Issue #312 • Sep. 10, 2020

“Deep in the Drift, Spinning,” by Lisa L. Hannett

“The Patron,” by Derrick Boden

For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

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

DEEP IN THE DRIFT, SPINNING

by Lisa L. Hannett

        A pause only Winnifletch herself notices, a twinge in her guts as she unsacks the gull that Gert Mews has lugged to her sea-spindle shack. Dazed but not dead, the bird crawks down onto her workbench. Think of shearwater honey, Winni tells herself, with predictions truer than gold. She grabs its fat fluttersome breast. Jams it wings-and-all between her vise’s steel jaws. Holds firm. Don’t think of shattered sailors.

        Outside, free-gulls keen for their lost fellow, their lament high and lonesome, shearing through dark sheets of morning rain.

        “You won’t tell my mam?” By the hut’s traitorous door, Gert gawps at Winnifletch like it’s her own belly set to be crushed. The girl clutches a mickey bottle, empty of dipper and screech. Stormwater drips from her wool collar and hems, lanks her oat-colored braids. On the woodstove a big iron pot’s steaming, pipping and popping a tallow-stink tune. Gert wrinkles her nose, subtly covers her mouth. Thirty-odd noons into what should’ve been a sevenday simmer, the broth is festering, a carbuncle Winnifletch can’t bring herself to lance. It should’ve been a brew to keep body and soul together. To keep her and Shale together.

        It should have been.

        “I’ve not seen your mam since she was your age, lass. Folk seek me, not t’other way round.” Winni pinches the gull’s snapping beak. “Still, you know the old saw: word wings where it will. Better it’s you doing the saying, and soon, rather than some nosy flap-jaw.”

        Sniffling as she warms, Gert scuffs a short path to Winni’s side. Ducks under shell-and-nut garlands, kicks crab traps and half-knotted nets that’re on the floor. Two steps from the hearth, she skirts around a rickety stool where Jinx craw-craws encouragement. Friend and familiar these past ten years, the old crow is a touchstone for Winnifletch, a nattering source of blue-black intelligence.

        “This going to hurt?”

        For the moment, Winni ignores her. Think of sandpiper cider, its farsights sharp as a mermaid’s harpoon. Casting her mind into chance’s currents, she focuses on the fates and fortunes floating around her. Senses more than smells the brine in their billows. The truths in their tickling breeze. Think of plover milk, its tidings glad as birthday boys bound for the Lundey, rowing to fetch their first harpy wives from its cliffs.

        With a mental inhalation, Winni sifts the drift for the right whirl in the air, the right future Gert’s here to imbibe. She draws everything in: these avian vessels, their airborne calls, their salt-spray scent. Magic, not marrow, will soon fill the gull’s delicate bones. Magic to set them all flying.

        “Sit, lass.” Without turning, Winnifletch takes Gert’s bottle, slips and clips it below a funnel nailed under the workbench. Gert watches, wary of crow and conjurer both, then lowers herself onto the hearthstones, sighing as the woodstove heats her back. She can’t have more than a year on Winni’s own daughter—seventeen most like, eighteen at a stretch—but already she’s bedded and wedded one of the Stagg b’ys. Already she’s running their kin’s haddock stall down at Barradoon harbour. Already she’s growing some extra girth around the girdle.

        But she’s so naïve, this lass. So dependent. You won’t tell my mam? So much younger than Shale, despite her age. You won’t tell? How she snared a husband is no mystery—those pert looks, those pliable legs—but she’s so stupid, clearly. Not believing her fish-smock’s smaller now than it was several weeks ago, before her Stagg lad prowed north on the season’s long trawl. Not trusting the new tune her body is singing, not daring to hear it on her own. Coming down to Winnifletch’s cove instead of talking her troubles out with someone who loves her, asking for spells over her own mamma’s insights. Stupid.

        Only two things cause that slow-but-steady swell through a maid’s middle—love and loneliness—and Gert has never wanted for company. Such a simple situation. Such a simple girl.

        Although she’s not said as much, not in so many words, Gert must’ve come here to water that bud in her belly. To soak and settle it, once and for all. To drink her fisherman happy.

        That old rub.

        “Hush now,” Winni says, anticipating Gert’s unasked questions—they always have questions, her many door-darkeners, with their bagged birds and thirsty bottles—questions she can’t and so doesn’t answer.

        Will it take long?

        Will it go wrong?

        Will it work?

        Will it fix me?

        So many uncertainties.

        When is it my turn, Mam, Shale had asked, again and again. Why won’t you help me?

        Such scope for mistakes.

        Don’t think of silenced songpipes. Winnifletch firms her lips, concentrates. Think of oldsquaw gladwater, its soft fizz a sure balm for sorrows. There, now. Tension trickles from her heart into her hands. There it is: a gull-sized whorl in the ether, swirling just for Gert. With fingers and focus tight, Winni starts spooling it in. A tickle of doubt—Don’t think of Bear, blank, broken—before the flow spins through her and into the struggling bird. Two, three firm twists of the vise’s handle, long screws squeaking. With each turn, the gull’s bones crack. Skin splits as the iron plates clamp together.

        This time, Winni thinks, the drift is with her. This time the juice’ll run good.

        “A minute and you’ll be on your way,” she promises. And this girl, this pretty, stupid girl, simply trusts her judgment. Trusts her experience. Trusts her.

        In so many ways, she’s nothing like Shale.

        It’s only this once that Gert Mews asks for Winni’s help. And she hears her out. And she’s here.

* * *

        Shale’s cleverness, her curiosity, would compensate for their isolation, Winni thought. Between the bottles and jars, the shelves in their shack were stuffed with books—fables and myths, natural histories and tales of adventure, biographies of the greatest mermaids Barradoon had known, tattlers about local harpies and sirens—and before Shale was old enough to fathom what any of it meant, Winnifletch read them all aloud, cover to cover, while she squirmed, while she watched, while she listened.

        She’d thought their protected cove, their pebbled beach and their hut, was a world only big enough for them. But after a broken wing dropped Jinx onto their stoop, Winni let their small family grow, just that much and no more. Shale was smitten; the love between girl and crow bound them faster than any of Winni’s spells or splints. Huge on Shale’s lap, the crow abided her small pawings, her splay-fingered strokings, her pickings and pullings at that lustrous ancient black plumage. Jinx sheathed her beak when Shale peered into the bowl of mealworms Winni set out each morning; she waited for her to reach in and squish the fare first. And when Shale spread her wiry arms, burst out their only door to soar over their patch of dune-grass to the coast, Jinx was forever flapping beside her.

        “Stay where I can see you,” Winnifletch called as her daughter dwindled. Shale splashed in the shallows, sang at the sun, such a soul-warming sight. “Stay close.”

* * *

        The crow calls Winnifletch back to the herring gull at hand.

        Nectar drips from the carcass, a steady plink-plink-plink of drift-dew. As the phial fills, Winni channels the whirling in her gut, that full-flight feeling, that storm-toss’d and directionless drive, and pushes it into the mix.

        The juice runs fast and free.

        “There’s your answer,” she says.

        “I thought it’d be like steak-drippings,” Gert whispers, standing for a better look. “But it’s hardly red at all. That’s good, right?”

        “Not bad,” Winnifletch says, the liquid glowing like her kerosene lamp. Squinting, she holds it up to the window. Nods as wan light sparks off the glass, catching no flotsam or flaw in the brew. Blue-gold or red or netherworld black, as long as it does no hurt, they’ll both be safe. As long as it does no harm.

        She screws the cap on tight, all the while rattling off a market-list of do’s and don’ts for the drinking. When she falls silent, Gert slips the bottle under her sealskin, jangles a small leather pouch onto the table, then repeats Winnifletch’s instructions word for word.

        “Just so,” Winnifletch says, half-expecting her to mangle phrase and juice both. Mistakes have been known to happen. Spindrift is wild and slippery as seaweed, no more hers to control than the tides. All Winni can do is focus. Catch what she can.

        Will it work?

        One thing she knows for certain: the tonic will be intense as the heart squeezing it. The dearer the wish, the more dangerous the water.

