Issue #306 • Jun. 18, 2020

“Kill the Witchman,” by William Broom

“The Augur and the Girl Left at His Door,” by Greta Hayer

For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

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

KILL THE WITCHMAN

by William Broom

        My first memory is of washing my face in a stone bowl. The water turns grey with the dust of the city streets. My chaptermaster comes in, carrying a broth that smells of ripe fruit and burning fat. He places it before me on the table.

        “Drink,” he says, “and focus on me.”

        I lift the broth to my lips. My throat constricts at the taste of it, warm and sweet and vile. I force myself to swallow it all. The chaptermaster is unfolding a sheet of paper on the table: a charcoal sketch of a man’s face. The man’s eyes are cold, his brow heavy. A crescent-shaped scar runs across his forehead like a rising moon.

        “This is the witchman,” the chaptermaster says. “His name is Ketan. Find him and kill him. He travels with a boy, his son, who will soon come into his own power. Kill the boy as well. Mark your arm with a scar for each one so you will know it is done. Then you may stop drinking the broth, and return to us.”

        The broth is already starting to take effect. My head throbs and the chaptermaster’s face becomes blurred. I will remember this moment but nothing else. The chaptermaster is still speaking, but his words float and drift apart from one another, becoming smoke. He is gone, and then I am gone, and then I am here.

        Cool water trickles down my throat. I set the cup down on the table and look around slowly. I am on the porch of a mud-brick building, under the shade of a red awning. The air is hot and dry, and the hills in the distance ripple with heat haze. From this I can guess that I am somewhere in the north, near the empire’s border. Most likely I have travelled many days since I left the chapterhouse.

        Turning across the porch, I notice that a woman is lying under the table behind me. From the angle of her neck I can tell she is dead. I am curious but not alarmed. Whatever has happened, it is done now.

        I take another sip of my water. I do not know my name, my past, my motives. I have only this present moment, and that one brief memory from the chapterhouse. I may have been seeking the witchman for days, weeks, or years. It doesn’t matter. Sooner or later I will find him.

        A boy with a shaved head comes out of the building, carrying a jug. He refills the water in my cup. There is a sheen of sweat on his brow, and his hands tremble as he pours. His eyes dart fearfully to the dead woman, but he says nothing.

        I stare at him as he leaves. I can recall something about this boy—a memory that dances at the outer edge of my thoughts. This is a sign that it is time to redose. Above all else, I must not allow myself to remember. I pat myself down until I find a hard leather canteen in the inside pocket of my jacket. I pull the canteen out and sniff it. Yes, this is the broth. I take a small sip and wash it down with water.

        Dust blows across the sky. It is noon, and the creaking of cicadas fills the air. Acacias and paperbarks cling to the hillside, enduring the fierce gaze of the sun. I hear the crunch of footsteps and, turning, I notice a woman lying under the table behind me. From the angle of her neck I can tell she is dead.

        Before I can look closer, three men come around the side of the building. They are olive-skinned northerners, hairy and tall. Each one is armed with a wooden staff.

        “Witch-hunter,” says the leader. “I told you I would be back. You owe me blood-price for the death of my sister. Give it to me and you can go free.”

        There is a soft weight at my belt that tells me I have money to spare. But I can sense this man is lying. His eyes dart nervously and his tongue runs across his lips.

        “No,” I say. “You know the law. Leave me in peace.” This much I still remember, despite the broth. As a witch-hunter, I have the right to free passage and hospitality. Wherever I go in the empire, the people must give me what I need. Any who stand in my way will be put to death.

        “You are a long way from the capital now,” he says. “Out here in the marge-lands, we have our own law.”

        “There is only one law,” I reply. “If you do not serve it, you serve the witchman.”

        I can see them sizing me up, trying to decide what to do. Even here, they fear the iron justice of the empire. But I can see the question in their eyes: who would ever know? I am one man, all alone, and in a few minutes’ time I will not even remember they were here.

        The leader makes his decision. He lunges at me with his staff. I pull it out of his hands and beat him across the head. The second man grabs me from behind, wrapping his arms around my chest. I drive my head backwards into his nose, spin around, and slam his skull against the tabletop. He falls alongside the other one.

        The third man runs away. Looking down, I see that I have defeated three of his companions—two men and a woman. The woman’s neck is broken.

        The back door of the building slams, and I sense that something is not right. Trusting my instincts, I go in through the house to the back room. There is a cramped kitchen there, with a stove that is still burning. Through the back door I see a boy running away down a narrow track. I follow him.

        The track leads me through the trees, then emerges abruptly into a dusty village square. Silent buildings surround me, their empty windows staring out from dry adobe walls. There are bodies here—dead bodies, men and women and children, lying in the dirt like toys scattered by an ungrateful child. The smell of burgeoning decay rises in the still air.

