Issue#313, Twelfth Anniversary Double-Issue • Sept. 24 2020

“Many Mansions,” by K.J. Parker

“A Minor Exorcism,” by Richard Parks

“The Heart That Saves You May Be Your Own,” by Merrie Haskell

“A Tally of What Remains,” by R.Z. Held

For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

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

MANY MANSIONS

by K.J. Parker

        “So you can raise the dead.” She yawned. “How clever.”

        With women (in my limited experience), ninety-nine times out of a hundred it’s the way they say it. They’re so much better at nuances than we are. It’s what they don’t say, what they imply by voice or gesture, that’s so infuriatingly eloquent.

        “Not that I ever would,” I replied. “Goes without saying. Absolutely forbidden.”

        She smiled and said nothing. The smile was a case in point. You aren’t impressing me, it said, and God knows, I had no reason to want to impress her, but I did want to, very badly, and I was trying too hard and making a real hash of it. All that, conveyed in one constriction of the facial muscles. Makes you wonder why they talk all the damn time when their silences are so eloquent.

        “You don’t believe me,” I said. “Ah well.”

        “I didn’t say that.” The smile changed shape slightly. “I’m sure you can do all these wonderful things, if your superiors let you. But they don’t, so really, what’s the point?”

        In my line of work I visit the Mesoge quite often, and I frequently stop overnight in inns. After I’ve washed my face in the freezing cold water provided absolutely free of charge and eaten the inevitable house mutton and lentil stew, I take a book and sit by the fire in the common room. I only do this because the common-room fire is actually warm, as opposed to the feeble glow you get in your bedchamber, and there’s enough light to read by without giving yourself a headache. I don’t do it for the company. I’m an educated, refined man, a scholar. I reserve my conversation for the select few who can understand and appreciate it. I most certainly don’t chat up women in taprooms.

        “Indeed,” I said. “But it’s like a soldier. He’s trained to kill people with extreme efficiency. But he only does it when his commanding officer tells him to. It’s the same with me and—”

        “Magic?”

        She only used the word to rile me. Everybody knows, we don’t do magic. The members of my order are not wizards. We’re scholars, scientists, natural and metaphysical philosophers. True, we can do things the uneducated can’t; a blacksmith or a carpenter can say exactly the same thing. A blacksmith can take two metal rods and join them so you can’t see where one ends and the other begins; but that’s not magic, it’s welding. No; some things, some apparently extraordinary and miraculous things, can be done, if you know the trick. Others can’t, no matter how many books you’ve read. That’s what we tell people, and in many respects it’s true.

        “I’m sorry,” she said, “I only said it to tease you. And you’re quite right. If people went about doing things just because they can, there’d be mayhem.” She smiled again, in a totally different way. “It’s been so nice talking to you. Goodnight.”

        And she stood up and walked out of the room, leaving me feeling like a hunter who’s stalked a deer for two hundred yards only to tread on a twig just outside bowshot. But I hadn’t started it. I was sitting by the fire reading Saloninus on conditional uncertainty. She was the one who sat down opposite and said, That looks interesting, not many people read Saloninus these days. And she wasn’t even particularly pretty or particularly young. And anyway, I don’t do any of that sort of thing, we’re not allowed, as everybody knows perfectly well. My guess was, she did it because she could. Understandable and very antisocial, as she’d no doubt have been the first to agree.

* * *

        I hate the Mesoge. Heavy winter rain had turned the roads to mud, and the cart got bogged down. I asked the carter, how far to Rysart? Two miles, he told me.

        “Fine,” I said. “I’ll walk.”

        He looked at me. “You paid all the way to Rysart.”

        I hauled out the sack I carry my stuff in. About thirty pounds, dead weight. “No problem,” I said. “Fresh air and exercise.”

        “I got to go on to Rysart anyway. I got stuff to deliver.”

        In the back of the cart lay a shovel, two iron crowbars, wedges, sacking; all the paraphernalia needed for getting the cart unstuck. A two-hour job, in the dark, the mud and the rain. Needless to say, I could have got the cart out of the rut and back on the road in five seconds; tollens aequor, a second-level Form you learn in first year. But I’m not allowed.

        “Drop in at the inn when you get there,” I said. “I’ll buy you a beer.”

        I started to walk. The mud sucked at my boots, the rain trickled off my hood into my eyes, and the weight of the sack made my fingers ache. I trudged fifty yards, which I guessed was enough to be out of sight, in weather like that, at night. Then I muttered a few simple words under my breath. The sack suddenly weighed about six ounces. The soles of my boots floated on the surface of the mud. The rain flew down at me but somehow missed. A light that only I could see illuminated the road, all the way down the valley. I wasn’t allowed, of course, but who was there to see?

* * *

        I was there because I have a field-officer rating. I wanted that rating about as much as I wanted a sixth toe on my left foot, but you have to get your field ticket before you can be made up to seventh grade, and I’m deplorably ambitious. I’m also a theorist, not a man of action; naturally contemplative, at home in the study, the cloister, the library, the chapter-house. Outdoors, in the wet mud, on my way to deal with problems in the real world, is not where I belong. But they send me because I get the job done—an early mistake on my part. On my first field assignment, I was under the impression that a splendidly successful outcome would win me merit and commendation. Silly me. What it got me was a reputation for being able to do this sort of thing. What I should’ve done was make a total hash of it, and they’d never have sent me again, and I’d be an abbot by now.

        (“You understand these people,” Father Prior said to me, after he’d broken the bad news about this job. “You talk their language. You’re one of them.” I didn’t hit him because it’s not allowed. Perfectly true, of course. I was born and raised on a farm, in the horrible, primitive Mesoge. I left it to get away from backbreaking work and stupid people. So, what happens? They keep sending me back there.)

        How can I begin to describe Rysart in the rain and the pitch dark? Yet another nasty little Mesoge village; the smell told me everything I needed to know before the first silhouetted barn loomed up out of the darkness. I knew the inn would be opposite the meeting-house, which would be at the north end of the one broad street. There’s no reason why it always should be, but it always is. It’s the way it’s always been done, you see. Lots of alwayses in the Mesoge.

        The inn door was shut, but there were cracks of light under it. I tried the handle, but the bolts were shot. I banged on it and waited for a very long time, during which rain fell on me. I’d cancelled fulvens dissimilis as soon as the smell hit me, just in case, so I was getting wet.

        “What the hell do you want?”

        I smiled. “A bed for the night, please. You’re expecting me.”

        She looked like I’d insulted her, but she opened the door anyway. The smell of dogs and wet wool made me catch my breath. I grew up with it, but when you’re used to a smell, you don’t notice it, until you’ve been away for a while, and then it hits you like a fist. It’s not actually an unpleasant smell, but it said home to me, and I left home a long time ago.

        The room was the sort of thing you’d confidently store logs in without worrying too much about mould. The lentil and mutton stew came with a mountain of fermented cabbage. The water had that taste. The fire in the common room had burnt down to embers. “In the morning,” I said, “I want to see the Father and the mayor, and probably the reeve and the constable.”

        She stared at me, as though I’d asked her to bring me her son’s head in a cream of asparagus sauce. But my tone of voice was just right. She nodded and got away from me as quickly as she could.

* * *

        I wake up at sunrise, even when I don’t have a window. It’s a farm-boy thing, and I get teased about it all the time.

        Even so; by the time I’d washed and had a good scratch, they were all waiting for me in the taproom, sitting in dead silence; six extremely worried men, the answer to whose prayers was me. They looked at each other as I walked in. I guess they’d had a vote and elected the Father to be the spokesman; fair enough. Did you ever meet a country priest who didn’t love the sound of his own voice?

        “Are you—?”

        I nodded. Spare him the embarrassment. “My name is Father Bohenna, and I’m from the Studium,” I said. “Now, I know the basic facts, but I’ll need you to fill me in on specifics. Then I can decide whether our intervention is called for, and if so, what the procedures will be, where your jurisdiction ends and ours begins, and so on and so forth. If we could start with some names.”

        They introduced themselves. I’m hopeless with names. Unless I write them down, they’re in one ear and out the other. There are men I’ve known and worked with for fifteen years, but I have no idea what they’re called; they told me once, and you can’t keep asking or you make yourself look ridiculous. But I never forget a face, or a voice, or a body odour. So, the names washed over me like the spring floods, but I made a mental note. The tall, thin, crafty looking man, around fifty-five, bushy white hair, was the mayor. The two round-faced bruisers with the red cheeks—brothers—were the reeves. The little rat-faced man was the constable; I knew his sort, looks like the wind would blow him off his feet, but he draws the strongest bow in the village and God help you if you pick a fight with him. The seven-foot fair-haired idiot was somebody’s son, there to open doors for his father and sit still when not in use. A competent body of men. I’ve dealt with far worse.

        The Father took a deep breath. “It all began,” he said—

* * *

        Obviously, you hear some crazy stories in this job. Some of them you can safely discount. It depends on who tells them, and how they tell them. The thing in this case was that the Father couldn’t ever possibly have had an imaginative thought in his entire life. He wasn’t the sort. If you told him you were having a whale of a time, he’d look round the room for a whale.

        It all started, he said, when two of the village girls began having fits. Nothing unusual in that, or at least not in the Mesoge. My sister was singularly prone to them; temper tantrums, floods of tears, right up till the day she realised that prospective husbands don’t really like that sort of thing, at which point she calmed down remarkably until the ring was safely on her finger. But these weren’t the usual sort of fits.

        There’s something profoundly unsettling about hearing wild, spooky stories told by an utterly prosaic man. He described what the girls claimed they’d seen.

        One night— You’re reading this, so you can read, so I don’t suppose you’re familiar with daily life in the Mesoge, so I’d better explain. Our houses have two rooms, one for the family and one for the livestock. The family room is square, with a hearth in the middle. We never quite got around to inventing the chimney, so we pitch our roofs high, to give the smoke somewhere to flock up and hover. We sleep on straw or feather mattresses in a square around the hearth. Rich folk with pretensions curtain off the back end for the man of the house and his wife—we did in our family; I can picture the curtain to this day, it was heavy felted wool painted to look like tapestry, the Ascension, and to the day I die the Invincible Sun will always have that crude, slightly half-witted face, like he’s just been woken up in the middle of the night. Children sleep in a heap, like puppies, on the opposite side from their parents, with the elderly, the poor relations, the dog, and the hired help making up the other two sides of the square. None of this should matter; the idea is that you should come in from work so tired out from your honest labours that as soon as you’ve bolted down your food you go straight to sleep. In practice; yes, we get on each others’ nerves like you wouldn’t believe, which is probably why the murder rate has always been so high in the Mesoge.

        Anyway. One night these two girls (fifteen and fourteen) started screaming in their sleep. It took a lot to wake them up, and once they were awake they were lashing out, biting and scratching. Their father laid into them with a broom-handle to quiet them down. When they were coherent again, they said that a tall, well-dressed woman in a white lace cap had knelt down beside them and stuck them repeatedly with a brooch-pin.

        Don’t be so bloody stupid, said their father, or words to that effect; but it happened again the next night, and the night after that, and then in broad daylight. Their mother went to see the Father, much to her husband’s annoyance. The Father found himself in a difficult position. He was and always had been a convinced sceptic. He didn’t believe in witchcraft, but he looked in his book—like most Mesoge priests, he only had one—and sure enough, the facts as related were a classic case of bewitchment, and he had no alternative but to treat it as such. He told the parents that their girls were bewitched, then sat down with his head in his hands and tried to figure out what he was supposed to do about it.

        Now, so far, the only people who knew about all this were the family and the Father; but shortly after that, three girls in another family on the other side of the parish started doing exactly the same thing. They too were terrorised by an elegant woman in a white lace cap, though sometimes she came as a tall black-and-white nanny-goat, and sometimes she had a goshawk on her wrist. When the Father went to see them, the eldest girl started to tell her story, then broke off and tried to bite off her own tongue; she did quite a lot of damage before her mother got her jaws apart and stuffed her mouth with rags. And then a man in the village jumped out of a tree and broke his back; he lived long enough to say that a fine lady in a white bonnet had scooped him up off the ground, carried him to the top of the tree and pushed him off. A rich farmer in the valley lost ninety sheep to some sort of scouring sickness he’d never seen before. Six hay-ricks caught fire in the space of a week. A man came home from market to find a huge black bear waiting for him on his doorstep, in a district where the bears are brown and never come into the villages. It scratched up the side of his face pretty badly—the scars were plainly visible—he hit it with his stick, and it vanished into thin air.

        By this point, the Father’s scepticism was wearing rather thin. He called in the mayor, who sent for the reeves and the constable, who convened an assembly of heads of families in the meeting-house. Needless to say, the meeting just made things worse. Everybody had strong views about the identity of the witch, and no two people had the same candidate in mind. When at last the Father could make himself heard, he told them there was only one thing they could do. And now, here I was, and what did I intend to do, and how soon could I start?

        By this point, apparently, the witch was definitely getting above herself. She no longer operated at night—presumably she needed her sleep like everyone else, and she appeared to be operating on a massively overcrowded schedule, so who can blame her? On average there were between six and ten attacks a day, affecting roughly half the families in the village. Although the witch appeared only as herself or the black-and-white goat, there was no recognisable description, because as soon as anyone tried to describe her they bit their own tongue or bashed their head against a wall. She was visible on her own terms, generally only to the person she was afflicting, but very occasionally to three or four bystanders as well. The Father and the other elders tried to meet a few times to discuss a plan of action, but they gave up when she took to sitting down with them, on a chair that hadn’t been there before she arrived but which stayed there after she left. In fact, the same chair I was sitting in right now—

* * *

        I stood up quickly, then slowly sat down again. “So you’ve seen her.”

        The Father nodded. “But please, don’t ask me to describe her.”

        I nodded. “No need,” I said.

        He frowned, then all the colour drained from his face. “You can see inside my—?”

        “Yes. But don’t worry. I’m an expert, and anything else I might happen to see I’m really not interested in.” He didn’t seem reassured, but I couldn’t help that. I mumbled aspergo devictos under my breath and looked straight at the side of his head and through it. “Thank you,” I said. “All over.”

        The look on his face; he’d be happier dealing with the witch than me, any time. “You saw her?”

        “Clearly.”

        The constable said; “She’s standing behind you, right now.”

        Nobody moved, especially me. “Is she now,” I said.

        No reply. The constable’s mouth was open, but he didn’t seem able to speak. The others were looking down, at the ground, as though they were afraid of catching something really nasty through their eyes. Slowly I reached for my tea-bowl and drank what was left in it. Then I stood up and turned round.

        Something lashed out at me. Scutum fidei and lorica will stop practically anything, but I felt the smack. Like a man in armour; the arrow or the javelin is turned and doesn’t pierce, but even so you get a hell of a thump. Instinctively—no, I’m ashamed to say, impulsively, with no proper control at all—I hit back with stricto ense or benevolentia or something of the sort, like you do in second year when you’re just starting on the military Forms; suddenly I’d regressed twenty years and forgotten everything I’d ever learned about fighting. It must have worked, though. I distinctly heard a scream, and then there was nothing there, except a bloodstain on the rushes.

