MYTHIC

A QUARTERLY SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY MAGAZINE

ISSUE #8 | FALL 2018

EDITOR’S NOTE

SHAUN KILGORE

FOR A QUARTERLY MAGAZINE to hit issue number eight means it’s been published for two full years now. Such is the case with MYTHIC: A Quarterly Science Fiction & Fantasy Magazine. Since I started this venture in late 2016, I’ve been challenged repeatedly and stretched in many ways as a fledgling editor to not only choose good stories for each and every issue but also make sure the magazine hits the stands, so to speak.

This isn’t easy when the whole project is mostly a one-man operation. But, I’ve persevered through it all and as I’m writing this the book is getting near it’s launch—albeit a very late one—given it is the Fall 2018 issue.

MYTHIC has endured multiple its share of scheduling problems this year. I’ve mentioned them previously, but I am doing my best to provide the supporters and subscribers with a quality issue.

I ask for everyone’s patience as I work to get back on track and deliver future issues on time.

I would further note that Issue #9 will be arriving very soon after this one is released since their scheduled releases have been missed. The second of half of the year has been tougher than I thought and the addition of managing and reward fulfillment of a successful Kickstarter campaign in my role as the publisher at Founders House Publishing LLC has taken a great toll on my time than anticipated.

There were certainly some lessons learned in that process. I hope to bring them to bear in a future campaign for MYTHIC. I will be announcing that after the start of the new years. So keep your eyes open.

YOU WILL ALSO NOTICE that I’ve been playing with the layout of the interior and have looking for ways to make MYTHIC more like the old pulp magazines that inspired me to start in the first place. That’s not always easy on my tiny budget. I hope to add more features as we progress and as new subscribers and supporters jump aboard.

As far as how each of you might become members of the MYTHIC community, it is much easier now. Since the beginning, I’ve had a Patreon page for MYTHIC and there have been folks who’ve taken it upon themselves to help us out every month. I’m very grateful for those people and since the last issue they get a shout-out at the back of the magazine and also on the MYTHIC website.

I’ve made some strides towards integrating our subscription services with Patreon over the last several weeks. Now, you can subscribe to the magazine for as little as $2.00 per month. In fact, you can choose from multiple membership tiers on our Patreon page that correspond with different levels of support and include different perks, including discounts, back issues, and Patron-exclusive content that I’m developing.

Visit www.patreon.com/mythicmag for more details on what our subscription memberships include and to get updates on what is coming soon.

Keep in mind that if you would rather just have a one-shot subscriptions they can still be picked up by visiting the website. Go to www.mythicmag.com for more details.

ALL OF THAT SAID, I do want to welcome long-time friends and newcomers to MYTHIC’s eighth issue. You are in for a real treat. This is an entertaining and thought-provoking selection of short stories. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

Each one of you, readers and subscribers alike, are one of the big reasons why I do what I do. I love sharing awesome science fiction and fantasy shorties with the world. MYTHIC is the vehicle for that dream and it always will be.

Thank you so much. Take care.

Until the next issue, yours truly,

Shaun Kilgore, Editor

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Interested in submitting stories to MYTHIC? We prefer electronic submissions. You may email us at the following address: submissions@mythicmag.com.

For more complete submission guidelines and any other information, you may visit our website: www.mythicmag.com

Unquenchable Flame

E.L. BATES

TATIANA’S LUNGS BURNED AS her boots thudded dully on the hard-packed dirt road. Somewhere, somehow, she had made a mistake. She had never been caught before, rarely even sighted as she pocketed goods and coins from people in the markets. Her fingers were as nimble as her brain.

Perhaps her luck has run out. Today the farmer had seen her slipping eggs from his stall, and his shouts of fury had aroused the attention of the entire marketplace. Caught off guard, Tatiana had barely escaped the village center ahead of her angry pursuers.

No, she refused to believe in luck. It was her own cleverness that had kept her the most successful thief in Rusvanya until this day, and it was her own error that had gotten her almost caught.

Was there no place along this road where she could lose this pursuit? The hard-packed dirt stretched out before her for many versts with no convenient twists or turns, no trees lining the way for her to catch a low-hanging branch and swing herself up and away through the verdant tops.

On either side of the road were fields of grain, tended by men and women in iron shackles. This was how criminals were treated in this principality: chained and put to work in the fields for a season or more, depending on the severity of the crime.

Tatiana would not be one of them. This she vowed to herself.

Shouts echoed in her ears as her pursuers closed in. Tatiana risked a glance backward and stumbled as her foot caught on a loose stone in the road.

Blazing fury! How was she to get away now? Her ankle twinged, informing her it would not hold up for much longer. She had no hope of outrunning the outraged villagers.

Up ahead, a building shimmered copper-bright and gleaming under the morning sun. Tatiana blinked the stinging sweat from her eyes, trying to see more clearly.

The tower anchoring the building soared into the sky, the curved dome on top resolving itself in Tatiana’s blurred vision as the symbol of fire. Of course! This was the Ogon Temple, where those who felt a particular affinity to fire could come and bind themselves to the sacred flame.

It represented only opportunity to Tatiana. She pushed herself forward, ignoring her ankle for these last few strides, and made it to the terracotta pillars framing the temple’s entrance.

She tried for a ringing call, but her breath was gone and she had to settle for gasps. “I come ... to offer ... myself ... as a servant ... to the sacred flame!”

The acolyte who stood to welcome petitioners at the entrance raised her slanted eyebrows at the sight Tatiana and the villagers made, Tatiana clinging to the pillar and resting all her weight on one foot, the angry villagers piling up behind her with shouts and flailing arms.

“Enough!” the acolyte said.

Though she was no older than Tatiana, the acolyte had a natural authority in the way she stood and spoke that silenced the tumult. Her flashing eyes left them in no doubt of her affinity to fire, even without the twin droplets of gold marking her cheeks.

“Have you no respect for the sacred flame and the Temple?” she said, ire heating her words.

The villagers drew back, abashed.

Not Tatiana. She cared nothing for the sacred flame aside from the chance it offered her at temporary protection.

“I am here to offer myself to fire,” she said again, trusting the acolyte was not possessed of the ability to divine truth from falsehood. “I wish to become an acolyte.”

“She lies!” protested the khozyain of the village, a stout, red-cheeked woman old enough to be both girls’ babushka. “She is a common thief, stealing goods from our market. If you check her pockets, you will see! She has no affinity to fire. She care for nothing but herself.”

Silently, Tatiana agreed with the old woman. Yet it would not do to let this opportunity slip away.

“What is a thief if not a flickering flame, darting where it wishes and leaving only ashes in its wake?” she challenged. “Is it so odd that a thief would feel a connection to fire, or a desire to serve it in a purer fashion?” She widened her eyes, attempting to look repentant and sincere. “Even as I fled, I felt a tug toward a higher calling, toward a more noble life. When I saw the temple before me, I knew I had been drawn here for a reason.”

“Ha,” snorted the khozyain.

Under different circumstances, Tatiana might have liked her.

The acolyte frowned. “Come,” she said abruptly to Tatiana. “I shall take you before the Matushka. We shall see what she makes of your claim.” When the villagers would have protested, she slashed her hand down across her front. “No more! If she is not found worthy of fire, she shall be returned to you for justice. But I cannot turn aside any who ask to serve, not under my own authority. This is out of my hands.”

The people drew back, began to disperse. Tatiana breathed a little more freely. The immediate threat was passed.

Now she must convince the Matushka, the head of the temple, of her sincerity long enough to be able to stay until she could escape under the cover of darkness, leaving this temple and this village behind, perhaps leaving the principality altogether. Rusvanya was a spacious land. There was room enough for a wandering thief to leave behind the setting of her disgrace forever.

Resisting the urge to make a face at the retreating khozyain, Tatiana released her grip on the pillar and limped after the acolyte, up the steps and through the portico into the temple proper.

The walls gleamed in the light from the torches hung on them: copper, bronze, and gold discs beaten flat and overlapping each other to cover the wooden walls as flames lick over each other and cover the wood they consume. Tapestries of every shade of red, orange, and yellow, with hints of blue flickering through hung every few steps, depicting rowan and linden trees with foxes and hares beneath them, and bees buzzing through the branches. Little scarlet fire-flowers, glowing within their tiny cups, were embroidered all up and down the edges of the tapestries.

It was beautiful, but Tatiana wasn’t tempted to steal any of it, not the smallest flake of gold nor the tiniest scrap of tapestry. She had no more reverence for fire than she did for the other aspects of nature, but only a fool would practice her thievery in a temple.

Tatiana was many things, but she was no fool.

She did not know much about the four temples: Ogon for fire, Voda for water, Zemlya for earth, and Vozdukh for air. No one in the principalities worshipped those elements, but they revered the life they gave to the people and the land, and so gave them honor. If anyone throughout Rusvanya felt a deeper connection to one element over another, he or she could join that temple and serve as a priest or priestess, a guardian, or a servant.

“What’s your name?” Tatiana asked the acolyte. If she could build a facade of friendliness with this girl, perhaps she would speak on her behalf to the Matushka.

“Elena Ivanovna,” the acolyte said shortly, then closed her mouth with a snap.

So much for friendliness.

The Matushka was not in a special hidden chamber or tucked away at the top of the tower of flame. Instead, Elena Ivanovna found her halfway down the hall, replacing a burned-out torch from a golden wall fixture in the shape of a bird with outstretched wings.

“Matushka,” the acolyte said.

The small woman turned, dusting her hands off as she observed the two girls. She was even shorter than Tatiana, with skin and eyes as dark as the thief’s. Unlike Tatiana’s black curls, her hair was snow-white and bound into dozens of plaits down her back.

“This person is a thief, on the run from the villagers from whom she stole, yet she claims she feels an affinity to fire and wishes to become an acolyte,” Elena Ivanovna said.

“Ah,” replied the Matushka.

Tatiana opened her mouth to protest, looked at the Matushka’s eyes, and thought better of it. She clamped her lips upon words unspoken.

“What makes you think the sacred fire wants you?” the Matushka asked her.

Tatiana lifted her chin. A challenge! She preferred this to pleading her case. “I am clever, quick, and strong,” she said. “I have a flame burning at my core that no hardship, no darkness, no cold has ever put out. I know what I want and I let nothing stand in my way. I do not tolerate weakness. Do I not sound like a daughter of fire?”

“There is passion in you, that much is clear,” said the Matushka, studying her. “Yet I fear there is too much impurity. Your fire will soon burn itself out, child, and you will be left an empty husk.” She shook her head. “There is no place for you here. For your own safety, I must refuse your request.”

Fury raged through Tatiana. Though she had only entered here as an escape, she could not bear to be told she could not stay. This was no longer about outwitting the villagers. It was a matter of pride.

She was no meek applicant, begging for scraps from a table. She took what she wanted and let nothing and no one stand in her path! This old woman had no right to deny her anything she desired.

Beside her, Elena Ivanovna cleared her throat.

“I will stand her surety, Matushka.”

Tatiana whirled on her. What did that mean? What was she offering?

“You do not know what you offer, solnyshko,” the Matushka said. “You would bind your fate with hers?”

“I would,” the acolyte answered. Her eyes remained steadfast, for a moment showing copper instead of black in the flickering torchlight.

Tatiana did not understand, but for a moment, she felt afraid.

The Matushka sighed. “If you insist. You, thief.”

Tatiana turned back to her. “My name is Tatiana.” She had no patronymic, no family name. She neither knew nor cared who her parents had been. She needed them as little as she needed anybody.

The Matushka waved a hand. “Tatiana. You have a choice: you may leave this temple and take your chances with the villagers and the world outside. Or you may remain, take the acolyte oath, and follow the sacred flame. If you take this path, your life, and your eventual destiny within the Ogon Temple, will be irrevocably woven with that of Elena Ivanovna.”

“I don’t want favors from her or anyone else!” Tatiana said sharply. “I will stand or fall on my own merits.”

“Those are your options,” the Matushka repeated inexorably. “Choose wisely.”

She should have left. The villagers had surely wandered away by now, lost interest in a sneak thief. Even if they had not, Tatiana could outwit any of them with two broken ankles. This farce had gone on long enough.

But the Matushka had wounded her pride. She wasn’t wanted here, that was plain. She was here only on sufferance, because of some promise Elena Ivanovna was making for her. Tatiana ground her teeth.

She would prove the Matushka wrong. She would make the sacred flame accept her, and she would do it on her own terms, not because of favors tossed her way by another acolyte. She would do it all herself.

“I choose fire,” she said.

The Matushka closed her eyes. The lines on her face showed in sharp relief against her brown skin. “So be it.”

It was only later, when Tatiana stood before the sacred flame and received the ash brushed on her face, leaving behind the gold dots of an acolyte, and she understood that to pledge oneself to the fire was to consent to let it burn the impurities from one’s soul, that she began to wonder what she had done.

IT WAS THE DAY of the Firebird, also known as the Day of Renewal, when all the people swept the embers out of their fire pits and clay ovens to light them anew with fire taken from the sacred flame. Those who did not live close enough to the Ogon Temple would have to settle for a blessing spoken by a fire priest or priestess over an ordinary flame, but for the Sestry, Brat’ya, and acolytes at the temple, it was their busiest and most sacred day of the year.

Tatiana had been an acolyte for seven weeks and already wished she had accepted the Matushka’s offer of escape when it was presented. Bad enough tending the offering fire under the scornful eye of Brat Mikhail, or cleaning the torch holders alongside the other acolytes, or replacing the burnt out torches for the giggling Sestra Marfa. Worse than all that was facing the people outside the temple, smiling and pretending an interest them and their lives, speaking respectfully and being spoken to likewise, when she cared nothing for them and they, if they knew who she was, caring nothing for her.

“It is time to get dressed, Tanya,” Elena said, holding out the ceremonial embroidered red skirt and pale yellow headdress.

Tatiana scowled at her. “I have told you, my name is Tatiana.”

“We are bound to each other until we bind to fire,” Elena replied, as she had so often before. “You might as well call me Lena; it seems foolish to insist on formality between us.”

Elena had a point, though Tatiana refused to acknowledge it. Ever since the day Tatiana arrived, Elena had been by her side. Tatiana’s tasks were her tasks, and she had already passed up two chances to bond with fire because Tatiana wasn’t ready.

The other girl never complained. Nor did she act as though she were superior to Tatiana. She calmly accepted the boundaries that came with her new role in much the same way as she accepted Tatiana herself.

Tatiana hated it. Sometimes she felt she hated Elena for it. She wanted no sacrifice, no gift, no special favors shown her. Elena had no right.

“You are still angry,” Elena said now as Tatiana stepped into the skirt and pulled it over her shift.

“My feelings are none of your business,” Tatiana snapped, wrapping her flame-embroidered belt around her waist and tying it with the complicated knot peculiar to the Ogon acolytes.

“Why did you come here, if you hate everything about it so?” Elena’s voice was warmly amused.

“Perhaps I wouldn’t hate it if I had the chance to experience it under my own terms,” Tatiana said.

“That is something granted to very few of us—and those who receive it often find it is not the gift for which they’d hoped,” Elena observed.

“No one put obstacles in your way to join the temple,” Tatiana said. “You were able to join freely.”

Elena sighed a little as her eyes gazed into the distance, perhaps seeing into the past as she recalled the circumstances of her pledge. “I did not want to join the temple at all, Tanya. I came here because I had to, not because I wanted to.”

Had her parents forced her to come? Tatiana knew that happened sometimes, that families who could not afford to feed all their children would bring their least-loved to the temples.

“I would never allow myself to be trapped like that,” she boasted, though her words rang hollow in her ears. Hadn’t she allowed the villagers to entrap her here?

Elena laughed and returned to the present. “It was not any other person that compelled me; it was my own heart. I wanted an ordinary life, with a husband and children and a small house. But fire called, and I had to answer. And now I think I am starting to see why.” She handed the headdress over, seeing that Tatiana had finished the rest of her dressing.

“As for not allowing yourself to be trapped—what are you now if not trapped by your anger and pride? You have forged the very chains that bind you. Will you not release your old ways into the fire and start anew? This is the perfect day to do so.”

The temptation to listen to her sister acolyte was strong, tugging at Tatiana’s heart, promising a new life of peace and joy. Tatiana clenched her teeth and closed her ears to it.

“My ways suit me, Elena Ivanovna,” Tatiana said, winding the cloth of the headdress around and under her unruly curls. “If you do not like them, you can break the bond between us and go your way in peace.”

Elena’s dark eyes glowed in the candlelight of their chamber, lending her a mysterious air. “Your path is my path now. I would be faithless indeed to turn away now.”

“Oh, let’s go and get this day over with,” Tatiana said, stepping around Elena to enter the temple proper.

She would prove herself worthy of fire if she died for it, but she would do it without Elena. She would force it to accept her as she was. That was her vow.

TATIANA FELT THE CALL as soon as she awakened. She had only been in the temple for seven months, but she knew what it meant.

It was time to bond with fire.

Panic rose in her breast—she wasn’t ready. It was too soon! She had not yet had a chance to prove herself, to show the Matushka, the Sestry and Brat’ya, the other acolytes, everyone, her own worth. She was still connected to Elena; apart from her, Tatiana had no value in anyone’s eyes.

Elena.

“It is time, Tanya,” said that individual, sitting next to her sleeping mat.

“I don’t want to do this yet,” Tatiana said. “You waited; can’t I?”

“I was given special dispensation from the Matushka to wait, for your sake,” Elena said. “Now that you have been called, we can delay no longer.”

“But I’m not ready,” Tatiana said through clenched teeth.

There was a hint of sadness behind Elena’s smile. “That is not for us to decide.”

Some acolytes who were rejected from the fire emerged with only a scorched hand or singed hair. Tatiana knew she would not be so fortunate.

“I’ll be burned up.”

“Then at least we shall burn together.” Elena stood up and held out her hand. “Come.”

Left with no choice, Tatiana took her hand and stood to face her doom.

Step by step, the girls crossed the temple and entered the tower. There, standing before the fire pit, the Matushka awaited them. Tatiana saw tears glittering on her cheeks in the light from the eternal torch.

“Matushka!” Tatiana burst out. “You must stop this! You know it is too soon, you know what will happen!”

The old woman shook her head. “I cannot stop it.”

“You are the high priestess of the Ogon Temple, if you cannot stop it, who can?” Tatiana demanded.

Her heart sank as she realized she had answered her own question.

“It is all right, Tanya,” Elena said, tugging her forward. “It is our time.”

Tatiana dug in her heels, but her bare feet found no purchase on the slick stone floor. “I’m not ready to die, even if you are!”

“Solnyshko ...” the Matushka began, then shook her head.

“It is well, Matushka,” Elena said. “I knew what this meant when I made the offer.”

“I didn’t,” Tatiana protested.

“Didn’t you?” the Matushka asked, piercing her through the heart.

She could not hide from the truth any longer.

She had known. Not everything, but she had known she was running into danger and taking Elena Ivanovna with her when she made her choice. In her arrogance and pride she had tried to cheat the flame, and now she and Elena alike were paying the price.

Elena had been right: Tatiana had forged her own chains, and she could not un-forge them.

The Matushka cleared her throat. “Here you face your final trial as acolytes,” she said, beginning the ritual. “Your past lives are no more: when you emerge from this chamber you will bear a new identity as priestesses or guardians of the sacred flame. The flame will burn away your impurities, leaving behind only that which is true.”

Tatiana swallowed. This was what the Matushka had tried to warn her of at the beginning. Her impurities were too great; when they were burned out, nothing would be left. She had refused to believe it then, but the truth could not be denied here in this room. She was going to die, and she would take Lena with her.

The Matushka finished. “The passions of the world are behind you, the joy of the fire is before you.”

She kissed them each on the forehead—the touch surprising Tatiana—and exited the tower, closing the door behind her and leaving them alone with the flame.

“Lena,” Tatiana blurted, and then did not know what to say. “I’m sorry,” she whispered at last.

Elena did not answer.

Before them, the flickering flames blurred and shifted shape, becoming a gateway of fire, its shape that of the symbol topping the temple.

“Come,” said Lena, squeezing her hand. “We will walk it together.”

For the first time in her life, Tatiana had no escape. She stepped forward, hand-in-hand with Lena, and passed through the gate.

The pain was indescribable. It was not physical: her flesh remained unscathed. It was inside, as though her very soul were being riven in pieces. Every cruelty, every petty deed and thought, every selfish whim, every lie; all her arrogance, her bitterness, even her independence, all crashed down on her at once. She saw her refusal to accept or to give a kind gesture or word to anyone, her refusal to help those in need or ask for help in return. All her life she had taken what she wanted with no thought for those from whom she took. Now the pain she had caused to others returned to her tenfold.

Her entire life she had felt she could act with impunity, yet all the while she had been digging a pit for her own feet.

Tatiana screamed and sank to her knees, still screaming. She could see the other side of the gate, but she could not reach it. She could not move. She was undone.

But there was Lena. Though she must have felt all of Tatiana’s pain as her own, she remained on her feet, her hand still clasped around Tatiana’s. Slowly, like a cool trickle, relief flowed into Tatiana through that link. The sensation of burning from the inside out receded. In its place, a steady flame, like a candle in a windless room, stood tall and straight, lighting her soul and showing her the path for her feet. She felt Lena’s goodness as her own, and it gave her the strength to rise.

Together, they staggered forward into a tunnel formed by the sacred flame’s curved walls. Each step felt an eternity. More than once, Tatiana faltered as the candle flame inside flickered and threatened to rise again into a devouring fire. Had it not been for Lena, she would have fallen again and again.

At last they reached the other side. Tatiana drew in a breath tinged with sweet incense and stepped through. As she did, she felt Lena’s hand slip from her grasp.

“No!”

It was too late. Tatiana had emerged from the trial, and Lena was lost.

This was not how it was supposed to happen.

The Matushka awaited them—awaited her.

“I’m sorry,” Tatiana sobbed, stumbling forward into her arms, the defenses of a lifetime undone. “I tried, I tried to bring her out. I did. She saved me and I couldn’t save her. I’m sorry. I’ll go, I’ll leave, I know I don’t deserve to be here. To be in her place.”

The Matushka gave her a little shake. “Tatiana.”

Tatiana looked up.

Perched on the Matushka’s outstretched arm was a bird the size of an eagle with plumage that glowed red-orange, with golden eyes and crest. Tatiana’s breath caught in her throat.

“The firebird!”

The rarest creature in all Rusvanya, the bringer of hope and joy. Tatiana had never believed it existed.

“You see, Tatiana, we had it backward,” the Matushka said. “We believed that your impurity would spread to Elena and condemn you both to death. I was certain the bond between you two would kill you both.”

“Instead she died and I lived,” Tatiana mourned.

“In a way, yes,” the Matushka said. “But that is not the end of the tale. Her purity and love was so great that it overcame your uncleanliness and covered you both. Her sacrifice, her willingness to die if that was what it took to save you from your old life, carried you both through the flame. She died, and you were both reborn.”

“But—I don’t understand,” Tatiana said. “Where is she?”

The firebird spread its wings and its low, joyful cry throbbed through the air.

It couldn’t be. Could it?

“Lena?”

“Yes,” the Matushka said, Tatiana’s own wonder echoed on her face. “Elena has received the highest honor any of us could have. She has been transfigured into the Firebird.”

The firebird—Elena—lifted off the Matushka’s shoulder, soared around the room and returned, brushing Tatiana’s cheek with her wingtips as she did. Tatiana put her hands to her face.

“There,” said the Matushka. “She has claimed you as her own.”

She turned Tatiana around to see her reflection in the polished edge of the fire pit. Standing out against her dark cheek was a pattern of copper feathers, imprinted on her skin for all time. Tatiana knew the markings for the priests and priestesses as well as for the Zashchitniki, the guards, and this did not match any of them.

