MYTHIC

A QUARTERLY SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY MAGAZINE

ISSUE #9 | WINTER 2018

Editor’s Note

SHAUN KILGORE

If this is your first issue of MYTHIC: A Quarterly Science Fiction & Fantasy Magazine, I want to welcome you. If you’re a regular subscriber, I want to extend my thanks for your continued interest in this magazine and the authors who appear in these pages. MYTHIC returns with its Winter 2018 Issue, and while it is late, I am sure you won’t mind because there are plenty of great stories inside.

One of the great things about having a regular magazine is finding great authors and working with some of them on a regular basis. Most issues so far have included new voices as well as returning ones. Issue #9 is no exception. In fact, we have stories by authors who’ve been with issue since Issue #1. Writers like John Michael Greer, D.A. D’Amico, Kathryn Yelinek, Lawrence Buentello, Fredrick Obermeyer and John Sykes are why I started MYTHIC. But there are some new voices that caught my attention during the last submissions window. I’d like to welcome Greg Belvedere, L. Joseph Shosty, and M. Michelle Bardon. Thanks for your stories.

My mission to provide better compensation four our wonderful writers is still ongoing and I am hoping some of you will consider either becoming a patron through our Patreon page or subscribing by visiting the MYTHIC website. You can also pick up a copy and tell your friends about us. Those can be purchased from most online retailers and you can also buy them on our website. Consider supporting this publication. Support great sci-fi and fantasy fiction.

Thanks again.

Shaun Kilgore

Editor at MYTHIC

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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.

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Life Studies in Stone

LAWRENCE BUENTELLO

THEIR CONVERSATION DRIFTED into an arcane debate on the existence of God and the quality of the natural world.

Of course, Greenleaf had only wanted fossils—ou acheter fossiles, he’d said in his poor French—and the merchant, an old Muslim dressed in white thobe and tan bisht, nodded casually, and understood immediately. He’d not only wanted fossils, he’d wanted special fossils, those fossils to which a traveling university professor might not have access in a more European setting. In Tangier, however, a person only had to know where to go in the old marketplace in the narrow passageways of the medina to inquire after irregular items; and to purchase them if the price wasn’t too high.

And inquire he did, enduring the odd stares of the merchants in their stalls, before being directed to an old man they knew to be in possession of the object of his desire. The merchant had only the one specimen, but Greenleaf, as was customary, composed a legible list of preferred articles in French and promised to buy more if they became available.

This should have concluded their transaction for the day, but despite purchasing a fine specimen of Carboniferous spider—possibly even Cryptomartus hindi—the merchant insisted Greenleaf answer his question about the nature of God. If Greenleaf had been in the Middle East instead of Tangier, he might have hesitated to speak truthfully. But since the city catered to many philosophies, he simply offered his status as university professor and man of science. The old man smoothed down his white beard and nodded, and remarked in good French that there were no atheists in the world, only people with closed eyes. At least, that’s what Greenleaf believed he’d said. Les yeux fermes. Also, that Allah was mysterious in his ways. Greenleaf countered that the very fossil he held in his hand proved his point, that the natural process had created life, and had been doing so for billions of years. But the old man only laughed.

“The things in which you believe are not what they seem,” he told Greenleaf as he tied a string around the package he’d made of the fossil. “This, too, is not what it seems. The stone will teach you. Stone is not stone only.”

“Stone is always stone,” Greenleaf countered, accepting the package. “If it isn’t, then what is it?”

“A memory,” the old man said.

“Nonsense.”

“You do not believe in the mystery of creation?”

“I only believe in material things, my friend.”

The old man smiled from behind his table. “Material things are only part of creation. You must believe in the others.”

“Why?”

“Because they are always with us whether we wish them to be or not. To deny the mystery of life is to deny God. But you must see for yourself. Ila-liqaa’.”

Greenleaf accepted this comment as the idle philosophizing of a superstitious old man and took no offense. He forgot the conversation almost as soon as he left the curtained stall, so happy was he to be carrying the paper-wrapped slab of stone under his arm.

He walked the crowded streets hoping to reach his room before the muezzin recited the adhan from the looming minaret behind the market, as he was still concerned about what fundamentalists might think of his ignoring the fard salah. He’d just closed the door to his room when he heard the call to prayer ringing through the streets. Once at the small table by the armoire, he cut the string securing the package and pushed back the paper to examine the specimen under a strong light.

The pale yellow stone seemed warmer under the lamp, the impression of the ancient arachnid clearly visible. The bulky, pear-shaped outline of an abdomen not even an inch long told him he’d acquired a beautiful specimen, one destined to become a showpiece in his private collection. The segmented appendages were well formed and fully attenuated; folded legs, or crushed, or missing legs would have been disastrous after what he’d paid. He brushed his fingertips over the stone, just to feel the ancient rock, but didn’t violate the outline of the arachnid itself lest he infect it with oil from his fingers. Yes, it was very beautiful, a wonderful acquisition he would ship back to the states with any others he might find in the next few days, using the special courier service he was so grateful to have found. International quarantine? No, not for his purchases.

He darkened the lamp and left the stone on the table while he retrieved the golden bottle of Amarula from the cooler by the bed. With a puff of his cheeks he cleaned a drinking glass free of dust and poured the cool cream liqueur into it. He held the glass in the light, smiling at his wealth of comforts. Wonderful fossils and a special elixir unavailable back home. He sipped the liqueur slowly, luxuriating in the creamy texture and exotic flavor. After one glass, though, he returned the bottle to the cooler, knowing he had several more nights to enjoy the taste.

Later that night, he woke to strange scrabbling sounds.

Greenleaf closed his eyes again and feigned sleep, for he feared intruders. Local thieves hoping to prey on the valuables of unsuspecting tourists often breeched unsecured rooms. But he’d locked the door and set the floor bolt; and the window held no balcony, so how could anyone have possibly entered? Using the darkness to his advantage, he slowly turned his head toward the door—or to where the door would be if it were visible through the shadows—but when he dared to open his eyes he could see no silhouettes. The only disturbance he perceived was an odd yellow glow emanating from the table where he’d left the fossil.

He threw off his sheets and quietly moved away from the bed, walking slowly toward the armoire, wondering illogically if the specimen held some radioactive properties.

When he stood over the table he witnessed an astonishing sight—dancing over the table’s surface, in quick, staccato movements, was a perfect phantasmal replica of the fossilized arachnid. Haloed by a pale yellow light, the tiny creature scurried from one edge of the table to the next, evidently seeking safe passage from that height.

Greenleaf’s first thought was that it must not possess the ability to adhere to smooth surfaces in its environment, or it would have simply slipped down one of the table’s legs. Then he realized the impossibility of what he was seeing and gasped loudly. The bulky little arachnid seemed to pause and regard him with two smaller legs near its eyes, and for a moment he felt he should reach out and touch it to verify its corporeality. His right hand extended toward the table—and then he pulled it back just as quickly. This couldn’t be happening. Certainly it wasn’t happening, it was only a delusion.

Greenleaf blinked a few more times at the ghostly creature before reaching toward the lamp and turning on the light.

The glowing yellow arachnid immediately vanished, replaced by the faint impression of the spider in the stone.

Greenleaf peered all around the table, the floor, the wall, before gently brushing the rough texture of the fossil with his fingers. It remained motionless stone.

He sat on the edge of the bed for a few minutes contemplating this vision.

Then he remembered his long draught of Amarula, and realized that some unlisted ingredient in the drink had to be responsible. He hadn’t read anywhere that the fruit of the Marula tree held any psychedelic properties, but anything was possible. He examined the label on the bottle, but found nothing unusual. Perhaps it wasn’t Amarula at all, but some exotic cousin found only in Tangier.

Satisfied with this explanation, but only partially so, he returned to bed and fell into a fitful sleep.

BY THE TIME Greenleaf made his way from his hotel to the medina the following day, he was convinced his vision had been nothing so much as a nightmare caused by his long flight to Tangier. Fatigue often infected him with a mental miasma, and his age certainly wasn’t helping matters. He happily meandered through the narrow streets of the old town, preferring these archaic architectures to the shining glass modernity of a twenty-first century metropolis, wishing he had more time to enjoy the marketplace. But he was due back at Cambridge in only a few days and was determined to meet his goals.

When he arrived at the old man’s stall again, recessed into the plaster of a whitewashed alcove, he pressed his way through the jabbering tourists crowded near the table and bent low to whisper in the merchant’s ear. The old man, more somber today, reached under the table to retrieve a heavy square object wrapped in linen. At once the acrid scents and irritating chatter of the street vanished from Greenleaf’s perceptions as he bent even nearer to view this new treasure.

A spectacular specimen of salamander frozen in Jurassic stone met his gaze, possibly even Kokartus honorarius! And beautifully defined, if his own expertise was to be trusted. He had to strongly resist thrusting his hand into the pocket of his coat to pull forth the dirham notes he’d reserved for his purchases, lest the old man raise the price according to his reaction.

When the price was negotiated, much to Greenleaf’s relief, the old Muslim wrapped the stone once again in linen and handed the fossil to Greenleaf.

“I shall return tomorrow, my friend,” he said in his manageable French, grinning down at his parcel.

“And have you learned to appreciate the mysteries of creation?” the old man asked.

Greenleaf lost his smile as he stared at the merchant. “I beg your pardon?”