        In the middle of the square is a stone well where an old man is hauling water. As I pass him, he lifts his head to look at me. His hands are blistered and his arms tremble violently, as though they will give out at any moment. The ground all around him is soaking wet.

        On the far side of the square, the boy disappears into a large stone building—what must pass for a prayer hall in these northern villages.

        I do not know when or why I began chasing this boy, but I trust in the self that came before and the self that will come after. This is the core of my training, the hunter’s mind. I reach the doors of the prayer hall and slip inside.

        It is dark and cool here. The boy is nowhere to be seen. I pause for a moment, trying to decide what to do before my memory fades.

        A figure rushes at me out of the blind side of the doorway—a young man, dark hair hanging down to his waist. He lunges with a long knife and makes a shallow cut on my shoulder. I jump back, feeling at my belt for a weapon, but I have none.

        “Father,” he says. “I know what you did. To mother, to Ilone—even to Mire.” His face contorts with an anger too deep to ever be fully shown. “How could you? With little Mire?”

        He comes at me again. I shuffle backward with quick steps. When I feel my back against the wall I spring off it, catch him around the waist, and push him to the floor.

        He goes mad in my grip. He has the strength of a man driven by bottomless hatred. If he can bring his weight to bear he will crush me—but I will not let him. Even without my memories, my body still knows how to fight. I catch his arm, twist it, and wrench the knife from his hand. Now he has me in his grip, but I have the knife. I lean forward and plunge it into his heart.

        Blood wells up and his grip slackens. A minute passes, and he is dead.

        I stay on top of him a moment longer, looking at his skin against my own. I am the colour of dark earth, almost black; he is a pale yellow-brown. Yet I could see in his eyes that he was not lying. He truly believed I was his father.

        Out loud, I say: “The witchman is here.”

        This is the power of a witchman: memory is wet clay in his hands. What you remember is what he wishes you to remember, and nothing else. For this reason, all people fear him, worse than plague or war or spirits of the night. For this reason, we hunt him wherever he hides.

        Above me, on a balcony, I see a bare-headed boy looking down. His face shows a mixture of fear and another emotion, something I cannot identify. After a moment he ducks back through a doorway.

        The balcony runs along the outside of the hall. There is a stairway at the far end, but I am impatient; I do not want to lose the trail. I put the bloody knife between my teeth and go straight up the wall, pressing my fingers into the mortared gaps between the blocks. I climb over the railing and push through the doorway into another room.

        The witchman is there.

        I recognise him at once from the sketch the chaptermaster showed me. He has grown a beard, but the scar on his forehead is unmistakable. By his side is a boy with dark skin and a shaven head. This must be the son I was told about—the son that I must kill. He stares at me with wide eyes.

        I grip my knife in my hand. There is a stinging cut on my shoulder and the taste of blood in my mouth. No doubt I have fought through many men to reach this room. Now I will end it. I take a step forward.

        The boy cries out: “Uncle! Don’t you remember?”

        For a moment I am frozen. A memory appears in my mind, vivid and bright. I am walking with the witchman and his son. We are travelling together down a long road in the rain. Ketan and I spread our cloaks over the boy’s head to keep him dry. We are laughing. Everything we own in the world is in the packs on our backs.

        It only lasts for a moment. Then the image slips away and I return to myself. The witchman is cunning, but he will never take hold of me—not so long as I am under the effects of the broth.

        “Stand back, Nazd,” says the witchman to his son. “He is not in his right mind.” He pushes the boy behind him and steps forward, looking into my eyes. “Dumu. What have they done to you, my brother? Do you really not recognise either of us anymore?”

        Another memory: of cold nights on a rainy island, two boys huddled together for warmth under a blanket of musty pelts. I, the older brother, telling stories for little Ketan until he fell asleep.

        “No!” I say, gritting my teeth. “Keep your lies out of my head.”

        I hold the memory of the chapterhouse before me like a shield: the bowl of water, the dust, the chaptermaster’s voice. Drink, and focus on me. That is the only real thing. All else is illusion.

        “Dumu!” Ketan shouts. “Yes, I am putting memories in your head. But they are not lies. They are true!” He points toward Nazd, who is on the verge of tears. “Look at your nephew. Do you think he is lying to you, too?”

        I meet the boy’s eyes. For a moment I can remember the day he was born. He was so small that we all thought he would die, and I held him thinking, this is the only time I will ever hold him. I want to go to him now and hold him again, tighter than I ever have before. Then the memory passes, and I shake my head.

        “That means nothing. You have shaped his memories too.” A witchman always lies. That is his nature. It is time to finish my mission before he confuses me any further.

        I spring forward, knife ready to slash. The boy cries out and clings to his father’s arm. But as I cross the middle of the room, the floorboards give way beneath my feet. I tumble down to the floor below in a shower of rotting wood. When I land, my head goes black and spins for a moment, or a minute, or an hour.

