Issue #252 • May 24, 2018

“The Wild Ride of the Untamed Stars,” by A.J. Fitzwater

“The Ghostpotion Games,” by Christian K. Martinez

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THE WILD RIDE OF THE UNTAMED STARS

by A.J. Fitzwater

         Silence hovered in anticipation over the racers. The Moth Moon caressed the fairy-light-spangled podium with her gentle smile. The Paper Moon peered over the lavender horizon, knowing better than to risk rising on the night of sharp-edged falling stars.

         A barrel-chested capybara stepped forward from the petitioner’s line. “Cinrak The Dapper, Captain o’ the most excellent IRATE ship the Impolite Fortune, an’ I ride in The Grand Chase of the Falling Stars fer the Queen’s Hand.”

         A most satisfying gasp from the crowd of petitioners, court adjuncts, fairies waltzing the breeze, and rodent rabble.

         “A capybara as the rat queen’s consort?”

         “There’s a reason they say the sea-farer’s union puts the ‘IRATE’ into pirate!”

         “Not since the First Ride...”

         Cinrak adjusted her purple bow tie, swinging her broad snout from side to side, trying to hold her grin in check. The court was all a-bluster? Good.

         The Rat Queen Orvillia pressed her with her coal-dark eyes. The jewel at the centre of the Queen’s crown throbbed, an ache against the festive mood.

         This was the bargain they’d discussed, of a sort. Cinrak had promised to petition for the jewellery of Orvillia’s well-adorned right hand, putting the orphanage of Cinrak’s upbringing in the black and IRATE ships bound to pleasure cruises rather than duty for some years to come. But promises were flexible, even to the head of the Independent Rodent’s Aquatic Trade Entente.

         “Petition—” Orvillia’s whiskers twitched. “—accepted.”

         A crackle-hiss, like lightning along a sword drawn from its scabbard. Cinrak turned her snout up. The stars were close; she could smell their light, fresh as a storm before it hit the sea.

         With their attention caught by the busy sky, no one noticed a new petitioner step up until her sweet, high voice pierced the night.

         “Loquolchi, Lead Soprano of the Theatre Rat-oyal, and I Ride for the Queen’s Hand.”

         Another gasp. A few onlookers took knees.

         “You blewdy diva,” Cinrak grumbled. “Trust you to upstage everythin’.”

         Taking her place in line, the marmot graced her pirate lover with a toothy smile. “Can’t let you have all the fun, Cinny.”

         “Petition accepted.” Orvillia’s smooth politician voice shimmered with amusement and fondess.

         “We had a deal,” Cinrak hissed to Loquolchi as Orvillia swept forward and began reciting the rules of The Ride. “I’m doin’ this for both o’ us, Loqui.”

         Loquolchi looked off into the darkness like she was steadying herself to deliver a beloved aria. “I love Orvillia, too. Besides, a little competition is fun.”

         There was no stopping the porcupine-headed diva once she set her course. Cinrak straightened the hem of her tailored suit jacket and eyed Loquolchi’s riding garb: a batwing dress straight out of the Rat-oyal costume department, all white froof and flop. Surely a tripping hazard.

         Another crack-hiss. Cinrak, accustomed to listening for tiny changes of wind in the rigging, swung her blunt nose up. There. Way high, a tiny pinprick of a star against the bruised velvet sky

         Ah! thought Cinrak. To be only the second rodent in history to capture and ride a falling star! Fame, riches, and the rat court would be there for Cinrak the Dapper’s asking.

         Ssssssinraaaaaak...

         But tonight, like every other Aestivus equinox, she had watched the stars fall, dance, sizzle, break to rainbow sparks, and climb again, something strange pulled at her heart, tweaking her storm senses.

         Ssssinraaaaaaak...

         Cinrak was running before Orvillia had finished her recitation of the Grand Chase’s thousand-year history or Loquolchi could pinch her for luck.

         A thunder of paws mixed with the thunder of the falling stars hitting air. Breath huffed. Leather and rope slapped against gloves.

