Issue #79, Third Anniversary Double-Issue • Oct. 7, 2011

“The Tiger’s Turn,” by Richard Parks

“The Calendar of Saints,” by Kat Howard

“A Spoonful of Salt,” by Nicole M. Taylor

“The Judge’s Right Hand,” by J.S. Bangs

For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

THE TIGER’S TURN

by Richard Parks

        Kenji found me reading in my newly cleaned yet persistently shabby quarters. When I continued to read even after he’d grunted a greeting and seated himself on my threadbare second-best cushion, he began to frown.

        “Lord Yamada, I know for a fact that you’re not illiterate. Are you having trouble reading that letter, or are you perhaps lingering over a lady’s love poem?”

        I shrugged. “Since Prince Kanemore is even less feminine than you are, we can eliminate the second option. Nor am I having difficulty; I’ve managed to read it at least three times since you’ve arrived. I know what this document says, Kenji-san. My problem is that I have no idea what it means.” I held up the paper. “This is an Imperial Commission. I’ve been awarded the income of a rather prosperous estate near Mount Hiei.”

        Kenji’s frown disappeared. “An estate? But that’s wonderful!”

        On the face of the matter I had to agree. While the land technically belonged to the Imperial Family, I had been assigned the position of steward, which gave me control of all the fruits of its production except for a modest percentage that was reserved for the royal coffers. Since the estate in question produced both rice and woven hemp in significant amounts, the steward’s portion amounted to quite a handsome income. Even better, it was common practice for stewards to appoint a deputy to handle the actual day-to-day running of the estate; in theory I could remain in the Capital and never set foot on the place.

        I sighed. “One would certainly think so.”

        Kenji rubbed the stubble on his head and turned his gaze toward Heaven. “Lord Yamada, as a priest of the Eightfold Path, I recognize that this material world is mere illusion. Yet some illusions are better than others, and there’s nothing wrong with a little security for your declining years. Aren’t you tired of being poor?”

        “Security is the greatest illusion of all. As for my poverty, it was more of a problem when I was drinking. Don’t mistake me—I am not ungrateful, Kenji-san. I am merely puzzled.”

        “Prince Kanemore is your friend. Why would he not want to help you?”

        I shrugged. “He would and does. Yet his own estates are barely adequate for his needs, which, due to his position, are far greater than mine. More to the point, such prizes as this are reserved for those of high rank who have served the Court both openly and ostentatiously; I can be accused of neither. My good fortune simply makes no sense.”

        Kenji frowned again. “As much as it pains me—I see your point. Perhaps you should ask the prince.”

        “Easily arranged. The commission letter was accompanied by a summons. I have an audience with His Highness this afternoon. Oddly enough, so do you. That’s why I sent for you.” I showed him the text of the summons.

        Kenji frowned again. “What would Prince Kanemore want with me?”

        “I don’t know. But I’m certain that your summons is another piece of the puzzle.”

* * *

        We entered the palace grounds through the east gate. The Minor Captain of the Guards was a young Fujiwara, maybe twenty years old, though Minamoto archers made up the bulk of the detachment. Our summons meant there was no difficulty about getting in, though the captain did look at us through narrowed eyes as we passed through the gate.

        Not that I could blame him—Kenji and I made a disreputable-looking pair at the best of times, though we had both done our best to appear presentable. The green hunting coat I wore over my hitatare was tatty but clean, and Kenji had thrown a new surplice over his stained robes. I glanced back once to see the captain’s gaze still following us, and he quickly looked away. We were met near the gardens by a young page attired in blue who led us to Prince Kanemore’s quarters within one of several mansions reserved for the Imperial Family.

        We were ushered into a formal audience hall, where Prince Kanemore sat on a raised dais by the rear wall. He was in his mid-thirties, strongly-built and handsome except for a scar on his left cheek. He looked a bit tired but in good health. His ornate tachi rested upright at his side on a black lacquered stand decorated with sprinkles of gold leaf. As a rule, an Imperial Prince didn’t keep his sword quite that close to hand, but then Kanemore wasn’t a typical prince. More warrior than courtier, palace life didn’t especially suit him. Yet he was the maternal uncle of the Crown Prince, and as such, his duty tied him to the Court until his nephew was safely on the throne.

Kenji and I kneeled and bowed formally, but Kanemore quickly dismissed his attendants and left the dais to join us on the floor cushions.

        “It’s good to see you again, Prince,” I said.

        “And you, my friend. Thank you both for answering my summons.”

        There was no chance that we would do otherwise, but of course he knew that. He smiled a little wistfully. “I suppose you’re wondering about your commission.”

        “I am grateful, of course, but I did find it a bit... strange, Highness.”

        “No doubt. Now then, what do you know of a man named Fujiwara Yasunori?”

        The name didn’t bring up any immediate associations, and I said as much.

        “I’m not surprised. He was Minister of the Crown Prince’s Household in my father’s time. The estate in your commission was originally assigned to him. There was one odd thing, and much remarked upon at the time—rather than appoint a deputy, Yasunori chose to leave the Court and assume the office of steward himself, and he held it until his recent passing.”

        That was indeed odd. When a noble gave up Court life willingly, it was usually to take holy orders. This person had instead decided to give up both Court and Capital to retire to a rural estate and, in essence, watch rice grow.

        Kenji spoke up. “With respect, gentlemen, and to my own surprise, I may have some information on this matter.”

        This was also a surprise to me, and apparently to Kanemore as well. “Go on,” he said.

        “For a time after I was ordained, I served at Enryaku Temple on Mt. Hiei. One of the primary functions of any temple, of course, is to arrange and conduct funerals. Soon after I arrived, I was asked to oversee the rituals for Yasunori’s principal wife, Lady Michiko. There had been a plague in the Capital at that time and she succumbed. That was thirty years ago, which, if I am not mistaken, was shortly before Lord Yasunori left the Court. A coincidence, perhaps—if one believed in such things.”

        “Grief?” I asked.

        Kanemore looked thoughtful. “It’s possible. He never remarried. Regardless, after Yasunori’s passing, it was decided that the stewardship should pass to his nephew, Tadanobu. He of course appointed a deputy, but the man disappeared before he could take up his duties. In due course Tadanobu appointed a new deputy, who also disappeared. No trace of either man has been found. Tadanobu appointed a third, but this one didn’t disappear.”

        Kenji and I exchanged glances. “I hesitate to ask,” I said.

        “He was found by a farmer, lying beside the road near the valley’s entrance. He appeared to have been shot with hundreds of arrows, though no traces of any arrows remained.”

        “Bandits?” Kenji asked.

        “With the sohei, the warrior monks of Enryaku Temple, so close? None would dare. That road is safer than some in the Capital, normally,” Kanemore said. “That is part of the... delicacy, of this matter.”

        Prince Kanemore seemed hesitant, and that was not a condition I associated with him. I glanced around and made certain that no one else was within earshot before I spoke again. “You suspect the monks of Hieizan might be involved. Why?”

        Kanemore looked grim. “The estate has no bushi of its own. If Tadanobu’s deputy was indeed killed by archers, the warrior monks of the temple were the only ones who could have done it. As to why, I would think that would be obvious—by removing Tadanobu’s deputies, they prevent him from assuming the stewardship.”

        “Ah. They want the estate for themselves,” I said. “It must gall them to have such a rich prize so close and yet out of their reach. Even so, you know the character of the abbot as well as I do. This is not the sort of thing he would condone.”

        Kenji spoke up. “Nor would he have to do so. In such a large organization as Enryaku-ji, it’s possible someone within the temple acted on their own initiative.”

        Kanemore looked thoughtful. “It is also possible that the abbot has lost control of the situation. There has been open conflict between the temple and the Court several times in the past, and if Enryaku-ji’s military arm is on the move now, whatever the reason or catalyst, the implications are far more serious than the income of one estate. The Court may be headed for an open confrontation that, to be blunt, the Emperor is ill-prepared to face.”

        I knew the truth of that. Most of the city’s guard and police were commanded by high-ranking gentlemen who looked on a military assignment as beneath them and its duties as inconveniences to be avoided. The true might of the Emperor was in the military families in the provinces, who could be mustered but this took time, nor could it be done without alerting the temple. Which, if it really was mobilizing, could prompt Enryaku-ji to strike immediately. Kanemore was right to be concerned, and with the safety of my friend and the Crown Prince both now at issue, so was I.

        He continued, “Tadanobu was resolved to make the journey to the estate in person, and so his family asked that his commission be withdrawn so that he would not, for his own safety. That was when I thought of you.”

        Kenji frowned. “Your pardon, Prince Kanemore, but are you trying to get Lord Yamada killed?”

        “I fancy he’s trying to give me an opportunity,” I said. “And now this commission makes perfect sense. If I can unravel who is responsible for these deaths and disappearances and apprise the Court of the true situation, my reward is the estate income as specified, yes?”

        Kanemore sighed. “Just so. This is a chance not likely to repeat, but it is also an obviously dangerous undertaking. You have the commission, but you also have the right to refuse. I will not think less of you if you do so.”

        “And I will not weigh it against you if I die,” I said, and I smiled. “But you still haven’t explained why you summoned Kenji.”

        The prince laughed. “I would have thought that obvious as well. It’s possible that no one at Enryaku-ji or the estate itself was responsible for the fate of the three deputy stewards. If they were not killed by bandits or sohei or angry farmers, then what killed them may be of a different nature. The manner of the third deputy’s death is especially troubling.”

        “You mean some sort of monster or demon,” Kenji said.

        “Yes, Priest. I do.”

        Kenji bowed. “I’m not sure what reward you had in mind for me,” he said. “But with all due deference to your Highness, my price has just gone up.”

* * *

        The journey from the Capital to the estate wasn’t an especially long one; Mt. Hiei itself was visible from the city, and while the estate wasn’t exactly adjacent to the mountain, the same road that passed the mountain did lead near to it. While the late summer heat was oppressive in the Capital, here in the mountains it was much more pleasant. Mt. Hiei loomed over us as Kenji and I stopped to rest and refresh ourselves at a traveler’s shelter at the foot of the mountain.

        I looked up at the seemingly peaceful temple complex nestled on the slopes of the mountain. “Curious. I don’t hear anything.”

        Kenji frowned. “What did you expect to hear?”

        “Any significant force of either monks or secular bushi cannot be mustering on this mountain. You simply cannot put such a large group of men together in a relatively confined space without noise. We should hear the sound of sparring, shouts, arguments, something.”

        “Then what killed Tadanobu’s deputy steward, if not sohei archers?”

        “I don’t know,” I said. “But I’ve been thinking about that as well. If the temple was mustering, wouldn’t they have the sense to dispose of the deputy in a less obvious manner, as apparently happened to the first two? The man’s death appears almost calculated to draw attention, which the temple would certainly wish to avoid if they planned to make a show of force.”

         “What you say may be true,” said Kenji, looking up toward the fortified monastery. “But it’s not what’s puzzling me.”

        “Oh? Then what is?”

        “That an estate so close to Mt. Hiei isn’t already part of the temple’s endowment. It’s the sort of thing they would normally receive as a gift from the Imperial Family after healing a sickness or offering effective prayers for the safe birth of an heir. Why would they need to resort to violence?”

        “The stewardship belonged to the Fujiwara clan, Kenji-san. As much as the power of the temple concerns the Emperor, he wasn’t going to risk angering the Fujiwara by handing their estate to the monks of Mt. Hiei.”

        Kenji sighed. “Do I have to point out that the Fujiwara are no longer an obstacle to the temple? Also, the temple has partisans and sympathizers everywhere. They will know your mission. If they are responsible for the disappearances, they will seek to do the same to us. If they are not, the monks will simply wait until you succeed in pacifying whatever is lurking along the road, and then proceed to make their petition the next time they’re up for reward. You are not a Fujiwara and your commission isn’t likely to deter them.”

        I almost smiled. “Thank you.”

        He frowned. “What for?”

        “For reminding me of why I associate with you. You’re one of the few people I know who make me seem like a cheerful fellow by comparison.”

        His face turned a little red. “I know how the temple works, Yamada-sama.”

        So did I. While it was indeed a seat of piety and learning, Enryaku-ji was also interested in its position and status and, yes, power and influence at Court and with the other temples, which is why so many of them had taken up arms in the past. In other words, the monks remained men, no matter how much they sought to distance themselves from the world, and wealth was useful to any man. The monks of Enryaku-ji were no exception. But how far would they go to attain it?

        “No doubt. Yet when crossing a dangerous bridge, it is best to keep one’s attention on the bridge and not worry about the tiger further along the road.”

        Kenji looked grim. “And yet the tiger will have his turn.”

        I also had no doubt that Kenji was correct, but there was no point worrying about it. At least, not yet.

        When we left the shelter, it was early afternoon. Before mid-afternoon I was certain we were being shadowed, and I said as much.

        Kenji scowled. “Sohei?”

        “I think we’re going to find out. I would prefer that it be at a time and place of our own choosing.”

        I did not get my wish. As I scanned the trees alongside the road ahead of us, looking for a good place for concealment, a group of four rather rough-looking fellows carrying cudgels stepped out from just such a place about forty paces in front of us. An equal number came trotting up the road behind us, apparently upon a pre-arranged signal. I saw a lone figure standing behind the second group, but after a moment he disappeared into the trees and did not join them. He was too far away for me to see his face, but I was almost certain he wasn’t a bandit.

        Kenji scowled. “Kanemore did say that Yasunori’s household claimed that none of the deputy stewards ever arrived. Perhaps they were telling the truth.”

        The same thought occurred to me. I didn’t draw my sword just then, but I kept my hand close to the hilt. “What is the meaning of this?” I called out to the closest group.

        I wasn’t optimistic, and so it proved. The men were not inclined to conversation. The largest one, a thick-bodied man with bushy eyebrows, was acting as leader.

        “Get them!”

        I quickly drew my sword. Kenji had his priestly staff, which was thick and reinforced with bands of copper about the top and bottom, at the ready. Fortunately for us, the ambush group tried to rush us without waiting for their companions. I dodged one swing from the leader’s heavy club and then killed him while he was out of position. Kenji accounted for a second in like manner. I barely evaded a third, and then the next group of four reached us, and Kenji and I were hard-pressed. While Prince Kanemore could likely have handled a band of such unskilled ruffians on his own, neither Kenji nor I were at his level, and we were now two against six.