        “Will it fix me?”

        I can’t fix what’s not broken, lass, Winni thinks, that old ache seething inside her, that murmuration of regret. There’s nothing wrong with you. Aloud, she mutters reassurances. Platitudes. Time heals all. Good things come. Nothing ventured. Out of habit, she plays to her strengths. Plays it safe. Small birds, small soothings, small sacrifices. No more, no less.

        “Fair winds,” she says as Gert lifts her hood and turns for home. Go talk to your mamma. Head bent against the rain, Gert avoids the coast and instead makes for Shale’s track through the dunes. Over and over, her hand returns to the new bulge under her slicker. Patting the proof of magic there.

        And if this potion proves wishy-washy? Winni watches the rain sheer down from Gallahorn way, not liking Gert’s chances of beating it to the Mews place. What if all she gets from this trip is a dousing? Well. Lasses always blame themselves first for such failures, don’t they, finding fault with their own minds and bodies when, truth be told, there is none. Most lasses, anyway.

* * *

        Twice a year, mermaids’ galleons sailed past Winnifletch’s bay. What a vision they made, so many tall ships with black pennants unfurled, bowsprits spearing the horizon. Shield rims glinting above gunwales. Glimpses of women commanding decks and rigging, featureless from this distance, sure of foot and secure in their mission. “Look,” Winnifletch shouted, pointing at the carved vessels, their timbers oiled and gleaming. “It’s just like the stories.”

        Shale, small on the seashore, straightened. Shaded her eyes. Looked.

        Long before the armada curved out of view, she was stooped once more in a clam-digger stance, scooping a series of holes in the sand. Around her waist, one of Winni’s aprons was folded and rolled, slung like a sailor’s luck-pouch, strings tying the leather into sections. One by one, the ships slipped away behind her. One by one, Shale slipped oval rocks from her makeshift pockets. A kiss and a cuddle for each precious egg, then she carefully laid them, one by one, into the hollows.

        “Beautiful, aren’t they?” Winni called.

        Cross-legged among her brood of stones, as varied and valuable as a harpy’s own clutch, Shale turned to her mother and smiled. “Just wait ‘til they’ve hatched,” she said.

* * *

        Even as a tot, Shale sang little dirges whenever Winnifletch boiled up the sevenday broths. Every third evening, it seemed, someone or another came a-knocking with problems only a drift-spinner’s juice could salve. The Staggs and Corrigans, the Ridouts and Galloways—reluctant regulars, bringing birds and bottles, taking Winni’s advice, leaving their troubles and good meat behind. Once they’d gone, Shale started up again. It wasn’t just the stench of marrow-melt that brought out the banshee in her, nor the scald of fat sudsing around the cauldron’s lip, but the peeking and poking of beaks in the bubbles, the peeping and popping of tiny eyes.

        “My poor sisters, Mither,” Shale would sob, hugging Winni’s plump thigh, begging her to stop this particular cook-craft, ignoring her huffs and don’t call me thats.

        “That’s Mamma to you, understood? Not Mither,” Winni corrected, again and again. “I’m no harpy, lass.”

        “But I am,” Shale cried, outstretching her skinny, featherless arms. Soft pink mouth pouting, cygnet face. “I am, Mither. You just can’t see it.”

        Stop it, Winni wanted to snap, whenever Shale started singing that particular tune. Listen to yourself, she wanted to say, gaze rolling over the rafters. Can’t you hear what you’re saying?

        Instead Winni cuddled her close, crooning to drown out the doubts.

        You didn’t make me right. I’m broken, Mamma. Fix me.

        Now, spooning into her teeming pot the gannet carcass she’d just spun for Jerah Culvert, Winnifletch looks out the shack’s sole window, hands and heart quaking as she stirs, as her mind roams. Across the storm-wreckage churned up on her beach, across riptides and white-crested chop, across the half-dozen miles (as the harpy flies) between her seething fire and all those cold nesting caves gouged into the Lundey’s sheer cliffs. How miserable it must be for harpy lasses out there, she thinks. Stuck in their shells all season, tucked in those awful nooks. Waiting and waiting for someone daring or daft enough to rescue them. To release them. To help them become—

        No, Winni had thought, still thinks. Tries not to. Her girl has seawater in her veins, doesn’t she? A spirit shining bright as abalone shell. Shale is no delicate egg-husked creature, part bird and part girl. She’s no prize for horny young bays to claim from Lundey Isle. Her hands aren’t dainty and taloned, their tips polished useless and pretty; they’re mermaid stock, aren’t they? Blunt-built for roughing with spinnakers and stays, for monkeying up to the topgallants, for captaining crow’s nests as she spyglasses wide waters for foes or foreign prizes. No harpy, her!

        Especially not with a name like Shale, chosen for the double-prowed ship that had swifted her father in and out of Barradoon. Designed for hit-and-run raids, those longships, much like the fair-haired men who sailed them. Wave-wrangler that he was, he had moored long enough to frisk the chill from Winni’s bed; short enough to avoid the by-blow.

        He sure was something, Shale’s da. Once.

        Before—

        Broth spits, scalding Winnifletch back to the fireside. The spoon slips from her grasp, sinks deep under foam and bones. She tongs it out, lays it to cool on the workbench, then dips in for a guillemot’s ulna. Then what looks like a dovekie’s radius. Then four scapula blades, each small as a tern’s. Fused together like so—she sketches an imaginary arc with her eyes, sees the new wing-struts stretching high and strong as a pelican’s—they might work on a bigger frame. They could. Maybe.

        No, she thinks again, plinking shards and shafts back into the pot. It’s too dangerous; such fancywork, such personal casting. A mermaid’s life, with its boats and battles, is far better than any Winnifletch could ever stir up. Far safer than any potions she’s pressed.

        You could try, Shale used to beg. Please, Mither. Please.

        Just try.

* * *

        Call me Henny, her daughter had said one day, dumping the dregs from Winni’s brewpots. Call me Soars o’er Stars, she’d said, scrubbing blood from the vise—ancient as the Lundey, that name, a rare harpy title, but not right, not for Winni’s stone-and-sea child.

        What’s wrong with Shale?

        Call me Starling or Sparrow or Crows-at-the-Sun.

        What’s wrong with the beautiful name I chose?

        Call me Leda, she’d said, after hearing some horrid story down at the wharf, some foolshood about girls and swans.

        You’re missing the point on that one, lass.

        No you are, Mither. Flat refusing, from then on, to answer to Shale. Claiming flight and feathers suited her better than sails and ships.

        Only flighty part of Winni’s girl was her fancy, she had thought then. Just look at those strong arms, that straight back, the stubborn tilt of Shale’s dimpled chin. Look at those cords of salt-swept hair tumbling over her muscular shoulders, those blonde ropes begging to be twined with shell and silver charms. Put a deck under those tanned feet of hers, a harpoon in one hand and an oar and the other, and she was the perfect image of a sailor. A mermaid through and through. No doubt about it.

        Except.

        Fix me, Mither, said not-Henny, not-Sparrow, not-Leda, again and again. Why won’t you fix me? You conjured me up, a babe borne of moonlight and mud—that was a lie, of course; Winnifletch couldn’t tell Shale the truth, not ever, about her father; not about his sleek ship and his round-the-world ways, not how he’d come here so proud and powerful, nor how he’d left Barradoon an awfully different man—so if your great magics made me, your great magics can save me.

        Oh the pleading, then, in not-Starling’s ocean-glass eyes. Help me, Mither. Help me for once, the way you do all of them.

        No, Winni had said, once too often, more than a month ago. I love you too much, lass. I can’t—

* * *

        Risk it, Winnifletch had said, twice. That was the second time, thirty-odd nights ago: right after Shale had stopped listening, grabbed her seal-skin and satchel, and slammed the shack’s only door. The whole damned scene so familiar it ached. Much like the first time, there was Winnifletch gathering her ragged skirts, tripping over droplines and glass floats, jiggerpoles and trout bins in her haste. Choking on tears, chasing her love across the threshold, shouting from the stoop as a trail of footprints stretched away across the sand.