         Angling away from the cut of the Silver Moon’s smile, Cinrak dug deep into the secret Alice pocket sewn into her jacket. If anyone had been so brazen as to attempt to loot the locked trunk under her billet aboard the Impolite Fortune, they would have been surprised by the paw that emerged as if from thin air to grab a red, silky rope. That is, if they hadn’t already been surprised to death by the poison kraken-spirit Cinrak had given a home inside the padlock.

         Cinrak had scoured the myths and stuck to the letter of the rules; reins were allowed only if they were soft natural materials that wouldn’t harm the stars. Mer-hair, made from night brushed a thousand times over into silken tresses, was supposed to soothe the star enough to allow it a passenger. Legend said like spoke to like.

         “Illegal buckles!” shouted the magpie referee keeping pace, and another racer, a beaver in a gaudy gold robe, fell away.

         Though Cinrak had a good head start, her stubby legs couldn’t hold the lead for long. The stars were crackling in earnest.

         Ssssssssiiinraaaaaak...

         “I see Spurs!” screeched the referee. Another participant, this time a squirrel, went down in a flurry of tail.

         “Metal harness!” The referee was relishing his job, and a mole rat fell out of the race, muttering darkly about bad luck and nasty nasty magpies.

         The Moth Moon did its best to get out of the way of the rodent runners powering uphill. Decent sized stars had started to dip low.

         There was no use wasting her breath in cajoling and promises. Cinrak tightened her fist on the first loop in her pocket. Still natural material, still legal.

         The bottom of the Moth Moon popped free of the hilltop with a satisfied sigh just as Cinrak chose her mark. The biggest and brightest tended to be too tumultuous and broke up into baby stars, the perfect ride to satisfy the ego of those only seeking to impress the queen. Those in the know, the race old-timers, went for a middling-sized star, the ones at the back of the pack, the more circumspect and less like to burn out.

         Cinrak drew the plaited rope free. At the sight of mer-hair appearing as if from nowhere, a racing gopher beside Cinrak stumbled in surprise and yelled for a judgment.

         “No foul!” squawked the magpie dodging sparks from the air-skittering stars.

         A huff of breath on Cinrak’s left, a delicious sound: Loquolchi.

         A loud and familiar sound: FWUMPH.

         With arms spread wide and a sail made of bright Moon Moth silk draped between, Loquolchi swooped overhead in a casually theatric pose like she was born for the sky and took the lead.

         “Clever girl!” Cinrak shouted and waved. How had Loqui bribed enough silk out of the recalcitrant insects to catch the beams at perigee?

         Cinrak then cursed as Loquolchi beat haste towards the best-looking star. The star pulled back from the rush towards the impossible—the moment of balance between equal light and equal night—to admire the scintillating wings.

         A mistake. Loquolchi swung up and over the spiky perch and settled between the star’s largest limbs.

         With the silky rope tightening in anticipation on its own accord in her paw, Cinrak had to concede First Catch. It meant little if a rider couldn’t get the star over the finish line with no harm done to its ephemeral existence. Loquolchi knew the skills of hot air but only what came from within, not without.

         In the thousand years of the race’s existence, only one star had suffered a rider to the end and crossed the finish line. That star now shone from Orvillia’s crown, a warning to its descendants.

         Alerted by the fizzing sparks and bucking cracks, other stars dipped to assist their sibling. The pants, growls, and shouts from the rest of the petitioners fell away. Cinrak’s attention hove fully to the glimmering prizes pricking the Aestivus sky and dodging the playful Moth Moon. More light meant a longer dance with the shy moths who dotted their cocoons across her craters.

         The red rope formed a lasso and sprang out before Cinrak had instructed her muscles and eight fingers. She barely had time to lay grip upon the knotted end when the rope pulled taut, having found its mark upon a blue-ish elder star.

         Such was the way of mermaid’s hair, made to unerringly find and caress the stars.