        I cut down a second man, but then a glancing blow numbed my sword arm up to the elbow. I managed not to drop the blade, but all I was able to do then was swing it in broad strokes to keep my enemies at bay; I could not wield it effectively. Kenji moved to cover my back, and now we were in the center of a ring of men shouting for our blood. The feeling was slowly returning to my arm, along with the pain of the blow, but all we could do was guard. One of our attackers picked up a stone from the side of the road and hurled it at my head. I dodged it but then barely avoiding getting brained when one of his companions seized the opportunity to dart in while I was distracted. Both Kenji and I were breathing hard by this time.

        A little more patience on their part, and they have us. I would have cursed myself for being so careless, if there had been any point.

        The man reached for another stone and was about to fling it when he stopped, looking puzzled. After a moment and without any sound or fuss, he toppled face-first into the dirt of the road, a long arrow sprouting from his back.

        Who...?

        I didn’t have time to finish the thought. I heard the twang of the bowstring this time, and the thug attacking me screamed as an arrow ripped through his thigh. He leaned over, instinctively grasping the shaft, and I seized the chance and cut off his head. It rolled to a stop at the feet of one his three surviving companions, and that apparently decided the matter for them. They took to their heels, but a sixth man went down with an arrow through his neck before the surviving pair reached the cover of the woods.

        The bowman stepped out of the trees and onto the road. He wasn’t in his guard robes now; he wore a tight-fitting hitatare and a plain hunting coat of dark gray, but I recognized him immediately.

        “Minor Guard Captain Fujiwara no Tadanobu,” I said, between gulps of air. “You are quite the archer... thank you.”

        The young man smiled. “You seemed to be doing well on your own,” he said, “but I did not think you would mind a little assistance.”

        Kenji leaned on his staff, like me trying to catch his breath. “Mind? I will say prayers for anyone you name, free of obligation, for the next year.”

        Tadanobu looked serious. “For my uncle, then, Lord Yasunori. He was a good man.” He glanced toward the trees on the other side of the road where the last of our attackers had fled. “Pity those two got away.”

        I looked around. “Yes, it would have been better if we had managed to capture one alive. I would dearly love to know who set them on us.”

        “It’s not as if they gave us much choice in the matter,” Kenji said, scowling.

        Tadanobu examined the body of the first man he’d killed. “No, they meant your deaths, and no mistake. I think we can safely assume what happened to the unfortunate deputy stewards.”

        “While I am in your debt,” I said, “I am a bit surprised to see you here, young sir. My understanding was that your family had prevented you from making this journey by having the commission withdrawn.”

        He laughed. “True, but no one said anything about not making a pilgrimage to Mt. Hiei itself. Such is an act of piety.” Then his tone turned serious again. “Lord Yamada, I know what you must think. While I am disappointed in losing the income from my uncle’s estate, I am not without other means. Yet I apparently sent three men along this road to their deaths. I would like to know why.”

        I was no admirer of the Fujiwara clan in general, but I had to admit that, every now and then, they produced men of worth. At that moment I considered that Tadanobu might be one such.

        “Two men, I think,” I said.

        He frowned. “But the third—”

        “Was killed just outside the estate proper, and obviously not”—I glanced at the bodies on the ground—”by these fine fellows. If they were archers themselves, we would not be standing here now. That leaves the question of what did happen to the unfortunate third deputy.”

        Tadanobu fell silent, but his glance strayed toward Mt. Hiei towering in the background, and that glance spoke volumes.

        “You can speak freely in front of my friend here,” I said, nodding at Kenji. “There’s nothing you can say about Enryaku-ji that he hasn’t said himself.”

        Tadanobu sighed. “Very well. I had kept some contact with my uncle over the years. I was rather fond of him. Every now and then he would write ominously of the monks of Enryaku-ji. He knew they coveted his estate. I did not think too much of it when the first man disappeared; a lone traveler can easily meet with misadventure. But after the second....”

        “You suspected the temple.”

        He looked a little defiant. “I did, though it may be impious of me.”

        “Wise of you, rather,” Kenji said.

        Tadanobu shrugged. “After the first two deputy stewards vanished I did not think to appoint another, but then Kintaro volunteered.”

        Kenji frowned. “Mika Kintaro?”

        “Yes. Did you know him?” Tadanobu asked.

        “I knew of him. He was a low-ranking servant at Court. He was also a lay brother at Enryaku-ji.”

        “Which you also knew,” I said, speaking to Tadanobu. “Or am I mistaken?”

        “I wouldn’t have done it,” Tadanobu said softly, “but I was certain he would be safe. If the Temple was behind the first two attacks, as I believed, then I felt certain they would not harm Kintaro. His first loyalty was to Enryaku-ji, I knew, so why would they pass up the chance to have their own agent in place? And if he succeeded where the other two failed, I would know for certain that Enryaku-ji was involved and then could decide a course of action. But then Kintaro was killed too.”

        My estimate of the young Fujiwara was rising by the moment, but there was a point he was overlooking.

        “But not, as I stated before, by these men.” I nudged one of the bodies with the toe of my sandal. “Look at how they are dressed and armed. The unfortunate Kintaro was not killed by a cudgel and then buried in some deep hole in the woods, as I believe happened to the first two deputies. By all accounts his body had more holes than a fishing net. More, he did safely reach the entrance to the valley where the estate is located, as you expected, which would only have happened if these men had allowed him to pass unmolested. We still have no proof that Enryaku-ji is involved in this matter, but if they are, the circumstances of Kintaro’s death suggest that whoever killed him was not acting on behalf of the temple. Therefore we can rule out archers from Mt. Hiei.”

        Tadanobu frowned. “But if not the Temple, then who?”

        “That is a very good question, and one we will need to answer—”

        We were interrupted by a scream from the woods in the direction our attackers had fled. Without a word all three of us set out into the woods at a run. The trees in this section were mostly chestnut and maple, with a few pines scattered here and there. There was little undergrowth, and we moved quickly. We had gone no more than the distance of two or three bowshots when we came across two bodies, which I immediately recognized as our assailants from the road. Each had been killed, by the look of it, by a single sword cut.

        “Someone truly did not want anyone to question them,” Tadanobu said. “Not that we don’t already know who is behind this.”

        I sighed. “Yes, but without a witness to that effect there’s no chance to prove it.”

        Tadanobu just looked at me. “Would that have mattered?”

        Kenji shrugged. “Minor Captain Tadanobu has a point. No monk of Enryaku-ji attacked us, so none was caught or killed to show the Temple’s complicity. Even if the men who did attack us were hired by the Temple and we had caught one of the louts alive, the temple could simply deny everything, and it would be their word against those of common thieves and murderers. Who would the Court believe?”

        It pained me to admit, but I knew Kenji was right. If there was to be any justice at all in this matter, I would need to find it elsewhere.

        There was no sign of whoever had killed the two men, but then we hadn’t expected these two to stay so close by. Since a renewed attack was unlikely, it made sense that they had remained to meet with someone, perhaps an employer. “Please, gentlemen, stay where you are for a moment.”

        I started where the two bodies lay and walked around the spot in a gradually widening circle. There had been a late summer rain a few days before; there was still enough moisture in the forest floor to take a footprint, and soon I found some. They were faint, but telling. One man had killed both of them, and done it easily. Perhaps because they had not expected it. Or perhaps because the person in question had more than basic skill with a blade. I glanced further into the woods where bramble thickets grew and placed my wager. I bent over and picked up a small object up from the forest floor.

        I called out to Kenji and Tadanobu, some distance away from me now. “These men were indeed killed by a sohei, a warrior monk from Enryaku Temple. Here’s our proof.”

        I walked back to where they stood, and I could read the questions in their faces before they asked them, but I held up a hand for silence. They both frowned but obeyed. Together we made our way back to the road.

        “What did you find?” Kenji asked once we were back on the road.

        “An early chestnut. A rather nice one, too.”

* * *

        The road turned into a broad path just before it reached the entrance to the valley. There we found a winsome young woman digging burdock in a small meadow adjacent to the path; the aroma of burdock root and the late summer flowers blooming there made a pleasant scent. The woman was dressed as a peasant farmer and wore a large reed hat, but I could easily imagine her in court robes moving about a palace. She was quite pretty, with hair so long, thick, and glossy black that any Lady of the Court would be jealous of it. When she saw us, she dropped her digging spike and bowed low.

        “Greetings, noble sirs.”

        I thought I detected a note of apprehension in her voice, which I quickly moved to dispel.

        “We mean no harm. I am the new steward of this estate. My name is Yamada no Goji. What is your name, girl? Who is in charge here?”

        She looked up at me, dark eyes wide and innocent. “You are not bad men...? Oh, forgive me. I’m called Kasumi, sir. No one is in charge. Our beloved Master is dead. Do you mean Mistress Aiko?”

        I glanced at Tadanobu, who grunted. “A local woman who managed my late uncle’s household. I’ve met her a few times, and I know he held her in high regard. I gather she’s been holding the estate together since his passing.”

        “She works hard,” Kasumi said.

        I considered. “Kasumi, are you up here digging burdock root very often?”

        “Oh, yes, sir. I am very good at gathering burdock. The best, Mistress Aiko says. I can take you to her, if you wish, but I really should stay here and finish my work. Would that be all right?”

        “That will be fine, Kasumi,” I said. “We’ll find her.” I turned to Tadanobu. “If you will accompany us?”

        Tadanobu frowned. “But I can’t—I gave my word not to enter the estate. Perhaps I should remain here and keep this charming girl company.”

        I noted with some amusement that Kasumi was blushing, but I insisted. “That would not be a good idea. I do need you with me.”

        He frowned. “You think there will be trouble within the estate itself?”

        “I think there is already trouble, and Enryaku-ji is only part of it. We need to sort out the rest now, or all is for nothing. For the sake of your uncle’s memory, I need you to come with me. I will ask Prince Kanemore to intercede with your family if it becomes an issue. I will try to make certain it does not.”

        Tadanobu reluctantly agreed, and we continued along the path, which began to slope downward. Almost immediately we could see the rice paddies spread out below us, thick and green with plants almost ready to harvest. Peasant farmers moved through the fields, adjusting the irrigation gates, funneling water with bamboo pipes. There would be holding tanks built higher on the hillside to catch and keep rainwater, though little would be needed now as the fields were almost ready to drain for harvest.

        “I understand this was mostly swampland on the valley floor before it was drained and reclaimed. Look at it now,” Tadanobu said.

        “Quite an accomplishment,” I said.

        “It’s unfortunate that the Temple agrees,” muttered Kenji.

        “There may be a solution to that,” I said.

        Kenji and Tadanobu both looked at me. “What is it?” Tadanobu asked.

        “If it proves possible, I’ll tell you. That is one thing we are here to discover.” I nodded at Kenji. “What were your impressions of Kasumi?”

        “Lovely girl,” Kenji said. “If a bit simple. Also a little young for my—”

        I sighed. “I meant what did your senses tell you?”

        He frowned, then understanding dawned. “Oh. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

        “Nothing aside from the smell of burdock?”

        He shook his head, looking puzzled. “Did I miss something?”

        “I’m surprised you didn’t mention her hair. It’s a truly astonishing feature, to find such long, beautiful hair on a peasant girl. They usually keep it shorter. As for missing something, I think we’ve all been missing something. I know we have an ambush waiting for us back on the road. I should know, because I arranged it. I just hope we aren’t walking into another one on your uncle’s estate.”

        “There are no warriors here, even if Mistress Aiko and her folk had some reason to wish us harm, which I do not believe to be the case,” Tadanobu said.

        I glanced back up the path. “I would not be too sure of either one of those conclusions.”

        We met one of the farmers on the path, an older man who bowed as we passed. “A girl named Kasumi told us that Mistress Aiko could be found here,” I said. “Is she a servant of Mistress Aiko, and are we on the correct path?”

        “Yes, masters, to both. Just a little further and you’ll come to the manor house. You should be able to find her there.”

        “Thank you. You’ve been very helpful.”

        He bowed again and then hurried off on his business. “Very helpful,” I said again when he was out of earshot. “In fact, you just told me more than you knew.”

        Tadanobu looked at me. “Lord Yamada, what are you talking about?”

        “Just that there were depths to your late uncle that we had not suspected. I’m intrigued.”

        Tadanobu sighed. “Is he often this impenetrable?”

        That last was directed at Kenji, who just spread his hands. “I’ve seen worse but, yes, quite often. It really is annoying. Yet this time I do follow his meaning.” Kenji turned to me. “Before you ask, yes. I sensed it. I’m either tired or getting old, that I did not pick up on this sooner.”

        Now Tadanobu was scowling at both of us, but I just shook my head. “I ask that you trust me for now, and take no action without a word from me. Will you promise?”

        Tadanobu assented, though he looked skeptical—whether of me or the situation I did not bother to find out. We continued along the path skirting the rice fields and soon came to what could only be the manor house.

        It was built in the shinden style of the Capital, with a plastered, wood-shingled wall and iron-reinforced wooden gate. A servant showed us inside. There was a garden, small but immaculate, in the courtyard. The main house had a high-peaked roof covered in the same plain wooden shingles as the wall, but the carpentry was on a par with any I had ever seen. Likewise for the two outbuildings linked by covered walkways that made up the east and west wings of the manor house. Tadanobu looked at the work approvingly.

        “I remember how proud he was when this was completed; he wrote to me about it,” he said. “My uncle Yasunori was a man of impeccable taste.”

        The servant, an older woman with a cheerful smile, bowed low. “Please come inside. I will fetch my mistress.”

        “Please do. And tell her we would like to speak to her in private.”

        “Of course, gentlemen.” The old woman hurried ahead.

        We entered the reception hall. Yasunori had it set up like that of a mansion in the Capital, only there were bundles of Kasumi’s burdock piled against one wall, apparently awaiting stripping and preparing, and the scent was heavy. We heard muffled conversation from a nearby room and then the very faint footsteps of someone approaching.

        A noblewoman would have spoken to us from the dais at the back wall of the room, from behind a curtain. Mistress Aiko instead entered through a side door, alone, and immediately kneeled and placed her forehead on the floor.

        “Mistress Aiko? I am Lord Yamada,” I said. “This is the priest Kenji, and I believe you’ve met Lord Tadanobu.”