        Risk it, she’d decided, sixteen years ago, heart and cleft throbbing from the wave-wrangler’s fervent, oh-so-flattering attentions. Her Bear. What a way he’d had with hands and words! What a feast of friendship he’d offered, filling Winni right up before leaving.

        So.

        Come back, she’d yelled into the dawn wind, brandishing a newly full bottle, its pure garnet liquid flashing love-steeped promises. Stay and your life will be rich. A hexed swill of temptation her Bear couldn’t ignore. Stay and you’ll know true bliss.

        Ignorance, Winnifletch thought now, recalling the wrong twist to Bear’s face as he chugged the red cormorant draught. The empty flask thunking onto his otter-pelt boots, spit dribbling from his suddenly slack lips. The complete lack of interest when she’d cupped and kissed his wan cheeks. Only the click of his sun-whitened lashes blinking, blinking. The breath whistling in and out his dumb mouth. The vibrant, once-impish expression drooping into a dullard’s stare.

        Focus, she’d snapped, shaking him senseless there on the strand, focus godsdammit, knowing too late that she should have, when crushing that stupid bird, distilling and decanting its juice just for him; she was the one who’d needed focus!

        If only she’d kept her head when spinning that drift, Bear wouldn’t have lost his. If only she’d thought less of their far-traveling future together, more on happiness here at home, he’d have drunk himself into her life for good instead of out of it altogether. If only she’d wrung into that bottle all the love he needed, all the love she could give, instead of thinking of all she could take...

        Hindsight, she’d thought, spiriting Bear back to his boat. Weeping over the wreck she’d wrought, the ruin she’d made of that once-lively rover. Too late, she’d thought, setting her lover’s body on the thwarts, wrapping his limp hands around the oars, setting him silently adrift. Lesson and limits learned.

        So.

        Come back, she’d hollered, sixteen years and a month ago later, as Shale trudged away, over the dunes. Please come back. This time holding nothing but hope that her daughter would hear her, that she’d change her mind and come back. That she’d unfix her fantasies from Lundey Isle and its barnacled nesting caves. That she’d leave their skiff moored where it was, right here in their sheltered cove, where she was no harpy but always Winni’s own little girl. Safe and loved and whole.

        Fix me, Mither.

        I can’t risk it, Winnifletch had said. The drift’s spin was too erratic, too unpredictable, too turbulent to hitch on Shale’s impossible dreams. It would only smash them like paperbark boats on Gutterson’s Reef, leaving everything—and everyone—broken.

        I love you too much, Winni wanted to tell her. So I can’t.

* * *

        The day Shale left, Winnifletch had started mixing what should’ve been the biggest, most potent sevenday broth she’d ever brewed. Hands and heart adding ingredients on their own, fate finding all the right fixings. Bitters to bind and herbs to heal. Jaegers and phalaropes crushed for harbourmen, grackles and ganders squashed for villagers, songbirds squeezed for smart and silly maids alike. Every last remnant of those folks’ feathered questions she’d wrung out, conserved, and dropped into the draught.

        A bold combination, she had imagined, for a bold lass. A stew to snuff doubts, to soothe and to succor, to sew up a split self.

        A month later, the batch is more bog than brew but still gurgling, its steam slicking the shack’s soot-stained wall. “Just about ready,” Winni says for the thirty-oddth time, but still the pot’s waterline rises. Still the stew goes unsupped. Another flank of driftwood goes on the fire. Another swirl of the spoon. “It’s only missing one thing.”

        Jinx crrrrks atop her shelf. Busy nitting and natting under her wings, she plucks a flurry of black down, offers no further comment. Winni admires the deft dartings of her head. The sleek scrapings of her beak. The blue bristlings of her proud breast. So efficient, so assured in her movements. So secure in her existence.

        “What else can I do?” Winni asks, staring into the pot, stirring, stirring. All those brittle bones. All those everyday woes, those trivial worries. All those folks she’s helped, all those times. Try, Mither. Just try. But then there’s forever the one—”I don’t want to hurt her, you know?”—the one she got so horribly wrong.

        “If she only understood—”

        Jinx’s talons scritch against timber as she edges away to preen in peace.

        “If I’d only told her—”

        Scritch, scritch.

        Stir, stir.

        Outside, the tempest takes a breath. In the lull between howls, Winnifletch hears a familiar crunching on the path leading up to her door. The tread is heavy and irregular, a cautious scuffling. Like the tides, it draws close then recedes, rolls forth again only to stumble away. Her pulse two-stepping, Winni raps her long wooden spoon against the pot’s rim. Clears it of sinew and scum. Holds her breath. The spoon raps again, its stem and scoop already clean, and again. Eyes down, she watches the grain fade as it dries. She won’t peer through the window. She won’t turn around. Only waits for the door to open behind her. For Shale to come in, drop her satchel and slicker on the water-stained floor. To toe off her boots, slide them under her narrow bed. No forgiveness begged and none offered. No change of heart or mind, not yet.

        If only, Winnifletch thinks, afraid she’ll never be able to spin the drift in Shale’s direction, never rein it or her in, never rebuild her girl’s outsides to match what’s trapped in her deepest core. Afraid it’s too late to for this spoiled sevenday spell of sorrow. To late for her to fix anything. Too late to try again.

        “Knock knock,” the wrong voice gruffs as the wrong person blunders in with the wind. The door whips free of his whiskey-slick grip, slams into shelves full-rattling with jars. Parchments whisk off tables and nightstands, garlands jangle, flames gutter in hurricane lamps. Startled, Jinx swoops through the chaos. With a flap and a flutter, she lands on Winni’s shoulder, claws gouging. On the stove, the pot belches—and with a chortled curse, Wilke Maggaw does likewise.

        “Get on in here,” Winni says, sharp as a sturgeon’s snout. As he wrestles with the door, she peers around Wilke’s cable-knit bulk, taking in the bare path behind him, the wide coast and frothing sea, the smudge of Lundey Isle in the distance.

        “That’s some hollow-blown gale,” Wilke says, lifting a longneck to his gob. Lipping for last drops. From the fumes reeking off him, Winnifletch guesses he drained those dregs more than once, hours ago. “Reeled these feet of mine right off course for a while,” he says, “right off course, those winds almost wobbling us anyway and anywhere but down here to Spinster’s Cove.”

        “Hm.” Winni squints out into the gloaming, looking far and near. No glint of firelight in the Lundey’s dark caves. No hint of warmth for the harpies nesting there. No torches bobbing up the evening blue strand, guiding young wanderers home.

        “Could’ve waited until tomorrow,” she says, shouldering him in and the door shut. “I’m going nowhere.”

        “Ah, bluster.” To stifle hiccups, Wilke jams a fist against his chapped mouth. From a boiled leather sack slung low on his belt, he manhandles a limp-necked puffin. Holds the dead thing out like a tussie-mussie. “Netted this beaut just for you, lass. Can’t let it go to waste.”

        Winni suppresses a sneer. As if he’s doing her a favor, showing up like this, week after week, year after year, bag and guts a-swill with spoiled juice. As if the slop from any old corpse could heal his reef-raw skin. As if he’s never learned a thing from her, not a single thing, to help himself. As if she doesn’t have her own spells to squeeze. Her own baits to bottle. Her own perfect birds to break and remake.

        The puffin was barely a fledgling, fragile as happiness in her hand. It won’t be good for much. “Sit,” she says.

        “These legs will hold, Winnifletch. Better view from up here, anyhow, watching you work and such.” The red spidering on Wilke’s nose and cheeks disappears, his face suddenly a single shade of fluster. “Always were a handsome woman, Win...”

        “An ounce’ll do you for now,” she says, vise squealing, skeleton snapping, her own jelly jar collecting the creature’s small drippings. “Sip it slow and careful, right? If you want it to last.”

        Old Wilke keeps talking as though she hasn’t. Typical harbourman: tongue-tied ‘til a dram or ten slippens his knots. “Never could get my head around that Bear Ingersen’s treating you so poor,” he says. “A woman with your talents.”

        A pause as Winni’s head whips up, vision blurring. “What’s that now?”