         Despite hard-worked shoulders, Cinrak had never fought a storm such as she fought with this star. Though the star was of the lumbering type, its orneriness almost wrenched her arms from their sockets. With very little breath left she dashed to keep up, her six toes tripping through then lifting above bramble bushes as the star pulled indignantly away from the excited rabble.

         Surely lost! Cinrak kicked at the air, hands slipping further along the mer-hair rope. “To the bottom of the sea wit’ ye!” she yelled into the rushing wind and the star’s crackle-delight.

         Hand over hand, like climbing to the nest in a hurricane, Cinrak fought her way up the rope wriggling with a mer’s brushed-in mirth. A lucky break: the star dipped to avoid an onrush of over-excited young stars breaking like fireworks against each other.

         Cinrak got a leg over.

         The mer-hair rope wrapped neatly around a flashing limb as the star bucked and swayed.

         Mer-hair held firm but not brutal.

         “It’s not like that,” Periwinkle had whistled as Cinrak laboriously plaited the rope: a gruelling harvest; months of supplication to mer needs, picking abandoned strands from sea-weeded rocks and bone combs. “The myths about our hair are such a farce! Never let the fearful tell your legend, Sssinrak-Dapper.”

         Stripped of her captain’s title and fancy coat, Cinrak had risked her life, loves, IRATE union career, and ship to parlay with the mer-people. Then suffering through salty fur, eating more fish than she cared to entertain, insults, chilblains, and drudgery in the effort to hook herself a star and a heart.

         Tonight she would find out if it was had all been worth it.

         The star whipped upwards, pushing tears from Cinrak’s squinted eyes and a scream from her lungs. Wind tore at her best suit, threatening to turn it to tatters. Despite having ridden into countless storms, excitement and fear tossed her about as much as her mount. She clung on for her life as the star tore across the sky, causing even the Moth Moon to hastily back-pedal at their passing.

         The star roared—Cinrak thought she could almost hear words in the mess, whipping around its youngers, going up-see-daisy over another rider: Loquolchi, moth wings a-streaming and marmot-melisma shaking sparks from frantically flashing arms.

         The will to win struggled hard against Cinrak’s will to love. Loqui be deservin’ better’n this. She deservin’ Orvillia too. But to be a new light in the crown...Oh, Stars!

         Unusually, four riders now held tenacious grips, the rest a furry ball of limbs and curses on the hillside. A chinchilla courtier screeched as it rode a tight spiral, followed by a spring-hare from a family who sent a race petitioner every year. Neither looked as if they’d keep their mounts for long, the way the young stars bucked.

         Loquolchi, however, held fast. Wrapped securely, the silk wings applied double duty, soothing the star as well as helping her keep her seat. She marmot-shrilled somewhere between a frightened scream and perfect high melisma.

         And she was pulling ahead.

         Cinrak, calling upon all the practise she’d done with the narwhals, bent low and kissed the mer-hair rope. How would it respond this high up? It was a being of the sea, not the air, pulling stars down with mer song to meet with their sibling celestials in the deep, not to tame them. She didn’t want to force supplication. The stars had travelled too far, shone upon too much, for such brute force.

         “Fly, darling star, fly!” Cinrak yelled. She didn’t kick at the star’s sides like others would a beast mount. Stars were too precious for that.

         The star leapt ahead like a dolphin racing the Impolite Fortune’s bow. Cinrak almost tumbled off the back, only holding her perch by the sheer force of her thick thighs and quickly looped sailor’s knot.

         Hills spun by, their grass dark as blood in the violet night. Tree heads whipped as they watched the riders pass. They shook their limbs in consternation and delight, depending on their ancientnicity.

         Cinrak grabbed the lead. Then, with a warble, Loquolchi sung her star forward.

         The chinchilla and spring-hare couldn’t compete. A crash, too fast to see in the strobing starlight, a flail of rodent and star limbs, and then a tumble. The two young stars shot off to rejoin their siblings.