        “We have been expecting your arrival,” she said. “And Master Tadanobu, it is good to see you again.”

        “And you, Mistress Aiko. I would also like to offer my thanks for taking care of my late uncle for so long,” Tadanobu said.

        “One does what one can,” she said, not looking at us.

        I seated myself on one of the cushions arranged before the dais, and Kenji and Tadanobu followed my example. “Please sit up, Mistress Aiko. We have business to discuss.”

        “Of course.”

        She raised herself to an upright kneeling position, and I got my first good look at her. Mistress Aiko was a handsome woman, perhaps in her forties. She was dressed in simple work clothes, though instead of pulling her hair up under a scarf like many peasant women, she wore it in one long strand down her back, tied with blue ribbons. She appeared to be no more than she was supposed to be, but the signs were there if one knew where to look. I heard a grunt from Kenji to my left, and I was certain he was carefully reaching for one of the spirit wards he kept about his person at all times. I glanced over at him.

        “I do not believe you will need that,” I said to him.

        It was a critical moment, and I did not know how it would end. I only knew how I wanted it to end. I could feel the tension in Mistress Aiko’s body, and I knew I was about to make matters worse, but there was no other way.

        “Mistress Aiko, how long did Lord Yasunori know that you were a fox?”

        She glared at me, but she did not move. “Lord Yasunori was a good man. Why do you think he would associate with such a creature?”

        Tadanobu gasped, but I glanced at him and he kept still. “Because he did,” I said. “For thirty years or more. Or are you really going to claim that he didn’t know?”

        “Of course he knew,” she said, softly. “How did you know?”

        “Because I have some experience with your kind. And Kenji, here,” I said, nodding at the priest, “is spiritually sensitive to such things, when he isn’t too much in his cups or besotted by a pair of pretty eyes.”

        Now Tadanobu spoke up. “You mean Kasumi? She’s a fox, too?”

        I smiled. “No, I am fairly certain that Kasumi is not a fox. Isn’t that correct, Mistress Aiko?”

        “It is,” she said.

        “In fact, I would wager that only a small percentage of the inhabitants of this valley are foxes. The rest run the gamut, I suppose? Tanuki? Yokai? There are all sorts of shape-shifters, aside from foxes.”

        Tadanobu put his hand on the hilt of his sword. “All the people in the valley? Murdered and replaced by monsters? Mistress Aiko, I can hardly believe—”

        Her hands clenched into fists. “Believe what you will.”

        I scowled at Tadanobu. “Please take your hand off your sword,” I said, “And I don’t think anyone has been murdered. At least, not here.”

        “We are monsters,” Mistress Aiko said. “The young master said so. Why do you think we would spare humans? How do you know Lord Yasunori wasn’t killed and replaced by a shape-shifter years ago?”

        I almost laughed. “If that were the case, then his death would not have been such an issue, would it? You could have simply replaced one of your kind with another, and continued the deception for years to come. He was not such an old man. No, Mistress Aiko. I want you to tell me how this came about.”

        She looked away. “That is pointless. If you are going to slay me, do it now. You might even get out of the valley alive, if you move quickly. It’s not as if you will believe what I tell you.”

        “While it is true that I cannot promise to believe you, I will promise on what remains of my honor to listen.”

        She took a long breath and closed her eyes before she began to speak. “This valley was our home,” she said. “Long before the men came. They came with priests and warriors and they pushed us out. They killed many of us, and the rest were pushed to the fringes as the valley was remade for their needs. Our kind existed on the margins after that, stealing scraps when we could, staying out of sight in the vain hope that the men would forget we were there. No such luck. One day I was being chased by the warriors and my strength gave out. I collapsed beside the manor house in what is now Lord Yasunori’s garden, not twenty paces from where he sat.”

        “Why was he out there, if there was no garden?”

        “He was grieving. He had only been here a few days; I think he just meant to put himself in seclusion for a time after the death of his wife. I expected him to summon a servant to finish me off, but as he looked at me his expression barely changed. He was so sad. I don’t know if that affected his judgment, but he took pity on me. He had a servant bring me food and water, and I remained there until the warriors gave up the chase and I was strong enough to leave.”

        “That was my uncle,” Tadanobu said. “He would not grieve one death while ordering another.”

        Mistress Aiko covered her face with her sleeve. “I should have left well enough alone, I know, but I wanted to repay his kindness. I took the form of a human woman and entered the manor as a servant, but he wasn’t fooled. I think he would have slain me then, but in my desperation I was able to read his heart, and I changed again.”

        “Let me guess,” I said, “Lady Michiko?”

        “He was furious. He knew what I was,” she said, “but he couldn’t bring himself to slay the image of his dead wife... nor to give her up again. He had meant to appoint a deputy, but now he returned to Court just long enough to settle his affairs and retired to this estate.”

        “And you became my late aunt for him,” Tadanobu said, sounding a little disgusted.

        “You mustn’t think so poorly of him. It was that way at first,” she admitted. “And for some time thereafter. He mostly wanted to talk to me, just to talk, and for me to listen, as Lady Michiko. But there came a time when it was no longer necessary. I returned to my first disguise, the one you see now. It turned out I was very good at organizing and running a household. I was useful to him, even after his grief had eased, and he chose to remain.”

        “What happened to the farmers of the valley?” Kenji asked.

        “Priest, it may surprise you to know that most of the original farmers are still here,” she said. “But being human, many have died over the years and not all with issue. Replacing them became a problem, especially as the estate’s production grew and the need for workers increased.”

        “Enryaku-ji?” I asked.

        She sighed. “Just so. They didn’t dare interfere directly; Lord Yasunori still had too many connections at Court, but they did make it... difficult, for new families to come here. That was when Lord Yasunori and I together conceived the idea of letting more of my kind assume the farmer’s roles. The life of a peasant farmer is not such a grand thing, but I can tell you from experience that it is far better than being starved and hunted. More and more creatures like me joined us, and Lord Yasunori sent his warriors back to the Capital.”

        “You still could have replaced him after he died,” I pointed out.

        She smiled a sad smile. “No, we couldn’t. We have lived in this valley all our lives, far from the Court and nobility. There is no one here who could play that role and convince anyone who needed convincing. I was only Lady Michiko for awhile because he wanted me to be.”

        “Certainly an unusual arrangement all around,” I said, “but one that seems to work. Your fields are in very good order.”

        “It has worked up until now,” Mistress Aiko said. “But our Master’s death changed everything. I know we cannot be allowed to continue, and even if we could, we cannot keep Enryaku-ji out without Lord Yasunori’s protection. I think we all expected this, so do what you think you must with me; the rest of us will return to the forests.”

        “You could have returned to the forests already,” Tadanobu said. “Why remain and put yourself at risk?”

        Mistress Aiko bowed to him. “Risk is not really my nature,” she said, “but I thought Lord Yasunori’s heir deserved an explanation.”

        I smiled. “Don’t be too quick to surrender. There may be another option.”

        All three looked at me very curiously then.

        “What do you propose?” asked Tadanobu.

        “Do you have any human men here at all who are literate?” I asked Mistress Aiko.

        “Some can do tallies, but read and write? I’m—I’m afraid not. Only a few of my kind do, including myself.”

        “Then you will have to act for him, when such things are required. For now I just need the name of a human male who lives here. Preferably one not too old, who might live for a while yet? And could possibly be counterfeited later if needed?”

        She looked startled, but after a moment her frown turned into one of concentration. “Let me think... ah, there’s Kinmori. He’s only about twenty-five and in good health. He’s one of our overseers. Why?”

        “Because, officially, he’s going to be my deputy steward. Though perhaps it will be best not to tell him. He might get greedy.”

* * *

        The warrior monk was waiting for us as we emerged from the valley path. Except for a monkish white cowl he wore instead of a helmet he looked like any other bushi, in a tight-fitting hitatare under black armor laced with red cords and a long tachi at his side. I breathed a little easier. I had long since given up the idea that Mt. Hiei was on a warlike footing, but I’d been wrong before. Even so, the situation was bad enough as it was.

        He had the girl named Kasumi clutched in one thick arm, and with the other he pressed a dagger against her throat. Kasumi looked more puzzled than fearful. Tadanobu set an arrow to his bowstring, but I told him to hold.

        “You there,” the monk said, pointing the dagger briefly at me, “you will surrender to me what you found in the woods or I will kill this girl.”

        I snorted in derision. “What makes you think I care what happens to a peasant girl?”

        He laughed then. It wasn’t a pleasant laugh. “Lord Yamada, we know you at Enryaku-ji. Your reputation is dubious at best, but you are not known to be cruel.”

        “As opposed to yourself?” Kenji asked mildly.

        “Silence, you worthless hedge priest,” the man said. “I was speaking to Lord Yamada.”

        “I gather you plan to kill us all whether Lord Yamada surrenders the object or not,” Tadanobu said, scowling. “You will not find that easy to accomplish.”

        The monk laughed again. “Kill you? Why should I? You will have no proof, and I am merely one nameless sohei. Accuse me, and the Temple will simply deny my existence. Persist, and my brothers will rise to defend their rights with force, if necessary. The Court will not risk that for your sake or twenty better.”

        I shrugged. “I suppose we have no choice.” I took out the chestnut and tossed it to the monk, who loosened his grip just long enough to catch it. “Now let her go,” I said.

        He stared at the chestnut. “What is this?!”

        “I would think that would be obvious. It’s a chestnut.”

        “Do you take me for a fool?”

        I smiled then. “Honestly, monk, have you lost anything that would lead us to Enryaku-ji? Were those fools you killed carrying anything that would lead anyone to the Temple? When I practically shouted in the woods that I’d found proof, did you even stop for a moment to consider that I might be lying?”

        From the stunned look on the man’s face, it was obvious he had not.

        “Monk, I said what I said to lure you out, so that I would know who was responsible, and obviously it worked. As for you being a fool, that matter is already settled.”

“Don’t goad me, Lord Yamada. My brothers wait in ambush even as we speak. A word from me and you all die.”

        I sighed. “Oh, honestly.... If that were the case all you had to do was wait for us on the road, ambush us in force and kill us, and that would be that. Why take a hostage? Obviously, because there are three of us, all armed and alert, and you are alone, monk. You hired those men to attack anyone traveling to the estate, and you killed the thugs who survived our fight when they became inconvenient. Now I am certain that Enryaku-ji’s sohei are not in the field and in force. Under orders or not, you’re acting by yourself.”

        He scowled. “So? You still have no proof. This changes nothing!”

        I smiled then. “You still do not understand me. For the Temple’s martial state I don’t need proof, just information, which my own eyes and ears indicated and your presence has just confirmed. As for your second point, I disagree. Whatever your rationale, you set to the work with far too much enthusiasm. I think there should be an accounting. Don’t you? You’re only making matters worse for yourself by threatening this innocent girl. You definitely should let her go. Now.”

        He shifted his grip. “Such talk. I will not release my hostage, and I promise you I will kill her if you follow me.”

        “I fancy that you’ll kill her even if we don’t,” Tadanobu said.

        He laughed again. “Perhaps you are right. In which case your choice is whether her blood will be on my hands or yours. Which do you prefer?”

        The monk was looking at us. He should have been looking at Kasumi. She still looked puzzled, only now she appeared to be annoyed as well. The change started about then.

        “Kasumi,” I said, speaking directly to the girl, “This is a bad man. He wants to hurt you. Do you understand?”

        “A bad man,” she repeated.

        “You met another bad man before, didn’t you, here at the entrance to the valley? I think you did.”

        She concentrated. “I remember. A bad man. He tried to hurt me.”

        “I know she’s simple,” the monk said, “but is it really a kindness to explain her situation to her?”

         “Oh, I think she understands her situation perfectly. It is you, Sir Monk, who aren’t clear on the matter, so for your own sake I’m going to tell you one more time—let her go.”

        “No! I—”

        Whatever he was going to say was left unfinished. He screamed and dropped his dagger, clutching at his wrist which was already dripping blood. Tadanobu drew his bow to shoot him then, but he did not have a clear target. Kasumi’s long, thick hair rose behind her, spread wide, and covered the monk, the strands wrapping around him like so many black snakes. At the end of each strand was what looked like a hooked spike of black iron that whipped back and thrust forward, impaling the monk wherever they struck, whether he wore armor in that spot or not.

        “Ah—” was all he managed before three heavy barbed strands struck through his open mouth and emerged, covered with blood and gobbets of flesh, from the back of his head. Kasumi’s hair whipped about her as if driven by the force of a thunderstorm, and all the barbs, thousands by now, struck the monk at once, running him through. Then they withdrew, and as they were all that was holding the body up at that point, the remains of the warrior monk crashed to the ground. His blood seeped into the darkness of Kasumi’s hair and disappeared like water into sand.

        “A very bad man,” Kasumi said, her face now a twisted parody of a human woman’s and her voice as terrible as that of any other monster. I thought Tadanobu was going to turn his bow on her, but for a moment he was too stunned to do anything, and I asserted control of the moment before it slipped away.

        “Yes, Kasumi-chan. But he’s gone now. You’re safe. Everything is all right.”

        She smiled at me, and then she was Kasumi again, and her long hair was back where it belonged, draping her chest and shoulders and back. She picked up a fallen ribbon and tied her hair back as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.

        “Now we know what happened to Kintaro,” Tadanobu said. He slowly lowered his bow but kept it at the ready.

        I nodded. “Given the odd circumstances of Kintaro’s death and the... unusual, aspects of Kasumi’s appearance, I strongly suspected her true nature. Kasumi is a harionna, a barbed-hair demon, but like most of the other inhabitants of this estate, not a typical one. Since, as seems certain, Kintaro was in league with our late friend here, he arrived at the entrance to the estate completely unharmed. Unfortunately for him, he then spied the lovely Kasumi and thought he would start abusing his authority right away. That was a mistake.”

        Kasumi didn’t seem to be paying us much attention. “I need to dig now,” she said. “Mistress Aiko depends on me.”

        “That’s fine, Kasumi-chan. We’re leaving now, so this is good-bye. When you do go back to the house, tell Mistress Aiko that I said this time please remove the bad man before anyone else finds him. All right?”

She bowed. “I’ll remember. I’ll tell her. Good-bye.”

        We set off down the road, relatively certain that we would not be attacked on our way back to the Capital. We hadn’t gone too far before Kenji spoke up.

