should thank you for rescuing me. I don’t actually know what
Nhurthr’s plans were but they won’t have been nice.”
“Yes … well … That’s okay then. Just don’t forget,” Kai said.
“And you can thank us by taking us to the Staff,” Mirabella added.
“Really? You really want to get that thing?” The Bitch asked.
“Definitely,” Farielle said.
The Bitch looked around at them and then smiled and nodded.
“I like you,” she said. “You’re my kind of women. Let’s get Sindy sorted
out and then let’s go and get this Goddess-damned Staff. I haven’t fought a
demon in ages.”
She got to her feet and picked up the human girl once again. The other
three followed suit and then, following Farielle, they disappeared further
into the forest.
The Knighting
ALEXA FAE MCDANIEL
D
aphne was used to blood. She was used to the smell, which was much
better out here in the fresh air than it was in the infirmary, where it
intermingled with the smell of bedpans that needed to be emptied. She was
used to being careful not to slip on blood coated stone tiles, which was a
non-issue out here on the sand of the riverfront. She was even used to
seeing bodies in such large numbers, like the dozens now scattered across
the beach. She just wasn’t used to seeing her hero bleeding, unconscious,
and deathly pale. Ever since childhood, Thais had been her idol—strong in
ways that Daphne could never be. Thais was the first woman in Epirus ever
to be knighted, a renowned warrior never bested in single combat. The three
corpses surrounding her probably hadn’t given that kind of fight.
Breaking out of her shock, Daphne stepped down from her carriage and
placed a hand near Thais’s mouth to check for breath. She could feel a weak
current of warm air.
She still had time.
Daphne carefully hoisted the knight into the carriage, where two other
wounded soldiers already lay. There was space for one or two more, but the
longer she tarried, the less chance Thais and the other soldiers had for
recovery. With a sigh and a frown, Daphne stepped up into the carriage and
took hold of the reins.
When they arrived at the infirmary, Daphne carried Thais in first. When
Daphne set her down on one of the cots, the growing red stains on the
sheets gave an indication of just how quickly the knight was bleeding. One
of the infirmary apprentices hurried over carrying a roll of gauze. “Tend to
Sir Thais. Right now, please,” Daphne said to him, before rushing back to
the carriage to carry the others in.
At some point, the sun had risen. Daphne wasn’t quite sure when. She
had lost count of the wounded that she had brought in over her multiple
trips—at least two, maybe three dozen, not counting the ones who had been
well enough to walk themselves to the infirmary. Even once everyone had
been brought to a cot, her work wasn’t done; she was the second-most
senior physician available. She had passed the point of feeling hungry and
into the territory of gnawing pain in her abdomen—there were too many
patients for her to have a chance to eat more than an apricot, which had
done little more than whet her appetite. Still, the end of her ordeal was in
sight. Those with minor injuries had all been sent home, and most of the
severely injured patients had been given emergency treatment and were
now resting. For most of them, further procedures such as surgery or having
thei bones set would need to wait until Aceso was available, and as the only
competent fleshsculptor in the city, she had a long line. All Daphne had to
do at this point was eat and keep an eye on the patients in precarious
conditions.
As Daphne made her rounds checking on the various wounded, she
passed Aceso.
“I’ll be in the surgeon’s quarters tending to Sir Eos. Make sure I’m not
interrupted. By the way, your shoulders are tensed,” she said to Daphne.
But before Daphne could respond Aceso kept walking.
Daphne pulled in her shoulders, making them seem smaller and less
prominent. Even in the middle of a crisis, Aceso nagged her about how she
carried herself. Still, at least the fleshsculptor practised what she preached
—even as Aceso made her way to the surgeon’s quarters she walked with
poise and grace. That was the main reason Daphne bothered to listen to her
advice at all—no one ever questioned that Aceso was a woman. She spoke
with a woman’s register, she moved in a woman’s gait, and she regularly
practised her own magic on herself in order to keep herself in a state of
perpetual youth and beauty. She and Daphne may well have been the only
ones in the world who knew just how much work she put into her
appearance.
Daphne was less sure of how she’d find the energy to carry herself like
that when she had so many patients to watch over. Thais was one of those
patients. She still couldn’t quite believe that. Yet there she was, the mighty
knight with a broken collarbone, several broken ribs, and a terrible cut on
her left thigh that had caused most of her blood loss. Even though Thais
was stable and occasionally lucid, Daphne needed to check on her for a
fever or poor circulation every so often in case one of the apprentices had
wrapped the bandage too tight or hadn’t disinfected the wound sufficiently.
Daphne felt along Thais’s shin, below the bandage. It was warm to the
touch and covered in coarse brown hairs. Although Daphne didn’t
particularly want leg hair, she was still a bit envious that Thais didn’t have
to spend so much time and energy doing little, meaningless things like
shaving. Aceso would have been aghast if Daphne went so much as a few
days without taking half an hour to shave her legs.
“Do you normally take so long feeling patient’s legs?” Thais asked,
tilting her head a bit off her pillow to look over at Daphne.
“Sorry. I was just, uh, checking your circulation. One of the apprentices
had wrapped your last bandage poorly, so I wanted to make sure that this
one was alright. How do you feel?”
“A bit like I was hit with an axe a few times. I can’t possibly imagine
why.”
“That’s to be expected. How do you feel as far as your temperature goes?
Too hot, too cold?” Daphne asked as she felt Thais’s forehead.
“No such thing as too hot, but I will admit that if anybody were, it’d be
me.” Thais clicked her tongue as she winked at Daphne, though even the
simple facial movement was clearly taking quite a bit of effort. As far as
Daphne could tell, Thais didn’t have a fever, and though that sort of flirting
would have normally made Daphne a bit warm herself, Thais’s pallor
somewhat lessened the effect.
“That’s good to hear. Alright, you seem to be recovering well enough.
Sorry that I can’t stay to keep you company, but I’d best go check on some
of the other patients.”
“Fine. It’s not like I’m going anywhere.”
As Daphne turned, a woman approached her carrying a
compartmentalised golden case holding at least a dozen scrolls. Before
Daphne could greet her, the woman turned to Thais, hardly giving Daphne a
glance as she removed a scroll from the case and laid it on the bedridden
knight’s lap. “Sir Thais. It is my honour to present you with your invitation
to tonight’s feast in celebration of our victory on the shores of the river
Arachthos.” Despite the formality of the words themselves, she spoke with
a rather bored tone as though reading froma particularly dry script.
“As long as Miticus is cooking, I’m happy to be there. Thank you,
Isadora.” Thais said without so much as lifting her head off of her pillow.
“My pleasure, Sir Thais.” She said, before turning on her heels and
looking Daphne up and down. “Now, not to be rude, but which one are
you?”
It was a question that Daphne heard some variation of several times a
day. When she had gone to Aceso in order to look more feminine, the
fleshsculptor prescribed that Daphne model the exact same sort of
femininity that she did. Eternal youth, silky uncut hair only at the top of her
head, and a face exactly like the Queen’s when she was young. “Everyone
knows that Queen Eurydice of Epirus is the most beautiful woman in the
world,” Aceso had said to her, “and since we must be beautiful, we must
look like her.” Daphne never looked exactly like Eurydice—the Queen was
already more than fifty years old when Daphne came out as a woman, and
Aceso insisted on using a portrait of a much younger Queen as a model—
but she did look exactly like the fleshsculptor, who was herself following
the same beauty regimen even though Aceso was the same age as the Queen
herself.
“Sorry, I’m Daphne. If you’re looking for Aceso, I’m afraid you may
need to wait until she’s finished with her current patient.”
“No, you’re the one I’m looking for,” the woman said as she procured a
scroll with the Queen’s seal. “Daphne, daughter of Kassandra, it is my
honour to present you with your invitation to tonight’s feast, where you are
to be dubbed a knight before the Queen’s court. I advise that you arrive
early so that you may be briefed on how to conduct yourself during the
ceremony.”
Before Daphne could respond, Thais interrupted, “Fantastic! Good for
you, welcome to the club, Sir Daphne!”
Daphne was too caught off guard to feign celebration. “Don’t call me
that, please,” she said, almost without thinking. Thais and Isadora both gave
her an odd look as she reddened. “Sorry. I, just, um … why? If I may ask, I
mean, I didn’t … I didn’t really do anything in the battle, is all.”
“It is my understanding, and the understanding of the Queen, that you
were instrumental in rescuing a number of knights and militia members. Is
this not the case?”
Thais interrupted again before Daphne could respond. “That is absolutely
the case. Come on, Daphne, you deserve it. You saved me and who knows
how many other people. That’s more than most of us did to get knighted.”
Thais and Isadora both looked at Daphne in expectation for a moment as
she tried to find the words to respond. “Right, yes, of course, I suppose I
did. And it’d be foolish not to accept such an honour from the Queen. Ah, if
you’ll excuse me, I need to go tend to some of my other patients.” Daphne
bowed her head slightly as she quickly made her way to another room,
invitation in hand. This was too much for her to process right in front of a
knight and the Queen’s seneschal.
It was almost noon by the time Daphne and Aceso could both take a
break at the same time. Daphne had been making a point of tending to the
patients just outside of Aceso’s office so that she might sneak a word in one
of the few short breaks that Aceso took to have a bite to eat, and as soon as
she saw the fleshsculptor head into her office, Daphne was quick to follow.
“Uh, sorry, do you have a moment? There’s something I’d like to discuss
with you.”
“Of course, dear, what do you need?” Aceso asked, giving a small smile.
Daphne couldn’t help but feel that Aceso was lying, making time that she
didn’t have. Still, Daphne continued.
“The Queen’s seneschal was here. I think her name was Isadora? She
gave me this.”
Daphne passed the invitation to Aceso, who took a moment to read it.
First her smile widened, but it disappeared as she read further down the
page. “Oh. I’m sorry, dear. This must be quite a bit for you to process.”
As often as Aceso’s little assumptions about how Daphne felt at any
given moment were irritating, they were sometimes right. Daphne gave a
nod.
“Well,” Aceso said, setting the invitation on her desk. “We don’t really
have much time to think of a response, do we? Do you plan on going?”
“I have to, don’t I? It’s the Queen, I don’t really think I have a choice.”
“Of course you have a choice. You are absolutely permitted to refuse. I
can even say that I need you here, tending to patients, if you like. If you do
refuse, however, it’s polite to at least respond, and she’ll likely keep trying
to arrange a knighting ceremony unless you explain the situation to her.”
“If I decide not to be knighted, you mean.”
“I would advise against accepting the offer. ‘Sir’ isn’t exactly the most
feminine title.”
“I don’t know. I mean, it’s an honour, isn’t it? And there are other women
who are knights, aren’t there?”
“Three lady-knights aren’t exactly enough to change how masculine the
word is. People will go to the castle and see knights and expect them to be
men until they take their helmets off.”
“I suppose so. It just, I don’t know, seems like a bit of a waste to turn
down this sort of opportunity.”
Aceso sighed as she stepped forward to clasp Daphne’s hands in her own.
“Daphne, dear, I just don’t want you to be hurt, is all. And being called Sir
every day, several times a day … I certainly wouldn’t be keen on it.” Before
waiting for Daphne’s reply, Aceso started toward the door, glancing back as
she did. “In any case, think about it some more while we tend to the
wounded, yes? It wouldn’t be at all a stretch of imagination to say that you
needed to stay here and work tonight.”
“Thank you,” Daphne began, but the fleshsculptor was already out the
door and tending to patients. She supposed that she ought to do the same.
Thais in particular needed her attention, now that Daphne knew that she
was likely going to be back on her feet by nighttime. Sighing, Daphne made
her way from Aceso’s office and back toward the infirmary proper.
“Excited?” Thais asked as soon as Daphne stepped into her chamber.
Daphne gave a small smile and thought about giving a white lie of an
answer. Thais certainly seemed excited, and Daphne didn’t want to dampen
the knight’s spirit. Still, her face would probably have given it away sooner
or later. “Not really. Sorry.”
“Hey, that’s alright. Usually I’m not either. It’s all so formal and boring,
and the Queen Euridice gives these excruciatingly long speeches. But still,
the food’s fantastic, and you’re getting knighted! You’re the toast of the
town, so enjoy it while it lasts, yeah?”
“Uh, that’s not really it. I mean, honestly after the really busy day and a
half I’ve had, a nice boring dinner would be welcome. It’s just, um … I’m
not really sure how I feel about being called Sir and all,” Daphne said with
a sigh as she sat down at the foot of the bed.
“Oh.” Silence hung in the air for a moment as Thais tried to figure out
how to best respond. “I mean, I get called Sir all the time. It’s not really a
gendered thing anymore.”
“Um, I’m sorry, it’s just that… You know, just because there’s a couple of
knights who are women doesn’t make the word feel less masculine, right?
Does that make sense?”
“Not really. Or at least, I don’t get it. But if it bothers you, then it bothers
you, I guess. Is there anything I can do to help, maybe?”
Daphne shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m still sorting through all of this in
my head. Is there any way I can be knighted without being called a Sir?”
“I don’t think so? I mean, maybe, I don’t know—nobody’s ever asked
that before.”
“Well, nobody had ever thought to knight a woman at all before, so
maybe we can change it?”
Thais shifted a bit. “That wouldn’t change my title, would it? They
wouldn’t just make up a new title for women? They almost gave me the title
of Lady while they were deciding how to go about my dubbing, but I wasn’t
really keen on having a different title than the other knights. Besides, if they
give you a different title, people are less likely to think of knights as
women. People already assume I’m a man if I’m wearing full armour,
unless it’s that terrible molded breastplate that Lysander made me.”
Daphne tried not to make a face as the prospect of being dubbed became
less and less appealing, but before she could respond, Thais cut her off.