“All praise to Allah for his creations. Have you not yet learned to accept all that is unknowable?”

Now Greenleaf recalled their conversation of the previous day. The old man’s face, a terrain of wrinkles decorated by a tangled white beard, shone with his sincerity. Surely he wasn’t still upset by the professor’s denial of the true faith? Tangier was an integrated city, after all. Proselytization had always annoyed Greenleaf, and yet he didn’t want to disturb his best conduit to such wonderful ancient resources.

“I’m sorry,” Greenleaf finally replied, measuring his words for diplomatic effect—he dearly hoped his command of French was sufficient to the task. “Nothing in my experience has led me to believe in anything mystical—”

“You deny your experience?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

The old man nodded, his turban moving slowly. “All things are created with the power of Allah. All power is manifested.” The merchant pointed a finger at the package Greenleaf held. “All life is full with God. The earth contains every memory of it. All life is one, under Allah. And yet you only worship stone.”

Greenleaf began to wonder if the merchant wasn’t actually a Sufi; finding a mystic in so mundane a setting seemed unlikely.

“No, my friend,” he said lightly, “I don’t worship stone. I only admire the record of a living creature that died millions of years ago.”

“Nothing dies that was once in the earth, if it returns to God. Don’t you believe this?”

Greenleaf laughed nervously; others were listening now. He dearly hoped they weren’t offended by his atheism. The political climate was not a good one for strangers in a strange land.

“What’s dead is gone,” he said, hoping to end the conversation. “How can it be anything else?”

“Perhaps Allah one day will bless you with knowledge,” the old man said, smiling as he did the previous day. “Ila-liqaa’.”

Greenleaf hurried back to his room, having left the medina with many questioning stares following him.

Once he felt safe, his door locked, he pulled the string from around the linen of his parcel and exposed his newest fossil to the daylight of the room. The stone itself was a good foot in length and width, though the impression of the ancient creature was barely three inches long. Still, the fidelity of the outline was stunning, as marvelous as that of the spider he’d purchased the previous day. He placed this new stone next to the other on the table and lit the lamp. Together they formed a small portion of a perfect prehistoric landscape.

To celebrate his great fortune, he brought out the bottle of Amarula and poured himself a healthy glassful of the cream liqueur. How sweet the drink tasted on his lips, how wonderful his trip had already proven to be!

He treated himself to a second glass, unconcerned by the light feeling in his head, and sat on his bed, his back against the headboard, admiring his ingenuity. When he was through congratulating himself, though, he thought about the old merchant’s words and wondered what he’d been trying to convey. Perhaps he’d indeed been trying to convert the Englishman, as unlikely as that seemed. The matter, he now felt, lay in his poor command of French and his subsequent inability to accurately interpret the old man’s intent. C’est la vie.

That night, from a dreamless sleep, Greenleaf was revived by a tickling sensation on his hands, which customarily lay across his midriff above the sheet covering his body. At first he believed the sensation to belong to the air stirred by the overhead fan, which he’d left turning at bedtime. But then, as the tickling continued from one hand to the other, he raised his head from his pillow and saw the green light flashing across his stomach.

Still groggy, the scene made no sense to him; fortunately, his somnambulant state prevented any panic in him and he only observed this light curiously.

Then he bent closer and observed the source of the sensation—something was crawling back and forth between his hands, and that something was glowing incandescently. Yes, it was a glowing creature in the shape of a salamander. Impossible—he must have been dreaming.

Then something else tickled his hand, and a companion light flickered with the other—the glowing yellow spider had returned!

Now his faculties revived in earnest, and the shout issuing from his throat must have alarmed the building’s other tenants. He flailed his arms wildly, tore off the sheets and rolled with a thump onto the floor. He struggled to gain his feet, slipping more than once in a comical display, before finally standing and hopping from one foot to the other in the dark of the room.

The glowing creatures scurried over the bed, ostensibly trying to find their host in the tangled linen. Greenleaf stifled another shout and stumbled to the light switch. At once the room flooded with light. He regained his courage then, and approached the bed, intending to capture the entities that had startled him from sleep.

But the bed was empty. No sign of either salamander or spider remained.

He searched the sheets, under the bed, behind the furniture, but failed to find his nocturnal visitors. Confounded, he stepped to the table, switched on the lamp and examined the stone slabs again. There he found a spider and a salamander, but ones long entombed in rock. Only his imagination had come alive, no doubt stoked by the potency of the Amarula.

Unnerved by this second event, he reluctantly retrieved the bottle of liqueur and emptied it out, saddened by the loss of the drink. Some evils were indeed necessary.

Greenleaf returned to bed after a while, though for the rest of the night he slept with the lights on.

THE NEXT DAY, soured by a night of poor sleep, Greenleaf ate his breakfast at a cafe near his hotel, delaying his visit to the medina for inexplicable reasons.

His conversations with the old merchant troubled him; between bites of crepe with honey, he tried piecing his objections together, though his reservations achieved no final form. The man was only a superstitious fool, but it was surely those superstitions which had influenced Greenleaf’s visions. Perhaps a combination of Amarula and unsolicited mysticism had played games on his mind.

Whatever the cause, he was determined to regain his foothold in the natural world—he sipped the last of his mint tea and left the cafe.

Chest out, posture erect, he penetrated the shadowed streets of the medina as a man of science, insisting to himself that he assess the world surrounding him in anthropological terms and nothing else. After all, he was to return to Cambridge shortly and should regain his composure. He spent a good hour shopping in the marketplace, not so much intending to buy as delaying the inevitable.

As happens in such cases, he found himself bartering for a small magnifying glass, which he believed would prove useful for inspecting his fossils, and an argan walking stick, which he hoped made him appear more the regal academic.

When he once again met the old merchant at his stall, leaning on his walking stick in his best impression of a dandy, Greenleaf assumed an assured expression on his face intended to convey his absolute self-possession.

The old man once again had acquired a piece for him. Removing a long, flat object from beneath his table, he carefully laid it before Greenleaf’s widened eyes and gently removed the paper covering it.

To his great joy, the two foot long slab of yellow stone held the most beautiful impression of a fossilized snake Greenleaf had ever seen out of a museum. The indentations were miraculous, the skeletal definition immaculate. He fumbled in his pocket for the small magnifying glass and bent low to carefully examine the artifact. Magnifique! he declared. This specimen seemed much finer than any found in the Green River Formation, and far older. More significantly, he couldn’t identify the species. Was it a hundred million years old, perhaps? A brand new species? And in beautiful condition!

But Greenleaf didn’t care from where the merchant had acquired the piece, or what nefarious means might have been employed in the enterprise—his only concern was in having enough dirhams in his pocket to claim ownership.

But before the merchant accepted the fold of bills Greenleaf proffered, he raised a finger in the air and said, “Un instant. Do you understand the glory of God’s creation?”

Greenleaf, frustrated that the old man hadn’t abandoned their previous discussion, could only sigh and consider his options. He could agree with the merchant, though untruthfully, and expedite his departure. Or he could uphold the principles he’d carried all through his academic life to represent the world in the viewpoint of science. The former would have been the astute diplomatic option, but he was in no mood to acquiesce.

“I understand the beauty of creation,” Greenleaf countered. “As recorded in ancient stone, of the kind beneath your hands. This snake was once alive, but died long ago. Only its fossil record remains. Living things are born and then die. I only wish to admire what has been left behind.”

“All living things contain the glory of Allah. All life is eternal, do you not see?”

“My friend, I do not believe in the soul, or spirits. The life has gone from the creatures in stone, only an impression in minerals remains. Life is not eternal. Not for individual creatures, and not for you or me.”

“I see you have a walking stick to support your body. But what do you have to support your soul?”

The academic stared briefly at the cane in his hand before again regarding the old man. “For me, the body and soul are one.”

“You still do not believe.” The merchant smiled, an expression Greenleaf had come to dislike. The old man reached to accept the bundle of bills from Greenleaf’s hand. “Take your purchase. Study it well, for it will help you to understand. All life is eternal. Soon you will come to know the mystery of creation.”

Greenleaf lifted the heavy slab, heartened by the weight of it, as if it were made more precious by its mass. He turned to leave, but hesitated; a superstitious impulse instructed him that he should ask the old man about his visions of the last two nights—but he would have to mention the Amarula and had no desire to listen to the old Muslim chastise him for his consumption of alcohol.

He spent the evening admiring his purchases. Beneath the lamp the impressions shone with such high fidelity that he couldn’t keep a smile from his lips. He sat before the table envisioning the display cases he would order for each; three small brass lamps to illuminate the glory of the past would be all that was needed to make his journey a grand success.

Impulsively pouring away the last of the Amarula left him regretful, though he was certain he would, at last, enjoy a thorough night’s sleep.

One last glance at his latest acquisition—the beautiful snake forever imprisoned in stone—would have to suffice to bring him sweet dreams. He darkened the lamp, intending to carefully package the fossils the next morning before delivering them to his ‘anonymous’ courier. He dearly hoped they arrived in England in as pristine condition as they were purchased.

At last he dressed for bed, having put off the inevitable for as long as possible. Tonight, though, he knew he would have no visions. His system was surely free of the previous nights’ intoxicants, and his conscience unscathed. He turned off the light on his nightstand and lay his head on his pillow.

A sound woke Greenleaf from a dreamless sleep; he was immediately awake and wary.