         The race looked lost. Cinrak didn’t have the promises of beauty and immortality Loquolchi sung to her star. It seemed erratic though, hitching and hurrying. The marmot’s voice was strong but couldn’t hold out forever in the thinner air.

         “What can I give ye, when ye have all the sky at yer disposal?” Cinrak whispered frantically.

         The front-most arm of the star flashed the brightest yet. Pointing perhaps? At the finish line. And at the finish line...

         A tickle travelled from the mer-hair rope up her arm to the base of her thick neck. The strange songs the mer-people had sung for her about the slow swing of stars over millennia started to make sense! Yes! That’s it! The stars were precious, but also...alive.

         Cinrak moved her lips from the mer-hair and buried a single promise into the stark limbs of the star: “I will set yer siblin’ free.”

         The star bucked like a lover and surged ahead, weaving like a dolphin but always coming back dead-on to the target: the flickering crown upon Orvillia’s head.

         Another thrust of moth-wing in her vision. Loquolchi came neck and neck, shrilling through her drawn-back teeth, her star-mount flashing sparks in time to her song.

         One final high note from Loquolchi, and...

         There was nothing between them as they sailed over the finish line.

         Thighs and biceps trembling, Cinrak’s dismount was more fall than finesse. Loquolchi managed to maintain some of her diva flow as the star let her go but only thanks to the products of a moth’s bottom. Obligatory cheers and a hish-hush of surprise rippled through whiskers and cupped hands. Not just the second winner in the history of the Great Chase, but a dead heat!

         Cinrak grimaced into her now-mutilated bow tie. So many things warred within her pirate soul: love and annoyance for her marmot beau, pride and surliness at the shared win, a tenderness for her star.

         Strangely, the two mounts bobbed in place, as if waiting.

         Orvillia stepped forward, her crown lighting the way. Cinrak’s gaze and canny thoughts moved quickly from queen to waiting star to the light kept captive inside the headpiece by generations of rat queens.

         Orvillia paused for effect, then with a flourish of a wicked knife cut off her right hand and offered the prize to Cinrak.

         The crowd gasped.

         “As petitioned, as promised,” Orvillia said without a trace of pain in her voice. “Will you marry me?”

         Cinrak trembled as she bent low over the bejewelled prize. She kissed the hand and the stump. “My majesty. But nay. I love ye, but the sea is my mistress.”

         The crowd tittered, and fairy hairdos flashed green and blue in surprise. Relief bent Orvillia’s grin into a jaunty angle.

         “As for you...”

         Orvillia turned to Loquolchi, who perfected her best sweeping bow, the moth dress aflutter. The queen examined her left paw, the one always devoid of ostentation. She looked between the capybara and marmot, her gaze dipping for a moment from midnight shrewd to a new-moon ocean delight.

         Another flick of the knife, and she presented her left paw to Loquolchi. “Will you marry me?”

         Loquolchi pulled upright and brought the freshly severed prize to her heart. “By the stars, no! I love you, but the stage always comes first!”

         Orvillia breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s settled then. Marriage is such a ridiculous institution—all silly glances and restrictions on who to take to bed. Those tokens will get you into my court any time. Use them at your will, my loves.”

         Orvillia planted a kiss on each of their cheeks, one-two, one-two. Blushes flourished. Tense glances offered reconciliation, then Cinrak and Loquolchi buried kisses in each other’s furry faces.

         Healer fairies dive-bombed, but Orvillia shooed them away. “They’ll both grow back anyway.” She spat on the stumps. Already the flesh pimpled as it worked on the fresh hands Orvillia would lay upon her queendom.

         The crowd roared. Two consorts to the queen? And unmarried? Outrageous! Romantic!

         Cinrak’s grin almost broke her face in two.

         “One more thing, m...my love.” Cinrak said.

         The queen cast an eyebrow as sharp as her knife.

         Cinrak, with her rapier-honed reflexes giving the queen no time to react, Cinrak snatched the crown from Orvillia’s brow. The crowd fell into chaos, guards having to be elbowed back by Orvillia.