“What does it mean?” she asked, touching it lightly with her fingertips. “Am I not a Sestra, then?”

The Matushka looked thoughtful. “The stories tell of once every several generations, a servant of fire being sent into the world to carry the sacred fire to the darker edges of Rusvanya, the places where it is known not. It is a rare honor and a hard task, for the world outside these walls does not always welcome the purifying effects of the Ogon flame.

“Oh yes, you are one of us now, zvyozdochka. But I believe you must follow the firebird outside this temple. She will lead you to the path you must take.”

For so long, Tatiana had believed she must fill the void inside her with the fire of her own passions and desires. Now, fresh from the sacred flame, she rested in the steady glow Elena had gifted her. Once, she would have rejected that along with everything else offered her without payment or expectations.

She was no longer that Tatiana. She would nurture this candle inside until it rose into a light to be seen by the whole world, in thanks for what she had been given.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I will follow.”

She tarried only long enough to change into clothing for the road and gather supplies for her trip, then stepped outside the temple gate for the first time in seven months. This time, she was no outcast. She was not fleeing anything or anybody.

Tatiana was no longer running away. Though the road ahead might be dark and cold, but she carried the sacred flame in her heart. It would light the way, and if she remained faithful, would change the lives of others even as her life had been changed.

High above her head, the firebird danced in the light of the morning sun.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

E.L. BATES lives on the beautiful North Shore of Massachusetts with her husband and two daughters. In between homeschooling and writing, she enjoys knitting, exploring the local beaches and hiking trails, and always, always reading. She is most often found with a cup of tea in one hand and dark chocolate in the other. You can find out more about her other writings through her website, www.stardancepress.com.

Morning Bells Are Ringing

PERI L. FLETCHER

THE CONTACT TEAM WALKED across a grassy field towards Inveran, the only city on the mountainous southern continent of Tyre. I should have been with them, not in the ship’s operations room, peering at the viewing screens with the rest of the crew. Tyre was Shepherd II’s first stop on a mission to re-contact the six furthest planets colonized during the Hegira, then lost to Earth during two centuries of turmoil. We had intended to land in the city of Beiguan, on what had been Tyre’s most industrialized and populated continent, but our electronic hails went unanswered. We discovered the reason for the silence when the thick cloud cover dissipated, revealing swaths of burned forests, central plains that looked like melted glass, and the ruins of several cities.

Instead, Shepherd II made rudimentary contact with the government of Inveran, on the small, southern continent, using an ancient radio code. We were given permission to land a team, and two days later our landing team shuttled to the planet. Sam Crawley, the team leader and senior ethnologist, hadn’t selected me to go with them, to my crushing disappointment.

I stood on an upended crate to get a better view in the crowded room. One screen displayed images of forested hills and small farmsteads from the landing shuttle’s optics, while the other screen streamed audio and visual from the security officer’s helmet and from the biologist’s hand-held recorder.

“We can see the gates now. Look at those carvings.” Grace Terzi, the biologist, said into her mic as she walked behind Sam. She shifted the camera’s view away from the city gates. “Oh wow, see the flowers on the hillside? They’re just like a quilt.”

The feed shifted back to the city wall, zooming in on towering row of statues along the city wall. The communications officer beckoned to me and pointed at the screen. “Jeannie, what do you think those statues outside the gates are? Religious?”

I pushed my way to the front of the group, happy to have anyone ask my opinion of anything. I was the most junior of officers, a green linguistics Ph.D. from Duke, with a yearlong postdoc studying archaic languages at Oxford, and a mother who served as liaison between the United Nations High Commission for Reunification and ISEA, the International Space Exploration Administration. Not too hard to guess which qualification got me on this mission.

“They’re beautiful,” I said, examining the statues, figures of men and women so elaborately carved they appeared to be made out of vines or wire. “We don’t know what religions, if any, are followed now on Tyre. At last contact they were secular. That must be the greeting party,” I said, as Thayer Weiss, the security officer, focused his lens on a group of men striding across the large plaza visible inside the open gates.

As the Shepherd team walked through the gateway the shadowy figures resolved into ten men dressed in knee-length brocaded jackets. They appeared unarmed, except for one who wore a jewel-encrusted sash over his white jacket and carried a large sword across his extended hands.

Grace kept a running commentary, speaking quietly into her mouthpiece. “We’re walking through the gates into the plaza. A lot of people are standing at the edge of the plaza, where the streets come in. We’ve almost reached the men. They’re next to some kind of tower thing with a bunch of bells. It’s covered with carvings. Now they’re walking towards us. The one in white, he seems to be the leader, maybe he’s offering the sword to us?”

She waved at Thayer’s head then swiveled back to the plaza, where a crowd of Inveranians ringed the plaza. “Hey, can you hear?” The sound of hundreds of people singing reached us. She turned back to Thayer, who called out to her to record the meeting.

Suddenly the feed jerked from side to side, showing one of the Inveranian men drawing a dagger from his waist as he advanced on the Shepherd team. Sam Crawley put his hands out, palms up.

“Oh, what?” Grace shouted. “He’s pulling a knife! Oh my god!”

Thayer yelled to Grace to get back, then, without warning, the man in the white tunic leapt forward, his sword flashing towards Thayer’s neck. A spray of blood splattered across the vid screen. Thayer fell backwards, and his feed showed only the silvery sky. Those of us watching let out a collective gasp. We heard Lukas Johanns, one of our two doctors, shouting, asking for the man to put down his sword.

“Oh, god, now Dr. Johanns is down, too,” Grace said. Her video recorder appeared to be pointing at the ground.

“They are, oh no. They’re pulling me away. No, please, please.”

A crunching followed, as if boots stepped on the recorder as we listened helplessly. Then, silence.

The display screen switched to feed from the ship’s cameras but we could no longer see directly into the plaza.

I rushed to the other side of the room, where the chief medical officer monitored the team’s vitals. “Myriam, what’s happening?” I asked, my heart thudding painfully.

“Grace and the science team are alright,” she said. “I’ve lost communication with Thayer.”

“Lukas?” I asked, my heart in my throat.

“He’s alive. His blood pressure is dropping, he must be losing blood. I don’t know anything more.” She rested her hand on mine. She knew how I felt about Lukas. “We need to get down there. Go tell the captain while I get ready.”

A few minutes later I stood in the conference room while the rest of the science team, the bridge officers, the security team and the captain discussed options. I couldn’t fathom what had happened. The planet’s early history was bloody, with generations of warfare between the two continents. ISEA’s predecessor helped broker a peace, and both continents had disbanded their militaries and slowly rebuilt. But almost two hundred years had passed since Earth had been in contact with either continent, and obviously the commitment to non-violence had not lasted.

“We need to send a rescue team right away,” I said, raising my voice to be heard over the heated discussion.

“You don’t get a say, Jeannie,” the chief mate, said, glaring at me. “We can’t chance losing the other shuttle. We need to get a message back to ISEA.”

“We’d have to return to the transfer station to send a message,” the operations chief said. 

The captain, a cautious man in his mid-forties, pursed his lips together. Returning to the transfer station to send a message to Earth would take two years. It would take a rescue ship another two years to reach Tyre from the transfer station, perhaps dooming our landing party. But attempting an immediate rescue meant risking the last shuttle and more of the crew. If we weren’t successful, the multi-billion dollar mission of the Shepherd would be finished on its first planetary landing.                  

“Please, Captain, the CMO sent me here. We should go down right now. It’s our best chance in a situation like this, before anything else goes wrong,” I said, imagining Thayer and Lukas with their lives waning. Lukas, who joined me in the mess when hardly anyone else would, who invited me for chess games and to watch movies in the rec. Who stayed up late with me, just talking. Lukas, whose smile lit up his face. “And I should go with the rescue party,” I added.

The bridge crew turned and stared at me with expressions ranging from skepticism to disdain.

“I speak Old English Standard. The Inveranian language probably won’t have drifted much from OES,” I said, trying to ignore their lack of approval. “I’ve studied their history. We’ve got to go in carefully and try to understand the situation.”

“And what’s going to keep us from repeating the same mistakes the contact team made?” asked Rutledge. “Sam Crawley is ISEA’s best ethnologist.” 

She had a point. Sam, was a veteran of Shepherd I, with extensive practice in first contact protocols. I had the same academic credentials as Sam, but none of his experience. Why wouldn’t I make even worse mistakes?

The argument continued until Myriam walked through the door, her med kit slung across her shoulders. “Captain, I have at least one patient dying down there,” she said, her voice making it clear that she wouldn’t take any argument. “We can’t wait.”

“Sir,” I said, “We should send the doctor with a small team. No weapons. No uniforms.”

“I disagree” said Rutledge, a former naval officer. “If anything, we should be sending in our strike team. Maybe tonight, when it’s dark.”

“We’re a non-military mission. Carrying weapons didn’t help our team, and if the Inveranians were aware of them they might’ve made things worse. We need to do things differently. Please, sir.” I had a feeling a commando rescue operation would end in a bloodbath.

The captain stood up and walked to the large screen, where we could see the image of the outskirts of the city projected by the lenses on the landing shuttle. “Could the Inveranians have weapons we didn’t pick up, something buried maybe? Automatic weapons that could mow you down when you step outside?”

“We didn’t see anything,” said Rutledge. “Doesn’t mean there isn’t a battery of surface-to-air weapons aimed at the shuttle.”

I shook my head. “Sam and I reviewed the bits of electronic emissions we picked up. Seems like the Inveranians stopped any technological progress over one hundred years ago. The prevailing theory is that war and development of weapons drive technology. Without an industrialized sector, it’s unlikely they have sophisticated weapons. They seem to have devoted all their energy to art and music and architecture since the last war.” I wondered how I could put on this pretense of academic expertise while my mind conjured up images of Lukas dying, of our team being abandoned.

“Alright then,” said the Captain. “No weapons. I’m sending an extra pilot to bring back the first shuttle. Doctor, Jeannie, and…” He glanced around the room and pointed at one of the communications techs. “Ensign Williams, right?”

The tech, who appeared to be in his early twenties, nodded, his eyes wide. “Wilens, sir. Drake Wilens.”

“You three, change into civilian clothes. You’ll each have a feed. And you might let the bastards know I’ll put a hole in their city if they harm you.” 

I hurried back to my small cabin and pulled on a long blue skirt and a red shirt with flowing sleeves, to look more like the women we’d seen on the feeds, then took the elevator to the shuttle bay. While I waited for the crew to load medical supplies onto the spare landing shuttle, I studied the feed, wishing I could talk to Sam. Would we be repeating the same horrifying scenario in five minutes? Maybe we’d sent an unlucky number of people, or acted in a disrespectful manner. The cameras could have offended them, or they could have been aware of the defensive weapons the security team carried, against their orders. Nothing seemed like a killing offense though.

An hour later we landed the shuttle outside the city, next to the first shuttle. Myriam carried her medical bag across her shoulders, a powered gurney loaded with a field stretcher gliding next to her. We walked slowly down the gangway, our hands in front, palms up.

I can’t begin to explain how I felt, taking my long-awaited first steps on alien soil, smelling the blossom-scented air, filled with an almost paralyzing dread. If it hadn’t been for Lukas I wouldn’t have volunteered. It didn’t make me feel very proud, just aware of my lack of real credentials for the job. 

Myriam gave me a little smile and said, “Not exactly how you planned your first mission?’

I shook my head.

“Jeannie, you’re the right person for this. I see how some of the crew isolates you, but I also can see, despite your inexperience, you’ll be a fine ethnologist. Let’s just get through today in one piece, alright?”

Myriam’s calming presence gave me courage. Drake, the tech, walked behind us, his teeth chattering. He probably knew his expendability was the reason he’d been chosen for the rescue mission.

Despite being the senior officer Myriam asked me to advise her as we approached the city. I suggested we keep quiet until we understood the situation better. Through the open gates we could see the Inveranian men standing near the bell tower. With their ornately brocaded tunics and jewels twinkling in their braided hair, they looked like a committee of dignitaries, a welcoming party, except for the blood-stained sword, held point down, in the hand of one of them. Their expressions of distress made me think things had not gone as planned for the Inveranians, either.

Lukas lay curled on the ground halfway between the tower and an open pavilion, his arms around his head. Sam and Grace slumped against a fountain, which sprayed water in intricate patterns high above their heads. Focusing my augments, I could see Sam’s purple throat. An egg-shaped lump bulged on his bald head. Grace stared at the ground, swallowing reflexively, over and over. Thayer lay face down, his blood pooling on the blue and green mosaic tile. 

I nodded to the ensign to communicate the situation to the ship. He flicked his eyes to activate his link and started to speak softly. Sam waved his hand across his chest to get my attention. When he saw me watching he pointed to his mouth, and then to his bruised throat and made a slashing motion. Did he mean he couldn’t talk? Or was he conveying the obvious, telling us Thayer had been murdered? He leaned back against the fountain as if exhausted by the effort.

As we got nearer we could hear the crowd. A wall of sound carried across the plaza, bouncing off the buildings at the edges, a haunting dirge, menacing and mournful at the same time. Drake touched me on the arm. I shook him off, anxious to reach Lukas.

“Shouldn’t we wait here?” he asked. “See what they do next?”

At the sound of his voice the man with the sword whirled around.

“Oh god, it’s going to happen again. We’ve got to run,” Drake said, his voice high with panic.

I grabbed him by the arm. As the men approached us, the one with the sword held it above his head.

“Let go of me,” Drake moaned, yanking his arm free.

The man with the sword sang something, a wild, harsh melody, and suddenly I understood what Sam had been trying to convey.

“Don’t talk or they’ll kill us?” I sang it, trying though my fear to make it a tune.

The Inveranian men stopped and stared at me.

“We have to sing,” I sang, using the first melody that popped into my mind.

“What? Why?” asked Drake in a loud voice.

“Frere Jacques.” I sang the ancient song, still sung by children on Earth.

“Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping?” I sang, staring at my team mates, willing them to join me.

“Brother John, Brother John,” they responded after a long minute.

“Morning bells are ringing,” I sang, raising my voice.

The man holding the sword lowered his arm. The chanting voices around the plaza stopped. We kept at it. Myriam had a beautiful soprano voice, Drake a wobbly, hoarse bass.

I clasped my hands together and sang in OES, “We meant no harm. Our intentions are peaceful. Please can we see our people?” The simple melody proved useful for conveying information.

After a minute the man answered in a minor chord. “Why did you attack us then?”

“I don’t understand.”

“You claim you came in peace, but you attacked us with speech. Speech is the way of our enemies, who waged cruel war on our people. They led their troops against us during the slaughter nights with yells. Like them.” He pointed to Thayer. “We learned generations ago no civilized humans use speech, only those who seek domination and destruction.”

“Forgive us. The ways of our world may seem strange, but we meant you no harm.” 

I kept singing to the leader until he gave his permission for us to go to our shipmates. We ran across the plaza, the city men following. Myriam turned Thayer over. He stared blindly at the sky, beyond our help. She knelt by Lukas, slapping a pressure bandage on the large wound in his side.

I stroked his arm, fighting back tears. “Please be alright, I whispered. “I have so much more I want to tell you.”    

“We have to go back to the ship. Now!” Myriam said, forgetting to sing. I touched her on the shoulder, and she glanced up at the men, who stood right behind us.

She turned to the Inveranians and sang the rest in her sweet voice, telling them Lukas would die without medical care. They conferred with each other in their strange low singing, allowing Myriam to approach the fountain.

“You may take your injured,” the leader sang. “You must stay,” he said, pointing to Myriam.

“She’s our only doctor now,” I sang, standing up. “This man will die without her.”

“She has the voice of a bird. Who else can sing like her?”

“I don’t have her voice,” I sang as I exchanged my freedom for Lukas’s life. “But I can teach you songs from many places.”

I expected Sam, an accomplished pianist who loved to sing, to say something. He could stay and have the ethnographic experience of a lifetime. I glanced at him, thinking he hadn’t followed the conversation. He met my eyes and quickly turned away. He’d heard, but he wasn’t going to volunteer.

“This is acceptable. And you.” The leader pointed to Drake, who appeared to be on the verge of throwing up. “We’ll see if you can rise above your ignorance and learn to act like a human. If so, your life will be spared.”

“How long must we stay? When can our ship return for us?” I asked, having a hard time keeping a tune.

He moved his hands back and forth. “Until you’ve taught me your songs. Maybe ten or fifteen years.”

Drake gasped. Ten of their years was half a lifetime. I grabbed onto Drake’s arm again to keep him from doing something stupid. 

“The captain won’t cancel Shepherd’s mission, won’t go back to the transfer station to send for help, you know. Not for us, Jeannie. You should’ve let the doctor stay,” Drake murmured to me, with the bare hint of a melody.

He was right. We were the two most unessential members of the mission.

“Or Sam should stay.” Drake raised his voice in a parody of a song, loud enough so Sam would be sure to hear. “We’ll be here the rest of our lives.”

“I’m so sorry,” Myriam whispered into my ear. “I can’t let Lukas die.” She hugged me hard. “You can do this, Jeannie. You’ve done a brave thing. I’ll do everything I can to make ISEA send someone for you. You will have to watch out for Drake, keep him alive. He’s so young.”

Still holding onto Drake’s arm, I watched as Myriam and Grace loaded Lukas onto the powered gurney, then placed Thayer on the field stretcher. Sam let Grace help him to his feet. He walked over to the doctor without meeting my eyes. Staggering under the weight, Grace and Sam carried the field stretcher between them, while Myriam guided Lukas’s gurney.

Sam limped through the gates, his head bowed. I understood the burden he carried. If he had volunteered to stay behind, Shepherd could not go on, a way would have been found to get him back. He had weighed the value of our lives against his passion for the mission. I’d like to think it was a hard choice.

The Shepherd crew made their way across the grassy field back to the shuttle, taking Lukas and all my hopes and dreams with them. I had never told him how I felt, and now it was too late. It would forever be too late. As the gangway retracted into the ship the crowd began to sing to the melody of Frere Jacques. They sang it in rounds, just like it was meant to be sung.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PERI L. FLETCHER is an anthropologist and writer who lives in Northern California. She has previously published fiction in Electric Spec, Liquid Imagination, and The Future Fire.

Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On

JOANNA HOYT

OPHIE TOOK NOTICE OF Cordelia the very first time she showed up at the craft fair. She supposed everyone must take notice of Cordelia, with her wide dark eyes that seemed to drink in all the light and her long dark hair tossing winglike in the wind. Ophie told herself the usual spell against inordinate jealousy of beautiful women: You’re never going to look like her. Might as well just enjoy looking at her. And Ophie did, she surely did, though that enjoyment would have been less complicated if Cordelia hadn’t reminded her quite so much of Liliane.

Ophie also noticed that Cordelia made the usual new vendor’s mistake of overpacking. She was hauling a collapsible booth and a midnight-blue coversheet across the parking lot the first time Ophie laid eyes on her.

“You won’t need that,” Ophie said, trying to be helpful. “We’re setting up indoors.... I’m Ophie Brown,” she added, not wanting to sound rude or bossy.

“I’ll need this,” Cordelia said, smiling. “I’m Cordelia.” She left it at that.

It took Ophie three trips to move her table and her boxes of stock in. Cordelia made six trips. The blue cloth covered the unfolded booth completely. After the booth she carried in a huge cubical box with a handle sticking out the top and midnight blue drapes swathing everything else. Then another covered box. Then a big swaddled round box that appeared to be heavier. Those all went inside the booth. Finally Cordelia brought an L-shaped folding table, which she set up in front of the booth, and an ordinary plastic tote, which she unpacked onto the table.

Ophie frowned at the contents of that box. Cordelia’d never make any money that way. Oh, the knit things were nice enough, mittens and booties and cozies, the sort of things Ophie’s great-aunts made, though the great-aunts didn’t have Cordelia’s sense of color. But Ophie knew, having watched other people try, that if you charged enough for knit stuff to make any kind of decent hourly rate you’d charge enough so no one likely to come to that craft fair would buy it. She thought of telling Cordelia. Then she thought Cordelia probably didn’t want any more unsolicited advice from her.

The last things Cordelia laid out on the table had less of a great-aunt look. They trailed in the air as Cordelia picked them up, so they must have been lightweight; but the pictures embroidered on them were so intricate that there must have been some weight of stitchery in them.... There was a great indigo-winged moth hovering over a black flower against a crimson-flecked sunset sky. There were three ravens, detailed down to the gleam in their eyes and the angle of their outstretched primaries as they flew, soaring on a field of gold with traces of a rather uncomfortable green swirled into it. They were lovely, but they left Ophie feeling as though she didn’t quite fit in her skin.

Last of all Cordelia unfolded two long narrow bands of tapestry from her box and pinned them up so they hung down from the front of her table. The background was a maelstrom of scarlet and silver. The words were in a fancy flowing script, and in midnight blue with highlights of gold. The words on one banner said, “To give losses their remedies.” The other said, “To knit up the raveled sleeve of care.”

Ophie figured Cordelia must know it was bad luck to quote the Scottish play, if she knew enough to quote it at all.

Cordelia’s luck looked all right to start with. She sold an afghan and several pairs of mittens (she’d priced them cheap; they’d move that way, you just couldn’t make a living at it). She didn’t sell any of the tapestry scarves. Oh, people looked at them, looked long and hard, but mostly they didn’t touch them.

Then Seth Harkness stopped in front of the table, staring at the tapestries, his left hand held out toward them but not quite touching, his right hand starting to clasp and unclasp behind his back, his shoulders twitching slightly, his back curving as if he was walking into a hard cold wind that no one else could feel. Ophie knew the signs, cut off a prospective customer in the middle of a conversation on lavender as a cure for nightmares, and hurried round the table toward Seth. He was a gentle man. He’d been a laughing boy when he and Ophie were in school together, before he went off to the war and came back with nightmares lavender couldn’t assuage, nightmares that fractured his sleep and shadowed his days. Sometimes, if Ophie moved and talked slow and steady enough, she could bring him far enough back into the waking world to stop twitching. The sooner she could interrupt, the better.

But this time it was too late. Seth was stepping round to the back of Cordelia’s table, and Cordelia was holding a fold of the drapery back just enough to let him in. Not, as Ophie noted, enough to show anyone else what was inside.

Ophie wasn’t any kin to Seth; she had no right to interfere. She went back and soothed her customer, still keeping an eye and an ear on the booth.

Seth and Cordelia were inside for fifteen minutes, which felt like a long time to Ophie. Once she saw the drapery swirl as though a wind had passed through the booth—not, she told herself soothingly, as though somebody in the booth had hit somebody else. Small as the booth was, there’d hardly be room for anyone to get a good swing in. Once she heard a noise that brought her halfway round the table again, a hoarse sound between a croak and a cry. But she had no right no right no right...

Seth stepped out of the booth first, Cordelia following him. Seth’s back was straight and his hands hung loose at his sides. He didn’t answer Ophie’s smile or her greeting. He shook his head like a swimmer coming up from deep water, and he headed for the door. The sharp lines in his face were all smoothed out.

Ophie looked again at the sign. It was sleep, of course, that knit up the raveled sleeve of care. Had Cordelia sold Seth some kind of sedative or tranquilizer—something much stronger and faster acting than lavender? Maybe she had figured out the money angle much better than Ophie had thought.

It wasn’t completely on purpose that Ophie dropped a glass potpourri jar when it was time to pack up and leave the church hall. It stood to reason that, having done that, she had to vacuum very thoroughly so no one would cut their feet on a missed fragment of glass. This left her and Cordelia alone in the hall.

Ophie offered again to help Cordelia carry her things out to the car, and this time Cordelia accepted, with a sidelong look at Ophie. Ophie lugged the table, the plastic tote, the round draped box. Ophie pushed the drapery up, of course, when she thought Cordelia’s back was turned.