        “Lord Yamada, this is insane!”

        “Which part?” I asked.

        “While I understand that you have a little more experience with her kind than I do, are you really going to trust the running of your estate to a fox?”

        I smiled. “Why not? Lord Yasunori did for over thirty years, and it worked out well. More to the point, I do trust a fox—I trust a fox to do what is in the fox’s interest. Lord Yasunori and Mistress Aiko created a haven here for herself and creatures like her. This way, she gets to keep it.”

        “At least until the temple intervenes,” Kenji said.

        “They won’t. While you two were preparing to leave, I also instructed Mistress Aiko to make a yearly donation of the bulk of the steward’s portion to Eryaku-ji.”

        For a moment Kenji and Tadanobu just stared at me.

        “Lord Yamada, have you lost your mind? After all that has happened, how could you reward the temple for its crimes?!” Tadanobu asked bitterly.

        Kenji just shook his head. “I asked you once if you were tired of being poor,” he said. “The answer to that is ‘apparently not.’”

        I smiled then. “Have sense, both of you—Enryaku-ji doesn’t want control of the estate, they want the income. You said it yourself, Kenji—even without a physical threat, how long could I have held onto the stewardship against the temple’s political influence? A year? Perhaps two? Sooner or later my commission would have been rescinded, and what do you think would have happened to Mistress Aiko and Kasumi-chan then? Tadanobu, would your uncle have approved?”

        Tadanobu opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. He finally managed a wry smile. “No. He would not have. Nor would I.”

        “This way your uncle’s legacy is preserved, and I receive a regular stipend for perhaps many years to come. A much smaller one, to be sure, but it is more than I had. Besides, I rather like the idea of kitsune and youkai and those other charming monsters living in peace right under the temple’s nose.”

        “There is that,” Kenji said. “And yet I was so looking forward to having a rich friend. Still, and Mistress Aiko aside, what makes you think you can trust the temple to leave well enough alone?”

        “As with Mistress Aiko—I trust them to do what best serves their interest. They have what they want.”

        “Exactly the same as the fox,” Tadanobu said, smiling.

        “Not exactly the same,” I said, considering the matter. “The fox deserves it.”

Copyright © 2011  Richard Parks

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Richard Parks lives in Mississippi with his wife and a varying number of cats. He collects Japanese woodblock prints but otherwise has no hobbies as he is, sadly, temporally challenged. His fiction has appeared in Asimov’s, Realms of Fantasy, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Fantasy Magazine, Weird Tales, multiple times in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and in numerous anthologies including Year’s Best Fantasy and Fantasy: The Best of the Year. His third story collection, On the Banks of the River of Heaven, was released by Prime Books in 2010, and PS Publishing released his novella The Heavenly Fox last spring.

Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

THE CALENDAR OF SAINTS

by Kat Howard

14 February—Feast of Saint Valentine

        Saint Valentine is often depicted surrounded by roses and birds. Popular poses include his officiating at a marriage or extending his hands in benediction over a couple. He is claimed as patron by affianced couples, those crossed in love, and beekeepers.

        The first time I used a blade to defend a point of honor, both the blade and the honor were mine. I was perhaps eight, and Rosamaria Sandro had accused me of copying her mathematics exam. The next time we were in the salle, I told her I would prove her a liar with my blade. She stopped laughing at the idea when I hit her for the third time with the blunted end of my sword and made her tell our mathematics instructor the truth. The pomp and ceremony of today’s events have nothing in common with that juvenile scuffle but the blade.

        The blade, of course, is what matters. It is as sharp, as edged, as fatal as truth.

        The subject of this Arbitration stands to the left of the dueling grounds, tiny white teeth sunk so deep into her lip that it, too, whitens. Her fiancé hovers close by, as if to shield her from the events or perhaps from their consequences. I wonder if he will put her aside if I am defeated. I want to think that he will stay with her, that his protective posture is a sign of genuine attachment rather than a signal of possession. Laurelle is beautiful, and wealthy. The things that have been whispered about her would never have been said so viciously if it were otherwise. So it is possible he stands at her back because of reasons other than love, but I do not wish to believe in them.

        Lost in my thoughts, I stumble in my warm-up, bruising the arch of my left foot against a stone I should have cleared from the ground. This is why I hate knowing the stakes when I take up my blade—they are a distraction. What I think should happen, what I would wish for the outcome to be, means nothing. If wishes mattered, there would be no need of swords.

        My distracted thoughts focus as the Arbiter takes his place at the precise midpoint of the square, and I remind myself that Laurelle du Lyon’s honor—or possible lack thereof—has not been placed in my keeping but has been entrusted to my blade, and my blade has long been dedicated to the will of God. Not that I wish to believe in God any more than I wish to believe Laurelle’s fiancé cares only for the social and financial benefits of his upcoming marriage. The only thing I have faith in is my blade. Still, the formalities must be observed, and there is something to be said for a system of order in the face of chaos. The Church is gifted at the maintenance of order.

        The Arbiter reminds those watching that by the grace of God and Her holy saints, my victory will confirm the truth of Laurelle’s claim to chastity. Should my opponent prevail, his victory will give divine imprimatur to the bragging of Count Gregorio. When directed to do so, I kneel, holding my sword before me like a cross, as the Arbiter invokes God’s justice and mercy and asks that the light of truth shine down in judgment.

        The Count’s claim is represented by the blade of Leviticus Cole. Thus, I do not need to hear the Arbiter announce that the duel ends with first blood. Cole is known for neither subtlety nor endurance but rather for brute force with a blade. He doesn’t have the skill to fence beyond first blood. Cole knows this and so has only taken preliminary vows. I have never understood why, if he is unwilling to risk his death, he took any vows at all. Truth feeds on sacrifice as much as it feeds on belief.

        But I am not here to judge him, nor to judge anyone.

        God’s judgment is rendered on the third pass, when I supinate my wrist to bring my blade a hair above Cole’s and lay open his cheek to the bone.

        My role finished, I clean my blade as the Arbiter places his blessing upon Laurelle and her fiancé. They hold hands as they kneel before him.

* * *

30 May—Feast of Saint Joan of Arc

        Saint Joan is often depicted as a young woman dressed in armour. Although she is usually shown carrying a sword, artists generally portray her gazing off into the distance, as if listening to her holy voices. She is claimed as patron by those in prison, victims of judicial abuses, and women in military service.

        There were not many options available, here in the City of Seven Hills, for a girl who was a whore’s bastard. Certainly, becoming a Sacred Blade was not one of the few options my mother offered me. There was no money for schooling. Everything extra was necessary for my mother to maintain the illusions of her profession.

        But I was born on the feast day of Saint Michael, Lord of Hosts and patron saint of fencers, and my mother had named me Jeanne, after another martial saint. When he found me defending his ridiculous lapdog from a rabid stray, holding a stick like I was wielding a rapier, one of my mother’s clients decided it would be a good joke to pay for my education as a swordswoman. My training began as a joke, but the sword became my vocation.

        It became my life.

        I graduated undefeated. The next day, I took vows as a Sacred Blade.

* * *

17 September—Feast of Saint Robert Bellarmine

        Saint Robert Bellarmine is often depicted in the red robes of his cardinalate. To his right are the scales of justice, symbolizing his work in founding the Lex Canonica, and to his left hangs an orrery, symbolizing his advocacy of Saint Galileo. Saint Robert Bellarmine is credited with the first serious steps towards harmonization of the disciplines of theology and science. He is claimed as patron by lawyers, astronomers, and students.

        There are no fresh-faced lovers at the dueling grounds today. Instead, pinch-faced clerks with threadbare cuffs and ink-smirched fingers shadow their elegant patrons. The patrons offer precisely gauged deference to the Arbiter. It is an uneasy crowd, more used to the bloodless weight of precedent than the sharp cut of a blade.

        I shake my hands as I stretch, limbering my muscles and loosening my fingers in the cool morning air. My feet slide through patterns of attack and retreat.

        Although it hasn’t always been, it is now rare for the Justiciar to send disputes to the dueling grounds to be arbitrated. The Lex Canonica is fussy and labyrinthine, but is also widely considered just. It is possible this dispute is over a matter of faith or that one of the parties is a member of the cardinalate, although if that is the case, it is odd that the dispute has gone through the Justiciary at all. Perhaps the case is here because one of the parties understands that words obscure truth, while swords lay it bare, clean and to the bone.

        I continue to shake my hands as I warm up, willing the stiffness and ache out of my fingers. The Arbiter arrives, red robes brilliant through the resinous haze of incense. I walk back to my end of the courtyard and wrap the black sash of the challenger around my waist, tucking the ends in tightly, then slide my misericorde through the sash at my left hip. The Arbiter’s acolytes cover the dueling grounds in a thick layer of scented smoke. I listen for the tolling of the Bell, but it does not sound. Third Blood, then.

        The stakes are not read. Perhaps I am in the minority, but I prefer it when the Challenges begin in silence. Arbitrations are cleaner when the only thing at stake is the skill of the two blades.

        Magdalena Nero is representing the challenged party. I know her by reputation only—she trained at Maria, Stella Maris. Their students are known for stealth and cunning.

        Since there is time to strategize, I let her score First Blood, a thin red line across my left bicep. I wince, as if it hurts, and let that side drag. Smiling, Magdalena comes in high and fast. Fire blossoms along my collarbone. I continue past her guard and flick my blade through the flesh of her sword arm and then across her back.

        Second Blood to both.

        Breathing rapidly, I retreat, then continue backwards, pulling distance at the peak of her attacks to make her lunge, then pressing her recovery, hoping to annoy her into forgetting stealth, into forsaking cunning for an honest attack. Finally, when she has backed me into a corner, she redoubles her lunge.

        I spin toward her outthrust blade, switch my own into my left hand, and continue the motion, driving it into the soft flesh above her right hipbone. Third Blood.

        Magdalena blasphemes loudly, cursing her blade. The focus of the clerks and their patrons snaps back to the dueling grounds. This place is sacred. There are consequences for blasphemy here.

        Magdalena has already dropped her blade and fallen to her knees, begging for mercy. The Bell tolls, low and clear, and the Arbiter meets my eyes, then nods, once.

        I draw the misericorde from the sash at my waist, then step forward and slip the knife into her heart. It is a clean kill—she bleeds hardly at all.

        The Arbiter steps onto the cold stone of the dueling grounds and I prostrate myself, cruciform, for absolution. He speaks the words by rote and turns away before I regain my feet. After a novena has passed, I will present myself and my sword at the Cathedral for reconsecration, my sin officially forgiven.

* * *

17 September—Feast of Saint Hildegard von Bingen

        Author of the oldest extant scientific writings by a woman, Saint Hildegard is often depicted with pen and ink in hand. Paintings of her are often bordered by musical notation from one of her compositions, and a flask of boiling water usually sits in the background. Saint Hildegard is claimed as patron by women in the biological sciences, linguists, and migraine sufferers.

        The man in black sets another whiskey in front of me and places enough money on the bar to cover the two that I’ve already drunk.

        I push the money back. “I was paid well enough for this morning’s work to cover my own drinks, thank you.”

        “One might think if you had truly been paid well enough, you would not now be drinking until you can no longer hold a sword.”

        “I’m not drinking over what I was paid to do.”

        “Over your opponent’s death, then.”

        “She wasn’t my opponent when I executed her.” I accept mortal commissions; I’ve killed before. Those deaths were honest. Magdalena’s was a waste, and my hands are filthy with it. With a casual nod, from a cleric who knew nothing about the sword-edge of truth, I have been made to feel like a heretic. “Being wielded in that fashion perverts what a Blade is supposed to be.”

        He sips his drink once, twice. “And what is it that a Blade is supposed to be?”

        I drain my own glass, feeling the flame of the alcohol lick its path down my throat and numb the raw edges of my thoughts. “Truth.”

        “Agreed. Which is why we’d like to place you on retainer.”

        “Forgive me, but who is we?”

        “The Ignatians.” The man in black pushes back his hood to reveal the silk lining of ebon-shot burgundy, indicative of membership in that Order. “We would offer you a commission.”

        He pauses, then turns to face me directly. “And the holy sword of Saint Ignatius Loyola.”

        A large enough shock, it seems, actually can smack a person sober. Ignatius Loyola, a former soldier, had founded the Sacred Blades when Arbitration became the legal method of answering the unanswerable. He never lost. Popular legendry held his sword to be miraculous.

        “Father, I appreciate the honor you do me, but I do not possess the faith I believe your Order would require in the wielder of that blade.”

        The Ignatian places his hands, sheathed in skin-tight gloves of black leather that were bonded to his flesh at the wrists, on the scarred surface of the bar. “My name is Michael Gonzaga. Since the death of Saint Ignatius, my family has served as custodians of his sword, passing it from hand to hand. God Herself has shown me in a vision that the next hand to touch the sword is meant to be yours.”

        “God Herself has a strange sense of humor, in that case.”

        “Perhaps she does.”

* * *

24 October—Feast of Saint Tycho Brahe

        Saint Tycho is commonly depicted in full court robes, standing before a telescope. In the background can be seen a star in supernova and a comet. In his left hand, he holds a model of a human nose, cast in gold. Saint Tycho is claimed as patron by poets, makers of prosthetic devices, and designers of astronomical instruments.

        I became the Sacred Blade of the Ignatians. Although they are an all-male order, their Rule makes provision for vowed female Blades. I kept my vigil in front of the crypt of Saint Ignatius, his sword gleaming coldly before me as I knelt on the marble of the Cathedral. The saint did not speak to me that night, but then, I did not expect him to. When dawn finally broke, kaleidoscoping through the stained glass of the rose window, I heaved myself up from my aching knees, bowed low before the altar, and picked up his sword for the first time.

        My hand only trembled a little.

        The hilt of the sword bumps against my hip as I walk to the library to meet with Michael Gonzaga to learn the commission I have been hired to defend.

        He sits underneath an India ink rendering of the Hazelnut Cosmos of Saint Julian of Norwich. His hands rest on his lap, and I can see the red line of skin where his gloves are bonded to his flesh. For as long as I live, mine will be the only hand to touch the sword of Saint Ignatius. When I die, it will return to the custody of Fr. Gonzaga or, in the unlikely event that he predeceases me, his successor.

        The very unlikely event. Death is only one of the truths of the blade, but it is beatitude and commandment both.