        I get to my feet slowly, trying to tell if any of my bones are broken. Wood dust hangs in the air and sticks to my bloody skin. Through the window I can see a village street. Silent buildings with empty windows. From the heat and the sound of cicadas, I must be in the north.

        Somewhere nearby I hear a door open, then two pairs of feet running, disappearing into the distance. Without a thought I am moving again, through the open window and out into the street. I don’t need to know who I am chasing yet. When I catch them, I will find out. Until then, there is only the hunt.

* * *

        The white trunks of the ghost gums twist like serpents around me. Red northern rock crumbles under my feet and trickles down the slope. My chest is heaving from the effort of climbing the ridge, and my shoulder throbs with pain. There is a shallow cut there, which someone has bound clumsily with a strip of cloth. From my pace I can tell I am in a hurry. Either I am hunting or I am being hunted.

        Ahead, I spot a broken twig on a low branch. Now I know that I am hunter, and I am following a trail. I grit my teeth against the pain and continue to climb.

        The trail leads me to the top of the ridge. At the summit I can see backwards and forwards, miles in either direction. Behind me is a patchwork plain of forest and scrubland, a small cluster of buildings nestled amongst the trees far below. Ahead of me is a wild land. The hills roll down into a wide basin, all shaped around a great river that glows golden in the dusk. This must be the edge of the empire; I am reaching the far limits of my official authority. Nevertheless I must go on.

        Down among the trees, the trail is clearer. I can see movement up ahead, and I know I am coming to the end. There is a creek here, a tributary of the great river. The witchman stands knee-deep in mud, steadying a canoe for his boy to climb in.

        “Dumu,” he says when he sees me. “We’ve been waiting for you. Though of course, you don’t remember our last meeting.”

        His words are dust. No matter what lies the witchman weaves, my mission remains the same. I stride down the hill towards him, readying my knife to throw as soon as I can get a clear shot.

        “Don’t worry, Dumu. I’ve got everything arranged for you now.”

        He puts his hand to his mouth and whistles. Men come out of the bush on every side—their skins are coated with mud and leaves to hide them. They pounce on me and beat me with clubs, striking from every angle at once.

        I am quick and I am strong, but no man could defend himself against so many blows. They knock the knife from my hand and drive me to the ground. They club me over and over, until my whole body goes limp and all I can remember is pain. Who are these people? How long have they been beating me?

        At last the witchman says, “Enough.” The men pick me up and tie my hands in front of me. They have the hard, efficient manner of mercenaries and the accents of southerners. From the heat and the ghost gums around me, I can tell that they are far from home.

        They prop me up against a tree. My head is ringing and my mouth is full of blood. The witchman squats in front of me, while his son watches from a few paces back.

        “I am so sorry to have to treat you like this, Dumu. Our mother would weep if she saw it. But it will be over soon, and then you will know me again.”

        He reaches into my clothes and searches while I struggle uselessly. Soon he finds what he is looking for—a hard leather flask with a cork stopper. The broth.

        So it is over, then. I wonder if I should still wait for a chance to kill him, or try to kill myself before I fall under his power? Both choices seem equally out of reach. I smell the sickly flower-scent of the broth as he unstoppers the flask. I expect him to pour the broth onto the ground. Instead, he nods to the mercenaries on either side of me.

        They grab my head and pry my jaw open. Before I know what is happening, Ketan is forcing the broth down my throat. I gag as it fills my mouth—three months’ dose in a single swallow. I kick and thrash and the boy runs over to me, tears in his eyes. He pulls at his father’s arm but it is too late. I have already swallowed everything.

        “It’s alright, Nazd! Don’t worry.” Ketan tosses the empty flask aside. “This is how it has to be. There are false memories rooted deep in Dumu’s mind. An overdose of the broth will wash them all away. He will be like a blank slate again. Then we can bring him back to who he is meant to be.”

        He looks at me, and for a moment his mask of brotherly love slips. There is nothing behind his eyes now but cold avarice; he is looking at me as if I am a prized treasure that he is about to take ownership of.

        I try to cry out: Nazd, it’s a lie! I am not your uncle. He is already in your mind. But I am still choking, and my voice comes out as a wordless gasp. The memory is already fading. Everything is fading. My thoughts grow dim and drift apart from one another.

        From the heat and the sound of cicadas, I can tell I am somewhere in the north.

* * *

        Trees drift above me, framing a white sky. I am lying in the bottom of a canoe, moving slowly downstream. A boy leans over me, his face wet with tears. My whole body hums with pain. Everything appears before me as though painted on a screen, images without a past or a future. As soon as a thought appears, it is gone.

        I am nowhere and I am nothing. My first and last memory floats in the middle of a great void. Stone bowl, dust, chaptermaster. I cling to it with all my strength, knowing that if I lose it even for a moment, it will be gone forever.