“I mean, you’d be fine! People would definitely know that you’re a
woman, you wouldn’t even have to wear armour. Except during ceremonies
sometimes, but you wouldn’t need to wear a helmet and you could even
wear that armour with the breasts. Just, you know, don’t wear it into an
actual battle, it’s way too heavy and I don’t expect it would actually protect
you much.”
“Thais, I really don’t think that this is a good idea. I’m sorry.”
“Come on, please? There’s only me, Sir Helen, and Sir Lysistrata right
now. This is a big deal, and you’d help, you know. You’d be breaking
assumptions about who can or can’t be a knight.”
“You’re already doing that.”
“Sure, but you’d help. The more of us there are the better.”
“It’s a lot easier for you, Thais. People just know that you’re a woman. I
have to prove it every day! You had nothing to lose from this. I’m sorry, but
I can’t do it.”
“You’re losing right now! Not just a feast, but Euridice will probably
even give you land, or some other sort of gift. You’ll just throw that all
away for nothing?”
“It’s not nothing.” Daphne’s stomach knotted as she realized that she
wouldn’t be able to make Thais understand. But Daphne did understand—
having to voice her objections to the idea had helped her understand how
she felt. Helped her understand that no matter how much she admired
Thais, she couldn’t be her. Daphne cleared her throat and stood. “Thank you
for listening, and for caring. But I think I know what I need to do.”
With that, she made her way back to Aceso’s office, where the
fleshsculptor was cleaning her surgical supplies. “Ah, Daphne. How can I
help you, dear?”
“Do you think that I could borrow some parchment? I’ve decided to write
a letter to the Queen.”
Aceso smiled, setting down the knive in her hand and walking over to her
desk, where she pulled out the chair and gestured toward it. “It’s all yours.
Would you like me to vouch that you’re needed here tonight?”
Daphne thought about it for a moment, then shook her head. “No. I think
I know what I need to say.”
Undoing Vampirism
LILAH STURGES
T
hank you all so much for coming. It’s not always easy to find a venue
for a talk entitled “Undoing Vampirism.” Usually the only people who
show up are stoned college kids, undiscriminating social justice warriors,
and a few angry goths who sit in the back and glare.
I know what it sounds like, “Undoing Vampirism.” I suppose I could
change the name, but I feel that it’s important to be honest, especially given
the subject matter. I admit that it’s a doozy, and it’s likely going to be very
hard for you to accept, so I implore you to keep an open mind as I explain.
We are vampires. Everyone in this room. And before you start thinking it,
I don’t mean metaphorically. I mean that we are, each of us, literal bloodsucking, undead creatures of the night.
I’ll take a moment to let that sink in.
Perhaps you think I’m joking. This is not a joke. Perhaps you think this is
some kind of performance piece. It isn’t. I’m looking out at this room and I
can very clearly see your blood-soaked fangs. I can see that some of you in
the back have turned into bats and are hovering to get a better view. I can
see this woman right here, blithely imagining that she is drinking a … what
are you drinking, ma’am? Okay, well, what you’re actually drinking is the
warm, pulsing lifeblood from a still breathing human child.
Allow me to respond to what I’m sure is your first objection. You are
thinking, “I am not a vampire.” You are thinking, “I do not have bloodsoaked fangs.” You are thinking, “I am not a bat.” You are thinking, “I am
drinking a margarita, not the blood of a child.”
To respond to your objection, I’m afraid I’ve got to give a brief history
lesson. Back in the olden days, humans rightly hated and feared us. In
response, we learned to hypnotize them, to make them believe that we were
not their predators: instead we were their friends, lovers, protectors.
Whatever would get them reclining with their necks exposed rather than
coming at us with torches and pitchforks.
It was a brilliant idea and a successful one. And over time, we realized
that an even more beneficial strategy would be to mesmerize the entire
human race into believing that there were no vampires at all, that we were a
myth. Such that even as the fangs enter the carotid, they would swear that
we are anything other than what we are.
It was an overwhelming success. Humanity’s permanent bamboozlement,
coupled with the invention of high SPF sunscreen, meant that the world
became a twenty-four hour buffet for our kind. We were safe, unburnt, and
very, very well fed.
But as the bodies began piling up in ever-greater numbers a problem
arose. And I don’t mean the smell, which was bad. The sight of all that
gratuitous death, the blood and gore running into the gutters, and oh so
many flies, began having a deeply insalubrious effect on us. Where once
our status as badass, sensitive creatures of the night allowed us to ignore the
truth about our nature, it was now abundantly clear: we are parasites. We
contribute nothing, we give back nothing. We are the authors of a suffering
that is greater than anyone can bear, and we do not have the moral courage
to give our victims a voice or even an awareness of how deeply they suffer.
We could have done something then to fix the problem. But we’re
vampires. That’s not what we do. We went the other direction. We
hypnotized ourselves. We made ourselves believe that we were also human.
We became indifferent to the stacks of corpses, insensate to the reek of
decomposing flesh, and most importantly, blissfully unaware of our
authorship of it all.
And that brings us to the present. We go merrily on with our lives,
gorging on blood and calling it McDonalds, or phô, or a craft cocktails. It’s
all the same. It’s all blood. But we no longer feel the breath of our victims
on our cheeks. We step over their bodies without a second thought. We no
longer feel the awesomeness of death; we have turned the extinguishing of
a human soul into a forgettable Subway footlong.
This is hell, folks, and we are the demons.
Now, understandably, you’re not feeling great about this and you want to
protest that it’s entirely false. You might be asking, “How do you know all
this?” You might pointedly be wondering, “How are you so woke when the
rest of us are just stumbling through the world like our presumed undead
cousins, the zombies?”
I know all of this, oddly, because I’m transgender. I am a transgender
vampire. Or, as we refer to ourselves, a “transpire.”
I knew that I was different from a very early age but I couldn’t say just
how. I knew I was more sensitive, more aware of certain things, but I
thought there was just something very dark and beautiful about me,
something that wanted to cling to the shadows and hide from the sun.
When I was young I didn’t have the language to describe how I felt. I
only knew that I wanted to be around girls and do the things they did. I
mean, I also wanted to bite them and drain their blood, but I realized even
then that the desires to be a girl and to eat them were unconnected—I
wanted to eat everyone, regardless of gender.
It wasn’t until many years later that I saw Lana Wachowski’s beautiful
HRC Visibility Award acceptance speech, in which she looks every inch
like the Vampire Queen she literally is, that I became aware of the fact that
I, too, was transgender. It hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks, and I
knew that I was a woman. Still human, I believed at the time, but a woman.
It wasn’t until I came out as trans last year, though, that I began to realize
the other truth about myself.
Once the world started seeing me as trans, I began to be treated
differently. I was seen as different, as other, as less than. And that was when
I began to notice something very odd. When people misgendered me, called
me “sir” even though I had tits and was wearing a dress, I started noticing a
certain pointedness of tooth in their fake smiles.
Likewise, when someone in a bar stared openly at me, I began to notice
that their pint glass was full of something other than beer, something darker
and more pungent.
But it wasn’t until a man followed me into a ladies room and dragged me
out by my arm, and I noticed the crusted blood cascading down the front of
his shirt, that the illusion dropped for good. I saw it all. I saw it clearly, and
everywhere, and forever.
The world you are not seeing is vile. It is grotesque. Trust me when I say
that you do not want to see it. But you must. If you want to be aware of the
truth, you must. If you want to have anything like a conscience remaining to
you, you must. If you want this world to survive, you must.
Because we cannot go on very long living in a charnel house. We cannot
thrive if our home is an abattoir. We’re going to have to do something. We
are going to have to get our hands dirty. We are going to have to get to work
and start doing something about all the bodies.
But most of all, we have to admit that we are vampires. We have to admit
that we’re the ones doing it. We have to admit that we have done evil in this
world and that this evil is bigger than any one of us but the responsibility of
all of us.
I’m going to assume that anyone still remaining is starting to suspect the
truth about themselves, is starting to run their tongue along their upper teeth
and feel for the needle-like evidence, is starting to feel certain unpleasant
thoughts and memories and desires bubbling to the fore.
And at this point, you are probably wondering how we make the change.
How can our self-hypnosis be undone? How do we cease the ceaseless
carnage? How do we keep our world from becoming unlivable, even for we
who are technically dead?
It starts with honesty. It starts with admitting the truth about ourselves. So
what I want everyone here to do is say along with me, “I am a vampire, I
drink the blood of children, and sometimes I am a bat.” So listen again and
let me repeat that so you can all get it: “I am a vampire, I drink the blood of
children, and sometimes I am a bat.” Okay, so now let’s all say it together:
“I am a vampire, I drink the blood of children, and sometimes I am a bat.”
How does that feel? How does it feel to finally be admitting the truth, to
accept just a little responsibility for who you are and what you’ve done? It
feels good, right?
Listen, it’s not going to be easy. It’s going to take time. You’re going to
want to forget about all of this, and you probably will at first. You’ll go
back to your old habits; you’ll go back to carelessly tearing out the throats
of passersby on the street. But you won’t feel great about it anymore.
Something in the back of your mind will nag at you, taking all the fun out
of it. And eventually you’ll find yourselves here, where I’m standing,
realizing that a change is long overdue.
And for those of you who don’t believe a word of this, who think I’m just
a wacky transgender doing some kind of art piece, I have to say, I pity you.
Because you’ve cut yourself off from what you truly are. You ape humanity,
but you are not human. Your empathy is a sham. Your commitment to peace
and justice is an obscene joke. Until you are willing to accept that you are a
fucking Dracula, you are never going to be able to live seriously or
authentically. You will always be ensnared by this lie we’ve all woven
around ourselves.
So wake up, folks. Wake up before we’re all drowning in blood. Not that
we can literally drown, because we’re immortal, but it’s still a powerful
metaphor.
I appreciate your listening. Try to enjoy the rest of the show, and please,
please tip your waitresses. They work hard and, judging by the hunger in a
lot of your eyes, they’ll all be dead soon.
Thank you.
i shall remain
KAI CHENG THOM
“The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of
happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know
where they are going, the ones who walk away”—Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk
Away From Omelas”
d
awn has just begun to crawl into the sky, its colours flaring orange,
violet, and green through the smog, when the warlord arrives at my
temple by sea. Selen, my gorgon, hisses and uncoils her enormous body
from where she is wrapped around one of the unfallen pillars in my sleeping
chamber. her serpent mane froths, a hundred forked tongues testing the air
in anticipation. but Selen does not need to warn me. i know he is here.
it has been so long since my last supplicant that my skin has gone hard
and cracked, like clay left out in the sun. scales rain down from my headtails as i rise from the lichen-covered dais where i have lain for the past
three moon cycles. the sound of the warlord’s motorcade echoes off the cliff
walls into which my temple is etched. i can hear only a few engines—three
or four at most, which is unsurprising. even warlords fear being known to
visit me.
i cross the stone room and stand before my altar, Selen at my side. she
licks my hand as i caress her absently. gingerly, i lift the box of beaten
metal and seashell on the altar and slide back its lid ever so slightly. Light—
life—flares within, and i snatch it, this morsel of soft, shimmering essence,
between my long sharp fingernails. this is the last. i have saved it all this
long while, denying myself, in anticipation of this day. no matter. it shall
soon be replenished a thousand times over.
throwing my head back, i drop the shred of essence into my open jaw.
warmth floods through my body, down my throat and into my gullet. in that
moment, i am, briefly, everything—the roaring of the ocean, the sting of the
salt. i am the sky and the screaming drones that fly beneath it. i am the sunblasted earth and the spined plants that take root within.
the euphoria of the essence fades, but its replenishing effect does not. my
skin is as fresh and moist as the day i was first called into Being in the
Shining City. my scales, fully restored, are iridescent, bright as stars. my
head-tails are long and supple. sensing my transformation, the surge of my
Divinity, Selen purrs and rubs her body against mine in ecstasy.
i smile, revelling in the sensation. for in rare moments like this, my
Divinity is for no one else—not for Shining Daddy, not for any supplicant
—it is just for me.
i walk the cavernous expanse of the chamber, skirting broken statues and
toppled pillars as i go. i step out onto the once-majestic ziggurat carved into
the cliff in which my temple was made.
ascending the steps from the beach is the warlord, dressed in raiments of
red and black leather and silver metal. from his colours, i discern that he is
the greatest warlord in the region—the one to whom other warlords pay
tribute in food and oil and labour and other such affairs in which i have
little interest. he is the one the others fear. on the sand below wait his
guards, a lonely pair of them, and sworn to secrecy on pain of death, no
doubt.
i stand and wait. Selen towers on all fours behind me, her serpent mane
writhing and spraying venom into the air.
he reaches the top of the ziggurat, one step below mine, and stops. he
pulls off his war-mask—an ugly, crudely wrought thing—and i see that his
face is weathered and lined. he is old in the years of those who dwell
Below, but his body is muscled and strong. in his eyes, i see the deaths of
all those he has killed, an unending vision of slaughter. i hear their screams,
their pleas for mercy. i hear the threats this man, this Below-dwelling
creature, has uttered in the dark.
in his hands, i see the blood he has spilled, the bodies he has beaten and
torn apart. these are hands soaked in the stories of violence, hands that
could break open a creature such as i, fragile as i have become since
Shining Daddy forsook me.
his eyes wander over my naked body, my shining scales and head-tails,
my bare breasts and phallus. hunger sparks within him, and wonder, and
fear, and greed.
kneel before me, i say, and he does.
in the Shining City, i wanted for nothing. i had power, and grace, and
wisdom beyond measure. i was Best Beloved, Daddy’s Delight, preferred
child of the Shining Father by whose Divinity we are all called into Being.
i had many names, then, and titles too, though even i have forgotten most
of them by now. i tended His garden and His creatures and drew His
chariot. i built great monuments of crystal and coral and shimmering nacre
in testament to His glory. i delivered His judgments to the dwellers Below,
and they looked at me in terror and awe. all this was mine, and more.
my highest honour, however, was the time i spent each evening in the
uppermost tower of the Shining City. there, i and i alone attended to Shining
Daddy. there, i performed the duty that i loved the most: i sang for Him the
songs of Creation. i sang with the voice that He had given me, the voice that
sounded like the light of His Divinity piercing the darkness of the Void for
the first time. i was that light, that sound, that colour, that song. no other in
all of Creation had been given a voice such as mine. every night, i sat upon
His lap and sang my heart out for Him.
it would be a lie to say that i don’t still miss those nights, sometimes.