        I felt a complete fool. But the constable said, “Did you kill her?” in a tiny voice.

        “No,” I said.

        “But you beat her.”

        I was still feeling disgusted with myself, and I really didn’t want to talk or deal with the public. I sat down again, carefully not looking at any of them. My hands were shaking. “Thank you for coming, gentlemen,” I said. “You can leave it to me now. This shouldn’t take long.”

        “You can—?”

        “Yes. Now, I think it would be advisable for everyone to stay in their houses for the rest of the day, if that’s at all possible. There’s no immediate danger, but it’s best to be on the safe side.”

        That got rid of them, and I sat for a while perfectly still, thinking; what the hell was all that about? A stripe hard enough to put a dent in scutum and lorica, and a twenty-year professional panicking, overriding a lifetime of training and conditioning to swipe wildly with thunderbolts. I wasn’t afraid—there’s no power on Earth, literally, that scares me any more, because I know I can beat them all—but I was bewildered and unnerved and unsettled, and I had to think to remember things that are usually part of the furniture of my mind; the Rooms, the Wards, the precepts of engagement. I felt like I was heading for a duel with a sword in one hand and a fencing text-book in the other.

        Still. The hell with it. I was able to outfight tenured professors when I was fourteen years old. I despise fighting, of course. That’s why I’m so good at it. I just want it done with and out of the way.

* * *

        Someone asked me why there aren’t any women at the Studium. I said, the same reason there aren’t any fish. She gave me a foul look and changed the subject, but it’s a valid answer.

        There are things men can do and women can’t (and vice versa, goes without saying) and what we do is one of them. To put it crudely, they don’t have the parts. We don’t actually know what the parts are—we’ve picked over God knows how many brains, looking for a particular blob of mush or twist of gristle, all to no effect. I don’t suppose we’ll ever find it until we get a chance to dissect one of the very, very few women (we figure something like one in two million) who’s got it, and that’s not likely to happen any time soon.

        No great loss, is how we see it. What we do, the power we have, is of very limited practical value. We’re theorists, pure scientists; we aren’t actually very much use to anybody, and where we could make ourselves useful—wiping out armies, destroying cities, sinking whole continents under the sea, bringing the dead back to life—we don’t allow ourselves to, for obvious reasons. Stripped of all pretences, euphemisms, justifications, and obfuscations; the main reason we do magic is because we can. Generally speaking, though, either it’s useless or it mustn’t be used. Now, why would women, who are so much more sensible and practical than us, want to bother with something so pointless?

        Witches are, of course, the exception. It’s a sad fact that, out of the tiny number of women who are born with the talent and figure out how to use it, ninety-nine out of a hundred go on to make insufferable nuisances of themselves; hurting, persecuting, terrorising the district with acts of petty spite.

        My learned colleagues say that this is because in everyday life, women are powerless and marginalised; they have no way of striking back against a society that subordinates and belittles them. Thus, when one-in-two-million suddenly finds herself powerful, her first instinct is to settle scores. Personally I dispute this. Anyone who says women are powerless never met my mother. What they really mean is, upper-class women are powerless and marginalised—which is entirely true; and of course, that’s the only sort of women my colleagues have ever had dealings with. But most witches are your basic peasant stock, simply because so are most people. There’s no higher incidence of witchcraft in the gentry, and so the oppressed-and-victimised theory doesn’t convince me. Myself, I figure that anyone, man or woman, who has the talent but isn’t identified and whisked off to the Studium at age ten to be taught polite behaviour would naturally use such powers to bully and torment others because that’s human nature for you. Let any man pick up a stick and he’ll use it to hit someone else, unless the other man’s got a stick too. And nothing will ever change that, believe you me.

        My colleagues and I, however, are civilised, educated men. We know what to do in practically every eventuality. Which is why we have nothing whatsoever to be afraid of.

* * *

        Finding her was no problem. Insignia verborum; you learn it in third year because it’s nominally a restricted Form; God only knows why, it’s harmless enough. It lights up a glowing trail, like a phosphorous snail. A tiny drop of blood, or a hair, or a nail-clipping, is all you need. I picked up one of the bloodstained rushes, and I was off.

        It was raining again, and when I opened the door I could see the trail winding away over the hills and far away. I considered requisitioning a horse, but I hate horse-riding, my back gives me hell for days afterwards. You’re not supposed to use Forms just to keep from getting wet and muddy, but who was there to see or care, and if they did, so what? It’s the Mesoge. Nothing that happens there matters worth a damn. I fortified myself discreetly and set off on my long trudge.

        It was well after sunset when the trail petered out, and by then I’d walked further than I had since I joined the Studium. Forms can give you strength, but they can’t stop your feet aching. But anyhow, I found myself on the wrong side of a gate set in a thick hedge; the quality live here, it said. Gates don’t hinder me much, locked or unlocked. On the other side, I saw a short drive leading to a large square black shape. I tweaked the view a bit with lux in tenebris and made out one of those fortified manor-houses that you get in the Mesoge; half farmhouse, half castle, our legacy from the Troubles three centuries ago. Curious, I thought. No reason to assume my witch was the lady of the house. Probably between fifteen and twenty women would live in a house that size, most of whom would be working for a living. My witch could just as easily be a scullerymaid or a cook.

        But she wasn’t. I looked for her—standing in the pitch dark, with rain dripping off my hood—with victrix causa and spotted her in the great hall. She was sitting on a stool by the fire, sewing a cushion. A few feet away, her husband was serving the loops on a new bowstring. He was about fifty, a fine-looking man with a neatly trimmed grey beard and broad shoulders. Two sons played chess on a low table; twins, most likely, around twenty. A greyhound slept on a bearskin rug. Your ideal picture of the country gentry at home, a beatific vision of aspiration for yeomen farmers and uppity merchants. Awkward. I had a problem.

        I was, of course, entirely within my rights to burst in, seize her by force, and blast anybody who tried to stop me. I was perfectly capable of all that. I had the power, the strength, and the authority. But you don’t do stuff like that just because you can. It’s insensitive and uncivilised, and we aren’t thugs or bullies. I was going to have to wait until they’d all gone to bed. I went and stood under a tree, from where I could watch the windows. The bedroom would be on the first floor of the big round tower; it always is. After an eternity, a faint light flared in the narrow window. I muttered victrix causa and peeped in.

        Country squires in the Mesoge are old-fashioned, and they don’t throw out good furniture just because it’s two hundred and fifty years old. The bed, therefore, was a huge thing, size of a small shed, with heavy tapestry drapes. I’m no voyeur; I cut the Form and gave them plenty of time to undress, get into bed, and blow out the candle. The window went dark. I gave them another eternity to fall asleep, then squelched in my sodden boots up the drive to the front door.

        Any fool can draw bolts with summa fides, but it takes real skill to do it quietly. There’d be servants and dogs sleeping in the hall, and anybody I woke up would have to be put back to sleep with benevolentia or some other unpleasantness. But I’m really very good at all the sneaking-about side of things. I’d have made a good thief or assassin; now there’s something to be proud of. I climbed the stairs without a sound. The bedroom door had old-fashioned leather hinges, and the floor was spread with rugs. Perfect.

        She was fast asleep, her head on one side, her hair loose. When we met at the inn, she’d had it done up in those horrible spirals, like wicker mats; it suited her much better au naturel. She was still neither particularly pretty nor particularly young, but a part of me envied the silver-haired gentleman lying with his back to her. Still; if there’s one thing I hate, it’s being made a fool of.

        I slipped into her mind, exactly the way she’d do it. I kept my scholar’s robe, because that’s what people see when they look at me; not the prematurely bald head or the weak chin or the silly little snub nose. I wanted to be sure she recognised me.

        You can’t take anything into someone’s dream; you have to use what you find there. In her dream, on the bedside table lay a fine old silver and amber brooch, heirloom quality—my guess is, a real brooch she’d always hankered after but never managed to acquire. I picked it up and unfolded the pin. In her dream, she was fast asleep. I stuck the pin through the lid of her closed eye, then pulled it out.

        She opened her eyes. One she couldn’t see through, the other stared at me. “Hello,” I said.

        In her dream, she yelled. I shook my head. “Nobody can hear you,” I said. “We need to talk. You’ll find me at the inn.” Then I stuck the pin in her other eye and got out fast.

        She hadn’t moved, though her eyes were tightly screwed up. Her husband was still fast asleep, so I guess she was a restless sleeper at the best of times. I blew her a kiss and went back down the stairs. I think a servant opened one eye and saw me as I thumbed the latch of the front door. So what?

* * *

        I slept well that night. Genuine Mesoge sleep; healthy exhaustion after a hard day of useful, profitable work.

        Some fool woke me up while it was still dark outside. Just as well for him I have perfect control; there are horror stories of servants at the Studium being blasted into cinders after waking up senior faculty members who weren’t morning people. There’s a lady to see you, said whoever it was. Note the choice of noun. He sounded deeply impressed.

        I’m afraid of nothing, but I’m still capable of embarrassment. How do you start a conversation with a witch you recently blinded in her sleep, who also happens to be the local bigwig’s wife? As I pulled my hose on I decided I’d better be cruel and heartless, though I know full well I’m not very good at it. Probably she’d see through it straight away. As I stuffed my feet into my boots, which were ice-cold and clammy with last night’s rain, I thought; the hell with it, I’ll just be myself. Not a part I’ve ever been happy playing, but it’s less of a drain on my limited imaginative faculties.

        She was sitting on the chair she’d conjured up and then not known how to dissolve. I don’t think she meant anything by it; probably she didn’t recognise it. A spiteful man would’ve vanished it with her still sat in it, but I’m not like that. I had no idea how to address her, so I settled on ‘Madam’, which is usually correct in the country.

        She looked at me. Her eyes were bloodshot. Also, she had a cut on her cheek, just starting to scab over. I hadn’t noticed it the night before, so presumably she’d been lying on it. I did that, I thought guiltily, lashing out like a schoolboy. She was wearing a white lace cap and a heavy wool cloak, fastened at the shoulder with a simple silver starburst brooch.

        I cleared my throat. “The cap,” I said. “Indiscreet.”

        She shook her head. “I wear it all the time, so naturally nobody sees it any more. I assume you’ve told them.”

        I was shocked. “No, of course not. I think we ought to find somewhere a bit more private.”

        That made her grin. “Are you suggesting I go up to your room? I don’t think so.”

        “Allow me.”

        So, I wanted to impress her; of course I did, from the first moment I saw her, in the inn. So what? A show of power would terrify her, let her know she was dealing with someone infinitely stronger than herself; it would serve a useful purpose and therefore was allowed.

        I touched her shoulder with the tip of my finger and took her to the third Room.

* * *

        It’s just occurred to me that you may not know about Rooms. You’re not supposed to. Rooms are classified top secret, not to be mentioned or hinted at in front of unqualified personnel. I could get in big trouble if I were to tell you anything at all about Rooms. Basically, it’s like this.

        Imagine you’re in a big house, or a palace, or a government building. There are lots of rooms in it, but for some reason I can’t begin to imagine, you’ve lived your entire life in just one of them. The concept of a door is so weird and unnatural to you that either you dismiss it as some crazy fantasy or else it terrifies you—anathema, abomination, and other words beginning with A to convey pious disgust.

        At the beginning of second year, the class tutor shows you how to make a door. It’s the most extraordinary thing that ever happens to you, and you remember it for the rest of your life. After that, your sense of wonder gets work-hardened; miracles make you yawn, inconceivable wonders are just another day at the office. But your first door is always with you. It’s the moment when the world changed for ever.

        In theory (and if I do manage to get tenure, it’s the area of theory I intend to devote the rest of my life to) there’s an infinite number of Rooms, linked by an infinite network of doors, stairways, and passages. In theory, you could get so good at this shit that instead of going to the Rooms, you could just sit there and all the Rooms would come to you. In practice, there are seven Rooms, and if you’re really brave and incredibly skilful and outrageously lucky, you might get to visit six of them by choice before you end up in the seventh very much against your will. In everyday life, you use three. I chose the third Room on this occasion because it’s always been my favourite. If there’s anywhere in the world this Mesoge farm boy is at home, it’s the third Room. When I’m there, I’m in control.

        Normally, wherever and whoever you are, you aren’t in control. You may think you are, but you’re not. If you’re the Great King of the Sashan, brother of the Sun and bridegroom of the Moon, and you happen to let your favourite crystal goblet slip through your fingers, it’ll fall on the marble floor and smash into a thousand pieces, and if you cut yourself on one of the pieces and get blood poisoning, you’ll die. But when I’m in the third Room, if I drop something, it needs my permission to fall. Don’t get the idea that it’s like that for everyone in the third Room, by the way. I know a tenured professor of applied metaphysics who wouldn’t go in there if you paid him, because there are monsters under the bed. I know how he feels. You wouldn’t get me in the fifth Room if the rest of the world was on fire; yet my friend the professor goes there to relax and hide from his married sister when she calls for a visit.

        I’m a bit of an old fusspot when it comes to décor. I know what I like. My small-r rooms in the West cloister of the Old Building are small, cold, and damp so I can’t really be bothered with them, but I’ve fixed up the third Room exactly how I like it. The walls are panelled oak, sort of a dark honey colour, with genuine late Mannerist tapestries depicting scenes from Chloris and Sorabel. On the floor I’ve got a rattan mat, because I love the smell and the way it cushions your feet. The ceiling is plaster mouldings with the details—birds nesting among the acanthus leaves, that sort of thing—picked out in gold leaf, because what is life without a few restrained splashes of vulgarity? The furniture is dark oak, almost black; two carved chairs, a table, a bookcase which only occupies half a wall but which somehow manages to hold all the books I ever want to read; three brass lamps; my grandfather’s sword on the wall just above my head, nice and handy if ever I need it; a footstool. And the nice thing is, I can go there for a whole afternoon and when I get back, I’ve only just left.

* * *

        “What the hell?” I said.

        I don’t usually swear in front of women, especially upper-class ones. I stared at her. She smiled.

        It was the third Room, because I’d brought us here, up the second staircase, across the dark landing. I’d opened the door, my thumb on the old-fashioned wooden latch. More to the point, I was in front of her. It’s different when someone gets into a Room ahead of you, or you go in and it’s already occupied. I’m always very careful about that, believe me. But no, I’d opened the door and walked in, and then she followed me. “What have you done?” I said.

        She pushed past me and sat down. There was only one chair. I had to make do with a low three-legged stool by the fire. She picked up her embroidery and carried on where she’d left off the night before. The boarhound lifted its head and growled at me.

        “You can’t bring dogs into the third Room,” I objected.

        “Can’t you?”

        “It’s against the rules.”

        “Then the rules are silly,” she said, licking the end of her silk before threading her needle. “You wanted to talk to me about something.”

        I stood up. This wasn’t right. I headed for the door, which wasn’t there.

