Issue #266 • Dec. 6, 2018

“Forest Spirits,” by Michael J. DeLuca

“Frozen Meadow, Shining Sun,” by Emily McCosh

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FOREST SPIRITS

by Michael J. DeLuca

         At the switchback where Bavda Path crested the first ridge, she paused in pine shadows left of the trail to adjust the fit of the boots. Cole waited, breathing hard, not wanting to push her. They were fine boots but borrowed. He worried her feet would blister. She was strong; maybe she could have done without them. But with the path muddy from torrential rain, she could slip on unfamiliar ground, sprain an ankle. They couldn’t risk that.

         It was calming to watch her. Deerlike, he wanted to call her, here in the high eastern marches of the Forest Argent, where he and his father had hunted the scarce deer when he was a boy, then given up when game got scarcer and his father accepted that Cole couldn’t bring himself to harm them. But Tethas wasn’t a deer, nor a supernatural being, despite her fawn eyes and fawn’s spots and that supernatural grace that had changed Sheralind’s course forever.

         “I’m okay,” she said. “...unless you want to lead again?”

         He shook his head, his heart in his throat.

         Then she stepped close and touched his face, turning it, to show him the view. And he laughed—usually she was the one so focused that she wouldn’t even notice a meal placed right in front of her. Behind and below them, through the tops of maples giving way to beech, broken stormclouds mingled with furnaces’ fumes over Sheralind.

         “It hasn’t changed,” she said, her tone asking how that could possibly be.

         She’d never left the city before. It was what she knew.

         Cole tried to see it as she must: hope confounded by reality. In the hours since the Harvest Masque, since Tethas had delivered the performance of her career in the seditious, arguably treasonous role they’d worked a year together perfecting, the city hadn’t grown. The harbor had sprouted no fresh warehouses or dry docks. The vast industrial district along the river had sprung up no new foundries or furnace piles. But none of the recent construction that already dwarfed the city’s old growth of domes and spires appeared to have died back.

         “I know it looks the same, but just wait. Change takes time. Believe me, Tethas. There’s never been a Harvest Masque like ours. You didn’t see their faces.”

         Pride and uncertainty made her eyes even more like a fawn’s. “The Masque always touched people, even when we were sticking to the script. That doesn’t mean they understood. Art doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t even necessarily make people think. If making people feel was enough, the world would be different.”

         Late light burned Sheralind’s skyline the gold of turning maples; beautiful, but it would be dangerous to linger here. “We’d better keep moving.” That he trusted in her art more than she did was, he supposed, inevitable. When there was time, he would try to make her see. “Careful, this next descent gets steep. Wait for me at the boulder by the brook.”

         She gave him a wry look. Boulders surrounded them. The way Cole’s father told it, these ridges were the remnants of an exploded volcano; the Forest Argent had grown from its ruins, and the forest spirits were its ghosts.

         “You’ll know when you see it. There’s a crevice at the base—my dad always stashed something there for the journey home. Candied pecans, pickled beets. The last waystation, he called it.” There hadn’t been waystations since the war, and Cole hadn’t eaten a pecan in years. That crevice would be empty.

         A last look at the red-gold city, while he let her get far enough down into the narrow vale between this ridge and the next that he wouldn’t take her with him if he slipped. That was when he saw the boars. A pair of bristlebacks, their long shapes unmistakable despite distance, each pulling a green-liveried Forester by a heavy leash across the same leaching field whose silky black refinery muck still clung to Cole’s boots.

         Down. Carefully. Hurrying wouldn’t help.

         She had found the boulder easily enough; it was the same boulder, though tilted on its side, its beard of lichen and moss scoured away by flood.

         He’d wanted to show her this place—this forest where he’d been a boy and hadn’t been back since. He’d expected to find it changed. Not like this. The storms had uprooted whole trees. The brook roared, churning with debris, fighting to drag it all down into the valley.

         “Tell me,” she said, watching him.

         He loved her. He didn’t know where to begin. “There used to be these pillars of stones, making a way across the brook. Thousands, millions of pebbles, piled in the middle of the stream. They were old—I thought they’d be there forever. Every time we passed, we’d add another pebble, for each of us. Sometimes we’d carry it for days.” An ancient tradition, kept up through generations of Foresters. Ending with Dad.

         Tethas took him in her arms. But he was being stupid, sentimental.

         “A lot of people are going to lose more than a pile of stones before this is over,” he said.

         “Cole, just because other people hurt doesn’t mean yours doesn’t matter.”

         The brook rushed, wind rustled the beech tops, and no birds sang. He let himself hold her, breathe her, and he tried to let go of what the Forest had been for his father and could have been for him and wasn’t. He tried to see what it was, what it could still be. While those bristlebacks led their Foresters three steps closer.

         “We need to keep moving. We’ll have to brave the current.” There might be a dry way across the storm wrack, but it wasn’t worth the risk. “Better this way,” he said, to convince himself as much as her. “It’ll wash away our scent. Better chance we’ll throw them off.”

         Tethas went all cold and straight. “Who?”

         He held her tighter. She’d taken such risks. She’d worked so hard. He wanted it to be over. But they’d come up with it together, all of it, the premise and the execution, like no enterprise he’d ever undertaken, or might again. Twenty dancers, forty-seven musicians—over months, Tethas and Cole had convinced them all to betray the government who paid them.

         Then, using nothing but bodies, masks, music, a snatch of seed magic and a stage, they’d tried to convince the whole city at once. Words weren’t needed to tell a story everyone knew, not even to twist it to new ends. The Harvest Mother had birthed a monster. That it was a beautiful, uplifting monster, that it made people openly weep, could not gild or soften what the consequences had to be. They’d both known they would have to run.

         “They’re tracking us,” he admitted, not letting go. “Two Foresters, with bristlebacks. But bristlebacks were bred for hunting seeds, not people, right? Once we’ve been in the water, they won’t be able to scent us. We’ll wade upstream a little, away from the path. Then we can go up into the wild, lose them in the gorges.”

         He watched her decide to accept it. Wealthy families like Tethas’s had once bred bristlebacks to hunt seeds, it was true. These days all the seeds went to the furnaces. Since his father’s time, the Foresters had become something else entirely. So had the Forest. The boars could only have done the same.

         Cole went into the trees and cut them each a beech sapling to use as a staff. “For balance,” he said. Or in case we have to fight, he didn’t say.

         They took off their boots, rinsed away refinery muck in the cold swift shallows. Then, before he could second-guess or doubt, Tethas was stepping lightly into the rushing brown water, staff in one hand, boots in the other.

         Sure-footed and quick, she was safe on the opposite shore almost before he remembered to dread. “Do you want me to show you where I stepped?”

         He laughed, then took up his own staff and followed. Carefully.

         He slipped anyway, plunging in up to his chest. He gave up on the staff in favor of keeping his boots. The rapids roared in his ears, dragging him downstream, back towards Sheralind. At a warning from Tethas, he managed to catch the trunk of an uprooted tree rushing past him; with her help, he hauled himself to the far shore.