        “Leaving you holding the bassinet like that,” Wilke goes on, “taking no care for his own pretty bairn.” Frowning, he swigs at his dry flask. “Saw her up the strand, just now,” he says, quick-changing subjects the way only delusionals and drunks can. “Your Shale. Keeping odd company, you ask me, strutting around in this weather with those hideous half-feathered lasses.”

        “Oh,” Winnifletch whispers. “Was she all right?”

        “What an age we’re living in, lass. Birds for best friends, Bear for a father.” Wilke turns and spits. “Some Bear. Hound, more like, siring pups at every port, boasting about it between pints. Always, some sweetheart swallows the bilge water he’s pumping. Guess you’ve heard about his latest doings with Abe Mews’s sweet Gertie? Bold-faced knocking on her boathouse window while the Stagg b’ys is away. Leaving his pawprints all over the place.”

        Stupid girl, Winni thinks, numb from tongue to toes. So stupid. But how?

        “Hoodwinked, she was. Same as the rest.” Swaying now, Wilke sweeps his rough hand around, taking in the workbench and stove, the iron pot and its month-long moldering, the basket of broken bones on the table. “What a cruel trick, shaming you girls into solitude.” He staggers forward and swipes the puffin juice from Winni’s cold fingers. “Playing you like that, then playing brain-dead. As if this beak-and-brinkle brew of yours has ever done more than wet a man’s whistle.”

        He lifts the jar with a chuckle, glugs it dry, then coughs himself even redder, words slupping from his whiskey-thick gob. “As if it’s actual magic.”

* * *

        The puffin lies in the sink, untouched, deflated. Good for nothing even before that fool Wilke wrecked it—too gaudy, those tiny fluffers, more show than substance—but she’ll save its meat for their supper. As ever.

        Must get lonely out here, he’d said. Bear first. Then Wilke Maggaw. A soul must get hungry for company...

        Winni grimaces. Still on her shoulder, Jinx stretches her neck and rawks. A long, low, chastising cackle.

        Stupid, so stupid.

        “Spells and spirits don’t mix,” she says, hands trembling as she wipes down the vise. That’s why the juice was weak tonight. That’s why there was no change in Wilke’s complexion, though he’d swilled every last drop. That’s why the chafe hadn’t uncracked from his cheeks. The old oaf was too drunk to absorb it. Too soused to see what she’d done, what she’s always done, for him. For all of them.

        “Actual magic.” She shakes her head. “As if there’s any other kind.”

        All those years ago, her spell had worked, in an unexpected way. It hadn’t hurt him, thank the stars, but it had done what she’d asked of it. Not as she’d wanted, of course, but even so. Though Bear hadn’t stayed here with her, something kept drawing him back to Barradoon, again and again. His life was full of riches now, wasn’t it? And in his own hound-dog way, he’d found bliss.

        Actual magic.

        Hopping from foot to foot, Jinx knocks her skull against Winni’s. Focus. Think of eagles, kites, jackdaws. Petrels and pelicans. Robins, sparrows, geese. Proud migrators, fierce hunters—great wedges of birds that travel so far, so free, but only for so long and no longer. Mermaids of the sky, that’s what Shale is, what she’ll be. Sailing off into the blue each season, living, loving, then rewinging her course right back to where it, and she, began.

        The right bird will bring Shale home.

        The right brew will send her off again, broken, rebuilt.

        Will it work?

        Will it fix me?

        A pause only Winnifletch notices, a twinge in her guts that says her instincts are good.

        Risk it.

        Faster than second-guesses, she snatches a fishing net off the floor, whips it around her shoulders, and traps Jinx in its tangles. Think of falcon oil, fast-fixing the future. Think of eagle sap, true as north-star navigation, unerring in cast and course. “I’m sorry,” she manages, breath short and chest cramping as she slams the bundle onto the workbench, securing her grip as it wriggles. “I’m so sorry.”

        Think of this crow.

        Think of Shale.

        Together.

        “Call her back,” Winnifletch cries, shunting Jinx into the vise, twisting. One, two, three turns, sharp and sure and so sorry so sorry so sorry. “She’ll listen if you call.”

        My poor sisters, Mither.

        This time the juice is good. It has to be. The flow is fast, the glass soon brimming. Hard to see through her tears, but she feels its strength as it trickles through her, the potency of Jinx’s lifeblood. Bruise-black as the plumage Shale loved so much, dark but translucent, still as a moonlit night. A potion of perfect clarity.

        Will it work?

        Winnifletch is certain.

        It’s safe, she tells herself. This drift will spin the right way. Our way. Here. Home.

        When the crow is dry, she lifts the body and cradles it close. Bear was never broken. I’ve hurt nobody. She presses a cheek against Jinx’s cooling breast. Kisses her silent beak. Lays her quietly on the rickety stool. Except my girls.

        “It’s good,” she says, putting the juice on the workbench. Gently sliding the glass away from the edge. While she waits—she won’t make Old Wilke’s mistake; she’ll not guzzle this pressing before its magic has settled; like a good stout, it needs to rest before drinking—she turns to the stove. Strains the bones from the stock, sixteen years and thirty-odd days too long in the stewing, then deposits them one by one on the table. Back and forth between cooktop and board, she collects and carries, splashes and spills. Eyeing the crow-glass. Sifting time for the right moment. Stirring for rifts to repair.

        She lines up the longest shafts, fanning some into powerful curves, and pictures wings springing from Shale’s arms, fitting and fletching her span. Think of sinew and song and sleek silhouettes, she tells herself, think Sparrow and Starling and Soars o’er Stars.

        Hours pass as she puzzles the pieces together. Night winds hush into dawn. The sea shushes up to the shack’s pilings, sighs slowly back. Soft light spills over the windowsill, yellow and rose, gilding the harpy’s new frame.

        Sore and sorry, Winnifletch finally gathers the glass. Jinx’s juice. Shale’s summoning. With eyes closed, she casts her mind over the water. Think of the Lundey. Outside a murrelet cries, its keer-keer clear and cold. Think of Henny.

        “Come back,” she says before sipping, slowly, steadily, the only spell she’s ever swallowed herself. Think of Leda and Crows-at-the-Sun. The afterbrew burns, bitter and brutal. It whirls the churn in her belly, threatens to bring up everything she’s ever kept down.

        Actual magic.

        “Come back,” Winnifletch whispers, deep in the drift, spinning. Limbs shaking, she fumbles for a chair, pulls it over to the door, close as she can without blocking it, and sits. Dizzy, she leans forward. Listens for footsteps, for Shale’s sweet singing. Gulls wail as they wing overhead, away.

        “Come back, my girl, and fly.”

Copyright © 2020 Lisa L. Hannett

Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

Lisa L. Hannett has had over seventy-five short stories appear in venues including Clarkesworld, Fantasy, Weird Tales, Apex, and The Dark, and her work has been reprinted in Year’s Best anthologies in Australia, Canada, and the US. She has won four Aurealis Awards, including Best Collection for her first book, Bluegrass Symphony, which was also nominated for a World Fantasy Award. A new collection of short stories, Songs for Dark Seasons, is out now. You can find her online at lisahannett.com and on Instagram @LisaLHannett.

Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

THE PATRON

by Derrick Boden

        On a sweltering winter morning, at the edge of town where the wailing desert clawed at her shanty door, the Patron held court. The preacher’s son knelt before her, trembling with fury and fear. His gaze lingered on the tuxedoed bodyguard fingering her wheel-lock pistol, the guitarist plucking at dissonant chords. His breath hitched at the sight of the daemons, that amorphous mass of shadow that writhed in the shanty’s darkest corner. Sweat roamed his cheeks. His eyes said: see what I have endured. I have nothing left to lose.

        The Patron’s lip curled. Visitors always brought such thoughts.

        They were always wrong.

        The preacher’s son lifted his gaze with surprising confidence. “Good afternoon—”

        “This relationship is purely transactional.” The Patron waved an impatient hand. “State your terms.”

        But as the hiss of blood locusts rose beyond the shanty walls, she hesitated. Beneath this man’s conviction, rarer urges haunted his eyes. Tolerance. Virtue.

        Could this be the one? The month was drawing short. Time was running out.