* * *

        Father Anthemius taught me how to make a door. The shameful fact is, I was a slow beginner. All the other kids could do it, I couldn’t. Not for want of trying; but it’s one of those things where effort is useless, bordering on counter-productive; like falling asleep, the more you try, the less you succeed. It’s easy, they all told me, you just think of a door and there it is.

        So I thought of a door, and there one wasn’t. All right, they said, try this. Think of a door, but you can only see it out of the corner of your eye. Didn’t work. So they explained to me about peripheral vision, and how you can see things without looking straight at them. Made no difference. I was ashamed and desperate. If I couldn’t make a door, I couldn’t learn anything else, they’d have to send me home, back to a two-room shack in the Mesoge. I wasn’t having that. In all other respects I was well in advance of the rest of my year and I’d already sneaked a look at the basic military Forms in the textbook. I reckoned ruans in defectum standing in front of a mirror would do the trick nicely, and there wouldn’t be enough of a body left to be worth shipping home.

        Enter Father Anthemius. He had retired from the teaching staff the year before I arrived and nobody was sorry to see him go. He was a miserable old bastard who hated kids, and he’d only got into teaching because he couldn’t make the field grades, which was all he’d ever wanted to do. His students had hated him, partly because he was hypercritical, judgemental, and mean, partly because of his habit of farting loudly during tutorials; the smell, they told me, had to be experienced to be believed. He found me in a corner of the cloister, crying my eyes out. He looked at me.

        “You’re pathetic,” he said.

        I looked up at him. “I know,” I said.

        He sighed. A stupid little kid bawling like a girl because he couldn’t do the simplest thing in the syllabus. “You’re trying too hard,” he said.

        “I know.”

        “No bloody good you knowing if you keep on doing it.” He slapped my mind with eget regimine and I squealed, which made him even angrier. “You’re disgusting,” he said. “The sooner they throw you out and you go back to mucking out pigs, the better for all of us. They shouldn’t let you people in here in the first place. You’re no good for anything.”

        I think he was trying to provoke me. He could see I knew some military forms, and if I lashed out with one of them he’d be justified in blasting me till I glowed. He filled my head with bees and locusts so I couldn’t think, then started up again with eget regimine. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it; they call it the teacher’s friend, because it hurts like hell but leaves no marks or traces whatsoever. I tried to get up and run, but he’d locked me down with something or other that made me feel like the whole building was pressing down on me. I could hardly breathe. He was grinning at me, and I felt him inserting something into my mind; memories, false ones, about having fits when I was a baby. Clever; he’d crush me until a blood vessel burst and I had a stroke, and when they looked inside my head they’d find memories of similar attacks going right back through my life. I wasn’t sure why he hated me as much as he did, but there was no doubt in my mind at all. Something about me was so objectionable that I couldn’t be allowed to continue, and he was going to see to it that I didn’t. I felt his hand pass through my skull, feeling for the vein he was going to pinch shut. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of a door. I jumped to my feet, wrenched it open, tumbled through, slammed it shut, and collapsed.

        “See?” said a voice. “Nothing to it, really.”

        I looked up. Father Anthemius was sitting in a carved oak chair with his feet up on a footstool. “This,” he said, “is the third Room. Most kids your age wouldn’t make it this far, but you’re precocious.”

        I turned my head and looked at what I was leaning against; a massive oak door, studded with nails, like you see in castles. The nails are clenched over to hold the plies of wood together. You lay six plies with the direction of the grain alternating at right angles. A door made that way is practically unbreakable, even with a battering ram.

        “You came here because it’s safe,” he said. “Once that door’s shut, nothing can get in unless you want it to. Nobody taught you that, you figured it out all by yourself.”

        “I made a door?”

        He laughed. “I certainly didn’t, so you must have, mustn’t you? I told you it was easy.”

        I lashed out at him with ruat caelum. He swatted it aside. “Too slow,” he said. “Do it again.”

        “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what I was—”

        “Do it again.”

        Nobody taught me ruat caelum. I do it better than anyone else in the world. I’d been practising it for years on birds, flies, anything really small and fast, before I found out it was called that. To do it right you have to focus on a pinprick. I narrowed everything right down and let him have it. But he wasn’t there.

        I stared. Had I hit him so hard he’d completely disintegrated? But then a door opened in the wall and he stepped through. “Which proves my point,” he said, sitting down and putting his feet up. “Rooms are everything. Doesn’t matter that you’re faster than anyone else I’ve ever seen. All I have to do is go next door and you can’t touch me.”

        I felt as though a tap had been opened and my soul drained out of it. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I got mad.”

        “Of course you did,” he said. “You were angry with me, instead of yourself. And before that you were afraid of me, instead of afraid of failing. You could be good at this. But you won’t ever be unless you stop feeling sorry for yourself all the damn time.” He stood up. “Like I said, you’re pathetic. If I hadn’t taken pity on you, you could’ve gone on trying the rest of your life and never got there. Lucky for you I’m such a sweetheart.” He stood up. “Till we meet again,” he said. Then he walked through the door he’d made and closed it behind him, and I was sitting alone on a stone bench on the cloister. I never saw him again; he died that afternoon. I didn’t find out he died until a week later. Apparently he was born at Spire Cross in the Mesoge, just a few miles downhill from where I used to live. Small world.

* * *

        Anyway, the point is, ever since then I’ve been really good at doors. I can make one in a flash, and my doors go to places my esteemed colleagues would never dream of being able to reach. It’s the one thing I’m supremely good at. Hopeless at many things, good at doors, that’s me.

        I tried to make a door. Nothing happened.

        She yawned. “You can try again if you like. Won’t do you any good. This is my place. I’m in control here.”

        I fixed my eyes on her so she was the centre of my field of vision. At the edge there should be, had to be, a door. There wasn’t.

        “You’re pathetic,” she said. “Did you know that?”

        “Actually, yes,” I said. “Let me out of here right now, or I’ll kill you.”

        She smiled. “I wouldn’t,” she said. “I’m sure you could, you’re so much bigger and stronger and more aggressive than me, but then you’d be stuck in here for ever and ever, since you can’t make doors. Of course you wouldn’t be entirely on your own, you’d have the dog for company. But he farts. It can be pretty unbearable in a confined space, believe me.”

        That draining feeling I told you about. Only the second time in my life I’d experienced it, but once endured, never forgotten. “Fine,” I said. “You win.”

        She clapped her hands together in girlish glee. “Do I really? How nice.” I felt a searing pain in the backs of my knees, as though someone had cut the tendons. Then I slumped forward, kneeling before her. I couldn’t feel my feet at all. “Now then,” she said. “The thing is, I don’t know how to do the next bit, never having been to college. But that doesn’t matter, because you do.” She smiled. “Much better really,” she said. “Why should I give up years and years of my life sitting in draughty libraries learning stupid old theory when all I actually need to do is open up your head, and there it all is, ready for me to use?”

        My head was splitting; now there’s a coincidence. “It doesn’t work like that,” I said.

        “Doesn’t it?” She reached out and picked up a book, the only one in the room. She opened it, and I screamed. It was as though she’d pulled the two halves of my skull apart, like opening a clam. “What a pity. No, you’re wrong, here it all is.” She ran a finger down the page. “Chapter six, how to steal someone’s mind.” She turned a few pages. “Doesn’t look too hard. Shall we have a go?”

        I slashed at her with stricto ense. She parried with the cover of the book. I yelled and clamped my hand round the gash in my cheek. Blood was gushing between my fingers.

        “Let’s see,” she said, turning a page. “It’s all pretty straightforward by the look of it. Stands to reason, really. If it was hard, you couldn’t do it.”

        Desperately I tried to remember about Room theory, but I couldn’t.

        “I feel a bit guilty,” she said, as I felt my mind emptying. “Playing all those nasty pranks on my neighbours. They’re stupid and dull as chicken broth but there’s no real malice in them. But it was worth it, to get you down here. I knew it was the only way. I’d never be able to go to your stupid college or read your stupid books, so all this wonderful talent I’ve been given would just go to waste, and where’s the sense in that? But then I thought, what’s a book? It’s the inside of someone’s head put down on paper so anyone can see it, and it’ll never, ever die. Do you know I can’t read? Women don’t, not even delicately nurtured ones like me, it’s not ladylike. So it’s just as well I’ve got a wise, clever man like you to do it for me.”

        “Please,” I said. “Don’t.”

        She looked at me over the top of the book. “You’re pathetic,” she said, and carried on reading.

        I tried ruat caelum, which I’ve known since I was thirteen years old. I couldn’t remember it. I tried to think of a Form, any bloody Form. They’d all gone. She looked up and folded down the corner of a page. The pain made me howl like a dog, and the boarhound lifted its head off its paws and growled again. “Don’t set him off,” she said, “or he’ll start barking.”

        And he farts, I know, you told me. I could feel slices of myself falling away like apple-peel in spirals, things that had been a part of me before I was truly myself. Meanwhile she read, calm and steady, and each time she turned the page I screamed, and she took no notice.

        “I don’t know what you’re making all that fuss about,” she said. “Anyone would think I was skinning you alive. It’s only knowledge, after all. When I’m done I shall turn you loose, and then you can live the rest of your life the way I’m supposed to live mine. I think that’s only fair, don’t you?”

        I didn’t have the strength to argue, or the words or the wit to argue with, or even enough understanding to know if she was right or wrong. The only argument left was strength; she was strong and I was weak, so presumably everything she was doing to me was just fine and exactly how it ought to be. I can live with that, I remember thinking; it’s so simple even I can understand it, and if it pleases her to spare my life and let me crawl away, I’ll be grateful and worship her for her goodness and loving kindness.

        She knew what I was thinking, of course. “You’re pathetic,” she said. “But I guess you know that.”

        “I’d sort of gathered.”

        That made her laugh. “You’re just a book, see?” She held up the book. She had it upside down. “All those clever men spent years copying things into you, and now I’ve copied them out again. Actually, not copied.” She grinned. “A real book must be a wonderful thing. It can be read over and over again and it’s not diminished. You’re not a book after all, you’re just a barn.”

        “Make your mind up,” I said. It cost me the last of my strength. One last wisecrack and now I’d be stupid for ever. Ah well. Everything was, no doubt, all for the best.

        “I ought to thank you,” she said. It was one of those books that has clasps and a hasp for a tiny lock. “But screw that. The hawk doesn’t thank the sparrow, because it’s rude to talk with your mouth full. All right, you can go now. I don’t need you any more.”

        A door opened and swung wide. She wasn’t looking at me. She had her nose in the book. I tried to stand up, but my legs were numb, so I started to crawl toward the door, pulling myself along with my elbows. I had a horrible feeling that I wasn’t going to like what lay on the other side of that door. The sort of life she’d have had if she’d been born normal, without the talent. I’ve come across some terrifying things over the years, inside Rooms and out of them, but nothing quite as bad as that. We use the phrase fate worse than death frivolously, like children playing with a spear they found in a corner of the barn; but there are things much worse than simply being dead, and a life like that would be one of them. Somehow, though, I didn’t seem to have a choice. She was just stronger than me, that was all.

        The boarhound lifted its head again and made that ominous grinding noise. I pulled myself a few inches closer to the door, and the boarhound sprang up and leapt at me—over me—

        I turned my head in time to see her on the ground, the huge dog standing over her, worrying at her neck locked between its jaws. It used its shoulders and back to rip her throat out; a quick, spasmodic movement, a snatch. It’s rude to snatch, my mother used to tell me. Now I could see why.

        The dog lifted its head and swallowed, two big gulps, all gone. She’d stopped moving. The dog sat up straight and farted.

        It was really bad, enough to make your eyes water. When they cleared and I could see again, Father Anthemius was sitting in a chair. The room was different. There was a big, broad table covered in clutter—rolls of paper, books, empty cups, chunks of mouldy stale bread, rat droppings—and a fireplace. The fire was lit. That room was always too hot, I remembered people telling me. What with the heat and the godawful smell, how was anybody expected to learn anything?

        He was reading a book. He closed it, looked at me, and tossed it into the fire. The pain, which was worse than anything I’d ever felt before, lasted as long as it took the book to burn. He reached over with the poker and pounded the dove-grey ashes into dust, then looked at me.

        “Well?” he said.

        I nodded. It was all back again, everything she’d taken from me. I felt as though I’d had a big brush, like the sort sweeps use to clean chimneys, shoved down my throat and pushed really hard until it came out through my arse. “I saved your life,” he said. “Again. You’re pathetic. But you know that.”

        “Yes.”

        “Obviously I didn’t do it for your sake,” he went on. “You’re worthless. I did it simply in order to survive. If you were stripped of your talent, where would I go? I would be lost, like the only copy of a book burnt in a fire. That would be a tragedy. Naturally, I couldn’t allow it to happen.”

        “Naturally.”

        “Even so,” said Father Anthemius, “I suppose I owe you a certain degree of gratitude. Don’t you think?”

        I nodded. “You were dying,” I said.

        “I was,” said Father Anthemius.

        “You knew you didn’t have long. It made you angry.”

        “Very angry. If there’s one form of vandalism I can’t stand, it’s burning books.”

        I reckoned I could afford one wan smile. “Quite,” I said. “You’d spent your entire life writing all that learning and wisdom into a book, and the moment you write the last word, it’s snatched away from you and thrown into the fire. Where’s the sense in that?”

        He nodded. “I don’t mind cruelty,” he said, “But I can’t abide waste.”

        “So,” I went on, “you considered Room theory. It’s always been your best thing. Whenever there’s any danger, you just duck into another room. You showed me that, when I got angry.”

        “Fancy you remembering.”

        “You saw me,” I went on. “And you saw that I was—”

        “Defective,” said Father Anthemius. “Or would you prefer inadequate?”

        “Defective, thank you. You saw I wasn’t capable of making a door. I could do Forms and other stuff, but I was missing the ability to make a door, which meant I could never progress any further, or qualify, or be a practitioner. Which meant they’d throw me out of the Studium and I’d have to go back to the Mesoge and spend the rest of my life ploughing and herding pigs.”

        “Actual useful work.” He grinned. “Perish the thought.”

        “So you pretended to teach me how to make a door,” I said. “But that’s not what you did. You got me scared out of my wits so I wouldn’t see what you were doing—”

        “Like a fly,” he said, “laying its eggs in a wound. A dreadful thing for a man of my distinction, but what choice did I have?”

        “You turned my head—me—into a Room,” I said. “Your body died, but you weren’t in it. You were—”

        “Plenty of space in there,” he said, “which you weren’t ever going to use. Admit it, I’ve been as quiet as a little mouse. You never even knew I was there. And thanks to me, you became a great wise scholar, which you never ought to have done.”

        The maggots of wisdom, I thought, gnawing away at me and building nests of scholarship in the holes they’d made.