It wasn’t a box. It was a glass jar with a tight-fitting lid. It appeared to be perfectly empty.

Ophie swung round when she heard the low croaking or sobbing noise again, coming from the box that Cordelia carried.

Cordelia went back for the last box herself, leaving nothing for Ophie to do but drive away. Ophie didn’t know what she was thinking when she pulled off on the shoulder, slipped her sturdy shoes off and ran barefoot back up toward the church, trusting the row of evergreens along the drive and the gathering dusk to keep her hidden.

Cordelia was just pulling the cloth back from one of the square boxes. Only this wasn’t a box either but a wire cage. There was an odd bluish glow to the wires which the moonlight didn’t seem to wholly account for. And there was something in the cage. Something hunched and croaking. Something that, when Cordelia undid the clasp and opened the top of the cage, spread broad black wings and flapped up heavily into the sky, crying as it went. It looked like a raven or a crow, except that its feathers were touched with the same blue light as the cage wires—no, the light must have come from the bird, for the wires looked flat gray and dead now. Anyhow Ophie had heard both crows and ravens make an ungodly to-do but she had never heard either call in a way that disagreed so sharply with her stomach and her blood. Whatever the thing was, it rose in slow circles, as though searching, and then flew off in a straight line.

Cordelia watched it go, then turned back to shut the empty cage. Halfway through turning she paused for a moment, facing straight toward Ophie, and Ophie could have sworn she was smiling.

AFTER THAT OPHIE KEPT running into her. They were assigned adjacent spaces in the Morrisville town hall. Ophie didn’t know the whey-faced woman who shuffled up to Cordelia’s table with her eyes down and her hands knotted together. But Ophie wasn’t altogether surprised when the woman went into Cordelia’s booth, or when she came out wide-eyed and high-headed.

This time Cordelia opened the jar, and out of it fluttered a cloud that slowly fragmented and dispersed on dozens of blue-black velvet wings. Moths, maybe, though if so they were uncommonly large and something about the shape of them didn’t seem quite right. This time Ophie was close enough to hear clearly what Cordelia said to them: To the elements be free.

THEY WERE TOGETHER AGAIN at the apple festival. Ophie’s mind was full of Cordelia until she saw Ellie.

Ellie lived down at the end of Ophie’s road, and she had taken to visiting Ophie’s farm some summer days, collecting eggs from the hens and helping weed rue and harvest mint. She was fourteen, old enough to be good help and, so far, not old enough to wish on principle to avoid being helpful. She and Ophie talked about the weather, about the garden, sometimes about books—she had a good mind, Ellie did, and apparently no one at home interested in helping her feed it. They didn’t talk about the time when Ophie came up behind Ellie, meaning to point out a butterfly, and Ellie, taken by surprise, screamed and bolted, treading on the rue plants. Nor about how Ellie flinched when Ophie touched her shoulder once to call her attention to an oriole perched on the garden fence. Ophie learned not to touch Ellie at all, or to come up behind her. She didn’t know how to ask why without scaring Ellie away altogether.

Ellie stayed in Cordelia’s booth longer than either Seth or the pale girl had done. When she came out her chin was up and there was a fierce little light in her eyes. She walked over to Ophie’s table and talked a little about the weather, about the apple harvest, about the book Ophie had loaned to Ellie. Light, comfortable talk. Usually Ophie felt as though these conversations with Ellie were dancing on thin ice over deep cold water. This time she felt as though there was ground under their feet.

The things that flew out of the jar that night were small again, but they flew faster and straighter than the moths had done, and their wings made a clicking sound. Ophie dropped flat to the ground, the way Seth sometimes did when a car backfired. The swarm passed low over her. They didn’t touch her. She thought she couldn’t have borne it if they’d touched her.

That night Ophie dreamed about the things from the jar. First she dreamed their release just as she’d seen it, but instead of passing over her the swarm stopped just above her and then plunged down. Ophie woke with her heart laboring and her mouth parched. She rolled over, tugged the blankets over her head and found herself back by the parking lot again, only this time she stood right beside Cordelia when she opened the jar. She heard what Cordelia told them: I shall see the wingéd vengeance overtake... In the play poor old Gloucester had ended the line with Such children. That wasn’t what Cordelia said. Ophie thought Cordelia said a name, but it was drowned out in the chattering wings of the vengeance Cordelia was loosing. When it—they—went whirring out of the jar Ophie saw them clearly, saw them in a cold blue light that illumined nothing but themselves. They were locusts, each one as long as Ophie’s foot. Like the locusts in the Book of Revelation, they had fierce human faces, long hair and golden crowns.

Ophie woke again to find her feet entangled in the covers and the rest of her body bare except for cold sweat.

She made her bed back up neatly, lay down and told herself to think about calming things, the same way she did after the quarrel with Liliane. It worked about as well as it had before—that is to say, it didn’t work at all. First she was lying in her cold bed—cold, though it was August—and fretting. Then she was out in the warm dusk listening to Cordelia calling on the wingéd vengeance. Her heart surged at the call, and she pressed up against the imprisoning fabric. When Ophelia’s hand pulled the cloth away she rose into the free air, spread her wings and flew, her sisters clamoring around her, a cold fire expanding in her thorax...

Ophie woke up on the floor. She made her bed again but didn’t lie in it. All the rest of that night she paced the floor, trying not to think about where her locust self had been going. It didn’t work. She’d never learned to keep her mind off Liliane.

OPHIE AND CORDELIA MET again three weeks later, at the Scarborough fair. Two men, strangers to Ophie, went into Cordelia’s booth at different times. Ophie told herself she wouldn’t stay behind this time to see what Cordelia had charmed from them, what she would loose on the world. She almost believed herself.

At the end when everyone else broke their tables down and packed their boxes, Cordelia didn’t move. Ophelia stuffed the last of her pillows into its box, snuck another glance at Cordelia, and found Cordelia looking at her, a steady look that seemed to pull her in. Ophie knew enough to be afraid of that look. She knew, also, that running was the worst way to deal with fear. Not that she hadn’t tried ever since the night of the locusts, tried lavender and music and soothing books, tried pacing the floor and refusing to sleep. None of it had done any good.

Ophie stood up straight, set her hands on her hips and looked back at Cordelia. “Well?” she said.

Cordelia pulled back the curtain on her booth. Ophie went in.

Cordelia’s black hair and her long blue dress faded into the blue shadows of the booth. Ophie might have been alone in her own mind, in a room she had meant to lock and leave a long time ago.

“I should have known,” Ophie said quietly. “I did know, almost. When I first saw Liliane I told myself she’d have no time for me, I didn’t bother her. But she came to me. She hung around my booth and asked the kind of questions people do ask about herbs, but she asked about me too. How I’d come to the farm. Whether it was what I’d always thought I’d do. She asked, and she looked me in the eyes like she really cared about the answers. And she told me bits about herself—the things she hoped to do, the things she was afraid she’d do, the memories...

“Well, she told me those in confidence, I’m not telling you. But I thought she trusted me. I thought she cared. I told her everything. About quitting the creative writing program and coming back when my mother was taken sick. About the two years I spent here, tending the gardens and tending her, and when she died... Well, I did go back to college, just one course, summer school, and it didn’t seem real to me any more. I came back home; I had work to do, and neighbors to tend to. And dreams... oh, I told her a little about those too. I never said what I dreamed about her, but I guessed she maybe knew. Knew, too, that I was too old for her, and the life I had wasn’t the life she wanted, so it couldn’t have come to anything anyway. But while she was here... Well, I made it pretty clear I would be glad to see her as often as she could come. I barely touched her, but we talked. More and more I talked and she listened, and I saw my face in her eyes and almost liked it.

“She kept on asking about the herbs too. What kind of nightmares did the lavender drive off? Did I believe what she’d read in this old book, that if you bathed your eyes in water where rue had steeped you’d see the truth about your true love?

“I guess some part of me knew not to trust her even then. I tried the rue one night. If I dreamed of her that night I don’t remember it. But the next morning old Meg Henshaw came by, and she talked the way she always does about her daughter Louise who teaches at the college. First I was half listening as she talked about this wonderful student in Louise’s creative nonfiction class who was doing a piece—that’s what she called it, a piece, of what whole they never do say—about this woman who’d repressed her sexuality and her creativity, shut herself up in a little farming town and lived in a fantasy world in her head. Poignant, she said Louise called it, poignant and insightful. Well, by that time I was listening all the way. I was guessing who that student might be. I wasn’t sure until Meg told about one of the subject’s—that’s what they called me in that piece, the subject—about one of the subject’s dreams. And it was one I’d told to Liliane.”

“She used you,” Cordelia said quietly, levelly. “Then what?”

“I met Liliane one more time. Told her what I’d found out. Thought she’d be ashamed—or, well, at least defensive. But she just beamed at me and said that people had found her pieces really moving, and that in a way she’d inherited the gifts I’d never worked on, so I could know I’d given the world something after all.” Ophie tried to laugh, but it came out more like a snarl. “Given the world something! As if the herbs are nothing, and the listening, and the space for kids like Ellie and folks like Seth to come and not be treated like freaks and not be ignored either—as if that was all nothing, and her... her...” Ophie bit her lips to keep the ugly words in. Shook her head. “I didn’t choke her. Didn’t even hit her. I do pride myself on that. I never even told anyone else the things she’d told me, the confidences, I thought they were...priming the pump, I guess, is what they really amounted to. I wasn’t going to be like her in the bad ways, since I couldn’t be like her in the good ones.”

There was silence in the tent for a little while. Ophie didn’t want to say the rest. She said it anyway.

“But still—what she looked like, what she acted like, what I thought she was...”

“She was alone the Arabian bird,” Cordelia said softly.

As she said it Ophie saw the bird, hanging in the air between them, gathering brightness, burning. The phoenix, long-winged, narrow-tailed, an aching beauty of fire and song.

Ophie made a sort of choking, sobbing noise. Her breath made the bird’s flames quiver and go out. What hung in the air of the booth after the flames died was the shadow of a shadow, a thing of smoke and ash, staring hopelessly at them with dulled eyes and rasping out a hoarse song with no tune that went on forever.

Ophie saw the shadow-bird darkening, gathering strength. Another moment and it would be real, it wouldn’t need her breath to feed on. Cordelia would shut it in the cage, would let it go as darkness fell. Would let it fly to Liliane’s window, perch over her bed, croak her dreams to nightmare, cover her with the choking dust of everything she loved.

“No,” Ophie said, half crying with the strength of her longing to say Yes. “No! No. I’ve told you about her, and maybe that was wrong of me in itself. I won’t follow her any further down that road...I won’t put my fear on her, or my grief. Likely she’ll have enough of her own. I can’t say I’m sorry for that. But I’ll bear my own shadows.”

Ophie took in a shaky breath and felt that certainty burning in her, a live coal banked in all that ash. A living fire.

“I thought so,” Cordelia said, and her voice was warm and bright. “I thought that you would wear your rue with a difference. You’ll be all right now. Not in the same way as the others, but you will be.”

Strangely enough, Ophie believed her.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JOANNA HOYT lives with her family on a farm in upstate NY where she spends her days tending goats, gardens and guests and her evenings reading and writing odd stories. Her fiction has appeared in venues including Factor Four Fiction, Flame Tree Publishing’s Heroic Fantasy anthology, and Enigmatic Mirror Press’s Mysterion anthology; some free online stories are linked from her website, https://joannamichalhoyt.com/

Julia Dream

DAVID TAUB

LEANDER STOOD OUTSIDE THE entrance to the strange bar, one eye on his watch, one eye on the passersby walking down Pearl Street. He’d been living in Boulder for over four years now and couldn’t believe he’d never seen this place before, even if it was the very definition of a nondescript hole-in-the-wall.

One minute.

He was supposed to meet his friends at the Downer, but he couldn’t face them tonight. He was just too tired of everything.

Five seconds. 56...57...58...59...midnight. Happy birthday to me, he thought and walked into the bar.

It was smoky and dark, and even if there were people everywhere, it didn’t feel crowded. The jukebox was playing Sultans of Swing and a few people were even dancing, or at least swaying rhythmically.

“Give me a shot of whatever,” Leander said, slapping down two twenties and his license on the countertop. “Then keep them coming until the money runs out or I give up and leave. You can keep whatever’s left.”

The bartender eyed his license suspiciously, looking back and forth between it and Leander and even checking the clock. “What year is it?” he finally asked.

“1992”, Leander replied, returning the bartender’s suspicious stare.

The bartender shrugged and gave him back his license. “I lose track sometimes,” he said, then took the money and poured a shot of tequila.

“Shouldn’t you be celebrating with your friends?” the bartender asked while cutting a slice of lime to put next to the shot glass.

Leander laughed. “My friends? Sure, let’s celebrate with my friends.” He raised the glass. “This one’s for Sarah, my first girlfriend. She fell off a cliff in Hawaii and died when she was 14.” He shot back the liquid, quickly biting into the lime just as the burning sensation engulfed his throat and mouth.

Another shot appeared just as he slammed down the first empty glass. Whisky this time. “And this one,” he said, raising the new drink, “is for Kyle. My best friend for two years until schizophrenia ate his mind.” He shot back the whisky, slamming down the glass a bit harder this time. “Have you ever watched someone’s mind and personality disassemble before your eyes?”

The bartender shook his head while pouring a new shot of vodka. “Can’t say that I have.”

A twisted smile spread across Leander’s lips. “How about this one?” He picked up the vodka shot, waving it around as he talked. “How about one for my friend John who masturbated to death last year. No. Fucking. Joke.” He shot back the liquid, which burned a lot less now than the others had. “It’s even got a fucking name. Autoerotic asphyxiation. Go figure.”

“You know, I think I might have just the thing for you.” The bartender unlocked a heavy metal door beneath the bar and pulled out a weird looking bottle, something out of a fantasy movie, with a bright green liquid sloshing around inside.

“Absinthe?” Leander asked, his curiosity piqued.

The bartender shook his head, pouring a shot. “You won’t have heard of this, but I promise you’ll enjoy it.”

Leander shrugged and shot back the liquid, tired of listening to his own whining. Expecting more fire, he was surprised to feel a cool and smooth liquid slide down his throat. Soothing. “It tastes like ... like ...” He licked his lips, trying to get a handle on what he was experiencing. “It tastes like a full moon on a clear summer night.”

“Why the hell did I say that?” he mumbled and stood up from the bar before he realized what he was doing. Suddenly very clear-headed, he wanted nothing more than to go home and sleep.

EVERYTHING FROZE, A SURREALISTIC mishmash of distorted people and places. It was Leander’s first lucid dream, the first time he had ever become aware in the middle of a dream.

“Are you a ghost?”

Leander spun around. “Who said that?” he demanded. He was supposed to have control in a lucid dream. He shouldn’t be hearing strange voices.

“Are you a ghost?” A woman dissolved into focus right in front of him. Smooth, dark, ebony skin. Hair dyed bright green and woven into tight cornrows. She was stunningly beautiful.

“Are you part of my dream?” he asked. He wanted to look at the rest of her, but was captivated by her eyes. She looked so awake, a person who really saw the world around her. Who saw things as they were and not just the mirage most people lived in.

She laughed at his question. He melted, thought his heart would burst. It was such an honest laugh, uninhibited. She was who she was. And he was already in love. With a dream.

“I thought you might be part of mine,” she said, keeping her eyes locked on his. “But you don’t fit. So I thought maybe you were a ghost.”

Leander shook his head. “I don’t believe in ghosts.”

That smile again. “I don’t either. But my lack of belief might not stop them from being real.”

It was his turn to laugh, and he could finally look away, look her over. She wore jeans and a loose fitting t-shirt, both covered in paint, as were her hands. Her fingernails were short, an afterthought. Her hands were busy, tools to be used, not put on display for men. They were her hands, and hers alone. And they were all the more beautiful for it.

She was impossible. A fantasy figure cooked up by his depression, or some drug that bartender had put in his drink. But he didn’t care. Right now, right here, real or not, he didn’t want to lose her.

“What’s your name?” he asked, looking her in the eyes again.

“Julia.”

“No. Fucking. Way.” He shook his head, snorting more than laughing.

She frowned and he thought he would die. Every emotion she felt echoed in him a thousand times stronger. He had hurt her a little bit, and her pain cut him like a knife.

“What’s wrong with my name?”

“Nothing, it’s perfect,” Leander said, and meant it. “There’s an obscure Pink Floyd song, one of my favorites. It’s called Julia Dream. I’m not going to torture you with my singing, but it goes something like this: Julia dream, dreamboat queen, queen of all my dreams.”

Her smile was back. “Sounds like a nice song. I’ll see if I can find it on Spotify when I wake up.” She paused, her smile fading slightly. “If I remember.”

Leander had no idea what Spotify was—maybe it was a collection of mixed tapes or something. But his focus was much more on the last thing she had said. “Am I so forgettable?” he asked.

“Hardly.” She was looking him up and down now, and he liked the expression on her face. She clearly liked what she saw. “But I never remember my dreams,” she added.

“I don’t think this is a normal dream,” he replied and moved closer to her. Dream moved. More like floating. He just thought about being closer to her and suddenly he was. And now he could see the fading scars on the underside of her arm, just below the wrist. Parallel cuts. Obviously self-inflicted. He’d had other friends who’d cut themselves. All for different reasons. Always about pain. You don’t get clarity of sight without walking through the fire.

She saw him staring at her arm and quickly pulled it away.

“Wait,” he said. “You don’t have to hide them from me.”

“They make people uncomfortable.” She looked down at her feet while she spoke, a slight tremor in her voice. “I don’t like the way they look at me afterwards.”

People are idiots. “It won’t make me uncomfortable. I promise.”

Julia looked up at him tentatively and then slowly held out her arm.

“May I?” he asked, reaching towards her hand.

She nodded and he took her wrist gently in his left hand. With his right hand he brushed his fingers lightly over her scars, the tips of his fingers barely touching her skin. The gentlest touch humanly possible. The softest caress. She closed her eyes as he moved his fingers slowly from her wrist to the inside of her elbow, skin barely touching skin the whole way. He could see she enjoyed it and that lit a fire inside him. Bending over, he brushed his lips every so lightly over her scars. Breathed on them. And then it was a soft kiss. It spiraled out of control from there.

The sex was impossibly good, as only dream sex can be. It was more than just physical. They had some kind of mystical connection in the dream, a sharing of feelings and emotions. Her pleasure was his pleasure. His pleasure was hers. It was almost unbearable how good it felt. Terrifying. Addicting. He never wanted it to end. But everything does, eventually.

He was still painfully hard when he woke, his underwear dripping from repeated orgasms during the night. Getting up, showering, getting ready. Going through the motions of life. It was tedium upon tedium.

Facing the day was a nightmare. Sitting through his university classes, pure torture. This was the real dream, last night was reality. All he wanted to do was go back to sleep, back to her. Somehow he knew she’d be there again.

And she was.

THE SECOND NIGHT SHE showed him her art. It was as amazing as he knew it would be. She poured herself into her paintings, all her pain, her joy, everything she truly saw. It was the kind of art that could change people. Help them see the world differently. It was transformative. But she was too scared to show anyone else. So she worked, and she created, and she hid it all away.

They talked about life, philosophy, religion, reality, no corner left unturned. They talked about all the big questions, the big fears. And in between, they made love. Again and again.

This went on for four nights in a row. And somehow, through it all, they never once talked about any personal details of their lives aside from her art. It was like the rest of their lives was the dream, and the only reality was what they created together. But nothing ever lasts.

Leander was afraid of going to sleep on the fifth night. He wanted more than anything to see her again. To touch her again. But he knew what he had to do. Had known it for a while now, though he tried to pretend he didn’t.

“Sometimes you matter most by realizing you don’t really matter,” he said to himself in the mirror. Trying to believe it. He was being selfish. He wanted to be with her. But he also loved her and her happiness came first.

There was no dream sex that night. Just a long talk about her paintings. Him trying to convince her to show her work. To change the world in her own way. In the end she agreed, and that was the last time he ever saw her.

LEANDER WATCHED THE SECOND hand on the clock tick towards twelve. 58...59...noon. It was now twelve hours since he’d turned 45 and nothing had really changed. He just kept getting older. Or perhaps it was only four hours, if you count the time difference between Colorado and the café in Amsterdam he was sitting in.

There was a time when he thought happiness was possible. When he might have had the strength to leave the past behind. But three marriages and five careers later, it felt like he’d just come full circle back to nothing.

He’d spent a few years teaching English here in Amsterdam, and that had given him purpose for a while. Made him feel like he was doing something important. But overwhelming bureaucracy and a stressful home situation forced him to give that up years ago. He’d stayed in Amsterdam after his divorce, having become a citizen himself by then. Now he made a living translating between Dutch and English. It paid the bills, but that was about it.

A bottle of pills sat on the nightstand by his bed. A silent debate he had every morning and every evening. A debate he knew he was losing. It was harder and harder to find things to put in the Why not? column.

Leander glanced at the clock again. Jamal should be here soon, he thought, then mentally slapped himself. No, that’s not her name anymore. Habits could be hard to break, and he didn’t want her to think he had a problem with her transition. He felt terrible when he realized he didn’t actually know her new name. Why am I just thinking of this now? I’m such an idiot!

Jamal had been one of his students when he was teaching English to teenagers. One of his favorite students, actually. He was skinny and nervous, and a bit weird, and he was bullied a lot during breaks. Leander had given him a safe zone in his classroom and they would spend the time talking about all kinds of random things. The kid was smart. And deep. He cared about bigger issues than most of the other teenagers who were focused on clothing, social media and sex. Leander had always hoped things had gone well for him later in life.

They were friends on Facebook, and so Leander saw small glimpses now and then. He knew that Jamal had come out as a woman at some point—which must have been extra difficult considering how religious his parents were. She had moved to another city and changed her name, hiding her identity for safety reasons—which was probably why he didn’t know it! He suddenly felt a little bit better. But only a little bit.

In a bout of self-pity, Leander had recently posted an old picture of himself on Facebook. It was from his early 20’s, kicking around a hacky sack in a park. His former student had commented on the picture almost immediately, using her old Jamal account, “Is that really you?!?!” That stung. Twenty years will take its toll on anyone, no matter how hard you try and fight it. That six pack was long gone, as was that smooth skin and full, curly hair. He knew that. He just didn’t like having it thrown back in his face. It was hard enough to accept as it was.

He tried to play it off with a joke. “Yeah, hard to believe, ain’t it?”

She said she was going to be in Amsterdam and suggested meeting for coffee. And so here he was, waiting for her to show up. Hoping he’d recognize her. She was 24 now, and he had trouble recognizing most of his former students at that age. A gender change was not going to make it easier. He really didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

Ten minutes later, he figured out her name.

It hit him like a shockwave. He spilled his coffee. Lost his breath. His world turned upside down. Reality turned inside out.

Julia had just walked into the café and waved at him.

SHE WAS SITTING ACROSS from him, talking excitedly about something, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying. The thunder in his ears was too loud. His heart was racing so fast he thought it might explode.

Green cornrows, smooth ebony skin, just as young and beautiful as she was twenty years ago in his dreams. It was more impossible now than it was back then.

“Leander! Are you listening to me?”

“What?” he mumbled, still trying to find a footing back to reality. Everything was wrong. Impossible.

“I know who you are!” she was almost yelling at him now. “I recognized you from your picture. From when you were my age. On Facebook.”

He shook his head. “What do you mean you recognized me? You weren’t even born then.”

The sudden doubt on her face cut him to the quick. “You don’t remember...the dreams?” Her voice was only a whisper now, her lower lip trembling slightly as she spoke.