But it wasn’t the sound of someone attempting to enter his room, or of gentle scurrying across his hands. This sound was more ominous, a soft, scraping noise flowing across the darkened floor. A slithering sound—

Impossible. It couldn’t be—but Morocco was in north Africa. If what he heard was what he believed to be the source of the disturbance—then it was entirely possible a snake had breached his room. He listened intently, and confirmed his impression of the sound. What if an adder had slithered into his room through an unseen fissure in the wall? Or an Egyptian cobra?

Cautiously, he raised his head and leaned over the bed to examine the floor. There! luminescent in the shadows of the room, he clearly saw the animal slowly moving near the table on which lay his fossils. Large, animate, and frightening, it coiled and uncoiled with unnatural agility, then rose up and began coiling up one of the table legs.

Panicked, Greenleaf reached for the lamp on his bedside table, but inadvertently knocked it to the ground. Fearing to step on the floor, he leaned over to try to retrieve it, but when he turned the switch it produced no light. A broken bulb, damn it all! Now his hands fumbled over the bedside table, and he found his walking stick where he had left it as a weapon against intruders. He had no time to search for his shoes. Instead, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed, holding the walking stick in the crook of his arm like a lance.

By now the snake had gained its place on top of the table by the armoire, glowing with an impossible green sheen as it slithered over the stones.

Greenleaf approached the table, stick in hand, wondering how he might rid his room of this potentially deadly intruder. If it were venomous, and bit him—then he would most likely die abroad. No, he would certainly die. No one would find him for days.

He raised the walking stick, wondering if he could somehow corral the reptile like a snake handler, but then the animal coiled onto itself with alarming speed and raised up, it’s jaws open and its tongue whipping in the air. A horrible hissing woke every nerve in Greenleaf’s body as the nocturnal snake reared back as if to strike—

With a delirious shout, Greenleaf brought the stick down on the snake, again and again in a furious motion, crying out like a frightened child as he swung. The cacophony he created didn’t concern him, only the incapacitation of the serpent in his room. When he once again gained control of his emotions, he realized the snake had ceased glowing.

Fearing the snake had slithered off the table, he gazed at his feet, but the reptile had vanished. Again panicked that the snake was preparing to strike his legs from a hidden position, he reached out and turned on the small lamp on the table. The room blessedly filled with light, enough to see any creature maneuvering across the floor.

Greenleaf examined every inch of the room, but the snake was gone, as if it had simply dematerialized.

Once relief overcame him, he turned back to the small table and finally registered the disposition of his fossils.

They lay in fragments on the table, shattered by his exuberant blows from the walking stick.

GREENLEAF RETURNED TO the medina the next morning carrying a burlap sack full of stone fragments.

This he placed on the old merchant’s table in the marketplace, not bothering to describe its content.

The old man once again smiled. “Do you now believe?”

Greenleaf nodded. “I only wish the lesson hadn’t been so expensive.”

The old man lifted the sack in his hands as if weighing its value. Then he placed the bag under his table. “I have given your money in alms to the poor,” he said in perfect French. “It is the will of Allah.”

“So you say, my friend.”

“Now that you believe, do you still wish me to procure more specimens for you?”

“No,” Greenleaf said, and managed a small laugh. He would be returning to England without any fossils, and also without his pride. “I don’t collect living things, you see.”

The merchant bowed his head. “Then go in peace. Ma’aasalama.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

LAWRENCE BUENTELLO has published over 100 short stories, in multiple genres, and innumerable poems in journals, magazines, and anthologies, many of which can be found in several volumes of collected fiction and poetry. Buentello lives in his hometown of San Antonio, Texas.

The Certainty of Echoes

D. A. D’AMICO

JGUNO RUSHED THROUGH the absolute darkness, his fingers furiously working the small polished stones in each hand, ears straining to hear the short, barked echoes returning to him from the damp walls. It reeked of mold this far from the warrens, but he tried not to think about it. He tried not to think about anything.

Concentrating made it worse. The sensation of knowing what lay within the stone nagged him like an itch he couldn’t scratch, the shape and texture of hidden minerals visible behind his eyes no matter where he looked.

The next bend widened. Jguno trailed his fingers over the coarse granite, relieved by its rigid caress, but already wishing he hadn’t listened to the others and taken the rough lump of tin from the visitor’s belongings. Something had happened to him when he’d grasped that dull stone. He’d changed. The world had changed, slipping from comforting solidity into a place of phantoms and magic.

“Pyo!” Jguno’s whisper sounded like a hurricane of noise in the darkness. He should’ve found the others by now.

Below, the fevered tapping from several sets of stones grew louder. Despite his speed, the proctors were gaining on him. Soon, their echoes would confirm his presence. They’d have him, and they’d know what he’d done.

“Where are you?” He hissed.

If he missed the hidden crease, he’d be caught for sure, tried and sentenced for possessing a forbidden substance. He thought of tossing the tin away, letting it clatter and roll back down the incline toward the wide corridors and comfortable chambers of home, but the damage was done. Maybe, when they finally reached their destination, the buyers could show him a way to undo it.

The wall against his hand changed suddenly. He felt the push of coal in the rough granite as it seared its way trough his veins, hot and alive, pulsating like a living heart ready to pump energy through whatever conduit it could find. He lost his grip, staggering into the center of the shaft, listening, straining to taste the shape of the tunnel ahead.

He veered to avoid a fork. Something ominous and dark sat like a fat spider behind the veneer of stone. Jguno felt it like an icy hollow in his chest, and he swallowed hard as he swerved to avoid the tendrils of silver lurking in that abandoned channel. He could taste its frost, the way it tugged at his essence seeking to extinguish the light within him.

“Vun, Pyo, Moaj, Raeo....”

Location memory revealed a familiar protrusion of basalt. His fingers brushed the thin split in the tunnel, invisible in the dark, and blind to his echoes. He traced its edges with trembling hands, and then squeezed slowly through.

Soundings on the other side took too long to return, as if something were snatching them out of the air and only reluctantly releasing them back toward Jguno’s ears. Tungsten, as black as coal, but as smooth as iron, radiated in bright points behind his eyes. He could feel it pulling, forcing his thoughts away like magnets held at opposite poles. He froze, afraid to step into the abyss.

“Stop fooling around!” Vun’s voice lashed out from Jguno’s left. Fat fingers gripped him, pulling him quickly past the unseen void and onto a thin ledge.

“Where have you been? We’ve been waiting for hours.” Raeo slapped Jguno’s shoulder from his right, an unexpected blow. She was supposed to be on his side.

“Do you have it?” Pyo asked from the darkness ahead, his voice a nervous giggle.

“Tell us you got it,” Moaj’s throaty bark rumbled from further down the passage.

Jguno fought for air. They crowded him, not giving him time to react. He felt hot breath on his neck. The scent of sweet puel moss and turmeric washed over him, reminding him he hadn’t eaten since the night before, since he’d drawn the short straw and been given the task of thievery.

“Yes, I have it, but—”

A muffled thrumming sounded from beyond the slit of rock. Accusations halted, and everyone stilled. The noise grew louder. Jguno bit his lip, afraid to even breathe. The proctors had caught up.

Thin fingers grasped his hand. Raeo’s warmth pressed against him, and in turn he reached for Pyo. He sensed the others doing the same, linking up, pulling together, becoming like a single frightened animal in the dark. Courage swept over him like a cool breeze tinted with tendrils of loss. They were only five. The others, Tagos, their medic, and their oldest and most fragile member, Habi had remained behind to keep the work flowing, to pretend nothing was out of place. This was a risk for them all.

The thrum grew louder, joined by shuffling footsteps and occasional sharp clacks as echoes flooded the main corridor. A brief shadow of sickly greenish light tickled the stones above them, but it was gone before Jguno could do more than tighten his grip on Pyo’s hand.

“You’re breaking my fingers,” Pyo whispered as the noise shifted further up the passage.

“Sorry.” Jguno let Pyo’s fingers drop from his grip, and then, reluctantly, he released Raeo’s hand. The warmth from her touch lingered. “I thought they were going to catch me.”

“They wouldn’t even have been close if you’d stuck to the plan. What went wrong?” Moaj’s voice came from high up, as if he were floating above them.

Moaj was the irritable one, the impatient visionary of the group. The theft had been his idea. He’d been the first to recognize the stranger for what he was, and the first to dream of the wealth that would set them free.

Jguno whistled into the dark, turning his head, listening as the echoes painted an approximation of the cavern. They were on a narrow shelf over a very deep chasm. A series of ledges worked backwards up the wall, arching around to connect with another chamber somewhere beyond his hearing. His new sense told him fingers of iron stretched branch-like within the rock, the metal murmuring like distant voices in his ears. Jguno struggled to shut it out.

“Where is it?” Vun asked, his languid tone as imperious as always. As leader of their cadre, he was responsible for the consequences, good or ill.

“I have it here.” Jguno fumbled in the leather bag affixed to his belt, fishing out the irregular chunk of tin. It felt surprisingly ordinary. “But it’s dangerous. It changed something in me—”

A dim, bluish illumination struck Jguno’s eyes like a hammer blow. He staggered back, stunned. The nugget slipped from his fingers, snatched up by Moaj before it could fall into the abyss.