        “Without me,” said Father Anthemius, “you were pathetic. You were as weak and useless as a woman. Actually,” he added, “I take that back. I was tempted, you realise. She was so strong, more natural untrained ability than I’ve ever seen in one human being in my entire life. I could have slipped into her mind and she’d never have known I was there, and I’d have had access to more strength, more sheer ability than I’d ever thought was possible.” He shook his head. “But she was still a woman,” he said. “Even with me to guide her, nobody would ever have taken her seriously. And then what? She’d have ended up making war on the whole world, like she did on the people in her silly little village, out of frustration and sheer spite. I hate waste,” he said. “I would’ve been wasted on her. So I decided to stay with you, even though you’re pathetic.”

        But very good at Forms nonetheless. I formed stricto ense in my mind and aimed it at him. He smiled at me. “Sure,” he said. “Go ahead. You kill me, I die, you’ll never be able to make another door as long as you live. Well, get on with it. I’m waiting.”

* * *

        That was a long time ago. He’s still waiting.

* * *

        I met the mayor and the constable on my way out of the village. All done, I told them.

        “You found out who it was?”

        I nodded.

        “Who was it?”

        I took a deep breath. “Tell you what,” I said. “Give it a week, then ask around. Whoever hasn’t been seen for a week, that’s who it was. All right?”

        They wanted to ask me questions, buy me a drink, hold a parade, give me money, put up a statue, make speeches, rename the village after me, all that sort of thing. Go away, I told them. I just want to get out of the horrible Mesoge. I think I offended them. So what?

* * *

        I can raise the dead. Not that I ever would, it goes without saying, because it’s absolutely forbidden. Actually, I always assumed that was a convenient cop-out on the part of the profession—yes, we could do it, of course we could, we can do anything. But we don’t, because it’s illegal and unethical, so you’ll never know if we’re telling the truth or not. Big deal.

        But yes, I can do it. Crazy, really. I can call back the dead, take those ashes and that dust and turn them back into pages. I can unburn books, but I can’t make a simple door. A bit pathetic, really, but there you go.

        And it was the Mesoge, for God’s sake.  There was nobody to see me do it, and if someone did see, nobody would ever believe them, because all country people are superstitious idiots, everybody knows that. A talking rat with LIAR branded on its forehead would stand more chance of being taken seriously by my esteemed colleagues at the Studium than anyone born within fifteen miles of Spire Cross. So why not?

        I won’t tell you the Form, not that it really matters. What matters is standing in the narrow passage off which opens the door to the seventh Room. I’d been there before, but this time I was all too painfully aware that he was there with me. I couldn’t see him, but the lingering stench of dog fart was unmistakable. Never mind. I knocked on the door. “Come in,” she said.

        She was sitting in front of the fire, embroidering something. “Oh,” she said. “It’s you.”

        I stood in the doorway. Believe it or not, I was in no tearing hurry to go fully inside the seventh Room. You’re all right if you have one foot firmly planted in the passageway, or so they tell me. How they would know that I have no idea.

        “Don’t give me that look,” I said. “I didn’t kill you.”

        “No, your dog did. Big difference.”

        I grinned. “Actually, I think it’s a moot point whose dog was whose, if you see what I mean. You go through life thinking you’re the owner and it’s the dog, and then you realise, who’s actually walking who?”

        She gazed at me. “You’re an idiot,” she said.

        “I suppose I must be,” I replied. “All that time and I never realised. How about you?”

        “Oh, I always knew, right from the start. I knew I was better than everybody else in the whole world, but they wouldn’t let me be myself.”

        “So you took to sticking pins in people. To show them how much better you were.”

        She shrugged. “Not through choice. If I’d been allowed to use my gifts and realise my true potential, it’d have been thunderbolts, not pins.”

        “What did they ever do to deserve it?”

        “What did you ever do to deserve what you’ve got and I could never have?” She put down her needlework and took in the room with a wide, circling gesture. “I spent my whole life stuck in this place,” she said. “And now I’m dead, and look where I end up.”

        The Mesoge, I thought. It’s where you go when you die, if you’ve been really bad. Or you’re born there; same difference. The Mesoge is where I belong.

        Just because I can do something, it doesn’t necessarily follow that I want to. Or that I should. Besides; giving her back a life like hers—I don’t think I could be that cruel.

        So I left her to her vengeful wallowing, which I regarded as pathetic, and went back to the third Room. But I couldn’t stay there for more than a minute, because of the smell.

Copyright © 2020 K.J. Parker.

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K.J. Parker is the author of the best-selling ‘Engineer’ trilogy (Devices and Desires, Evil for Evil, The Escapement) as well as the previous ‘Fencer’ (The Colours in the Steel, The Belly of the Bow, The Proof House) and ‘Scavenger’ (Shadow, Pattern, Memory) trilogies, and has twice won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella. K.J. Parker also writes under the name Tom Holt.

Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

A MINOR EXORCISM

by Richard Parks

        Kenji’s temple was small compared to the ones we had known in Kyoto but spacious enough and surprisingly well kept, considering his personal habits. I was almost impressed. I wandered the lecture hall, admiring the craftsmanship of the woodwork and generally wasting the time I was likely supposed to be doing something else.

        “Come to inspect your investment, Yamada-sama?”

        Kenji stood in the doorway, a small scroll in one hand and his priestly staff with the brass cap and heavy rings in the other, which could only mean he was preparing to leave.

        “More like neglecting my duties. The truth of which causes me neither guilt nor regret, I might add,” I said. “Have I come at an inconvenient time?”

        Kenji glanced at the small scroll in his hand. “I was just on my way to Nishisawa. I received a request from the headman there to perform an exorcism.”

        I frowned. “Nishisawa? Where is that?”

        Kenji sighed. “Lord Yamada, the village is within your jurisdiction. Are you telling me you’ve never been there?”

        “There are several such within my estates, Kenji-san. If they’re paying their taxes and not causing trouble, I do them the courtesy of leaving them alone... and what sort of exorcism?”

        Kenji scratched his shaved head. “In truth, the man was a little vague in that regard. He said all would be explained upon my arrival.”

        “So he saw fit to summon the abbot of this temple with no more explanation than that? Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

        Kenji demurred. “It strikes me as discreet. Likely his mistress is possessed by a fox spirit, or some such. That’s not something you’d want to put in writing. Besides, I am the only priest of any experience within your jurisdiction. Who else would he request?”

        “A fair point, but I think I will accompany you, for my own peace of mind.”

        “Lord Yamada, honestly... are you that bored?”

        As a priest, Kenji had his shortcomings, but as my oldest friend he was very difficult to fool. “Tagako-hime has taken my daughters to meet their aunt in Kyoto. My son is on another horse-buying trip to Mino province. What do you think?”

        “Fine, but let’s be off. The morning is ageing, and so are we.”

        Ageing indeed. I could see nothing better than a fine long walk to remind me of the fact.

* * *

        We hadn’t traveled very far on the road before Kenji was forced to comment on the two heavily armed archers accompanying me.

        “Since when do you travel your own estates with an escort?” he asked.

        “Since Tagako-hime found out about your and my last excursion together. She suggested it would be very unwise to leave the compound without one.”

        Kenji suppressed a smile. “I imagine the suggestion was quite forceful. Don’t misunderstand me, Yamada-sama—I enjoy your company. But I would not wish to be the one to bring the news to Princess Tagako if something were to happen to you. Your slight inconvenience does much for my peace of mind.”

        I couldn’t blame Kenji for that. The weight of my current position could only be avoided temporarily, not put aside at will. I was now the head of my own clan and responsible for a vast estate. My life was no longer solely my own, and in truth I would not have changed that fact for the world, but sometimes it was pleasant, for a little while, to pretend otherwise.

        Admittedly, the presence of an armed escort made this more difficult.

        The road we traveled was little more than a well-used cart path with deep forest on either side. As we got closer to Nishisawa, the trees were broken up more and more with small meadows, but I saw no rice fields, and I asked about it.

        “Nishisawa is a small village of no more than a few dozen folk, and fishing is their primary occupation,” Kenji said. “They work the stream of the same name, though in truth I’ve seen rivers that are not nearly so wide or deep.”

        I knew, certainly, that some villages paid their allotment in salted fish. Now I was going to visit one such community. I felt almost dutiful. “Fisher folk must always be on the alert for water goblins and other monsters of that ilk. Have there been any reports?”

        “None that I’m aware of,” Kenji admitted, “though I know the villagers make occasional offerings to appease any kappa in the area. And while we’re on the subject, leave it to you to be looking for trouble where there is none.”

        “I merely consider the possibilities. It’s an old habit that’s served me well... wait. Do you smell that?”

        Kenji and my escort had already stopped one step behind me. “Yes, I do.”

        The scent was faint but unmistakable—death. “Likely nothing more than a wolf has left parts of a rabbit hereabout,” I said. “Such things happen.”

        Kenji looked troubled. “Probably, but I fear there might be another explanation. Follow me.”

        He led us all off the road, through a thick stand of pines. In the distance I was able to make out an open space, invisible from the road. As we approached, the smell of death grew stronger, and I knew this was no rabbit. I remembered the stench of the battlefields of Hokkaido after a few days of sun. This was the same smell.

        “What is this place?” I asked.

        “A place no one outside the village is supposed to know about,” he said, “Myself and the temple excluded. Under the circumstances, I’ll have to trust your and your escort’s discretion.”

        When we arrived, I understood. We were at Nishisawa’s burial ground. The village’s dead were buried in unmarked graves, as was the custom. Only the graves had been disturbed—a rather polite way of saying ‘desecrated’. Several had been dug out completely, and bones and mouldering arms and legs were scattered among the grass. The stench was severe. Takamichi, the younger of my two guards, was turning an alarming shade of green.

        “Takamichi-san,” I said. “Please stand watch at the road. I don’t want anyone following us.”

        He bowed with obvious gratitude and hurried away, though he didn’t manage to get out of earshot before we heard the sound of retching. I glanced at Kiyomatsu, who seemed to be holding up better.

        “Bear it a while yet,” I said. “We won’t be long.”

        He simply stared at the scene of carnage. “Who would do such a thing?” he asked.

        “Not ‘who.’ I suspect the answer will be ‘what.’”

        I went to stand beside Kenji, who was staring at an open pit. “It is as I suspected, Yamada-sama. The bodies have been devoured.”

        I glanced at the edges of the pit. No shovel or pick had made the marks I saw there. A more tunnel-like hole had been dug into some of the graves, possibly to test them for the freshness of the corpse before taking the trouble to dig them out. I could almost admire the efficiency of the enterprise if not for its hellish nature.

        “It would take a very sensitive nose to find this place prior to the desecration,” I said. “And clearly, digging this extensive is the work of more than one creature.”

        “One what?” Kenji asked. “That’s the question, isn’t it? I conducted the rites for many of these burials myself and witnessed the interment. All were done properly. No mere wild animal could have located the bodies.”

        Kenji was stating the obvious, to get it out of the way. It was clear to us both that youkai were involved. Monsters existed in many shapes and forms, and there were indeed many which enjoyed human flesh, but not all of those favored ripened corpses. Kappa, the river-goblins, did, and so were natural suspects this close to the water. Yet they were solitary by nature. This sacrilege had clearly been carried out by several creatures—at least a half-dozen or more by my estimate, working together.

        “Youkai are dangerous enough individually,” Kenji said. “Can you imagine what could happen with an organized and disciplined band?”

        “We don’t need to imagine. You saw how some of the graves had been tunneled into first; I suspect it was to test the quality of the remains before digging them up.”

        Kenji looked grim. “Let’s get back on the road to Nishisawa. There have been no burials in at least a month, so it’s possible the villagers don’t even know what’s happened.”

        That was no more than sense. On the other hand, if they did know, it was possible they had more information than we did. At the moment all Kenji and I had was speculation.

        We found a somewhat-recovered Takamichi back at the road. “With your permission, Yamada-sama, I will go to the temple and fetch Master Kenji’s associates. They will be needed.”

        It was a good point, and Kenji agreed. While Kenji was the abbot and only full priest, there were several acolytes and lay-brothers in residence. Now they all had grim work ahead of them, and I did not envy them or Kenji one bit. I sent Takamichi on his way.

        “We’ll be days setting this to rights, to the degree it can be done at all,” Kenji said. “Whatever did it, we need to find them before this happens again... you don’t think they might have attacked Nishisawa, do you?”

        I wanted to be hopeful, but all my possibilities looked grim. “The thought crossed my mind. While they apparently don’t prefer fresh meat, what we saw back there required forethought and direction of the sort we seldom see in youkai. We can’t assume they wouldn’t kill now in order to feast later. We must proceed with caution until we know what we’re walking into.”

        Kiyomatsu insisted on taking the lead position, his bow in his hand. I followed with my tachi while Kenji, with his heavy priest’s staff with the bronze cap and heavy brass rings, brought up the rear.

        By the time we arrived at the outskirts of the village. I had come to dread what we might find, so it was with considerable relief that I noted unburned houses and unslaughtered people. The houses were small but well-tended; several fishermen mended nets or built fish traps by the river while women and girls weeded gardens. Yet the air felt strange and puzzling. While there was neither the stench of death nor the smell of blood, I felt as if I’d walked into an invisible fog.

        “Kenji, do you feel that?”

        I didn’t explain what “that” was. With Kenji I knew I wouldn’t have to. He was sniffing the wind like a cautious hound.

        “A sort of miasma,” he said. “Faint, and I can detect no hint of poison or other harm in it, but it should not be here. Perhaps this is what the headman was referring to.”

        “Perhaps....”

        Otherwise the village seemed normal enough. There were several townsfolk going about their business. Nothing that one would not expect to see in a village whose inhabitants mostly subsisted on fishing. As Kenji had said, the “stream” that marked the western boundary of the village was the size of a river, larger even than the two which snaked through the Capital. There was an old moon bridge spanning the stream at its narrowest point, leading to a path beyond, likely the continuation of the road we had taken to arrive there.

        With the river so close, several kappa could easily hide within mere feet of the village, and we would be none the wiser.

        I still doubted the water-goblin explanation, but at this point I couldn’t dismiss any possibility. Kenji went off to find the headman while Kiyomatsu and I had a look around. After all, it was, as I had told Kenji, my first visit. The thought came to me before we saw any more of the place.

        Something is very wrong here.

        The miasma alone suggested no less, but that wasn’t all. Dullard that I was, it took several minutes for the reason for my discomfort to become apparent.

        It’s the villagers.

        While Nishisawa was new to me, it was hardly the only time I’d visited one of the communities under my jurisdiction. Then as now I traveled with a very light escort, but somehow word of my imminent presence always preceded me, which tended to cause crowds of varying sizes to gather for no other purpose I could ascertain except to get a glimpse of me. I had always found this habit more than a little disconcerting, despite being repeatedly informed that it was no less than a normal reaction to the presence of one’s overlord. And, while I didn’t think I was ever going to be comfortable with the reality of it, this was the role I filled now.

        In Nishisawa? Here and now? I was being completely ignored.

        It would have been refreshing if it hadn’t been so contrary to my previous experience that it made me uneasy. Had these few years playing the “Great Lord” turned me into such a dullard?

        “Kiyomatsu-san, let us find Kenji. Now.”