        Fr. Gonzaga begins speaking as soon as the back of my calves brush the rungs of my chair. “Our Order has retained you because there have been a series of Challenges made to the teachings of the saints. None have been heard as yet, but we believe that it is only a matter of time before one will be.”

        “Which saints?”

        “The scientists.”

        “Science has never been a matter for the Arbiter’s jurisdiction.” Not that there are never disagreements over the scientists’ theories, but those play out in the Laboratories of the University.

        “Not previously, no. But we hear rumor that a Challenge is being prepared that will claim that the Laws of Science contradict the Laws of God.”

        “That’s heresy.” During the time of Saints Robert Bellarmine and Galileo Galilei, scientific law was infallibly declared divine truth.

        “Yes. And heresy must be judged on the dueling grounds of the Arbiter.”

        “This is ridiculous. The Church believes in the saints of science.”

        “Not all of the Church. Some hold that complex science is simply miracles our pride has blinded us from recognizing as such.”

        “Your Order does not believe that. No sensible part of the Church believes that.”

        “Honoring our vows requires us to defend the Church.”

        Honoring my vows requires that I do so as well. Honor, which is as sharp as penance, as sharp as truth. As sharp as a blade.

* * *

22 June—Feast of Saint Thomas More

        Saint Thomas More is depicted in his robes and chain of office as Lord Chancellor. An axe, the instrument of his martyrdom, crosses the field of the painting, left to right. On the desk in front of the saint are copies of two of his works, the Moriae Encomium and the Utopia. Saint Thomas More is claimed as patron by politicians, diplomats, and writers of fantastic impossibilities.

        Gonzaga hands me the curling sheet of paper. The scarlet ribbons signifying it has come from the Arbiter are affixed to the bottom of the page by a wax seal showing two crossed swords. “The challenge is to Saint Rudolf Clausius’ work on thermodynamics. They chose well.”

        He is right. The challenge, which states that a universe in which chaos is increasing is incompatible with an ordered universe designed by God, is a smart one. “I don’t see a resolution to this anywhere outside the Arbiter’s jurisdiction.”

        I don’t either, and even contemplating the challenge repulses me. Heresy is judged on the dueling grounds, yet this challenge, for all it follows the legal forms, is also a form of heresy.

        I put my hand on the hilt of the sword I carry everywhere and worry my fingers across its curves. As the Branch Militant of the Church, the Ignatians are sworn to defend the Lex Canonica, and I am the sworn Blade of the Ignatians. “Will the Order command me to lose?”

        Fr. Gonzaga looks appalled. “Jeanne, no. The challenge is mortal. And even if it weren’t, such an action would be a grave sin against the blade you wear.

        “Our order believes in the Lex Scientia, holds it equal to the Lex Canonica—St. Bellarmine was an Ignatian, after all—but we recognize that we may not know the truth entire. Perhaps this challenge is a way of showing us a new facet of the truth. For us to see that, you must fence as you always do, Jeanne. To win.”

        Good. This perverse challenge may require my life, but at least I will be allowed to keep my honor.

        “Jeanne, if you don’t believe in the Church’s doctrines, why do you care about the outcome of the challenge? Why does it matter to you whether the Church calls something divine miracle or human discovery?”

        “Because, Fr. Gonzaga, it isn’t that I don’t believe. It matters because I do. I believe absolutely in the law of the blade. This challenge is a perversion of that law. It is blasphemy.

        “I believe in this,” I say, and I draw the sword at my side. “I believe it means something beyond the desire of the person wielding it, or the person wielding me.” I drag my left hand across the blade, watch the blood weep from the wound.

        “Truth is a blade, Father. It requires that we bleed.”

* * *

8 January—Feast of Saint Galileo Galilei

        It has recently become fashionable for artists to depict Saint Galileo sitting with his daughters, the nuns Maria Celeste and Arcangela. Orbiting their heads are the four Galilean moons. Saint Galileo is hailed as the father of modern science and is claimed as patron by physicists, insomniacs, and the blind.

        In the grey light of early morning, I stand listening to the last echoes of the Bell’s toll through myrrh-scented smoke.

        A mortal challenge. As expected. The morning reeks of endings.

        I do not listen as the official Challenge is read. I know why I am here, what I stand for. I look for Fr. Gonzaga in the crowd and see him, his lips moving, I assume in prayer. On the far side of the dueling grounds, my opponent, Josef Benedictus, shifted his weight back and forth.

        We kneel, and the Arbiter absolves our sins. He begs the light of truth to shine upon us. We come en guarde, and the signal to begin is given.

        I fling the holy sword of St. Ignatius—my sword—to the heavens. Fr. Gonzaga cries out as it arcs through the air. Thinking that I have forfeited, Benedictus launches himself at me like an arrow shot from a bow.

        A forfeit is not truth. A draw, however, is.

        I step into his guard and slide the misericorde from his sash, then continue the motion, driving the knife into his heart. At the same time, I pierce my own.

* * *

9 January—Feast of Saint Jeanne of the Knife

        Saint Jeanne is always depicted in the white garment of the Sacred Blades. The broken blade of Saint Ignatius Loyola lies at her feet, on top of a formal challenge, rent in two. Her breast is pierced by a misericorde. Saint Jeanne is claimed as patron by scientists, bastard born children, and unbelievers.

Copyright © 2011  Kat Howard

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Kat Howard is a former competitive fencer who is exceedingly glad dueling to the death was not a requirement of the sport. Her short fiction has previously appeared in the anthology Stories, edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio, as well as Apex and Fantasy Magazine. She currently teaches fantastic and medieval literature at Stony Brook University, and has no desire to be a saint.

Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

A SPOONFUL OF SALT

by Nicole M. Taylor

        This is not the story that Naomi told when Dr. Benjamin and the story men came to collect all of our memories. Instead, she told about her granny and the blue cookie jar. Marco was a dead man and a sore point by then.

        Marco was Naomi’s first and only love from the time she was fourteen, which might seem young to you. It might have been kinder, though, had she started going with him a bit sooner. They only got three years of hand-holding and walk-taking and four months as man and wife before he passed. Even here, where lives are often mean little things, it didn’t seem fair.

        Marco was a sailor, which is the usual occupation for our men. He crewed on his uncle’s rig and he died there with the rest of them when it went down during a late November squall. Of course, Naomi was hundreds of miles away and had no way of knowing about that when she walked into the kitchen one morning and found her husband sitting at the table.

        Now, Naomi had been without Marco for going on a month and a half and her own daddy was a sailor as well. She was well used to being alone, as all us women are. It can be frightening. The island is small and we know the men, their names and the names of their mommas and sisters. But that didn’t stop the fearing, not altogether. It was a kind of ticking, a working like a machine in the back of your head. Each woman on the island kept a running tally of each sharped-edged, deadly thing in her home. For Naomi, it was the long rifle in the back of the closet, the six wooden handled knives in the kitchen draw, even the heavy carriage clock that her daddy’d made her for a wedding present.

        And so when she saw Marco sitting there, she was just standing still, but her mind was zipping away all “how am I going to get to the closet?” or “how am I to open the knife draw without his hearing?” Because, by all rights, Marco should have been weeks away across the water right at that very moment (indeed, right at that very moment, Marco was floating in the cold ocean making dinner for the fish, but of course Naomi didn’t know that.)

        But he was just there, Marco. He was just sitting and staring down at his hands like he was noticing them for the first time. He didn’t look particularly dangerous. He looked like her husband, the good boy she’d known her whole life.

        “Marco?” she said, with her hand resting but not moving on the knife draw. He turned to look at her, but he did it real slow, and when he saw her, he didn’t seem to know her at all.

        Naomi pulled out the draw, and it made a little wheely creak. Marco’s face didn’t move at all.

        “Naomi,” is what he said finally, and it said it like she was some old friend he hadn’t seen in years. Like he was proud of himself for remembering her name.

        Naomi was a practical sort. You see a lot of antsy girls get married before they’re ready; still too young and feckless to keep a house, let alone a husband. Naomi wasn’t like that; you could eat off her floors and, though he wasn’t around long, you never caught Marco complaining. Being like she was, Naomi couldn’t help but wonder if she weren’t seeing things. Women did that sometimes, when they was too lonely or too worn out from the waiting. Naomi didn’t think of herself as no weak woman, prone to fits or crazies, but it seemed more likely than her husband up and appearing like magic at her kitchen table, right next to a piece of blueberry pie wrapped in waxy paper.

        She backed out of the kitchen without saying a word and went across the way to Elia DuPree’s place. Elia was about five years older than Naomi and was in the habit of giving Naomi advice, as is often the case in the friendships of women.

        This was a Saturday, so Elia was doing her baking and she was flour-white up to her elbows. “Well, I dunno,” she told Naomi, who was pacing around the kitchen like a needy cat. “My daddy died when I was young, and my mama was always telling about how she saw him the night his ship went down upstairs in our house, going from room to room and checking on us kids.”

        “You think Marco’s dead?”

        Elia didn’t answer for a real long time. “That’s not what I said,” she told Naomi. But it sure sounded like that was what she had meant. You might think Elia was scaring Naomi for no reason, just being superstitious. And maybe she was, but she’d thought about it, and between Naomi Smalls going off her head and a sailor dying at sea with a bit of funny business, she knew which was more likely.

        Naomi had prepared herself for the idea that Marco might not come back to her; or she thought she had. Listening to Elia, she couldn’t help but wonder if she had known, somewhere in the hidden parts of her heart, that something terrible had happened.

        She started crying, right there in Elia’s kitchen, and Elia came right over and held on to her, though she left white dust on her shoulders and her back.

        Naomi didn’t go home for another forty minutes and she didn’t expect to find anything when she did. It was a blessing, she supposed. This way she’d have time to prepare for the funeral and for the pitiful looks she’d get around town. She’d looked that way herself at those sad little widows with their teenage faces.

        But when she got back, Marco was still there. He’d moved into the sitting room and he was just standing in the corner, looking down at the unfinished cradle that sat there.

        Naomi had been hoping hard for a baby, but her monthlies had stubbornly come just as regular as rain in the spring. Hating to see her so down in the mouth, Marco had started work on the cradle. He told her he had to get a move on, because when he got back, he was going to give her a little baby boy to take care of.

        Feeling silly, Naomi started crying again.

        “I made that,” Marco declared, pointed at the cradle. He didn’t seem troubled by her tears.

        “Mmm-hmn,” was all Naomi could manage.

        “But I didn’t finish it.”

        Naomi crossed the room slowly until she was right up close to him. She could see his chest rise and fall. He smelled like he always did, dirt and briney water and the dusky dried-leaves of his hair.

        “You said you would when you came back.”

        Marco turned to look at her. He smelled just the same, but his eyes were all wrong. “I’m sorry,” is what he said. Naomi looked at the cradle, touched it with her fingertips. It was supposed to rock back and forth, but Marco hadn’t gotten to the little mechanism that allowed it to do that. It was stuck, always in-between.

        “I missed the way you smell,” the Marco told her, and he gathered her up in his arms, and Naomi let him because he looked just like her husband. “Ocean only smells one way,” he muttered into her hair. “All sorts of smells on you. I can smell the blood in your heart. In here.” He laid one hand flat against the little rises and falls of her rib bones.

        He tasted of salt. Not human sweat-salt, but like a spoonful of it. Naomi half-expected to see him melting in the places where her mouth had been.

        He took her into the bedroom she had shared with her husband. Naomi began to lift her housedress over her head, but she stopped when she saw he was just standing there, not undoing his shirt or trousers like he usually would. He was waiting for her, she realized. As if he didn’t know how.

        “I’m sorry,” he said again, as she unhooked button after button, concentrating on them real hard because her hands had started shaking.

        He was very cold. His skin was cold; his breath made clouds in the air. She felt frozen underneath him. She watched her own skin turn bone white and then pale blue, like it was happening to someone else. Her body didn’t know him; she didn’t open up and welcome him. It wasn’t like with Marco at all.

        When he was done, he lay still on top of her, his arms spread out over hers. For a moment, she was afraid he was going to want to stay like that all night. Marco had been terrible about stealing the covers and he used to throw his leg over hers in the night. But Naomi didn’t know how she was going to sleep with all that cold heaviness on her. She could hardly breathe.

        She reached out, touched his hair and grazed her fingernails over the place where his hairline vanished into his neck. When she used to do that to Marco, he would shiver all over. And she, lying close, would be able to feel the brittle gooseflesh that rose up on him. “What are you?” she asked him.

        “I’m... a wish,” he answered. And then she must have slept, because the next thing she knew, it was morning and the sun was coming in orange through the windows. She’d slept away a whole afternoon and night.

        Sixteen days later, the letter came, telling all about when and how Marco had died. Nine months later, Naomi’s only daughter Mala was born.

        There was all sorts of nasty talk in town about Marco’s best friend Eli or the teacher up to the school, Mr. Brubaker. But those of us that knew Naomi and had heard the story firsthand, we never did but believe her. The strangest thing, she said, was how in the morning there was no sign of the man-shaped thing. Except for a little pile of white salt on the undisturbed quilt next to her. I saw it for myself: almost a handful of big, coarse grains. It looked like sea-salt.

* * *

        I am sad to say that Mala never got much love from this island or the folks on it. Not even when she was just a little thing. In school, she got a reputation for hissing like a cat, and for biting, even though she only did that the one time. At lunchtime, she sat alone on the low slope of the outhouse roof reading something stolen from the school library. Once or twice some shiny young teacher would try to pull her down, but all they ever got was pine cones thrown at their heads.

        Most every day, a group of tough boys, mean-mouthed boys, used to chase her all the way home. But they were noisy, beating the underbrush with hasty-cut switches and they were slow. They seldom caught her.

        When they did, Mala went to her mother and submitted to her tender doctoring. It probably wasn’t right, but Naomi almost relished those days. Normally, Mala was prickly as a burdock and it was only in the cleaning of scrapes, the bandaging of cuts, that Mala allowed her mother to touch her at all.

        Naomi was a sad woman. She still missed Marco every day, and it was so fierce even after all those years that she sometimes wondered if a person could have an abscess in their heart as her grandfather had in his leg. Something that only pretended to heal for a little while but always opened up once again and wept. Sometimes, she went down to the shore and did watercolor pictures of the water and lighthouse, and she missed Marco while she hung them up and she missed Marco while she stirred the stew for dinner and she missed Marco when she kissed their baby goodnight and then she crawled into her empty bed and missed him all night long.