“Give us some warning first!” Moaj complained, his huge, bulbous eyes blinking furiously, shovel blade-shaped nose twitching over a mouth that looked as if someone had scratched a line of coal across the bottom of his face.

“I agree.” Vun sighed, weariness in his voice—or had it been impatience? He swatted at the glowworm Pyo had placed on a nearby ledge, covering his face with one claw-like hand. Jguno noticed the man had pinned his long ears back against the top of his head, the way proctors and politicians did. Jguno hoped it was just a phase.

“Is that it?” Raeo pointed at the stone in Moaj’s hand. Her enormous pink eyes glanced at Jguno, and then shyly away. “It doesn’t look like much.”

“You shouldn’t touch it.” Jguno’s heart raced, nerves twitching under his skin, as Moaj fingered the dull rock. “It did something to me when I stole it. It made me... different, sensitive, able to feel things I shouldn’t be able to.”

He couldn’t really put it into words. It sounded crazy, and he wouldn’t believe it himself if it weren’t for the nagging tug at the back of his mind, the sensations flowing over him from the elements within the gneiss intent on making themselves known.

Pinpoints of tungsten blazed overhead like the myth of stars. They seemed to push back when he stared, turning his senses on themselves, reversing his perspective. He swallowed, glancing quickly away.

“Don’t be dumb.” Moaj sneered. “The stories are just that, stories. They’ve been concocted by greedy high-caste bankers and proctors to keep all the precious metals for themselves.”

“I’m serious. The moment I touched it, I could feel things. I can tell where minerals are even if they’re hidden in the schist. I can sense what they can do, what powers they have.”

“Just by touching this?” Moaj’s tone was skeptical.

“Yes,” Jguno said. “Tin must be a catalyst of some kind. That’s why it’s forbidden, and it’s probably why the treewalkers and thicknecks on the surface are willing to pay a fortune for it.”

Moaj frowned. He stared at the stone, thin lips puckered, eyebrows furrowed as he concentrated. The others leaned in, silent as they tried to see something special in what seemed to be a very ordinary chunk of stone.

“I don’t see it, and I certainly don’t feel anything. What about you?” Moaj tossed the lump to Pyo.

“No—” Jguno leapt forward, but it was too late.

Pyo froze the moment the rock touched his fingers. He twitched. His face contorted, features locked in horror as a low vibrating growl dribbled from his lips. He clutched his chest, gasping, pleading... and then his mouth parted in a comic smile.

“Nope, nothing for me either,” he laughed, passing the stone to Raeo. “But you should’ve seen the looks on your faces. Priceless.”

Moaj pushed him. “Jerk.”

“It’s not a joke.” Jguno caught his breath, blinking rapidly as the light dimmed. The glowworm would be dead soon, and the darkness would overtake them once more.

Raeo handed the rock to Vun, who turned it over in his thick fingers, tossing it from one hand to the other. The stone looked almost black in the fading light. Jguno could feel it as an ethereal presence, a light breeze like the opening of a door, and he swallowed.

A SCATTERING OF sand rained down the chasm to Jguno’s right, followed by a grunt and soft footsteps. Vun’s light breathing came closer.

Raeo marched beside him on his left. He could feel the heat of her body nearby, her scent lingering in the darkness. She probably thought he was crazy, but she wasn’t the only one. At least she was too shy and polite to say so.

There’d been a connection between them since she’d joined the cadre. Jguno felt it, and he was sure Raeo sensed it too, but the prime edict of cadre life forbade that particular bonding. They were partners, cogs in the same machine, and as long as their cadre continued, they could be nothing more.

Vun yawned. He probably hadn’t slept in days, none of them had, but they all handled it in their own ways. Jguno just wished it were over.

“You didn’t tell me,” Jguno blurted. He felt foolish. He felt used.

“Tell you what?”

“What it would do to me,” Jguno said.

“Because there was nothing to tell,” Vun said. “Moaj was right. Those stories are there to keep the cadres in line, to keep us from paying off our debts and tearing up our contracts.”

“We all touched the stone. Nothing happened,” Raeo whispered. Her fingers brushed Jguno’s cheek, tracing shocks of static electricity over his rough skin.

“Tin is bad, but silver’s worse.... One’s a mixed blessing, the other, a curse....” Pyo sang the verse from somewhere behind Jguno, his voice beautiful, his tone giving the ominous nursery rhyme an almost happy quality.

Moaj picked up the song. “Gold makes you wealthy, it’s power complete.... But shrouded in lead, it’s mild and thus weak....”

“You’ve held all those metals. We all have,” Vun said. “But none of us can say we’ve felt anything from any one of them, even you. Now stop being irrational. We’ve got a long way to go before we reach the surface.”

“Even if the words in the rhymes were true, those effects would only be possible in the presence of a magic user,” Pyo said. “Are you calling yourself a wizard now, my friend?”

Jguno sighed. He wished he hadn’t spoken out. He wished he could drop the whole thing, push the sensations from his mind, but the rock wouldn’t let him. He felt it throbbing above and around him. Base elements screamed their intentions, threatening him with unimaginable enchantment, and cajoling him with the promise of power. They would consume him, given the chance.

“WE DON’T HAVE time for this, Moaj,” Vun called for the third time. “Where are you?”

They’d gotten closer to the surface than Jguno had ever been, marching through caverns that grew smaller as they climbed, the air nearly empty of the familiar scents of the warrens. Loose dirt covered his feet. It stuck uncomfortably between his long toes, threatening to trip him at every turn.

“Who’s got a glowworm?”

Jguno reached into his pouch and extracted a small stone cannister. “I do. Shield your eyes.”

He tapped the container three times with the pebbles he held in his left hand, a warning to look away, and then pinched one of the sleeping grubs from the box. It trembled when exposed to the air. Thin sapphire filaments blossomed, slicing through the absolute darkness like razors. Jguno found Raeo standing very close, her enormous pink eyes blinking rapidly, one hand stretched out towards him.

She turned, a shy, startled look on her face as Vun stepped between them.

“Where is he—”

“Here!” Pyo shouted from a turn in the shaft behind them, his face in shadow.

A deep pit spiraled through the rock, jagged fingers of granite marking its edges, a fog of dust still lingering like a haunted spirit over footprints in the dirt nearby. Moaj lay a third of the way down. He’d struck an outcropping, twisting his head, breaking his neck. All without a sound.

“He was as surefooted as anyone,” Pyo whispered.

“People just don’t fall in the dark, not our people,” Vun growled.

“What happened?” Tears streaked Raeo’s large eyes, the thin slit of her lips trembling.

Jguno gave Raeo a pained look, his heart still pounding. He’d known Moaj for decades, from before they were paired with their current team. They’d each known loss, each coming from one of the broken families created in the last war with the thicknecks.

“He used to laugh, once,” Jguno said. “He wasn’t always this sullen.”

Jguno found it hard to breathe. He felt the sense of loss like a boulder on his chest, heavy and smothering. He’d known Moaj’s past more than anyone. He understood the anger and hate that frequently bubbled to the surface, clouding a face that might have one day become happy again.

“The day we’d met, the proctors had just undermined a thickneck stronghold. My cadre were in on the upside linchpin, his chiseled the down. It was a textbook maneuver. We cracked the supports, the rock shattered, and the surface dropped six stories, crushing everything above.”

“I heard this story too,” Raeo said. “The thicknecks were ready.”

“Yes,” Jguno continued. “They’d learned a new trick. They’d shored up some of their structures with iron, thick plates of the stuff. It crushed more than it saved, but one iron arch held. Thicknecks infiltrated the warrens for the first time in history. They killed hundreds. They slaughtered whole cadres, bodies left in heaps like rubbish. I lost my family in the flight, but Moaj....”

He caught his breath, memories of that day washing over him. He could still hear the screams, smell the burning flesh as thicknecks torched everything they could find and lit up the warrens like a surface noon.

“They left him for dead, broken and bleeding, stuffed between the bodies of his cadre members. It would’ve been enough to drive anyone mad, but Moaj was tough. He recovered. He came back stronger than ever. To have him die like this....”

Raeo touched his shoulder. Jguno leaned into it, feeling her warmth smoothing the sadness from his troubled thoughts.

“What do we do now?” Pyo asked.

All eyes turned toward Vun. He yawned, emphasizing how long it’d been since any of them had slept. They were all exhausted. Maybe Moaj had fallen on his own, stumbled from sheer fatigue. Anything was possible.

“We continue on,” Vun said as the glowworm died and darkness shrouded Moaj’s body once more.

JGUNO FOUND RAEO in the dark. Her scent filled his nostrils like perfume, the heat of her body palpable beside his.

“Something’s not right,” he whispered. “I don’t know what, but that was no accident. Moaj wasn’t clumsy. He was irritable, tense, sometimes grumpy, but he knew where his feet were.”

“I don’t think any of us know where our feet are anymore.” Raeo’s breath smelled sweet, her words tickling his long ears as she leaned in.

It made him gasp. He stumbled, his knees suddenly weak, and he shook his head as he pulled away. She’d been on his mind more since they’d decided to steal the tin. He wanted to be closer to her, more intimate than merely cadre members. He hoped she felt the same. Having the wealth that little block of ore represented would allow him the freedom to find out.

“Just be careful around the others,” he said. “I’m not sure they can be trusted anymore.”