        We didn’t have to go far. Kenji was walking along the river bank near the bridge, a smile on his face. Or rather, something that passed for a smile. A sort of forced expression I had seen many times in our years together—a façade to conceal the fact something was very, very wrong. When he saw us, he stopped and waited at the foot of the bridge for Kiyomatsu and I to come to him.

        “I gather you’ve finally noticed,” he said. “No wonder the miasma seemed harmless. It wasn’t poison—it was a veil. Otherwise one of us would have detected their presence sooner. Whatever despoiled the burial ground is here...it is them.” He nodded toward the villagers.

        “And the headman?” I asked.

        “Dead. For several days, by my estimate. I presume I was allowed to find the body because my—or rather, our—understanding of the real situation was considered moot at this point.”

        “It may well be,” I said. “Look.”

        The “villagers” had abandoned their disinterest. Now they gathered together and moved silently toward us as a group. Some were unarmed, but others carried clubs and I noted a few fishing spears and flails.

        “Yamada-sama, I suggest we move to more defensible ground,” Kiyomatsu said.

        “I quite agree.” We hurried onto the bridge and up to its highest point, about twenty feet over the water. “The path beyond the stream looks clear,” Kenji said. “We could make a run for it.”

        “Run to where?” I said. “The closest aid is on this side of the river, now blocked by those...things, whatever they really are. And I have no doubt they can run at least as well as we can.”

        Kiyomatsu spoke up. “Your pardon, Master Kenji, but I believe Yamada-sama’s assessment of our situation is correct. There are no archers among them, so our best chance is here on the bridge. They cannot bring their full weight of numbers against us.”

        The bridge was just wide enough for two people to stand nearly shoulder to shoulder. Enough room to swing a weapon, but only just. With luck we could hold them off, but I wasn’t optimistic about our ultimate fate.

        “Kiyomatsu-san, how many arrows do you have?”

        “Fifteen.”

        The phony villagers numbered about twice that number, and even with an archer as skilled as Kiyomatsu, we couldn’t count on every arrow finding its target. “Kiyomatsu, stand behind us and loose as you see fit. I needn’t tell you to be judicious. Kenji and I will form the line.”

        I half expected an argument from Kiyomatsu, as it was his sworn duty to protect me, but he clearly saw the sense in my suggestion. “As you wish, but once my arrows are depleted, I’ll take your place.”

        “If the point is not moot by then for all of us, so be it,” I said.

        I traded my tachi to Kiyomatsu for his kodachi. The tachi was very effective from horseback or man to man but too long and thin for close-quarters; a shorter blade made more sense. Kenji shifted his grip on his staff and held it more like a spear, for the same reason. Kiyomatsu readied his bow, and we waited for the first attack.

        Kenji frowned. “Why are they moving so slowly?”

        This was a question I was asking myself by that point. We already knew the “villagers” were not human. As for the real townsfolk of Nishisawa, I did not hold much hope for them, and only a little more for us. We were badly outnumbered and still did not know what sort of monsters we faced. Whatever they were, they clearly had us a great disadvantage despite our better position. The proper tactic would have been to rush us with their superior numbers and either kill us outright or, by the crush of bodies, force us off the bridge into the water, where we would be all but helpless. Yet they were showing distinct signs of hesitation.

        “Perhaps, as the sort of creatures which clearly feed on the dead, they’re unused to prey that fights back,” I said.

        Kenji frowned. “Wait... do you feel that?”

        I did. I wasn’t as sensitive as Kenji, but years of practice had taught me to distinguish, at least somewhat, the presence of the otherworldly. While the veil of miasma had hidden the villagers’ true nature from us for a time, it was gone now. This was something separate, very close and powerful compared to whatever things were masquerading as townsfolk.

        This was pure evil.

        “Be on your guard, Kiyomatsu,” I said. “I think the creatures’ true leader is close to revealing itself.”

        Whatever the thing was, it was obvious the villagers felt it too. And, either encouraged by its presence—or more afraid of the unseen leader than of us—the villagers advanced.

        I had an idea. “Kiyomatsu, see that slightly bulky fellow a half-step ahead of the others? Kill him.”

        Kiyomatsu drew his bow in one smooth, practiced motion and loosed. The arrow caught its target in the neck just below the chin. For an instant it stood there, looking surprised, before blood gurgled from its mouth and it fell forward at the base of the bridge. In a moment, death released it from its disguise and its true nature was revealed—a short, squat creature with red skin, dangling ears, and long flowing hair.

        “MMryM,” I said.

        While the term now referred to any one of a number of youkai often found in the wilderness, its original use was specific to this one—an unpleasant creature known to haunt graveyards in search of its meals. It was especially fond of rotting entrails. It was also, like the kappa, known to be solitary.

        Something brought them together into a band that preyed on corpses. And what could possibly have done that?

        My guess was something more powerful than a mMryM; something which also preferred the entrails of the dead and used the weaker creatures to help it get them. The thing that I now knew hovered, still invisible, above the disguised youkai. I had a strong suspicion of what that creature might be. I could only hope I was wrong.

        “Yamada-sama, they’re moving again,” Kenji said.

        While the death of their comrade had caused some delay and consternation in the ranks, now the others pressed forward. Kiyomatsu found another target in the front rank—which led to another hesitation, then another advance, though it was clear that none of them was enthusiastic about facing us, even with their advantage of numbers.

        “It’s almost as if they’re being pushed,” Kiyomatsu said.

        “That’s exactly what’s happening.” I turned to Kenji. “Do you have any spirit wards?”

        “I always do,” Kenji said. “But what... oh, I think I see. Here.”

        Kenji reached into his sash and pulled out a long strip of paper, carefully folded. I passed it to Kiyomatsu. “Tie this on the end of your next arrow. I’ll tell you where to aim.”

        “This will likely affect the arrow’s flight,” he said, though he quickly did as I bade him.

        “We won’t need great accuracy. Aim your arrow two bow-lengths over the heads of those at the base of the bridge, and sight toward the right corner of the railing. Shoot when you’re ready.”

        Kiyomatsu drew and released, shooting, as he thought, toward the empty air. There was a bright flash of white light as the arrow struck something and then burst into flames. In no more than an instant the true enemy was revealed. It floated in the air, surrounded by corpse-fires. A massive creature with great rippling fur, long white teeth, and vicious claws.

        Kasya!

        There were many varieties of monster cats, the bakeneko. Some were merely annoying, others even somewhat kindly disposed toward humans, but the kasya were not of either kind. They were little less than demons, powerful and evil, and their favorite meal? Human corpses. They had been known to openly raid funerals to steal the body, swooping down from the sky like a feline vulture, but this one apparently was not content with such sporadic meals and had made common cause with the mMryM. Now that its presence was revealed, it roared in anger, and the other monsters, now also showing their true forms and clearly more afraid of their master than the three of us, pushed forward with purpose.

        “I don’t suppose you have a ward powerful enough to deal with this?” I asked.

        Kenji glared at me. “This is not the sort of thing I need to face every day, Yamada-sama! The kasya is a rare creature... though clearly not rare enough.”

        I killed the first mMryM that reached me and shoved it back against the one behind it. Both fell into the water. I glanced at Kiyomatsu. “Your target is the demon. Aim for the head and heart. We’ll handle the mMryM.”

        I saw Kiyomatsu’s first attempt glance off the demon’s shoulder, and it howled in pain. It flew towards us but Kenji was reciting a sutra, and his chant not only kept the kasya at bay; it was causing the mMryM considerable discomfort as well, though they did not stop.

        I had to concentrate on killing and not being killed, but I was well aware that Kenji would not be able to keep up his chant and fight off the mMryM at the same time. He was even older than myself and was already huffing, although his priestly staff found its mark again and again, and the splashes of the fallen were almost as numerous as raindrops. They had to be, as more and more of the creatures joined in the fight.

        There are too many of them.

        At this point there was no doubt in my mind that we would soon be overwhelmed. The mMryM were small but stronger than they looked, and the roars of the kasya as Kiyomatsu’s arrows struck home did much to turn their fear into something resembling fortitude. They kept coming. We were forced to retreat one step, then another.

        Tagako-hime will mourn me, but not before she curses me for a fool.

        I knew I probably deserved it, but then I thought about what would have happened had Kenji come alone. Not only would I have lost my friend, but the kasya with its mMryM allies could have kept up the charade and used the village as a base for their predations. Scores of people would have died, people under my protection. As it was, Takamichi’s report would likely bring enough unwelcome attention that the monsters would be forced to move on. At least I hoped as much, since I had little for our survival.

        “Yamada-sama, I fear I was unsuccessful,” Kiyomatsu said. His quiver was empty. I took back my tachi and gave his sword to him. I could see more than one arrow or arrow-stump protruding from the demon cat, and it was moving more slowly than before, but no arrow had struck a lethal area. The creature was in pain and enraged, but Kenji’s chant was quickly fading, along with his strength.

        “It was unlikely a lone archer would be able to do more than you did, Kiyomatsu-san. That is a very tough creature.” I killed another mMryM and turned to Kenji. “Behind me, Master Kenji. Rest a moment.”

        “Thank you, Lord Yamada, but I must decline. If I am to die fighting evil, I will not count it as wasted effort.”

        The demon cat was floating toward us, and the leer on its face told the tale. No doubt it was imagining the fun it would have killing us and later feasting when our bodies were ripe enough. I was determined to give it a few more gashes to remember me by.

        “Loose!”

        The familiar command was loud and clear and did not come from any of us. I looked toward the shore and was both amazed and relieved to see a squad of Yamada-clan archers in perfect formation even as a dozen arrows struck the demon cat from behind. It howled again, but its howl was not rage this time—it was pain and fear. The next volley ripped through our attackers at the base of the bridge, and a third quickly followed. The mMryM once pressing us hard now turned their backs and attempted to flee, even as the arrows struck them down with almost methodical precision.

        I saw Morofusa, the captain of my guard, at the end of the line with Takamichi beside him. I raised my tachi and pointed at the kasya, now attempting to flee, and Morofusa directed the next swarm of arrows at the demon. It slumped, slowed, and then fell out of the sky onto a pile of dead mMryM. Kiyomatsu, Kenji, and I struck down the last few as they attempted to flee the bridge.

        The kasya was weakly trying to crawl away when we reached the foot of the bridge. I took no small pleasure in separating its head from its body, which by now resembled one of Morofusa’s archery targets. Kenji stuffed a ward into the creature’s open maw for good measure.

        Morofusa hurried up to us, with Takamichi close behind. “My Lord, are you unharmed?” Morofusa asked as he kneeled before me.

        “I am tired but quite well, KanchM. Your arrival was much more than timely, but how did you know?”

        He grinned. “Blame this one.” He nodded at Takamichi, who did indeed appear a little nervous.

        I made myself appear fierce. “And may I ask how you knew we were in trouble, Takamichi-san?”

        He was kneeling also and did not look at me. “I didn’t know... but I was under orders, Yamada-sama.”

        I blinked. “Orders? Whose orders? What were they?”

        “Tagako-hime’s orders. She knew I was assigned to your escort, and I was given strict instructions. She said if it appeared that you, with or without Master Kenji, were about to pursue anything odd or potentially dangerous, I was to make an excuse to return to the compound and bring your full guard. No exceptions. Forgive me, but Tagako-hime made it very clear what would happen to me if I did not do as she said.”

        I frowned. “You told me you were going to inform the temple.”

        “I did,” he said. “The acolytes are at the burial ground now.”

        Kenji just shook his head wryly. “I had better go help.”

        I assigned three archers to escort him there, though it occurred to me that my caution was somewhat belated. “Send for whatever aid you require.”

        “Likely quite a bit,” he said, and limped off with his guard close behind. I directed Morofusa to have the rest of our men divide into teams and search for the true villagers. I had a feeling there would be many more funerals involved. I instructed Takamichi to remain with me. He still had not looked up.

        “Tagako-hime said you might be angry. I am prepared to accept your punishment.”

        I almost smiled. “For saving my life? No, Takamichi-san. In your place I would have done the same. You and Kiyomatsu can expect suitable rewards.”

        He bowed lower. “Thank you, Yamada-sama, but it was no more than our duty.”

        True enough, but then Tagako-hime, even so far away as the Capital, had somehow managed to remind me of my own duty, and it was no longer simply to myself. It was also to six villages just like Nishisawa. Continuing to pretend otherwise was not the best course for me, my family, or the people who were now my responsibility. I made a vow to be more careful in the future, now that there would be one.

        Or at least as careful as the situation allowed.

Copyright © 2020 Richard Parks

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Richard Parks is an ex-pat Southerner now living in central New York state with his wife and a couple of grumpy cats. He is the author of the Yamada Monogatari series from Prime Books and The Laws of Power series from Canemill Publishing. In addition to appearances in several Best of the Year anthologies, he has been a finalist for both the World Fantasy Award and the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature.

Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

THE HEART THAT SAVES YOU MAY BE YOUR OWN

by Merrie Haskell

        You are a girl alone on a prairie.

        You hunt alone and you sleep alone. You sleep alone, with your thighs clamped tight on nothing at night, but not too tight. You carry a rifle and a dream of a white dress. You sleep under the stars. You hunt.

* * *

        You were a farm-girl once. You fell in love at a husking bee, your heart flipping open like a broken-clasped locket, showing a hidden face to the world ‘til you scrabbled to snap it shut once more.

        You walked to church every Sunday morning thereafter and sat modestly with the other maidens in the middle pews. With your mouth full of hymns, you could angle your head to spy Roland Schmidt from the corners of your eyes. His blue-checked church shirt always glowed against the backdrop of the half-married women’s rust-red dresses.

        Josie Speight caught you looking about three months after the husking bee, and you knew you had to act.

* * *

        You are a girl alone on the prairie, under the blue bowl of the sky, and you have run out of hardtack.

        You ignore the jackrabbits and hunt for pronghorn. Rabbit starvation is a term you learned twice as a warning, first from your pa’s war stories and later during your ma’s womanhood teachings. You don’t have to learn things a third time.

        You bring a pronghorn down easy enough, but the season’s on the cusp of winter and spring. You know enough to take your ‘corn knife and chop through a foreleg. You inspect the marrow and find a good fat ring there. You won’t starve through improper feasting.

        You eat and you eat, too hungered to fuss over the blood scent in your nose. Though what’s a little blood between you and the prairie? Blood is the binding between hunting and womanhood, and yet, and yet, the dress the virgin bride wears is white, no matter how much she hunts or menstruates.

        White dresses are impossible to keep clean on the prairie.

        White dresses lie.

        You are a girl alone on the prairie, on the flat but surprisingly uneven prairie, on a prairie whose grasses hide secrets.

        You are a girl alone, and you fall alone. You fall into a fissure in the earth, into darkness, losing consciousness when you land, or maybe before.

        You wake a few times, but waking is painful, particularly in your head and your left leg, and walking? Walking is just out.

        You are alone, delirious, and you are broken.

* * *

        When you turned sixteen, your classmate, Nan Eberhardt, marked a kiss on the forehead of Boone Irvine and left to hunt with the spring. She didn’t return.