He knew she was wondering if she’d just made a terrible mistake. If it had all been in her head. And for a moment, he thought it might be best to let her think that it had. The truth would only make it worse. More heartbreak. It was unbearable. The literal girl of his dreams turns out to be real, but she’s twenty years younger than him. A former student! He was old. Ashamed of the way he looked, of what he’d become. She was young and beautiful, just starting her life. It was insane. It was unfair. Un. Fucking. Fair.

In the end, he couldn’t lie to her. Not to her. “I remember you,” he said, his eyes watering. “I don’t understand how, but I remember you.”

Her smile lit up the room like a supernova. “My paintings are being shown in a major gallery. I’m the youngest artist to ever get a showing! It’s all thanks to you!”

Leander wiped his eyes and took a deep breath, pushing down his feelings. A skill honed over the years. “I’m really happy for you, Julia. But that was him, not me. It was a lifetime ago.”

A noise by the entrance caused Julia to glance over her shoulder, a shadow momentarily darkening her face. She relaxed when she saw it was just another customer.

Leander realized that she’d been subtly glancing out the window the whole time she’d been sitting there. “Is everything okay?” he asked, concern for her momentarily pushing aside all other feelings.

She shrugged. “I’ve been in the city a few days now. It’s dangerous for me. I might be recognized.”

“That’s...,” he started to say, but she cut him off.

“My life. My choice. This, right now, is about us. Forget everything else. Okay?”

He nodded, “Okay.”

“Good. Now take my hand,” she said, putting her hand on the table, palm up, her scars on full display, but with no shame this time. The same scars he had caressed and kissed so many years ago.

“I can’t.”

Julia frowned, her hand starting to close. “Is it because you think of me as a man?”

“God no!” Leander shook his head vehemently. “You’re too young.”

“I’m an adult,” she said, opening her hand back up. “I have been for years. I’ve even lived together with a man for over a year. That’s over now, but it was serious while it lasted. We almost got married. I am an adult. Take my hand.”

He couldn’t do it. “You were my student.”

“And you were wonderful to me back then, as a teacher. You helped me more than you know. But I am not that small boy anymore. That was a very long time ago. Take my hand.”

Could he do it? Was it possible? No, she deserved so much more than he could ever offer. He had his chance, it wasn’t her fault he’d fucked it up. It was her turn now. He knew she would do better.

And yet, there she was, right in front him. Real. Waiting for him to take her hand. The way she looked at him made him feel so young. So alive. Like he still had value. Like he mattered.

Maybe. Just for a little while. Just until he felt strong again. Maybe he deserved a little happiness. Just a little.

“Jamal!” The angry scream snapped him out of his thoughts. Then everyone else started screaming as a large man with a knife starting running towards their table.

He saw the terror and recognition in Julia’s eyes even before she turned around.

And then everything happened so fast.

The table overturned. Cups and plates crashed onto the floor.

Julia screamed.

Leander was jumping towards her. Shielding her.

Pain!

More pain!

More screaming.

The angry man was swearing, being held down by customers and staff.

Leander lay on the floor, unable to move. He felt cold. Tired. It was hard to focus. He knew he was dying.

Julia’s face appeared in front of his, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Why?” she asked. “You saved me as a teacher, you saved me as a lover, and now you saved me again. Why didn’t you let me save you this time?”

Leander smiled, and, with the little strength he had left, reached up and gently brushed a tear from her cheek. “But don’t you see? You did save me. You gave me everything today. Everything.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DAVID TAUB lives in Sweden where he works as a university lecturer. His first horror novel, Comes the Dark, hit the shelves in March 2006, and his short stories have appeared in Cosmos, Farthing, Neo-opsis, Dark Recesses Press, Nocturnal Ooze, Coyote Wild, Beyond Centauri, POW!erful Tales, Mitrania (Swedish), and 9 Magazine (Greek).

Giving Back

LONNIE BRICKER

“I’M TELLING YOU IT’S just another fear tactic.” Justin sneered at the television. Behind the pretty, blonde, female news anchor, an inset video showed a plume of blackness spewing from into the sky from sheer white Arctic ice. “Global warming has become old news, so now they’re trying to stir up panic with bugs.”

“So, billions of insects, frozen for possibly millions of years in an ice cavity, suddenly come to life, cover the entire world, and you aren’t worried.” Barbara sipped at her bourbon and eyed Justin. Beside her, he leaned back on the sofa, no doubt preparing for a smug retort.

“Why worry? Giant locusts flying around and dying? I call that fertilization, which is helpful,” Justin said, not disappointing her.

“You aren’t curious?”

“Ahhh, I never said that. I’d love to know how they stayed alive for so long. I mean, wow, all that time frozen under the ice?”

“Scientists think that thing they found under the ice might have been a huge egg—”

“Seriously? A giant egg kept dormant under the ice until, millions, millions, of years later, the temperatures are just right for hatching. And what laid something that big? A giant prehistoric insect nobody’s ever heard of?” Justin snorted.

Barb’s nostrils flared, but she kept calm, reminding herself that she loved her fiancée, even when he was being an ass. “Oh, I suppose it’s a plague of locusts signaling the end times?” And she was, of course, baiting him.

“As likely as anything else. Billions of locusts appearing from someplace they have no right being, swarming over the planet—”

“Dying, as you mentioned earlier,” she said, then took another sip of bourbon from her tumbler. “Not exactly a disaster of Biblical proportion.”

BARBARA WATCHED THE ICE plants, the common name for the green and yellow plants that sprung up wherever one of the locusts died, grow back behind Justin and the lawnmower. By the time he had finished mowing their fifteen-by-twenty backyard, they had grown an inch. From the comfort of her Adirondack chair, she toasted him. “What if we tell people it’s our garden instead of our backyard, maybe they won’t notice the plants have taken over.”

Justin raised his fists to the sky. “Overrun by bug-vegetables, this is the end of times! The Apocalypse is upon us!”

Barbara laughed. “Let’s just hope broccoli doesn’t get the word that veggies are taking over. It’s had it out for humanity since, well, forever.”

“How long before our vegetable overlords force us to eat nothing but meat and cheese?”

“And candy.”

“To rot our teeth of course. Just to make certain we can never bite into another carrot.”

“But …” Barbara sipped her bourbon. “… what if the ice plants are fruits?”

Justin held his nose in the air in mock indignation. “Impossible. I refuse to bow to anything other than a vegetable, or possibly a grain,” Justin said in his best English accent, which was indistinguishable from his Indian, or Russian accents.

“Are you talking revolution?”

“I believe I am.”

“Well, I refuse to start a revolution without being sexed up one last time.”

“I’m in.” Justin sprang across the yard, crunching ice plants under his sandals. The moment he lifted a foot, the greenish-yellow plants popped back upright, looking for all the world like he’d never passed.

Ten minutes later, he rolled off her with a satisfied moan, reached across her naked breasts and took the remote control off the nightstand.

“Seriously?” she said. “Why can’t you fall asleep after sex like a normal guy? Or at least turn on sports or something, you know … manly.”

“World news is quite manly, milady,” Justin said in a deep voice.

On the television, a handsome CNN news anchor sat behind a desk. “Some estimates place the number of employees calling off work at levels as high as forty-percent nationwide.”

“Holy crap,” Justin said. “What if …” He ran a finger around her bellybutton.

“What if what?” She said, reaching for the glass of bourbon she’d placed on the nightstand.

“What if this is the Apocalypse, like in the zombie-type?”

“Couch potato zombies?” She laughed. “Hide the Doritos.”

“TWO WEEKS WITHOUT A drink,” Barbara said as she bent over and picked another green, grape-sized ice fruit. Her plastic bowl was almost full.

“Now let’s see if you can go two hours without eating another bowl of that … stuff.”

“As soon as you can go two minutes without ogling this.” She shook her booty at him. Justin’s laughter brought a smile to her lips. She loved that he didn’t care if her jeans were suddenly a bit too tight.

“I guess we may as well get a head start on burning off that next bowl then.” With a barely audible grunt, he swooped her up in his arms.

BARBARA PICKED ANOTHER FRUIT from the ice plant. Only four months after the egg hatched and the amazing plants now covered the entire world. Even though it was mid-January in Ohio, the plants grew right through the six inches of snow covering the ground.

“One for me.” She popped an ice fruit in her mouth. With a crunch, her teeth penetrated the hard outer shell, releasing the pudding-like filling. Its taste varied depending on her mood; she’d heard it was that way with everyone. Today it tasted of mulled wine full of cinnamon, clove, and with a touch of citrus. What never changed was the warmth that spread through her body, followed immediately by a feeling of satisfaction bordering on euphoria. “Mmmm … and one for you.” The next hard fruit hit the bottom of her plastic bowl with a small thud. “Oh, you look so lonely there.” She ate it too.

“I’m a big enough man to admit when I’m wrong.” Justin stood a few feet away in their tiny backyard. Unlike her, he was bundled up against the cold, and he refused to eat from the ice plants.

“Uh-huh.” She chewed on the fruit.

“Except that maybe I’m not. Look at society now: no sickness, no hunger, not even erectile dysfunction. You’d think that with those things covered, we could move on to bigger and better things—pun intended—but not us, not humanity. Nobody has any ambition. I mean, c’mon, what does anyone do now, besides get fat on these things?” He pulled a plant from the ground and tossed its foot-long stem to one side.

Sighing, she trudged through the snow to the uprooted plant.

“Oh come on, Barb, it’s cold out here.” He hugged himself. “Leave it. There will be eight million new plants by tomorrow.” That was only a slight exaggeration, by morning each of the twenty or so fruits on the uprooted plant would be a fully grown specimen with fruit of its own.

She giggled. “Not if I eat them now.” She returned his glare with a vapid smile, and stripped the plant clean before following him inside.

“It can’t be healthy,” he said, pulling off his coat and gloves.

She sat down on the sofa and turned on the television. “…OSU Medical Center joined the ranks of hospitals closing their doors,” a CNN anchor said, between bites of ice fruit. “Along those same lines, another renowned nutritionist, Blake Goodall, claims ice fruit is all we need in our diet.”

“Look, he can’t even stop eating long enough to do his job.” Justin kicked his boots off, bouncing one off the back of the couch.

As if in response, she changed the channel.

“All those people that were part of the healthcare industry are out of jobs. That’s gonna raise the unemployment rate, again.” He flopped down beside her. “Don’t you even care?”

“They won’t go hungry,” she said, offering him an ice fruit.

“IT’S BEEN OVER A year, Barb. You’re getting worse, along with ninety-nine percent of the world.” Justin stood just inside the front door of their home, a gym bag slung over one shoulder.

“Yeah, okay.”

“I’m leaving you.”

“Yeah, okay.” She didn’t look away from the television. Someone in Egypt had figured out how to freeze the pods, so people would not have to go outside and pick them every day. Now she only had to heave her bulk as far as the refrigerator. The obese CNN anchor was praising the process, calling it the most exciting thing since global warming revealed the giant egg that had changed the world. The problem with freezing them, he was saying, had been one of deterring growth while frozen.

“You don’t have a job, Barb. Once I’m gone, you will lose the house, so you should probably look into one of those communal shelters they started.” He shifted his bag. “You know, one of those where everyone works like one day a week, so they can sit around and eat ice crack the rest of the time.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“I’m going to California, where there are other people who hate the bug munchies.”

Deep inside, past the thick layers of apathy, alarms sounded. He was talking about joining the Coalition of Health—terrorists searching for a way to destroy all the ice plants. Fortunately, scientists were saying it was impossible.

At the prescribed time, the television changed channels. Barb giggled at the opening credits of her favorite show, How Long Can You Last. Each week, contestants battled to see who could go the longest without eating an ice fruit. The returning champion, Peter, held the record at eight minutes. When she turned back, her fiancée was gone. She dug another fruit from the bowl on the coffee table.

“THE ENORMOUS CRAFT APPEARED over Washington D.C. an hour ago. So far, there has been no communication, but I assure you, we will have any—” the CNN anchor placed a pudgy index finger on one ear, “—I’m being told our reporter on site, Lincoln Abscomb, has something. We are going to him live, in Washington D.C.” The picture switched to a young man standing in front of the White House. His close-cropped dark hair was so perfect it had to be plastic. Yesterday they ran a story saying the government was going to subsidize the purchase of plastic hair. Barb couldn’t wait; daily grooming was so tiresome. Behind the triple-chinned reporter stood a few dozen of his peers, with accompanying camera crews. Microphones held before silently moving lips indicated the others were doing their own live feeds. Didn’t news stations used to plan their shots so their competitors didn’t show up in them? Must have been too much trouble. Beyond the crowd, four dark-suited secret service agents guarded an empty podium.

“You two see okay?” Barbara said. Mary and Stan glared at her from their seats at her usual table in the Mayfly’s dining room, the one in easy reach of the food dispenser and with the fantastic view of the sixty-inch television. She’d been here for two years now, a year longer than either of them; they knew that was her spot. She thumbed the joystick of her motorized chair, turning so she could eat her ice plant soup and watch the big screen without craning her neck. Her chair responded with an audible whine, eliciting a scowl from Stan. Her new, government-sponsored upgrade should be here in a week or two.

The young reporter swallowed hard, sending a ripple through his chins. “Hello, Jim. That’s right, the aliens have made contact with the White House, and—” In the background, beyond the secret service agents, the President of the United States emerged from a door. “Oh, here comes the President now.”

The President smiled, adjusted his expensive-looking blue suit, patted his plastic hair as if making certain it was in place, and waddled to the podium. “As you have most likely heard,” he said in his famous baritone, “I have spoken with the commander of the alien craft.” He paused to look over his audience, making eye contact with several of the cameras as he did.

“What do they want?” Though the residents of the Mayfly asked, not one reporter on the scene interrupted the President with the question.

“They have demanded we supply them with ten million people a month for the next five years. Further, they have threatened to take the people by force and kill all the ice plants if we don’t comply.” The President’s voice remained flat as he spoke. “According to their leader, the egg that spawned the ice locusts was sent here millions of years ago. Once the Earth held the correct temperature for a predetermined amount of time, the egg hatched, releasing the living ice plant seeds and signaling the aliens. According to their leader, the ice plants are a highly addictive food source meant to render our bodies incapable of absorbing nutrition from any other source. I can tell you that we have confirmed this. Even if we were still capable of producing our own food, it would have no nutritional value to us.”

Barb started to chuckle at the ridiculousness of that statement then stopped when she realized it had been years since she’d eaten anything other than ice fruit.

“According to the aliens, who call themselves the Molong, they are on a grand mission to map the entire universe. The journey will take hundreds of millions, possibly billions, of years, and will surpass any endeavor ever attempted by any other species. They believe we should be proud to be an integral part of such an accomplishment. And I quote: ‘Even the magnificent need to eat.’“

Barbara gasped and exchanged shocked glances with Stan and Mary.

“IGNORING BORDERS AND WORLD politics, the aliens have destroyed a portion of the ice plants on every inhabited continent. In response, world leaders have united to help those affected by the show of force.” The CNN anchor took a moment to pop an ice fruit in his mouth. He continued to speak while chewing. “The President has sworn to start shipping ice plants to those hardest hit. He did ask for patience, however, reminding the world that the majority of our aircraft and shipping resources have been mothballed. On top of the expected maintenance, they will also require several adjustments to accommodate the added girth of trained personnel. He also had this message. ‘The United States was proud to stand with the rest of the world and show the aliens that humanity will not be treated as cattle. We will be just as proud to stand beside our fellow nations in offering our fair percentage of people to the Molong.’

As we’ve come to expect, the only dissenting voice was the Coalition of Health,” the news anchor continued as a picture appeared beside his head. The inset video showed Justin striding up to a podium. His athletic body and brown locks contrasted sharply with the plastic hair wearing, obese CNN anchor. Funny, she could remember Justin laughing in the backyard and carrying her to the bedroom, but not when he left.

“That is … was my fiancée.”

“Him?” Stan’s incredulous look screamed his disbelief. “The leader of the C.O.H.?”

“Yeah.” The wistful tone in her voice surprised her almost as much as the hole in her chest.

“Kinda skinny.” Stan turned back to his food.

On the television, the CNN anchor pressed a finger to his ear. “Better to let the Coalition’s spokesperson, Justin Carter, speak for himself. We are going live to the California State Capitol now.” The video of Justin grew until it filled the screen.

“We have a cure,” Justin said, then waited for the shouted questions to die down. “Here is living proof.” He waved a hand at three women standing behind him. Rolls of excess skin hung from each of their tiny frames. Makeup could not hide dark circles under their eyes that accentuated bags the size of fingers. “Three weeks ago, Julie, Rebecca, and Margaret were ice plant addicts.”

“Excuse me.” A reporter in the front row raised her hand.

“I won’t lie to you; it was not easy. Rebecca,” Justin motioned toward one of the women, who gave a weak smile in return, “compared it to heroin addiction, times ten.”

Apparently deciding that she looked ridiculous, the reporter dropped her hand and spoke up. “Wasn’t there a man in your test group?”

“Yes. Unfortunately, Phil passed away.”

“Mmmm, hmmm. Is it true he died from cancer that the ice plants had forced into remission?”

“Yes. The cost of not allowing the aliens to use us as a source of food is that we will have to once again deal with sickness, disease, and the responsibility for taking care of our bodies. I know that if we come together we can get through this. Humanity has been through worse: world wars, the black plague, and HIV to name a few.”

“Yeah, and getting rid of the ice plants will mean we gotta do it all again.” The anonymous comment from the back of the crowd sparked a series of derisive snorts and outright laughs.

The video vanished, replaced by the news anchor. “Before we go back to the press conference, I’ve been asked by a Whitehouse spokesperson to inform you that the President has invited the Coalition’s leadership to the Whitehouse to discuss the possibility of a cure.”

“They’re sure to televise that, so you’ll get another chance to drool over your old boyfriend,” Stand said.

“Fiancée.”

BARBARA MADE CERTAIN SHE was in the common room on the day the Coalition was supposed to meet with the president. Stan was in her spot again, but it didn’t seem as important since they’d placed a second fruit dispenser in the dining area.

On the television, four members of the C.O.H. waited on the president of the United States. Justin’s dark blue suit and tie set off his eyes. He glanced down at his phone and his forehead creased in that cute way it always did when something bothered him. The video feed of the Whitehouse vanished, replaced by a CNN news anchor. “We’ve been asked to inform the American people that the president has declared the Coalition of Health a terrorist organization and the United States does not negotiate with terrorists. Further, he has worked out a deal with the Molong to accept the members of the Coalition as a portion of the world’s first payment. The terrorists are being collected at this very moment.”

“Justin!” Barbara’s exclamation startled herself almost as badly as it did Stan, who spilled his bowl of ice fruit. “He’s not a terrorist,” she muttered.

“The C.O.H. wanted to send us back to the days when we had to grow our own food and got sick. I heard they were trying to figure out how the aliens killed the ice plants, so they could finish the job.”

“But … Justin. Someone should do something.” Barbara ate an ice fruit.

“Like what?”

Barbara sighed and ate another. “I can’t stand to watch anymore of this.”

Stan picked up the remote control. “How about, How Long Can You Last?”

Barbara shrugged.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

LONNIE BRICKER is a fifty year old man who lives in central Ohio with his wife of seventeen years and their two cats. After decades of writing for himself, he decided to unleash his hobby on others—weep for them.

Lonnie's successes include writing credits with Alban Lake Publishing (Disturbed Digest), A Murder of Storytellers (Beyond the Nightlight anthology), 9TALES TOLD IN THE DARK (Issue #11), Zombified: Hazardous Material (Sky Warrior Book Publishing, LLC), and now Founders House Publishing (Mythic).

The Long-Maintained Fates of The Norns

WENDY NIKEL

ON THE DAY I was born, the maiden-giants’ shadows fell upon our cottage.

No one else saw them — neither my mother in her pains nor the midwife who smelled of wormwood nor my timid and wide-eyed older sister — though the Norns’ great shadows darkened the dust-coated windows, blocking out the autumn sun’s meager warmth. Afterward, while my mother dozed, they stared down into my wood-carved cradle, speaking words too deep and wide for a newborn babe to comprehend.

No one else heard them whispering their prophecies over the keening of my infant cries. No one else saw the star-furred death-wolves skulking at their feet, their bellies gorged from the spoils of a battle beyond the river’s bend.

I saw them, though. I saw them all and wondered at their strange faces. I wondered at their words and what they did.

Wyrd twisted the silvery thread of my life between her fingers and an incantation fell from her lips: “The child will never know peace, born on the dawn of this war.”

Verdandi chiseled runes on a tablet, taking up where her sister left off. “Her mother is grateful for a girl, who will be spared the task of taking up her father’s sword.”

“But when the time comes,” Skuld said, following in line, “she, too, will rise up and fight.”

I WAS TEN YEARS old when next I saw them, having convinced myself their first appearance was just a dream.

Pani Anna pounded on our door — her quick, frightened lips filled with quick, frightened words, whispered so Dorotha and I wouldn’t hear: Mercenaries. They’re nearly upon us. The time for hiding and waiting is gone. You must take your daughters and flee. The forest will conceal them no longer.

The death-wolves howled in the distance.

Dorotha dropped her mending and rushed to Mama’s side, but I edged my little wooden chair deeper into the corner, as though the familiar shadows might have power to protect me. We’d all heard tales of the mercenaries, foreigners in our land who’d slaughter and pillage with no regard for life. Even as children, we knew their coming meant death.

Mama hushed our frantic questions. The loaf of rye she slid into a satchel, but we left the soup to grow cold on the stove. We slipped from the cottage where the Norns had once watched and rushed out into the chilly autumn woods.

The forest which had once been my friend, my plaything, my pet, now turned vicious and hateful as we made our escape. Thorns scraped like daggers along the tender insides of our arms. Roots tripped us up like snares. Cold darkness closed around us. The death-wolves’ eyes glowed from among brambles — always just out of sight, never too far behind.

Just beyond the trickling stream where Dorotha and I used to catch tadpoles, I spotted the Norns again and froze in place. They towered over the ash tree, massive shadow puppets shrouded in the nighttime haze. The death-wolves circled their ankles, snapping with their gleaming fangs at the hems of the old women’s cloaks and whining in tune with their chanting.

Dorotha must not have seen them, for she tugged my arm to urge me on. Their voices drifted like a song to my ears — a song I didn’t fully understand, with words I didn’t wish to hear.

Wryd poured her water over the tree, and it fell like a rain shower from its leaves. “The child will never see her home again,” she intoned, “driven away by these foul skirmishes.”

Verdandi showered the branches with handfuls of sand that sparkled in the glimmering moonlight. “An old man has proposed marriage to the eldest; the mother takes consolation that at least then they’ll be fed.”

“And when the time comes,” Skuld said, “the younger will prove the strongest.”

THE ANCIENT BARON’S MANOR was filled with artifacts of his former life: swords from battles won long ago, tapestries of exotic textiles from places he’d once sailed, and the icy gems he’d presented to his first wife, hung like a noose around Dorotha’s frail neck. He had no use for a weak child like me, and I kept to the corners as best as I could to avoid the kick of his boots on my shins and the smack of his hand across my face.

Mama, with her fragile lungs further weakened in chill of the baron’s drafty tower. She survived just long enough to hear her firstborn grandson’s cries, then, as if considering her work done, faded away. I watched, helpless and shaking, as the death-wolves took shape at her bedside, as they lingered in the shadows while her lungs rattled and greedily devoured her final breaths.

On the third day of mourning, the wolves — finally satiated — slowly slipped out of sight. In my daze, I wandered the corridors and chose the wrong moment to be found outside the baron’s study. There, he and a stranger who spoke with a strange accent huddled over rolls of ink-stained maps. At the sight of me, fury burned in their eyes, and in my grief, I forgot to flee.