        I am just managing to hold on. Then I feel a presence pushing into my mind. The witchman.

        “Don’t fight me, Dumu,” he says.

        The memories come like a starburst in the void, a whole life exploding from a single point of light. The rainy grey-green islands of my childhood. Hidden beaches where my brother and I played together. The test of manhood and the thrill of first battle. Suffering and joy. My brother the witchman, bringing whole armies to their knees, and I his faithful protector, always by his side. The birth of Nazd on a fogbound ship, his strong wail echoing off unseen rocks. Holding him in my arms, rocking him to sleep. Then the war. Our tiny island nation standing proud against the might of the empire. The witch-hunters coming for us in the dead of night.

        I fought them off so that Nazd could get away. They captured me and brought me to the capital in chains. In the great dusty city they fed me the broth until I forgot everything I had been. They made me into a weapon and pointed me at my brother’s heart.

        “This is who you really are. Remember.”

        No. I will not accept the witchman’s lies. He thinks he can break me down and remake me according to his will. But in this void, I can remake myself too. I can create memories of my own.

        I remember coming to the witch-hunters as an orphan. I trusted no-one, feared everything. The chaptermaster raised me like his own son, trained me, taught me to fight. He made me who I am. I remember, too, the horrors Ketan left in his wake, the cruelty of a man whose power knew no limit. I saw women driven mad, dashing their own babies against rocks; men eating faeces off the ground like dogs; children running in place until they collapsed from exhaustion. Whole towns depopulated, smoke on the horizon, the air thick and oily with the smell of burning human flesh.

        “None of those things ever happened,” Ketan says.

        It doesn’t matter. They are no less real than the memories he is forcing upon me.

        “Don’t do this, Dumu. Don’t turn your back on Nazd.”

        He fills me up with images of the boy: my sweet, clever, mischievous nephew. Learning to catch crayfish in the mangrove swamps. Cooking plantains over an open fire. Trying to string my bow.

        Again and again I pull away from the lies. Again and again I am drawn back—not by Ketan but by Nazd, who even now is leaning over me with a damp cloth to my brow. “Uncle, please,” he whispers. “Come back to us.”

        Then I see it: the flaw in Ketan’s plan. The gap in his armour, through which I can strike at him. The way to kill the witchman.

        I let the memories flow together like two streams joining. On the one hand, my mission. On the other hand, my nephew Nazd. Together they will draw me through the witchman’s net.

        I remember that I am Ketan’s brother, and Nazd is my nephew whom I love more than my own life. But I also remember the abominations that Ketan committed, the madness and the massacres. Seeing him drunk on power yet wracked by paranoia. Fearing every day that he would lash out at me or his son. When I could bear it no longer I fled from him and begged the help of the witch-hunters. I was ready to kill my brother—for the sake of justice, but above all for the sake of Nazd.

        The memories congeal and harden around me. They become truth. Now I know who I am and what I have come here to do.

        I heave myself up to a sitting position, making the boat rock wildly. My hands are tied in front of me, but it doesn’t matter. Ever since we were children, Ketan has never bested me in a fight. I strike him across the brow, then push him down until I am on top of him in the bottom of the boat. I put my hands around his neck.

        “Brother!” he gasps.

        “I know,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

        Nazd is beating me with his fists, but I ignore him. I press my thumbs down into Ketan’s windpipe, deeper and deeper, until I feel the snap as it collapses. He sucks at the air, but nothing comes in. His arms flap weakly. His eyes go dull.

        I let go.

        Nazd is still striking me and weeping. I put my arms around him and hold him tight. “It’s alright. It’s alright.” I realise I am crying too.

        We cry together, arms locked, for a long time. For a while Nazd becomes calm, but when he looks over at his father he begins to howl even louder than before. The boat is so small that we cannot even sit down without touching Ketan’s body.

        “Say goodbye,” I tell Nazd. “We have to give him to the water now.”

        I give Nazd a moment. Then I pick up my brother’s body and let it slide over the side into the dull green water. Weighed down by his robes, he sinks without a trace.

        Soon a dreadful fever begins to grow in my skull. I become paralysed. I lie in the bottom of the boat, sweating and delirious, watching night and day slide past overhead in a phantasmagoric tapestry. I know I am fighting not just for my life but for who I am—this me that I have made out of the broken parts Ketan left me. I must hold on with all my strength or I will dissolve back into the void.

        I wake to morning sunlight. We are still on the river. Nazd is leaning over me with a knife in his hand. He presses it against my throat.

        “Do it if you think it’s right,” I tell him.

        He holds the knife there for a long time. Tears roll down his cheeks and his hands shake. The blade is cold against my skin, drawing a trickle of warm blood. I fade into fever dreams.

        The next time I wake up, he is at the rear of the boat, looking away from me. There is no sign of the knife.