        When you turned sixteen, your neighbor, Thalia Gendregske, told you she burned for Granger Hedgepeth. She forswore the hunt and turned up round-bellied in a shame-red dress before the magistrate, taking her man, her civil union, and her seat forever in the back of the church.

        At sixteen, people paired off. But you didn’t pair off, though it worried your pa. You waited, although for what, you couldn’t say. There weren’t so many young men with good futures to go around in a town this small and lonely. Always plenty of old men with grave-wives out there, though. Always plenty of young men with bad intentions. There were opportunities if all you wanted was a seed to bear.

        But that’s not all you wanted.

* * *

        You dream a hundred times of returning home in triumph, in some dreams a ‘corn slung over your shoulders, in others a velvety pelt tucked in your knapsack. Ma greets you always, sometimes never dead, sometimes telling you that her time buried ‘neath the mockernut tree was just a dream you all shared. Always, she is proud of you for obtaining the white dress, for carrying back the single horn to her to carve into your wedding crown.

        Every time you wake, sweating and panting, you feel the dress slip a little further away, falling away like you fell into the earth.

        You dream of the hunt, too, of luring the ‘corn in through one of the doorways of the world with your sweet, pure scent. You dream of your sweetheart welcoming you home. Nothing is so sweet as these dreams, and waking from them is even harder. You’re sure you’ll never see Roland’s face again.

        Then you dream of the town’s schoolchildren singing you a song:

        Tabitha, Tabitha, where have you gone?

        I’ve got to Laramie to harvest a ‘corn

        Tabitha, Tabitha, what have you done?

        I’m home to marry, a murderer born.

* * *

        When Roland Schmidt returned busted from some lawless gold rush town, gone a boy but returned a prodigal son, he’d smiled at you in just such a way that your waiting made sense. You froze in the warm bright whirl of the husking bee, fingers twined in cornsilk, and that moment when you fell in love is one you will carry across the threshold of death, to the storm beyond the quiet.

        You kept your love quietly, while you made your secret preparations. You did your work. You churned butter and colored it with carrot peels, the way Ma taught you. You practiced shooting your rifle, the way Ma taught you. You mended fences side-by-side with Pa during the day and mended stockings by lamplight in the evenings, the way Ma taught you. At night, you lay wakeful on your narrow pallet, afire.

        Your prey was always sparse on the prairie, and any town spinster who caught wind that Tabitha Müller was in love—oh the traps that would be laid for you at watering holes and river crossings by the unlucky who hoped to steal your kill. Planning a proper wedding was the greatest danger a frontier girl faced.

        But time kicked at you, made you worry. Someone else might see the good in Roland Schmidt, and waiting longer wouldn’t make the prairie suddenly teem with ‘corn so you chose to stop loving Roland Schmidt through half-opened doorways and went to him.

        Roland worked late, as smiths often do. You stole to the smithy door, breathing in the scent of charcoal fire. His anvil was lower than the others, you noticed, but his height made no difference otherwise. His muscled forearms made you eager, but the crinkles at the corners of his eyes reminded you of the kindness he’d always possessed, even as the wildest boy in school, and this steadied you.

        “Evenin’, Tabby,” he said at long last, not seeming when he noticed you.

        You became graceless, a stump of a girl. You unknotted your handkerchief and showed him your silver. “I’m commissioning a knife.”

        His smile faded. He took the coins into his broad palm and looked them over, calm and professional. “This will buy you a fine knife.”

        “My ma’s broke in the field. I want one I can pass to my girls, should I bear any.”

        “Ah,” he said, his face shuttering like a house awaiting a storm. “A wedding knife.”

        “Yes. A knife suited to unicorn hunting and butchering.”

        He grunted and fished a tinder of paper and a kindling of pencil from his pocket. He wrote Tab. M. ‘corn knife on his paper and looked up. “Any specifications?” His eyes were dark, the promise in them gone.

        “I—I—maybe this was a mistake.” You back away, feeling sore ashamed. Ma never talked you through this part, before she passed last winter, so it wasn’t your fault you made such a hash of it; it wasn’t your fault.

        Roland relented. “Wait, Tabby. I apologize. That wasn’t proper of me. I should offer you felicitations and ask the name of your intended.”

        No amount of chalk could’ve hidden the blood that rose to your cheeks. You looked at the ground. You hoped you would be braver, facing a ‘corn.

        “I have the cart before the horse. I know most maidens purchase a knife after speaking to their intended, but today is not going as well as I’d hoped.”

        Roland’s fingers slackened and his pencil tinkled against his anvil as it fell. He ducked to fumble after it. “I don’t understand.”

        Your cheeks went oven-hot. “I’d like to court you, Roland Schmidt,” you whispered to the top of his fine head.

        As he rose with his pencil, his eyes stopped at your hands. “Your bonnet!”

        You glanced down. You’d bent the stiff brim of your new bonnet clean in half and now creased it with disastrous efficiency. You gave up then, crushing the whole useless thing between your hands. “The bonnet’s not important.”

        He met your eyes square. “All right then. Why me?”

* * *

        You wake alone, alone with a fever in a fissure on the lonely prairie.

        You prepare yourself for an ending. You pray. You get right with God. You close your eyes and try to will yourself to sleep, hoping sleep carries you through to death, where you might meet your ma again.

        The song from your dream stays with you. You hum to yourself: Tabitha, Tabitha, where have you gone?

        Morning breaks, casting enough light for you to see there’s nothing of use in the fissure with you except your pack, which landed nearby. You drink what water you have, mixing it with headache powders from the apothecary. You splint your leg with your ‘corn knife, which is long and tough as your shinbone. Tougher, maybe, and made by your beloved.

        Your head steadies. When the sun reaches a point just shy of noon, it shines right down into your fissure. It is like being trapped in a dry well, you think; dry wells have long terrified you, for different reasons. You aren’t staying here another minute, no matter what shape your leg is in. You clench the sheath of your ‘corn knife twixt your teeth, and you claw your way out of the damned fissure, dragging your leg behind you.

        You are not without grit. You’re a farm-girl after all, and there’s a good man pining for you, back in a small town on a wide prairie.

* * *

        You looked into Roland’s eyes and said, “I choose you because I have always liked talking to you better than I’ve liked talking to any other person. Because when I look at you, and you look at me, my heart rings like a bell.”

        Promise glowed in his eyes again, sunlight remembering a darkened world. “Maid Müller, I accept your courtship.”

        You let a smile seep from one corner of your mouth to the other. “Tabby will do as a name for everyday, if you will. We should kiss, if you will that too.”

        “I will,” he said, and you leaned down, your heart thrumming with two words—him, yes, him, yes—with a thresher’s rhymeless rhythm.

        Your courtship lasted the brief weeks it took for Roland to stretch out the making of your knife. Love grew, in secret snatches of time. You feared the eyes of the town’s restless spinsters.

        “You don’t need to go,” Roland said in an urgent quiet voice, when you met on the street one day. You stood far from him, as though you exchanged strangerly how-do’s instead of secret ‘corn hunting plans. His eyes cast a long glance up the street to the magistrate’s house.

        “Go about in rust-red? Confess to sinning? I might sin, Roland, but I won’t wear red forever if I can help it.”

        Roland’s brow beetled. You gentled your approach.

        “I may be half an orphan and have no hunters left in my family to train me, but my Ma taught me what she could, and I can find a ‘corn. Don’t you fret.”

        “She trained you so long ago, Tabby. And so many girls never come back from the hunt.”

        You forced a confident smile. “I will, though.”

* * *

        You are a girl alone on the prairie, and you are broken. You have climbed from a crack in the earth, but you cannot walk. You drag yourself along for a while, but you tire. You must find water. You build a fire instead.

        You lie still, listening to the wind, watching the purpling sky bear up a moon so luminously silvered it echoes the pictures of white-dressed brides in your memory. You wonder if you will see the moon rise again.

        You think you are dead when a red-haired woman looms out of the silver light and hoists you to her shoulder. You are not dead. You are just in pain, thirsty, confused. Fortunately, you faint.

        You wake a time later. The red-headed woman tells you her name is Salvia, that her wife is Petra, and that you have slept a long day in their tar-paper house on the prairie after they set your leg. Your leg alternates feeling snug and secure and screaming to aching life. You sleep, you wake, you drink broth.

        Salvia and Petra tell you the prairie is too dangerous for a girl alone. They hunted together, and they brought down two ‘corns, though they never found any sign closer than sixty-five miles away. “It was a long hunt, and a lonely hunt, and would have been lonelier still if we had not been Sapphic.”

        “How long? A week?”

        “Three months,” Silvia says. “A season.”

        You swallow hard, trying not to taste decay on the back of your tongue. “My ma found a ‘corn in a week.”

        “Sure, twenty years ago, back East, a wedding hunt often took less than a week.”

        “In Appalachia, they could knock it off in a single afternoon,” Petra agrees. “The ethereal doorways are more numerous east of the Mississip, most plentiful in the mountains. Out here in the flat, there just aren’t enough transits.”

        It makes sense. Your pa and ma came out from Philadelphia, shortly after they wed. Your ma hunted the Poconos. After she passed last winter, all else you learned about the white dress came from hearing the town’s venerable ladies complain about their old hunting wounds. This is the first you heard about the transits being slimmer out here, though of course you understood some limiting factor must be at work.

        Salvia turns to attend the porridge on the stove. “I must know, Tabby. Why not woo your beau and go stand before the magistrate if you get with child?”

        Answering that directly feels like a weakness, so you challenge her. “What made you choose to hunt?”

        Petra touches Salvia’s shoulder, looks at you, speaks. “We did it so no one can ever say our union doesn’t count. None can gainsay a white dress.”

        “Well, the same,” you say. “My beau ain’t... average. I want the town and Roland to know he’s worth the white dress.”

        Salvia swings back around. “Roland, son of the Shutter Creek blacksmith?”

        “The same.”

        “He’s a beautiful man, Tabitha, for all he lacks in height.” Salvia glances at Petra.

        Petra says, “But ain’t he worth the red dress, too?”

        Your jaw works as your mind works too. You bite back word after word. You know there’s a rightness to Petra’s question, but you also know the shape of your own stubbornness, which has been your bosom friend your whole life.

        “I regret our dresses,” Petra says in a slender voice.

        You dart a glance at Salvia, who doesn’t look surprised. “Wh-why? You just said—”

        Petra’s voice is burnt coffee brewed in tin. “I know. But I’m angry I believed that wearing white would make it better for us. It didn’t. Oh, they have to let us sit up front in the church, call us ‘missus and missus’ when the fancy strikes, but it’s a varnish of respect, not ingrained.”

        Salvia says, “I disagree. It would be much harder without those things.”

        You speak slowly. “My ma used to say, ‘a girl in white respects herself, and the world knows it.’ I don’t want to be one of those half-married women in the back of the church.” You lick your lips, chapped from the dry hours in the fissure. “One of those women who don’t care enough about being clean to get a clean dress, the ones who decide bearing children is better than bearing pride.” You’re amazed and a little sickened by the depth of scorn in your own voice.

        “One of those women who choose happiness over what other people think?” Petra’s scorn matches your own, and she slices bread like the bread is Holofernes and she’s Judith. She has surprised you speechless; now she scowls at the breadboard. “I don’t know how killing an innocent beast makes you clean, either.”

        Salvia says nothing, but you think she agrees. Your ma’s voice is a weak thread in your head, so you latch onto it more firmly, with both hands. “Just like the Lamb’s blood washes us clean,” you say virtuously.

        That ends the conversation handily.

* * *

        He came for you by starlight, the dawn before you left. You sat together in the haypile out back of the barn, holding each other.

        “My mother wore white, and both my sisters too,” he said. But he also said, “It makes no difference to any of their unions what color they wear at church.” And, “What would their bravery have served, if they lost their lives?”

        “They proved to all their esteem for their husbands. The world saw their bravery and chastity and dedication.”

        “At least let me come with you. Let me guard your back. Make sure no townswomen ambush you in your hunt.”

        “That—that’s not done. Women must face the hunt alone.”

        “That’s never how it was supposed to be,” Roland said. “My grandmother’s hunt in Bremen, back in Europe, the whole town came, and it was concluded in an hour. An hour, Tabby. She knelt beside a fountain in a gold dress, wept for a few moments, and a unicorn crawled into her lap! That’s not possible here. This is a different place, a harder place.”

        He was so adamant, so hard, so certain that you weren’t making the right choice.

        He tried another tactic, a dangerous one. “Besides, who would you give the horn to?”

        Throwing Ma’s death at you was an unkindness. You couldn’t see his face clearly in the darkness, and where that bothered you earlier, now you are glad. When you kissed him the first time at the husking bee, the noise and the light of the Stürmers’ big barn had faded away and you had known in the moment of that kiss three true things: you would fall in love with this man; you would marry him; and you would wear white at the wedding.

        But maybe you hadn’t known anything true, after all.

        He would take me in the red dress, you thought. But I wouldn’t take him.

        He knew he’d gone too far, so he pulled you close and gentled your feelings. You clung to him. You wouldn’t give up the white dress. Not even for him.

* * *

        You write a letter in Salvia and Petra’s tar-paper house and wait. Pa comes ten days later, bringing precious silver to pay Sal and Pet for all you ate under their roof. It won’t compensate for their time lost from hunting and farming, but it’s something.

        You lie in the back of the wagon, your healing leg bolstered by Ma’s last quilt. You sway and drowse, until Pa stops for the night. You eat sausage rolls together, and he makes you beds next to a fire fed with dung and twists of grass.

        “What’s next, daughter?” Pa asks.

        “I’ll heal up and I’ll go back out.” Your teeth ache with clenching. It’s too hard to kill the vision of yourself in white, too hard to love the vision of yourself in red.

        He just nods. He knows you for Martha Müller’s daughter.

        You drowsed all day, so you lie awake on the cold prairie.

        A chilly wind whistles through your camp, flattening the fire. You’re grateful for Ma’s quilt. Pa doesn’t even stir. You nestle deeper in the quilt, and for a time you sleep, in that wide-awake way where you don’t know if you’re dreaming or thinking. But you must have slept, for when you are truly aware of being awake, you are entirely comfortable and cozy, with a heavy warmth pressed along your side, a whole body’s worth of warmth. Pa still snores across the fire.

        You tilt your head to look. What lies next to you is winter-moon white, gleaming softly like Christmas tinsel.

        What lies next to you breathes in comforting puffs, like a family’s guardian dog.

        What lies next to you is the thing you came to the prairie to kill.

        Your hand creeps to your knife. A dozen stories crowd in at you, none so clear as Roland’s story of his grandmother in Bremen. A unicorn crawled into her lap.

        Your hand stills on your knife and leaves it where it lies. You reach out, fingers descending slowly to the ‘corn’s beautiful hide.

        Warm, living fur envelops your fingers. You are stroking a unicorn.