        “My name is—”

        “I know who you are.” The Patron maintained the illusion of disinterest, left leg flung over the arm of her rust-and-rivet throne. “Your terms.”

        The young man’s fingers twitched toward a picket-line of knives at his belt. His gaze flicked to the bodyguard’s gun, massive in her bony hands. He did not breathe for a solid minute.

        Then, visibly, his mind was made.

        “I need you to kill my father.”

        Another father. How banal.

        “It must be painful.” The grout-lines of his face deepened. “He must know it was me.”

        The Patron ran her tongue across her cracked lips. Perhaps this was the one, after all.

        Her pulse quickened. The cold metal around her right ankle felt suddenly present. Heavy, with the weight of seven wretched years. This commission, this prison, this curse.

        Perhaps the preacher’s son would buy her freedom.

        But old habits drew her tongue. “So kill him yourself. You have my blessing.”

        His teeth flashed, bestial in the candlelight. “The Cult protects him.” A hint of derangement in his words. “His cult.”

        The Patron understood. To every church in town, every other was a cult. But the intonation—the uttered capital C—could only mean one.

        “The Goodlads. Hammered a red cross to my lover’s—” He hesitated, then, “My doctor’s door in the Night Quarter. Same kind they post at the casinos, the saloons, the brothels. As if the poor man were on the Skin Inc payroll. They didn’t leave enough of him left to bury.”

        The guitarist picked a bluesy riff. Trails of incense stuttered.

        The Goodlads condemned homosexuality, wore their bigotry like a badge. For the son of their own preacher, they would not make exception. They would make example. Inside their painted crosses: black powder and nails. The red was contagious.

        But this young man’s woes neither started nor ended with the Goodlads, the Patron knew. She’d already noticed the bitter stench on his sweat. Shift; by its pungency, an addict’s dose. Only one shift supplier had survived last year’s drug wars. Elixir Co’s secretive honcho governed the Night Quarter, with its tarps strung across every street to stifle the burn of the noonday sun. By proximity, this man’s lover—his doctor, his dealer—no doubt had worked for Elixir. Elixir’s pushers would strangle infants for the promise of an enduring client. Feigning love was but a trifle.

        It wasn’t the Patron’s duty to assign nor assuage guilt. Still, she felt compelled to offer him one last chance.

        “Get out.” She ignored the anxious swell of the daemons. “Find another township to haunt with your petty problems.”

        The preacher’s son hesitated. She seized the shred of hope.

        “You don’t qualify. Leave, before I bury you.”

        For a moment he seemed ready to comply. Then, slowly, his brow furrowed into an angry knot. “I demand an accord.”

        The Patron sighed. Not once had a visitor heeded her advice. They were always too invested.

        She knew how they felt.

        “You know the terms,” she said.

        Like clockwork, the bodyguard twitched at the Patron’s side. Thirsty for action, some might have thought.

        The Patron shot her a warning glance.

        “I’m no longer afraid.” The preacher’s son lowered his gaze. “I’ve already lost everything.”

        A twang from the guitarist, as if to say: I wouldn’t be so sure.

        The Patron stifled her frustration. “Very well.”

        The candles flickered out; darkness saturated the shanty. As if already realizing his mistake, the preacher’s son gasped.

        Only through experience did the Patron know what happened next, in the dark.

        The daemons divided, encircled, embraced. First he would feel euphoria, then agony—as if brought to sexual climax, only to find he’d been dismembered. But this wasn’t the pain the accord promised.

        This was only the discovery.

        The Patron awaited the results with closed eyes. A familiar nausea gripped her as the daemons’ tendrils invaded her nostrils, her ear canals, the pores in her eyelids. Thoughts gestated, hatched, festered in her consciousness—thoughts so subtle it was near impossible to distinguish them from her own. Only the bruising left by the daemons’ psychic bridge served as proof of their molestation.

        Until now.

        This time, as the daemons severed the link—a half-second slower than usual—she noticed something different. Something tantalizing.

        An opening.

        The inkling of a plan wormed into the Patron’s brain. If she couldn’t buy her freedom, perhaps she could steal it.

        She shelved the thought, opened her eyes to an uncomfortable brightness. Sweat slicked the young man’s unshaven face. In his eyes: relief. It was over.

        If he only knew.

        The Patron could not hide her disappointment. The discovery was complete—this was not the visitor she’d been waiting for. Hope was dwindling.

        A clutch of daemonic tentacles—separated from the whole during the discovery— slithered through the threadbare curtains, back from their malefaction. None would’ve seen them leave but for she who never blinks. As the daemons reclaimed them, the Patron spoke to the preacher’s son for the last time.

        “It is done. Now go.”

        The preacher’s son balked. “Already? Impossible.”

        The guitarist produced an off-tune twang, her feet propped against the kitchen door.

        The preacher’s son stood. “What about my payment?”

        The Patron slouched, too tired for words. At such times, she couldn’t help but dwell on the life she once knew. The brother she’d lost to this chair. This transaction.

        She nodded, as if to say: that, too, is done.

        After an awkward silence, the preacher’s son departed.

        As the curse dictated, a single daemon strand shadowed him. This was how the Patron knew what came to pass. This was how she felt every fiber of his pain, as if it were her own. How he traveled first to the town crier, then—upon confirming his father’s death—to the saloon, where he drank to justice, and to vengeance, and woke with the cold sweats of shift withdrawal. How he clawed his way to the Night Quarter for a fix, only to learn that Elixir—blaming him for the death of his own lover, their pusher—had no further interest in accommodating his needs.

        The days grated on, too bright, too hot, and the preacher’s son withered to bone and burns. The mites burrowed into his ears, and the sweat bled from his body. All the while, his loathing for the Patron mounted. She’d tricked him, connived with Elixir, cursed him to this living hell to bolster her reputation. When his joints swelled and his gums bled, it was only his hatred that kept him alive.

        And so, when the man with the soft smile arrived in the alley with a double dose of Shift, the preacher’s son could not possibly have declined. Besides, this stranger—he seemed like such a good man.

        Such a Goodlad.

        And so, like his father before him, he fell hard and swift into a role most unsuited to his temperament. He donned heavy robes. He hammered crimson crosses. He preached whatever the Cult would have him preach. And he proved the Patron right.

        There’s always something more to lose.

        The shred of his former self that remained, so gnarled and deranged as it was, dwelled on the Patron and felt only spite. On his third day as preacher, he proved as much by doing something none had ever risked.

        He put a bounty on the Patron’s head.

* * *

        The chain that bound the Patron’s ankle to her chair weighed heavy the morning of the apothecary’s visit. Although the chain was largely symbolic—the daemons served as her true shackles—its heft and its chill proved an effective reminder of the lengthening days. The waning month. The dwindling chances.

        “Eat.” The bodyguard only spoke when no visitors were present. A ridiculous superstition, the Patron thought; consequence of her own unseen chains. “You aren’t well.”

        The Patron grimaced. As if a plate of millet would heal these wounds any more than a pint of water would slake the desert’s thirst.

        The bodyguard knelt, massaged the Patron’s ankle. Her height was so unnatural that even on her knees, her gaze came level with the seated Patron. Candlelight smothered the bodyguard’s bald head in crimson. She wore a trim black tuxedo and bowtie, same as every day before.

        “Lupe,” she said. “Please.”

        The Patron winced. If not for her bodyguard, she might’ve maintained the illusion of anonymity. The absence of guilt. But despite her irritation, the Patron’s nostrils flared at the scent of clove and sweat. Her skin flushed from the pressure on her ankle. Her lips found the bodyguard’s knotted jawline.

        Hesitated.

        Outside, the cries of the blood locusts swelled, as they would until month’s end. These creatures writhed below ground for seven years before breaching the surface to feast on fruits and flesh alike. It was during the prior plague that she’d set foot in this shanty for the first time, foolish and desperate, in search of her own bloody accord. By the daemons’ whispers, it would be during another such plague—this one, with any luck—that she’d regain her freedom. But if the daemons lied, or if her replacement failed to arrive—

        She sat up, stiffly. “I’ll have some tea.”