         He wrung out his clothes. No time to bask in the sun; not much sun left. His pack, with what supplies they’d managed to scrounge in their rush from the city, was dry enough—the oilcloth he’d brought to sleep on had kept out the worst.

         “I’ll be fine,” he said, shivering, “I just need to get moving.” He pulled on his sopping boots.

         She let him lead the way up the next ridge, scrambling over roots and fallen logs and a slippery layer of last season’s leaves, detouring around boulders and nettle thickets, breathing hard—Cole was, at least. Tethas made it look easy.

         She talked, nervously, into wind and breath and silence. “I used to wish that dancing left something behind that lasts. Like your heaps of pebbles. My mother’s buildings—it’s important to her that they outlast her. The way she sees the city, we’re each responsible for a tiny part, and if you don’t add something to that, something tangible, you’re wasting your life. She thinks dancing’s just a way to mark time. I guess—mostly—she’s right.”

         He didn’t have the lung capacity to argue. They both knew it was no easy work leaving ideas that would last, now that they were engaged in tearing them down to make new. Maybe before long, they’d be tearing down buildings too. If the ideas didn’t get them killed first.

         He could already feel blisters forming on his cold wet feet. He paused, heaving, in the shadow of a ledge like a great severed arm. Tethas, leaning on her staff, looking east to where the green ridge hid the city, anticipated him. “I guess everything gets knocked down sometime.”

         Wind, breath, and otherwise silence. No bird songs, because no birds. Not even predatory birds, whose songs were harsh, who ate other birds, chipmunks, or mice. No birds, no chipmunks, and no mice, because no seeds. Because Sheralind needed every seed, every sliver of the kernel of life, to feed its furnaces, to make more magic to power more ships and build more furnaces to burn more seeds and cause more, bigger storms and draw more of the life-spark of the world unto itself. He tried to think what the Forest would become if Sheralind kept growing, if the floods worsened, if there were no new seeds to take root, no new saplings to take the place of the oldest trees when storms brought them down. He looked at Tethas’s freshly cut staff, which might have saved her life already.

         After the Harvest Masque, after the long silence followed by all that unhinged applause, after the crowd that had trailed the parade through the streets kept standing there staring at the empty Conservatory stage until the Council chief got up all white and retreated with half the city government at his heels, Cole and Tethas had paused in mid-flight to look in at the Development Authority and say goodbye to her mother. Mrs. Amnan had been cool, as always. Patient, in the face of their urgency. She had seemed to cultivate the impression Cole was taking her daughter on a weekend retreat, that they would visit his own mother’s family in Bavda then return in a few days, and in the meantime nothing in particular would change. Maybe she knew better.

         He wondered what Dad would have said, a man whose lasting mark on the world consisted of his son and one one-thousandth part of a heap of pebbles that had all been washed away. Dad had thought of himself as a part of the Forest, that was certain: an outgrowth of the ledges, the volcanic soil, the ancient ghosts. Would he have started a new pile of pebbles? What would he think of the city, the furnaces, her mother’s facades progressing further into the baroque as the city grew and the Forest emptied? But even without seeds, with no game to hunt or food to forage, Dad could still have made a living here. As a scout and guide. As a hunter of fugitives.

         From the crest of the next ridge the Forest Argent spread like velvet, bunched into heaps and valleys, slashed with brown streams and gray ledges, Bavda Path winding among them as it always had.

         “It’s... beautiful,” Tethas said. Sweat rolled down her cheekbone past those beautiful freckles, but the hitch in her voice wasn’t from being out of breath.

         “Tell me,” he said.

         She shifted on her feet, graceful even in awkwardness. “It’s just... all this is new. I’ve never been this far out of the city. I’ve never been in the wilderness before, and now we’re not even on a path. It’ll be dark soon, and there are Foresters tracking us with boars. You grew up here, I believe you know what you’re doing. I trust you more than anyone, or I wouldn’t be here. But I don’t have to like it. Just... tell me what we need to do.”

         She leaned into him, her head against his shoulder. She was sweaty and warm; her sourness blended with the summer-browned scent of fern. The sky had begun to fade from red, the shadows of the ridges to stretch. The wind blew from the fading sun, carrying their scent back towards the boars.

         He was scared too. He’d grown up here, and everything was different. But she could put on a brave face; so would he. “Come on, then. We can get farther before dark. I know you’re not tired. Boars have stubby little legs. Their noses aren’t so good with stone. We can make things harder for them while there’s light.”

         He found it just where he remembered: another long granite ledge, this one not sheer but broken, fissured enough for his father to have hidden a banquet. They clambered down it into shadow. At the bottom, their boots sank into a carpet of needles, yet no mushrooms sprouted from old logs. Black water collected in gullies and rushed down little rills, yet no late mosquitoes dogged them. As Sheralind’s great hunger for the seeds of life grew, it had begun to feed even on insect eggs and spores.

         Back when he was still doing his job, still representing the will of the council and the “good” of the people, Cole could have spun all this with ease: no more pests. No more mold. Magic bred magic. Too late to take it back, too late to fix it. Maybe not too late to smash it apart.

         “Cole,” said Tethas.

         When he looked up, the darkness surprised him. To their left, a sudden, graceful shape leapt away.

         “A deer,” he said, remembering. It had been a long time, but the way they moved in dusk wasn’t something he’d forget: hesitant, a few almost soundless steps, then great, crashing leaps, agile as if set on springs. They’d scared him, badly, more than once, making his father laugh.

         Tethas was trembling.

         “Just a deer. We’re safe. Boar make a lot more noise than that.”

         Her wide eyes were like the rough caps of acorns. Her skin blended with leaf shadows like she’d been born to them.

         “We’ll make camp,” he said. “No point going farther tonight.”

         He found another little ledge, with a ten foot drop on three sides, a bed of needles and moss under a crooked pine. No fire, not tonight. And none of the other comforts of home Tethas was used to—or that he was used to, for that matter. He hadn’t slept out in years. No fire, and no bath, and no bed but this one, chilly, quiet, wrapped in oilcloth. They ate still-warm levain, slightly crushed, slightly damp, hastily bought at the bakery on Swallow Square, and a pemmican of cranberries, barley, and pork fat, his father’s recipe. They drank water from the flask he’d filled at the public fountain outside the Conservatory. Then they wrapped themselves in the oilcloth and listened to dusk become night.

         More deer moved in the dark beyond their bed, and Cole felt that old, irrational impulse to rise and chase them, knowing it would terrify them, wanting the opposite, to catch them only so he could set them free, to show them what they meant to him, the closest he’d ever be to the spirits.

         The forest spirits were like deer, said his father, but huge, long-limbed as trees, moving like night fog in moonlight, scattering pale stars, the fragmentary souls of the forest’s dead reincarnated in seeds.