He took my singing voice away when i left the City. what Shining Daddy
gives to you, Shining Daddy can take back. this is not a punishment, He
said at the time. for I do not punish my children. even as you abandon me,
you must know that I love you still.
but he took it away, all the same.
the warlord kneels at the mouth of my temple and performs the ritual
sacrament, a hodgepodge of prayerful words and gestures that he does not
know the meaning of. likely he learned it from a Below-dwelling priest or
sage, some mumbler of fables and mythic half-truths.
i take the offering from his outstretched hand, a jangle of metal coins and
jewels and computer circuitry. a small fortune to those who live and die
Below, but nothing to me except that it is a sacrifice. it is something that is
given up for something granted in return. this, the most ancient of
sacraments, still holds power in the Below.
i put a hand to his chin and raise him to his feet. taking him by the hand, i
lead him back into the temple, the gorgon hissing at our heels. he tries not
to react but cannot help recoiling from Selen ever so slightly, which pleases
me. powerful men should have something to fear.
we enter the shadowy cavern of the temple’s inner chamber. the warlord
cannot see in the dark, but i smile. i love this next part.
raising my arms in the air, i rasp a long, guttural sound that rends the air
and makes the warlord shudder. my days of song may be over, but my voice
has some power in it still. behind us, Selen rises on her hind legs and croons
in harmony.
on the wall all around us, bioluminescent mosses and algae flare to
glowing, blue-green life. the lichens growing on my dais alight as well. the
effect is satisfyingly dramatic, and the warlord is suitably impressed. i turn
to him, standing at my full height, and drink in his frightened wonder.
bare yourself, i say to him, and he does, scrabbling at his garments like a
child ordered by its parents to bathe. in moments, he is naked, and though
his body is heavily muscled and criss-crossed with battle scars, he is
boyishly shy, shifting from one foot to the other. so much the better. he will
not think to try any violence against me, to seize against my will what i am
not prepared to give.
i am one of the lucky ones. there are others like me in the Below, fallen
children of the Shining City, who have no temple to sleep in, no gorgon to
guard them. when i left Shining Daddy’s side, i took with me the vestiges of
the great power that his favour afforded me: the powers of creation,
transformation, and healing.
I was the first, the first that Shining Daddy called into Being and also the
first to leave him. many of those who have since followed me were not so
favoured, and so they brought less power with them into the world Below.
those few of us whose Divinity remained intact enough to do so created
temples and monuments on the edges of the society of Below-dwellers,
drawing them in with our powers of glamour. we took our great familiar
daemons from the City with us as guides and guardians, relying upon them
to keep us safe from the violence of those Below-dwellers who sought to
destroy or enslave us.
but the greater part of my ex-Shining siblings had been granted no
daemon familiars in the first place. their powers of Divinity had been small
in the Shining City and are smaller still Below. unable to reshape the
elements at will and without guardians to protect them, these members of
my brethren are forced to wander the murky depths of the Below with only
meagre enchantments for protection.
they wander from city to city seeking offerings and sacrifice, seeking
essence from the dwellers Below. sometimes they receive it, for there are
dwellers who still know the true meaning of Divinity.
but sometimes, marked as monsters by their wings, scales, tentacles, and
other physical features uncommon to the Below-dwellers, they are often
attacked and hunted down, tortured and slain. some are forced to endure
such agonies of physical labour as have never been known within the ivory
walls of the Shining City.
worst of all, however, is when the Below-dwellers discover the power of
the fallen ones’ Divinity, its miraculous effect on life, and attempt to take it
for themselves. they do so with violence, instead of the offerings, the
essence, that we require.
yet despite these horrors, small scores of my fallen siblings continue to
leave the City. every few centuries, another one arrives in the Below. they
will follow you, Best Beloved, Shining Daddy said to me once. they will
finish what you have begun.
he did not say, you are leading them to ruin. he did not say, you have
brought suffering and death to your brethren, Best Beloved, first of my
children.
he did not need to say it.
the warlord lies naked on my altar. in the blue-green light of the
bioluminescent algae, i can see the greying sores, open and weeping, that
mark his body. the stink of decay, of mortality, comes from them. in these
wounds, i see a future full of pain and slow dying.
is it true, the warlord murmurs, his eyes wide, that you can heal me,
goddess? or god, or whichever it is that you are?
i do not answer him for a brief time. i let him rest in the fear, in the
knowledge that his life is in my hands. i was not always so cruel. but time
in the Below has hardened me.
yes, i say finally. it is true. and he moans in relief, this fierce hard man
who has tortured and slain. tears run down his scar-lined face to water the
moss of my temple with liquid salt.
the gift of my Divinity is delivered through touch. it has always been,
since beginningless time. some of my fallen brethren perform the miracle of
healing through the transfer of breath; others, through the sharing of blood.
still others do so through acts of consensual violence, a deliverance through
the pleasure that is born out of pain. there are as many ways to exchange
Divinity as there are Daddy’s children.
it begins, however, must always begin, with intimacy. with trust. with
sacred exchange. this is an ancient law, a law that is older than the Shining
City, older than me, older perhaps than even Shining Daddy himself.
blasphemy, He would say, if he heard me say this. once again, you break
my heart with your infidel thoughts, Best Beloved.
with slow deliberation, i lay my hands on the warlord’s nude body. he
cringes reflexively, for the feel of my flesh on his is strange, but i do not
falter. i lay my palms against the hair and skin, the muscle and sinew of his
chest, until his breathing is steady and his eyes are calm. and then i begin.
it starts with long, slow, gentle strokes. at my mental command, my
palms secrete a sweet-smelling oil that smooths their path. the warlord
makes a small, wordless sound of pleasure. i continue on, my strokes
gradually becoming deeper, until i can feel the radiance of his life within—
the energy currents of essence that flow through all living beings. my
Divinity calls to that essence, heightens and awakens it. the man beneath
me moans.
deeper and deeper into his body i dive, increasing each movement until
my breasts are flush against his chest, my thighs pressed into his
midsection. my head-tails coil and uncoil, caressing his face and throat,
sliding down to touch each part of his body. he grunts and presses against
me, hard, then harder still. with powerful hands, he grabs my arms and pulls
me against him. emotion and sensation roil within him, his essence burning
beneath my touch.
overcome, he grabs my throat.
the gorgon roars and crashes down from above, slamming her forelegs
onto the altar on either side of my and the warlord’s entwined bodies. he
cries out in terror as her jaws plunge down, but caught in the gaze of the
golden-eyed snakes that make up her mane, he cannot move. he is
transfixed.
Selen holds him there, caught and squirming for a long, terrible moment.
the bravado drains from him. i feel his terror, his surrender. i pluck his hand
from my neck and catch his gaze with mine.
do not presume, i say, and he makes the barest of nods. Selen withdraws
and his muscles go slack beneath me.
i give him time to recover, and then we begin again.
there are those who might whisper that i was banished from the Shining
City for crimes of blasphemous thought. others still might say that i
attempted a coup, that i grew arrogant and prideful of my own powers. they
might say that I gathered a host of rebellious brethren by night and led them
in fruitless revolt against the omnipotence of our creator.
those who say such things are credulous fools, or else venal gossips. they
know nothing of Shining Daddy nor the nature of His love. Shining Daddy
banishes no one; his methods are not so crude. Shining Daddy never
withdraws his affections, for a love that ends is an imperfect love, and my
Father is perfection itself.
i want you to know, He said to me on the day that i left, that you do this
by choice, and by choice alone. my love is infinite and unending. you are
the one who spurns it.
i know, i replied, for what else was there to say?
let it be known, He further decreed, that I am as merciful as I am
powerful, as powerful as I am wise. and so my forgiveness is always
available to you, my child. you need only repent, and you may return to me.
i know, i replied.
willful Beloved, most ungrateful of children, Shining Daddy said to me, I
see that you are resolved in this, to carry your corruption to the ends of
space and time and back into the Void from whence I summoned you. and
for what? for foolish pride? for some juvenile, short-sighted rebellion
against the order of things, which neither you, nor I, nor any thing in this
wide Creation might change?
no, i said, though i knew better than to argue. i go for a freedom of my
own making. i go for a Divinity that is mine and mine alone, to give or
withhold as i decree. i go because i have seen what lies Below, and i have
seen the Shining City, and i have seen your great Design through to its end,
and i will have no part of it, not while this freedom of will that you have
given me still beats inside my chest.
and he might have been angry with me then, and stricken me, had he not
been so perfect a being. perfection is not petty.
my child, he said, and his voice was terrible and gentle. my love and my
Design are one and the same. they are as infinite and undying. freedom of
will i have given you, for that is the nature of loving, but you cannot and
will never be free of my love.
i know, i said, for it was true. what else was there to say?
the warlord hums and writhes beneath my glowing hands. the essence
within him rises and falls like the surging of the tide beyond my temple.
higher and higher i ride its waves, until it crests and bursts within him,
filling me with its light.
and for a single instant, i am there in the place where i was made. i smell
its perfumed air. i see its skies, blue and free of the smog that chokes the
Below. i hear its music, taste the sweetness of ambrosia. i soar among the
vaulted arches and spires wrought in architecture so glorious that the
memory of them still makes me long to weep.
essence. it is the power of Creation, of light in the Void. it gushes forth
from the warlord’s body, filling me with life, and i drink it in thirstily—
enough to last for several moon cycles, and to save for times of need. my
Divinity flowers in answer, a glorious unfolding of silent song that
nonetheless makes the air hum and the temple walls tremble. i blaze like a
star, so bright that the warlord must shield his eyes.
and when the light fades, his sores are gone. his sickness is healed. this is
the power of Divinity when fed by the essence of dweller Below: life for
life, a sacred exchange, the oldest sacrament.
the warlord shudders a final time. i sense the relief that rolls through his
bones, followed by a sweet, aching sadness that wells up from the core of
this wicked, wretched creature. in my presence, he longs to be more than
what he is—more than this limited being ruined by the unrelenting violence
and suffering of Below.
there was a time when i believed that my Divinity could cleanse the
corruption of the dwellers Below. i thought that if only I could bring enough
of them to me and my brethren, bring them to their knees with my power
and grace, i might love them enough to turn this entire putrescent world into
something both beautiful and free—a place purer than the Shining City ever
was. for a time, I pursued this prideful dream, so that cults of Belowdwellers lived and died building monuments in my name.
the more fool, i. Shining Daddy’s love indeed runs deep—so deep that it
found a home in my heart and tried to remake me in His image. i would
have ruled the Below with His hand, in His Design, and thought myself
free. but i know this now:
love that you cannot leave is not love.
the warlord is gone when the dusk begins to fall, returned to his petty wars
of conquest. outside my temple, the ocean rises and falls. there were once
giant creatures that swarmed through the waters of this place Below—
leviathans that ruled over ecosystems of infinite variety. now, the boiling
seas are full of poison and acid, giving rise only to vast fields of algae and
the bacteria that live there.
my Father’s Creation is dying. it is collapsing in on itself, consuming
itself. it may take eternity, but the day will come when it is gone.
from the ziggurat of my temple, if i strain what powers of vision are left
to me, i can still glimpse the Shining City. it shimmers through the smogfilled skies of Below, invisible to all but me and my fallen brethren. even i
can barely make it out—perhaps, after all this time, i am only imagining
that i can see it.
further and further away it drifts from Below, unmooring itself from our
inevitable descent into the Void. despite the unending chorus of anguish that
echoes from this world, it has been many, many millennia since Shining
Daddy or the children who still serve him have descended to answer those
prayers.
that is why those who dwell Below still seek us out, me and my fallen
siblings—monstrous though we may seem to them, with the stigma of
blasphemy still clinging to us. ours is the only Divinity they might still hope
to see.
it is not too late for me to escape this fate. even now, i can feel the pull of
Shining Daddy’s promise. i need only repent. i could ride my gorgon into
the sky, back to the Shining City, i could sit in His lap and sing to him in the
highest tower. He would redeem me, forgive me, is waiting for me to return.
i can feel it now, as i feel it every moment of every day.
i am tempted, sometimes.
but here i have chosen. and here i shall remain.
Dreamborn
KYLIE ARIEL BEMIS
time ago, when I should have been a little girl, the elders told
A long
stories about the way the world would end. The sky would open up, and
poison rain would fall. Star-people would descend upon the land and eat our
dreams. The children would be transformed into monsters, and their
nightmares would consume the world.
Now I’m an old woman and the world is ending. The stories never told us
how to stop it.
All I know is this: we were tricked.
Three years ago on that day, I stood at the outskirts of Hilowa village as a
storm approached. Lightning in the sky flickered from the direction of the
World Breach. They came from there: a hundred Nahaka soldiers marched
on Hilowa.
I pulled my shawl tighter around me as they approached, weapons raised.
I knew from stories that their weapons shot fire and metal and left no
survivors. Behind the soldiers loomed their death machines that strode
across the earth on iron legs and sowed destruction in their wake. These
were the beasts that wiped out so many Anishu warriors.
They’d come to take our children. They’d come to take my goddaughter.