         A swift twist of metal softened by the internal star’s breath, and Cinrak snapped the crown in two.

         The star flowed out of its thousand-year prison.

         A thrum gripped the hearts of every rodent present. The two star-mounts danced around their freed sibling, bearing it carefully back to its cradle of the long, deep sky. Orvillia held her left stump up in an apologetic farewell, while Loquolchi fiddled with the two pieces of the crown trying to fit them back together.

         Cinrak put her arms round her two best girls. “Now ain’t that a sight,” she breathed.

         Moon moths danced after the retreating stars, the Paper Moon dared another squizz, and the crowd sighed in sheer delight.

Copyright © 2018 A.J. Fitzwater

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A.J. Fitzwater is a meat-suit wearing dragon living between the cracks of Christchurch, New Zealand. Their scales were partially shaped by the Clarion workshop of 2014, and they added two claws to the tally with two Sir Julius Vogel Awards. Their work has appeared recently in such venues as Clarkesworld, Shimmer, Glittership, Giganotosaurus, and previously in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Twitter @AJFitzwater and blog pickledthink.blogspot.com.

Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

THE GHOSTPOTION GAMES

by Christian K. Martinez

         Erinia was at the table to win, more than anything else. The need for it filled her bones, burned through her lungs, steadied her will. She wanted it more than earning the Empresses’ favor, more than testing her mettle, more than the pleasure of defeating her opponents, or the rush. She wouldn’t let anything interfere with the goal.

         To win herself a wish.

* * *

         Wafts of cabbage and rosewood infiltrated her nostrils as she poured a middle-aged carpenter from one beaker to the next, preparing her little champion, her gamepiece. He dribbled out, sludgelike and mercurial at the same time, and she smiled. Her expression was more focused than grim, though it was grim work, and sharper than it was happy.

         Ghoststuff the same consistency and color as mashed pumpkin liquified completely as she mixed it with the clear memory-flecked gel already settled in the beaker. An onerous sound reverberated through the glass, coming out the open top in a fit of steam. The carpenter’s scream was all saw blades and mallets pounding wooden pegs, fitting them in holes, fastening things together. Nothing of the ghost fought her; it went easily, even the sound of him. Just loud enough to be noticed.

         Amidst the vibrant noises echoing together around the competition’s large and circular table, her ghost’s scream sounded almost mundane. The pale man to her right, with the blue hair and a single eyebrow, was using some sort of uplifted bat soul as a base; he had to keep whistling it back into his flask. The chemyst across from her, with skin a deep and uncompromising brown just a shade darker than her own and a hand made of silk ribbons and gold wire, was grimly wrestling a fairy spirit that kept changing the colors of their silk hand. It made a scream like butterflies on fire and vines snapping stone. And then...well.

         Erinia didn’t let herself look to her left. Seven chemysts competing for the game’s Wish; of course they would be one of them. Isidore.

         Isidore had always matched her in the lab, matched her in ambition, if in nothing else. The scream from their vials sounded something like a natural disaster and a siren rolled into one. And of course it was vials, all three clasped together with a bronze tool, preparing three ghosts to twist into one right from the outset. Erinia did not allow herself to be curious.

         Her teeth gritted at the thought of even wondering about Isidore’s ghost; still waiting for the final flecks to dissolve in her solution, shaking it in a tight circle. The way Isidore’s pretty nose would turn up till their eyes caught light and turned amber if they knew Erinia was thinking of them, accentuating their height and looking gracious and haughty and—

         It would be so good to beat them. Everything else felt like a ghost all its own next to that single desire, beating them. Getting the wish.

         Winning.

         Erinia’s slowly growing headache worsened a little at the thought, stress probably, but she didn’t care. She grabbed an eyedropper, slamming her second kit open on the table and making the pale man jump beside her. His skittish uneven glare she answered with a smirk and then ignored. A spectral wing was trying to slip out of his flask, the sneaky thing. He should’ve known it would get up to something; she did, even if she’d never worked with a bat before. Bats were tricky.