         Just a story. Like the story of the Harvest Queen.

         He contented himself with the deer in his arms.

         “One performance isn’t going to be enough,” she murmured. “Even if it worked just like you wanted, if everybody went home and told their families, started saving seeds, protecting them. If everyone stopped using magic. It’s not enough. We’re going to have to go back.”

         “We will,” he said. “But not tomorrow. I want you to perform again. In Bavda, for my mother’s people. In Reterre. And in Sheralind, eventually. You’re the key, Tethas. People love you. All those kids who grew up watching you dance—we’re going to need them most of all. But I’m not letting anyone make you a martyr.”

         “Not even if that’s what it takes?”

         He shook his head, his face pressed in her hair. “I won’t accept that.”

         She squirmed around in his arms in the dark until he could feel her breath.

         He wasn’t her only lover. Certainly not the most graceful or the best-looking. It was possible he was the cleverest. It was possible he loved her more fiercely than the rest. Maybe she knew that. Maybe that was why she was with him. He wanted to ask. But he let her sleep, or at least let her try.

         When they’d met, three summers past, it was because he’d written her a scene: his first, a fragment of a Harvest Masque that the Council’s chair of propaganda let him pitch to the director. He’d wanted her to play a seed, a maple whirligig caught on the draft of a furnace’s draw then transformed, multiplied into a dozen dancers each in clever costume representing the way its magic could be used: cultivated fields sowing themselves, an ember lighting a Councilor’s pipe, a swarm of tiny iron spheres to fly at an enemy, a pin to build a bridge, a drop of pigment for an artist’s brush.

         And she’d given him that look—the way she’d been looking at him ever since; the way he hadn’t thought it was possible for one person to look at another, outside of a propaganda piece. And she’d shown him, gently, kindly, laughing, how people’s bodies didn’t work that way, how it could work instead, better.

         Shouts in the gray before dawn made him realize he must have slept after all.

         “Cole Telbin. Tethas Amnan.” The voice came from the east, from somewhere above, the speaker invisible through leaves, taunting from high in the branches like a jay. “You’re accused of treason, embezzlement of city funds for seditionist purposes. You are ordered to submit. We are authorized to use force. I’ve a thousand-pound boar on a ninety-pound leash,” added the Forester, mildly as a market vendor offering quince pies from a tray.

         At some point in the night, Tethas had shifted away from him. Reaching for her now, he found her tensed for flight. One sudden movement and she’d bound away into mist until he lost the white flag of her tail.

         “It’s a bluff,” he told her. “They’re up on the ridge, where we stopped at dusk. The boars can’t get down the way we came. They’ve probably been hunting for a route all night. They’re desperate, trying to flush us out.”

         “Are you sure?”

         “No.”

         They waited, listening, but there was nothing, no birds, no crickets, no frogs, no wind.

         “What do we do?”

         What would Dad have done? Fight. Maybe kill; Cole didn’t have that option. His father hadn’t run from many things in his life—not even from a son who couldn’t live up to his roots. It was Cole who’d run—away to the anonymous city. The future that Cole was fighting to make with Tethas bore no resemblance to the one Dad had wanted for him.

         He touched her cheek: freckled skin cool with heat beneath. “What would you do?”

         It shouldn’t matter that this was the Forest, a place he remembered so well though everything had changed, where she’d never even set foot. Neither of them could do this alone.

         Her fawn eyes closed, opened. “Well,” she said, a slow outlet of breath. “We’re not splitting up.”

         “No.”

         “And we can’t just sit and wait. They’d find us. So... we should trick them. Or—not trick them, but teach them. Like with the Masque.”

         She was wild with fear. But she was right. All they had to do was convince two Foresters—two people, not a whole city—that this place they were supposedly sworn to serve needed saving.

         Wordlessly, Cole and Tethas untangled themselves and set to breaking their meager camp. It was eerie, disorienting, waking in the Forest. He wasn’t a child anymore. Blisters pulsed on the pads of his feet. He must have slept on a pine root, because there was a knot in his ribs the size of an apple. Cole steeled himself for the shock of slipping cold feet into wet boots.

         They still needed a plan. They didn’t have costumes, masks, dancers, or an orchestra. They had half a bag of pemmican, Tethas’s staff, an oilcloth, a bit of cord, a knife. And they had the Forest Argent. What was left of it.

         Beside them on the ledge, something moved—leaves rustling under the lightest of steps. Tethas caught her breath. Cole touched his lips. No way a Forester could have come down from the ridge that fast, even if he’d left his boar behind.

         A fawn emerged from the brush onto their little ledge. Its nostrils flared, dimly visible as darkness lifted into faint color. It was thin. Ribs showed through its quivering flanks. Cole had hung his pack, with what was left of their food, from a branch the way his father had taught him. The fawn rose on its hind legs, seeking. Hunger, Cole realized; that was why the deer had come so close. With no pine nuts or acorns to eat, the late-summer leaves going dry, they’d be living on famine food, roots and bark, scavenging along the path for what travelers left behind.

         “Tethas.” It was more the shape of her name on his lips than a sound. “If we can lead the deer to the path,” he mouthed, “they’ll confuse our scent. Fool the boars.” Then they’d only have to fool the Foresters. And figure out what they’d eat the rest of the way to Bavda.

         Cole untied the cord, letting the pack slip to the ground at her feet. Tethas produced the bag of pemmican for the fawn to examine.

         Then she showed the fawn something else, cradled in her palm: a potbelly jar, glowing telltale and warm like a tiny, golden gourd. The fawn hesitated, but Cole understood. Seed magic, refined to pure form. Not a drop had remained from their allotment after the performance, that was certain. She must have taken it from her mother’s. She’d kept it hidden from him all this way. He knew why. He’d underestimated her again. She meant so much. He’d been so worried about protecting her that he’d failed to account for the ways she did the same for him. And for herself.

         They’d used seed magic in the Harvest Masque because to do without would have around suspicion, and because it made the illusions of the performance more real. With any luck, the magic had helped people see why they couldn’t keep using it for everything else. Because Tethas couldn’t just empty that jar into the dirt and watch pine saplings sprout at her feet. Deer couldn’t drink it to survive. Seed magic was good for a thousand things, but it couldn’t unmake itself. It couldn’t bring back what was lost.

         Still, maybe they could use it now to save their lives.

         Not looking at him, Tethas let the jar disappear into the pack. She held out a handful of the fruity, aromatic pemmican to the fawn.

         “Don’t,” Cole said, too loud. He couldn’t bear it, even from her, to see a deer made dependent, the last wild thing succumbing to human control. “Please, not like that.” Tethas and the fawn drew back from each other as though stung.

         He tried to make her see he wasn’t angry, that he understood. He was angry that it had come to this, at himself, at every time he’d relied on seed magic in his life—not at her. Never.

         Tethas scattered a few pieces of fat-sticky fruit to the ground. The fawn came forward, questing.