        The beast snuggles closer, making a contented sort of sigh, warm breath soughing over your neck. Its breath smells of crocus pollen in autumn, cold spruce boughs draped in snow, the first asters of spring. Its breath sounds like the snores of children that would never be born and the hums of elders who were children long ago. Everything possible and everything alive is in the unicorn’s hot, fragrant breath, and breathing it in makes you dizzy and open-hearted.

        What would Ma say right now? You wonder. Kill the unicorn. Take the dress. Ma died last winter. No—not last winter. She died when you were twelve; she died four years ago! And yet it is always last winter, just last winter, that she died, and always you are reaching for her in your memory and not finding her where you left her.

        Leave the unicorn. Leave the dress.

        Truth is, you knew your Ma as the ma to a child. You didn’t know her as an adult. You don’t know what she would say in this circumstance, with the knowledge of you now and the world you choose to you live in.

        You reach for the knife, this time to throw it away. But you misjudge, maybe. The handle isn’t where you thought it was. Your hand closes on the blade. A sting—a cut. You hiss and throw the blade far. And you reach again for the unicorn. True to the stories, you’re healed by touching him. Your wound closes up. But now there’s a wide dark streak of blood across his flank.

        Eventually, the unicorn stands and shakes himself, looking down on you with eyes of sunrise. Behind him, you can see the doorway that opened for him, and the whole of his harmonious realm beyond. You think of your mother again, always gone last winter, always alive the winter before that.

        You let the ‘corn go, to slip through his doorway back home. Tiny insensate pieces of you slip into the beyond with him: the piece that dances on your wedding day in a white dress; the piece that almost died in a fissure on the prairie; the piece that’s always reaching for your mother and never touching her.

        The doorway slides shut, and the moon sets. You turn your yearning heart towards home.

Copyright © 2020 Merrie Haskell

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Merrie Haskell grew up half in North Carolina, half in Michigan. Her first three novels are The Princess Curse, Handbook for Dragon Slayers, and The Castle Behind Thorns. She has won the Schneider Family Book Award (Middle Grades) and the DetCon1 Middle Grade Speculative Fiction award, and she was twice a finalist for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature. Merrie lives in Saline, Michigan and works in a library with over 7.5 million bound volumes.

Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

A TALLY OF WHAT REMAINS

by R.Z. Held

        At breakfast that day, Helena noticed one of the twenty-eight sufferers of the Fever currently staying in her barn had come through the worst of it. She’d expected exhaustion to keep him sleeping until she arrived with dinner; instead, he sought her out, picking his way across the fallow fields toward where she stood on the centuries-old pre-magic slab of concrete she used for the pyres. She judged his distance and speed, weak from illness, then continued prodding through the ashy remains of yesterday’s pyre with what had once been a fireplace poker. Best to clear away as much as she could, to spare him the sight.

        In direct sunlight, the still air of the afternoon left her sweaty, but at least she could avoid any plumes of ash puffing up before they coated her throat. The larger bones couldn’t be scooped up with the shovel, so she nudged those out of the mound with the poker and, gloved, set them in the wheelbarrow first. Then she shoveled up the rest of the ash, making a steady rhythm of the scrape of metal along concrete until it was bare—or at least evenly coated with a layer too thin to be scooped up. Once she’d dealt with this survivor, she would return to trundle the load out to the corner of her family’s land where she was burying Fever victims this season.

        She shouldn’t really call the fields fallow, she reflected as she leaned on her shovel and waited for the survivor to cross the last hundred yards. That implied an intentionality that had vanished from the world with her last sister-in-law. Instead, they were tangles of autumn-browned scrub. This man had started lean and a bit hard—the first ones to flee from the cities across the pass were softer and richer, but that had been three years ago now—and his survival seemed to have left him distilled rather than haggard, though his color was still a bit gray beneath the brown.

        The man’s dark hair was rendered even darker by wetness; he must have washed at the pump by the house. A few droplets lingered on his neck, but the rest had been sopped up by a quilt thrown over his bare shoulders, one of the many she’d tasked with keeping those in the barn warm. Its white was yellow and its yellows and reds were translucent from too many washings that couldn’t remove every trace of Fever sweats.

        She had a vague memory that when this man first arrived, staggering up the road from the pass, he’d been in company with another man who’d gone on the pyre a few days ago now, but she couldn’t be sure. She’d have noted it down, however, and could check at the house. She always asked names as she showed them to the barn, for those notes. If they weren’t lucid enough to answer, she searched possessions when she later tallied them up as each body disappeared into the pyre. That had been her brother’s idea, in case anyone ever arrived to ask after one of the dead.

        No one had yet, but perhaps when the Fever burned itself out, someone would. In the meantime, too many names had arrived, too many names had gone on the pyre, for Helena to keep any in her head.

        She didn’t have her youngest brother’s inborn gentleness either, but she tried to make her voice kind. Soon enough, grief would be ravaging what the Fever had left. “Follow me to the house and I’ll get you your things, as well as his. The man you came with, I mean...?” She trailed off for him to supply the relationship.

        “My husband.” The quilt slipped off one of the man’s shoulders and he smoothed it back again, restless. He was nude to the waist, shirt no doubt unbearably permeated with the Fever sweats—no less so than the rest of his clothes, but the farm retained some semblance of civilization, pulling them into the corresponding mores. “His things?—he’s not—I couldn’t find him among the others in the barn—” He sidestepped to see around her, face crumpling.

        As if ash and bones would be recognizable. Helena propped the shovel with the poker against the barrow, stripped off her gloves, and stepped up to him to herd him toward the house. “What’s your name? I’m Helena.” She wished the survivors felt more like successes and less like one more bump in the wheel of the seasons.

        Each spring so far, when the pass cleared, those who had escaped the cities but not the Fever started to arrive. They died, or they didn’t, and Helena burned them or handed their things back before they headed down the road to fight for a place among the farmsteads and ranches that didn’t want the cities’ survivors. Her oldest brother and sister-in-law, they’d been good at celebrating the small victories, but she didn’t have the knack.

        Eventually, when the Fever burned itself out, she’d have to figure out something to do with herself in the long term. Or maybe one winter, in agonizing solitude, she’d decide enough was enough and set her own stopping point.

        “Benedict. My husband’s name is Sam.” He scratched at the scraggle of his beard, expression souring with disgust as if that one point of divergence from his normal, clean appearance had come to stand for all the rest.

        Was Sam. Helena didn’t correct him. “We can get you some clean clothes as well as a razor.”

        Her blood magic wards plucked at her heartbeat briefly as Benedict crossed the threshold of the house behind her. She’d strengthen them again tonight once he was gone. After she’d buried the ashes, after she’d taken dinner out to the barn and checked to see if anyone had died today. As long as there were chores to do, it wasn’t time to stop yet.

        She’d moved into the room nearest the kitchen, once a sitting room, to save on heating, which left the rest of the house for filing. She led Benedict to the former dining room, the rough piles of possessions left by the latest deaths. She didn’t clean inside enough—didn’t clean at all—leaving the house smelling musty, but at least it was a must of people’s absence, not of active death. “I haven’t had a chance to wash anything from the most recent ones who— Well, I haven’t washed your husband’s clothes yet.” She gathered up the clothing anyway, bunching it around a simple wedding ring and a chain with a pendant of a rearing stallion. When she handed them over, Benedict couldn’t seem to figure out how to make his arms encompass both the quilt and his dead husband’s possessions, never mind an added burden of grief, so he let the quilt slip to the floorboards.

        She retrieved her notebook and flipped to the correct page. Sam & Ben, possessions left outside: one horse, one cart, two long coats, one shotgun—no ammo, as was so often the way. It continued at length. She winced. He wasn’t going to be happy, as she couldn’t provide all those things. “I bartered your horse to my neighbors, I’m afraid. I have nothing to feed people’s animals with, and I’m no good at caring for them anyway. That was my middle sister and the children. You can take whatever clothes and other things you can carry, though, in recompense. I’ve sorted things roughly upstairs. I’ll see if I can spare any extra food...”

        “You expect me to buy back my own horse?” There was a growl beginning in Benedict’s voice, as she’d anticipated. Well, this was why she had the wards, even if each time she hoped anew she wouldn’t need them.

        “Better that than trying to catch it, if I’d set it free.” Helena smoothed the notebook open with a firm movement and sought out what she could within this room, muttering to herself. “Two cans of beans—”

        “What gives you the right to redistribute the property of the dead without family? And keep all the valuables for yourself, no doubt!” The growl became the vibration of true rage, and Benedict was suddenly right there, yanking at her wrist to pull her close. He glowered at the opal chips set into her stud earrings, all too exposed with her hair back in its usual tight tail. “Why would a farmer be wearing jewels? What dead traveler did these come from?”

        “Take your hands off me!” With her free hand, she drew out her blood-magic working knife, flicked it open. He wouldn’t understand its primary purpose, but its secondary one was threatening enough. “These were my sister’s.” Why did anyone in a farming family wear jewels, then? Because they were blood mages, not simply farmers. Before the Fever, before their deaths one by one, some turned their blood magic to farming tasks, and some ranged out from the farm as a base, selling their skills as far as the cities beyond the pass. That bought opal studs.

        Before the Fever, Helena would soon have ranged—

        No. She didn’t even think that. Wishing the world was other than it was accomplished nothing.

        Neither did wrangling with grieving survivors, but perhaps she could talk him down yet. He wasn’t wrong to question her motives; she knew how it looked.

        “I haven’t taken a single thing besides food.” Not even clothing, as her own and what she’d altered from her family went the way of the quilts, translucent when it didn’t tear. None of this belonged to her; dying did not mean the owners had gifted it to her by default.

        Benedict backed up, arms held first open and unthreatening and then crossed over his chest as he perhaps acutely felt his lack of shirt or anything to slow the blade. “You’re still collecting everything together, though. All ready to sell, a few years down the road?”

        “I keep records of everything so I can return it to anyone who asks.” She tipped her head to the notebook. “As for the food, I need it. Cooking, doing laundry, burning and burying the bodies—it’s not like I have time to keep a garden or gather eggs.”

        Benedict drew himself up, taller than her by a good half a foot. “A price for the nursing you provided? I wasn’t delirious the entire time—what did you even do to earn it? Dropped off food and blankets, pointed the way to the privy, and fucked off? What about those without slightly healthier companions? Who feeds them and helps them to the privy while you sit here and catalog your hoard?”

        “I’m one person. Did you count everyone in the barn? Twenty-seven, now you’re on your feet.” Helena rocked a step in his direction, to ease him subconsciously toward the door, but he was too set in his judging to move. “How am I supposed to individually care for that many? My brother tried, he was good at that kind of thing, but even he couldn’t. I do as much as I can!” And of course she wished she could do more. His objections were only her own guilt given voice.

        Now he was pushing forward, looming. Helena didn’t give ground any more than he had. “I’m so glad you’ve found a way to pat yourself on the back for doing nothing! Sam—Sam was recovering, with a little help, maybe he could have made it—” A sob eased into his voice and he strangled it back down. “Instead you took his body before I could—how do I know he was even dead?”

        And there it was. She wasn’t talking to Benedict now, she was talking to the grief, and the grief was never going to listen. Helena drew a line along the meat of her opposite thumb with her working knife. This wasn’t going to make this situation better, but she had no choice.

        “Did you help him die? And the others? If they came in with something especially valuable?!” Screaming, now.

        “I helped save your sorry life!” Helena curled her fingers on that hand into the line of blood and flicked them outward at Benedict. No droplets freed themselves, but she was only activating the wards, so she didn’t need much. The ward spell pulsed her heart once, too hard and out of rhythm, then Benedict was slammed backward, out of the front door, as if she’d thrown the force of a gale at him instead.

        He landed on his ass on the rutted dirt of the front path and skidded. She watched him through the slight distortion of the ward across the doorway for a few seconds, making sure that he coughed and choked his way into breathing properly after the impact to his chest. Now. He could pick himself up and retreat, or—

        “You’re a shitting blood mage? How many people could that save if you didn’t waste it on violence?” He scrambled up, threw himself at the ward. A sheen of red light clotted around his touch, growling in a low buzz as it held him back. Her heartbeat wavered at the same low frequency for a second before she breathed it away.

        “None!” She was screaming herself now. How could she make him understand how much she wished her magic could do a single thing to help? “Blood mages may be able to heal flesh and bone, using what meager quantity of our own blood we can spare, but we can’t stop sickness of any kind.”

        Enough. She had things to do, a whole list. She whirled, back to the dining room. She gathered up Sam’s clothes and the other listed items and returned to the front door. Benedict met her eyes in panting silence, grief keeping his muscles wound tight.

        Helena first tossed the soft items through the wards to the dirt, then threw the food cans at his belly, keeping him too occupied with dodging to renew his verbal attack. Then she shut the door firmly, leaving him to no doubt pace the wards. She could work on the soup for tonight’s dinner until he stopped hanging around outside.

* * *

        Benedict showed himself in the doorway of the barn that evening as Helena approached with the heavy pot of soup. She always had to let it cool to lukewarm before carrying it, weight balanced into her belly as she clasped the two handles. Past years, it had been her and her brother both, a handle each, and the soup just off boiling.

        She set it down immediately on seeing him, grabbed her working knife, but Benedict stepped out and away from the barn, hands held non-threateningly. “You should know, I’m staying, to take care of the others,” he said, raising his voice to carry to her with a brush of defiance.

        The sun was setting, and the sudden loss of the pot’s warmth, scant as it was, made her shiver. Benedict was wearing his original shirt, still damp in patches as if he’d washed it at the pump. At the neck, it showed a chain that Helena deduced must now hold Sam’s ring as well as his pendant. The huge barn with its weathered patchwork of additions and repairs, raw orange on pitch brown, stood in solemn solidity behind him, throwing gold cheatgrass into deep shadow to one side.

        “Knock yourself out, but stay away from the house. And me,” Helena said. Looking at his face, she guessed he’d shoved the grief somewhere deep, cultivating the defiance as a cover. Unhealthy, her brother would have said, but who was he to talk? He was dead.

        Benedict stayed well back as ordered while she set the soup inside, retrieved the bowls and ladle, washed them at the pump, then set out the bowls, filled, in a line for those who were awake and lucid enough to feed themselves or others. The smell inside was—well, it was how the barn always smelled. Sweat. Sickness. Soiled blankets. Death by degrees. She breathed shallowly through her mouth as she walked the two rows of pallets. One row held sufferers to a sort of order, providing even spacing along the line of people with faces carved down to tight misery or glazed feverishness, their bodies twisted in restless discomfort or far too still under their quilts. The other row ran more raggedly in and around former stalls, often chosen by those who wanted to sit by a loved one before they succumbed too, a rough privacy for family groupings.

        Helena held a small hand mirror above the mouth of anyone who was still, wiped away the condensation with a sleeve pulled over the heel of her palm, and moved to the next. No new deaths today.

        As she walked, Benedict’s voice, his grief, twisted through her mind like the roots of a weed you couldn’t pull from the kitchen garden. Why wasn’t she staying to spoon the soup into people’s mouths? What if someone, the sole survivor of their party, was dying right now, not from the Fever but from hunger?