The look on Vun’s face as the glowworm’s light faded had trouble Jguno. The man had seemed more than just fatigued. He’d seemed bored, as if Moaj’s death were a minor inconvenience, something to be cast behind them as quickly as possible. It wasn’t right.

JGUNO’S FINGERS BRUSHED a filament of tungsten lurking in the matrix of rock. It bit deep. A landslide of sensation overwhelmed him, pulling his essence from his body, flipping it around to feed on itself. He jerked away, stumbling.

“Light!” Jguno swallowed, breathing hard. He could hear his heartbeat, feel the heat from the bodies around him.

Something ominous tickled the hairs on his neck. He felt a mix of elements, a soup of metals and salts that seemed to shudder and fade just outside his perception, growing blacker than the darkness around him, leaving a hole in his senses.

“What is it?” Pyo called from behind, his body a shockwave of sound against the dark.

Glowworms ignited. Both Pyo and Raeo held dish-like stone containers, light flickering in shades of blue and green between them. Vun lay in the dirt nearby, motionless, but Jguno already knew the man was dead.

Raeo was the first to move, dropping to her knees beside Vun. She held the man’s face gently in her hands. A trickle of blood seeped from his flat nose, and she dabbed at it with an intimacy that caused Jguno to feel a twinge of jealousy. He regretted it instantly, sick to his stomach at his reaction.

“There was nothing wrong with him. What’s happening?” She cried as she closed Vun’s bulbous eyes, laying his head gently back onto the dirt.

“I felt it,” Jguno whispered. “I could feel him dying.”

He’d sensed the energy seeping away from Vun’s body, and the cold emptiness it had left behind. It had been quick, but not instant, as if something had steadily and relentlessly drained the life out of the man as they’d stood in the darkness unaware. They weren’t alone down here.

“What did you do?” Raeo stood, brushing the dirt from her hands, her eyes wide and accusing.

“Me? Nothing. Don’t be crazy.” Jguno’s skin tingled, his face hot. How could she even think he’d have anything to do with hurting any one of them?

“Jguno was with me,” Pyo said. The light from the dying glowworms made his wide face seem to slant sideways as if it were about to slide from his skull and puddle into the dirt below.

“After I felt Vun die.” Jguno stepped away from Pyo, a horrible thought coming to him. Pyo had joked when he’d held the lump of raw tin, pantomiming its effect. What if he hadn’t been joking?

“Don’t be dimwitted. Why would I want him dead?”

“Why would any of us?” Raeo pinched another glowworm to life, setting it into the dish with the first. She added a third, creating a wriggling triad of bright bodies in shades of cerulean and emerald. With three they’d mate, breeding new light as the old died, creating a self-sustaining illumination.

THEY STOOD FACING each other for a long time. Raeo panted, her small, flat tongue flicking through the slit of her lips as she stared distrustfully from Pyo to Jguno. Jguno, instead, concentrated solely on Pyo. The man was a jokester, always happy, always playing some kind of game. Was this one of his games?

“We can’t stand here forever. What do we do now?” Jguno asked.

“Keep the light,” Raeo said.

“Keep moving forward.” Pyo looked suspiciously at Jguno, and then at Raeo. “We have the tin, and we still have a mission to complete. Vun would have wanted that.”

Until you killed him, Jguno thought. How could anyone think of profit when two of their cadre were dead?

“Moaj’s death wasn’t an accident, was it?” Jguno said.

“Only one person knows that.” Pyo glanced back toward Vun’s body, and Jguno shuddered.

“BECAUSE I TRUST her more than I trust you,” Jguno said as he held the dish of squirming glowworms over his head.

They’d been arguing over the lump of tin as they marched up the steadily increasing incline towards the surface, Pyo in the lead where Jguno could watch him, Raeo in the middle because she couldn’t decide who to trust. Her frightened look upset him, but he understood. They might never know what really happened.

The walls were rough-hewn here, lacking the smooth elegance of the lower corridors. Raw patches of ore dotted the path. Tungsten teased from divots in the dust-strewn floor, acting as a conduit, an echo that drew energy and fed it back into its source. Hints of gold, copper, and zinc flared like a chorus of shouts in Jguno’s mind, each a different sensation, each with unique magical properties visible only to him.

“As do I,” Pyo agreed. “But I’m not letting it go, either way.”

They’d left Vun back on the path. It hadn’t sat well with Jguno, but they couldn’t return the body to the funereal shafts, and, like Moaj, Vun would eventually be found and properly laid to rest. If the proctors were still searching for them, this would keep them busy.

“It might be best if you do what he says,” Raeo said timidly from behind Pyo.

Jguno had inspected Vun’s body before they’d decided to keep to the plan. There hadn’t been a mark on the man. If Pyo had done something, it had been so subtle as to be undetectable. Vun’s death may very well have been a tragic coincidence. It was possible, although highly unlikely, that both Moaj and Vun had died by sheer accident, but Jguno still felt as if something more sinister were at work.

“I’ll consider it.” Pyo huffed, his huge eyes scanning the irregular walls ahead.

Pyo had always been unstable, a prankster, a trouble maker. Jguno didn’t know the man’s past before he’d joined the cadre. Pyo never spoke about it, and it’d been rude to ask. Now, he wished he’d pried.

“Is it even worth it?” Pyo asked. “The tin. What’ll we even do once we trade it?”

“The plan was to buy out, free ourselves,” Jguno said.

They’d discussed it at length. With the value of that little stone they’d become wealthy beyond their dreams, able to tear up their contracts and dissolve their cadre. They could create new cadres, or they could live like the upper caste in triads, quads, or even couples. Jguno thought of Raeo. He wondered again how she’d feel about a more intimate pairing.

“They’ll never let us come back. You realize that,” Pyo said.

“Even if we can buy our way in?” Raeo asked. She’d moved closer to Pyo as they navigated an uneven section of tunnel.

The caverns were more difficult to traverse when lit from the flickering light of the glowworms. Jguno longed for the comforting darkness, the certainty of echoes, but he was reluctant to snuff out the tiny creatures. Something still felt wrong.

“THE AIR TASTES different,” Pyo said sniffing. “I think we’re almost there.”

Jguno tensed at the thought of daylight. He’d never seen it, but it’d been described in agonizing detail. Vun had assured them all that surface night would be tolerable. They’d be able to navigate the darkness, make their way to the cities of the firstmen, the magic users. They’d sell their tin. They’d get rich, and with wealth, chose their own fates.

He still didn’t know how to feel about that.

Raeo screamed. Jguno looked up in time to see Pyo stumble, falling backwards against the girl. Their bodies spun. Flailing arms struck Jguno’s hand, throwing him to his knees. He dropped the glowworms. The cavern plunged into darkness. Jguno scrambled, hands furiously patting the loose dirt to find a pebble.

“What’s happening! Raeo!”

Jguno found a rock. He struck it frantically against the floor, getting a feel for the corridor, straining to decipher the echoes coming from the bodies in front of him. His heart raced. He couldn’t breathe as the shadows of a struggle strobed between clacks of his stone, dark bodies mingling until he wasn’t sure which was which. Something brushed his fingers. He faltered amid the dirt, finding the cold stone dish, quickly pinching a wriggling mass of glowworms to life as he spun away from the erupting illumination.

Raeo knelt against a protrusion in the rock, panting heavily, her eyes blinking and wild, the lump of tin held tightly in long, thin fingers. Pyo lay nearby. Blood covered the side of his face Jguno could see.

“He attacked me.” She gasped. Her voice had a squeaky, hysterical quality. “He tried to kill me.”

Jguno let out his breath, not realizing he’d been holding it. “So, it was Pyo.”

“Yes.” She stepped closer, her legs shaky, that wild look still in her eyes. It was a miracle she hadn’t been hurt. Pyo had managed to kill two others without even a sound. If he’d killed her, Jguno didn’t know what he’d have done. She was all he had left.

His right arm tingled as she neared. The breathless sensation he’d felt earlier in her presence returned, making him weak and light headed. Confusion clouded his mind, and he staggered back.

“The tin....” His eyes widened. How was she holding the rock when Pyo had refused to give it up? Why did he feel so weak?

“What are the odds?” Raeo asked, her voice suddenly strong, all traces of the timid woman gone. She smiled, the line of her lips curving upward in a sneer. “What are the odds that two of our cadre would be receptive, that we’d both be awakened by the catalyst of tin when we’d been told again and again our people could not be magic users?”

“Magic users?” Jguno couldn’t keep his thoughts clear. Raeo stepped closer, and the cavern seemed to spin.

“Yes. You and I both have the talent, although yours seems a bit passive.”

“You killed them?” The realization struck him like a rockslide. He stumbled, turning away. He needed to run, but he could hardly move. “How?”

She crossed the gap between them, and it was if he’d been thrown in icy water. He gasped. His face hit the ground, the acid taste of dirt on his tongue, the noise of his breathing like a rushing waterfall in his ears.

“It was like my eyes opened the moment I touched the stone,” she said leaning down, brushing a lock of stringy hair from one of his ears. Her touch felt like fire.

“As you can sense the intent of the rocks, I can feel the strength of life. I can taste it, mold it to my whims. It’s an easy thing to reach in and crush a life like I was squashing a glowworm.”

She stood, and his breath returned. She was playing with him.

“We were your family,” he croaked. “Why?”

“Family.” She spat. “Do you know how many cadres I’ve been passed around to, always the seventh, always the lone female to be leered at, drooled over by men who were supposed to act like brothers to me?”