         Tethas brushed her lips against the scruff at the base of Cole’s jaw.

         Giving a wide berth to the fawn earnestly munching, then to a trio of does that bounded away to the edge of shadow at their approach, Cole and Tethas scrambled together down the little ledge, over chill stone and dew-damp moss, and Cole led the way west towards Bavda Path.

         The forest floor was springy and treacherous with shattered stone. He used the staff he’d cut for Tethas, unconcerned anymore if it made him look inexpert or weak or if his father would laugh. Though he’d grown up in this forest and Tethas had never set foot here, she was faster, surer, like a dancer, even pausing every dozen steps to scatter a handful of pemmican. Cole stage-whispered for her to wait.

         Not hearing, she reached the path well ahead of him, stepped blindly out onto it, and froze.

         One of the great bristleback boars hulked astride the path ahead, its heavy breath clouding in mist.

         It hadn’t seen her, nor scented her. No wind.

         “They flanked us,” he murmured. One Forester must have stayed on the ridge to fool Cole that his ruse had worked, while the other returned to the path. A trap.

         He beckoned Tethas back behind a huge old beech. They crouched among its roots, waiting. Cole wanted to take her hand, to reassure her. He was afraid if he did she would scream.

         A flurry of hesitant footfalls behind them, faint but audible in the quiet of the predawn woods. Cole nearly leapt out of his skin, but it was only the deer again, the three does led by the inquisitive fawn, still hungry. Their presence was eerie, almost supernatural. Like Tethas.

         Cole thought he knew what to do. “Do you know the myth of the forest spirits?”

         Her brow wrinkled in puzzlement—but she knew. Everyone in Sheralind knew, even if they didn’t recognize it or thought it quaint, like Mrs. Amnan, too busy building the future to bother with the Harvest Masque or think what it meant to that future. “My dad thought this whole forest existed because of them. And everything in it, even us. He thought all our souls were tiny fragments of theirs. Like seeds.”

         He dug her jar of seed essence from the pack, keeping it low, close to his body to hide the glow. They bent over it together, her freckles soft in its light, her dark eyes glimmering.

         It was a mysticism out of vogue—but it was at the heart of all the stories. Children dressing as deer, crows, and foxes for the Harvest Masque acting out the myth just as sure as if they’d heard it from his father’s lips over a dying fire. That was the thing about ideas. Once you made them last, truly last, they were nearly impossible to kill.

         “What were they like?” Tethas asked. “The forest spirits. What happened to them?”

         Cole tried to remember. “There were so many stories.” Mostly he remembered firelight, and Dad’s red-and-pepper beard as he spoke, and the feeling that the spirits were just beyond the reach of the light. “They were... powerful. Violent sometimes. Destructive. But... they studied life. They knew how it worked, they learned how to cultivate it. Nobody knows why the volcano exploded when it did. Maybe they did something to cause it? Maybe it was just their time. But my dad believed their spirits were still here. Watching us.”

         The crown of the huge beech above their heads began to rustle as a breeze found its way down from the ridge. An east wind, from the city. Cole thought he caught a hint of burning.

         The whole Forest Argent seemed to brighten. Beads of dew caught sunlight. Leaves lit up silver. The morning mist was burning away.

         In the near distance, the huge bristleback boar that until now had hulked quietly, almost as if it were sleeping, shook itself, snorted and turned.

         “The point is,” Cole said hurriedly, “if those Foresters are anything like my dad, whatever they’re being paid to do, whatever else they believe, they believe in the spirits too.”

         Moments later, there came a sharp blast from a hunter’s horn.

         They ran—or tried to, moving as quickly as they could over the broken ground, back along the path towards the ridge, towards Sheralind. Tethas outpaced him easily again, and he let her. He wasn’t about to look back for the boar behind them, nor for flying arrows or tiny spheres of magic-propelled iron, but he wanted his body between them and hers. A crashing from the woods to their left signaled that the deer were still with them, keeping pace, but panicked now—no longer seeking food but fleeing the bristleback. Any moment, around the next bend in the path, they’d encounter the second boar. Then it would be time. Or it would be over.

         Leaves rustled, dislodging drops of dew that pattered like a moment’s rain. No birds sang. Cole hoped the spirits were watching.

         He rounded the next bend and found Tethas face to face with a stag.

         It was the closest Cole had ever seen one alive, not pierced by one of his father’s arrows or hanging mounted in the Amnans’ receiving hall, and he could not account for its presence here or for the rage in its eyes. Its skin was stretched as sharply over its ribs as the fawn’s. A season of starvation had left its antlers stunted, gnarled, but sharp, and the stag stood tall and did not shy. And neither did she.

         She turned the bag of pemmican inside out in her hands, but it was empty.

         The stag pawed at the rocky, rootbound earth.

         Then, between the stag’s antlers, along the Bavda Path from Sheralind, Cole saw a Forester walking, one hand resting lightly on a huge boar’s back. By his dress, his neatly tailored greens and the longbow slung over one shoulder, he might have been Cole’s father. But he was taller, younger. He might have been Cole. Seeing the stag, seeing Cole and Tethas, he stopped short. Three tiny iron spheres hovered about his head, dull in the morning light, awaiting their target.

         “All we have to do is show them,” said Cole. “Just like with the Masque. You and the deer are the dancers. The music is the wind. You don’t have to make them think. They know. Just make them feel.”

         Tethas would have to dance with the stag, to move with it, while the seed magic’s powerful illusion made them both into something more. To spirits.

         He could see it already in his mind. They would tower as high as the trees. The ancient forces of the forest, breeze and mist, would adorn them. Their bodies would glow with volcanic heat, answered by the glimmer of long-dead fireflies and untouchable stars. He wouldn’t need to infuse them with poise or vitality or grace; they had that to spare.

         He didn’t have to explain. She nodded—scared but focused, calm. It was so easy to read her; that was part of what made her such a master. It was what made her so incredible to work with. She didn’t just dance, or play a role. She felt it.

         Cole watched her chest expand and contract with her breath; the incredible grace and precision, even in heavy boots, with which she flexed her calves as she took a half-step back, opening her body.

         The stag’s antlers shivered. It seemed to breathe with her.

         Cole’s feet throbbed with blisters within his own damp boots. He laid the staff aside against a tree trunk. He loved her. She could do this.

         If she didn’t, there was every chance they would be torn apart by iron, antler, and tusk, and they’d both die martyrs, despite everything he’d tried to do. That, or nobody would ever know. At least they were together.

         But if she could, if it worked, they’d go on to Bavda, where Tethas would perform the Masque again, where she would speak. They’d win more people to their cause. She could train others. Cole could write new dances for her. Maybe there was something he could say about his father, about all those pebbles being washed away and then, one by one, replaced. And then they’d go on to Reterre and do it all again. It wouldn’t be easy. Every time would be a struggle just like this one, life and death. But slowly, things would begin to change.