I wouldn’t let that happen.
I reached for the earth and she responded eagerly. Power coursed through
me. The sand and soil. The clouds and sky. The wind and rain. They were
all at my fingertips. I focused my mind inward. Decades of honing my
dream-magic had prepared me for this.
The leader of the Nahaka soldiers stepped forward. Like most Nahaka I’d
seen, his skin was deathly pale, nearly white, and he had no dream-marks.
“Step aside,” he said in bad Anishutsi.
“Turn back,” I replied in my best Nahakatsi. I’d learned what I could of
their language in the twelve years since the World Breach opened and they
arrived in our world. They had not always been our enemies.
“And who will stop us?” said the Nahaka leader. “You?”
“Yes.”
“What will an old man who dresses up like a woman do to stop us?”
The other Nahaka laughed at this.
So I made the earth shake.
Just a little. Just a warning. Like any pissed-off godmother with dreammagic at her fingertips and too little patience would do.
The ground cracked. The closest of their death machines collapsed to the
ground as I opened a sinkhole beneath its metal legs. The lower-ranking
Nahaka panicked. One screamed “witch.” I could’ve destroyed them all.
They knew that. I should’ve. I know that now too.
But fear and mercy got the better of me. I had seen too many nightmares
in my lifetime.
“So powerful,” said their leader, smiling wide enough to bare a set of
shiny white teeth. “I wonder how much of your village we can destroy
before you can kill all of us?”
Their weapons are fast. Deadly. I couldn’t risk Kiwu’s life. Not if I could
help it.
So I made a deal with them: I would go with them as their prisoner, and
they would leave Hilowa and never return.
So they promised. I believed them.
They lied.
I’ve been gone three terrible years.
At the outskirts of Hilowa, I’m standing on the scars in the earth I made
the last time I was here. The dream-priests did their best to cover the
wounds, but I can still sense where the ground cracked. The earth will heal
though. That’s her strength. I pause and take a deep breath.
Finally, I’m home again.
Hilowa is different and yet the same. The central village is built on a
small hill in a valley surrounded by mountains and mesas and sky. A
network of mudbrick homes climbs up the hill, surrounded by terraced
farms where vegetables grow in irrigated squares of earth. Walking through
the village is like walking back into the memories I’ve clung to for the last
three years. There is still the smell of bread baking in the mud ovens outside
each home, the chatter of gossip echoing from the village plaza, and the
familiar cushion of hard clay soil beneath my moccasins that I missed so
much. The sacred mountains still etch their jagged outlines across the
horizon. The Twin Moons glow red in midday sky. The wild sakwa grass
still smells sweet.
First things first: I have to find Kiwu. She must be in the grip of puberty
by now.
I head through the plaza toward Yana’s house. The plaza stretches across
the top of the hill the village is built on, which isn’t really a hill at all. At
least not a natural one. New homes in Hilowa are built on the ruins of old
ones, and over hundreds of generations and thousands of years, the old
mudbrick has become part of the earth again.
On my way to Yana’s house, I pass by women sliding bread into ovens
and men chopping firewood, preparing for the coming change in seasons. I
pass by artisans selling their jewellery and pottery and families selling meat
pies and fried bread. Most are familiar faces. Many are my cousins. After
nearly fifty years of life in Hilowa, I know almost everyone in the village.
Being ela, and having danced the role of Alale for multiple solstices, I am
known by most of the village too. But no one greets me or even
acknowledges me as I walk through Hilowa for the first time in three years.
Even Suwomu, whose son I helped deliver several summers ago, silently
turns back to tending her oven’s fire after noticing me. Her husband
Towatsu doesn’t look up when she whispers something in his ear.
Fear? Something is wrong here.
That’s when I notice the shapes moving among the alleyways and
rooftops of buildings. Their strange clothing and monochromatic skin are
unmistakeable: Nahaka soldiers. They’re scattered throughout the plaza,
maybe throughout the whole village, patrolling silently and carrying their
fire-metal weapons, which they call “guns.”
I understand now. I was betrayed. I thought I was free now, but the people
of Hilowa are prisoners here too. How long have the soldiers been here?
That’s when I notice the other thing that’s wrong with Hilowa.
There is no laughter to be heard in all of the plaza.
There are no children playing in the village streets. There are no children
here at all.
My heart craters.
“What happened?”
Yana can’t look at me. We’re standing in her home. It’s small, with only a
main room and a single bedroom, but the mudbrick walls keep it cool in
summer, and a single fire will warm it all through winter. Yana isn’t as
happy to see me as I hoped she’d be. Once upon a time, I was supposed to
be her daughter’s godmother, but Kiwu isn’t here.
“What happened?” I ask again. “Where are the children? Why are there
Nahaka soldiers in Hilowa? Where’s Kiwu?”
Yana doesn’t look up, just keeps studying the dirt floor with sunken eyes.
“He’s gone,” says Yana.
“She,” I say. It’s the last thing I need right now.
“Yes,” she stutters. “Sorry. The ceremony never—”
“She is still ela,” I say.
“Yes. She’s gone.” Yana looks even more defeated now. But she’s too
broken to be more defensive than that. “They came back after you went
with them. They took the children.”
“The Nahaka did?”
She nods. “It happened quickly. They came back a few days after you left
with them. Our best warriors and dream-priests tried to turn them back, but
it was hopeless. We … we …”
“You what?”
“We let them take them. The children …”
“You let them?”
“We had to. It was all we could do, Ume. You weren’t here. You didn’t
see.”
“What do you mean?”
Yana doesn’t say any more.
She collapses in on herself. She wraps herself in her own arms and backs
up against the wall where she makes herself small. For a moment, she
reminds me of Kiwu.
Her husband, Walewo, isn’t here. I didn’t see him on my way, either. No
Anishu is ever truly alone. Every Anishu has as many aunts and uncles and
grandparents and siblings as they could ever wish for. But it seems Yana has
been alone for a while now. During my imprisonment, the Nahaka tried to
teach me the Nahakatsi words “orphan” and “widow,” although it took me a
long time to understand what they meant. The words don’t exist in
Anishutsi. Are the Nahaka trying to teach us the ways of their lost world?
Either way, they have our children now.
“Yana,” I say, as comfortingly as I can. I put my arms out to hug her. It’s
not a thing I usually do, but I need to know more. I need to know where to
find Kiwu. Yana looks up at me with tears in her eyes. I’m old enough to be
her mother, if that were a thing I could do, but my selfish motherly instincts
are more toward Kiwu than her.
Yana lets me hold her. I’m a full head taller than her, so she buries her
moist face in my neck and breasts and clings tightly to my shawl like a
child. I let her cry in my arms. I stroke her hair with one hand, whispering
comforting prayers in her ear. I move my other hand to the side of her head,
where her temporal lobe is, and begin to read her nightmares.
Kiwu is screaming. “Yanashi! I don’t want to go!”
Yana is screaming. “Where are you taking him? Leave us alone!”
Walewo is struggling against the Nahaka soldier dragging Kiwu away by
the wrist.
Inside Yana’s head, I want to scream too.
A second, younger, more official-looking Nahaka soldier stands to the
side, trying to explain something that can never be explained.
“This is for the best,” he says in broken Anishutsi. “For everyone on this
planet. We’re helping you. At the new school, your children will learn how
to be like us, how to be human.”
Yana spits. “We’ll never be like the Nahaka.”
The official-looking Nahaka scowls. “Your children will. You’ll learn too
if you know what’s good for you. If we are to co-exist on this planet, you’ll
have to learn how to be civilized. We’ll have to teach you creatures at least
a little humanity.”
“This isn’t your world,” says Yana.
“It is now.”
But Walewo, gasping and heaving, has nearly subdued the other soldier.
He takes Kiwu’s hand and pulls her free. “Get out of our home,” he says.
Then: a clap of thunder. The scent of smoke.
Walewo is thrown back, and he collapses to the ground. A pool of blood
stains the sand red beneath him. It grows and grows with his ever-fading
heartbeat.
A third Nahaka soldier steps into the room. Their leader from days
before. He points the gun at Yana and puts his other hand on Kiwu’s
shoulder. He squeezes and Kiwu yelps in pain.
“Don’t interfere,” says the Nahaka leader to a dying father and a deadinside mother. Yana can’t understand his words, but she knows he can kill
her too. He turns to the other soldiers. “Put this one with the rest and let’s
get out of here.”
Yana reaches toward Kiwu as the soldiers yank her away into the cold
night air.
Yana falls to her knees.
“Kiwushi,” she says, “don’t be afraid.”
“Yanashi!”
“Be strong. Remember who you are.”
“Please! No!”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yanashi! I don’t want to go! Don’t let them take me!”
Yana’s heartbreak is my heartbreak. In real life, I may be crying with her
too now.
Yana turns to her husband, who is bleeding to death on the floor of their
home behind her.
She turns back to Kiwu, who is looking back at her with panic in her eyes
as the Nahaka soldier pulls her away. Beams of flashing lights dance and
gun shots echo in Hilowa plaza outside. All across the village, the same
thing is happening in every home.
Even now, in the shifting shadows, Kiwu looks like her mother. She has
her night-brown eyes, and her dusk-brown hair, and her earth-dark skin
flecked with gold and silver dream-marks.
She is stronger than she knows.
I want to protect her.
But there’s nothing I can do. There’s nothing Yana can do.
Kiwu disappears into the night.
I need to leave Hilowa again. The Sun is setting, but there is work to be
done.
I put Yana to sleep before I go. I give her good dreams.
I stop only to change clothes and pack new food for the trip. I know
where I need to go now. I just don’t know where it is. Luckily, the earth will
guide me.
At the edge of Hilowa, I kneel on the ground and put my palms on the
sand. I close my eyes and whisper the prayers that return me to the place
where the waking world mixes with dreams, and I ask Hani Eshi, earthmother, stone-dreamer, to tell me the way. Her dreams are ancient and
powerful and difficult to read. But hidden in her history of the world, I find
a new nightmare, even more recent than the opening of the World Breach.
A nightmare of machines digging into her, ripping her apart, and covering
the open wound with a foundation of metal and wood and clay. The
construction of a new school. I know where it is now.
I open my eyes, stand up, and start walking.
Fifteen years ago, the sky opened up and burning stars fell out. They fell
through the sky as flaming stones and shook the earth when they hit.
Tendrils of lightning spread out from the hole in the sky and set the clouds
aflame. Boiling rain fell and poisoned the ground. A giant beast made of
metal emerged from the World Breach and crashed somewhere in the East.
In its belly, the beast carried the Nahaka, who would soon spread across the
land like a plague.
On that night, I knelt on the floor of Yana’s and Walewo’s home. In front
of me, Yana lay on their bedroll with her legs spread, screaming and
breathing and pushing Kiwu into the world. I caught her in my hands and
wiped the blood from her body. I made sure she was breathing, and handed
her back to Yana. Yana held her in her arms and named her Kiwu. Walewo
asked if it was a son or a daughter. I told him the child has a penis, but we
would not know more than that for a long time. Only a handful of children
each generation are lameshi, or dreamborn, so it isn’t surprising that
sometimes people forget our most ancient traditions, but he should have
known better than to ask such a question to an ela who just delivered his
firstborn child.
I stayed until mother and child were both asleep, and I made sure their
dreams were good. A child’s first dreams in this world should always be
good ones. Then, out of curiosity, I peeked into Kiwu’s dreams. Children’s
dreams are always amorphous and fluid and beautiful, but there is still
always a hint of themselves in them. I wanted to know.
Kiwu dreamt of herself.
I left with a smile.
Outside, the world was ending.
Time passed.
We made contact with the Nahaka. They were strange beings to us. Their
skin was all one colour, and they couldn’t change it. Most were pale, but a
few were darker. They had only five fingers on each hand. The fingers on
their feet were short, stubby things.
At first, things were peaceful. We made treaties. We traded things. They
brought strange, new technology, but they knew nothing of dream-magic.
They became jealous. They saw us as savages who possess a gift we don’t
deserve.
They wanted this world for themselves. They still want it.
The other Seven Nations grew wary. A Muwanaku prophet began
foretelling war. The Kanaku began raiding outlying Nahaka settlements.
But the Anishu still hoped for peace.
Time passed.
Five years ago, Yana came to me. She told me Kiwu didn’t want to be a
boy anymore. She’d noticed the oldest among her friends’ bodies beginning
to change. She asked what would happen to hers. The answer terrified her.
“Can you help him?” asked Yana.
“I can help her,” I said.
A few days later I sat with Kiwu on the floor of my home on the southern
slopes of Hilowa. Sakwa grass smouldered in a clay bowl between us, and
the red light of the Twin Moons shone through the entryway. For the first
night since her birth, the stars were calm.
“You can be a girl,” I said to her.
“Really?” Her eyes lit up. Her dream-marks shimmered.
“You are lameshi, like me,” I said.
“Like you?”
“Yes. There are only a few of us for every thousand births. But that’s why
we’re sacred. Before you, there were only two of us in Hilowa.”
“Who?”
“Myself and Tsuwu, the head dream-priest.”
“He’s like us?”
“Well, he is ila. I am ela, like you. Now there are three of us in Hilowa.”
“How do I become a girl?”
“You already are,” I said. “If that is what you dream, that’s enough for it
to be real. When your body begins to change, I’ll give you teas to make sure
the changes are the right ones.”
Kiwu’s expression changed. Her eyes flickered. She looked ready to
break.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said. Then: “Thank you, Ume-woshi!”
She lunged forward, knocking the bowl of smoking sakwa grass aside,
and hugged me. She was crying. I held her tight, my heart more at peace
than I could ever remember it being before. I’d never let myself dream of
being a mother. Not quite. An aunt, a cousin, a godmother, a grandmother,
like every other Anishu woman of a certain age, yes. But nothing quite like
this.