        Later he comes to me and, without saying anything, pours fresh water down my throat.

        The fever lasts three days. At some point we must have come ashore, because when I wake on the fourth morning I find myself inside a small tent. Nazd brings me a little food and watches silently while I eat it.

        We come to an understanding with our eyes alone. Each of us has our own memories, our own reasons for needing the other. Words would only bring complications, rifts between our fragile new selves. So we say nothing. At last Nazd leaves me alone to sleep through the day. When night falls he comes and curls up beside me for warmth, just as he used to do back home.

        The next day I am able to crawl outside and stand on shaking legs. We are camped on the shore of a great blue-brown lake, fringed on all sides by trackless wilderness. We are far in the north, beyond the empire’s borders, in lands that have no name.

        Nazd asks me, shyly, what we will do now. I look down at him. Soon he will come into his own power as a witchman. The chapterhouse will send more hunters after him, and when they do I will be ready. I will protect him with my life.

        I take his hand and we pack up our camp together. Then we climb back into the canoe and set off: across the great still water, toward the distant northern shore.

Copyright © 2020 William Broom

Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

William Broom lives in Melbourne, Australia. His work has previously appeared in Canary Press Short Story Magazine, New Myths, and The Never Never Land anthology.

Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

THE AUGUR AND THE GIRL LEFT AT HIS DOOR

by Greta Hayer

        The augur looked at the bridegroom’s back and sighed. He bent close to the bridegroom’s skin, examined every bump and line in his flesh. Most apparent were the red lines, claw marks from fingernails. A less experienced fortune teller would have seen those marks and spoken of the satisfaction of the young man’s new bride, perhaps suggested the imminent birth of a child, but the augur had done this for many years, many more years than the young man had been alive. He knew how to read the skin of a person, living or dead. He knew that there would be no happiness for the couple. There would be a child—there was already a child quickening in the bride’s belly; that much was obvious by the angles of the cuts, the swell of the muscles by the shoulder blades—but that child would be the end of them. It was as clear as dark moles on pale skin; as obvious as the ridge of a spinal column.

        The augur told the bridegroom to put his clothes back on. He did not tell the bridegroom about the darkness in his future. The augur had seen other soothsayers punished when they told people things they did not want to hear, when he worked for the emperor many years ago. But the augur did not lie. He never lied. And to not tell the whole truth—that was no lie.

        “You will have a daughter,” he said. “Afterwards, you will travel to the city to make your fortune.”

        The bridegroom left the augur’s hut, his spirits in the clouds, babbling about the hope he had for his future.

        Even so, the augur was not surprised when the squalling, pinch-faced infant appeared on his doorstep nine months later. As the village augur, it was his duty to place any unwanted child with a new family, reading everyone’s skin until he found the most fortuitous match. As he lifted the girl into his arms, she cooed and grabbed fistfuls of his beard, and the augur laughed, though it pulled at his cheeks.

        The girl had seven freckles on her scalp, a brownish birthmark on her hip, and eyes like mud. The augur took careful stock of her skin, noting every hair, every wrinkle. He heard her piercing, demanding wail. She would be a fierce child. She would ask many questions. Perhaps it was best she stay with him.

* * *

        The augur had been wrong once, long ago. When his beard had been the color of a raven’s wing, he had read the skin of the emperor’s back. The emperor’s flesh was smooth and soft, almost untouched by hair. The augur ran his hands along the emperor’s skin, feeling for crevices and knots. The emperor’s ribs stuck out boldly. The augur saw success and a long life and strategic wit. He did not consider the width of the emperor’s shoulders, which indicated bad luck in games of chance, or the curve through the back of his neck, signifying a tendency toward night terrors and decisions made in haste.

        “The war will go well,” the augur said. “You need not be concerned.”

        But the war did not go well. The armies carved gashes into the fields and turned villages to smoke. The emperor limped back to the palace with scars on his back.

        The augur was banished.

* * *

        The girl grew quickly. She waddled behind the augur as he collected the herbs for medicines and teas. She stomped barefoot through the village, crying loudly whenever the augur left her sight. The augur wondered if she understood that her mother was dead from childbirth and her father had forsaken her. He wondered if she sensed the loss and felt afraid that the augur would disappear as well.

        The augur had no intention of disappearing. He could read on her skin that she would be cared for by an old man who was not her kin. Even his own hands bloomed with signs of the connection between them: purpling age spots between his second and third knuckles, a pooling of loose skin around his joints.

        The girl’s hair grew dark and fine and covered the spots on her scalp. The augur was relieved. The seven spots foretold her death and the losses she would face along the way. That kind of knowledge could not bring anyone happiness. In the city, there were listless, pathetic men, men who had paid incredible sums of gold to know when they would die but found that it gave them no comfort, only a dreadful sense of hopelessness. He would not burden the girl like that. Instead, he put the secret into the back of his mind and carried on.