         Cole didn’t take his eyes from her as he opened the jar.

Copyright © 2018 Michael J. DeLuca

Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

Michael J. DeLuca lives in the rapidly suburbifying post-industrial woodlands north of Detroit with his wife, kid, cats, worms, and microbes. He is the editor of Reckoning, a new journal of creative writing on environmental justice. His fiction has appeared most recently in Three-Lobed Burning Eye, Strangelet, and Middle Planet, and at BCS, where he also reads the occasional podcast. Try him at @michaeljdeluca.

Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

FROZEN MEADOW, SHINING SUN

by Emily McCosh

         My sister has been missing three days when the fox appears.

         My ona returns with his small group of men, my sister not among them. They walk exhausted and slumped, long beards catching heavy snowflakes. They shiver under their bearskins, and his eyes are dark and empty, crying of loss. A day and a half of searching through a gathering storm, and he still can’t find his eldest daughter. My totto, my mother, wails, and her own sister, belly swollen with a coming child, gathers her close.

         The snow swallowed my sister, Ona says. She lost herself in the storm.

         I try to imagine it. My sister losing her way. Such things don’t happen to Aimi. Her feet are sure of their path; her eyes find their way where others would not. She knows the woods, the same ones I fear; the snow couldn’t have changed such knowledge.

         The eyes of the other villagers follow my ona, then rest on me, where I stand half-hidden behind our family’s hut. Some of the young men are still nursing wounded pride, from my sister denying them all her hand in marriage. A few of them frown at me, and their parents shoo them away. The adults are not angry, but they do stare. They’ve known me my entire life, and for that reason, some are curious, suspicious. They think a girl will always know where her sister hides. But I don’t know. I should know.

         The wind is ice-cold, bearing snowflakes from far away. I catch a scent in it, a smell I fail to name or truly recognize. It makes me think of my Aimi. It’s sharp and bitter and warm at once, and it’s gone before I can blink. When I turn towards the woods, I almost think I’ve imagined it. As I slide a toe across the border of the tree line, my stomach flutters like spirits are dancing in it, pounding their feet. Ask after what I fear, and I can’t tell you. There’s no sense to it, nothing I can control, nothing I can soothe. No fearlessness in my soul.

         I touch the trunk of the closest tree. The storm is swirling, regaining its vigor. Tendrils of cold slip through my bearskin, and my feet sense the coming ache of standing in the snow too long.

         “Aimi?” I whisper.

         The wind calls, but no one else. The tree trunk shimmers a coating of ice in the cold light of the winter-white sun. Where has my sister gone? Why would she leave me the way she did?

         I beat the trunk with a snow-rotten stick. Shivers of ice fly in my face, stick to my hair. And there, screaming at a tree that refuses to speak, a flash of red catches my eye.

         The fox is staring, blinking ice-white eyes rimmed with black. Its ears and paws are tipped with fur so dark it seems like bits and pieces of it are disappearing into the shadows of the woods. Thin and waifish; the snow drifts seem to swallow it up. The red that caught my eye amongst all the white is its foot, limp and blood-crusted, from a fight with another animal or a wayward arrow from one of the hunting parties; it’s difficult to tell.

         Nine separate tails drape the snow behind it.

         I sink into the snow, fingers aching with the cold.

         “Kitsune,” I breathe. A fox spirit. I reach out a hand.

         My sister has always reminded me of a fox, for the way the woods embrace her, for the long shape of her face and the quickness of her eyes. For the strangeness of her eyes. One all blue like the darkest river water; the other black, like someone sprinkled flecks of obsidian into it, so unusual for our people. Not a trace of my parents resides in her features; none of me. She is ours but doesn’t look it. She could be a kitsune, although she laughed the once I asked.

         “Aimi?”

         It growls, showing ivory teeth. When it backs out of the snowdrift, I can see that it is male, and my hand drops. If it isn’t Aimi, it could be dangerous. Benevolent spirit or demon, there’s no way for me to tell.

         The full of the storm is upon us, numbing my ears and ripping at my dark hair. The air is crisp, smelling only of the blizzard. I cast a glance towards the village. Our cluster of thatched homes will be buried by the time the moon rises. My ona will be in the home of the village head, discussing my sister and the village’s need to hunt game through the snows. My totto will be with her sister through the night, expecting the child to come. I will be alone in the house with a fox spirit outside, and that frightens me.

         I run home, but the kitsune doesn’t follow; simply watches with too-bright eyes. I stoke the fire pit near the front of the hut, crack the door to watch for movement, and, when there is none, crawl within the hanging mats of Aimi’s bed.

         After a time, I sleep.

         #

         When I was young, not yet past eight years, my sister took me far into the woods. My memories of that time are a child’s memories, still ethereal and strange but real as any other. I accepted the strangeness then the way one accepts the sunrise or the rain.

         It was early spring, some stubborn bits of snow still refusing to melt. The mountains in the distance seemed frozen and fresh. Many of the men had prayed for a good catch and safe hunt to Kim-un Kamuy, god of bears and mountains, and left in search of deer and bears still sleepy from hibernation. Our totto was cleaning early caught salmon, preparing the meat to be boiled and dried. Aimi was always watching, waiting for opportunities, and when our totto’s back was turned, she fled with me into the new growth of the forest.

         I enjoyed it for a while. The spirits within the trees frightened me when my sister wasn’t by my side, but with Aimi I was free to explore. I couldn’t explain the safety she brought; all I knew was the freedom of it. My sister always knew where the forest treasures were. A tree that leaked honey, or berries that bloomed early. Maybe we would catch salamanders by the smaller fork of the river. But Aimi ran on, face set with determination. I’d never seen her that way, and it kept me silent as I struggled to keep pace with her longer legs. She refused to release my hand.

         We went farther out than allowed, and I was hopelessly lost. Finally frightened enough, I began to whine.

         “Hush,” she told me, expression brightening, “I want to show you something.”

         The woods broke very suddenly with her words, and a meadow stretched out before us. I turned back, blinking in the sunlight, and the outline of the mountains burst against the horizon. I was too young to realize that they should have been before us instead of behind us and were too far away for our little legs to have crossed.

         An old fox greeted us at the edge, three-tailed and red like fire. I was so small that her snout reached my neck, smelling of the cloying musk of foxes, thick and odd, like dirty metal gripped in my hand. She came to Aimi like one of the village dogs, completely unafraid, and kissed her cheek.

         There were others in the clearing. A gathering of many different colors. The clouds were drizzling, a warm, springtime rain, the sun shining through. I could taste the smell of rain and wet grass on my tongue. And something different, bitter and sweet all at once. I knew the stories, the fate of those uninvited to kitsune weddings, and I tugged on Aimi’s arm, fearing a fox’s teeth in my throat.

         “It’s fine. I’m invited,” she said, releasing my hand. “Trust me.”