        The bodyguard leveled a stony glare that would’ve felled nine of ten men. Then she disappeared into the kitchen.

        It was just as well. The Patron had no love left to give.

        The apothecary slipped through the curtains with arms folded beneath her robes and head bowed. Pious, as if visiting a local saint.

        The Patron studied her grimly. This could be the one. And if not...the shadow of that other plan was sharpening in the Patron’s mind. It was a foolish plan, born of desperation.

        The bodyguard, now back at the Patron’s side, stood motionless. The tea was poorly steeped, and too hot—the Patron seared her tongue, stifled a hiss. The bodyguard, curse her spite, remained stone-faced.

        “You must save my son.” The apothecary knelt—eyes jeweled, voice aquiver. “He suffers from the lung blood. He has few days left.”

        The Patron studied the smoothness of the apothecary’s skin, the luster of her hair, the bulge of the cure-all beneath her collar—signs of unwanting rare to these times. The badge riveted to the woman’s robes said: Elixir Co.

        “You’re the apothecary.”

        The woman’s face tightened. “Desert’s got a hundred pharmacists—”

        “I know your reputation.” The Patron showed a few teeth. “Your cures that are timed to last only what it takes for you to leave town.”

        The apothecary spat. “Now the incurable plagues are my doing?”

        Not far off, the Patron thought, so long as the apothecary wore that badge. Elixir’s faceless honcho had grown rich profiting from the aftermath of the company’s historic malpractice. This woman’s cure-all—which bolstered her own immunity to her clients’ ailments—was surely Elixir-made.

        The apothecary collected herself. “It wasn’t always this way.”

        That much was true. Now even the most well-intentioned of physicians would trade hope for hard coin. And who was the Patron to judge? What if that coin had gone to her son’s failing health? She was here, after all—she’d exhausted every other option.

        Even a fraud deserved a chance.

        “Go beg your employer for a cure.” The Patron waved a callous hand. “They have a presence here, I’m told.”

        The apothecary’s glare hardened. “I cannot afford their asking price.”

        “My price is higher.” The Patron leaned forward. “Believe me.”

        The apothecary hesitated.

        The bodyguard cleared her throat; this was her least favorite part, for how it agonized the Patron.

        The silence hung taut. The guitarist held muting fingers over her strings. Even the hiss of the locusts quieted.

        Then, slowly, the apothecary’s lips twisted into a grin. “I anticipated as much.”

        Something was wrong. An itch, a worm, a doubt.

        Creeping through the silence: a soft wheeze.

        “I will not pay.” The apothecary watched the Patron hungrily. Looking for signs.

        For symptoms.

        The Patron measured her pulse. “You’ve come for the bounty.”

        “As I said. I cannot afford Elixir’s asking price. Nor will I take my chances with yours.” The apothecary’s expression contorted with glee. “So I poisoned your tea.”

        The bitterness of the herbs clung to the Patron’s tongue. The wheezing persisted. An unfamiliar beast stirred in her gut.

        Fear.

        The apothecary reveled. “Either grant my favor gratis and receive my antidote, or die and I’ll collect your bounty to pay Elixir’s bill. Either way, my son lives.”

        The Patron’s heart thrashed. The daemons stirred in her periphery, but she didn’t dare break the apothecary’s gaze. All the while, the wheezing crescendoed.

        The apothecary approached. Her sickly perfume fouled the air.

        Another step, then another.

        The smile bled from the apothecary’s lips. Her proximity must’ve clued her in: the wheezing did not come from the Patron’s mouth.

        The bodyguard coughed. Even this much sound from her—with a visitor present—was so incongruous it tightened the Patron’s chest.

        “It tasted spoiled.” The bodyguard’s words came clipped, strained. “So I brewed you a fresh pot.”

        The Patron gripped the chair’s cold arm. She couldn’t bear to glance at her bodyguard, in fear of what she might see. Her bodyguard, who insisted as a matter of practice on tasting everything the Patron would consume.

        The Patron seethed. A quick snatch and the bodyguard’s pistol would be in her hand. A quick squeeze and a lead bullet would be in the apothecary’s fleshy body. Fast, easy, gratifying.

        Folly. The apothecary would not have brought the antidote on her person, and the Patron had no way of identifying the poison—let alone procuring a remedy on her own, chained as she was to this accursed chair.

        Against every instinct, the Patron remained still.

        The apothecary’s lip trembled. “Will you kill me?”

        The question blindsided the Patron. Only as the silence endured—punctuated by the bodyguard’s aching rasp—did she understand. As far as this woman knew, the bodyguard was nothing but a hired gun. Expendable. As far as this woman knew, her plan had failed.

        There was still hope.

        The Patron narrowed her eyes. “Death is never the most painful option.”

        The apothecary backpedaled.

        “You’ve come for an accord.” The Patron smiled bitterly. “You’ll get one. But my fees have increased. In addition to the customary payment, you will provide my servant a cure. Agreed?”

        The apothecary nodded, forcefully, as if her head hung at the end of a marionette’s string.

        Darkness consumed the shanty.

        The apothecary whimpered.

        Desperate for distraction, the Patron squinted into the shadows where half of the daemons busily invaded the apothecary’s skull. What were they, exactly? Some antediluvian presence unearthed by humanity’s ceaseless conquests—that much she could guess. But why did they thrive on pain? And why the charade—the chain, the accord, the Patron as their figurehead? Were they serving some preordained purpose of heaven or hell, for time without end? Or had they gone rogue—obsessed with exploiting humanity’s greed, their wrath, their envy?

        What was their endgame? How many more must suffer for it?

        Already the other half of the daemons slunk back inside from their jaunt, rejoined the whole, and tapped into the Patron’s own psyche. Her disappointment hardly registered as she learned that the apothecary—now bathed in sweat and fear—was not the visitor she’d been awaiting. The strange fissure in the psychic bridge—this time even more evident as the tendrils slipped from the Patron’s nostrils—was tomorrow’s concern. Only one thing occupied her mind, now: the dry wheezing that permeated the shanty.

        “It’s done.” The Patron’s impatience mounted. “Now, the antidote.”

        The apothecary fingered her cure-all. “What have you done to me?”

        “An improvement. Rather than staving off the ailments you claim to cure, now you can enjoy their full effects—and then some.” On fear of contamination, the apothecary would never swindle another patient. Elixir Co, on the other hand, would hardly forget her indenture.

        The apothecary bared her teeth. “Devil! How will I—”

        “Not my concern.”

        The apothecary rose unsteadily. Almost as an afterthought, she said: “And my son?”

        “He’ll live.” The Patron squeezed her hands into fists. “Now. The antidote.”

        “You’re no patron. You’re a gangster.” Spittle erupted from her lips. “Vengeful, isolated, sadistic. You are all of humanity’s greatest faults.”

        And yet, the Patron thought in passing, the visitors still came.

        “I’ve fulfilled my side of this transaction.” The Patron leaned forward. “Give me the antidote.”

        “There is none.” The apothecary shrugged. “I never expected you’d agree to my terms.”

        Then she walked out.

        The Patron could only watch. Inflicting more pain would serve no purpose.

        A momentary stillness gripped the shanty, one that an outsider might have mistaken for peace.

        Then the bodyguard collapsed to a knee and vomited blood.

* * *

        The bodyguard’s condition worsened by dusk. By dawn’s knell she lay propped against the Patron’s leg, skin stripped of color, lips stained crimson.

        The Patron stroked her bald scalp, her notched ear, her sweat-glazed jaw. She remembered.

        She remembered waking one morning to find the bodyguard prying at her chain’s lock. She remembered the fierce glint in the bodyguard’s eye, months later, as she produced a rusted hacksaw. For the chain—or if that didn’t work, the ankle. She remembered the bodyguard’s silent protests when the Patron shrugged her off, time and again. She remembered thinking: I deserve this fate, and besides, the daemons would not abide my escape. She remembered saying nothing.

        She remembered other moments, too—not all of them bad. Some close to good. This was the worst part of remembering.

        But even now, a cocktail of remedies surged through her bodyguard’s bloodstream. Hope lingered. The Patron stared knives into the daemons. She forced her thoughts to retribution. She honed her plan.