        If Mala had been more like other children, if she had given hugs and kisses and laughed more and frowned less, Naomi might well have been a bit more cheerful. If Mala had been a little easier to understand, Naomi might have loved her easier. But no one could ever love a child more. And as Mala grew up and Naomi grew older, Naomi learned to be grateful for her odd girl. Mala, after all, would never marry and leave her alone. Mala wouldn’t ever leave the island for a job in the cities. Mala wouldn’t ever get so old that she didn’t still need her mother to take care of her, even if it was only in the smallest ways.

        And the years went on and Mala wasn’t a child no more and they lived together in that little cottage and made an island of themselves. That, more or less, was how things were going along before the story men came.

        Dr. Benjamin wasn’t a real doctor. Not the kind that heals people, though we could have used one of that sort. He was just another man writing things down in notebooks, but “Doctor” was how he introduced himself and that’s how his men always called him, so didn’t none of us argue with it.

        By then, we were used to people like him coming to the island to study it. Sometimes it was the birds or the trees or the sand or even the tides. As if there was anything to know about tides that any one of us couldn’t have told them. But Dr. Benjamin came to the island to study us.

        We took to calling it the Story Eater, that machine he brought along with him. It had a metal horn on one end, like the blossom of a lily flower and a big wheel of yellowed wax around the bottom. “Going down to the shore,” we’d say to one another, “gotta feed the Eater.” And then we’d take the skinny black path down to the water’s edge, where Dr. Benjamin and his people were living in their white tents, stakes drove deep into the ground like they meant to stay.

        From me, Dr. Benjamin got a story about Mama Lavalie, who steals the breath from the lungs of babies, among other things. Naomi gave him the one about the cookie jar, like I said. Others told about witches and ghosts and their own lives, whatever he wanted to hear. And Dr. Benjamin wanted to hear everything. The Eater was always hungry.

        It was curiosity that drove most people down the shore to him, and perseverance. Look at any manner of strangeness long enough and it starts to become the shape of the land. By the time Dr. Benjamin had been camped out for half a year, those tents might have grown there or washed in from the sea.

        Dr. Benjamin came in the spring, an odd and gentle one for us. He stayed on through the summer and into the fall and, after a while, we stopped expecting him to leave. He got to be such an accepted sight that we was all just as surprised as him when the first big squall of winter came in and near washed him out to sea.

        It poured miserable, dashing, sideways rain for hours on end. The sky boomed and lit up yellow with lightning. Dr. Benjamin’s tents collapsed under the weight of that water, spilling and gathering in them like in a woman’s burdened apron. Or else they just blew right out of the sand. Dr. Benjamin, he was running, running, running back and forth from one tent to another, trying to save his Story Eater and those pasty wax circles he’s spent so long collecting. He was piling them all up in an alcove on the sea wall and, once, he looked up. Mala was sitting there on the top of the wall. She wasn’t wearing a rain slicker or even shoes and she was just looking at him like he was a rat, like he was a bug. Like he was something with too many eyes and too many legs and all she wanted to know was what ridiculous thing he was going to do next.

        “Can you help me?” he shouted over the wind. His men were running forward and backward around him, like water flowing around a stone. Later, he would think it was funny how no one seemed to take notice of the girl on the wall.

        Mala didn’t say anything to him. He stayed too long, looking up at her studying face. Eventually, he ran back to his tent, filled up his arms with more stories and tried to protect them with his own body as he ran. Mala on the wall didn’t move.

        In the end, it wasn’t so great a loss as it might have been. A few of the wax wheels were ruined but most survived. And in those days after the storm, Dr. Benjamin spent most of his time writing lists of everything he was missing and making plans to build shelters more stout and more permanent. There was nothing gone that could not be replaced.

        He called up on Bethel Ellison special, asked him to come down and “sit for him.” It was because Ellison’s wax wheel had been destroyed, of course we knew that. But Bethel still walked with a bit of a spring in his step down the black rock way. He was the only one, after all, that Dr. Benjamin had asked back personally. It must have been a memorable story.

        When he got there, it was almost exactly like before. They’d set up the tent again and Dr. Benjamin had his little wooden desk (the wood was soft and splitting down by the legs now, though). All the wax wheels were stacked up behind him still, but now they were uneven and jumbled, listing into each other. And there was Mala. She was just standing in the corner, not looking at anything in particular. Dr. Benjamin didn’t say anything and Bethel didn’t say anything and it was like she was a lamp or a table.

        Dr. Benjamin said what he always did: “what would you like to share today?”

        But of course old Bethel knew that he wanted the story he’d lost. It was the one about him and his father and the little drowned boy that they found in the harbor. More than forty years out from it, and Bethel still remembered the way the boy’s shirt had slid and slid against his hands. And the sick swooping in his stomach when he realized that it wasn’t just the boy’s clothes, but his skin that had come undone and was sliding around.

        He tried to tell his tale just as he done before. It was one he had shared often enough to have a bit of a speech for it. He knew the edges of it the way he might have learned to understand a table or a chair that had sat in his home for a lifetime.

        When he was done, he turned and walked past Mala on his way out, and he was none too happy with that. Island folk didn’t see much of Mala and, even those of us kindly disposed towards her would have admitted that we liked it that way. More unsettling still, as he passed her by, Mala stuck out her hand like the two of them had just done a deal. Too surprised to do anything else, Bethel shook her hand. He made a choked noise in his throat, though, and dropped it quick like a burning thing. Bethel left without looking back. When he was gone, Mala turned to Dr. Benjamin. “Do you want to know a better story about him?” she asked.

        “Pardon me?” asked Dr. Benjamin. Two days earlier, Mala had become a regular in the tent. She came in the mornings with the first light and left around sunset. She wouldn’t answer any of Dr. Benjamin’s questions and she just watched while they filed in, told their stories, filed back out again. At first, he was surprised that we was all speaking so frank in front of her like that. But then Dr. Benjamin realized that Mala was like his white tents. We’d had a lot of practice putting her aside in our minds.

        “You asked me to help you. And you want the best stories, right?” Mala asked. Dr. Benjamin gestured for her to take a seat in the story chair in front of him. Mala did so. For the first time since he’d seen her on the wall, the was something uncertain in her.

        “Are you going to turn on your machine?” she asked.

        “I’d like to,” Dr. Benjamin admitted. “But I won’t if you don’t want me to.” That was something he had discovered early on: people thinking they was running the show was a hell of a lot more important than people actually running the show.

        She looked past him at the Story Eater. “Turn it on,” she said.

        Mala sat very still. Most people telling stories waved their hands, slid them over one another. Most of them flicked their eyes around, looking at Dr. Benjamin and then at the tent walls and then at their own lap. Mala just looked at the Story Eater, watching it draw the shape of her words in the soft wax. And she said:

        “When Bethel Ellison was seventeen years old, he married a lady older than himself. When she was eight months gone with her first child, her best friend Annet Davis came to Bethel and confessed to him that the child was not his, belonged to a boy who did odd jobs down in the marina between benders. Bethel’s wife had always loved him, Annet said, and her parents had forbid her to marry him.

        Bethel trusted Annet, but his wife was a fine thing. Prettiest girl in the village by far and he was a young man, just starting out and it was quite a thing for him to have her. That all meant little, of course, if she carried another man’s child in her belly. That was like having a handful of sand. And so Bethel waited.

        A baby, a girl eventually called Nivi, was born easy, especially for a first child. Bethel did not ask to hold her. Instead, he drew the midwife aside. She was a wise woman as well as a midwife, as many are. Bethel explained himself, his doubts, and asked her to divine the truth for him.

        When Nivi was fourteen minutes old, the midwife picked the skin on her new little palm with a silver needle until it bled. She was not concerned with her caterwauling. Blood welled up and the midwife swirled it on her own index finger. She pushed her finger into her mouth and tasted the blood with a thinking, close-faced look. Then she turned to Bethel with her needle in hand.

        Bethel knew even before the midwife began to shake her head.

        When she was gone and the house was quiet and the sun had sunk, he took Nivi’s mother bleeding and sobbing from her childbed. He drowned her in the dark green water where the sea met up with the land. He told everyone she had succumbed to the kind of madness that strikes new mothers, that she’d slipped out of the house like a sleepwalker, that he’d found her himself in the surf the next morning. When he told the story, he thought of a dead boy he’d once pulled from the water. He remembered his cold blue skin and the way he was ragged and swollen, worried at by fish. In that way, he contrived to cry.

        Most believed him. Those who did not had an idea about the baby she’d carried and they knew that those sorts of women generally came to one bad end or another. Mostly, there was the question of the baby, whom Bethel had still not named. No one would blame him, he knew, if he didn’t keep her. He was a man alone and very young still. His house was no place for a little helpless thing.

        He gave her to Parson Clarent, who had taken in others of her kind. There were no secrets for Nivi about where she had come from. But she knew in an unspoken way that she must never come to Bethel, for aid or for information or any sort of familiarity at all. Outside, of course, what was to be considered reasonable between neighbors.

        She saw him as she grew. In the pews on Sunday, down to the shops with the other men. But she had rarely ever spoken more than two words to him. He never re-married. As she grew, she collected the whispers of others, the suspicions that never quite materialized into words.

        And so Nivi looked at Bethel with interest. Was it his hands, his ordinary brown hands, that had pushed her mother’s head down under the water? Had he watched her hair and her skirts floating and the bubbles dying? She didn’t know if she hated him. After all, she had not known her mother. Perhaps spending her childhood with a slut and a cuckold would have been worse than the Parson’s house where the only sounds were catechisms being recited.

        But sometimes when Nivi looked at him, across a street or over the top of a hymnal, she thought he looked sad. Sometimes, Bethel looked back at her and he thought about the soft, liquid sound of her, the shift and stretch he had felt with his head resting easy against his wife’s round belly.”

        Dr. Benjamin stared at Mala, letting the Eater’s needle run around and around, drawing nothing in the yellow wax. Unthinking fingers reached into his pocket, brought out a red and white hard candy in crinkly cello-paper. He popped it into his mouth and sucked thoughtfully.

        “How do you know that story, Miss?” he asked Mala.

        Mala hesitated. “I... like stories. I’m a good reader.”

        “But, I mean, did he tell you those things? He couldn’t have, could he?”

        Mala gestured towards the spinning Eater. It broke Dr. Benjamin out of his spell and he dashed for the machine, shutting it off all a fumble-fingers.

        “Would you like more?” Mala asked him. “I can get you more.”

        Dr. Benjamin rested his hand on top of the Eater, like it was a little child that needed his comforting.

        “Yes, I’d like that very much.”

* * *

        The last time the mean-mouthed boys chased Mala, she was thirteen. She hadn’t started her bleed yet, but she had the look of a young woman already. She was tall, like Marco, and she had a round bottom like her Mama had. If she wasn’t Mala, the boys might have chased her in a different sort of way.

        The Ferris boy was running after her—that whole family was trash, washed in like scrum from the sea. He called out “hiiii-ya!” and smacked the heads off flowers with a stick as he went. He only got Mala because he jumped her from the low branch of a tree.

        “What now, Spazzy?” he sneered, holding her arms down and driving his elbows into her ribcage.

        Mala didn’t give him no words, just snarled and kicked at him. First, he set to fighting her, laughing and forcing her into the dirt with his knees and all the sharp points of him. Then, as Mala watched, something funny moved over his face.

        He moved his knee along Mala’s leg, high up on her thigh. His face looked strange; scared, even. Like he was the one being held down.

        And this is what Mala learned:

        The Ferris boy’s father was a mean drunk. He couldn’t keep a position on a boat; he messed around with the wives of men who were at sea. He never had a kind word or a soft touch for his wife or any of his three boys.

        “I am your father,” he used to tell the Ferris boy, who was the oldest boy. “I’m owed.”

        The Ferris boy did a man’s work around the place. He chopped wood and repaired the cottage in winter. He tore his hands and bent his back down at the docks, picking up odd jobs for small sums, all to pay back that bottomless debt he owed just for being born.

        “Don’t go out in the Midsummer night,” his mother told him every year. “Mama Lavalie walks and she’s taking folks to fill out her court.”

        “Don’t go out in the Midsummer night,” she reminded him when he was ten. She said it with a rich purple bruise on the side of her face; a little crusting of blood left over because it hurt too much to wipe away. The Ferris boy looked at the table set with mealy bread, thin soup, all that was left to them.

        He worked so hard, almost wore through his little bones. He raised more money that week than he’d seen in his whole life. It was like a kind of dying, handing it over to the man who imported the fancy liquor.

        Yellow whiskey, the color of amber beads like ladies on the mainland wore. A whole bottle of it. He gave it to his father and said it was to repay him. Already in his cups, the man could only nod. It was just what he knew himself to deserve. The Ferris boy looked at him and he’d never hated a thing so much.

        The Ferris boy left his father reclining on the lawn, with the glass bottle crooked in his arm, held more tenderly than he’d ever held his own babies. The Ferris boy locked the windows and the doors. He sat up all night.

        When the pounding came, the shouting, the cursing and the screaming, the Ferris boy sat and waited. His mother woke up and sat beside him. She didn’t make no moves for the door. She brought him a blanket for his shoulders and wrapped it around him like he was still a child.

        The boy never saw his father again. The Ferrises ate better after that.

        While Mala was learning this, the Ferris boy was crushing her with his chest, pushing against her and making strange little noises in the back of his throat. But he’d been dumb and thrown his stick away where Mala could reach for it. One end, broken carelessly off a tree, came to a mean point.

        Mala stabbed him deep in the thigh. “Don’t you ever touch me again,” she said, standing over him while he screamed. “None of you. None of you touch me.” Mala brandished the stick to show she meant business. “I can tell them what you did.”

        Those boys never did chase Mala again and, from then on, she read fewer books and watched her classmates instead.

* * *

        On her way home from Dr. Benjamin’s tents, Mala took the long way through town. She walked through the fruit stands and fish vendors and she spread out her hands and her fingers, just a little bit, not so much that you’d notice.

        When she got home, Naomi asked her what she’d done that day and Mala said: “Nothing.”

* * *

        Mala filled six wax wheels by herself. She ruled the tent, coming the morning and not leaving until the dark of the night. And she talked the whole time, only stopping every once in a while to sip a little of the water or the clear liquor that Dr. Benjamin offered her.