         I plopped down among the grasses, a nervous ball of little limbs, watching my sister mill about with the fox spirits. The bride and groom were gorgeous in their human form, their features much sharper than my sister’s. They were naked in the clearing once they lost their fur, but I knew we were far enough away from home that no one was going to find us. Not all the kitsune changed, but those that did gave me soft, curious looks and did not pay me any mind.

         Once wed, the couple retreated to a hut in the border of the clearing, its walls woven so tightly with bamboo that I didn’t notice it until they disappeared into its shadows. I wanted to follow, to see what magic had created it, but I couldn’t gather my courage.

         My sister took me home late that evening, humming to herself. She swung our hands between us, and I felt a part of something that was too strong and bright to ever break.

         “Don’t ever tell anyone,” she said, bumping me with her hip.

         “I promise.”

         I kept my promise, but curled now within my sister’s bed, I remember a kitsune pup my sister had spoken to those years ago, white-furred with bits of black on his ears and paws.

         #

         I wake to the howling of the storm outside, the wet pad of snowflakes against the hut, and a distinctively animal whine at the door. I loosen the shutters of a window, peeking over the edge. The fox is balled against the door, shivering under the blinding snow. Pity closes my throat, dampening my fear. When I unlatch the door, he looks at me warily, head low, eyes raised, unsure if I’m to be trusted. I open it further, feeling the heat from the hut rushing out and the smell of something odd and magical rushing in. I am overwhelmed with the expectation that my sister will be standing here, instead of this furry little creature. It passes quickly but seems to lodge a sliver of itself in my heart.

         “Come in,” I say.

         He hesitates then scampers past, standing opposite the fire, peering around, ears perked. His tails twist within one another as he wags them nervously. It’s the oddest sight, beautiful and unreal. I sit and offer a strip of bear meat balanced in my palm. He sniffs, dips his head and takes a step, limping on his injured back leg. His eyes stay on my face, unnervingly wise, before taking the treat delicately from my hand and flopping down at my feet.

         I maneuver my way to his back foot, but he doesn’t seem to mind when I brush his tails aside. How he is so tame, even being a spirit, is beyond me. When I lay my hand on his leg, above the wound, his eyes flicker back and stay on me, but he rests his head on his paws. I dress the small wound with honey to keep out infection and bandage it with strips of cured salmon skins.

         With nothing else to do, I sit and drink in the sight of a spirit warming himself by my fire. His musky dirt scent, strangely attractive, fills the hut.

         I want to fetch Ona from the meeting house, but I don’t know if he’ll approve of a kitsune in our home, especially after Aimi’s disappearance. He might take it as a bad omen. Totto was always more tolerant when Aimi and I brought back injured creatures, but even she might be suspicious. And I wouldn’t know how to get her from her sister’s house without spilling the secret. Others would kill the spirit in a heartbeat, both to drive away demons and for the meat.

         The fox is watching me over his shoulder, eyes sharp, as if he senses my thoughts. I wish he would change to a form I can speak to, but I doubt he remembers me from all those years ago.

         On the other hand, why else would he come to me?

         “Aimi?” I ask again, “Do you know Aimi, my sapo, my sister, did she send you?”

         He blinks and whimpers, head on his paws, unhelpful. The door to the hut works open, my totto’s feet against the threshold, and the fox is gone before I can speak, disappearing within the curtains of Aimi’s bed. I am stunned, hands half held out, mouth open. Door shut, Totto stares at me, something hard in her dark eyes. I feel like a chastised child, although I’ve done nothing but allow a mild-mannered spirit into our home.

         “Opere...” she says, her voice cracking under a strain I don’t understand. “Where is it?”

         “Totto...?” I ask, certain she couldn’t have seen the spirit in the storm, not from her sister’s hut.

         “Huci-Resunotek saw you take a kitsune into this home. Where is it?”

         I lower my eyes. The old grandmother sees everything. I should have known. But how she told my totto so quickly is beyond me. “Totto, he’s kind and tame.”

         “How do you know anything about such matters?”

         Her tone lets me know it isn’t a question, and I bite my tongue, thinking of the sunshower wedding Aimi led me to all those years ago. All I know is they never sought revenge on us. Suddenly, I think I must check the clearing of the wedding, even in the winter. The bamboo hut. Where else would Aimi run when upset? But I doubt I could find it on my own. I doubt I can step in the woods on my own.

         Totto is checking the individual bed curtains, ripping at them with a vengeance. She finds the little fox and snatches at his tails, dragging him out, his nails making hard scratches in the dirt-packed floor.

         She grabs his muzzle with her other hand, stronger than I would have imagined her soft round body to be, and snarls, “What have you done with my Aimi, fiend?”

         “Totto! Totto, he’s hurt!” I grab her arm, but she shrugs me off, and I land backwards trying to help. The kitsune does not bite or scratch but spits a necklace at my totto’s feet, a long chord with a glass ball on the end, dragged from Aimi’s things. My totto’s hand slips from his tails, her shoulders hunching as she stares at the piece of jewelry. The kitsune whines and nudges it with his nose, backing towards the door pointedly.

         My heart flutters, a mixture of excitement and fear. “He knows where Aimi is.”

         My totto shakes her head, gathering the necklace into her fingers. “I should have known. She’s all me.”

         I get to my feet, touching her shoulder. I’ve never seen her like this, cruel to a living thing. In my fifteen years, I’ve never seen her so sad.

         “Totto?” I whisper, frightened to ask for an explanation.

         She takes my hands and hugs me. Her embrace is all-encompassing, and I feel the strength in her arms needed to wrestle that fox from the bed. She smells warm and comforting, like fire smoke, and I lean back, wondering at her.

         “You’re all of your ona, do you know that?” she asks, more to herself than to me. “Aimi is all me. I can’t believe I let this happen.”

         I see the kitsune over her shoulder, his eyes low-lidded, knowing. He understands her words, even when I don’t. I think of Aimi and her fox face, the way she loves the woods. The way my totto never slides a foot past the border of the trees but always gazed longingly after us when we ran in. I thought I got my fear of the forest from her, but she wasn’t afraid at all.

         Aimi is all me.

         “Totto,” I ask, knowing how horrible this will sound if I’m wrong, “are you...like him?”

         Her breath is more of a shudder, and I know I’ve stumbled across her secret. I hug her tighter, trying to imagine it. It’s difficult to believe, but she’s always been magical in my eyes, for no reason I can explain. She doesn’t look like a kitsune, like the others I saw in the meadow that day, but perhaps all her years as a human have dulled the wildness in her. The softness of her has hidden all the sharp angles and features. Maybe she has given it all to Aimi.

         “Does Ona know?” I ask.

         She sighs, and her voice cracks as she speaks, “I think he suspects, but he won’t give voice to it. Opere, he must never know. You must never tell him. If you tell him, I must leave.”