The baron cursed and grabbed me about the neck with threats and sneers and leering. His dirty nails pressed deeply into my skin, and in my ears rang his threats. You’d better stop snooping and start earning your keep or I’ll find a way to put you to use.

Conscious of the death-wolf prowling at the man’s feet, I tugged at my arm and slipped away. Ignoring his shouts that echoed through the hall, I ran till I found a corner dark enough for tears.

The giantesses had said I would rise up and fight, but what could a girl like me do? I had nothing. I was nothing. And I could do nothing.

In the distance, the death-wolves howled.

I looked up through my tears and a glimmer of metal caught my eye: The axe above the baron’s mantel. Shaking, I pulled the tool from the wall. I staggered out to the rain-soaked forest, shivering against the chill. I spent the evening’s cold hours chopping log after log until my delicate palms blistered and bled, until my muscles were sore but strong. With each chop, the death-wolf’s howl faded until finally, I could hear it no more.

The baron sat at the table stuffing his face, the foreigner and the wolf-shape long gone. I entered the room without his summons and when he looked up, I opened my arms. Log after log clattered upon the polished floor. The axe hung heavy on my belt. I touched a hand to it for sharp reassurance. I would not cower any longer.

“I will earn my keep,” I said, avoiding the sight of raw juices dripping from the corners of his mouth. “But if you ever touch me again or harm my family, I will not hesitate to rise up and fight. To die has long been my destiny. I no longer fear my fate.”

THUS BEGAN MY YEARS of back-breaking work, splitting logs and hauling wood. I repaired the baron’s fences and lean-tos. I kept his roaring fires fed. It was all to keep us safe, both from the enemies beyond the walls, as well as the monster within them, safe from the wolves that would devour us all.

Dorotha’s hands still shook and her eyes flitted downward whenever her husband entered the room. She no longer confided in me, and I was left to guess what cruelty was concealed beneath her sleeves and shawls.

Her firstborn grew to a spoiled boy who learned young to manipulate and whine, to deceive and lie and hate. His favorite game was to join me in the forest where I chopped wood and to throw pebbles and mocking insults, crude words no seven-year-old ought to know. He was his father’s son, all haughtiness and malice and oily tresses of night-black hair. I couldn’t bear to look at the beastly child, nor the shadowy wolf-pups that surrounded him like pets, yapping at every stone’s throw.

All the while, sweat trickled down my neck, and the only response I afforded him was the thwacking of the axe against tree bark.

Some days I wished that the Fates would take shape deep in the shadows of that forest, to spill out their prophecies and grant me their words. How much longer would I need to sit about and wait with the lock on my door bolted and my axe by the side of my bed? Some days I pleaded with the wolves to take us, to free us from this earthly torment. My body quaked for vengeance, but the Norns were silent and the wolves held at bay. My time, it seemed, had not yet come.

THEN ONE NIGHT, THE foreigner returned, unaware of the death-wolves nipping his horse’s hooves. The baron took up his sword and the two rode off, leaving us alone — unprotected, yes, but safer than we’d been in years. For a moment, I dared to hope. Perhaps the Norns had been wrong.

In the dead of the night, Dorotha gave birth to twins. Despite the midwife’s efforts, not one of the three survived. A trio of snarling wolves circled their bed, and for once, I tried to shoo them away. Though I yelled and screamed and flung myself at them, they paid my protests no mind. My hands passed through their teeth unscathed. They had not come for me.

The midwife departed, and I left the boy wailing at his mother’s bedside. One of us had to be strong. One of us had to keep our wits. One of us had to gather eggs from the henhouse and rabbits from the traps, to prepare our food and keep the wolves from devouring us, too.

That night, the boy’s howling filled the halls of the drafty old manor, which felt more like a prison than a home. Undone by the keening, I flew from my bed and gripped the handle of my axe. The metal was cold and unmoving as my fingers glided across its edge.

I ran out into the darkness, to the forest behind the manor, where a creek trickled and the shady ash trees grew. I called to them. “Wryd! Verdandi! Skuld! Has the time come? Is this what you’ve fated? I am tired of fleeing, of hiding, of waiting for the world to be safe enough to live. Send out the wolves and let me fight them. Let me defeat them, once and for all!”

As if in answer, a shout rang out. Then another, and another, overlapping on one another and joined by a chorus of howls — the sounds of not just one pack, but many, following along the heels of horses. One word rose up around the rest, a word in dialect of the local townsfolk: “Traitor! Come on out, you traitor! Come and face the countrymen you’ve betrayed!”

The torches flickered, their swords were drawn, and each stomp of their boots sent hot anger through my veins. Cold understanding passed over me. The foreigner... the maps... How long had the baron been passing information to the enemy in exchange for foreign gold? Had he orchestrated the attack that had driven us from our home and my sister into his bed?

My breath caught in my throat as I thought of the boy, alone in the friendless manor. I stumbled inside and called for him, my shrieks echoing through the otherwise empty corridors, the howls of death-wolves drawing ever closer.

When he appeared at the top of the steps, he was no longer a miniature of his father. He was just a boy, frightened and motherless. And just as alone as I was. Looking at him, my heart betrayed me, pulsing with maternal protectiveness.

“Don’t worry, child. I’ll take care of you. Now go. Hurry. And hide.” I pointed to a cabinet, and for once, the boy listened.

Then I waited, sword drawn, for the inevitable to overtake me, for the circling shadows to strike. Was this, then, finally, after all the years waiting, the day that the Norns had foretold? If it was, I was ready. I would rise and I’d fight and I’d protect this son of my sister.

I gripped the axe’s handle and waited.

The door strained, rumbled, then cracked. Everything blurred.

The mob swarmed over me in a flurry of claws and swords and boots and hatred and fur. My axe — flailing violently, desperately, blindly — strewed hot blood like a shower of rain. Though the sounds of crashing furniture and fire swelled, the cupboard at my back remained untouched.

I fell against it, my body burning with pain, my wounds licked clean by the wolves’ phantom tongues. Boots kicked, voices shouted, and my life slowly bled from me as the howling faded into the night.

When all fell still, the cupboard door creaked open. The boy’s face shone over me, his cheeks glistening with tears.

“Run to the village.” I took his hand, knowing somehow exactly what to say. He listened, eyes wide in awe as if I myself were a Norn, as if my words were prophecies he could cling to. “Find the midwife and tell her what has happened, but tell no one else who you are. She will find you a home where you’ll be loved and protected and cared for. And you, in turn, will be kind to them. To them, and to all others you meet. For if you live as your father did, you will die just like him: cold, afraid, alone.”

The boy nodded and whispered a promise. With the whisper of “I’m sorry,” he disappeared.

And then there they were, the giantesses, hovering over me, squatting beneath the chandeliers and the arched doorways.

“The stones of this manor will never be reconstructed,” Wryd said, cutting marks into the wall, “for none will lay a claim on it.”

Verdandi held a measuring stick over my fallen form. “But the boy will live to do great things — kind things, generous things — because of this great sacrifice. Because you loved him more than he deserved.”

Even in those final moments, this fate so long foretold tasted bitter upon my tongue. What more could I have done, marked as I was, haunted by death since the day I was born?

“What’s foreseen is not predestined,” Skuld said in response to my unspoken words. “Now rest in peace; your part is done.”

And with a snip of golden scissors, she cut the thread of my life.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

WENDY NIKEL is a speculative fiction author with a degree in elementary education, a fondness for road trips, and a terrible habit of forgetting where she's left her cup of tea. Her short fiction has been published by Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Daily Science Fiction, Nature: Futures, and elsewhere. Her time travel novella, The Continuum, was published by World Weaver Press in January 2018, with a sequel released in July. For more info, visit wendynikel.com.

Water of Life

F.J. BERGMANN

SURE, A BATH WAS almost pointless, in the ship all by himself: Jack wouldn’t be hitting a port—or hitting on anybody who cared how he smelled—for months. But when he couldn’t stand the smell of his own armpits any more, he had to do something. And it would be a good idea to get clean before exploring the surface of the asteroid to check for abandoned mining sites. The inside of his vac suit didn't need to get any nastier than it already was.

At least enough justification, he thought, as he wallowed luxuriantly under the gush of hot water pouring into the huge cylinder. He’d improvised a bathtub by sealing off a maintenance tunnel section and letting it fill with the filtered outflow from the engine cooling system. He’d had to temporarily power up the gravity generator a bit; the asteroid didn’t mass enough to keep the water from going all over the place. But his energy reserves would get him to the next job—scavenging, bounty-hunting, whatever—even if this site didn’t pan out. Besides, his used bath water would provide additional nutrients (lots of them, if his nose was any judge) for the hydroponic broth vats which were the wastewater’s next destination.

The only thing better than a hot bath was a hot bath at .4 gee. And the only thing better than a hot bath at .4 gee was a hot bath at .4 gee with a squeezebulb of good whiskey. He took another long swig. Inhaling lavender-scented steam, he was nearly comatose, floating in the buoyant warmth as the cascade of clean water sent bubbles everywhere. Even the scar dragging down the left side of his mouth had relaxed until it looked like only a dimple, reflected in the stainless pipework.

Eventually, the squeezebulb was empty, coinciding with a new-found feeling of invigoration. The still-filling tub was already deep enough that his toes could barely touch the floor of the tunnel section. With a whoop, he leapt, arced, and dove for the bottom, flipping his legs straight up and over. He realized he’d misjudged the extra spring the low gravity had given him when he felt one of his feet strike painfully on some protrusion of the tunnel wall. Grimacing, he let himself drift gradually back to the surface, and rolled over to float on his back, buoyant and relaxed for the first time in weeks. Through the viewport overhead he could see a streaming fluffy, white cloud, brilliantly lit by sunshine.

It took a moment to register—no atmosphere, ergo, no clouds—and then he grew aware of the growing roar in his ears and the rapidly dropping water level. That’s a leak from the ship! The tub emptied in a gurgling rush, and he sprang frantically to reach the lever he’d accidentally kicked open as the air began to whoosh past.

HE LOST MOST OF the water circulating in the system before he managed to dog back the emergency-vent release. Almost thirty percent of the total water on the ship had been sucked into space—or, at any rate, the virtually nonexistent atmosphere of the asteroid. Even with the upgrades he hadn’t been able to afford, the loss would have pushed the engine function dangerously close to critical limits. Given the maintenance condition on his old beater of a spaceship, he would barely be able to make it into orbit around this puny asteroid—which had almost no gravity to speak of. And then what? Any merchanter or mercenary vessel in a position to deliver the water he needed would not only demand his ship in payment, but his permanent indenture as well.

And even indenture might be difficult to negotiate, with his record—they might just decide to cut their losses and stock their organ banks. Not that his current liver was likely to do anyone much good. He tried not to think about how close he’d come to dying the last time he’d run out of booze for a day or two: rehab would not be a profitable investment for any outfit that would consider taking him on.

Jack had been eligible for treatment after each of the incidents on his record—sometimes they’d offered to waive the fines as well, if he’d accept an implant, but he’d made a point of refusing. He liked drinking, especially good whiskey, and he liked how it made him feel, and he liked how it made him act, and to hell with the damn fines. No matter where he went, there was always some genius who had rigged a still, and after the last near-disaster he’d made a point of making sure that he always had enough whiskey on board to outlast any of his other supplies. He had his independence and his ship; not much else mattered any more. He’d managed to survive by tracking and retrieving—or disposing of—certain individuals whose former associates didn’t care to use legal procedures to extract them, and by locating abandoned settlements throughout the sector and then salvaging equipment to be either retrofitted or sold on the antiques ’bay.

He powered down the ship’s engine as far as it would go, and checked the water levels again. Either there was water somewhere on this rock, or he was screwed. If he didn’t find any water out there today, he’d have to run all his frozen food supplies through the recycler immediately, to extract whatever water it could. Hailing another ship might not be an option before it was too late. He suited up grimly, methodically running all the safety protocols. He checked the clock as he stepped into the airlock—it was half-past three, shiptime. He had enough air for four hours.

Jack fired up the hoversled and began a methodical search pattern, spiraling gradually outward from the ship. On the visor projection screen, he searched the fly-by pix the ship had taken during the approach. From straight overhead, hills looked like dimples and valleys could be mistaken for low rises, but some anomalies were easier to spot—the hoversled’s maximum cruising height of 3 meters allowed a limited perspective. Of course, the craters were unmistakable. He periodically did a real-time visual scan, just in case the ship had missed something.

HIS AIR WAS MORE than half gone when a faint spark of light winked briefly in a crater shadow. A transmission artifact, he told himself, braced against disappointment. He swung the sled around and down to make a second slower, more careful pass, trying to follow his sled tracks in the dust as closely as possible. Whatever it was flashed again. He turned toward the crater wall, trying to repress his eagerness, trying not to surrender to the excitement that would be followed by a black depression if this wasn’t something that would save his ass.

The best he’d hoped for was to find either ice-laden cometary debris, or an abandoned wreck—a ship that had somehow crashed without managing to rupture its tanks. Miners frequently abandoned heavy equipment that was outdated or worn out, but the one thing they didn’t leave behind was water. However, there was no trace of a landing--crash or otherwise--near where he’d seen the light.

As Jack neared the crater wall, a darker opening appeared within its looming shadow: an archway in a perfect half-circle. He allowed the sled to decelerate and brought it down to just above the rocky surface, a mounting excitement pulsing through him. No human mining operation would have built anything like that on this godforsaken asteroid.

He flicked on the spotlight and aimed it through the archway. He gasped, and his hands fell away from the control module. The sled coasted to an unheeded stop just inside the shadow’s edge. Inside the dark cavern before him a blue-white, glittering structure threw spangles of light everywhere.

The only alien race that had ever been discovered—long-extinct, as far as could be determined—were known as the Artisans. All their artifacts that had ever been found were static objects, in incredibly complex physical forms that had no function or discoverable purpose. Every planet where Artisan artifacts had ended up enjoyed a highly profitable tourist economy, just from pilgrims who came to stand and stare.

Dismounting, he flipped on the lamp’s floodlight setting and focused it on the ... God, it looked like a magic castle made of diamonds. Or an Old Earth cathedral carved from some sort of rutilant jewel, crusted with glassy spines and petals. He ducked under the archway and stepped cautiously to one side to allow maximum illumination. A million prisms threw colored beams of light to fill the entire cavern with rainbows. Dazzled, he slowly moved around the artifact. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life.

About fifteen meters in diameter, the object was roughly octahedral, each facet carved into uninterpretable shapes. Oddly triumphant protrusions, like the spikes on an ancient crown or the watchtowers of a fortress, swept upward into the surrounding void. For all he knew, the carvings might have been intentionally nonrepresentational, or even random growths—but the forms reminded him of landscapes or planetary surfaces: mountain peaks, dune patterns, cresting ocean waves, wild forests, cascades tumbling down vertical cliffs.

The interior of the crystal was a maze of fluted columns, twisted pipes, and filigreed lattices. The nearly colorless pale blue of the crystal intensified to a pure turquoise hue in its depths. Smaller shapes within the larger ones resembled plants and animals: sponges, sea anemones, or ferns, that seemed disquietingly like clear fossils embedded within the transparent matrix. As he stared, entranced, the scenery grew less abstract and more suggestive by the minute.

He roused himself—what was he doing, wasting time gaping at the thing like this—waiting for his air to run out? Unquestionably, it was an Artisan relic—from the available evidence, their entire civilization had had a major obsession with Shiny and Pretty—and worth a bloody fortune. If he could only get word out to a planet-based government to report it and stake a claim.…

His thoughts whirled frantically. No matter how valuable the artifact was, any ship hailed for rescue would take sole possession if he mentioned its existence, since he couldn’t leave unassisted—and it would be easier to space him than to let him take the credit for the discovery. He could go back to his ship, summon help from the next ship that came within range without mentioning the artifact's presence, and try to work out a secret deal during his years of indenture—slavery, more like—if the opportunity ever arose to contact an official who wouldn’t arrange to cheat or murder him out of hand ... and if no one else found it in the meantime. No. The only possible way to get any money out of the relic—or to reveal its existence at all—would be to leave under his own power, then make arrangements with either one of the more reliable planetary governments, or a major university, or a prominent museum of non-human history.

What he had to do was keep on looking for water—ice, it would be, at the near-absolute-zero of the asteroid’s surface. No matter how impure it was, his equipment could remove the contaminants. He had less than two hours of air left before he would be forced to turn back to his ship, if he kept to the pattern he’d originally planned. He turned toward the hoversled, then hesitated. He ought to at least explore the cavern housing the artifact thoroughly, just in case. There was no record of more than one Artisan relic being found in the same place, but maybe, this once, they’d left supplies?

The cavern was otherwise empty, as he’d suspected; it appeared to have been hollowed out solely as a container—a temple?—for the marvelous sculpture it contained. He sighed with longing as he turned toward the alien fairy-castle for one last glimpse before continuing his search. It occurred to him to wonder what it was made of, although even as a single flawless diamond its value as an Artisan-produced object would exponentially eclipse the worth of its substance. He drew his pocket analyzer and turned it toward the artifact.

Ice. It was perfectly pure water ice.

JACK RAN TO THE hoversled and scrambled behind the controls. He swept fruitlessly through the remainder of his planned search grid, his fists clenched on the sled’s grips. Squinting until his eyes burned from trying to spot the faintest suggestion of wreckage or debris or an impossible cache of abandoned goods, he delayed his return until the last possible margin of safety was nearly exceeded. As he reentered the cavern, he was already beginning to feel the tremors and sweating that told him it was too long since he’d had a drink.

He thought desperately of saving some portion of the marvelous structure, of taking a recording, but it was hopeless. The penalty on every civilized planet for tampering with alien cultural memorabilia was death—he would have to wipe the suit’s chip, and arrange a malfunction for the sled recorder as well. And where would he keep even a small piece of the sculpture—in the galley freezer? In the hold, for the next customs inspection to find?

As he snapped off the first spearlike turret, he felt something like screaming start up in the back of his brain. Although he knew that no sound could possibly be generated in the airless void, he imagined the jangling as the larger fragments tumbled slowly toward the cavern floor like gigantic, asymmetric gemstones; the resonant tinkling that sang from each shattered spine. Methodically, he continued to batter at glassy cornices, spires, and parapets, watching the interior vistas spider with cracks. He would have to come back with heavier cutting equipment. As his arm rose and fell, glittering dust and chips of crystal flew up all around him in the low gravity to hover in the beam of the sled’s floodlight like ethereal snowflakes and then slowly, slowly, fall. The brightness was blinding him, filling his eyes with tears.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

F.J. BERGMANN edits poetry for Mobius: The Journal of Social Change (mobiusmagazine.com) and imagines tragedies on or near exoplanets. Work appears in Abyss & Apex, Analog, Asimov’s SF, and elsewhere in the alphabet. She has competed at National Poetry Slam as a member of the Madison, WI, Urban Spoken Word team. A Catalogue of the Further Suns, a collection of dystopian first-contact reports, won the 2017 Gold Line Press poetry chapbook contest.

Murder and Mayhem

SEAN PATRICK HAZLETT

DETECTIVE JOEY D’ALESSIO GNAWED on a toothpick in a seedy Tenderloin diner. He waited for the only jerkoff in San Francisco who knew something about the city’s worst crime wave in over two centuries to quit bullshitting and start talking. So far, his informant had been about as useful as a football bat.

“All right, shitbird, tell me what you know,” D’Alessio said with all the subtlety of a grizzly bear.

Sitting across from D’Alessio, Dorn Mather vibrated with the nervous intensity of a starving crow. His eyes had a jaundiced hue, and his hair was straw white – unnaturally so for someone with such smooth and delicate features. An oversized dark gray overcoat hung like a tarp over his scrawny frame.

In a voice reminiscent of Casey Kasem, Dorn cackled, quivering like a harlequin sprung out of a music box. “Murder, mayhem, and violence. Isn’t it obvious? Welcome to our little intergalactic show where gods walk among men.” He waved his arm in an exaggerated flourish.

Flashing police lights intermittently punctuated the diner’s dim lighting.

D’Alessio reached across the table and grabbed Dorn by the throat. “Listen, dicklicker, people are dying. You promised answers. I’m either leaving here with wisdom or a piece of your ass. You’re the guy gets to decide which. What’ll it be, douchebag?”

D’Alessio relaxed his grip. He needed answers. Unlike prior crime waves, these murders had been spread fairly evenly throughout the city. Nowhere was safe. Anyone could become a victim.

Dorn exhaled loudly. His eyes lit up like Jack O’ Lanterns on a moonless Halloween night. “Oooh, soooo many choices,” he said in voice oozing with sarcasm. “There’s so much rage in you. I think I’ll enjoy living in this savage city by the bay.”

D’Alessio tossed his coffee mug at Dorn, spraying him with steaming coffee.

Dorn squealed, then covered his face with his hands. “What an intriguing sensation,” he said with the dispassion of a scientist stripping legs off an insect. His sadistic smirk never left his face.

“Tell me what’s going on or I’ll break your fucking nose!” D’Alessio threatened. “What gang do you run with? Answer me!”

“Gang? Ha!” Dorn crowed. “We’re just undesirables dumped on a third-rate rock. You better hope we don’t get organized.”

“What do you mean, ‘we’? I need answers, dammit!” D’Alessio yelled, pounding his fist on the table.

“Officer down! I say again, officer down!” a frantic voice squawked over D’Alessio’s handheld radio. “Need immediate assistance at 555 California Street on the corner of California and Kearney. Male suspect in vicinity.”

D’Alessio grabbed the lapels on Dorn’s overcoat and got in his face. “I’ll be keeping my eye on you.”

Dorn grinned. “And I, you, Detective D’Alessio, at your 988 Fulton Street apartment.”

D’Alessio charged toward Dorn, but then stopped. An officer needed D’Alessio’s help.

“I’ll be back for you, pissbird.” D’Alessio put on his coat and left the diner.

D’ALESSIO PARKED HIS beaten up Ford Taurus behind an empty squad car and drew his service weapon. The car’s strobe lights pulsated red and white. The driver’s door was slightly ajar. Behind it, a pale, bald man squatted, chewing on something. Blood was everywhere. The air reeked of human filth.

A crowd had gathered on Kearney Street, recording video and snapping photos with their smartphones.

When D’Alessio saw what the man was eating, he struggled to contain his fury. “Put your hands where I can see ‘em, you piece of shit.”

Smacking his lips, the suspect huddled over an unresponsive police officer. It was Sergeant Wayne Murphy. Murphy and D’Alessio had graduated from the same academy class. The man had a wife and two children.

“I said, ‘hands up’, goddammit!”

The assailant ignored D’Alessio, continuing to devour Murphy’s arm.

Wheeling into action, D’Alessio kicked the man in the face. The cannibal spun and landed on his back. A riot of bone, sinew, and shorn flesh hung from sharpened teeth. He hissed at D’Alessio.

Training his Glock on the suspect, D’Alessio yelled, “Hands up!”

The attacker leapt to his feet and lunged at the detective.

D’Alessio fired two shots, center of mass. The assailant fell back, hitting the pavement with a dull thud.

The crowd pressed in from all directions, their smartphone cameras flashing. D’Alessio holstered his weapon. He crouched next to the police officer and took the man’s pulse.

Dead.

D’Alessio glanced at cannibal’s body. Only then did he notice the man’s sickly yellow eyes.

IT WAS EIGHT THIRTY in the morning, and D’Alessio was late for work. As he was about to leave his apartment, the phone rang. It was Karl, an old buddy from D’Alessio’s Brooklyn stomping grounds.

“You all right?” Karl said, his voice on the edge of panic.

“Sure,” said D’Alessio, not sure what to make of Karl’s out-of-the-blue call. “Why?”