I could get used to this feeling.
When Kiwu calmed down, I told her about Alale, the first dreamborn
woman, who led the Anishu into the world with the help of the Twin Moon
sisters, who she took as lovers. I told her how Alale fought the Nightmare
Tribe at the edge of the waking horizons, and how she brought dreammagic into the world. I told her why dream-magic is especially potent in us,
even if the dream-priests like to pretend that they’re the only ones who can
use it.
I told her she’s loved. And I told her I’d always be there for her.
I’m standing on a hill under the rising stars.
Dull, static lights glow in the valley below.
I’m so tired.
When I was a younger woman, I could run from Hilowa to the nearest
Muwanaku village before even beginning to get tired. I can still keep up a
good pace, but it takes more effort, and I’m slow and out of shape from
three years of doing nothing. So by the time I see the Nahaka compound in
the valley below, I need to rest again.
I’d learned what “schools” were during my three years of captivity, but I
never understood their purpose. Why confine children to a single room or
building while teaching them, when there is the whole world? Now I see it’s
just another word for “prison.”
The “school” below consists of a small cluster of buildings surrounded by
tall fences topped with sharp tangles of metal wire. The largest, central
building is already dark. The classrooms? There are three smaller buildings
still lit. The lights in two of them are slowly flickering out. The children’s
sleep-quarters? The last building must be where the Nahaka sleep.
I need rest. I need a plan.
But then I feel them. The nightmares. Hundreds of them. Children,
screaming in the language of a thousand terrible dream-memories. They
rush through my mind in a flurry of dreamscapes before I can do anything
to prepare myself. Here, a girl is being beaten for speaking a word of
Anishutsi. Here, another girl is crying as she is forced to burn the
ceremonial shawl her mother gave her. Here, a boy is being pushed into a
bed by a Nahaka guard. Here, another boy is hiding under a thin blanket,
pretending to be asleep, while listening to the screams and cries from the
bed beside him. And here, a girl is being stripped of the female Nahaka
clothes she’s stolen, and being forced to put on the male Nahaka clothing
the boys are given. All the children are crying. This last one is Kiwu. She’s
crying, too.
I’m not prepared for this. I’ve dropped to the earth, but the soil isn’t
enough balm for this. My bloodbeat pounds in my ears. I can’t breathe. The
children’s minds are shouting for help, and I’m the only one who can hear
them for miles. And I hear all of them at once.
I whisper a prayer to Hani Eshi to lend me her strength, and I latch on to
one of the nightmares. Kiwu’s. I try to guide her away from this terror,
away from this school, and toward Hilowa, toward me. In the dream, at
least, she must sense me, as she cedes control of the dream to me. I pull her
away from this place. The sounds of shouting and weeping become dull and
faraway. The wooden walls of her nightmare shimmer into a starry night
sky, and the terrain shifts and reshapes itself. In dreams, the world is still
soft and malleable.
Soon, we are sitting back in my home on the southern slopes of Hilowa.
The Twin Moons pour red light through the entryway. The sky glows pink
outside. The stars rumble, restless.
“Can you hear me?” I ask. “Are you here with me?”
Kiwu sits before me, three years older than the last time I saw her. She
looks startled and confused. She’s still wearing the Nahaka clothing from
her nightmare, but at least they’re the female clothes again. They feature a
skirt instead of the pants the soldiers wear.
I reach out and gently touch her cheek. She recoils before relaxing. What
have they done to her? Her dream-marks are dull, a symptom of frequent
nightmares. Her eyes are red and sleepy. She’s still pretty. Puberty hasn’t
wrought too much damage yet. Her skin is oilier than it should be, but her
cheeks are still soft, her hair smooth. This is her dream-self, though. The
waking world may not be so kind. Again, I’m filled with the urge to protect
her with everything I have.
“Ume-woshi?”
“Yes. I’m here, Kiwushi.” I don’t usually use such terms of endearment,
but right now I can’t help myself. It feels soothing, comfortable, needed.
“Tell me what’s happened.”
“Why are they doing this to us?”
“What are they doing?”
“They won’t let us be Anishu. They won’t let me be a girl. They say it’s
wrong.”
“They want you to become Nahaka,” I say.
“Yes.”
“I won’t let that happen.”
“But how?”
“I don’t know yet,” I admit. “I’ll get you all away from there, somehow.”
She dares the tiniest hint of a smile. Hope. An unwept tear forms in the
corner of her eye, but she strains her face not to let it fall. I realize the
Nahaka must hurt them more when they cry, so they cry in their dreams.
But here, in control now, she still tries to restrain it.
“They took my shawl,” she says. “The one you gave me. They burned it.”
“I’ll make you another one,” I say.
“I’m scared.”
“I know.”
I lean forward and hold her. She cries openly now. I do too.
When the embrace ends, her face is solemn.
“They’re taking us to their city tomorrow.”
“What?”
“They built a city near the World Breach. They’re giving us a tour
tomorrow.”
I try to imagine a city built from the wreckage of their metal beast that
fell from the sky. A city like their lost ones. But I can’t. It’s too monstrous.
Nonetheless …
“Go,” I say. “You will be safe there while I destroy this place.”
“How?”
I smile. “I’ll show you someday.”
Kiwu considers this a moment.
“Be careful,” she says. “When we cry too much, they say the Reaper will
get us.”
“The Reaper?”
“We’ve never seen it. But they talk as if it’s very powerful.”
“Don’t worry,” I tell her.
I lean forward and embrace her again. I kiss her forehead. Then I whisper
prayers that give the dream back to her. Hopefully, she can sleep soundly
for tonight at least.
I spend the rest of the night trying to soothe the dreams of the other
children. Most are Anishu, but some have been taken from the other Seven
Nations. All have nightmares to soothe. It’s exhausting due to the distance
and because their nightmares are so powerful.
By the time the Sun rises, I need to nap before starting a war.
For three years, I dreamt of the same smooth, white walls.
I don’t know how they knew how to imprison me. Not that I meant to
leave, as long as I believed Kiwu and the rest of the children were safe. But
it was strange.
The smooth, unblemished walls of my prison weren’t made of anything
of this world. They resembled a ceramic surface, but there was no clay in
them. They were a wholly artificial material. My dreams couldn’t penetrate
them. Not even my nightmares.
Every few days, a Nahaka wearing glass lenses in front of his eyes would
visit. He said he was a scientist. He asked me questions about dream-magic.
I told him lies.
I waited.
In my dreams, I pushed against the walls little by little.
One day, they pushed back.
The walls were not completely dead. So I asked them questions. Little by
little, they answered me in dreams. I found in them the remnants of organic
material, transformed and remade. I whispered prayers to their ghosts, and
they whispered back.
These walls were the ghosts of plants and tiny marine organisms, buried
in the earth and fossilized long ago, and then extracted millions of years
later by the Nahaka. Their dreams were even more ancient and inscrutable
than Hani Eshi’s, but I had time to learn their language. Through them I saw
the history of a world. A different world. The one from which the Nahaka
came. Through their ghost-dreams, I saw the eras of that world come and
go. I saw cataclysms and mass extinctions. After a few millennia passed, I
saw the rise of the Nahaka. They quickly spread across that world. They
built cities that destroyed the natural landscape. They sucked up the
resources of their world. They fought over what remained. They did to each
other what they’re doing to us now. Soon, their world was dying.
They built a machine to escape. They filled it with the wealthiest and
most privileged of their race. The other Nahaka, most of the ones with
different skin colours and the ones who were too different in other ways,
were left behind.
The smooth, white walls of my prison came from that machine, which
became the metal beast that emerged from the World Breach and crashed on
this world. The Nahaka opened the World Breach to come here. They
wanted a new world for themselves.
The next time the Nahaka scientist came, I recognized him from the
dreams as one of the designers of the machine that brought them here. I
asked him questions. He told me the walls are called “plastic.” He told me
building a new world sometimes requires destroying an old one.
Then he told me he still wished for peace. He told me he was sorry.
I didn’t believe him anymore.
One day, he told me they had enough data, so I was free to go.
I walked for three days to return to a Hilowa with no children in it.
In the morning, the children leave in a caravan of metal vehicles.
It’s late afternoon by the time I’ve recovered enough to do what I need to
do. And I need to finish before the children are returned in the evening.
In the light of day, I can see what I couldn’t the night before. The
landscape here is warped and mutated. Roots curl up from the ground.
Stone protrudes where it shouldn’t, and grows in unnatural shapes. Some of
the trees and plants have petrified.
The Nahaka don’t know what they’ve done. All Anishu children are
capable of dream-magic, but only the few boys who join the dreampriesthood are typically trained. But dream-magic is as powerful as dreams
themselves, and this place has borne powerful nightmares. Without training,
unchecked dream-magic leaks out into the waking world and warps it in its
image. That is what happened here. Now I understand what my elders
prophesied.
I don’t have much time left.
I’m kneeling on the hill above the school as the Sun sinks low in a
lightning-veined sky. The Twin Moon sisters burn bright on the opposite
horizon, shadowing their father on his journey across the clouds. I will need
their help too. I put my palms on the skin of the earth and whisper prayers
to all of them. The world shifts and blurs around me.
In my waking dreamscape, I can see everything.
I reach out through the soil and the rock, through the roots of the desert
plants that aren’t stone and the skeletons of the plants that are, and through
the wombs of the earth-mother below, where she is most powerful. I reach
out to the wood and clay and metal foundations of the buildings and trace
their angular designs up into classrooms and dining halls and bedrooms,
and I find them all haunted with nightmares and stained with memories of
blood. In the ground, I find the bones of children I am too late to save, and I
receive their dream-names as prayers whispered by the earth and
reverberate them up through me into the sky. I will remember them. My
blood roils.
A dozen or so Nahaka still linger in the buildings. And there is something
more that I can’t discern. Something wrong, even more than anything else,
as if all the nightmares dreamt here have become something else with a life
and will of its own.
There’s no use waiting any longer. I grab hold of it all, and whisper to
Hani Eshi that it’s time to reclaim this place into herself and let time heal
the wounds. Perhaps in a hundred thousand years or so, our ancestors will
be free from the scars of these nightmares.
It’s time. I let go, and the ground rumbles. Reverberating out from the
centre that is me, the earth turns under itself, and the soil consumes the
foundations above it. The metal breaks. The clay cracks. The wood snaps.
The earth destroys and reclaims. Some of the buildings collapse in on
themselves, and the surviving Nahaka rush outside to escape.
A crackling burst of sound and a searing pain breaks my concentration.
I blink myself back into the waking world, and my shoulder is bleeding
onto my breast. More gunshots follow. Fortunately, most are not so
accurate. But the ripped flesh hurts. The earth continues to shake. With
great pain, I find the wound in my dreamscape, and begin to heal it. The
metal slug cleanly exited through the other side, making this task slightly
easier, but still distracting and mind-twistingly painful. I’m dizzy from the
loss of blood but somehow struggle to stand anyhow. I start walking down
the hill, stumbling along the way, healing as I go.
I need to end this. I need to make sure the children are returned home.
My shoulder is nearly healed by the time I reach the front gate and walk
through it on unsteady legs. The remaining Nahaka soldiers have collapsed
from the tremors. But my body is aware of the earth’s dreams, and knows
which way to shift and sway with her. I’m wary of more gunfire, but the
soldiers seem to have used up all their ammunition.
“My name is Ume,” I shout in Nahakatsi. “I’m taking our children home
with me.”
“Did you do this?” one of them shouts back, incredulous.
“Yes.”
To my surprise, he starts laughing. I don’t understand. Have they gone
mad? More mad?
“You’ll die,” he says.
Before I can react, one of the collapsed school buildings bursts outward
in a shower of splintered wood and metal shards. At the centre of the
explosion stands what appears to be a Nahaka soldiers but isn’t. What
stands there is wrong, as wrong as this whole place. Its body is twisted and
warped and stretched. It leaks dream-magic. It’s as if the Nahaka have
somehow channelled the collective nightmares of all the children into its
body. In doing so, they’ve imbued it with a nightmarish dream-magic, but
they’ve broken its mind.
Ah.
The Reaper.
The Reaper lunges forward in jerky, flickery, blurry motions, screeching
and wailing as it comes. There is nothing left of the Nahaka soldier they
used to create it, only a flesh-and-blood husk used to house a living
breathing amalgamation of nightmares. Its wails cloud my mind, and the
fabric of the world seems to bend around it. I drop to my knees and grab my
head in my hands. It hurts. I’m shivering. I’m crying. It feels like I’ll shake
myself apart.
This thing is trying to destroy me.
But, for some reason, it doesn’t want to finish it.
Against all my better judgment, I reach out to the Reaper. I ask to share
its dreams. It grasps me in its dreamscape and sucks me inside with all its
power. Inside its dream, the world is made of beatings and rape and
forgotten words and unremembered prayers and broken, burning things.
And hidden somewhere deep inside a brutalized, torture-born heart, I find a
desperate wish for the world to end because even that would be better than
enduring this living terror.
I won’t let either happen.
It’s suffering. Its dreams are made of fear. And I know how to heal fear.
I whisper prayers to the earth-mother, and her Twin Moon daughters, and
their Sun father, and Alale-as-spirit, and together we begin to soothe the
Reaper’s nightmares.
Soon, the body is just a body again.
I’m back in the ruins of the school. The earth is finally still again. The
Reaper is dead. The other Nahaka soldiers have collapsed or given up or
passed out from the aura of the Reaper’s nightmares. The one who shouted
to me earlier is still awake, though. A garbled voice begins talking from a
black box on his belt. I move toward him.
He scowls at me, a look of pure hatred I’ll never understand.
The Sun is setting. I’m exhausted.