         I feel cold in the warmth of the hut, at the thought of my totto leaving. But there’s something I know for certain, “You should tell him. He loves you too much to make you leave.”

         She sounds exhausted, “Opere...”

         “Tell him. I’m going to find Aimi.” I say, pulling away. My totto’s eyes are red-rimmed with worry and hurt, but I smile. “We’ll be back.”

         “No, I will go. I still know the woods better than you.”

         The kitsune barks, shakes his head. Points his snout towards me, as if only I am allowed. As if Aimi only asked for me. Somewhere inside my soul, I feel warm.

         Totto turns to the fox at the door. The creature has averted his eyes, having the decency to be timid. No other animal would think to do such a thing.

         “Take your form.” Totto says, her voice no longer quite so harsh.

         The kitsune blinks, but his bones pop, pure fur retreating into his skin until there is a tall, startlingly naked young man crouching by the door. His eyes are the oddest color blue, his skin pale, hair black as his ears had been, face lovely. His expression is sad, eyes shimmering in the firelight.

         “You had better keep her safe,” my totto says, and I don’t know whether she’s speaking of me or Aimi.

         He nods, a strange movement, more used to being an animal than a man. His voice is lilted and gorgeous. “I love her.”

         “I know,” my totto says, eyes softening. “Now get out.”

         I stare as he shifts back into the shape he’s most comfortable with, watching me expectantly. My sister is in love with a kitsune. I’m not surprised, although I feel as if I should be.

         I wrap myself in my bearskin and another for Aimi, kissing my totto’s cheek.

         “We’ll come home,” I swear again. “Promise to tell Ona.”

         “Be careful. Be safe,” she says, and doesn’t promise.

         I shut the door behind me. The kitsune is sitting at the wood’s edge, and I crunch through the snow towards him, stopping beside the trunk of a tree.

         “She’s loved you for a long time, hasn’t she?”

         He whines and bobs his head. His thick fur whips every different way in the storm’s wind.

         “I don’t know why she left. Why now, of all times?”

         He knows what I’m saying, every word of it, but his eyes only shimmer and blink. I think I’ll know the answer soon enough.

         He limps away, and I stop suddenly. It occurs to me finally that I will be hunting for Aimi in the woods, at night, in a storm, without her there. I’ve never been in the woods without my sister. Maybe this is what I was afraid of all long—that my sister would disappear into the trees and never come back. At least when I was in the woods with her, I knew that wherever she went I would not be left behind.

         Be brave. I tell myself. I’m in the company of a kitsune. I’m strong enough for this.

         The spirits in the wood are kind, if they show their faces at all through the harsh snow. I breathe, try to find the shape of the mountains through the snow, and when that fails, follow the spirit blindly into the storm.

         #

         I think of Aimi to keep my thoughts even, unafraid. I try to understand.

         At seventeen, she is past old enough to have taken a husband, yet she refused every young man who tried for her heart. She never gave reasons, not even something as simple as disliking the boy.

         Three days ago, our ona was trying to reason with her for an explanation, and his gentle prodding upset her. I remember her crying and rising to leave. She asked me to walk with her, but I only tried to coax her into staying. The hurt in her eyes then won’t leave me now.

         With the kitsune leading me through the snow, I understand what she was frightened to tell us, but why she suddenly thought she had to leave, I can’t imagine. Maybe if I’d just walked with her, she’d have told me, and she’d be safe with us at home.

         Maybe if I’d walked with her, she would have trusted me with her secret.

         #

         I remember the trek to the kitsune meadow taking hours in the warm easy travel of springtime, but it seems such a short time now. I keep my head down against the cold, watching the limping paw prints before me as a guide. Every few minutes, the kitsune turns his head to check on me. I wish I could read the emotions in his eyes.

         I am shivering even under the extra bearskin I brought for Aimi, but soon the woods spread open before us. The meadow is unfamiliar with so much snow, but the storm has eased, leaving a silence so deep it makes noise of its own. A shining cold sun peeks over the trees, shimmering against the crystals of snow, but another storm is brooding on the horizon, embracing the mountains. If anything, it looks to be worse than the last. I wonder how many days it will rage and if Aimi and I will return home before it falls.

         The hut looks the same as in my memories, green in the whiteness, smoke drifting from the hole in its snow-covered roof. It hasn’t lost any of the mystery it possessed in my childhood. I’m ashamed it took me so long to realize that this is the first place my sister would run.

         The kitsune trots across the frozen meadow, quicker than before, leaving me to stumble along behind. He pauses before the hut, feet planted in the snow, expectant. I lay my hand on the wooden door, almost touching my head to it, breathing in as deeply as I can. The cold air stabs my lungs, but the scent of the hut is strange and familiar at once. Bitter and warm, like the earlier ache that settled in my chest.

         It feels right somehow, but I’m suddenly nervous. What will my sister say? I can’t imagine returning home without her.

         The kitsune glances between me and the door, nudging my knee with his head. When I crack it open, he slides inside.

         My sister’s voice drifts out. “Did you find her?”

         “Aimi?” I ask, forgetting my nerves and pushing away the door.

         It’s darker in the hut than I would have imagined, the warmth of the fire tingling my cheeks. Nothing so magical or mysterious that I can see, besides the bamboo forest woven into the walls. And the aroma of a home that crashes over me, much stronger than anything the wind carried my way. There are reed mats stretched across the floor, dry and crackling under my feet. I can make out the silhouette of a bed stretched along one wall and the form of my sister sitting curled by the fire.

         Her voice is scratchy, hardly a croak. “Opere...?”

         My heart pounds with relief, my throat wanting to cry, and I shut the door to hurry to her side. The fire gives off some heat, but still I cuddle beside her and wrap her in the bearskin to share warmth. If only to be closer. Her breath is cool on my face, and her one blue eye shimmers in the darkness, brighter than the other. The tattoos around her lips, marking her womanhood, seem nothing more than a shadow in the lack of light. She laces an arm around me, head on my shoulder.

         The only noise beside the cracking fire is the kitsune’s panting, his breath hot and dog-like. He lays with his chin on her leg, watching her face with tender eyes. Orange firelight leaps and dances over his coat, casting strange shadows.

         We are quiet for countless minutes, holding each other close. Eventually, when the new blizzard has begun to howl around the hut’s walls, she speaks. “You followed him here? Through that storm?”

         “Yes.”

         “You went in to the woods without me.”

         I’m embarrassed, and a little proud. “Of course, I worried for you. I missed you.”

         Her hands grip my shoulders tighter. “I’m so sorry.”

         “No need.” I say, shaking my head, then smile against her neck, feeling like teasing her, giddy with relief. “You’re in love.”

         “We are one,” she says, and her voice cracks at my intake of breath. “Months ago. I wanted you to be there, for the wedding, but I was afraid...”

         Maybe I should feel betrayed, for her secrecy, for marrying a creature so unusual and wild, but I feel something warm fill me, knowing how happy she must be with him. I snuggle closer, letting her know she’s forgiven. “That’s silly, to be scared.”