“You don’t know, do ya? Turn on your TV.”

The carnage that unfolded on his television horrified D’Alessio. Shards of twisted metal rent their way through asphalt and mangled cars. Thick black smoke swirled over the scene as it mixed with choking gray dust. Scores of BART commuters stumbled through the haze, dead-eyed, despondent, and caked in dust like specters emerging from some nightmarish dreamscape.

The East Bay BART derailment was unprecedented. Casualties would be in the hundreds, not to mention the crippling economic cost to the region.

D’Alessio couldn’t think clearly. His mind began to spin. But there was one hunch he couldn’t shake: this derailment was no accident.

“Hello? You still there?” said Karl.

“I’m here. Let’s catch up when I have more time. I need to get to the station.” D’Alessio hung up. Seconds later, his phone rang again.

“What?” he said in frustration, as if the world were conspiring to keep him away from work.

“Sorry to bother you, Joe. I’m not sure if you remember me, but I’m Doctor Eli Rosen. I worked with you on the Red Oleander murders.”

Despite his stress and frustration, D’Alessio couldn’t help but smile. Rosen was one of the smartest and quirkiest people D’Alessio had ever met

“Sorry for my pissy mood, doc. ‘Course I remember you. You still working for PEARL?”

PEARL stood for the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab, a research program that studied various parapsychological phenomena.

“Unfortunately, no. Princeton shut down the program in early 2007. Now, I just teach astrophysics. I also consult with various governmental agencies on the side. Speaking of which, I have a favor to ask.”

“Name it.”

“I’m working on a classified project for a certain government agency related to encryption and cybersecurity. I need the San Francisco Police Department’s help.”

“Sure, but why does the NSA need us?”

Rosen chuckled. “Whoever said anything about the NSA?”

D’Alessio raised his eyebrow. “C’mon. Seriously?”

“Fine, you got me,” Rosen said. “To answer your question, I can’t have the NSA tied to this case. It needs to be off book. It’s related to today’s BART derailment.”

“When ya gonna be in town?”

“I’m already here. Can you meet me at the Starbucks inside the Bank of America building in about an hour?”

“Will do.” D’Alessio hung up the phone.

INSIDE STARBUCKS, D’ALESSIO CHECKED his watch obsessively as he drank black coffee with the alacrity of a sloth. Ten minutes later, a balding man with ample girth, a prodigious beard, and a grease-smeared polyester polka dot suit shuffled through the entrance.

Rosen extended his hand. D’Alessio ignored it.

“Tell me about the case.” said D’Alessio.

“I’m investigating a sophisticated zero day vulnerability in BART’s operating software that enables a hacker to remotely control a train.”

D’Alessio perked up. “What do you mean? BART officials are chalking the derailment up to operator error.”

Rosen grinned. “That’s exactly what the perpetrator wants us to think. The code was calibrated to mask the attacker’s digital footprint.”

“I bet this is related to the current crime wave,” D’Alessio said. “Why exactly has a single hack gotten the NSA’s attention? A bit too tactical for them, no?”

Rosen sighed. “Look, I don’t want to say too much, but U.S. cybersecurity experts are alarmed. The attack exhibited an unprecedented degree of sophistication. So much so that NSA officials worry the hacker is capable of doing far worse. For instance, imagine if the hacker solved the traveling salesperson problem.”

“The what?”

“The TSP is one of the more intractable problems in computing. Let’s say there’s a salesperson traveling to N cities. The TSP is finding the most efficient path for the salesperson to travel to each city in the least amount of time. As you add more cities, it takes exponentially longer to compute the optimal route. For just twenty cities, there are over two billion billion possible combinations.”

“What’s that got to do with national security?”

“Modern encryption systems rely on the TSP’s inherent complexity to work. Let’s say I have a password with twenty distinct, non-repeating characters, and it takes one second to enter this password. It would take over seventy-seven billion years to try every combination. This is why encryption is so effective.

“Now suppose I come up with an algorithm that identifies the right password combination in seconds. Imagine what I could do with this knowledge. I could hack into any bank account in the world. It would lead to the almost certain collapse of the global financial system. No encrypted data would be safe.”

“Jesus,” said D’Alessio.

“So, are you in?”

D’Alessio nodded. “You’re goddamn right I am, and I know exactly where we need to start.”

ROSEN, D’ALESSIO, AND DORN gathered in the same decrepit diner where Dorn and the detective had met earlier that week.

With a demented grin, Dorn jutted his head toward Rosen. “Who’s the plump turnip?”

Rosen seemed unfazed by the insult. “I’m Doctor Eli Rosen.”

Dorn smirked.

“Look, dickbag,” D’Alessio said, “we have a specific request. I strongly encourage you to cooperate.”

Dorn waved his hand as if he were swatting a gnat. “Yes, yes. Sooo, what’ve you learned in the last few days, detective? Any closer to uncovering your make-believe criminal conspiracy?”

D’Alessio’s face turned beet red. He was trying his best not to throttle Dorn. “We have something more pressing to discuss today.”

“Oooh, what could be more important than the biggest crime spree in San Francisco’s history?”

D’Alessio jerked his head toward Rosen. “Go ahead, chief.”

Rosen unfolded a wad of paper from his wrinkled jacket. He spread the sheet on the table. Tiny blue equations peppered its surface.

Rosen said, “Are you familiar with the traveling salesperson problem?”

Dorn stared blankly at Rosen.

Rosen continued. “It’s a classic optimization problem to find the shortest possible route for a salesperson traveling to N cities.”

Dorn’s eyes widened. “Ah, yes, yes. I’m familiar with this rudimentary riddle. The number of possible combinations is equal to N factorial or some such. We solved this problem hundreds of years ago. It wasn’t so much an algorithmic solution as it was a quantum mechanical fix.”

Rosen’s jaw dropped. “Are you telling me you know of a technique to crack 256-bit encryption at the quantum level?”

“Of course. It’s a routine function on any quantum computer. Just take the digital bits coming out of one of your primitive binary computers, translate them into qubits and run all the permutations through a quantum hypercomputer until the code is cracked. If the engineer is particularly talented, he could build a qubit-to-tachyon converter and run the calculations backward in time. Theoretically, he’d only have to run the computation once, rendering his attempt undetectable.”

Rosen’s face turned ashen.

“C’mon. You don’t buy this, do you, doc?” said D’Alessio.

Rosen shook his head. “I honestly don’t know what to believe, but theoretically the technique he laid out could work. We just haven’t made enough breakthroughs in physics and engineering to get there yet. For instance, if one used Shor’s algorithm on a quantum hypercomputer to factor large prime numbers, one could exponentially reduce the time it takes to decipher an encrypted code.”

“Fine. Suppose what this chucklehead is saying has some merit. Who’s got the technical chops to pull it off?”

“Oooh, wouldn’t you like to know?” Dorn teased.

Leaping to his feet, D’Alessio rounded the table and elbowed his way into Dorn’s side of the booth. Dorn giggled. The detective put Dorn in a headlock and said, “Start talking now. We don’t have much time.”

Dorn raised his hands in mock surrender. “Relax, detective. As far as you know I haven’t committed any crimes.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” D’Alessio said.

“That’s not your concern,” Dorn countered. “I’d be delighted to help you find the suspect so long as you provide me with certain...assurances.”

D’Alessio grabbed Dorn by the throat. “Why, you cocksucker.”

“Calm down, Joe,” Rosen said. “This man hasn’t committed any crimes. And he seems to have knowledge that could help us.”

D’Alessio released his grip. “Fine.”

“Thanks for the assist, butterball,” said Dorn. “As I was saying, I’m going to need a few things first.”

D’Alessio braced himself.

Dorn grinned. “I want you to rent me a billboard on Highway 101 for one month. Should cost you around fifty-thousand dollars.”

“What?” D’Alessio said, dumbfounded.

“A billboard. For advertising,” Dorn clarified in the most condescending tone D’Alessio could imagine.

“What the hell could you possibly be selling?” The request was so far off the reservation, D’Alessio had to ask.

“Oh, some harmless spiritual claptrap that shouldn’t concern you. But if you want my help, you’ll make it happen. If you don’t, I’ll sit back and watch your civilization collapse.”

The man had a point.

“Done,” D’Alessio bluffed. He’d worry about making it happen later, and only if Dorn’s intel panned out.

“Good. I’ll hold you to it,” Dorn said matter-of-factly. “Any who, you can find your man where they invented gene splicing.”

D’Alessio balled his hands into fists. “That’s it? That’s all we get?”

“Now, now, detective, I’m operating on scout’s honor. I have no real assurances you’ll deliver on your promise. This is all a good faith effort on everyone’s part, no?”

Holding up his hand, Rosen said, “Relax, Joe. Our suspect is at Stanford University.”

“Stanford’s a pretty big fucking place,” said D’Alessio.

“I’m sure we can handle it,” Rosen said. “Whoever our suspect is, he’ll likely be within a square mile of Stanford’s Computer Science Department.” Rosen smiled at Dorn. “Thank you for your help, Mister Mather.”

“The pleasure was all mine, doctor.”

“All right,” D’Alessio said, slamming two twenty dollar bills on the table. “Let’s get cracking.”

D’ALESSIO AND ROSEN WALKED down Palm Drive toward Stanford’s Main Quad. Orderly rows of palms flanked the road.

“Man, you gotta have some serious dough to pay for this joint,” said D’Alessio. “Looks like a damn country club.”

The beauty of the Quad was breathtaking. Even on a moderately cold autumn day, the sun shone on the complex of red-tile-roofed buildings nestled in the Northern Californian foothills.

“Have your colleagues made any progress figuring out who’s behind the crime wave?” Rosen asked.

“Damn, doc!” D’Alessio grumbled, “You sure know how to piss on a man’s corn flakes and call it syrup.”

“I didn’t mean to spoil your morning, but has the SFPD made any headway?”

“Nah. The department’s got its collective head up its ass. Every swinging dick is pounding the pavement, responding to crimes in progress and arresting bad guys. The only connection officers have made, but aren’t reporting, is that most arrests include suspects with no fingerprints and yellow eyes like Dorn’s.”

Rosen pressed. “You mean not one single officer’s looked into that fact pattern?”

D’Alessio shrugged. “‘Course they have. One lady in forensics did an autopsy on a yellow-eye killed in a police raid. She had a theory that the crime wave might’ve had something to do with a strange new disease that was similar to rabies. Turned out to be a blind alley. All I know is about two weeks ago, the crime rate spiked.”

Rosen clammed up.

“What? Is it something I said?”

Rosen squirmed. “I’m sorry, but I can’t talk about it.”

D’Alessio spun toward Rosen and grabbed the man’s collar. “What do you mean? People are dying, you got some intel that could help us, and all you can say is you can’t talk about it?”

D’Alessio could see conflict and sorrow in Rosen’s eyes. “I...I’m sorry, but it’s classified. I tried to get you clearance. My request was denied.”

D’Alessio pressed his nose against Rosen’s. “Start talking, fatso, or I’m gonna break your balls.”

“Fine,” Rosen said. “I’ll tell you, but you won’t believe me.”

“Try me.”

“About two weeks ago, NORAD detected nearly imperceptible but distinct anomalies in the Earth’s magnetic field, localized in the San Francisco Bay area. More precisely, there were two-hundred thirty-three distinct pulses.”

“That seems kinda specific.”

“Exactly. Turns out that number’s a Fibonacci prime.”

“A what?”

“A Fibonacci prime. A Fibonacci prime is both a prime and a Fibonacci number.”

“That means dick to me. And even if it did, it’s probably just a coincidence.”

Rosen nodded. “That’s what I thought too, but then I looked at the pulse distribution. The first pulse occurred one second before the second one. The second pulse, one second before the third; the third, two seconds before the fourth; and so on.”

“What’s your point?”

“The time between each subsequent pulse was equal to the next Fibonacci number in the sequence, which makes it highly unlikely the anomalies were random.”

“What caused them?” asked D’Alessio.

“I don’t know, but a few three-letter agencies in the U.S. government are freaking out about it.”

D’Alessio was struck by a sudden insight. “What if two-thirty-three equals the number of yellow-eyed criminals on the streets?”

Rosen smiled. “Joe, have your colleagues done an inventory on how many suspects without fingerprints have been incarcerated over the last two weeks?”

D’Alessio smirked. “Hell, our forensics team has a running tally. Let me call my buddy, Larry.”

Whipping out his phone, D’Alessio made a quick call. Thirty seconds later, he hung up and said, “Do you want the good news or the bad news?”

“The good news.”

“One-hundred ninety-eight of the yellow-eyed nutjobs are dead or in lockup.”

“What’s the bad news?”

“Thirty-five of these shitstains are still loose, and they’re the smart ones since they haven’t been caught. I’ll bet you dollars to donuts our computer geek is one of the thirty-five.”

Rosen nodded. “I hate to say it, but you’re probably right.”

“Of course I am. Now let’s go find this bastard. Then I can get back to my day job in San Francisco. Where exactly are we going?”

“I have a colleague who does some work on quantum computing. If anyone arrived on the quantum computing scene and started making radical discoveries, my friend, Tom, would know about it.”

The duo wended their way towards Stanford’s Gates Computer Science Building, an L-shaped sandstone behemoth. Rosen pulled out an ID card and waved him and D’Alessio in. The two headed to an elevator, making their way to the fifth floor. Once there, they walked down a hallway, passing glass-paned offices with dry-erase boards drowning in equations.

Halfway down the hall, Rosen knocked on a glass door. He waved at the office’s two occupants. The first was a tall, thin, grandfatherly-looking fellow. He wore glasses that imposed order on the chaos of his wispy, white hair. The man smiled at Rosen, as if the two knew each other.

The office’s second occupant sat huddled over a laptop. He too had wild white hair, but seemed much younger than his counterpart.

The older gentleman stood up and tapped his colleague on the back, motioning him to follow. But the younger man shook his head, his eyes fixed firmly on his screen.

The older man opened the door with a smile. “Eli, what an unexpected pleasure! What brings you to Stanford?”

Rosen beamed. “It’s great to see you again, Tom. I’m working on a delicate matter. Given your expertise in quantum computing, I was hoping you could point me in the right direction.”

“For you, Eli, anything,” Tom said. His eyes shifted toward D’Alessio. “Who’s this?”

Rosen put his hand on D’Alessio’s shoulder. “Tom, this is my friend, Joe D’Alessio.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Tom said, shaking D’Alessio’s hand. “I’d invite you both in, but as you can see, there isn’t a ton of space in my office.” He inclined his head toward his colleague and frowned. “This is Kip. He’s the most gifted graduate student I’ve ever had, but also the most anti-social. I hope you’ll forgive his rudeness. Kip, c’mon over here and introduce yourself.”

“I don’t think I will,” Kip said, his eyes still locked on his screen.

D’Alessio tensed. “Hey, chief, your professor told you to stop what you’re doing and talk. We’re working on a criminal investigation and require your cooperation.”

Tom’s face tightened. “A criminal investigation? I didn’t realize it was that bad, Eli. We’ll assist you however we can.”

Kip jerked his head toward Rosen and D’Alessio.

Yellow eyes.

D’Alessio reached for his service weapon.

Kip sneered. “Actually, we won’t be helping.” With the theatricality of concert pianist, Kip tapped his keyboard with a single flourish. The glass-paned door slammed shut and locked, trapping Tom inside. Kip smiled, stood, strode over to Tom, and slit his professor’s throat with a box cutter.

“You motherfucker!” D’Alessio yelled. He fired two shots into the door. The glass shattered. D’Alessio stomped toward Kip, training his weapon on the suspect. Tom writhed on the floor, covering his throat in a desperate but futile attempt to staunch the bleeding. Rosen rushed toward his friend.

“One more move and I’ll shut down the Western Interconnection. The Western United States won’t have power for a year,” Kip threatened.

“Bullshit,” D’Alessio said. Turning his head toward Rosen, he asked, “He can’t really do that, can he?”

Rosen ignored D’Alessio. Tears streamed down Rosen’s cheeks. “Why did you do this?” he screamed at Kip.

“Because I can,” Kip answered, his tone calm and clinical.

“Rosen. Focus. Can he really shut down the grid?”

Rosen nodded. “That’s the least he can do. We have to de-escalate this situation. If he shuts it off, thousands could die.”

D’Alessio nodded. “You’re right.” He fired two shots into Kip’s head. The man collapsed into a heap before he could tap his keyboard. “It was the least Kip could do,” D’Alessio continued, “If we’d given him more time, he probably would’ve done worse.”

AFTER CLOSING THE CASE, D’Alessio and Rosen went their separate ways. But D’Alessio still had to deliver on his promise to Dorn Mather. After all, the man’s tip had panned out.

In the end, Doctor Rosen used his government connections to fund Dorn’s billboard. The bureaucrats had been so ecstatic Rosen had averted digital Armageddon that they’d gladly cut a fifty-thousand-dollar check to a stranger.

Dorn had disappeared just before his billboard had appeared on Highway 101. That day, thousands of Bay Area residents went mad on the evening commute. Each swallowed his or her tongue. Those who’d survived the subsequent auto accidents reported a strange yellow-eyed man whose face had been posted on a Highway 101 billboard. They claimed he’d appeared to them in their cars and granted them wisdom. They called him Dorn and now worship him as a god.

Rosen went back to Princeton where he continued to consult for the government. D’Alessio returned to his beat, busting criminals in the Tenderloin. Neither ever figured out where the yellow-eyed crooks were from, but D’Alessio was pretty sure it wasn’t here.

Soon, Dorn’s followers began committing crimes in his name. D’Alessio swore if he ever found the bastard, he’d show ‘em what’s what.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

SEAN PATRICK HAZLETT is an Army veteran and finance executive living in the San Francisco Bay Area. His short stories have appeared in publications such as The Year's Best Military and Adventure SF, Volume 4, Year’s Best Hardcore Horror Volume 3, Terraform, Writers of the Future: Volume 33, Galaxy’s Edge, Grimdark Magazine, and Abyss & Apex, among others.

Dust Mote

MIKE ADAMSON

AS THE SLEEK, RED emergency shuttle boosted away from the lunar transfer station, Janine Matheson shook her head: nothing was worse than lying to a friend.

Even little white ones felt bad, and she was not sure how little or white this one had been, but what choice had she? Orders were orders, and when the flight supervisor told them to get the standby pilot, Yuri Semilovsky, out of Rescue 5 immediately, they knew it could only mean something or someone was compromised. He had demanded the instructions be repeated three times on the com channel before he threw up his hands and let the techs float him out of his seat and get Janine into it. Everything was readjusted and recomputed for her mass, and the hatches had barely closed by the time the launch order was in her ears.

“Rescue 5, clearing moors, sixty seconds to primary burn. Course dynamics loaded and verified.” She threw switches and tightened her harness as clamps released and the craft drifted clear with a blip from the RCS quads.

She knew what it was about and knew Yuri would be pounding on desks already. He would know why they had lied but that would make it no easier, and Matheson agreed—if positions were reversed she would have preferred to be the one to go up and do something.

She gritted her teeth against the vibrations of the twin rocket motors pluming hard from the stern as she left the station far behind, lost it in the starwash over the night side of the planetoid, and streaked out into the glare of the sun. Now the stars before her were all the reference she had and she watched her fuel reserves draining fast. This was a long, high-speed coast operation, and she rechecked the burn parameters redundantly. Shutdown of the primary burn came on schedule to the millisecond and the EM thrusters took over, continuing to build acceleration. She let out a gust of held breath behind her faceplate and panted softly, relieved of the severe G-stress of the mains. Now she could afford to relax, bide her time and watch the data beamed up from the lunar complex.

Accidents in space were infrequent but the rescue system had proven its worth on a number of occasions. Shuttles had acted as tugs, retrieval units, ambulances, data relays and a dozen other roles, and in twenty years had saved a great many lives. The irony and agony of this mission was that disaster had already struck; Matheson’s mission was palliative only.

The first midcourse correction came up and she watched the computers trim the ship’s attitude before firing up the mains again for a 12-second burn that curved her trajectory. There would be three more, by which time she would be three-quarters dry of fuel and heading back for the Moon, sliding into formation with the incoming target.

The news would not be released to the public for quite some time, and the sourness in her mouth reminded Matheson she was part of this drama—the only ray of sunshine it had to offer, so she had better not make a mess of it. The flight supervisor had given her the bare facts and sworn her to secrecy, and she pondered upon them as an hour elapsed and the second burn plastered her into her seat with G-force, bending her flight path inexorably.

Deep space could be an uncompromising taskmaster and what luck it had to offer was somewhere between ironic and cruel. Eros-II had been on her way back from the Venus orbital station, three weeks into the crossing, returning the science team from their four-month tour observing Earth’s angry neighbour. Two disasters rolled seamlessly into one with a rapidity which verged upon the insane, and the craft’s telemetric log told the story in unemotional details.

A problem with the auxiliary life support system had called for one of the team to go EVA but an hour into the spacewalk proximity scanners had registered a meteoroid stream. It was imperative the craft maneuver to avoid the stream and the hard decision had been taken to leave the spacewalker—pray the much smaller target avoided a hit and rendezvous for collection later. This was textbook-correct and the decision any ship commander would have made. The bad luck came in the form of a direct hit to the Eros after the distancing burn had been made.

Matheson could imagine the chaos, the terror of the moment, as the lidar track of the incoming pebbles, intersecting with the craft’s course at many kilometers per second, blended into one knot of data and they waited—listened, heard perhaps a few minor scratches and bounces as sand-grain sized fragments deflected from the hull or went through the solar panels like bullets. They would have been talking to their spacewalker, reassuring, updating… Then the log indicated massive failure. Orientation loss, G-stress, depressurization, sustained roll initiated by asymmetrical venting, system disruption, electrical failure--then transmission ended. Had their high pressure systems exploded? A debris cloud had been tracked expanding around the craft on its new course, and another rescue ship had left another station heading to meet the Eros as she went tumbling by the Moon’s south pole, but that crew knew they were on a very long shot—the desperate hope the other members of the crew had been in their hardsuits during the maneuver and might have survived in them the five days since the ship had evidently become uninhabitable. The odds were long, and when that pilot looked in through the flightdeck windows there may be only frozen corpses.

Matheson’s mission was rather more hopeful. The spacewalker had been outside while Eros was on its intended trajectory back to lunar orbit and had therefore retained those vector dynamics. The lone astronaut was coming home as surely as the ship had been and as the hours passed and the burns were completed to bring her into formation Matheson felt more and more hopeful there would be more than a frozen body, riddled with entry and exit wounds.

The suit’s beacon was operational, a radio pulse every ten seconds which provided an RDF baring to supplement lidar, but there was no point calling. No voice contact was expected with the occupant: the only way to survive five days was to enter deep hibernation, a survival option designed into the suits. A mixture of anaesthetic gasses and metabolic suppressants was administered by the central computer to send the occupant to sleep, and all remaining power was used to maintain temperature above hypothermia. All other systems were at dormant levels and Matheson, as a pilot, had faced the terror of dying alone when drilling in the hibernation method. Alone, utterly beyond contact, the only hope left was to wait for help to arrive—so the astronaut must initiate hibernation mode on his or her own initiative. There would doubtless be recorded voice messages in the suit chip to serve if worse came to worst; and all of this presupposed neither meteoroids nor the expanding debris from the doomed ship had found the lone traveler.

Her own long range com array was locked to the lunar relay, her cockpit video and voice record was on the downlink to control, and the tension in her expression would be on a hundred screens. The final MCC burn came and went and she began to scan in earnest as the suit beacon pulsed loud and clear.