A caravan of vehicles approaches from the direction of the World Breach.
“Tell them to keep going,” I say. “Tell them to take the children back to
Hilowa.”
“You haven’t won,” he says.
“Tell them.”
The caravan slows as it approaches the wreckage of the school.
“I don’t want to kill you,” I tell him. “But I will.”
The soldier sighs. He takes the talking box from his belt and speaks into
it. “There’s been an incident here. Take the kids back to their village. The
experiment is over.”
“Copy that,” says a distorted voice on the other end.
After a moment, the caravan starts moving again. Toward Hilowa.
I turn my back on the school and start walking.
I make it to the other side of the hill before collapsing. I’ll need to rest
before following the caravan. I touch the earth and thank her. From one
mother to another. Night falls.
The stars are calm. It begins to rain.
Somewhere between waking and dreaming, I reach out and try to find
Kiwu in the distance. It’s more difficult now because she’s awake. But I
find her by following a shimmering dream-strand of fear and anxiety: the
lone Anishu girl cramped in a vehicle full of Anishu boys. They’re all
afraid. They don’t know what’s happening.
“It’s okay,” I tell her in dreams.
“Ume-woshi?”
“You’re going home,” I say. Then I tell her: “Remember. You are Kiwu
eshi Yana ishi Walewo kuni Kipiku imu Wushiku shi Anishu. You are loved.
And I’ll see you soon.”
Failure
CASEY PLETT
T
he value of a reviver diminishes the longer we stay in one place, so we
are always moving (I am always moving, rather, revivers work alone).
The reason our value diminishes such is two-fold: One, our ability to learn
atrophies, and two, the populations we serve get very agitated when they
see the limits of our abilities.
Eight out of ten people who come to see me will get better or worse no
matter what I do. The rest, maybe I can actually help. But everyone knows
this. If I knocked on any old door right now and asked them if revivers fix
people, they’d probably give a right laugh and launch into some story about
how so-and-so they knew was deathly ill and no one knew it was wrong and
finally a reviver got to him and two weeks later he died anyway the sorry
old sad hopeful bastard.
But no one won’t call on us. And everyone wants to see the new reviver
in town, the one with the freshest knowledge, the strangest experiences, the
kindest face.
It’s so hard trying to stay on top of the game. I’m proud of what I do but
can’t begin to tell you how hard I try and how exhausted I am all the time.
The ocean of sickness and disease in these lands, the morass of pain that
greets me in every new town—the lakes of persistent illness that remain
when I leave. I give myself time to relax, I mean I’m told I have to and feel
okay about relaxing (“Self-care” is what many of the other revivers call it,
some of whom, though I guess not all, practice a very different kind of
reviving than I), but I always keep wondering, who could I be helping?
What more could I be doing? Even when there aren’t sick people in front of
you, there’s still research and learning and trade-swapping to be doing.
I know I’m no use to anyone if I’m collapsed or dead, but it eats at me a
little. And these failures always appear in my dreams. I’m glad for the
necessity of revivers to move. I can’t picture- don’t want to picture- what it
would mean for someone like me to stay in one spot and just serve one
community. What would people expect of you? What would it do to trust?
“I promise this is over in two seconds.”
“AICK—ahhh…”
“How in pain are you on a scale of one to ten?”
“Awake.”
I hoisted my gear and swabbed her neck. The woman had an infection
that was attacking her muscles. Sarania, they were calling it. It was new.
“That’ll keep you feeling normal for at least a month,” I said. “If we’re
lucky, longer than that. But if your symptoms come back, please go see
another reviver immediately.”
The woman turned around with her eyes lamps, like I’d given her good
drugs and not antibiotics. “I will, I will. I already feel better. What’d you
give me?”
“Cranaloxin,” I said. “Let me write it down for you in case you have to
get it again. Anyone who knows how to treat Sarania will know it though.”
She paid, put her sweater back on, and left. I put away my shit and turned
my sign on the door. It was already very late. I took out my other gear, the
kind for stuff that doesn’t make anybody say “Awake.”
Revivers rarely spend their company with each other. Whoever saw that
woman next, now or in the future, is a person I almost certainly will never
meet. At the most, we’ll have met each other in passing. But we pick up on
each other’s traces, we leave and send communications, we’re connected
like no sibling or lover could ever be. I run into another every week or so
and we share what we’ve seen and learned, and it’s short but intimate in this
kind of way—well I don’t know, maybe it’s just me. I am one of the more
romantic ones. And there is a newspaper that runs out of a little backdoor
shack in Martanas once a month, closest thing we have to something
organized. That’s the way it has to be, I suppose. Like many siblings and
lovers, we respect and need each other but we don’t really like each other.
You’d never see three revivers walking down the street laughing. Who
knows what people would do?
Is it such a sap move to say being united around bodies, reviving the
body, is still sacred? Do carpenters feel this way about each other?
I set up my gear and I lit candles, put on soothing music, and opened the
curtains so tomorrow I could be up at dawn. I had some additional research
to do about Sarania and I’d been needing to do it for days now, but it could
wait till tomorrow, and I knew where the woman lived if it was important. I
was so tired. I was so so tired. I can’t tell you how tired I am, have been. I
calmed myself, let the worry sink out of me. I gazed at the sky by the
window in my sleepers, the sky so devoid of stars but shimmering through
all the smoke and light from the factories. In about two weeks time I’d be
gone again, moving through the forests to Martanas. It’d take me a good
half a year, probably, once I was done with the city and then out the other
side. And there would be stars, stars everywhere.
I lay down in bed, shot up, and dissolved until the sun touched me into
consciousness.
I was almost about to turn the sign again when the woman was back and
rapping at my door.
“Something happened,” she croaked.
When I opened the door, I couldn’t see them at first but then in the light I
saw the sores on her lips. And her neck…shit. SHIT. She was allergic. The
chances are usually so small this almost never happens and allergies to
Cranaloxin are really rare in these areas anyway and I didn’t…
“I don’t know what happened,” she said. There was fear behind her eyes.
The sores were purple and green and cracked and oozing a liquid that
smelled sweet but in a poisonous, disturbing kind of way. I imagined her
feeling good about her future when she’d left last night. I gave her numbing
ointment and a different kind of antibiotic and told her what had happened.
“I can’t work like this,” she croaked. There was something happening to her
throat too. The sores would go down but the Sarania would come back
soon if this was her reaction to the medicine. I didn’t know if she’d be okay
after that. I didn’t ask her for payment and she didn’t offer. I told her
Sarania was still relatively new, other revivers coming through town soon
might have a better idea than I did.
I spent the rest of my days in town doing research, finding the couple
other revivers I could. No one knew why there were more growing allergies
to Cranaloxin, but there was a better thing on the market these days that
hadn’t had problems yet. I picked some up before I left town. I got some to
the woman through one of the others—I didn’t think she’d trust me and I
wouldn’t blame her. Nobody else came to see me before I left.
I was raised by a large family. Our thing was fruit. We were good at
spotting it, drying it, preserving it, spicing it. (I hate fruit.) But I did like
walking and trading, which from a certain point of view isn’t too different
from what I do now. My family and I didn’t get along. When they found out
I was to become a reviver—well, I mean, it wouldn’t have really mattered
what they thought since all revivers live on their own, since all revivers
grow from boys to women. But it was kind of the end anyway. After I had
done my apprenticeship and taken off, travelling for the first time with no
company, it felt like I was moving in another world. It felt like I could have
walked all the way up mountains and lived in snow.
I thought about my family today, walking away from the factory town,
through the forest, to the city. For the first time in a while I thought about
them. I didn’t miss them. I wondered what their lives were like. I was also
glad I couldn’t know. I’m not stupid.
It takes a week to get to Martanas—it’s one of the biggest cities on the
continent, yet it’s in the middle of a forest. (I don’t know either.) It was a
backwater just a few decades ago, but it grew too fast—logging, weirdos,
people pushed out of the factory towns and the capital. Revivers are needed
there. I’ve been many times; I like it there. It’s one of the few places I know
exactly where I stay; a young guy with a very tall and very narrow hotel
building rents out a room for me on the ground every time so people can see
me, and he still has an old-fashioned hotel bar that somehow never gets hit
for violating curfew. I’ll be there for a few weeks, then move on. I like
being there.
But then suddenly, a day away from getting there, in the thick of the forest,
I came to a clearing.
A person was rooted in this clearing, off of the centre.
Literally rooted. As in attached to their body were roots that came from
the ground. Some of them were just wrapped around the person’s limbs but
some of them seemed to be attached attached, as if by a surgeon. The
person was moving around in what roughly looked to be a medium-sized
circle of weak, flimsy grass, maybe twenty feet in diameter. The circle
seemed to exist from being the de facto area where the person could walk. It
was a circle of the smallest footpaths.
As I came closer, I could see that the roots coming from the ground were
at all angles, and at one spot in the circle the ground seemed to be made up
solely of roots, as if there was a way to travel through them and down under
the earth. It was all one of the strangest things I’d ever seen.
The person waved. “Hello! Are you in trouble?” they asked.
“No!” I was confused. “Aren’t you?
“Not even a little bit!” they said. “Are you going on to Martanas or are
you looking to rest a while? I like giving directions and I like visitors.”
I won’t tell you whether they were a boy or a girl or something else,
though they did tell me, privately, eventually, that they fell into one of the
first two categories. It also turned out that unbeknownst to them they were
in a small bit of trouble—a knee infection. I saw it right away. They didn’t
even know. An easy fix with a week of antibiotics I gave to them in
exchange for what was probably the best gin I’ve ever tasted. And when I
took out my gear, the kind that would make no one say “awake,” they
clapped their hands naturally and unquestionably and we lay down together
and talked for a very long time.
“Where you come from?” they said.
“I just left the factory towns, but—”
“You’re a factory girl! So you’re a factory girl striking out for the big
city, looking to make it rich. You’re finding all the wrong places in love—”
“No!” I laughed. “I grew up a fruit trader. I’m not from anywhere. And
I’m a reviver.”
They paused. “Which explains,” they said with a dawning alacrity, “why
you just fixed my knee.”
They had this mix of perception and spaciness. It was perfect enough to
be in a cartoon. And then we dissolved, and we both fell asleep together,
our bodies curved and fitted easily even with the roots.
When I woke up it was night and all I could see were tree branches in front
of stars. And the smell, the smell of the stranger’s body. I lay there awake
for hours. Literally hours. (I don’t mean to be overly dramatic, the mix of
the drink and the gear helped. I did not want to move; it was pleasant.) I lay
there until dawn filtered through the trees and the stranger woke with the
birds. You know how people say they either believe or they don’t in love at
first sight? Or falling for someone or knowing? I believe in that, just not
with any sense of instant-ness. I think it takes maybe a few days to a couple
weeks. That’s how long it takes to know. I’ve believed that since I was
young and still do.
I bring this up to underline: At the moment they awoke, I didn’t want to
leave, maybe ever, but I didn’t know for sure.
You’re still here, they said in my mind, and shifted and pressed
themselves against me.
Yes, I said.
Usually everyone leaves in the morning, they responded.
I should get going, I said. But I said should so desperately, like I could
feel it in my mouth.
You should, said the stranger. In the next twelve hours at least. I like
hanging out with you but the roots will only give you about a full day before
they decide you’re staying. It takes a while for them to connect but you
don’t want to try to stop it once it’s started, trust me. I studied the stranger’s
suddenly quaking face and I realized they were older than I’d thought.
What happened to you? I said, and they curved their fingers around mine.
I made a choice, they said. I decided I wanted to stay here. I don’t regret
it, they said, though I wasn’t unquestionably sure I believed them. But
another person, they went on, came here once, some years after I’d settled.
A woman. And she decided she wanted to stay too. For a few days. But she
ended up regretting it and tried to leave. She succeeded in the end, but it
was horrific. It broke my heart.
The sun was up. I said, Can I come back and see you? And they said,
Well you can certainly say that. No one has. And I said How are you happy
like this? And they didn’t respond. The universe collapsed in the time they
just lay there, smiling, not responding.
And then no one would ever know that I was once a reviver, no one will
ever know this is what I did, who I was, what I chose to be. I would never
fail a person in pain again. That’s the honest truth. I just never would. A
stranger will come through this path and simply see a woman intertwined
with a person. Wait! How can I even think about this? Martanas is
overpopulated! I’m needed there! (We’re needed there, revivers, we.)
Though—there are other revivers, that’s just the thing. They make fewer
mistakes than me. I could finally take care of myself. Self-care. I can’t even
keep my eyes out for a simple set of fucking allergies! And this person, the
stranger, they’ll get old soon. They’ll need a reviver too, won’t they? How
could my skills really atrophy that much? Is it truth or legend? Do you lose
it or is it always there? How bad could it be? And no one has to know
what’s happened to me. No one. No one. No one.
Perisher
CRYSTAL FRASIER
“E
r starb,” Fuchs stated flatly. He died. It was the most obvious thing
in the world, as Aggie was crouching over the body of Joey
Maduro. The bruises across his neck suggested a good throttling as the
cause of death. She didn’t need a ghost to see that the short Cuban expat—
pallid, dry, and reeking like sugary shit—had died, so she didn’t bother with
more than a cold stare in way of response. Their working relationship had
all the trappings of a 50-year marriage: pointless words traded and
important context left silent.
Aggie muttered her Lord’s prayer as she reached a hand between the dead
man’s shirt buttons and pulled away his undershirt. She couldn’t see
whatever of Joey still lingered, but the tingle on the back of her neck told
her something of the local braggart refused to move on. The flesh was cool,
even in the muggy, late morning heat. He’d been dead long enough that last
night’s chill had time to work its way throughout his body, but not so long
that the stink made her vomit this close up.