        So it was that when the next visitor stepped into the shanty on snakeskin soles, his own glut of bodyguards milling in the swelter outside, the Patron sat composed. The void at her side and the faint rasping from the kitchen did not betray her poise as she received her guest.

        This one was famous. Perhaps, even, the one she sought. If her bodyguard were to die... at least unchained, she could dig the grave herself.

        “Patron.”

        Mr. Midas’s voice unfurled like velvet over bare skin. His suit—three-piece, bone-white—was immaculate, despite the sandstorm that had hammered the town at dawn. A greased mustache provided cover for his too-thin lips; wire-framed sunglasses concealed his eyes, which the Patron imagined were small, red, lustful.

        “I assume my reputation precedes me.”

        The Patron stifled a sigh. “I know your company—Spore Brothers. Their sterile seeds and their starvation tax. I also know, by your presence here, that you aren’t as powerful as some might think.”

        This garnered a brooding silence.

        “I respect you, Patron—” He raised a corrective finger. “I respect your pursuit.”

        The Patron rapped her fingers impatiently.

        “The pursuit of pain.” He spread his hands, as if welcoming her into some sinister club. “The threat of murder is always more effective than the act itself. Fear and pain are the only true motivators.”

        The guitarist fingered a jarring tritone. Mr. Midas reddened at the interruption.

        She plucked another chord, less pleasant still. Her unblinking eyes twinkled.

        Mr. Midas glowered, as if the Patron owed him an apology for the disruption. As if she were the girl’s charge.

        That one came with the place.

        “State your intentions,” the Patron said with unchecked irritation.

        “Elixir.” Mr. Midas’s lip twitched. “They are a scourge—the last credible threat to my empire. Yet how can I kill that which I cannot see? Their cowardly honcho remains anonymous. This is my demand: his head.”

        Politics. Some things never changed.

        Still, she couldn’t stave the need to try.

        “Have you ventured negotiation? Armistice? A cup of tea?” The Patron winced at her own choice of words.

        Mr. Midas exhaled sharply. “I want his head.”

        So be it. “You understand the terms.”

        At this, a wry grin. “Of course.”

        Darkness, as cruel and certain as death. The daemons split, advanced—all tendril and vice. Unwelcome thoughts percolated in the Patron’s mind—he was not the one—and her attention snapped again to the kitchen. Time was running out for them both.

        But the plan. Her preoccupation had cost her valuable time. She turned her thoughts inward, probed the psychic bridge—there. Not a fissure, but a valve. As thoughts filtered in, others might slip out. Damage, perhaps, could be done in both directions. Lasting damage. She prodded the valve with her psyche—

        Mr. Midas chuckled.

        The daemons severed the bridge. Her awareness jolted back to the shanty.

        “I’ve outsmarted you, Patron.”

        The Patron’s skin went cold. Another bounty hunter?

        Impossible. This honcho had all the coin he could carry.

        Mr. Midas’s voice snaked through the darkness. “I’ve steeled myself to all forms of pain. I’ve eliminated every compassion, every weakness. My wife and son are dead. I exiled my beloved daughter across the desert years ago, so that none should leverage her love against me. With pain as your arsenal, I am bulletproof.”

        Before the Patron could respond, the lights flicked on. Behind the honcho, the daemons’ other half slipped inside from their foray. Mr. Midas held his chin high.

        It was almost a shame to bring him down so fast.

        Almost.

        The Patron picked dried blood from her fingernail. “It’s not your daughter’s love you should fear.”

        A shout from outside drew Mr. Midas’s attention. He left without a word—returned moments later, a shade paler. Trembling.

        Cradling a human head.

        “You should’ve feared her fury.” The Patron echoed the daemons’ thoughts. “Exile doesn’t suit every young woman’s taste.”

        Mr. Midas stared into his daughter’s vacant eyes. Above her brow, a gilded headband read Elixir.

        It was a convenient, if grisly, package. Rarely did both sides of the transaction require but a single maneuver.

        The Patron continued. “One might take offense to being treated as a pawn by her own father. One might connive a covert return, a gutsy power grab. Escalate a turf dispute into a full-scale war. Wield fear and pain as her weapons.” The Patron regarded him coolly. “You must be proud.”

        Mr. Midas remained impassive. Gauging the repercussions of destroying the shanty outright, perhaps. He certainly had the capacity.

        But that wasn’t this honcho’s style, and even now—his daughter’s blood still warming his hands—he retained his ideals. Pain promised, rather than delivered.

        He left without a word, then promptly installed a blockade around the Patron’s shanty. A dozen armed guards would dissuade even the most desperate of visitors. His logic: the Patron drew reputation from these transactions; without them, she was nothing. Obsolete. Forgotten.

        This wasn’t far from the truth. But much worse was the blockade’s timing: with just two days before month’s end, her chances of finding a replacement had already grown slim.

        Now they were nonexistent.

* * *

        She hadn’t always been a bodyguard. Once, her name was Ania.

        A cruel desert wind had blistered the town for forty days when she first set foot in the Patron’s shanty. Two weeks escaped from Northern slavers, the necessary murders still staining her palms. Her eyes were hungry vortices—taking in everything, letting nothing out. Her clothes were tattered and too small; the inscription emblazoned on her wheel-lock pistol long since filed off. Even her name was stolen.

        She came in search of protection, work. Companionship.

        The Patron had none to spare. Memories of her brother were still too sharp. Would always be.

        “This relationship is purely transactional.”

        The tips of Ania’s lips had twitched upward. Her vortex eyes said: sure it is.

        For the first time, the Patron wasn’t certain.

        Then Ania had stated her terms.

        The Patron balked. “You can’t—”

        “I can.” Ania folded her arms across her chest, all filth and bones and beauty. “And I will.”

        The Patron’s pulse stuttered. “Begone. You are unwanted here.” It had already become instinct to dissuade her visitors.

        Ania didn’t blink. The vortices said: nice try.

        And so Ania’s terms were met. A place by the Patron’s side, in exchange for her newfound freedom. Bound by chains less corporeal than the Patron’s, she would never leave her post. The fierce wanderer known briefly as Ania was no more. Now, there was only the bodyguard.

        At the foot of her chair, the Patron hunched over the dying bodyguard. “Fool.”

        Outside, the sun chewed at the scorched horizon, signaling the month’s end. The cries of the blood locusts ebbed to a dying murmur.

        The bodyguard’s eyelids cracked. “Where will you go, when your replacement arrives?”

        The Patron looked away to mask her discomfort. She hadn’t told the bodyguard about the blockade.

        “Far from here,” she lied.

        The bodyguard laughed—a wretched, rasping sound. “You still think your payment was freedom.”

        “I’m chained to this chair, woman—”

        “I see your eyes, when the visitors come.” She raked in a shallow breath. “Your sweating brow, your clenched fists. This is called pain.”

        The Patron waved a dismissive hand. “They mean nothing to me.”

        “Why, then, exhort them to leave without payment? Why show pity to even the most loathsome of bigots?”

        The Patron had no answer.

        “Because their pain is yours. This is your payment.” The bodyguard’s expression grew distant. “Mine was watching you suffer, my love.”

        Is, the Patron almost corrected. But the word never reached her lips.

        The gunshot rang out like an angry thunderclap, like a sandstorm snapping the roof off a church of beleaguered worshippers, like a heart bursting through a weary chest. The bodyguard’s hand slipped from her pistol, lifeless.

        Transaction complete.

        “Fool.” Salt stained the Patron’s lips. This was her fault. All this time, she’d hidden behind the excuse of human nature.

        This world is an abyss, people get what they deserve.

        It was the easiest lie to believe.

        She hardly felt the tendrils slipping into her tear ducts, probing her psyche. When she did, a brutal rage hoisted her to her feet. This was her pain—they could not have it. Would not have it.

        The daemons’ presence trembled within her—drunk with surplus, slowed by her glut of agony. She knew then, what they’d been doing all this time.

        They were feeding.

        She seized the opportunity—focused on the connection, tore through the valve and across the psychic bridge. Nausea crawled up her throat. She saw the daemons for what they were: perverse, inhuman—yet curious. They weren’t merely feeding.