“Estimating 22 kilometers from target. Recomputing for rendezvous.” She killed the EM drive and enjoyed freefall as the computer ran the data; she could potentially exhaust her chemical fuel 100% and the EM would still bring her home—eventually. The stars were brilliant, the sweep of the galaxy laid our in its glory as she styled the craft with the sun astern, the Earth-Moon system off her port bow and seeming very far away. The numbers came up and she loaded the parameters, felt the EM kick in and send her on her way. “Four minutes to final trim burn, then I’m on thrusters to close in.”

Lidar showed no debris from the Eros, the cloud had expanded far, far away by now and Matheson was quite safe. She watched the contact grow ahead, sipped from a drink tube by her lips to moisten a suddenly dry mouth, and peered into the darkness. The final burn would neutralise her closing inertia and park her on a parallel course no more than half a kilometer from the target, and she let her eyes roam the stars, searching. The computer handled the deceleration, trimming the craft and pulsing the EM drive, and when the numbers equilibrated with the original trans-Earth course from Venus, she knew she had arrived.

The track was firm, 504 meters away, and Matheson blipped her RCS quads to send the shuttle drifting toward it. Then her gloved hand danced over a keypad and mouse to tie onto the suit systems computer and bring the acquisition lights online. When she looked up the spinners were blinking steadily and she allowed herself a tight smile, now seeing the figure against the stars like a dust mote side-lit in a sunny room. That was the grandeur of scale—what were humans compared to the universe in which they moved, but dust on the scale of the gods? She walked down the range, blipped the thrusters again to kill the closure rate, and nodded to herself as she directed an external video pickup at the white suit and MMU combo which hung out there against the stars fifty meters off. With the greatest satisfaction, she shucked her harness and drifted out of the seat, turned under the canopy and headed aft for the airlock. “Control, going EVA for pickup. Standby.”

The ship was the only island of stability left in her universe as Matheson rose head and shoulders out of the lock, plying the controls of her MMU with delicate precision. She picked up the drifting astronaut with a spotlight in the hatch, then kicked off and crossed the distance. Closer, closer.... She needed no lidar now, and when she trimmed alongside she reached carefully and turned the figure. It was all for nothing if anything at all had gone wrong in the last 125 hours....

The female face behind the polycarb seemed peacefully asleep. No tension was etched in the features, and the spill of a few blond hairs around the inner cap was so redolent of home Matheson could have wept. She saw a faint mist of exhalation crystalized on the faceplate before nose and mouth, and watched closely for it to grow and fade with each long, slow breath. At last she turned and raised a hand to the video pickup on the shuttle and spoke with more depth of feeling than she had allowed herself since the moment she was handed the mission. “I’ve got her. She’s okay.”

Far away, over the closer of the two worlds in the sky, she knew there would be cheering and many, many tears, but for now Matheson looked down at the nameplate of the suit—Semilovsky, N--and took her in tow, setting up for a docked pack-shunt to take them back to her ship. Getting her there, through the lock, packs stowed, then floating her into a seat and settled to sleep the way back would be hard work in itself, and the return flight would be neither quick nor easy; but that was what they paid professionals for.

The red shuttle, almost glowing in the harsh sunlight, had begun to slowly grow before her when she felt, more than heard or saw, something strange. A momentary tap at her helmet, as if a ground crewman had tried to attract her attention.... Then an odd feeling as if she had been somehow compromised. Violated in a very real sense.

Her right cheek was throbbing, just faintly, and she worked her jaw, feeling pins and needles and a cascade of sudden nerve pains. Then she realised a spot had appeared on her faceplate, a pale fleck moving with her action against the background stars.

She squinted, tried to resolve the spot, but it was too close, and she thought hard.... No change in internal pressure, no fault indicator chiming in her ears. With a sudden spike in heart rate and the impulse to hyperventilate, she realized a micrometeoroid, perhaps smaller than a sand grain, the mass of a dust mote, had intersected with her at an intrinsic velocity perhaps many times that of a rifle bullet, and passed right through her, in her faceplate, out the back of the helmet and clean through her head in between. It had missed her brain, for that she could be thankful, but drilled through solid bone as easily as the toughened polycarb of the helmet.

The fleck. Was it growing? Had the micro-fine hole weakened the faceplate? Would it fail in a sudden spiderweb of cracks? No, she told herself, the polycarb was stronger than that, but all the same she watched the mark moment by moment, her heart racing and flight control in her ears wanting to know why.

“Twenty meters to the airlock,” she whispered, unable to answer directly. “Fifteen. I’ll make it. I’ll make it....” Fate could not be so cruel as to let Tashi survive five days in the dark, then take them both within a breath of home....

Had the mote exited her helmet, or had her living tissue slowed it down? No trouble showed up on her suit systems to suggest it had passed through her backpack. Time, time, streaming by, all the while the forces of physics playing on the weakness.... Surely a minute ice crystal would have plugged the puncture, and at that scale internal pressure would never dislodge it, but Matheson prayed as she had never prayed before, dimly aware a tiny spot of red had congealed on her cheek and the bones were aching.

“I’ll make it.... I’ll make it....”

The fleck was growing. She thought it was growing. Maybe it was just the working of panic as she watched the hatch expanding before them.

I’ll make it....

I’ll make it....

She plied the grips to slow them for contact, brought them to walking speed, then drifting, and in moments they hung over the open hatch, lights so welcoming within. Her heart was racing, head swimming, as she uncoupled the packs and gave Tashi a nudge to send her inside, her pack jostling but not jamming.

While her attention had been on her friend, the cracks had grown ten millimetres and Matheson tweaked the grips to come about, send her boots down into the bay, drew her elbows in instinctively, then reached for the hand rail beside the hatch for leverage. Her right hand went to the hatch grip and she swung it silently down....

The heavy hatch seated into the seals, she spun the locking ring to wind out the lugs—

Her faceplate went with a silent explosion, spraying polycarbonate shards into spinning ricochets all around her and she felt the muscles of throat and nose clamp involuntarily on the last breath she would ever take. Unable to cry out, feeling the vacuum rip at her with invisible talons, she turned in a frenzy of uncoordinated scrabbling, found the REPRESSURIZE bar release and slammed it to the open position.

In utter and terrible silence, gas jetted visibly from the ducts for a few moments, then the pressure came up and she began to hear the hiss; and moments later managed her first desperate breath.

For long seconds she could not think, could not even remember who she was or where, but when her heart steadied she made out the voice of Control in her headset and laughed, just a little crazily. Tashi was still unconscious, drifting gently below her, and now they were inside they had all the time in the world.

“It’s okay, Control,” she whispered. “I’ll get us underway, then I’ll tell you all about it.”

All the time in the world. She was in no hurry to crack the inner hatch and move Tashi through. Her own mortality had just looked her in the face, and such moments demanded careful processing.

Thirty minutes later, when she fired up the engines for the translunar burn, she was stable and in control, but at the back of her mind wondered if she would ever fly another mission. She may have used up all the luck she would ever have.

On account of a dust mote.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MIKE ADAMSON holds a PhD in archaeology from Flinders University of South Australia. After early aspirations in art and writing, Mike returned to study and secured degrees in both marine biology and archaeology. Mike currently lectures in anthropology, is a passionate photographer, a master-level hobbyist and journalist for international magazines. Recent sales include to the anthologies Mind Candy Vol, I, Endless Apocalypse and Visions VII: Universe, and the magazines Daily SF, Compelling Science Fiction and Nature Futures. Mike has placed some sixty stories to date.

The Door in the Woods

M.A. SMITH

I WANT TO TELL you about something that happened a long time ago. I’ve never told anyone this before, and I’m scared. Not that you’ll disbelieve me. But that you will. Because if what I’m about to tell you actually happened, and wasn’t the set of hallucinatory ‘events’ I’ve half convinced myself was the truth of the matter, then I don’t know if I could keep my sanity in the face of it.

But all stories, real or imagined, have to start somewhere, so I might as well start this one on the Sunday afternoon when I first began rooting around in those woods. Perhaps if the football game hadn’t been cancelled this whole thing wouldn’t have gotten started. Perhaps if I’d been more committed to my distance learning business course and had put my head down to study in the aftermath of said cancellation, I wouldn’t be writing this at all. Perhaps if Kaz hadn’t broken up with me I wouldn’t have been spinning my wheels that day, either, and neither a cancelled football match or a doorway into some unspeakable place would have had any bearing on my life’s course. But there it is. Such are the roads we tread, that we cannot see the traps in the distance, and only become aware of them as we hear them snap shut around our ankles.

I lived, then, on a new housing estate which had been so recently carved into the land that the rawness of the building was everywhere apparent. A row of houses, bricks as yet un-weathered, ended abruptly, suppurating into a scrubby field where meadow grasses bobbed and waved as if unaware of the partial amputation. Indigo dusks fell, if you looked from certain angles out of certain high windows, over distant hedgerows; but when you shifted your gaze a fraction the orange blur of sodium streetlights reflecting off rows of car windshields infiltrated your vision, so that you were never truly sure if you inhabited a dying countryside or a newly born suburban hybrid. And everywhere, building continued. A new library sprouted; a rank of shops bloomed up and out of fallow concrete; a school mushroomed, in stages, from the soil; a village hall put out brick tendrils and grew upward, seeking the sky.

I rented a top floor flat in this new-born town, and things were good for me. I had an okay job, I was working on a qualification so that I could ditch it for a better one, and I even got together with Kaz, although it didn’t last long. He used to come and stay at the flat on the weekends, and we would walk together in the afternoons: just around the estate, or to the pub at its periphery; Kaz didn’t like the half-land around the town. He said it gave him the creeps, the way the brambles and scrub trees had so quickly reclaimed the skeins of wire and abandoned piles of breeze blocks that the builders had left behind on the fields’ edges. As if the land were angry at the incursion, and merely waited for its chance to reclaim its own. I used to laugh at him about it. I feel bad about that now.

The Sunday I’m telling you about was in late October, as I recall. It was that time of the year when the air is smoky and sharp and the light is strange and fey. When dawns and dusks extend outwards, so that there are times when the creeping greyness meets and entwines, and the only telling apart the hours of the day is by the rising fog of the morning, or the lowering gloom of the late afternoon. This day was wild and damp and steely, the rain lashing hard and twisting the russety leaves from the trees in rough pulses. The few survivors were straggly things, finally dripping from the branches in forlorn little flurries after the storm blew through. It was obvious that the pitch was going to be too waterlogged to play, and I wasn’t surprised when Lewis rang to say the match was to be postponed. I could have invited him over, I guess, but I wasn’t in the mood for it. Kaz had broken up with me the week before, and I still wanted only to wallow in my own fetid company. Toro, my dog, understood: he started whining at the door the moment I got off the phone, and I agreed with him: the afternoon was for getting out into the now softening drizzle and forgetting about things for a while.

I hadn’t intending on going into the wood. It just happened. Much the same way that a person doesn’t intend on catching a plane that’s destined to crash, or on smoking the cigarette that’ll be the one, in all those thousands that went before it, that will trigger the cancer. I had just intended to get out of the flat for a bit with Toro, to take him for a run around the fields, and fill my lungs with some of that autumn air that’s so full of flavor it’s as if you’re eating it, rather than breathing it. Nothing more. Sure, I took a little flask of spirits with me, tucked into my coat pocket, but what of that? As I said, my boyfriend had just dumped me and I was wallowing. Not terminally wallowing, you understand, just…readjusting.

An early dusk was settling, soot-like, over the half-field as I crossed the town’s vague border, stepping over a low wooden fence, which Toro scuttled happily beneath, coating his belly with red mud. A frail rain fell, drops thin and sporadic, as we ambled through the long grass, watching the lights come on in the houses that flanked us. The people milling within, so lit, seemed framed: tableaux for our entertainment as we continued to the meadow’s far border, where scrubby trees, homes to nests of plastic bags and folds of ragged polythene, marked the edge of a small, but dense, woodland. Toro, smelling something tempting, bounded into the trees and I, vaguely interested in the unexplored territory, followed.

There was something off-kilter about those woods, and I sensed it straight away. I didn’t mind it though, thinking it was just to do with their proximity to the estate, that the oddness was simply due to the juxtaposition of the primal, untamed forest with the sharp edged march of the houses so close to its border. There was a melancholy there, and that was fine with me: it suited my mood. I sat on a damp stump, watching the purple strands of sky visible through the branches overhead and sipped down a not insignificant amount of whisky while Toro ferreted around in the wet leaves.

And then we went home.

And that could have been it. But it wasn’t. For over the following weeks I found myself drawn back to that place again and again. I finished work each day and, driving home, found myself thinking about the peaceful, straggly despondency of those woods; how the bass hum of the traffic there was ever audible, but distant too, like a noise heard at the tail end of a dream. I liked finding a spot within the grey-green dim to sit and think. I liked the way the whisky sludged up the edges of things, so that the ground, now boggy with rotting leaves, sometimes undulated beneath me and, on more than one occasion, I woke from a dizzy snooze to feel Toro’s damp fur pressed against my face and to find that full dark had crept in, unseen.

As autumn withered away, revealing the stark bones of winter beneath, I began trying to resist the daily urge to head to the woods, a bottle (the flask long discarded as being too feeble in its capacity) of something soothing tucked tight within the layers of my clothing. To reapply myself to my, largely forgotten, coursework. To abstain from the luring pull of those slow and bleak thoughts that, when sat tight in the half light of the trees, were as comforting as a heavy blanket, weighted with snow.

I allowed myself one last foray into the woods; or that’s what I told myself, anyway. Following our usual path across the fields, Toro hung back, unsure. I knelt beside him, ruffling the knotted fur of his head, but when I moved forward again, he remained behind, eyes on the trees, legs planted firmly. Suddenly, far in the distance, a spray of fireworks crackled and fizzed upwards, leaving a sparkly wake that drifted for a while across the grey-black sky. Sure that Toro had simply gotten an inkling of the fireworks before I had, I went back to him, gave him a treat from the stash in my pocket, and pulled out one of his ratty toys. Waving it around for a while until I was sure I had him distracted, I then lobbed it towards the tree line. Toro hesitated, but eventually trotted towards the woods, and I followed.

A dense hush enveloped me as I stepped between the ragged, ivy covered trees, the swampy ground swallowing the sound of my steps, the press of the coming night like a door sealing closed against the outside world. Stepping over the odd fallen bough, dodging the grasping snarls of thistles, I wove my way into the centre of the wood, already feeling that strange and peaceful resignation fold over me. Toro stayed close at my heels, still spooked by the fireworks, I thought.

We were nearing the midpoint of the forest when I saw the door in the tree. About two-foot-tall, it nestled within the thick trunk of a diseased oak whose last few leaves, black spotted and limp, clung to peeling branches. I stayed for a while, just looking. I had had no more than a few sips (maybe slightly more) from the bottle in my pocket along the way, and I didn’t feel feverish or in any way unwell. The door was definitely there. I want you to understand this much at least. That door, made of thick cut timber and studded with poorly tooled iron, existed.

Toro started up a low growl, deep in his throat. Despite this, I didn’t really feel in any way uneasy: I remember considering the possibility that it had been cobbled up by some of the kids on the estate for a laugh. I recalled seeing on the news, back in the summer, how a number of forests down in Cornwall had been infested with ‘fairy doors’ and how the local councils had had to urge people to stop putting them up in the trees as it was impinging on the wildlife. There was some irony there, I supposed. Anyway, I thought the appearance of this door was something in this vein. I guess I should have wondered what sort of a person would put a ‘fairy door’ in this particular forest. And why it was so large in its dimensions: it looked about the right size for a human child.

I should have wondered these things. I should have turned and left that place and never gone back. I should not have opened that door. But I didn’t wonder too much, and I didn’t turn round, but instead, smiling slightly, I pulled open the thing, sure I would see merely the plain wood of the oak beneath and ready to share in the joke I felt a little foolish, I remember, but it was a door, after all, and who could go by such a thing and not try at the handle?

At my heel, Toro backed up a couple of paces as I swung the little door open, its cunning hinges whining slightly with the movement. Behind the door was the yawning blackness of a tunnel that sloped steeply downwards. I stumbled away before I knew I did so. After a short while I realized I was holding my breath, and let it out shakily, a ragged huff that steamed up into the purple air. My mind could not put things together; it tried, but my brain refuted the incoming information, so that my thoughts were a muddled mess. I may have stayed like that, simply looking at that pitchy hole, for ten minutes, twenty minutes, or more. I’m not sure.

After some unknown time I crept back towards it. My hands shook as I rested them on the tree above the door and ducked my head to peer, cautiously, inside. The passageway that the door opened onto disappeared deep into the ground, mud walls held up at intervals by struts and braces that marched into the blackness. Straining my eyes I could just make out, far in the distance below, the faint glitter of torch or lantern light.And then, caught on a rising draught, a stench assailed me, a smell so foul that I instantly recoiled, but not before I caught, floating out on this updraft, the sound of singing. The voices that were producing this noise, a dissonant, meaty harmony, were somehow so obscene that I stumbled back and away from the doorway, intent only on escape, feeling a horror in my heart so pure that, if I had not fallen backwards, my feet tangling in roots, I think I would have died of it. As it was, I landed hard, my head knocking against the ground as I landed so that, for a while, I knew no more. But before that dissembling mist enveloped me, I saw Toro rushing headlong towards the tunnel to disappear inside, snarling and foaming as he went.

When I came to, deep night had wended cold fingers through the trees, and all was still and hushed. Remembering in a rush what had happened I sprang up, and shards of glass pattered and shivered around me. I recalled the bottle in my jacket pocket, and put a tentative hand to my side, feeling the wet fragments within, crunching under the press of my hand like little crushed bones. The door in the tree had vanished. All that remained was the vague imprint of its hinges in the wood, which were scorched looking and warm to the touch when I put out a faltering hand to them.

At the base of the trunk, half buried beneath a drift of dank and rotting leaves, a small pile of gore. If I am to be wholly truthful in this account, I must record that, at this point, I started up with a gibbering weep that rose to a breathless scream when I saw, jutting from the spreading mound of blood and shredded flesh, tufts of knotted fur. A collar.

I ran then, hard, back through the branches that whispered and grasped, back through the clotted mud that sucked at my feet, exploding out of the trees to stand, utterly devoid of sense, beneath a clear sky sharp with starry shards, gazing with mostly unseeing eyes at the row of houses so close to me: at the sanity they represented, that I knew was lost to me forever.

I never went back to my flat. Truth be told, I have no clear memory of what I did do the rest of that night I could have slept out in the field, face up to the moon, for all I know, although I think I went to the pub and sank the required number of pints to knock me insensible again. That would certainly explain the headache I woke up with the next day. The one that lasted a week. I hired someone to shift all my stuff, and moved into a ground floor apartment in the city. Somewhere the only trees to be seen were tamed, held tight within squares of gravel or caged within conservatories. Somewhere the dawns were tinged with the spray of sunlight off glass and corrugated steel, and the dusks were electric for as far as the eye could see.

As I told you, I have never told anyone this story before. I would pay a great price to sleep at night again, to know that what I saw when I opened that door was a dream, that I had drifted off on my usual stump and conjured the whole thing from whisky; that Toro ran off and strayed onto the road, never to return, and that the fleshy mess beneath that tree was a fox hunted bird, merely. But when I close my eyes, seeking the sleep that never comes, I am enveloped once more by that foul stench, and by the sound of profane voices, singing into the stillness of the night.

And one of those voices is my own.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

M.A. SMITH writes from Gloucestershire, UK. Her fiction has appeared in publications including Dark Moon Digest, Gathering Storm Magazine and the ‘From the Depths Anthology’ compiled by Haunted Waters Press. Her debut novella ‘Severance’ (published by Fantasia Divinity) is available to order now via Amazon. Find out more at www.masmithwriting.com.

Transcend

SHAUN KILGORE

THE WIND BLOWING OFF the bay was frigid and it wormed its way through all the layers of clothes I was wearing. The warmth was being leeched away every moment I was standing there exposed to the elements. The sun glowed with a wane light and seemed so far away. There was no warmth there hidden behind a gauze of wispy clouds. I adjusted my gloves and tucked the thick scarf back in around my head. There were no other sounds but that gusty breeze and the snow it was bound to bring from the north. The landscape surrounding me was barren and white, the snow-covered ground permanently coated with a glaze of ice.

Just behind me, a door popped opened, the hinges protesting in the sub-zero temperatures. I turned around. I was several yards away from the bunker. Someone wrapped up in the same cold-weather gear came tromping towards me, face obscured by goggles and scarf. I waited until whoever-it-was stopped in front of me. The newcomer pulled back the goggles and scarf.

“Dan, we need you inside. There’s a whole new batch of data from the sensor arrays that you’ve just got to see for yourself.”

Jenna’s voice was pitched higher and she was clearly excited by the findings. I smiled in response to her infectious grin. God she was cute. Why hadn’t I ever realized that before?

“Well, let’s get back then,” I said.

I followed her back to the bunker, conscious of the way she walked and idly wondering what she’d look like in something more feminine than that thick parka. I knew Jenna was oblivious to my attentions. She was entirely focused on the work we were supposed to be doing down here at the bottom of the world. I had to question my own judgment. Maybe ten months in Antarctica without anybody else for company but the same seven people was too long. Hell, maybe I was just tired of the job and plain bored with the lack of progress. I was more skeptical of Jenna’s enthusiasm than genuinely intrigued. There had been other occasions where Tom or Angela had rushed out with some big find only to have me point out the errors in reading the data.

The bunker for our little operation was actually a state of the art, climate-controlled research unit complete with dormitory, labs, and utility rooms. As we approached I was glad that, at least, I would be able to peel off the parka and get warm. The soft humming of the generators became audible as we closed in on the last yard or so to the front entrance. Jenna had a spring in her step that both annoyed me and had me thinking inappropriate thoughts again.

We entered the main door and entered a short hall lined with benches and parkas hanging from various pegs. Other sub-zero temperature gear was stowed in bins throughout the room. Another set of doors marked the entrance to the bunker. Jenna peeled off her hood, goggles, and scarf and unbuttoned the parka. She wore a bright wool sweater beneath it. The insulated boots and pants came next. She had to unhook the suspenders. I set about removing my own gear but couldn’t help watching Jenna.

She caught me looking. Jenna gave me this big grin. “Come on, Dan, they’re waiting.”

“Oh, right.” My face felt hot. I struggled to finish removing the clothes.

Jenna waited for me at the inner door. Once I was free of the heavier gear I felt so light and almost bounded down the hall to where she waited. When I reached her, Jenna pulled out her security card and leaned closer to a retinal scanner. The machine confirmed her identity and the card completed the job and let her access the inner sanctum of our little operation. I followed behind, feeling the gust of warm, pleasant air from the base. The soothing heat penetrated my arms and began to thaw me out. I looked around at the various computer banks that monitored the sensors scattered across the ice plains for miles in every direction. Jenna paused to pull on a lab coat and followed suit. When she retrieved a cup of hot coffee I took one too. The stuff was bitter and quite strong but I drank it black anyway. The warmth flowed into me and I sighed.

We continued down through sensor systems and past server rooms. Jenna pushed through a set of double doors and I could hear several voices arguing about something before I could see anything.

“Damn it, Greg, you know the infrared scans don’t make any sense whatsoever. Global-warming alone, doesn’t account for these temperature spikes. Shit, there’s no way in hell those sensors are functioning properly.”

Another voice, a woman’s, chimed in. “Marcus, what about these numbers, look at the waveforms on these seismographic reports. We’re getting low-level tremors throughout the same region. Two point four and five at the epicenter.”

“Let me see those, Angela.”

I walked in and found Marcus gawking at the crumpled pages. “But...but, what are the odds?”

“Not very likely,” I said.

Marcus looked at me.

Angela and Greg both started towards me with their data clutched before them. I help up my hands. “One at a time. Let’s see if we can get to the bottom of this.”