         When would people learned that difficult didn’t mean best. There were many ways to win.

         She glanced up at the miniature maze her creation would have to navigate, a spherical cityscape of shell and chrome-colored fossil levitating above the table. A pressure-headache hum of whispering thoughts brushed against her mind, the judges murmuring to each other. Something she could do without. She usually didn’t get headaches and she was already struggling with one. The judges’ thoughts made her nauseous to go along with it all, but it wasn’t like she could tell them to stop.

         The Empresses, all nine, minds seething and strange behind shale-grey faces and six-split chins. Her competitors heard them too; she could see it in their furrowed brows as the tentacled judges commented on whatever had drawn their attention. Tallying their actions in whatever mysterious way they determined best.

         Points for completion, points for style and invention, points for alief. Which as far as Erinia could translate meant maze-thought and fell somewhere between gumption and cleverness. It was in old Imperial, and far older than human tongues. Points for other things, too, not that many of the first would be awarded the way a human might. But that was almost the point: if they’d been human, they couldn’t have granted a wish at all.

         Only the Nine could, all together.

         With tool in hand Erinia squeezed up little droplets of liquid and puffs of gas from the leatherwood case in front of her, ferrying them into her carpenter soul with flicks of her wrist and tiny squeezes of the dropper.

         First abandon, paired with an anxious need to act. Next the desperate knowledge of something better just over the hill; a lavender breath of smoke, something she’d bargained from a vampire tricked into daylight and cowering beneath a tree. Not hope; hope was malleable. She’d hoped before, she was hoping now; held it clenched between her teeth like a blade of ice. It was a terrible thing.

         Her last touch, a earnest melancholy, that sort of relentless tapping of apathy on the glass; threatening to sink in claws if one slowed long enough for it to grasp. She’d tested them all together, twice. It’d worked once; the time before... it’d fallen apart.

         She mixed both into her beaker with a stick made from mother of pearl and breathed a sigh of relief as she left it spinning there, her ghostly mixture slowly eating it away. The scream in her bottle shifted as the stick dissolved until it was mallets made of pearl and wood thudding away, beating walls into shape, passing nails into planks. No more cutting, no more slicing.

         There was a scoff, from beside her. And it wasn’t the bat handler.

         “You never did have any flare.” It’d been four years and their voice sounded exactly the same. Biting, snide, and addictive. Neither of them had aged particularly well—they each looked like it’d been twice as long at least—but their voice was the same. There was that at least.

         The ice-thick feeling in Erinia’s mouth widened and sharpened pathetically, joined by a curtain of embarrassed heat dropping from her eyes. Facing off against them, competing, had always been a rush.

         She snorted the feeling away, carefully removing her last two ingredients. One in a box, a ghost of clay pulled from the River Imperian, extracted from the corpse of a melted again-urn. Another, the shard of a mirror.

         She bent over her creation-in-progress, motions deliberate and cautious. “Just because something isn’t flashy doesn’t mean it isn’t clever. And that’s what matters, something clever enough to win,” she retorted back, using the mirror shard like a spoon, splitting the clay into octants and dropping each into her ghost; letting the shard itself sizzle in last. The scream grew errant, like an echo of itself, like it was questioning, questing.

         Perfect. Well, hopefully perfect. Erinia wiped her brow, clearing the sweat that’d beaded there. She’d practiced as much as she could; still hadn’t been entirely certain it would work. But it had, precisely. Just as well as if she’d done it a hundred times.

         “Hah. You could win the maze and still lose the wish, if you’re not willing to take risks, and you never were, were you?” Isidore sniped, peeling their gloves off and feeding them of all things to their vials; she saw it out of the corner of her eye.

         “Flashless doesn’t mean riskless. And besides, risks are well and good, but—” Her potion was opalescent now, the ghost muddy and vapory at the same time. But solid, but real. She could feel it in her hand, singing through her. Just as it should. “—winning is better.”