        They were looking for something.

        The daemons must’ve grown conscious to her presence across the bridge: they repelled her with a jarring force, severed the connection. Doubtless they wouldn’t be so careless next time—but that was irrelevant. The Patron had already gleaned their fatal flaw.

        They were dependent—on her. Burrowed in like so many ticks, surviving only by the pain of their host. Without her, they would perish.

        The final stage of her plan grew clear.

        The Patron lifted the pistol. Its grip was still warm.

        In her periphery, the daemons writhed.

        The Patron reclaimed her seat in the chair. She took her time reloading the gun, pressed the barrel beneath her chin.

        Hesitated.

        A man stood in the shadows, foot propped against the wall, knee jutting. His Highwaymen’s duster—speckled with sand and blood—grazed the bare floor. A mop of sandy hair obscured his face, save for the crooked arc of his grin.

        “There, there,” said the month’s final visitor.

* * *

        It would’ve betrayed the Patron’s surprise to ask how the visitor had bypassed the blockade. So she said, flatly, “Shadows are for snakes.”

        The man chuckled. “Says the asp that’s spent seven years festering in darkness.”

        The Patron laid the pistol on the chair’s arm to hide the tremble of her hand. Who was this man, that knew so much about her?

        She swiveled the gun’s barrel to face him. “State your business or get out.”

        “My business is...transactional.”

        He stepped into the candlelight.

        This time, the Patron could not conceal her disbelief.

        The visitor cocked his head—a childish pose at odds with the grizzled scar that gouged his face, the rust-bitten spike that served as his left leg.

        The Patron swallowed bile. “Brother.”

        Her gaze lingered on his jacket. Same as the one she’d worn, while she enforced the Highwaymen’s grisly road tax in exchange for coin. To afford meds for her mother. Food for her kid brother. The jacket’s heft—and the cruel indenture it signified—had been the very reason for her visit to this shanty, seven years prior. She sought her boss’s head, because—brash as she was—she knew she could run the outfit better. And because many years prior, he’d taken her mother by force—not once, but twice—as if she were some cut-rate Skin Inc commodity. He was a vile man.

        A vile father.

        The daemons had dispatched him, though she’d never been afforded a chance at succession.

        And now, seven years later, her brother had taken up the same garb—the same bloody role, answering to another ruthless honcho.

        “How did you find me?”

        “The bounty note contained a sketch.” His lip curled with disgust, but his eyes bore something far worse: pity. “I had to see for myself, this throne for which you renounced your family.”

        “And you? What have you traded for that jacket?”

        “You thought the Highwaymen would wither without a head? Foolish sister. His lieutenants knew it was you. They came looking for you.” He paused to collect himself. “Do you think they believed us, when we said we didn’t know? What do you think they did to us? To our mother?”

        The Patron could not hold his gaze.

        “You left me to fend for myself. I had no choice but to join the company. So don’t judge me for my garb, sister. I’ve always lived by your castoffs.”

        The Patron pressed her eyes shut, long enough to acknowledge her mother’s death. “Blame me for what you will—but not the decisions you’ve made in my absence.”

        His wince was slight: a ripple of scar tissue. “My decisions pale beside yours. How many have you murdered from this chair?”

        But as he spoke, his voice quivered. His own decisions already hung leaden on his shoulders. He was as she had been, seven years prior. Bitter, vicious, proud.

        Sympathetic.

        Their pain is yours.

        Of course he’d avoided the blockade—the daemons had helped him. He was, after all, the one she’d been waiting for: brother, successor, patron.

        “I’ve one last castoff to collect.” He squared his shoulders, drove home her revelation. “I’m here for your throne, Patron.”

        The Patron glared at the loitering daemons. Did they know she’d turn the gun on herself? Did they know that only one person alive could’ve stayed her hand?

        Of course they did. They’d probed her mind on every visit. This would be her final payment: to watch her brother assume the seat she’d so long endured. To know that for seven brutal years, he’d suffer the shared pain of every vigilante, every lover, every fraud and cripple that walked through those curtains. Even her own death wouldn’t stop it now. Her brother already stood within the daemons’ shadow. The ticks would soon crawl into their next host.

        All that remained was for him to accept the terms.

        Unless.

        Her finger twitched near the pistol’s trigger.

        The air grew tepid. Her brother’s lips parted.

        The guitarist fingered a lazy riff. The daemons began to circle.

        The body at the Patron’s feet felt suddenly present. The vacancy at her side occupied more space than the bodyguard ever had.

        She had always been the stronger one. What would she have done?

        The Patron knew at once. She would’ve done what was needed.

        The Patron lifted the gun. “I’m sorry, brother.”

        Words died on her brother’s lips. Sweat stood on his jaw.

        The daemons hesitated.

        She narrowed her eyes. “Leave.”

        “I will not—”

        “You don’t qualify for an accord.” She held his gaze, not daring a glance toward daemons. “You have nothing of value. No money, no power, no family. You are less than worthless.”

        His skin reddened; his breath came at a labor.

        She rose to her feet. “At least when I arrived, I had your mother’s life to trade.”

        His jaw snapped shut. Rage simmered in his eyes.

        “Now leave,” she said. “Or you’ll follow her down.”

        Amidst the fury that knotted his face, a flicker of sorrow. Her gambit had worked. He clearly believed she would do it—kill her own brother to retain her seat of power. This was the worst part—a transaction in itself. Her dignity, in exchange for his life.

        He left without a word.

        She could only hope he’d never learn the extent of her lies. Better to spend a lifetime in this wretched role than to endure the guilt of passing it on to another. Her brother, or anyone else. Be it seven years or seven hundred, this was her burden to bear.

        Liberated from her shadow at last, her brother might finally cast off his bloody garb. She knew it from his eyes on leaving: the transaction had changed him. He was better off, now.

        So was she.

        Her gaze darted to the daemons, then to the guitarist propped in the corner—for by then the Patron knew she was more than just a languid musician. The girl who did not blink offered the slightest of smiles as her daemon-eyes glimmered. The Patron hesitated.

        What if these daemons didn’t thirst for pain after all? What if pain was just the catalyst for pity?

        I see your eyes, when the visitors come.

        So did the daemons. Her bodyguard had been right—they’d put her on this throne because of her pity. Plumbing her emotional reservoirs—not for sadism, but sympathy. Not for horror, but hope. Her employ was not just payment: it had purpose. Under the right conditions, humanity might emerge from the unlikeliest of places.

        The preacher’s son might come to mourn his father, rise up, and destroy the Cult from within. The apothecary might recommit to her calling on account of her compromised cure-all, raise her child into an honest doctor who in turn would launch the desert’s first open clinic. The honcho might grieve his daughter so fiercely that it would drive him to self-exile, sparking an era of tentative peace.

        Or, maybe not.

        Perhaps it was the next visitor that would one day deliver them all from this hell.

        Whatever the case, the Patron would be waiting. Amidst the reek of death, she reclaimed her seat at the throne. As the cries of the blood locusts died on the evening wind, the Patron hardly noticed the chain at her feet, severed.

Copyright © 2020 Derrick Boden

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Derrick Boden’s fiction has appeared in numerous venues including Escape Pod, Daily Science Fiction, and Flash Fiction Online. He is a writer, a software developer, an adventurer, and a graduate of the Clarion West class of 2019. He currently calls Boston his home, although he’s lived in fourteen cities spanning four continents. He is owned by two cats and one iron-willed daughter. Find him at derrickboden.com and on Twitter as @derrickboden.

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COVER ART

“Valley of the Fallen,” by Alexey Shugurov

Alexey Shugurov is an artist from Dnipro, Ukraine. He has more than twenty years of experience in professional drawing and ten as a digital artist. He has worked in the game industry on a variety of casual and social games, and recently he has been working as a lead artist on a major social project. He mainly draws in fantasy and sci-fi styles, and he especially likes to draw the natural world. You can find his work at www.artstation.com/allius.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

ISSN: 1946-1076

Published by Firkin Press,

a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization

Compilation Copyright © 2020 Firkin Press

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