        When the augur took up a cane, so did the girl. She found a stick as wide as a thumb and banged it on the ground as they walked, and they progressed through the village like a six-footed beast. She learned to hit her stick against all sorts of surfaces; the dull thud of wood on wood, the brighter sound when rock and stick met. She added rhythm as the augur went about his days. Quick beats in the morning to accompany his chores, sweeping, and tea-picking, then slow at night before bed. The augur wondered if there was something special about her drumming; that maybe a different type of augur from a distant land could understand the rhythms and learn something about the girl. He wondered if the fate a different type of augur foretold for her would be different from the one on her scalp. The augur wished he could read a better future for her; one less painful.

* * *

        The augur taught the girl to read letters and numbers but not the signs of the flesh. One day, when she was as tall as a fencepost, he came back from the tea fields to see her with his augury book. The anatomical sketches spread out upon the splintered table, the pages yellow and thin as butterfly’s wings. The girl still read with her fingers, tracing them across the crumbling pages. Her red mouth moved as she whispered the words.

        The augur lashed out with such haste it was as though his body had forgotten its age. His spine made a painful cracking sound, and his beard whipped about him as though there was a gale inside the hut. “This is not for you,” he said, snatching the heavy book. “There is no happiness in some knowledges.”

        The girl clung to the parchment drawings. “There is no happiness in ignorance either!” she shouted. “I want to know my fate!”

        The augur tore the pages from her grip. He would not lie to her. “This skill has brought me nothing but suffering,” he said, and he threw the book into the fire. The flames shot up in a torrent, with a sound that seemed to suck the air from the room. The Diviner’s Book of Augury had been priceless, worth more than everything in the whole village combined. It had been a gift, illuminated with lapis and gold. The augur felt his back straighten as he watched it burn. He felt younger than he had in years. He knew the secrets of skin and bone by heart, but at least now the girl would never learn. The more she knew of her future, the less happy she would be.

        The girl cried in the smoke-choked hut. In her fist, she held a scrap of parchment. The augur recognized the illumination. It came from the page that had taught how to read the curve of a collarbone to tell a person’s capacity for love. He could not bring himself to take it from her, even though he knew he should.

* * *

        Before his banishment, the augur had once been the emperor’s favorite and had been given a suite of rooms in the palace compound. Outside the augur’s window was a still pond where mallards drifted and willow trees dangled their leaves into the water. In those days, the augur wore silk and brocade in colors that made the water lilies seem dull. Many women sought him out for his skill, shivering out of their dresses so he could examine their flesh.

        But the augur sought the company of only one woman, a young lady of noble birth with hair the color of the horizon at dawn and a dainty, emotive collarbone. They spent many days strolling along the edge of the pond, kissing beneath the curtain of the willow tree. He studied the skin on her hands, white as the moon. He inspected the veins in the crook of her elbow, the same blue as the pond. He considered every freckle on her shoulders; the dimple in her cheek.

        But when he unlaced the ribbons of her bodice and began to read the fortune splayed across her breasts, he was filled with tears. It would not matter how great their love; the lady would marry another man, one her father would choose for her. The augur saw fortune and power folded into her sternum. Nestled between her ribs, he saw all the things he could never give her. And among them, little more than a wrinkle beneath her left breast, the augur saw himself.

* * *

        The girl poked at beehives and ran wild through the woods. The augur read a fortune for a lord in a nearby village, and with the money he bought the girl a red roan mare. The girl rode fast and reckless, but the augur did not worry. She would not die of an accident in the woods or a tumble from her horse. The girl was given freedom to do as she liked. Too much freedom, the other villagers whispered, especially for a girl. The augur did not worry about this either. Their pettiness was etched onto their broad-nosed faces.

        When the girl came home covered in bee stings, he made her a cooling poultice to bring down the swelling.

        The girl asked him many questions. She wanted to know about everything. She asked him about every plant in their garden and every bird in the sky. She asked him about the lines on her hand, which contained the most innocuous suggestions of her future. He told her how she would be raised by an old man and grow up poor but happy. She laughed. She knew these things already. The augur never told her more about her fate; no more than she already knew.

        She never brought up The Diviner’s Book of Augury, and that comforted him.

        The augur’s beard began to brush the dirt floor of the hut, so he started tucking it into his belt. It was white as the tops of mountains and dangled in a way that reminded him of willow leaves. He braided it in the morning while the girl unbraided her own locks. Her hair shimmered like waves.

        The augur left the girl for several days and returned with a drum of birch and goat skin. The girl was so delighted with her gift that the augur did not mind eating only porridge for months so that he had enough silver for the taxes that autumn.