         “I know,” she mumbles, but still, there is relief in her voice.

         “I’m sorry too, Aimi. For not coming with you when you asked. I knew you wanted to talk to me, but I didn’t come—”

         She touches my cheek, sighing contently. “It’s all right, as long as you’re here now.”

         We’re still for a few moments more, before I ask, “Why did you leave all of a sudden? Aimi, I don’t understand—”

         “I didn’t want to,” she says, stopping me, stroking her husband’s ear. He whines and licks her hand. “I wanted to stay home, I did. But I didn’t know how... I didn’t know how to tell you...”

         She works my hand under her garments, pressing against the warm skin of her belly. It feels soft and flat, no different than any other day, but the gesture speaks for itself.

         “Oh!” I gasp, an inexplicable amount of joy filling me. “No wonder you’re moody.”

         “Opere!” She’s trying to sound affronted, but there’s too much surprise in her voice. I giggle, and the kitsune yips. If a fox could laugh, this is what it would sound like. My giggle turns into a full laugh. Aimi pinches me, but her lips are forming a shaky smile. I squeeze her neck and wrestle with her gently. She rests her cheek against my shoulder and doesn’t speak again.

         The kitsune’s eyes are closed, his head lying on my sister’s leg, face pressed into her stomach. I think of home. “Aimi, Totto is a kitsune too.”

         She lets out a harsh breath, touching her chest in surprise.

         “We want you home. We’re going to make Ona understand.”

         There is silence in the little bamboo hut, until I feel hot tears on my neck that are not mine.

         “You know we love you,” I say.

         “I know,” she whispers, “but the village...”

         I grimace, knowing the rest of the place we call home will not take so kindly to a kitsune and their child, even if they are bonded through marriage. But our totto did it, and I won’t let my sister run away forever, even if only our little family will know the truth.

         “Can you be brave, for me?” I ask.

         “I don’t think it’s that simple.”

         “It’s the best way to start, isn’t it?”

         She takes a breath. “I... I’m not going back to the village, Opere.”

         All the air leaves my lungs, and I pull away just enough to see her face. It’s streaked with tears, but her eyes have that same, strange determination. I refuse to believe it. “Aimi, we can find a way—”

         She shakes her head. “I don’t think Totto is going to tell Ona.”

         “She will,” I say with absoluteness.

         Aimi looks at me out of the corners of her eyes. “Did she really say that?”

         I open my mouth to answer, but no sound comes out. I remember the expression our Totto wore, when I asked her to promise. How she didn’t promise.

         Aimi reads the answer in my eyes, and the smile she gives me holds no happiness. “Secrets like this can’t keep themselves.”

         “But Totto—”

         “Totto is just one kitsune, and she gained the trust of everyone around her. She never went into the woods, and that’s giving up what she was. I can’t bear that. And neither can he.” She spreads her fingers in her husband’s coat.

         Fox eyes blink at me, and I look down at him. His face, even so much like a dog’s, is sad, apologetic. He’s hurting for his wife, for the new sister he’s only just now begun to know. He licks my hand, and the realization of why I’m here crashes over me like a spring waterfall, isolating and cold. Pressing down on my shoulders, making it difficult to breathe.

         I finally understand what she means. There’s no home left for her in our little village.

         I am here to say goodbye.

         And if I do, I may never see her again.

         I raise my head to find her gazing into my eyes, begging me to understand. When I don’t speak, she cries. Aloud, this time; not silent, gentle tears. Covering her face with her hand. Fear makes a raw wound inside me. More acute and deep than any unease the woods inspire; immediate as a broken limb.

         Her hands in mine, I lean my forehead against hers, eyes closed. There are new things I refuse to believe in. That all the years our parents have been together, that all the love they’ve shared and given to us, can be shattered by something so small as our totto’s other skin. That this is the end of our family.

         That I will let my sister walk away, into these woods, without me.

         “What if I stay?” I whisper.

         Aimi sniffles, eyes flickering to mine. “What?”

         I hold her gaze long enough to know the words I say are right and true and I can’t simply walk away from what is here in this little hut. That it is something strong, bright, and unbreakable. “I’m not letting you run away. I’m not. Even if you never come back, what if I stay?”

         Awe has written itself across my sister’s face, and it’s a time before she finds words. “You can’t just run away too—”

         Her husband whines, rolling to his feet. I wince as I hear his bones popping, but he doesn’t appear to be in pain as he wraps a blanket around his now-human self. His eyes have many of the same emotions as my sister’s, and he leans against her to whisper in her ear. They share a long look I don’t understand.

         “My cousin,” he says, tripping over the words in a tongue he’s not used to. “She is not far outside. If you’d like to stay out the storm here, she can carry a message. To your mother. So she understands.”

         We both look to Aimi, him calm and expecting, me fearful that she won’t want me here. She never takes her eyes from me, weighing her thoughts with everything she knows.

         “You’re going to have your own life very soon, and I won’t let you give that up to stay with me. But until then—” She touches my cheek softly. “I’d love to have my sister here.”

         I watch a small but genuine smile curl her cheeks, and I wrap my arms around her neck.

         She turns to the bright expression on her husband’s face. “Will your cousin go now?”

         “Yes. I’ll tell her.”

         He leans over to kiss her in a way that’s familiar. Tender and sweet, not too far from the kisses my ona gives my totto.

         When he’s in his fox skin once more, he slips out the front door, into the howling snowflake-laden wind. Aimi and I watch him go without speaking, without feeling the need to. Contentment has settled over me, tinged with sadness for our parents and the hardship that may follow once this storm has blown itself out. Wherever she goes, I’ll be right there for her and the little child she carries, until I’m ready to begin my own life.

         I take her hand and hold it tight, listening to the snow and the howl of a fox outside, breathing in the smell of home.

Copyright © 2018 Emily McCosh

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Emily McCosh resides in the land-of-no-rain (California) with her family and monster dogs, where she pursues a graphic design degree by day and is a dedicated daydreamer (writer) at all times. Her fiction is published at Shimmer, Nature: Futures, Flash Fiction Online, Galaxy’s Edge, and elsewhere. Find her online at oceansinthesky.com and on FB and Twitter as @wordweaveremily.

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COVER ART

“Galbourne Ridge,” by Tyler Edlin

Tyler Edlin is a freelance illustrator and concept artist for the entertainment industry, creating epic fantasy and science fiction worlds. He gives back to the community providing regular classes and tutorials on such popular subjects as the fundamentals of character and environment design. View more of his work online at tyleredlinart.com. View more of his work online at tyleredlinart.com.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

ISSN: 1946-1076

Published by Firkin Press,

a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization

Compilation Copyright © 2018 Firkin Press

This file is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 U.S. license. You may copy the file so long as you retain the attribution to the authors, but you may not sell it and you may not alter it or partition it or transcribe it.