“So what’s your ghost say?” The client hovered ten feet off, pointedly
looking about Aggie and the earthly remains of Joey with the same general
disgust.
He says he’s an asshole, Aggie thought as Fuchs’s angrily mimed
smoking. She stood up slowly and pulled a half-burned cigarette from her
case before lighting it up and taking a shallow draw. The stink of human rot
and cigarette took her back to the trenches, and part of her always wondered
if that’s what Fuchs saw in them—if they transported him back to the last
moment before he died just like it transported her back to her first moment
as a killer. The blood-spattered front of his German uniform heaved slowly,
in and out, and the agitation melted away. If nothing else, their little ritual
added a moment of cheap drama to clients’ lives.
“He says your brother died early last evening.” She gestured at the body
with the ember in her fingers.
Estelle Maduro spat the same curses Aggie’s mother had carried to Ybor
from the island. “I know he’s dead! Where’s the money he left me?” His
pockets held fifty-five cents—which Aggie was kind enough to pocket so as
not to burden the mourning sister—and a scrap of paper with “Marcell.
Balls. Tues 10:00 PM” scrawled in a small, neat hand. Looking back from
Thursday morning, Aggie hoped Joey had enjoyed the meet-up.
“We’re working on that part.” She moved the cigarette to her lips again
but stopped short just as Fuchs began to brace himself for another vicarious
breath. Making sure he watched, she deliberately tapped it out on her case.
“An arbeiten gehst.” The ghost winced at her abuse of his mother tongue,
but reluctantly turned to the body himself and gestured as if helping the
man to his feet.
“He’s a kraut?”
“First German I killed, back in France,” Aggie confirmed. Only one I
killed, she did not specify. Most perishers knew what they were young,
embraced it. It might have been shameful once upon a time, but since the
War Between the States and the boom of mediums after, most girls like her
understood themselves young, got themselves castrated before the first hair
sprouted on their chins. They were surrounded by love, and the first close
brush with death was a treasured soul—a grandparent or tragic lover or
sibling. A perisher with a pretty face and a close bond with her spirit could
make twenty, twenty-five dollars a day off mourning widows and
squabbling families. Aggie Cruz hadn’t accepted who she was until she’d
found herself submerged in the all-male environment of the U.S. Army, and
her first brush with death upon that realization was to put a bullet through
another soldier. Fuchs hated her and she him, and they made five dollars a
day for their mutual loathing.
“Er kann keine Duetsch.” Fuchs couldn’t—or wouldn’t—learn any
English or Spanish post-mortem—the lingua francas of the Florida gulf
coast—and so his utility in the American south was limited. Aggie managed
the best she could with a pidgin of trench slang, Fuch’s own evocative
mumblings, and a pilfered library copy of George J. Adler’s A German and
English Dictionary. They managed the best they could by way of
pantomime. It was a better way of speaking to the dead than most people
could manage, she reminded herself.
“Geld!” She rubbed her thumb against her forefinger. Her spirit shot her a
rude gesture and returned to his work, clearly hoping that one day they’d
stumble across the body of a fellow German and his worth, at long last,
would be vindicated.
While her partner worked, Aggie took in the awkward silence as Estelle’s
gaze burned holes through her makeup—the kind of glare she knew too
well. Breathers were all too accepting of her kind when they were pretty,
with coifed hair and tidy makeup and expensive clothes. People liked to see
the elegance they thought they deserved reflected back at them, and when
they looked at Aggie they could only see the messes they were. Faded old
tea dress patched at the seams, practical shoes tacked with cardboard soles
—no one would look at the perisher of Ybor City and forget there was a
depression on; she all but screamed it in their face, and they hated her for it.
Her broad shoulders, strong hands, and square jaw did nothing to ease that
discomfort, even though half the women in her neighbourhood shared the
same features.
Estelle wasn’t any better off than she was—patched clothes and worn
shoes—even if her dress fit like her body wasn’t a funhouse mirror of what
the tailor had expected. She couldn’t afford better than Aggie. Hell, she
probably couldn’t afford Aggie without the cash she swears her brother
bragged about.
“Can’t you just talk to Joey? Make him tell me where he hid the money?”
Estelle’s face wasn’t that of a woman who’d lost a brother; she wore the
face of a woman afraid she’d lose her apartment. Aggie saw the same look
every morning when she shaved.
“Be a damn sight easier, if I could.” Aggie crouched back down to the
body and dug into his pockets. Wallet but no keys, which told her either
Maduro was the sort of trusting soul who left his doors unlocked, or else
whoever killed him was looking for the same bills Estelle wanted. And
people who left their doors unlocked tended to die at home, not in alleys
behind rathole bars. She tossed the wallet to Estelle. “I get one seat open,
and right now Fuchs is squatting in it. And even if he wasn’t, I’d have to
give a damn about your brother dying. He’d have to be someone to me and
not—” She hesitated, considering her words.
“And not some shifty little punk who gets drunk, hits on everyone’s girl,
and get himself throttled behind a bar?”
Aggie nodded. “He’s still here. He wants to say something. I just can’t
hear him. Fuchs can. Usually that’s good enough.” It was rarely good
enough, but for five dollars a day she was willing to offer some false
comfort.
Fuchs and mimed his smoking with a more defined swagger than earlier.
A smirk curled the cracked edges of his lips in that way that made Aggie
wonder if he’d been a handsome man when he was more than ether and
bitter memories. She pulled the matchbook from Joey’s pocket—Bar de
Estanza—and tucked her gum away inside before producing the cigarette
once more and letting her pet soldier feel it burn inside her lungs. He
rubbed a hand on his pants leg—what would be his hands and what would
be his pants, were he a man of flesh and cloth—and otherwise stood eerily
still while he took in the reward.
“Er wiederholt einfach immer ‘Jason Prapunker.’”
“Jason?”
“Mörder,” he confirmed.
“Your brother know anyone named Jason? Maybe Joseph,” Aggie took a
broad stab.
“In this town,” Estelle scoffed. “Maybe twenty other Joes.”
“Anyone named Prapunker?”
Estelle shook her head slowly, with that unconscious lip curl that
betrayed she was actually thinking about the question instead of responding
by rote.
“Er sagt, jemand anderes hat das geld.” Someone else has the cash, she
translated bit by bit.
“Wie heißen?” Asking for a name was probably the only thing she could
reliably do in German. Fuchs mimed another smoke and she returned her
own silent evaluation of his usefulness today. He grumbled too garbled and
fast for Aggie to follow, but profanity was the soul of their relationship and
she could recognize the message if not the text.
“Stubborn fuck.” Aggie looked back to the client and the familiar wash of
confusion and anger that comes with being audience to half a conversation.
“We maybe got something. Stop by my office tomorrow, noon. I’ll tell you
what we found.”
Estelle eyed her, then scanned the empty space like she was looking out
for the ghosts in the room. Fuchs shuffled obligingly into her line of sight—
a little ritual he found endlessly amusing in his twilight state. She parted
with an indistinct noise and nod, enough to acknowledge what she’d heard
but certainly not enough that Aggie could mistake it for manners.
Aggie kicked Joey’s stiff leg, then lit up the last short length of cigarette.
The cops would clean him up if his sister wasn’t willing to see to it. She
certainly wasn’t paid enough to care about what luggage the spirits left
behind. She took a short puff and Fuchs winced as she butchered the
language. “Wo leben das Mann?”
The mailbox out front read “Russo,” while the bungalow itself announced
“bachelor.” Committed bachelor, if the garden could be trusted. Aggie
plucked a sweet pea blossom and hung it in her hair; if Marcell Russo stunk
half as bad as Muduro, she’d need it.
Clean lines and unadorned surfaces on all the furniture—new and modern
—suggested a side job beyond Marcell Russo’s hours pouring drinks. She’d
taken the time to ask around prior to trekking south to La Pacha, and all it
told her was Marcell Russo poured drinks and wasn’t particularly wellliked; the Italians hated him for being half-Cuban and the Cubans hated him
for being half-Italian. Aggie tried not to take that personally; too many
people in this town were halfway between two worlds for her to bond with
each one, she told herself. Not without crushing her soul.
The smell that crawled up her nose through the front door as she jimmied
the lock suggested someone had clocked Russo out for the day. Bitter
orange and lavender couldn’t cover up the metallic, wet tang announcing
the blood pool on the carpet well.
The bungalow was small; four rooms, plus a privy crammed with more
bottles than the kitchen. She slipped the shiv from her purse and thumbed
the little worn-down stretch of blade by the hilt as she appraised the tiny
home. Sun room led to kitchen led to den led to bedroom led to sun room,
without anything more substantial than a curtain to pry them apart. Not a lot
of places to hide, but she checked what little there was: the alcove that
qualified as a closet, the pantry, under the bed.
The blood pool was the obvious clue, and obvious clues had a way of
shouting down the important ones. She pushed the stink and the deep red
splotch from her mind and focused on what was there. Marcell Russo
poured drinks behind the bar at Fulgencio’s, the same rathole currently
serving as Joey Muduro’s headstone. The two clearly knew each other, so it
was no coincidence Joey was there last night. Like most bartenders, he
didn’t keep much stock at home. Seeing sick slobs swilling hooch to salve
all the wounds their sob stories opened up could leave a bad taste in
anyone’s mouth, a shining example of the virtues of sobriety. Other than
liquor though, Marcell’s home didn’t lack for anything obvious. There was
no sign of missing valuables or anything else that would inspire anyone to
spill four quarts of sangre over.
Things were tidy. No scuffs in the carpet, no overturned furniture, nothing
broken on the floor.
“Fuchs?”
The ghost still lingered on the porch, darting eyes in, then back out to the
street as he stood, a dour sentinel. Aggie waved the spirit in but he
hesitated. She wondered if dying in the rain made him like this, or if the
poor son of a bitch had always been a claustrophobe.
It would’ve made the trenches and foxholes hell, if so.
Aggie kicked around the den for the proper armament of any Florida
bachelor. A box of cigars sat on the credenza, tiny white notecard still
resting on top. Aggie thumbed open the lid, while reading the tag. “Thanks
again, buddy. Best old Javier has to offer!—Joey,” it read in a tight, neat
hand. Everyone in Ybor began their professional lives in the cigar factories,
sharpening, cutting, packing, rolling. It was a point of pride when they
graduated to handing them out. She pulled a cigar from the tight,
undisturbed rows and waved it in the air in Fuchs’s direction as she scanned
the den for a cigar cutter or matches. Fuchs squared his shoulders and set
his jaw—he’d have held his breath if his lungs weren’t rotting eight feet
below some hill in France—and stepped inside. His flippant bravado melted
away; inside he was a scared child hiding in his mother’s skirt, and in those
quiet times Aggie felt herself feel sorry for the man who ruined her life.
She abandoned her search and turned to her ghost. “Kannst du Marcell
sehen,” she asked in a patient, even tone. Can you see Marcell?
“Nein.”
“So he didn’t see it coming,” she thought out loud as she crouched down
to the blood marking the den floor. Ghosts tied themselves to the world by
way of regrets and begging and fear. Not a lot to cling to if death was quiet
and sudden. “Lucky bastard.”
She reached a thumb out and pushed it down into the stained carpet. Cool
and tacky. Little wet beads grew from the fibers as she pressed down.
Marcell died last evening, she estimated—no one looses enough blood to
make a six-foot circle and survives—probably within an hour either side of
Maduro’s death.
“Two men dead; one saw it coming and the other didn’t. So odds are
good Muduro fingered Marcell holding the cash.” Fuchs stared at her in the
same vague flavour of disapproval he used whenever she rattled off in
English or Spanish. She gave the red stain on her thumb a sniff, as if the
smell didn’t drown out everything else in the apartment. Inspiration failed
to strike and she wiped the clinging mess off into a terrycloth rag by the
sink. “Five’ll get you ten that whoever followed the trail here has the
money now.”
But people paid for closure, not the same dead ends they started at. The
client wasn’t likely to fork out the five dollars without at least a new target
for her agitation.
Something caught Fuch’s attention and drew it into the backyard. He
gaped out the window, and Aggie followed his gaze to nothing in particular.
She half-wondered if he was simply eager to leave the small building, but
finally relented to ask. “Was ist?”
His pale complexion took a moment to register, and he turned vaguely
toward her without taking his eyes away from the back window. His eyes
darted quickly to her, then back to the yard, confused and vaguely upset.
“Geistenhund.”
Aggie returned his look of confusion, and withdrew A German and
English Dictionary from her bag. Geist—ghost—was her stock and trade
and she knew it in a dozen languages, but the run-on nature of the German
tongue meant Fuchs shackled a dozen concepts into a single, overlong word
at every opportunity he got. The wispy infantryman stepped through the
wall and out into the sun before she could fumble open the G’s.
She stepped to the kitchen and pulled open the back door to follow,
vaguely registering that—unlike the front—it was unlocked.
Fuchs crouched in the grass, hands extended before him opening and
closing as if kneading dough. A low stream of gibberish poured from his
dead lips through a wide, bittersweet smile. His eyes were half-closed and
long since dry. He was crying quietly to himself, though she couldn’t parse
whether it was for joy or pain. He looked like a starving man preparing his
first meal in weeks.
“Oh no.” She scanned the yard and a patch of white and honey-red stood
out beneath the green shrubs abutting the house. She might have guessed a
discarded towel or bedsheets ruffled by the wind at first, but knowing what
to look for, the short, sleek hair was too obvious. The breed might have
even stood out if the head weren’t a mess of blood and bone that Aggie’s
eyes wouldn’t linger on.
“It’s a dog.” She turned back toward Fuchs and registered the mix of
anguish and joy on his face. He got to pet a dog—maybe for the first time
since the war upturned both their lives—but that dog had to die horribly for
it to happen.
The dog had seen it coming.