* * *

        The moon turned her face three more times, and the girl stopped riding her horse so fast. She trotted through the village, her chin up, the roan’s hooves drumming on the cobblestones. The young men all looked at her, not because she was beautiful but because it was impossible not to look at her. The village had never seen a girl like her before.

        The girl brought home a suitor with bare arms bulging from his work in the field. His skin was tanned and his eyes the color of jade. “We’ve come to ask for your blessing,” the girl said, holding the suitor’s hand. It was so big that it swallowed her little fist like a trap around an animal’s leg. Not a good sign, the augur thought.

        “I brought you this, sir.” The suitor held up a dead quail, its neck limp in a twine noose. The girl took it from him and began to pluck the feathers.

        The augur did not speak.

        The suitor shifted in his wide boots. There were pockmarks on his forehead, mostly hidden by his hair. They spelled misfortune.

        “You will not get my blessing,” the augur said. “Take your bird and be gone.”

        “Father,” the girl snapped, a burst of feathers floating to the ground around her. “Give him a chance.”

        The augur took ahold of his walking stick and hoisted himself to his feet. “You may go,” he told the suitor.

        The girl swept toward the augur, and, for a moment, he was afraid she would seize his cane and smack him like a disobedient child. “But look at his collarbone,” the girl said. “The angle, the curve, it means that he can love me.”

        The augur felt ill. The scrap of parchment from the book. He should have never let her learn even that. He did not want to hurt the girl, to give her the weight of dread, but if he refused, her heart would be broken twice. First in anger at him, then in sorrow.

        “Strip,” the augur said to the suitor.

        The suitor looked at the girl, and she nodded energetically. “Do it,” she said, and turned her attention back to preparing the quail, gutting it with the apparent smugness of having won an argument.

        The suitor removed his shirt, then his shoes. “Your pants as well,” the augur directed.

        It was cool in the hut, and the suitor, shivered, naked. The augur looked at him and did what he did best.

        “You want to know what his body says of love?” He asked the girl, his voice low and cold. “You want to see his joys, his fears? Everything?”

        The girl turned to him, the entrails of the quail still in her hand.

        “Look, child, the way his skin of his back wrinkles when he straightens his shoulders. Three lines, that means a hard life, poverty.” The augur brushed his hand down to the suitor’s hip. “That scar, thin but white, the angle parallels his ribcage. He will face pain of the heart, though not true pain, at least.”

        The augur glanced back at the girl, expected her to look like a mouse, but her face was flushed with anger, her eyebrows twitching. “You’ve been wrong before,” she said, her voice barely louder than a breath.

        Rage filled the augur’s belly. “You want to know more, then?!” he shouted. “Look, the cut of his ears, low intelligence. The mole on his neck, cowardly. The thickness of the hair of his pubis, the way it reaches toward his navel, stretches down his leg. He is sterile. It would be just as clear to me as though he had no balls at all.”

        Now, he looked back at the girl. She was white and scared, but the augur could not stop himself. He had been wrong once, only once. This boy’s body told a story clearer than letters on a page. “Look, the beds of his nails. He will leave you. See how the middle toe is longer than the first? That is the sign of someone who will die far from home.”

        It was the truth.

        The augur felt his anger leave him suddenly. He had to sit down. The suitor put his clothes back on quickly, the girl murmuring to him. The augur’s ears still rang with the sound of his own voice, dizzying him. He wanted to apologize, but when his head cleared enough to look up, the girl and her suitor were gone.

        The girl returned the next morning, and neither of them spoke of the night before. She helped the augur cook breakfast, and they ate in silence. She did not stop her courtship with the suitor, but they did not seek to marry, either.

        Less than a season later, the emperor’s men came through the village. There was another war, and every war needed young men. The girl’s suitor left with the soldiers, a sachet of herbs for good luck and health pressed against his chest. When the girl returned to the augur’s hut that evening, her face was ruddy from tears and her eyes rimmed red, but she was too stubborn to cry in front of him.

        “You were right about his collarbone,” the augur said when the night was so dark he could not make out her shape across the room. “But collarbones are deceptive shapes. I never trust them anymore.”

        “I could go with him,” she said, and her voice seemed choked.

        “You cannot change your fate because of love,” he said, and he thought of the young woman who had kissed him by the palace pond. Something in his heart seized, and he felt a burst of sympathy for the girl. He wished violently that he had not lost his temper with her. “But what do I know? I’m an old man, and my eyes are growing weaker. Perhaps I will be wrong again.”

* * *

        The girl and the augur stood in silence above the broken bodies of young men carried back from the war. Their families wailed and shaved their hair in grief. Some cursed the augur, who had let their sons go to war even though he knew they would only return piled cold in the back of a cart. The augur was too old to feel shame, but he could feel the searing gazes of the villagers as he walked back to his hut, leaning heavily on his staff for support.

        The girl’s suitor was not among the dead that time. The next delivery of corpses, stinking of carrion and buzzing with flies, brought him home instead.