        She uncovered her neighbors, all their little sins and triumphs. She delighted in secrets, in sacreds, and Dr. Benjamin delighted in her. When she spoke, Mala lit up like a candle in a windstorm; she flickered and bent and danced and seemed to inhabit all the shapes of her stories. Mala, she was a thing to see.

        But our island is a small one. Filling all day, every day with stories... sooner or later, Mala was going to run out. Dr. Benjamin could see she’d started to slack her pace. The stories she picked now were less bitter and less vibrant. Mala herself didn’t seem so struck by them. She was reaching the end of her supply, and that scared the Doctor.

        “Mala,” he said once. It was night, the usual time that Mala would be leaving. “Would you sit next to me?” Dr. Benjamin pulled a chair over by his own. He’d been partaking of some of that clear liquor of his and that was the only way he’d gotten up the nerve to talk to her like that.

        Mala looked at him for a long minute, because she wasn’t in the habit of being hasty about much of anything. And then she circled round the table and sat next to him.

        Dr. Benjamin looked at his hands. “Mala,” he said, “do you like living here on the island?”

        Mala was confused by the question because she wasn’t real sure she liked living at all. It was just what she did. But Dr. Benjamin didn’t seem to care that she didn’t have no answer for him.

        “Do you think... do you think you would like to live on the mainland? I could take you there. To the cities. There would be so many opportunities for someone with your gift.”

        “Gift,” Mala repeated, like a magic spell. They were silent together for a moment. Dr. Benjamin drank.

        “There are a lot of stories in the cities, aren’t there?” Mala’s books had all suggested that that was the case.

        Dr. Benjamin smiled at her. He spread his hands expansively, and when he brought them back down again, they rested on her shoulders. “Mala, in the cities, there are so many stories that you couldn’t tell them all even if you talked all day, every day until the end of your life.”

        That was the first time Dr. Benjamin ever saw Mala smile.

        Dr. Benjamin smiled too, but nervously, like an apology. “Can I ask you something?” he whispered. Mala inclined her head. Dr. Benjamin laughed in that way that folk do when nothing is funny. “Could you... could you tell my story?”

        Mala leaned forward. She looked seriously at Dr. Benjamin. He was not very old. She imagined his life in the city had been good and unexciting. But Mala was curious; Mala was always curious.

        When she kissed him, he tasted cold and sweet. Peppermint, like his candies. She bet he tasted like that all the time. Maybe everyone in the cities did?

        This is what Mala said:

        “Once, you had a sister. She was much younger than you and you took care of her.

        Your parents went away for a living. You and your sister used to run through the stone courtyard and pretend to be pirates. You had nannies and you had maids. But your sister had no one to play pirate with, except you. Even after you were too old for those kinds of game.

        One summer, your parents came home for weeks at a time. It was the longest you’d been with them in your whole life. They took you to the beach and you walked behind your sister in the waves and untangled green ribbons of kelp from in and out of her ankles. She had never seen the ocean before and she didn’t even notice you, following along behind and making her safe.

        She died in the ocean, drank it and sank. That’s what your parents and the doctors told you afterwards. She was a little girl, she could barely swim. There was nothing mysterious about it. But you could remember hands. Green, cold hands. They took your sister and you reached out for her but they were so much stronger than you were.

        Sometimes, in the summer nights, you drag your hand down the sheets of your bed and remember the feeling of their fingers breaking your grip and pushing you away.

        The doctors told you to forget. Your parents told you to forget. They were going to send you to be cured. They were going to take you away from the house and the courtyard and all the small things that were left of her in the world. And so you learned to forget.

        You still spent your summers on the sea.

        The hands took her underneath for a princess. You thought they would want her for a princess. You could not remember if they ate human folk. But she was such a pretty little girl. How could they not want her? How could they not give her a crown and worship her? So you floated. Disconnected from her, you went up and up and up and rested on the top of the water.

        And in that moment, before your parents found you and pulled you back to shore, you relished it. That cool weightless ease of no one hanging on your hand. Later, you would wonder if you had called them with your wish so secret that you did not even tell it to yourself.

        “They taught you to forget. Do you remember now?” Mala looked steady into Dr. Benjamin’s stricken face.

        Dr. Benjamin tasted salt. Too much, he leaned over the side of his chair and spat out on to the wooden floor. A streaked white pile landed there, salt warm and half-melted from the heat of his mouth. He could feel the tumbling grit of the few remaining grains on his tongue and in his teeth.

        “I remember,” he said. So much salt and he thirsted from it.

* * *

        Before Mala was born, Naomi didn’t paint. She used to draw in the little paper books her daddy would bring her back from the world, but painting wasn’t something she ever saw a woman do. After Mala, all sorts of things suddenly seemed possible, and she was already an odd duck as far as the rest of us were concerned. So while another woman might have spent her evenings knitting or sewing or reading, if there was books to be had, Naomi sat at her kitchen table and spread the white sheets of her sketches all around her.

        Mala sat on the floor beside her and traced the grooves between the soft white boards. “Baby, do you think we should plant poppies alongside the house this year?” Naomi asked her girl. She did not expect an answer because that sort of thing wasn’t of no concern to Mala, but we do all like to hear a human voice, even if it’s our own.

        Mala shrugged her shoulders. “I won’t be here when they bloom.”

        Naomi laid down her sketch. Her charcoal pencil rolled in among the curls of her papers. “What?”

        Mala tucked her pinky nail into the dark little crack between boards. “I’m going to go away,” Mala said. Naomi shook her head without words, her mouth worked all useless. “The stories here....” Mala struggled to explain, “they’re... dead now. He put them in his machine. I need to find new ones.”

        “Mala,” Naomi made her voice low and reasonable, “you can’t leave. You don’t know how to take care of yourself. People will hurt you.”

        Mala just stared, thinking about those boys who chased her. Hurting was everywhere.

        Naomi’s voice rose, her eyes got bright, like black stones washed in with the tide and glistening. “Mala, you need me. I’m your mother, no one else is going to care for you.”

        “There’s nothing here anymore,” said Mala.

        “I’m here.” Naomi choked a little on the words. She could feel her heart beating hard in her throat and her chest, it was like panic, it was like fighting. If Mala had apologized, or reached out for her mother’s hand, she might have soothed some torn up thing inside Naomi. But that wasn’t in Mala’s nature. Instead she just looked at her mother with that flat stare, like she was looking through her. That look of hers that always said there wasn’t anything to see.

        “You’re not even a person!” Naomi screamed it; she stalked into the kitchen and opened one of the wooden cupboards so hard it made a slam-crash noise against the other cabinets. She threw a glass vial at Mala, stopped up on one end with cork. It hit the floor in front of her and the stopper tumbled out. White grains spilled out, some landed on the floorboards, some on Mala’s skin. “That’s all you are.” Naomi was shaking, Naomi was white. Naomi held on to herself with both arms.

        Six little grains clustered on Mala’s bare knee. She licked her index finger, scooped them up. She pressed them against her tongue.

* * *

        “They’re hollow inside. They’re made of breath and dust and sea water. They can’t have anything heavy inside of them, it falls through their body and rips them apart so they must be remade. But they can carry things for a little while.

        My daddy sank like your sister. He was a fisherman. When he died, he was thinking about the lines he’d left dragging out in the water. He was thinking about the fish, creeping through them, sides jeweled.

        The demons like to look at the dead fisherman. They sink for a time and the demons float underneath them, let their cold bodies pass through them. For a moment, when that human skin passes through their hollow dust, it is like a pulse.

        The demon took my father’s kiss. Touched his hair and his shoulders and rode on his hips, wearing my mother’s face. Kissed him goodbye, tasted his breath, smelled his blood.

        Like each empty thing, they ache. For a while, they hold life inside of them. It grows, it pushes, it warms and insists. They hold on for as long as they can, but it will weight them down. It’s too heavy. It would tear them, you see?

        The demon brought me to my mother. When I was gone-just the smallest seed of me-the demon felt weightless. It could sink back into the sea and watch for the dead fisherman again. Without me, the demon was bereft; but the demon was wise. The demon knew that I had never belonged inside it. I’d only just rested there for a while.”

* * *

        Long after dark, Mala climbed into Naomi’s bed. It was first time something warm and living had laid next to Naomi’s body since Marco’d left for the sea. For a minute, Mala just rested and drew breath in and out and let her mother listen to the sound.

        “Please don’t leave me alone,” Naomi said eventually, her voice got little and teary. “You’re mine. You’re my wish.”

        Because she wasn’t a cruel girl, Mala stretched out her arms and awkwardly enfolded her mother. She touched her only gingerly, as if it burned or buzzed, but she touched her. “I’m mine,” she said.

        Naomi pressed her face into the bend of Mala’s arm, drawing warmth and something like comfort from the girl. “Momma?” Mala hadn’t called her that, hadn’t called her anything since she was just a little thing. “Would you like to hear a story?”

        Naomi took to weeping, salt water on her daughter’s skin.

Copyright © 2011  Nicole M. Taylor

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Nicole M. Taylor is a freelance writer and copy editor, recently relocated to Los Angeles. She likes alphabetizing things and looking at pictures of bewildered kittens. She bloggerates at www.nicolemtaylor.com/blog/.

Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

THE JUDGE’S RIGHT HAND

by J.S. Bangs

        I killed Jacob Finley. I broke his head open with a hammer and kicked his chest in until his ribs split. Then I took his woman and his mule and left town. That was six years ago.

        I did it for Cate. I had been laying Catherine Finley for a few months by then, and when her mean-drunk husband finally found out, he sent her back to me with a broken jaw. I went to him planning to return the favor, and I guess I got carried away. Afterwards Cate and I took refuge up in Silver Falls, thinking we’d have a good many years before the Judge came around to such a godforsaken mountain hamlet.

        I guess we did have a decent run of years. Just wish they were more.

* * *

        Taylor says to me while we’re cutting hay, “You see those crows up there in the north meadow?”

        I lower my scythe and look up. A swarm of birds as small and dirty as flies is rising from the gold-touched aspens that border the field. “Yep,” I say. “Something spooked them.”

        “Odd,” he says. “Not much up there.”

        Now Taylor is an earthy man whose mind doesn’t run off much. He doesn’t have any brand more serious than Envy, and he keeps me on even though I’m scarred with every brand from Theft to Lechery, so I always consider myself in his debt. But the way he looks at those crows makes me nervous, for no reason I can say at the moment. We keep on cutting hay till the sun gets down towards the tops of the mountains in the west, myself feeling troubled without having much cause to say why, and then he touches my hand. He’s looking up towards the north end of the field.

        It takes me a second to see the blue-winged Seraph in the shadow of the poplars, watching us with his still silver face. Neither of us says nothing, but Taylor sees my hands shaking.

        “Why don’t you go on home,” he says to me. “I think we cut enough hay for today. I’ll take the wagon in.”

        “Sure,” I say. “I gotta let Cate know.”

        I get home just in time to hear the Judgment Bell toll.

        Cate’s on the porch holding Loren’s hand and looking towards town. The iron peals of the Bell are still rumbling back at us from the mountains, and her face is pale and nervous. But when she looks at me all she says is, “You’re home early.”

        “Taylor let me off,” I say.

        Loren starts to bawl, and I see his mother is squeezing his hand so hard it’s turning white. “Let the boy go,” I say. “You ain’t gonna help him by breaking his fingers.”

        “That was the Bell, Henry.”

        I crouch down and scoop Loren into my arms. “Did Momma hurt you? She’s mighty distracted.”

        Cate tisks. “Didn’t you hear me? That was the Judgment Bell. We gotta go into town. Loren hasn’t never been judged before. And us—”

        “Quiet, Cate,” I say. “Let’s just eat supper first.”

        Cate has porridge on the stove and crusty bread in the pantry, and we sit down to a quiet meal. Loren is only four and he normally chatters like a blue jay when we sit to eat, but I think he’s picked up on his mother’s mood, because he sits quiet as a hare. As soon as we’re done Cate stacks the dirty plates and says, “We really gotta go, now. It’s only gonna be worse if we try to avoid it.”

        “Yep,” I say. My veins feel like they got lead in them. “Loren, you stay close to me. We’ll register after Momma.”

        “Yes, sir,” he says. “What’s all this for?”

        I hesitate. We haven’t talked to him much about the Judge, since he’s small and it’s a subject Cate and I prefer to avoid. “We’re gonna go talk to someone,” I say. “And then it’s probably gonna hurt. But there ain’t no avoiding it.”

        Silver Falls doesn’t have but one street, and when we get there just about everyone in town is crowded around the Judgment Bell. The scarred, cast-iron bell casts a shadow like spilled pitch across the boardwalk. Loren shouts and points, and I can hardly blame him ‘cause the Judge is there on a chair carried by four Seraphim. The Bailiff is standing underneath the Bell taking registrations, and me and Cate and Loren get in line. It don’t take long to get to the front. People don’t want to stand around talking to the Bailiff any more than they have to, to say nothing of the Judge.

        Taylor comes up behind us and greets me with a short nod. He must have just got here from the ranch, and he pats Loren on the cheek. Normally Loren kisses Taylor like an uncle, but now we’re real close to the Bailiff and the Judge, and he’s got eyes only for them. He wraps himself around my leg and shrinks away.

        The Bailiff is the only one of them that looks like ordinary folks. He’s got black leather boots and dusty trousers, a wide-brimmed felt hat and a short, peppered moustache. A wood-bound ledger balances on the table underneath the Judgment Bell, where he’s writing down registrations with a common ink pen. If it weren’t for his company, you’d take him for a banker or a doctor. But he’s guarded by two Seraphim.

        Their faces are living silver, with shining breastplates and metallic gloves that ripple as quick as river water, and from their shoulders rise wings with feathers of thin blue stone that sparkle like fish scales. They don’t hold any weapon you can see, but men talk of their gloves lit up with fire.

        And behind them, on a palanquin of ivory and emerald, sits the Judge himself. Like the Seraphim his face and breast and hands are liquid metal, gold to the Seraph’s silver, but six wings float around him like spider’s silk, shadowing his face and hands and feet. The eyes in his mask are black and sparkle with flashes of lightning.

        If I was a boy like Loren, I’d hide, too. But I’m a man now, and I’ll face my judgment standing up.