Jguno put his head down, suddenly more ashamed than frightened. He’d always thought the feelings were mutual between them. “I never meant to force my attentions. I’m sorry.”

“I know you are.” She touched his cheek and he screamed.

He felt as if every one of his bones had shattered, the pain shooting purple spots before his eyes. He pulled himself away, crying as he dragged his body over the stone floor, screaming as tremors of agony shuddered through him.

“Please,” he pleaded. The changing shades of glowworm fire disoriented him, shifting in waves of blue and green across the rough walls, crushing in its deep-ocean illusion. He drowned in it, unable to breathe. “Don’t do this—”

His fingers brushed something on the floor. A concentration of ore flared from deep within the granite, pulsing as Raeo toyed with him. It was tungsten.

“You have the tin. You’ve won, now leave.” He crawled onto the vein of tungsten. It burned inside him, threatening to turn him inside out, but he knew its propose now. He knew what would happen if she attacked him again.

Even after all this, Jguno still cared about her. Raeo was more broken than bad. There was hope for her if she’d only open her eyes from the anger, let it go, let herself see something larger than her hate.

“I will,” she whispered from very near his ears. “When I’m finished.”

“Don’t....” He closed his eyes, exhaustion threatening to keep them closed forever, and waited.

She pressed her hand Against him. Her fingers felt as if they slid right through his skull, into his brain, into his soul. He screamed.

She screamed with him as her power surged through his body and into the rock, all the agony and pain flowing with it, coalescing, growing until the ore couldn’t hold it any longer. Then it snapped, lashing back to its source, rushing into Raeo with so much force it threw her across the cavern in a misshapen, broken heap.

Jguno crawled over to her, cradling her head in his hands. “Why didn’t you tell me. I never even knew you were unhappy.”

If only his ability had let him see the secrets of people, and not rocks, he might’ve been able to save her, to save them all.

He sobbed, his body twitching as the pain and magic drained away and the glowworms died. Darkness closed in, leaving him with nothing except the whispers of elemental forces within the rock, and the certainty of echoes.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

D. A. D’AMICO is a playful soul trapped in the body of a grumpy old man. In early years, this presented a problem, but the author’s grown into the role quite nicely. He’s had more than forty works published in the last few years in venues such as Daily Science Fiction, Crossed Genres, and Shock Totem... among others. He’s also begun transcribing his memoirs onto the moon with a 25 petawatt pulse laser borrowed from his evil twin, but he’s afraid the beautiful 12-point Old Century Gothic font he chose is lost among the bright dust of Tycho crater. He can be found at http://www.dadamico.com, or on Facebook at authordadamico, or in the crevices between those pesky floorboards you’ve been meaning to fix—if you can find him.

Paint the Past

FREDRICK OBERMEYER

NICK HABERTON CARRIED the last three cans of time paint over to the studio behind his house. Trembling, he set the cans down on the gravel, reached into the right front pocket of his paint-spattered blue jeans and took out his key ring. He looked around nervously as he removed the padlock on the studio door.

Of course nobody was out here in the middle of the countryside, but he was afraid someone might accidentally stumble onto his latest art project. Or perhaps whoever or whatever left the cans of time paint by his door each night might appear and want it back for whatever reason.

He pocketed the lock, slid open the door, grabbed the cans and walked inside the huge white metal walled studio that had been converted from an old garage. Inside, he closed and locked the door, then flicked on the light switches.

The overhead fluorescents flickered to life and revealed the nearly completed cube of dried time paint in front of him.

Nick carried the cans across the cement floor and around the cube of dried time paint to his workbench and set them down on it. Several hundred pictures of Felicia and the living room where they held their last conversation had been pinned to a corkboard above the bench.

Nick grabbed the lime green smock off the bench and threw it on, then grabbed the gleaming silver brush that had arrived with the original time paint cans and rechecked the level of paint in each can.

He didn’t have much paint left in any of them. Just enough to finish the current project.

He had no idea why the unknown benefactor or benefactors had stopped supplying him with time paint any more than he knew who or what they were. But this time, he was determined to paint the past correctly.

Please, God, let it work this time, Nick thought as he began mixing the paints together and placing them on the paint board.

When the board had the colors he wanted, he carried it over to the cube. The inside of the door to the living room’s broom closet had been painted on one side of the cube. He opened the door and entered the cube, stepping back five years into the past.

Back to the morning just before Felicia had died.

Inside the painted cube, he shut the door and looked at her.

No matter how many times he saw her frozen there, it still made his heart ache to see her again, frozen right before her last, fatal ride.

He had used the time paints to recreate the surrounding dining room, living room and every piece of furniture, using the old pictures as a guide.

He had saved Felicia for last, wanting to paint her as perfectly as he had painted everything else.

Details were what mattered, after all. When Nick first touched the brush that came with the time paint, it gave him a vision. In this vision he learned how to mix and use the paint and create a cube of alternate painted time. Along with such knowledge, he learned that if he painted all the details perfectly, then a new timeline would be created and he could regain all the time he had lost with Felicia.

Alas, Nick had screwed up the past two times. The painted pasts had failed because he had messed up one tiny detail or another, and he had to escape through the broom closet before the alternate paint universe collapsed around him.

But this time he swore he wouldn’t get it wrong. He would get every detail of that morning exactly right and make sure that he could have a new life with Felicia.

When Nick stopped in front of Felicia, he took out a picture of her in the dining room and placed it on the nearby mantel. He had taken it only three days before she had died, and it captured her likeness perfectly.

Using it as a reference, Nick dipped the silver brush into the flesh-toned paint on the board and resumed painting the finer details on his wife’s face.

The hours seemed to melt away like minutes as Nick feverishly worked, continually checking back and forth between his wife’s painted face and the picture. He made each stroke with the utmost care, making sure that it was as perfect as it could be.

Despite his best efforts, however, he sometimes made mistakes. Thankfully, though, he could use a rag with turpentine to wipe away the mistakes before the paint dried and start again.

Since he was on his feet for much of the day, pain soon blossomed in his legs, hands and the other joints around his body. Nick ignored it, though. Pain didn’t matter to him anymore. It was just one more due to be paid on the journey toward rebuilding his shattered life.

Nick only stopped painting three times that day. Once for lunch and twice for two quick bathroom breaks. Yet even the brief minutes spent away from the cube filled him with resentment. He wanted to get back to work and finish the job.

Like so many other work days, it spilled into night, and he lost track of time. Finally, he emerged from the studio, locked it up and sighed. It was nighttime outside. Crickets were chirping and the air was frigid enough to make him shiver.

He walked back inside the house, entered the kitchen and checked the glowing wall clock above the sink. One o’clock in the morning. Despite the intense fatigue that weighed down on him, he wanted to go back in and work some more, especially now that he was so close to the end of the project.

I wish I didn’t have to sleep, Nick thought.

Still, his body demanded rest and fatigue would only make him sloppy. He knew that he couldn’t afford to take any chances now. Not with this being the last shot at getting Felicia back.

Though frustrated, Nick forced himself to take two ibuprofen and crash on the couch.

AT TEN THE next morning, he awoke, stopping only to eat a half-hearted breakfast of shrimp fried rice reheated in the microwave.

Back in the cube, he resumed painting, ignoring the persistent pain in his arms and legs. He worked all day and into the night.

At last, after hundreds of hours spent laboring away, the cube was finished. The entire morning scene had been painted and was now completely dry.

Nick stepped back and looked around. Some prideful part of him wanted to take pleasure at the work he had done. However, instead of joy, a consummate fear rippled through him like an aftershock.

Did I make a mistake? Nick thought. Did I miss anything?

Perfectionism was the curse of his life.

He tried telling himself that enough was enough, and he had done everything as well as it could have been done.

Unconvinced, he spent the next five hours checking every nook and cranny with the pictures. Occasionally, he stopped to fix a small mistake that had escaped his eye.

As midnight approached, he finally forced himself to stop and quit for the night.

Tomorrow, Nick thought. Tomorrow morning I’ll bring her back and make the world good again.

NICK HAD SET his alarm clock for six and bolted up from the couch, feeling like a kid on Christmas.

This was it. Today was the day.

He had laid out all the clothes for it and decided to do it right. He took a shower, shaved, dressed and put on the same clothes he had worn the day Felicia had left him forever. Doubt festered inside him like a splinter caught under his finger, though.

What if I screwed up again? Nick thought. What if this doesn’t work?

Don’t think that, he told himself. You’ll do fine.

Ready, he rushed back to the studio, closed it up and entered the cube through the broom closet door.

His heart was racing a million miles a minute as he picked up the silver brush. Sweat slicked his hands and stood out on his forehead. He wiped his sweaty hands on his pants and checked his watch.

8:45 A.M. October 3rd. Three minutes before the moment that Felicia left him forever.

Technically, he could start the cube’s time at any point, but Nick wasn’t sure if that was what screwed the other cubes up. Plus, he wanted everything to be exactly right.

Nick took his position in front of his wife’s frozen, dried body. He had painted her perfectly, the brush imbuing her last moment, her lips and brow tight with anger.

It had been such a silly last argument. So pointless.

Every day since she was gone, he regretted not telling her that he loved her. But he put the old past out of his mind and focused on the new past.