         With a wild grin, she slid a stopper in her beaker’s mouth, felt the scream already begin to pinch and pound at the glass, and flung it at the globe. Two other containers were in the air just moments after hers, but not Isidore’s.

         First wasn’t better than good, anymore than complicated was, but it still made her want to crow. Her heart pumped, adrenaline racing.

         Things began to move quickly then, as other vials joined hers. They crashed onto the maze all together, each one releasing a tiny, newly minted ghost onto the artificial world.

         Most of them appeared solid; hers did not. It wasn’t quite translucent but still faded, looking around at the maze curiously as it began to explore. Isidore was moving in a blur, but she focused on the goal. Focused on her ghost.

         His hand touched the walls, tracing them as he started to jog, turning at strange intervals as the other spirits began to race. A thrice-damn lightning spirit went racing by him, and Erinia whistled as he dodged in time, the other ghost too occupied with moving forward to attempt a turn.

         A few minutes later the lightning came again, this time from behind, with immortal and impossible speed. Her carpenter dodged to the side again but this time lashed out with his mirrored mallet—deflecting the other ghost into the wall.

         Where it promptly collapsed into a thousand sparks each racing in opposite and harmless directions. Her carpenter continued. Across the table, somebody cursed.

         “I told you. Flashy and smart aren’t the same,” she drawled.

         Isidore didn’t answer, instead tying a bizarrely knotted string around their vials and hurling them at the floating maze. They both watched, rapt, intent, hands gripping the table in almost identical positions; knuckles gone white.

         The vials exploded, and didn’t stop exploding; the glass turned into wheels spinning through a storm of all fire and cloud and thundering, about three times taller than the tallest ghost already on the field. An elemental ghost, far stronger than the lightning bolt.

         It began to smash through wall, after wall, grabbing a section of one and tossing it atop the fairy ghost. The other spirit did not move, after that.

         “A little thunder, a little show and sizzle, is good for something. If the way is hard, make a new one.” Her once-paramour was gloating, already, in that irritating know-it-all way that—

         She took a steadying breath.

         It didn’t matter. It was even a little ironic, that as different as they were, they often hit along similar angles. A new way, indeed.

         More quietly, Erinia’s carpenter began to sprint, faster and steady. He began to change too, growing more solid. His head elongating, chin drooping down, beginning to split, beginning to writhe. And-

         “You absolute witch,” Isidore hissed in admiration.

         Erinia gazed up at the Empresses on their shadowed thrones. Arranged near the ceiling, in a half circle, all in the dark except for lightly glowing veins of crystal. The minds that’d made the maze, that’d shaped it. As she’d provided a mirror, and clay, to be shaped. There was no reaction, no buzz or hum. Her headache worsened but only gradually. Their three-cornered eyes stared altogether at the game even more fixedly than the players’.

         There was something disturbing about that, but she didn’t mind. She wanted them to see, because it was going to be close. Both their ghosts were moving at a steady clip, dangerous and competent.

         Bats stood up poorly to mallets, it turned out, especially mirrored ones, and her carpenter knew exactly where to turn as it navigated through the city-scape. The monstrous elemental was equally intent on crushing the opposition and crushing its own path to the maze’s end. Erinia’s world narrowed, ignoring the other competitors, her eyes only for the fruit of her work. The fruit of Isidore’s.

         The contest between them.

         All that mattered was winning.

         Her heart wasn’t just in her throat but under her tongue, crowding against the roof of her mouth, the backs of her teeth. The two ghosts reached the topmost section of the maze at the exact same moment, entering from opposite ends.

         The elemental ghost and the tentacled carpenter stared at each other from across the top of the sphere, the glass-wheeled storm spinning in a slow tornado of itself. They lunged forward, the elemental reaching with one massive hand to swat the the tiny carpenter and with the other reaching for the raised tableau that would mark victory.

         The carpenter threw his mallet to the ground shattering it, creating a half dozen images of himself all ducking and weaving. Isidore’s ghost roared, smashed two carpenter-shadows. But three of them touched the tableau just as the elemental did. And one of them was real.