Greg moved in first, giving Angela an awkward smile. He pointed at the numbers printed on the page. “You can see right here that the air temperatures are rising, a half degree or so every twenty-four hours. This shows the uptick over the last three days. Prior to that, all was normal.” Greg’s brow was creased heavily.

I scanned the numbers myself. There was no mistaking the data there. “Have we checked the hardware and software to make sure there aren’t any glitches?”

Marcus walked up. “We sent Tom and Allen over there while you were out getting some fresh air.”

I heard the jab but chose to ignore it.

Angela was next. She handed me the printout from the seismograph. Poking up her glasses from where the slumped to the end of her nose, she pointed out the pattern. “It’s all rather localized. It’s sort of strange really. It’s as though the vibrations from the quake seem to die maybe a mile from the site.”

Marcus butted in. “Angela, quakes don’t behave that way. Even I know that. That’s crazy.”

“Crazy maybe,” I said. “But, that what I’m seeing here too.”

“But it violates physics or something, doesn’t it?”

I looked at those gathered around me. Jenna wasn’t smiling now. “Yeah, it does.”

I SPENT THE NEXT hour reviewing additional reports and charts in my office. Angela, Greg, and Marcus argued different points, poured over data, and generally tried to find any possible way to explain the findings. I was racking my brain too, exhausting every theory I knew.

I leaned out the door. “Jenna, are the satcom units still down?”

Jenna dropped the stack of printouts on table. She glanced down at a console. “Yes. Allen was working on them until we sent him out with Tom.”

“Okay.” I had no web access and I couldn’t contact anyone at Base 47 our sister site. They were located about five hundred miles away across the icy plains. We were alone out here.

“Get Allen and Tom on the short-wave radios. I want them back here. I need those satcoms up and running ASAP.”

“Okay, Dan.”

An anxious activity filled the lab. I downed several cups of coffee while doing calculations. The data processing systems were spitting out different models based on the data that was still coming in. Angela came in with a hot sandwich for a late lunch.

“Thanks,” I said. “Are Tom and Allen on the way?”

“Jenna said they got the message.”

I sat back, cracking my knuckles. “Good. I need to call Doctor Banks in San Diego.”

Angela went back to her desk. Marcus was pacing back and forth, shaking his head. I watched him. He was fuming as he walked by my open door. “It can’t be, damn it. There has to be a logical, scientific explanation.”

“Yes, and we’ll find it,” I said. “We just need time to figure it out, Marcus. You’ve got to calm, man.”

Marcus’ skin was flushed red. He had a cup of coffee clutched in his fist. He looked at me for a few seconds and I just waited until he reined himself in. Marcus took a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah. I know, Dan. This is all just so frustrating. We’ve been doing this geothermal research, walking on the cutting edge trying to bring results for the suits in San Diego. Now, this happens and it looks like it’ll get worse before it gets better. Something’s wrong with the sensors. That’s got to be it, you know.”

I let him talk. I wasn’t sure if he was right or not. The whole team would probably have to go out and start checking the equipment to make sure there weren’t any hardware problems we couldn’t pick up on from the lab. I felt a chill in advance. I wasn’t keen on the idea of the whole bunch of us traipsing through the ice fields in subzero temperatures.

Marcus looked mollified. “I might hit the hay for a nap. I’ve got a killer headache. Maybe some shut-eye will do me some good.”

I nodded. “Yeah. Hell, I should probably do the same. Not sure when Allen and Tom will be back. Even when they do show up, it’ll be some time before they get the satcoms up.”

“Later,” said Marcus.

“Yep.”

When he was gone, I rocked back and forth in my chair. I had some data models up on my laptop. I stared at the grids and compared all the data we had from the sensors and seismographs. I wasn’t so much aggravated as curious. I mean, what if the information we were getting was accurate? I realized right there that I would have to go out there right in the epicenter if necessary to get some manual readings. I did more calculations, checked my work with both Angela and Jenna.

After another hour, Tom and Allen arrived, bursting with questions of their own. Both guys let loose with a barrage of information about their forays out on the plain.

Allen stepped up to me. “Dan, we checked all of the main arrays and could find no glitches or obvious malfunctions.”

“What about the secondary systems, the smaller arrays?”

Allen adjusted his glasses. His scruffy beard and propensity for black baseball caps added to the fact that the man was a dead ringer for Michael Moore, the director.

“We didn’t check them but the connectivity to the main units looks good.”

“So there could be a problem in the overall system?”

Allen thought for a moment. “Dan, I just don’t think so.”

I nodded. “Okay. Thanks. Get the satcom up. I need to contact Base 47 and maybe San Diego too.”

“You got it,” said Allen.

He left the doorway and Tom stuck his head in and lowered his voice. “Jenna gave me the scoop on what’s been happening here. That data’s pretty screwy, eh?”

I chuckled. “You could say that.” I leaned back in my chair. “Did you see anything strange out there?”

Tom’s eyebrows shot up and he grinned. “What do you mean, strange, Dan? I mean I didn’t see the yeti tap-dancing on the ice, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I don’t know what I mean, exactly. Umm, how close did you two get to the epicenter?”

“Man, we came within two or three miles. It was all quiet like.”

I picked up the seismograph printouts Angela gave me. “Yet the sensors picked up an earthquake that you guys should have felt clearly inside the truck.”

“We need to go out there right down in the middle of it.”

I looked up at Tom. “We’ll go out there tomorrow first thing. Why don’t you give Allen a hand with the satcoms.”

“Okie dokie.”

The rest of the afternoon was a carousel of frustration and headshaking. Tom and Allen couldn’t get the satcoms up and running and the temperatures plunged, putting an end to the work. Marcus returned from his nap in a better mood and reviewed the newest data with Angela. Greg and Jenna were up to fix dinner for everyone so they abandoned the lab work and went to the dormitory wing. I remained in my office as all the activity slowed down typing up reports about the day’s events. I was the last one out of the lab unit. Only as I was walking to the common room, mouth watering with the smells wafting from the kitchen, that I realized I was fully engaged again. Whatever was going on out there on the ice plains, we would work together to figure it out. There was this burgeoning excitement. I still wanted to reach Doctor Banks and fill him in, but I was more anxious to get out there to see it for myself. I had this ingrained feeling that tomorrow would be an auspicious day.

A strange sort of joy warmed me up. As I entered the common room, everyone was there waiting to eat. Jenna saw me and smiled. We were a good team. The work we were doing was important and no one was going to let this current crazy situation derail us.

THE NEXT DAY, I heard a cry of triumph from Allen. “I fixed it. I fixed the satcoms. Oh yeah!”

A few moments later Allen came barreling up the hall, a boyish smirk flashing across his fuzzy face. He stopped in front of me and opened his mouth.

“You fixed the satcom,” I said first.

Allen closed his mouth and gave another sheepish grin. “Yes.”

“So I can get on the horn with Base 47?”

“Yeah, man. Give it a try. The signals are good.”

I closed the door to my office and dialed the number. The telephone rang several times but no one answered. I tried it again. Base 47 was nonresponsive. I got this uneasy feeling but wasn’t sure why. The other research unit was far away from the epicenter. I tried again. After the sixth ring, a high-pitched tone started pulsing on the lines, increasing in decibel strength and frequency until I had to pull the receiver away. Then the sound ceased and there was not tone whatsoever. I tried to dial again. The satcom signal dropped off.

“Shit.” I dropped the line and tried the web. I couldn’t get online. “Allen!”

Allen showed up in the doorway. “Yeah.”

“Satcoms went down again.”

Allen gasped. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”

“Wish I was.”

Things didn’t get better. Without the satcoms, we didn’t have much notice that a storm was blowing through. The bulk of us were preparing our gear for a trip out to check all of the sensors and get a look at the epicenter when it hit. We managed to get one of the older Dopplers up so we could monitor the progress but for the most part we were blind. The whole day was wasted.

At about seven o’clock that night Allen came into my office shaking his head. “I’m sorry, boss. I don’t know what happened. I can’t tell for sure, but I think several of the transmitters and microprocessors are fried. We don’t have enough backups on hand here. There’s no way to get them back up without new replacement parts.”

“And we can’t call in an order with the satcoms down. We’ll have to wait for a regular supply plane to get any messages out.”

“That sums it up.”

“Damn, Allen. I need a drink. Do you want one?”

I pulled a bottle of bourbon out of a desk drawer and scrounged up two glasses. Once I poured them, looked around me at the familiar furnishings of my office. I could just hear the distant hum of the generators that caused the lights to flicker occasionally.

“Well, Allen, do the others know about our extended communication problems.”

Allen screwed up his lip and squinted. “Not yet, I don’t think. Unless Tom said something.”

“We’re stuck in this place with a snowstorm rolling over us and can’t talk to anybody beyond the range of the short-wave radios. That’s just wonderful.”

The rest of the evening was uneventful though we all gathered in the common room, Greg and Angela laden with printouts, Marcus pacing around the table nursing a beer. Tom and Allen were searching the workshop and garages on the off chance they would find enough parts to cobble together the components for the relays. Jenna and I joined the pow wow as we tried to work out what was happening. Marcus kept his temper in check despite the talk outside the box about what could be causing the localized seismological activity. We were scientists working in cutting-edge research fields. If anyone were to come up a plausible theory, one of us would--despite Marcus’ tendency to be dogmatic about the laws of physics.

I was drinking what was probably my fifth cup of coffee when Tom ran into the common room. “Guys, you’ve got to see this!”

Everyone got up and followed Tom through the complex until we reached the lab. Through the glass doors, Allen was hunched over a computer screen. When the door came open he turned around and wave at us frantically.

“Dan, it’s happening again. There’s another quake going on right now. Look at these readings.” Allen crammed a page into my hand.

I did. My mouth dropped open. “These...these can’t be right. It says the quake is registering a three, maybe three point five on the Richter scale.”

“Son of a...,” blurted out Marcus, who just walked away shaking his head and muttering.

Angela peered over her glasses. “It’s happening right now. The same profile as before just stronger readings. This is unbelievable.”

I looked over the readings myself. Then updated reports came in. “Holy shit.”

Marcus came back like a bullet. “What the hell now?”

Everyone was clumped together in front of the bank of computers and sensors. The seismograph was showing five on the Richter scale. A few minutes later it spiked to five point eight.

“A quake that strong,” began Allen. “Man, we should be feeling that right now.”

Everyone looked at one another.

I stared at the screen. What the hell was going on?

I RAN DOWN THE hall towards the entrance to the bunker. Marcus, Tom, and Jenna were following right behind me.

“You know I’m right.”

“Dan, that storm isn’t past us yet,” said Jenna. “Marcus, tell him it’s crazy to go out in that weather.”

“No, he’s right, Jenna. We’ve got to get out there now. I want to know what’s going on out there just as much as Dan does. I need to know.”

Jenna grunted in exasperation. “Well, I’m going too.”

Neither Marcus nor I argued. She could keep a track of the storm’s progress on the truck’s mobile Doppler. “You keep an eye on the weather, Jenna. Let us know whether it will hinder us.”

I pulled out a walkie-talkie. “Tom, do you copy?”

There was a bit of static on the line. “Yeah, Dan. Got the truck ready to roll.” I could hear the wind howling.

“Good,” I replied.

The three of us stopped along the banks of alcoves filled with cold-weather gear. For several minutes no one spoke but the rustling of the thick sub-zero fabric, snapping of buttons and clasps. I looked up when I saw Greg come dashing around the corner.

“I’m coming too. Angela said she’ll be monitoring the seismographs and other sensors. Allen is helping her.”

I shook my head. “I need to stay here. Sorry, Greg. I want you and Allen to see if you can rig up some way to get a message to Base 47. Maybe use the dish to send a coded message. Hell, use Morse code. I want contact with somebody. Also make sure all of the walkies and short waves are charged. We’re taking six walkies with us and we’ll have the antenna set up on the truck.”

Greg looked disappointed for a moment but shrugged it off. “Okay, boss. I’ll get right on it.”

“Great. We’ll try to get some video for you.”

“Cool.” Greg ran out the way he came in.

Marcus zipped up his parka and adjusted his gloves. “This is just nuts. You’re crazy, Dan, but damn it I’ve got to know what is going on out there.”

I finished putting on my own gear. Jenna did the same.

“We’ll let’s get out there, then.”

The first blast of icy wind gave me second thoughts but once I could breath again, I stepped out into the floodlights that dispelled the darkness around the bunker and outbuildings. Over the dull roar, I heard the sound of the truck’s diesel engine rumbling. I shoved the goggles down and covered my mouth to keep the ice off.

The truck’s lights were blazing in the darkness. Tom saw us coming and climbed up in the cab. I followed him up and entered the warmer interior. Jenna and Marcus were up next and then the doors were sealed.

“Brr. Is that heat cranked up?” Marcus rubbed his hands together.

“Yeah. Just give it time,” said Tom.

The truck rolled out on its treads, moving at about thirty miles an hour. Jenna set up at the console to keep track of the storm while Marcus tested the radio. We were on the way to the epicenter. Despite the hour we were wide awake and pumped up with anxiety. None of us knew what we would encounter. I stared out the windshield while Tom drove the truck out into the snow-blown darkness.

“DAN, WE’RE ABOUT TEN minutes away from the edge of the site. Still no activity on the onboard sensors. Angela’s reporting continued aftershocks numbered two point two through two point seven on the Richter scale.”

I looked back at Marcus. The man’s face was scrunched up in a frown.

“Thanks Marcus,” I said. Jenna had her eyes glued to the screen. “How’s it look on the Doppler, Jenna?”

She glanced up. “The winds and snow are drying down the closer we come to the epicenter. I can’t explain it but it looks like clear skies ahead and no turbulence. The entire site is open to the sky.”

No one in the cab spoke for a few minutes.

Tom broke the silence. “Dan you’ve got to see this.”

I turned back and peered out into the darkness and couldn’t figure out what I was seeing at first. It was like a hazy curtain of ice and snow had been drawn together to form a wall or barrier of some sort obscuring everything ahead of us. Tom kept the truck rolling towards it but I noticed the speed was dropping.

“What is that?”

“I don’t know,” said Tom, “but I’m heading right towards it. Hang on.”

We were soon buffeted by strong winds that struck at us from both sides. Tom kept a tight grip on the wheel and kept the truck rolling relatively straight on the path. Visibility decreased steadily until we could no longer see anything but the white veil. Tom was forced to slow the truck down. It wouldn’t do to crash out in the middle of the ice field.

“Jesus, this is unreal,” muttered Marcus.

The cab was shaking from all of the turbulence caused by the flow of the wind. The vibrations were shaking all of us and sent tools and some of the equipment falling from interior walls and ceiling. I closed my eyes for a moment, wondering whether we were going to be torn apart by this bizarre storm, and then the sound and motions stopped all at once. I opened my eyes again and saw clear night skies and stars. The truck, which had been stopped for several seconds, lurched forward because Tom had pressed his boot to the floor.

“Shit. Sorry.”

A light shudder went through the truck.

Marcus looked down at the seismograph. “That’s a quake. A small one. Probably an aftershock.”

“We can feel them now,” asked Jenna.

I sat back in the chair for a moment. “Looks like it.”

Tom adjusted gears and the truck rolled on though he was mindful of the terrain since there could be fissures all across the area. We followed the sensors straight for the epicenter.

“Monitor everything you can,” I said. I pulled out a walkie-talkie. “Allen, do you read me?”

Static. Only static.

“Allen, repeat, do you read me? Over.”

Still nothing but empty static. I looked at Jenna.

“Try the short wave.”

“Allen, anybody, do you read us? Over. We’ve entered the site and are investigating the epicenter.”

We all waited. The only other sound was the hum of the engine and the noise from the treads. There was no response.

“Looks like we are on our own out here.”

The last couple of miles to the epicenter cut through a more rugged patch of land where ice hills reared up on all sides before descending to a flatter depression. Tom handled the truck well and we had no other mishaps other than the occasional shake from aftershocks. As we rolled up over a hill the epicenter came into view.

Tom hit the breaks on the truck. “My God. What is that?”

I shook my head and rubbed my eyes trying to make sense of what I was seeing. “I don’t know.”

“Holy shit. It can’t be,” said Marcus. His voice was tight like he couldn’t quite get his words out.

“What,” I asked. “What is it, Marcus?”

Marcus was staring at the strange round object illuminated in the trucks floodlights. It filled the entire center of the large depression. Broken ice and rock littered the area immediately surrounding it. The strong beams of light reflected off the shiny surface.

“Dan, that looks like a flying saucer.”

“A what?”

“A UFO. A real, live unidentified flying object.”

“It looks like it’s bored its way up from beneath the surface of the ice,” said Jenna.

“It does, doesn’t it,” I said softly.

“What do we do,” asked Tom.

Could this be happening? “Tom, I have no clue.”

We stared at the object, not one of us thinking clearly enough to make a decision.

A bright light burst into life at the top of the metal object. Marcus cried out and jumped. He hit his head on the top of the cab. “Damn it.” Marcus winced rubbing his scalp.

“You okay,” asked Jenna.

“Yeah. I’ll be alright.”

The light began pulsing, blinking at regular intervals. There were no other signs of motion or activity. Just the flashing light, blazing in the darkness like a beacon.

A beacon. The idea stuck in my mind and I couldn’t shake it. My mouth went dry and I felt uncertain. Maybe I was making more out of it than I should be. After all, we had no idea what the object was.

Jenna tried the radios again. “Still nothing. All I’m getting is static.”

I came to a decision. “Tom, take us closer.”

Tom looked at me. “You sure about that?”

I paused to clear my throat. I felt a tremor in my body but managed to answer with out a trace of it in my voice. “Yes. Let’s have a closer look.”

The truck lurched into motion and rolled slowly down the slope so that in moments we were right up next to the metal object. It was twice as tall as the truck and did seem to have the classic UFO look to it. It was like a prop from on of those cheesy 1950s science fiction movies.

“This thing is big,” said Marcus who was looking at the shiny surface through the truck’s windows.

“Yeah. That’s understatement,” said Tom.

The light continued to pulse, shining way up into the sky.

“Guys, do think the light is some kind of signal?”

I couldn’t help but say it. I waited for them to disagree or to wave it away. Nobody said a word. Jenna leaned forward to get a better look at the pulsing light.

“Dan might be right,” she said. “That thing is blinking in a pattern of some kind.”

Marcus jotted down notes on a paper. “Who or what are they signaling then?”

“I don’t know.”

Suddenly the whole cab was bathed in a terrible blast of light that made my eyes burn. I was blind and realized I was screaming. The others were too. Oh my God, I’m going to die. I’m going to die!

THERE WAS A SENSE of vast space surrounding me. I couldn’t see anything nor could I speak or hear. But I could feel the space and a gentle flow of air the touched my face. There was no way to tell whether the others were occupying this same strange environment, but believed they were there experiencing the same sort of sensations and detachment from what had happened. My thoughts were jumbled up with wakefulness came pieces of memories about the last few moments when we had entered the stillness of the epicenter and saw the metal object with its flashing light.

Slight sensations from my body returned after the other senses. I did not feel any pain. In fact, I was washed in this pleasant warmth that reminded me of my bedroom as a little boy when the winter nights were chilly and my mother tucked my brother and I into our thick quilts. Those sorts of memories seemed to bleed through to the present and mingled with those of the last day or so.

What had we found? Were we all dead now and experience some version of the afterlife? I didn’t—no, I couldn’t—find the answers. Though I knew my eyes were open I saw nothing but deep darkness that enshrouded me. I tried to call out to Jenna, to Marcus, to Tom, but I couldn’t get the words out. I wasn’t sure what was stopping me from speaking. Maybe whatever was keeping me—us—here in this cocoon of warmth. I realized a part of me didn’t care what it all meant. My curiosity had swelled to fill me up, pushing out lesser, mundane concerns. I cared what happened to Jenna and the others but somehow knew they were just as safe, just as content to remain in this place.

The more I let the peaceful disinterest enter my mind, the less my body still seemed a part of me. Those fragments of physical sensations receded. I felt like I was caught in a different current now--one that was steadily carrying me away. There was little resistance on my part. Somehow, I wanted this. No, I needed this release. The darkness was graying at the edges of what I took to be the boundaries of this vast empty place. The gray light gradually brightened and I could perceive these luminous shapes. Everything was glowing now. I was felt like I was glowing like a firefly on a summer night, flashing on and off. Tremendous feelings of well being and...and love were pouring directly to the heart of me.

At some point, I could feel and see Jenna, Marcus, and Tom all around me in a circle. Not their bodies, but their spirits maybe. Or some incorporeal form that I knew intuitively was each of them. There was a flash of recognition from each of them. We all saw and spoke to one another but not with our mouths. Whatever was the essence of each of us communicated and felt the awe of all the physical barriers dropping away so that we glimpsed the spaces between life and death and being. We were being drawn up into the limitless expanses of the multiverse and there was so much life there. Together we ascended into the brightest light of all, that which binds all things, not a knowable, approachable deity, but something far more profound and uncontainable. It was as though each one of us was also it, but as the fragments of a reflection seen through the shards of a broken mirror.

The feelings and sensations intensified and it was as though we were being subsumed utterly into the Oneness, the uncontainable at the heart of creation.

FFFFSHHH.

“Tom? Do you read?

Ffffshhh.

“Tom? Dan? Do you read? Over.”

Ffffshhh.

I opened my eyes. The act itself seemed like the first time I had done it. I was aware of all of my physicality, every movement of muscle beneath flesh, the way the heat from the truck blew across my exposed face. I blinked. It was the cab of the truck lit only by the glow of the console lights.

Ffffshhh.

“Does anybody read me?”

Something moved beside me. It was Tom. He looked at me. His eyes were wide and glistened with unshed tears. He looked around too as though filled with a child’s wonderment.

“Come on, guys. Quit playing around. Do you read me? Over.”

Ffffshhh.

Tom reached for the walkie-talkie. He looked at me. I nodded.

“Sorry guys. We read you.”

Ffffshhh.

“You had us worried. What happened out there?”

I looked back at the sound of soft moaning. Marcus and Jenna were waking up and looking around with the same awed expressions. Jenna’s face was covered in tears. She was smiling so brightly and seemed suffused with the same joy I felt.

Even Marcus, sourpuss that he once was, looked renewed and somehow the carrier of the same inner light that the rest of us were.

Tom put the walkie-talkie up to his mouth. “Not sure what it was, Allen. We’re coming back to the bunker. Over.”

“Affirmative. We’ll see you when you get back.”

I kept looking around at the other three, each of us holding these buoyant expressions.

“It’s gone,” said Tom.

We looked through the windshield. The truck’s lights revealed only an empty field of snow and ice. There were no traces of the metal object.

Tom shook his head. “What do we say to them?”

I opened my mouth but paused. I smiled. “Whatever feels right to say.”

All of us started laughing, and the memory of the experience lingered though only in paler fragments. It had changed us in more ways than we knew.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

SHAUN KILGORE is the author of various works of fantasy, science fiction, and a number of nonfiction works. He has also published numerous short stories and collection. His books appear in both print and ebook editions. Shaun is the publisher and editor of MYTHIC: A Quarterly Science Fiction & Fantasy Magazine. He lives in eastern Illinois.

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COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

MYTHIC

A Quarterly Science Fiction & Fantasy Magazine

ISSUE # 8 FALL 2018

Copyright © 2018 by Founders House Publishing LLC

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

All Contents are copyrighted to their respective authors

and used here with their permission.

Cover art copyright © Grandfailure/Dreamstime.com

Published by Founders House Publishing LLC

MYTHIC: A Quarterly Science Fiction & Fantasy Magazine

is a project and publication of Founders House Publishing LLC.

www.mythicmag.com

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This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional,

and any semblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts

thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.