        Cate goes to the Bailiff first. “Name?” he asks.

        “Catherine.” She pauses for a moment. “Catherine Finley.”

        “When and where were you last judged?”

        “Eight years ago, in Dunville.”

        The Bailiff nods and scribbles in his ledger. “Judgment begins tomorrow. Come as soon or as late as you want, but if you take too long the Seraphim will be out to drag you in, which you won’t like. And don’t try to run away.”

        He gives the same warning to everyone at every judgment. I’ve heard it six times.

        Loren and I follow. I give my name as Henry Dodge, last judged eight years ago in Dunville, and then I present Loren for his first judgment. “What’s gonna happen?” he asks with pitiable innocence.

        “The Judge will hear you confess all of your sins,” the Bailiff says. “If he gives you justice, he will show you his left hand and you will be branded for your sins. But if he gives you mercy, he will show you his right hand and you will go away unblemished.”

        This is a lie. The Judge’s right hand is bound behind his back by an iron chain, and he don’t give mercy to nobody.

        Cate and I squeeze Loren’s hands and pull him away from the Bailiff, back towards our home at the north end of town. Neither of us says nothing. A moment later I hear boots kicking up the dirt behind us and Taylor says, “Henry, wait up. I’d like to have a word with you privately, if I may.”

        He nods apologetically to Cate, who hushes Loren into her skirts and continues without a word. Taylor leans close to me and asks in a low voice, “Cate gave her name as Catherine Finley?”

        “That’s her name,” I say.

        “So you and her are not properly married?”

        “No.” The brand Adultery will scar her pretty cheeks, and Loren will wear the Bastard brand his whole life. But those aren’t the brands I’m worried about.

        Taylor takes off his hat and runs a hand through his ruddy hair. “Well. Folks won’t like that when they find out.”

        “I reckon they won’t. Not a lot I can do about it, though.”

        “Did she have a husband before?”

        “He died.” That’s all I’m inclined to say.

        Taylor goes quiet for a minute, looking back towards the center of town. In the meadow behind the Judgment Bell men are rigging up a great canvas tent to cover the Judge’s Tabernacle. “You’ve still got a job with me,” he says after a minute. “No use leaving Cate and Loren to beg.”

        I almost tell him that there’s no need for that, since I won’t be around to work after the judgment. But I hold my tongue and just say, “Thanks.”

* * *

        The sun is hidden behind the hills by the time I get home, and Cate is putting Loren to bed in the corner of the room. I sit down next to him and hold his hand until he falls asleep. I figure I’ve got one, maybe two days left to do that.

        When Loren’s asleep I take Cate to our bed and we make love, quiet and hard. In the dark she holds me and says, “Henry, what are we gonna do?”

        “We always knew this day was coming,” I say.

        “But what am I gonna do without you? I got no way to raise Loren by myself. I ain’t got nothing to work at other than mending, which don’t pay much. I’ll be reduced to whoring in a month.”

        “Maybe Taylor will take you in. Loren can start doing chores to make it worth his while.”

        “We could run.”

        I shake my head. “Don’t be silly, Cate. The Seraphim got the village surrounded.”

        “Oh, Henry.” She begins to sob. I pull her close to me and we fall asleep like that, arms and legs tangled up beneath the heavy wool blanket, our bodies warming the one-room cabin.

        I wake up before dawn and dress without waking Cate. I want to get this over with.

* * *

        The Bailiff is already awake when I get to the tent—I don’t think that the Bailiff ever really sleeps—and he takes me through the tent to the curtains of the Tabernacle. Though every town’s got its own spot to host the judgment, the Judge carries the Tabernacle from place to place. Its walls of gauzy silk tinkle with tiny chains when I pass through.

        Inside, there is no light other than a soft glow that comes from the Judge’s face and wings, and the bank of coals where the brands await. Seraphim in the four corners hold thuribles that fill the room with sweet, smoky incense. The incense loosens your tongue and your mind and makes you want to tell all your secrets. I breathe deep.

        “Tell me your sins,” the Judge says with a voice like a waterfall.

        I feel like I’m floating. I can’t feel my feet or my hands. The Judge’s seat seems to grow before me, turning mountainous and hot, and the Judge towers like a giant born out of a lightning bolt. I start to talk. I tell the Judge how I fell in love with Catherine Finley and killed her husband, how we came to Silver Falls and had a son. I confess every lie and curse I uttered since my last judgment, every time I got drunk and fought fools at the bar and the time I stole ten dollars from Taylor though he never done me wrong. Then I roll up my sleeves and wait for the Judge’s response.

        Voices patter around me like the muttering of distant thunder. The Judge is speaking to the Seraphim. I catch only words and phrases:

        “...confessed freely...”

        “...but the child...”

        “...consented to murder...”

        “...already carries the brand...”

        “...she, too, is guilty.”

        With a crack the voices cease. The Judge extends his left hand and gestures to the Seraphim. “You will receive justice.”

        A Seraph approaches with two brands, red-hot from the coals. The first is Adultery, and it blackens my right cheek. I bite my tongue to swallow the scream. The second is Death, and it sears my forehead. This time I do scream.

        “Life for life, death for death,” the Judge says. “Your sentence will be carried out when judgment is complete.” The Seraphim push me out of the Tabernacle, though the door of the tent, and into the morning light.

        I take a breath of clean air. Two women awaiting their judgment outside the tent scream and cower. For a moment I’m confused, then I remember that Death is on my forehead. I ignore them and stumble towards the cabin as quickly as the pain allows me. Those who see me gasp and turn their faces away. No one greets me. The living do not speak to the dead.

* * *

        There is smoke rising from the stovepipe of our cabin. I fumble with the door and come through to the smell of coffee and frying bacon. Loren screams. For a moment I think he’s screaming ‘cause a dead man has come through the door, but I realize he don’t know the meaning of the mark on my forehead. He sees only his father scarred.

        My vision still swims. A tin cup of coffee and a plate of bacon appear before me. The coffee boils the incense from my mind at last, and I see Cate is crying silently. I chew the bacon and consider whether to speak. But what do the dead care for the laws of the living?

        “I have until judgment is complete,” I say. “A day or two.”

        She pours the bacon grease from the skillet into the grease can. “Loren, we’re gonna go into town today,” she says. She don’t look at me.

        I picture her soft, freckled cheeks branded with Adultery. Hard to get work even whoring with that kind of scar. Taylor will take her in, I think. He’s a good man. My fingers wander to the Death brand on my forehead, still hot and blistering at the edges. The brush of my fingers is a needle of pain, and I suddenly remember the Judge’s words: She, too, is guilty.

        I bolt to my feet and send the chair clattering to the ground behind me. “Cate, we have to go.”

        She won’t look at me. I go on, “The Judge said they’d kill you, too. For Jacob’s murder.”

        She pauses. For a long time she just looks at the rag in her hand, then she answers in a voice barely loud enough to hear. “Where did you hear that?”

        “The Judge said it—at my judgment.”

        “You sure you weren’t just hearing things? Strange things happen under the Seraphim’s smoke.”

        “I swear, Cate. And I ain’t leaving Loren without neither mother nor father.”

        “The Seraphim have the town surrounded. You said so last night.”

        “Maybe we can get out.” My heart is racing now. “Over on the east edge of Taylor’s ranch there’s a ravine where Crooked Snake Creek runs out. The top is so thick with juniper that you can’t see to the bottom unless you’re in the ravine itself. We could maybe sneak through, I think, if we were real quiet.”

        Loren is in the corner of the room spinning a top Cate made from an old spool of thread. The clattering of the top is the only sound in the room.

        “Please,” I say.

        She throws the rag to the ground. “Loren, baby, get out your spare set of clothes and put them here in the sheet. We’re not going to town. We’re leaving.”

        It only takes us a few minutes to get our extra clothes and the fifty dollars I got hid under the mattress wrapped up in the sheet and tied into a bundle. It’s a good thing that we live on the edge of town, ‘cause it’s pretty clear we ain’t just going out for the day, and anyone that saw us was likely to raise alarm.

        As it is, we don’t see no one all the way out to Taylor’s ranch, where the road splits north towards his homestead and east towards the pastures. I ponder for a moment whether to go and tell him why I’m going, and maybe to beg a little extra money—but an honest fellow like him might feel obliged to stop me, if he’d even talk to a dead man. We take the east fork and skirt the pastures towards the ravine.

        Crooked Snake Creek comes crawling out of the woods there at the edge of the field, and to get into the ravine you gotta walk right up the creek bed itself. I carry Loren, who squeezes my neck and hides his face in my shoulder, while Cate carries our belongings. Just as soon as we get into the wood, the mossy walls of the ravine rise on either side and the sun gets lost in the thicket that brambles up the top walls. The creek gurgles around our feet, and we step from stone to stone to avoid splashing in the water. There’s no telling how far out the Seraphim have made their cordon. We move real slow. My heart beats as fast as the woodpecker drilling overhead.

        We come to the place where the trees over the ravine change from pine to aspen, and the air goes golden from the light in their autumn leaves. And a voice like a bell at night says, “Halt.”

        The Seraph is at the lip of the ravine, his silver mask shining like the moon. The brambles in front of him spark into brief white flame and wither away at his touch. He begins to descend the rocky slope.

        “Go!” I shout. We forget caution. Loren clasps my neck in terror, I scramble over the mossy river rocks, and Cate’s heavy breath follows us. The sound of our splashing in the water mingles with the horrible crackle of brush burning in the Seraph’s wake.

        A cry of pain stops me. Behind me Cate has sprawled on all fours, our knotted sheet fallen into the creek bed. Her hands are bloodied where she caught herself on the stones. The Seraph is a step behind her, reaching out to seize her neck, and his hand is white with power. I drop Loren and stumble to Cate’s side.

        “Stop,” I say. I try to grab his wrist, but the touch of his glove scalds me like a brand. He pauses. The silver gaze turns to me.

        “Let her go,” I say. My voice cracks. “I ain’t too proud to beg. Let her go. I’m already a dead man, but she don’t deserve what I’m getting. And the boy ain’t done nothing. I’ll go with you if you let her go.”

        The Seraph watches me, and I imagine he’s looking at Death on my forehead. “This is your wife and child?” he asks, and all the trees quiver at the tolling of his voice.

        I don’t know what to say. I ain’t never heard of the Seraphim giving ear to the pleas of those under judgment, and he knows I’m a dead man. But there ain’t nothing more for me to lose, except hope for Cate and Loren. So I gotta try.

        I tell it to him straight. “She ain’t my wife, not proper, but she’s been my woman, and that’s my boy. If they go to judgment, she’s gonna get Death on her forehead, too, and then my boy’s gonna be orphaned. They don’t deserve none of that. It’s all my fault, and I don’t want no one to suffer no more on account of me.”

        The Seraph is still for a moment. Then, as quick as lightning, he seizes me by the shoulders and begins to carry me away. He don’t look back at Cate and Loren. His footsteps make no sound, so I can hear real well when Cate gathers up the bundle and quiets Loren’s sobs and continues on up the ravine.

* * *

        The Seraphim guard me all that day and the next, until everyone in Silver Falls has been judged. The whole town gathers to see them plunge their silver hands into my chest and crush my beating heart.

* * *

        The Judge calls out: Arise.

        His voice crashes down like a mountain falling into water. There ain’t nothing you can say to a voice like that except you do what it says, not even to wonder what in Hell is going on and why you ain’t dead.

        I’m wrapped in a soft cloth that feels flimsy and wet like old leaves, which I tear away like rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. There’s a stone in my mouth that I spit onto the ground. And that’s when I get my first thought that something else ain’t right, because the shreds of cloth that I tore through are lying all around me, and they ain’t rotten burlap like I thought, but heavy canvas you’d be hard up to tear with a knife. The stone from my mouth smokes like a coal on the ground.

        And then I see my hands are silver and ripple like water under moonlight, and I touch my face, which is hard as steel and hot as fire. I start to scream. At first I scream from terror. Then I scream from pain.

        Stone knives are splitting open my back. My shoulder blades are broke and reformed. My ribs groan. My spine is hot as a blacksmith’s fire. Soft, human hands lift me off the ground where I’m writhing, and I hear whispers of help, encouragement. And with a blast of blue something breaks free: wings, my wings, beating the air like a hawk taking flight.

        I am lying in the Tabernacle, held off the ground by a crowd of Seraphim. Their hands are human and kind, and when I look at them I don’t see silver masks, but men and women. Every one of them has Death on their foreheads.

        The ones holding me aloft help me stand on my own feet, and I turn to see the Judge.

        “Welcome to my host,” he says. He has a face like a man, but where his eyes would be there is darkness filled with lightning.

        I waver on my feet like I’m drunk, but I find my voice to ask, “What’s going on here?”

        “You sought mercy for your family,” he thunders, “and you received it. Now show mercy to others.”

        “I don’t understand.”

        “The Seraphim are my right hand.”

        “What are you talking about?”

        The Judge don’t explain. He turns and walks away, and when I try to run after him the Seraphim crowd forward and seize me, and take me back to their barracks, and hold me until I stop struggling.

* * *

        After a few weeks I stop fighting, and things get a little easier. I learn my place in the rituals of judgment. People confess their sins to the Judge, and I give them their brands as sentenced.

        One day I’m holding the brands in the Tabernacle when a faithless woman comes through, one who’s run off from her husband to take up with a man that don’t slap her around so much. By rights she ought to get Adultery on her cheek, and the Judge shows his left hand to say just that. I’m supposed to carry out the sentence, but when the woman comes to me I realize what I’m really supposed to do.

        I am the Judge’s right hand.

        I let her go.

Copyright © 2011  J.S. Bangs

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By day, J.S. Bangs works as a mild-mannered computer programmer somewhere in the American Midwest. By night he slays princesses, rescues dragons, and writes stories. You can see more at his site http://jsbangs.wordpress.com.

Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

COVER ART

“New Lands,” by Rado Javor

Rado Javor is a Slovak artist who splits his time between Bratislava and the UK. His favorite subjects include gothic Colonial America, WWI aircraft, dark science-fiction, and Napoleonic naval engagements, many of which were featured in the game Empire: Total War. See more of his work at http://radojavor.com/.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

ISSN: 1946-1046

Published by Firkin Press,

a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization

Copyright © 2011 Firkin Press

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