         That— Okay. That was disappointing. A tie, but solving the maze wasn’t the only qualifier. There was the how; there was the work. The way it’d been done. And Erinia was always confident in her work. She forced her hands off the table, folding them behind her back as the ghosts both froze.

         There was a thrum, a pulsing in the air. The reflections faded.

         A few moments later, the maze went dim, ghosts vanishing completely, and the room filled with a migraine of private conversation. Isidore looked up at their judges, and Erinia followed, uncomfortably.

         Who knew how long it would take. She’d known some contestants had waited days for the judges to deliberate; she could almost see herself waiting, waiting for hours right in this spot, until her legs went to jelly and her bad knee began to ache. Almost a real memory, with how much she dreaded it.

         Her stomach was twisting in knots as excitement faded into tension and she braced herself and—

         “You have won. You may have your wish.”

         The voice blared into her mind, a nine-sided song trumpeting and fervent and wistful all at the same time. Almost marveling.

         Which, what?

         Somewhere in her mind, a bell went off; a canary whistled. The Empresses’ marveling; they held the games twice a year. Why marvel? It’d been a good trick but...

         She turned to Isidore, starting to smirk, only to see the same expression on their face. They each turned scowly. Irritation soured in her chest. They couldn’t have tied, could they? Not on every level.

         Ugh.

         Though, there could be worse things. She liked fighting Isidore, facing off against them; it was challenging. It’d always been challenging. If they could go at it again, it wouldn’t be so bad. Go at it so she could win this time. Her scowl started to turn upwards.

         The judges repeated themselves. And then—

         “Again, we grant your wish.”

         Erinia opened her mouth to speak the wish, then paused, again? She tried to say something boastful, to clarify, to— Sound came out. She was sure of that, even if she didn’t hear. Beside her, Isidore’s eyes went wide as Erinia’s smirking words didn’t quite treble the air.

         The pressure-headache swarmed her all at once, crowding into her, shaking her too much to think about Isidore more. She was dizzy, she couldn’t move, her fingers only twitched and—

         Smoke curdled in the room around them; panic spiked in her chest, acid boiling in her stomach as the world slowed down.

         And she understood.

         She wondered, briefly, why she’d thought telepathic queens would wait for her to ask, for her to phrase her wish in words. To speak it aloud. For either of them to.

         Erinia tried to think, desperately, of what had been on her mind. Her exact thoughts before panic. What about Isidore’s? She tried to think at them to wait, tried to imagine waiting, but there was just sensation flowing past, rippling along her skin. There was motion. The stone pressing at her, all at once, or the wind or-everything blurred at the edges of concept.

         The world went onyx and glass, the air went tar and tasted of burnt tangerine, forced its way through her mouth and her nose, invading her.

         And her wish, their wishes, were granted.

         Isidore was at the table to win, before anything else. They always were. They glanced at Erinia. Despite the unusual pressure beating at their skull, this was going to be great.

Copyright © 2018 Christian K. Martinez

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Christian K. Martinez’s short fiction has been published in Jabberwocky, Every Day Fiction, and here in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Originally from California, Christian has traveled back and forth across the country, wandering off to New York just in time to meet the blizzards, and finally settling in Oregon with their wife and cat.

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COVER ART

“Legendary Passage,” by Jereme Peabody

Jereme Peabody is a software engineer in the DC area and is also a freelance concept artist, 3D artist, and game designer. He started his artistic career dabbling with clay sculpting, pencils, and eventually still-life oil painting. As tablets became available, he switched from oils to digital by first applying the skills he gained from oils to digital still-life painting. Through experimentation and practice, he transitioned from still-life to digital landscapes both real and imagined. Now, he’s merged his software engineering background with his artistic background to become a budding a game developer. You can view more of his artwork on his DeviantArt site and view him in action on YouTube.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

ISSN: 1946-1076

Published by Firkin Press,

a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization

Compilation Copyright © 2018 Firkin Press

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