        But Benedict was going to try to do that now. For her part, she still hadn’t buried the ashes from the last pyre. Or gathered wood for the next and for the stove tomorrow, to cook the next dinner. She didn’t have much daylight left to do either. A heroic effort to save one set of victims only left them all shivering completely without heat a week later, or fighting off predators that came to eat the bodies she didn’t have the strength to bury deep enough. She set the hand mirror back in its place on a window sill near the door and stepped outside, nodding to Benedict to release him to enter.

        He dipped his head in reciprocal acknowledgment. Helena figured it was best to presume he’d hidden his grief, his disgust with her, in the long shadows of the sunset. That was all right. They could help travelers without liking each other.

* * *

        Three weeks later, when Benedict collapsed, they had only twenty-one in the barn, travelers having tailed off to nothing as autumn thinned out. Helena had just arrived with the pot of breakfast, the porridge today a bit odd as she’d had to add rice to supplement dwindling oats. She’d grown used to handing the first two full bowls into Benedict’s hands these past weeks, but today he staggered to the doorway of the barn when she was filling the fifth one.

        She held it out to him. “You eat first.” The words were becoming a ritual for her now. Sometimes he listened, sometimes he didn’t. She didn’t comment that his color was, if anything, perhaps worse than that of his patients, when seen in the sunlight; the dark stains beneath his eyes reminded her of farm ponds dried to fetid mud at the height of summer.

        He blinked at her, then—folded. On the way down, his shoulder slammed into the doorjamb, and that seemed to jar some consciousness back into his eyes. He fetched up on his ass, legs awkwardly folded under, and clung to the wood beside his shoulder.

        She’d told him so, but she didn’t say anything now. She set the bowl down and crouched before him. “Have you been sleeping?”

        He managed to focus on her face. “On and off, whenever I can.”

        That was something, at least. “And eating, on and off. What about drinking water?”

        Blankness, in reply. Right. Helena rose and dipped him out a cup from the stack by the water barrel on the other side of the door. She should haul a few more buckets from the pump for it today. Maybe before she did the laundry.

        “Cordelia died last night.” Benedict’s voice was a thin thread, but it didn’t break. “Brandon in the early morning. And—the little girl—no one was left who knew her name...” When Helena placed his hands around the cup, he roused enough to lift it to his lips and drink under his own power. One sip and then he was gulping, thirst apparently awakened.

        A pyre before laundry today, then. Eighteen left in the barn. Helena refilled the cup for Benedict, then went back to spooning out porridge.

        “He looked just like Sam.” As Benedict’s voice gained power, it also gained the potential to fracture. It broke after his husband’s name. Helena doubted there had been any resemblance at all, other than what the Fever wrought on anyone. “I couldn’t— I don’t even know exactly when he died, I was working on the other side of the barn. If I’d checked people starting at the door instead, I might have been able to do—something.”

        “I know,” Helena said. She did.

        “He’s dead— Sam’s dead—” Benedict broke into dry, wracking sobs.

        “I know.” Not dismissive; simply the best sympathy she had. Helena crouched before him once more. “Go up to the house, try to sleep as long as you can, all right?” When he nodded, she helped him to his feet. He’d be back to the barn soon enough, she supposed.

* * *

        Benedict did go back to the barn, but for less time each day, and he continued to sleep at the house. As winter neared and the dark pressed in from both ends of the day, the need to gather enough firewood to last them through the season grew more and more pressing, and eventually that task consumed all of his waking time. Helena never spoke to him about the fact that he’d abandoned nursing, or indeed anything else of importance. Coordinating chores was more than enough to make up their conversations, day after day. She suspected he’d found a way to exorcise his grief in the solitude of dragging wood back, the physicality of swinging the ax to split it. Once, she heard him screaming his anger out into the uncaring universe as the world leaked its colors away into the blue of twilight. She left him to it.

        Today, a few hours before dinner, she was doing laundry in a big metal tub once used to water livestock, her hair bunned up tight against a breeze that smelled like the birth of snow in the mountains. Benedict, companionable in a way she didn’t understand, had dropped a barrow-load of wood nearby, though he was currently seated on one of the logs, absorbed in the small movements of splitting kindling instead.

        Helena drew a line with her working knife along her inner forearm and shook a few droplets over the clothes soaking in the tub, already turning the water a bit yellow-gray. She concentrated as she took up the broken handle of a shovel and churned the clothes, making sure the magic-laced water seeped into every pore of the fabric. Dirt clumped with the magic and drifted steadily to the surface. She scooped it off with a curve of bark that had split off one of Benedict’s logs.

        “How do you manage to avoid having any scars?” Benedict had laid his ax across his thighs, and his eyes were on her now-unmarked arm.

        “I add a little bit of healing at the end of every spell. When you’re trained properly, it becomes second nature.” It was such a normal question, it bumped Helena off balance for a second.

        She started wringing out the pieces of clothing, stacking them damp in a basket to carry to the line. She could use magic to dry them too—and would, once snow fell—but for now she could save the effort. She lifted a stylish jacket of a peacock shade and considered it in the sunlight. “My sister loved this color.”

        “It looks like it would fit you. As it gets colder, you could use something without holes. Unless it belongs to someone with family who might still recover?” Benedict went back to his kindling.

        “No, the last one in her party died a month ago. This is a catch-up load of laundry.” Helena set the jacket aside to wring out the next item. “But I don’t take anything except food, you know that.”

        Benedict gave a vindicated little “ha!”, and she realized he’d only been pretending to focus on his task. “I never understood how you could forget people’s names and fates seconds after adding them to your records. But something deep in your mind is doing it on purpose, isn’t it? You can’t stand to count the dead, but remembering a list of shirts and shoes, that’s safe. Hell, I’ve never even heard you use a name for one of your family members.”

        Helena rocked back a step, hand going for her working knife, as if she could hit him with a spell every time he said something that stung. She forced herself to lift her hand away. “You keep saying I’m not doing enough for them, what about you? How much are you doing for them?”

        Benedict let out a long breath and set his ax aside but didn’t rise. “I did say that once, and then I tried it. And now, it seems you read that into everything, no matter what I actually say. What’s enough to avoid the judgment you’re afraid of, then? I don’t think Sam would have wanted me to freeze to death this winter.” He scrubbed a hand along his jaw, clean-shaven since the first morning after his recovery. “What’s enough to keep your guilt at bay? We’re both grieving, only you don’t seem to admit it. No one is ever going to come back to get that jacket. When do you get to have nice things again? When do you get to love things, to be good at things?”

        Helena couldn’t make sense of his words. “What?”

        “You say your sister loved that color, your brother was good with the horses. But I’ve never heard you say something about your own opinions and skills. You would still be honoring their memories even if you left space in your own life for yourself.”

        “That’s not—”

        Helena stopped, drew her next breath deep.

        Smoke, carried on the breeze. But wildfire season was past. With winter coming on, they’d started stoking a stove in the barn, but that trickle of smoke was a constant her nose had learned to ignore. This was more, much more.

        “The barn—” It had not just a stove but also a few lamps now, to counteract the failing sunlight. “If someone knocked over a lamp—” She was running now, cursing making a syncopated rhythm with her steps. Benedict soon passed her with his longer legs but stopped when he spotted the barn.

        Helena kept going. They still had time. Yes, pale smoke, rapidly darkening, was pluming upward from the far edge of the roof, but no flames were visible, yet. The front wall, door closed to keep the heat from the stove in, was untouched. Crackling reached her, eager and growing, but as she ran she shut it out and focused on the door handle, across the length of the barn’s yard. They still had time.

        “With that much smoke, it’ll be all along the back wall! The other walls will be catching in moments. Helena, stop!”

        Benedict’s voice spurred her on instead of stopping her. “That means we need to get them out before then!” The crackling had reached a near roar, forcing Helena to reply in a bellow. A single gout of flame burst free on a side wall near the roof, its orange against the blackening wood and darkening gray smoke searing the eyes.

        But the door. The door was untouched.

        Helena had imagined the heat might be a wall, one she could choose to push through, but instead it encompassed her completely with no warning, hazing her sight and scalding the skin of her cheeks and hands. Her next breath came hard, burning her throat with the heat and smoke both, but she could still see the door.

        “It’ll be even worse inside! They’re already dead from the heat or the smoke! They’re already dead, Helena!”

        She’d never make it to that door in time at the rate she was moving. The whole top half of the barn’s side wall was a mass of that licking, searing orange, and individual plumes of smoke from the roof had merged into one thick, roiling column. She’d already slowed, stopped, so she drew out her working knife. She cut along her thumb and flicked the magic down over herself, ending with a smear over her lower lip. That would keep the heat and smoke back. Another step toward the door, a second. So slow. Even if the air she drew into her lungs didn’t directly burn any longer, the heat beat like physical blows against her magic.

        And then her magic shattered, her heart stuttering as if she’d been punched in the chest. In her next breath, the air burned again. She stumbled—stumbled back, pulled by Benedict, and she didn’t have any air to resist him until he’d dragged them nearly back across the yard and she’d coughed and coughed and finally managed several breaths that scoured her injured throat so deeply it felt like it must bleed soon.

        She pulled away from his hold, slashed at him with the knife still in her hand. “My magic was working—” Too much pain to keep speaking, but she had to make him understand.

        “You would have to bleed yourself dry to reach the door, and then when you open it and let in the air, the fire would engulf you, as well as the people inside who are already dead.” Benedict caught her around the waist, dragging her farther. Her flailing with the knife didn’t deter him, and while she could have stabbed him, she didn’t want—didn’t want to hurt— She didn’t want anyone to be hurt, why couldn’t he see—

        “Stop punishing yourself for living when your family died. Stop punishing yourself for not doing enough for these people either! Giving your life won’t save them, and it won’t bring your family back!” Benedict had to shout into her ear. Orange had found the door, just one tongue, while the rest of the building was orange shooting so high it became yellow and the smoke was black, black, as black as the remaining wood.

        Now she was sobbing. Or choking on the smoke, or both at the same time. Her burned throat couldn’t tell the difference. “They’re dead,” he said again. “They were dying anyway. Let them go, let them all go!”

        “I fucking know my family is dead!” She screamed it at the fire, relishing the pain seizing her throat because she was wild with it, wild with the feeling of it filling her whole vision like the end of all things instead of the end of one barn and nine dying—dead—strangers. Maybe she needed that in order to crack herself open, break the grief free. “Peter! Susanna!” Every sibling, every sibling’s partner, every child. Every name.

        The columns rising to the sky from the barn weren’t just smoke now; they were a whirling mixture of flame reaching to half the barn’s height above it.

        Nothing left of the barn itself, only flame in a barn shape, so bright as to wash out the remaining daylight and make the sky look like night beyond the smoke.

        Then, slowly, the wildest of the flames diminished. Somehow, the structure still stood, posts and boards reduced to a black skeleton silhouetted against the flame. A pyre leaving bones; only these would eventually be consumed as well, and that would be an end to it. Like the end, finally, she needed to give to her guilt.

        When Benedict relaxed his hold, tentatively, she whirled on him. “You know what I was? I was a good blood mage. With wards, not healing. A damn good blood mage. The best of all of us.” She got those words out through the pain; then coughing swallowed anything further.

        And while she regathered her breath, she saw that sparks had spattered into the summer’s tinder-dry cheatgrass and birthed flames now racing outward, low along the ground. The barn was gone; now she’d have to move fast to save the house. And that would be impossible without breathing hard, so she pricked her thumb and swallowed a few drops to pull her damaged throat back to something useable.

        Then she was running back toward the house even as she planned—planned properly this time, rather than grasping at the first action that seemed likely to silence the guilt of being here when her family was not, of all the travelers she couldn’t save. Wards were about readiness triggered, not direct opposition, so once she was far enough ahead of the flames—

        Yes, here, using part of the cracked pavement of a pre-magic road. At the last moment, Helena spared a quick thought for Benedict. “This will look like a lot of blood, but it’s not dangerous.”

        Dubious didn’t begin to describe his expression, but he didn’t interfere as she set her feet, slashed her cheek, smeared her whole palm with the blood. That, she cast in a great line along the road, a huge gesture that drew most of her heartbeat away with it. She collapsed to her knees as the ward snapped up, arcing wide until it encircled the barn and the spreading flames. The flames reached it a breath later, splashing up and back like a flood against a wall. Another breath and the ward snapped out of existence, but that terrifying splatter of fire had taken the grass in that circle down to blackened soil. Low flames continued to coil and chew at the collapsed mound of the barn, but none jumped the pavement firebreak.

        Benedict was holding her up, she realized. And shaking her. “Helena! How was that not dangerous?”

        Helena smacked a fist against her chest to remind her heart of its duty, though it was slowly grinding its way back to normal already. “I’m fine, I know how much blood I can spare. When I’m doing the kind of things I’m actually good at. Since the Fever, my talents haven’t been very... applicable.” She was crying again. When had that happened?

        “It won’t last forever.” Benedict folded his long legs down properly, settled her back against his chest. It wasn’t as intimate as crying on someone’s shoulder, but somehow it was exactly what she needed. He wasn’t facing her, they were looking outward, toward... that world, perhaps. Where the Fever had burned itself out and people had picked themselves back up.

        Her voice thinned to nothing, around the tears, but she got it out. “We need to hole up for the winter, now, but come spring— I think I’d like to pull together supplies from everything I’ve kept—new clothes, to start—and head back over the pass. Use my magic to help rebuild.” She scrubbed at her nose before snot obscured her words entirely. “Would you want to come with me? I’ll leave the house open for travelers to continue to use; you could stay to help them. Or move on alone. But you asked what I loved— I loved being a part of the chaos and joy of my family. You might prefer to find a new partner and family of your own, but—”

        “But maybe I’ll find a partner in the city. Maybe this damn good blood mage I know will be beating suitors off with a stick and I’ll console a loser.” Benedict’s laugh creaked like a rusty pump no one had primed. She understood the feeling. “We’ll see.”

        Together, as Helena cried herself out, they looked outward toward that world.

Copyright © 2020 R.Z. Held

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R.Z. Held writes speculative fiction, including the Amsterdam Institute series of space opera novellas. Her Silver series of urban fantasy novels was published under the name Rhiannon Held. She lives in Seattle, where she works as an archaeologist for an environmental compliance firm. At work, she uses her degree mostly for copy-editing technical reports; in writing, she uses it for world-building; in public, she’ll probably use it to check the mold seams on the wine bottle at dinner.

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COVER ART

“Colossus,” by Vladimir Manyukhin

Vladimir Manyukhin is a digital artist based in Moscow. He has been drawing since childhood and started drawing professionally ten years ago. He currently works as a concept artist and doing freelance work and work for the soul. He has worked with Creative Assembly on the series “Total War.” His digital illustrations are suggestive and full of realism, capable of engaging those who observe them into an intriguing reality. View more of his artwork at his gallery on Art Station.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

ISSN: 1946-1046

Published by Firkin Press,

a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization

Copyright © 2020 Firkin Press

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