At 8:48 A.M., Nick twisted the middle of the silver brush counterclockwise, then clockwise again and hastily stuffed it in his pocket.

The frozen, time paint cube suddenly came to life. Outside, the birds chirped and the shadows of barren trees rippled across the yellow walls.

Felicia blinked and her brow furrowed with anger.

“Well, what do you want me to do about it?!” Felicia said.

“You’re right,” Nick said

Originally, he had continued arguing with her right out the door, both of them screaming at the top of their lungs. Nick had thought that she would cool down afterwards, but that time never came.

Uncertainty flashed across Felicia’s face, and she looked confused.

“What?” Felicia said.

“You’re right and I’m wrong,” Nick said. “If you want to sell this house, then fine, we’ll sell it and move back to Vermont. Whatever you want.”

She blinked. “But I thought you just said you didn’t want to move back to Vermont and that you hated it there.”

“Well, I thought about the matter some more, and I realized you’re right.”

“You did?”

“Yeah.”

Nick walked up to her and gripped her right hand. It felt warm and alive. “Look, just do me one favor.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t go on that flight today. Please.”

“But I have to meet with Sam Arnold and the other realtors—”

“Then take a later flight. You don’t have to be in Burlington till tomorrow anyway. Just stay home with me for a little while longer.”

“But I have to go now. There won’t be another flight till three—”

“Please, Felicia. I have a bad feeling about the flight.”

“A bad feeling?”

“I’m afraid it’s going to crash and you’ll die.”

Felicia snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous.” Yet her eyes wavered.

“Will you just stay with me till lunch?”

“Nick, I really have to go.”

“Please.” He looked right into her eyes, pleading with every ounce of his will. “The flight will probably get delayed anyway, so you’ll be sitting in the airport doing nothing.” In fact, the fatal flight had been delayed by two hours.

Felicia glanced at the house’s front door and sighed. When she looked back at Nick, she opened her mouth to say something. But a moment later, she swallowed hard and said, “All right, I’ll cancel the flight and take a later one.”

Relief flooded Nick and his eyes burned with tears. He was so happy that he could have wept with joy, but he kept his joy tempered with a small smile, not wanting to make Felicia think he was crazy.

I did it, Nick thought. I saved her. Now we can make up for all that lost time.

“Thank you, honey,” Nick said. “Thank you so much.”

He kissed Felicia on the lips and hugged her as tightly as he could.

“Geez, when did you get so affectionate?” Felicia said, hugging him back.

“I realized how foolish I’ve been,” Nick said. “This is just a house, and we can always get another one. But I can’t get another you.”

“No, I suppose you can’t.”

Nick sighed and looked at Felicia again.

The right side of her face appeared wet. A small stream of flesh-toned paint ran down her face.

Terror gripped Nick’s heart like a vise, and he wanted to scream, “No.” Instead, his lips quivered.

“What’s wrong?” Felicia said.

No, I did everything right! Nick thought. I was perfect. I know I was. Goddamn it, why did I have to fail again? What did I do wrong?

Nick swallowed hard. Behind Felicia, the walls bubbled and the paint began to melt and run down them.

“Nick?” Felicia said, her voice tense with worry.

He glanced over at the broom closet. If he wanted to escape, he had to do it now before the cube collapsed.

Escape to what, though? Nick thought. Without Felicia, I have nothing. What’s the point in going back out there?

His survival instinct told him to flee now, yet he quickly pushed that thought aside. At that moment, he realized that he didn’t want to leave.

“It’s nothing,” Nick said. “I’m just so happy to have you.”

He forced himself to look into Felicia’s melting face. Stream after stream of flesh and black paint spilled down her face, mixing with the red from her lips, oozing like fresh blood. Her hands became soggy and moist in his, yet she seemed oblivious to her own collapse.

“Honey, can you do me a favor?” Nick said.

“What?” Felicia said, her voice distorted.

“Close your eyes and let me hug you a little more. Just for a moment.”

“Okay.”

Nick closed his eyes and wept silently as Felicia placed her melting chin against his shoulder.

“I love you so much,” Nick whispered in her melting ear.

Felicia tried to say something, but all that came out was an incoherent noise.

Nick tightened his arms around Felicia’s collapsing body and held onto her for as long as he could while the past collapsed around them.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

FREDRICK OBERMEYER enjoys writing science-fiction, fantasy, horror and crime stories.  He has had work published in NFG, Electric Spec, Newmyths, Perihelion SF, the Destination: Future anthology, Mythic, and other markets.

Alexandria Stands

GREG BELVEDERE

I ARRIVED AT work with only a few minutes to spare. Most of the other librarians had already started going through the teletype that had come in over the radio the previous evening. Some busied themselves collecting books put on hold and getting them ready to send to other branches. Others updated the availability of books in our copy of the system wide catalog. Data processors sat behind the glass of a soundproof room operating the radio and teletype equipment. They would periodically stand up and pass the printed pages through a drawer that allowed them to move the documents in and out of the room without disturbing the quiet of the library with the din of mechanical typing.

As expected my boss gave me the dead eye as I walked in. According to the clock on the wall I still had almost five minutes to spare before my shift began, so this attitude seemed unnecessary. Especially since I always managed to get all my morning duties done long before we opened to the public. I found her a bit too rigid and neurotic. I guess I should expect that from someone who grew up at a time when everyone had a computer in their pocket coordinating all their behavior.

“Good morning Kathleen,” I said as I put my coat and bag down at my desk. She did not even acknowledge my presence but turned her head of gray curls, walked into her office, and closed the door. Tristan looked at me and snickered.

“Don’t laugh.”

“I’m sorry. I just enjoy seeing someone else get the treatment.”

“I showed up two minutes late once and she won’t get off my back. But she also won’t even give me the common courtesy of saying ‘hello’.”

“Just don’t let her get to you,” said Tristan as her slender carmel hands wrote notes on the catalog update sheet. As a children’s librarian she had the kind of patience and composure specific to teachers and other people who work with kids.

I grabbed a book cart and a list of the remaining holds. It did not take me long to find them all. Getting them sorted and labeled correctly so they could get to the right branch took a little longer. The list included a few inter-library loan requests from outside of the Hudson Valley system. Those took a little longer to fill out, but it was a pretty rote process that I could just about do in my sleep by this point.

When I finished with this I had a few minutes to read the newspapers before we opened up to the public. I had to work the first reference shift, so I sat behind one of the reference desks and caught up on current events for a few minutes. All the papers this morning had the same international story on the cover. Germany had just elected Mishal Jahani chancellor, making her the first chancellor of Arabic descent in the country’s history. Some editorials compared her election with last year’s surprising election of french president Hassan Farouk who had campaigned on a promise to crack down on national front terrorists. I flipped around the paper following this story. On this side of the atlantic I read a lot about climate refugees from Florida seeking asylum here in the Northeastern republic. One editorial warned of a crime wave if we allowed the Floridians to enter. The author argued that unlike internally displaced people fleeing from the flooded coastal cities in our own republic, the Floridians had a different culture that did not respect law and order. He also felt that we should not have to shoulder this burden, because Floridians had denied the reality of rising sea levels since before the old union broke up. I wanted to check the business news next, but that had to wait. The doors opened and patrons who were waiting outside for us to open shuffled inside.

Some people headed towards the circulation desk to return books and a young man walked to my desk.

“Good morning. How can I help you?”

“I just moved to town and I would like to sign up for a library card.”

“Ok, they usually handle that at circulation. But they seem pretty busy right now and I’m not. So let me get you a form.”

“Thanks.”

“Here you go,” I said as I handed him the form. “Fill this out. When you finish bring it up to circulation with some form of ID and your membership fee. Please read rules on fines and your responsibility as a library member.”

“Ok, thanks again.”

“No problem.”

I read the paper for a few more minutes. Then I took out a copy of Anais Nin’s Diary. I had meant to get to it for a while and I wish I had not waited so long. I looked up over the cover periodically to see if any patrons were approaching the desk or looked like they needed help. Then she walked in. Long black hair, a simple but well-fit dress that showed off her curves, crocheted stockings, and black boots caked with a bit of spring mud. We caught eyes for a moment and then I looked back down at my book and she headed towards the fiction section.

A moment later Cliff, one of my regular patrons, walked up to the desk. Depending on the day I either enjoyed his company or hoped people would start lining up to ask questions so I had an excuse to get rid of him. He apprenticed for Mr. Carson, who had a business that repaired and retrofitted all kinds of old electric appliances to operate on mechanical power. Mr C even had a few designs he built from scratch, though those tended to cost a bit more. I usually learned interesting things about mechanics and such from talking to Cliff. But he could not read social cues and on the days I preferred to be left alone he had a hard time taking a hint. He wore jeans and a brown hoodie and seemed excited as he walked up to the desk and pushed his greasy black hair away from the glasses on his pale face.

“How’s it going Cliff?”

“I got this great idea. I’m about to start going through the card catalog, but I wanted to tell you about it first. Maybe you can give me some direction and I can find what I need a bit quicker. I call it a friction stove. You know how you can rub two objects together to generate heat? Well I got to thinking that maybe you could use a mechanical device, something pedal powered probably, to generate enough heat to cook a meal. Or at least bring something to a boil or simmer before you put it in a hay box. Maybe even heat a small space. If you pedal to charge up a battery or run a generator you lose most of that energy as heat, but if heat is what you want than you have something much more efficient. I don’t know if I can do it, but I want to try.”