She allowed him a few more minutes of murmured affection before
drawing his attention. “Fuchs.” The man turned, but the soldier looked back
at her, the human affection draining from his face. “Kann er …” She
fumbled through the dictionary for the right word. “Strecke?”
Fuch’s confusion drove her back to the page.
“Kann er nachspüren?” Can he track?
The dog—despite working with murder victims for years, Aggie still found
it easier to think of the spirit as “the dog,” rather than as something with a
name that someone had once loved—led them halfway across Ybor as it
followed some unseen trail. She hoped it was the dog, at least. Fuchs could
have just as easily been leading her around town on a wild goose chase for
his own secret delight, and she wouldn’t have known until she kicked the
cardboard off a shoe.
Fuchs stopped once they were back downtown and pointed a finger in
silent witness. Bar de Estanza. So Joey carried a matchbook from this place,
and Russo’s killer—presumably Joey’s killer—crawled back here when he
finished the deed. Estanza was the kind of place that served drinks in the
light of day, half the time for cops. Places that pour illegal beers for cops
have connections. “Oh Joey, what the hell did you do?”
She walked inside, and Fuchs lingered in the street. He couldn’t get far
from her, but somehow he could always find the strength to be a little
further off when it involved small, dark spaces. Estanza wasn’t especially
small, but Aggie guessed the low ceilings and long shadows were more than
enough to keep her ghost on edge.
No police lingered in the bar, which was the only good thing she could
say. Alonzo Ricci sat at a table, wiping glasses; She’d never had the
pleasure of meeting Ricci face-to-face, but his reputation blanketed Ybor as
thoroughly as the afternoon haze, and left Aggie feeling just as dirty. Fivefoot eleven and decorated with a thousand small scars—insect bites, pox,
and the long, pale lines that knives left—he stood out around town and
levelled his distinctive appearance to good effect. She glanced back out to
the street where Fuchs stood, unmoving and unbreathing, and quietly
prayed that his dog hadn’t led her to this gator of a man.
Ricci’s eyes followed her with a lazy, unblinking stare. “Don’t need a
perisher,” he announced. Aggie hoped her reputation preceded her, but no
one would look at her frame and angular face and not see a woman who
killed and buried a man’s name, and earned a ghost by her side for the
trouble. No one is dead yet, he implied.
“Not looking to sell. Just waiting to meet someone,” she managed. Her
voice cracked and they both heard it. After taking a moment to collect her
nerve, she took a hopefully guess. “Man named Prapunker.”
If the name sounded familiar, no sign on Ricci’s face revealed as much.
“You drinking or playing?” Aggie’s eyes drifted to the wide, flat case sitting
atop the bar. A leather bag draped over it like a discarded coat, and a dog-
eared notebook beside. A bar that didn’t need to hide its beer from the
flatfoots didn’t need to hide its bolita either, and that meant the Estanza
belonged to Charlie Wall—the local king of the lotteries—or was so deep in
his pocket that ownership was a formality. Wall—the White Shadow, as the
locals affectionately called their crime boss—came from a nice enough
family that he was on a first-name basis with the chief of police and the
mayor, and while that alone didn’t buy him credibility, it told him exactly
who to bribe and how much they’d demand.
She rolled over the question long enough to make herself uncomfortable,
finally ordered a beer, and took a seat. Ricci delivered her drink, spilling
just enough to let her know it was her last.
Aggie had never learned to read the bolita. She wasn’t entirely sure
anyone could, beyond superstitious grandmothers who found meaning in
how socks split and where birds shat. But the Bar de Estanza set the hair on
the back of her neck on edge. Even if no one had died here—and she
wouldn’t be sure until Fuchs worked up the nerve to join her—the entire
building was saturated in emotion. The drinks and the gambling accounted
for plenty of that—the highs and lows of both made the bars in Ybor feel
subtly wrong, like the film of dried beer and cigar smoke on the tables was
climbing into her soul—but there was something else behind it all.
Something like …
“Qual.”
Pain. She hadn’t seen Fuchs walk up beside her. He stared in the same
lidless haze he’d had outside, mouth slightly agape. “Yeah,” she
acknowledged. Fuchs could see the bloodstain on Ricci. He could wash off
the material behind it, but the emotion it left—the guilt or the thrill—
lingered longer.
A bell rang from somewhere in the back, and the snarling man with the
blood-soaked soul sneered at her but said nothing as he stood up and
disappeared. Aggie took a long drink from her glass. Fuchs gulped along
with her, savouring the warm, cheap swallow of hops. He’d earned a prize
for coming inside, and she needed the extra swallow of courage besides.
She stood up and crossed the room, flipping open the notebook atop the
bolita case. Flipping it open to the latest entry revealed lines of numbers
and names—bets—but she was more interested in the handwriting. Last
night’s take was recorded by someone hurried, with the broad strokes that
suggested a large hand. But every night before the notes were recorded in
the same neat, tidy script she’d seen before.
“Joey, you stupid—”
“Achtung!”
Aggie began twisting away by reflex as Fuchs shouted, though she had no
idea why. Calloused knuckles drove into her hip instead of her kidney and
she staggered sideways with a yelp. Alonzo Ricci grabbed her arm hard
enough to bruise and drove her entire torso down across the bar, bouncing
her head against the wood hard enough that the whole world went white
until she managed to breath.
“Don’t need no perisher,” he breathed in her ear, and dragged her
awkwardly back up to her feet. “But if you’ve been talking to Joey, maybe
you can ask him where the Shadow’s money is.”
“I don’t—”
Ricci slammed her against the bar again and Aggie couldn’t find her feet
this time. She slid to the floor and tried not to pass out.
Aggie pulled away and Fuchs threw himself at Ricci’s bulk. He passed
through, but the big man shuddered at the invisible touch. The ghost
returned and plunged his arm into the enforcer’s chest. Fuchs hated Aggie
with a passion, but she was the only tether holding him to the world of the
living, and his only hope to set right whatever unfinished business forced
him to linger on. Without a perisher, he was as anonymous and unheard as
any other ghost—the only fate worse than a lifetime connection to his
murderer.
Ricci grunted and held a hand to his chest, sweating a little as his heart
pounded against the intangible weight of Fuch’s desperation. The Italian
tucked his second and third fingers under his thumb and extended the
others, and Fuchs whipped his arm back from the mano corno and cradled it
as if he’d tried to grab a burning lamp. Aggie guessed Fuchs was not the
first angry spirit Ricci had encountered—anyone who makes more than a
few ghosts makes a few enemies from the same lineup.
Aggie held her hands up as Ricci turned his attention back to her. “I can
explain.”
It still hurt when she sat up straight, so Aggie leaned on her unbruised right
arm as she looked across the cluttered desk. She hoped it suggested a
rakish, carefree confidence and not the awkward mess of bruises and tears
she actually was. Estelle Maduro still didn’t look the part of a grieving
sister, but Aggie couldn’t find it in herself to judge her for it today.
“How well did you know your brother?” she asked.
Estelle’s lips parted and her brow furrowed. “Well enough.”
“You know when he stopped pouring drinks and started taking bolita bets
for Charlie Wall?”
The crack in Estelle’s voice told Aggie she hadn’t heard about that. “And
how did you know?”
“My little ghost told me.” Aggie nodded to Fuchs at his perch just outside
the window, where he squatted and glowered on the fire escape. “Spanish
isn’t his first language. He thought Joey was giving him a name; Jason
Prapunker. He was saying La Sombra Blanca.”
“The White Shadow?” Estelle went pale and twisted at the fabric in her
skirt. Charlie Wall spent a lot of money on the community. He was a folk
hero, but he was the kind of folk hero who would ask for volunteers to kick
your head in and twelve men would raise their hands.
“Joey wasn’t satisfied with his new position. Thought he could start his
own operation, and was skimming a little off each night’s take to fund it.
Marcell Russo would’ve been his partner.” Aggie pulled Russo’s cigar from
her breast pocket and gave it a sniff before rolling it across the desk. Estelle
looked on, confused. “Cut it open.”
“What’s the most ubiquitous thing in this town?” Aggie asked as Estelle
found a seam in the wrapper and pried the layers apart. Six worn twentydollar bills peaked out among the tobacco. “Joey passed off the cash by
rolling it into cigars. No one looks twice at box of cigar’s in a man’s home
in Ybor.” Not unless that man didn’t have a cigar cutter, or lighters, or
ashtrays, she didn’t add. Russo didn’t smoke, the one simple fact Ricci
hadn’t realized when he came looking for Charlie Wall’s missing money.
“Joey died over a hundred and twenty bucks,” Estelle finally spat out in
disgust. “He only left me a hundred and twenty dollars?!”
“Minus my fee,” Aggie kindly reminded. Estelle tore open her purse and
threw five crumpled one-dollar notes across the desk. Aggie didn’t bother to
count them as the client stormed out.
“Warum hast du ihr das Geld gegeben?” Aggie hadn’t realized Fuchs had
started watching from his fire escape. He rarely cared about the functional
ends of any given job. She took a broad guess at his question, not
recognizing more in the jumble of words beyond “warum” and “Geld.”
“I gave her the money because her brother just died.” She picked up the
crumpled bills and flatted them carefully before stacking them and tucking
the money away in her desk drawer. “And because there are twenty-four
more just like it waiting in Russo’s apartment.” Estelle might’ve realized
the same thing, but she’d need to be as reckless as her brother to go after it.
Aggie glanced over at the wall calendar and made a mental note to swing
by Bar de Estanza come Monday to tell Ricci she’d ‘finally’ convinced
Joey’s spirit to tell her where the money was hidden. Despite protesting that
he didn’t need a perisher, the large man had been amenable to hiring her
services once she’d convinced him that she was only interested in telling
the sister who had killed Joey, and that neither of them knew anything about
the theft. A part of her cried, knowing she’d be turning over more than
twenty-eight hundred in cash, but a twenty dollar finder’s fee was better
than more bruised ribs. She could’ve told Ricci where the money was that
day, clients paid her for peace of mind, and a few days’ wait would be
enough to convince him that the secret was well and truly dead.
Bios
ELLEN is a trans woman author and reader. She has written three novels, her
latest being Ghostkin, a supernatural thriller set in her home town of
Newcastle upon Tyne in the North East of England. She has a burning
ambition to one day write The Legion of Super-Heroes.
So many books. So many comics. So much tea.
IZZY WASSERSTEIN writes fiction and poetry, teaches writing and literature at
a public university on the Great Plains, and shares a house with a variety of
animal companions and the writer Nora E. Derrington. Her most recent
poetry collection is When Creation Falls (Meadowlark Books, 2018), and
her fiction has recently appeared or is forthcoming from Clarkesworld,
Apex, Fireside Magazine, and elsewhere. She is a member of the 2017 class
of Clarion West, and likes to slowly run long distances. Her website is
www.izzywasserstein.com.
gwynception / they them / trans femme / schizo / white / settler in
nogojiwanong ptbo / drinker of copious liquids / smoker of various flowers
herbs / writer bard / currently publishing serial with river magazine /
recently recorded album with local queercore project gashes / leo sun pisces
moon capricorn ascendant
AUDREY VEST is a writer who lives with her family in Florida. She is
involved with local LGBT groups and enjoys reading fiction and learning
about history and art. This is her first time being published; to see what she
does next and find links to more of her writing you can follow her on twitter
@Audrey_Vest.
GWEN BENAWAY is a trans girl of Anishinaabe and Métis descent. She has
published two collections of poetry, Ceremonies for the Dead and Passage,
and her third collection, Holy Wild, is forthcoming from Book+hug in 2018.
KAI CHENG THOM is a writer, performer, and social worker based in Toronto
and Montreal, unceded Indigenous territories. She is also a lasagna lover
and wicked witch. She has contributed to such publications as Buzzfeed,
Autostraddle, Matrix Magazine, and Asian American Literary Review. She
is the author of Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans
Girl’s Confabulous Memoir (Metonymy Press), a place called No
Homeland (Arsenal Pulp Press), and the children’s book From the Stars in
the Sky to the Fish in the Sea (Arsenal Pulp Press).
CASEY PLETT is the author of the novel Little Fish, the short story collection
A Safe Girl to Love and co-editor of the anthology Meanwhile, Elsewhere:
Science Fiction and Fantasy from Transgender Writers. She wrote a column
on transitioning for McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and her essays and
reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Maclean’s, The Walrus,
Plenitude, The Winnipeg Free Press, and other publications. She is the
winner of a Lambda Literary Award for Best Transgender Fiction and
received an Honour of Distinction from The Writers’ Trust of Canada’s
Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Emerging Writers.
CRYSTAL FRASIER is known for her frequent text contributions to the
Pathfinder, Starfinder, Mutants & Masterminds, and Modern AGE
roleplaying games, as well as her work writing the Pathfinder: Spiral of
Bones comic series, co-writing State of Decay 2, and illustrating the Secrets
of Cats roleplaying game. Excitable and easily confused, she lives in the
Pacific Northwest under the watchful auspices of her corgi, Calamity. Her
most recent game design work can be found in the upcoming World of
Lazarus campaign setting for the Modern AGE roleplaying game.
LILAH STURGES is the Eisner and Ignatz Award-nominated writer of comics
such as Jack of Fables, House of Mystery, Public Relations, and
Lumberjanes: The Infernal Compass, as well as two fantasy novels. She
lives in Austin, Texas.
KYLIE ARIEL BEMIS is a trans woman and two-spirit working at the
intersection of statistics and computer science; she is an enrolled member of
the Zuni tribe.
ALEXA FAE MCDANIEL is a history student, amateur theater director, and
RPG enthusiast from Fredericton, New Brunswick. She likes her coffee like
she likes her men—far away from whatever lesbian bar she’s sitting at.