* * *

        Winter rushed in, and with it a cough that wracked the augur’s lungs and made him taste blood. The girl fed him soup, spooning it into his mouth when he was too weak to do so himself. During the long nights when the snow gathered wetly on the rush roof, the augur trembled, cold even through all his blankets.

        He wondered if he was going to die soon. He had never looked at his own back in a mirror, and there was no shield or even a polished pot bright enough to reflect it back to him in enough detail. The augur coughed, and it misted his wool blanket with a fine spray of bright red blood. He wanted to prod his face for answers, but he was afraid of what his wrinkles, dripping from his bones like candle wax, would tell him.

        There was no such thing as hope if you knew your fate, and the augur needed hope. He did not want to leave the girl yet.

* * *

        The augur felt his age in a final, unceasing sort of ache. His body quaked; the winter had rooted itself in his bones even as spring warmed his skin. The girl helped him hobble around the village, then around the hut.

        From far away, a messenger came, and the augur had the girl bring him to the town center, though he already knew what the man would say. The emperor was dead, and there was a new ruler. The war, the new emperor said, was over, and the evening of the full moon would be a grand celebration.

        Even in a village as poor as the augur’s, they had a great feast. They ate snake eggs and egrets, the cocoons of moths and butterflies, venison and buffalo and veal, grapes and grape leaves, honey wine, rice wine, and wine as red as lung blood. The augur picked at his food, his hands shaking. The girl cut his meat into small pieces so it could dissolve between his gums.

        Villagers approached him after a few drinks. Now that the old emperor was dead, would the augur go back to the palace and read the fate of the new one? They agreed that they didn’t want to see him go, but they speculated wildly about how much gold those readings might bring in and how it could be invested for the welfare of the village.

        The augur did not lie. He was going nowhere. He brushed aside the villagers’ comments; he barely had the strength to listen to them chatter so mindlessly.

        The girl snickered, but the augur could see she was worried. What will I do without you? Her question etched itself into the creases around her eyes, a wrinkle between her brows. When they arrived home, the augur made her an ointment of orange peel and spearmint and hoped her worry would go away.

* * *

        The augur was dying. He didn’t need to read the skin on his back to know it. He hurt; he had a fever. He found it difficult to leave his bed, a terrible strain to hobble to the latrine behind the hut. He had bouts of confusion where the woman tending him was the young lady from the palace, the one he had loved and lost, only to realize that it was the girl he had raised. His hands were as cold as ice.

        The girl shaved her head in anticipation. The augur could see the freckles on her scalp for the first time since she was an infant. Everything great and terrible she would do was there, written in her flesh. Her triumphs and her fears. She would mix ointments and salves for people in the city, and these would mend the skin of many, rich and poor alike. She would lose a lover. She would watch a book burn. She would die in violence, a black arrowhead sunk into the side of her slender neck. He shook his head, fates swimming like floaters in his eyes. Had those things happened already, or were they still to come?

        “Father, what will I do when you are gone?” she asked, her hands in white knots around his own. Her knuckles promised vigor, three healthy children, an object lost she would never find again.

        The augur shook his head, though the motion made the blood rush around his brain like a riptide.

        “Please,” she begged, baring her palms and forearms for him to read. She would grow up poor but happy, raised by someone who was not her blood.

        “It is better not to know,” he said.

        The girl’s face pinched and her mouth twisted. This reminded the augur of what she had looked like when she arrived at his doorstep. Her face had shown him so much then. How she would climb the tall trees in the woods and ride wild. How she would bang a drum, first in his kitchen, then while his body burned in the funeral pyre. How she would marry a good man with a straight back; how he would hold her as she died, her grey hair pooling like silk on a bloody marble floor.

        “Please,” she said again, her voice as raw as a bee sting. “I don’t know what I will do when you are gone.”

        The augur tasted the cool air between his chapped lips. He felt warm for the first time in seasons. “You, my child, will do whatever you want.”

Copyright © 2020 Greta Hayer

Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

Greta Hayer received her MFA at the University of New Orleans and has nonfiction published in Booth and fiction appearing in Into the Ruins and Pilcrow and Dagger. She received a bachelor’s degree in history from the College of Wooster, where she studied fairy tales and medieval medicine. Her nonfiction was chosen as a finalist for the 2019 Mockbee prize. She lives in New Orleans with her husband and their two strange cats.

Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

COVER ART

“Sea Shore,” by Anton Ninov

Anton Ninov is a freelance illustrator located in Bulgaria. He has been creating digital artwork since 2015. His work focuses on fantastical environments and scenery with playful colours and strange shapes. He draws his inspiration from his favourite video games, books, and the stunning nature of his location. View more of his artwork at ArtStation.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

ISSN: 1946-1076

Published by Firkin Press,

a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization

Compilation Copyright © 2020 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.