“Huh. I could see that working with a metal disk rubbing against another surface to create heat. I don’t know how you would keep the materials from wearing out. Do you need any help doing research?”

“Not just yet. I’m gonna look through the 620s first. If I don’t find anything there I will rummage through the card catalog and do some subject searches.”

“Ok, good luck,” I said as he walked briskly to the non-fiction stacks.

When he left I noticed that the girl from before had sat down at one of the tables facing me. She looked up from a copy of Henry Miller’s Sexus and I could see she had lovely green eyes that looked back down at her book nervously when they met mine. I kept reading my book trying to avoid looking at her even though I wanted nothing more than to steal another glimpse. Fortunately, things picked up and I had a lot of work to keep me busy. I gave a refresher lesson to a middle-aged man who had not used the card catalog since his school days. I placed holds on a few books for an elderly woman. In between I answered a few general reference questions. Most of these people just needed me to point them to the right reference book. Then one question actually stumped me.

The question came from Troy Mathis who walked up to the desk wearing his trademark mix of homespun fabrics and vintage sneakers. His shaggy dirty blonde hair and glassy stare made people who did not know him a bit wary. But most people in town recognized the talented scop musician and knew his jovial attitude. He had been looking up lyrics in one of our Rap Genius lyric anthologies when he came across a few phrases that he simply did not understand. I wrote down the question and his info and told him I would put in a query to Plex when I got off the desk. Like any great scop, Troy had a way of reworking even the most electronic laden over-produced old songs using currently available instruments and arrangements. His ability to make you feel a lyric even if you did not understand it set him apart from a lot of other acts and it seems like the research he put into his covers might explain why.

“Do you want to come back in a day or two for an answer, or do you want us to send a telex message to you?”

“I will probably come in again soon, but send me a telex,” Troy replied. “You coming by the Macrophone tonight?”

“Why should this Friday be any different than any other Friday?”

“Cool, I’ll see you there. Some good acts coming through. Not to mention yours truly.”

“See you there.”

When he left the girl with the green eyes stood up and started towards my desk, but before she reached it Cliff came out of the stacks and cut her off without realizing it.

“Check out what I found,” he said. “Two ways of doing this already exist, but I don’t think anyone ever put them to use for anything practical. Seems like a mechanical curiosity some gear heads tinkered with before and during the peak. They just did not see any need for it with so much cheap energy. Anyway, one method is called a Frenette heater and the other is called a Lloyd heater. I think I could adapt one or both of them to do what I have in mind. They might even work in conjunction with a geothermal heating system.

“Look at this diagram,” Cliff said. “The Frenette heater uses two wheels rotating in opposite directions..”

“With oil in between them so they don’t wear out. That answers my question from earlier.”

“Yep. I have a good amount of info here. But I need to get a hold of one of the books referenced in the footnotes, because the diagrams in this book are very rudimentary. I already checked and it does not look like it is in the Hudson Valley system. Could you take a look for it somewhere else?”

“Sure. It just might take a while to get it. You probably want the schematics and we can’t send those over telex.”

“No problem. I can work on what I have in this book until I get more detailed plans.”

I wrote down all the info so I could do an inter-library search when I got off desk and Cliff went to check out his book. My heart beat faster as I realized I would finally talk to the young lady I had my eye on the whole morning. But before either of us could speak a word I heard Kathleen walk up behind me and say, “I’m on desk now. I’ll take this one.”

I walked into the back room thinking about a lost opportunity. I sat at my desk for a minute composing myself before I walked to the electronics room. I opened the first door and waited for it to close and seal. Then I opened the second and had a seat in front of some radio equipment and a teletype machine. First I sent a request for Cliff’s title to the Northeastern Nationwide Catalog. The staff there would look through a combined catalog of all the libraries in the country. If one of them had it they would send the library an inter-library loan request. If more than one library had the book they would try to find the closest available copy. NNC would send us a message with an expected arrival date once the other library had sent it out.

Next I sent a query to Plex asking them to explain the meaning of the lyrics Troy had dug up. Like a lot of librarians I often daydream about working for Plex. They have a giant staff of librarians with tons of research material at their disposal. Plex rose from the ashes of one the old internet search engines, so they even have an electronic database that they managed to keep running. However, they only use it when none of their staff can get an answer doing regular print research. They can answer pretty much any question you have. Libraries and various organizations subscribe to the service, but only very wealthy individuals can afford a Plex account. Most people can’t justify the expense of something they only need occasionally and can get a lot cheaper via a subscription at their local library the few times they have a query their local reference librarian can’t answer.

When I finished up sending out messages I went to the break room to eat my lunch. I sat and talked to Tristan about some of the children’s programs she was doing this month. Denise and Tivia, two of the clerks, spent most of the meal talking about an injury that Denise’s nephew had sustained working on a salvage job down in Manhattan.

“They had to dive into the water to get him. But the break was not too bad. Thank the mother that the union pays for his medical expenses and gives him some wages while he can’t work. I’m really worried about the gash getting infected,” Denise said.

“I hear that water is full of all kinds of nasty things,” replied Tivia. “Chemicals, filth. But I would not worry. The doctors that work for the Salvage Union seem to know what they’re doing. It is the scabs that get into trouble.”

When I finished up eating I went to my desk and read a bit more of Nin’s diary while my lunch started to digest. It got me thinking about the young lady I saw that morning. I took a quick walk around the stacks and the reading area, but she had gone. Not that I know what I would have done if I saw her. Kathleen would give me hell if she saw me flirting with a patron and I have trouble just walking up to women and talking to them anyway. I went back to my desk and did some more reading. Officially, the library encourages librarians to spend as much free time as possible reading. They figured this would make you more knowledgeable and more able to answer reference questions. Perhaps it worked like that at other branches, but not this one. If Kathleen saw anyone reading she basically interrogated them about which of their duties they had completed. When it became clear that you had indeed done all your work, instead of leaving you alone she ended up giving you some kind of busy work. I don’t much care for pointless tasks, so I tried to only read when I knew she worked the reference desk. Looking at the clock I realized she would get off the desk soon, so I started to get things ready for my afternoon program.

A brought my notes into the small meeting room. A handful of people shuffled in and took seats. After waiting a few extra minutes for late-comers, I started my information session on telex message boards with a little bit of historical background. I began with the familiar history of how radio became the preferred method of communication during the war of partition because cell towers, telephone lines, and other 21st century communication infrastructure were easy to sabotage and difficult to protect. Then I discussed how this technology grew and changed after the war with the increasing incorporation of teletype machines.

“People had become accustomed to using the internet. With all of its faults, they still wanted to retain some of the features it produced. For the most part, the net did not allow people to do anything they had not done before, but it did create some ways of doing things they might never have imagined without it. They wanted ways to crowdsource ideas and connect with people who shared similar interests across great distances, but they had to achieve this in a way that did no depend on such complex technologies. Most of these attempts failed. You simply could not scale many of the social and economic tools of the internet down to fit the limits of teletype radio. But the message boards weathered the transition rather well with humans performing most of the data processing once done by machines.”

“A lot of people wanted to try and rebuild the internet. However, resource bottlenecks and a lack of funds due to war and instability at home and abroad made this very difficult. Also, unlike the old union, all of the countries that formed after it broke up placed substantial taxes on resource extraction. So nobody could justify the cost of rebuilding the internet.”

After this brief background I got down to the business of showing how to use telex message boards. I started by familiarizing the group with some of the ways to find out about existing boards. This sometimes happened by word-of-mouth. But you could also learn about a board through various publications. Special interest magazines had information about relevant boards. In fact, many of them operated their own boards. However, reference directories gave you the most extensive list of boards and they usually had the most intensive amount of information on them. In addition to a description of the board and its community, each directory entry told you about fees, contact frequencies, hours of operation, board rules, and how to set up a membership. I gave a few examples of how to set up a membership, make a request for the text of a page, and submit a comment to a board. Then I mentioned some of the more popular in-depth guides to teletype message boards and handed everyone a pamphlet that went over the basics of using the medium before opening up to questions.

When I finished the presentation, I had a few minutes to answer questions and to ask for some feedback on the course. I heard a lot different reasons for coming to the class. Most of the attendees wanted to converse with people who shared their taste in music, movies, or books. Some wanted a place to discuss religion, politics, and economics. One wanted a way to sell some things he could not find a buyer for locally, but thought someone would probably pay a lot of money for. Knowing what I do about message boards, I assume that a few of them wanted to find people with the same sexual proclivities but of course they would never mention this. Or maybe I just have a dirty mind. In any case, I like teaching this class.

When I finished up I went to the reference desk. Right before the afternoon rush of kids and teenagers getting out of school came in, a woman stopped by the desk to check on the results of a NNC search I did for her the day before. I found the book, but it was up in a library in Maine. She wanted it sooner rather than later, so she decided she would pay to have the book telexed to the print shop where they would collate and bind a copy for her. She even payed an extra fee to have a copy printed for the library, something patrons often do to help expand our collection.

The kids and teens kept me busy for the rest of the afternoon and made the remainder of my day go by very quickly. Shortly before we closed when I noticed Tamara Chang, a kinky haired teen who liked to hang around the library, walking towards the desk. She had a huge smile on her face and seemed to have something to share with me.

“I got in,” she said.

“Where?”

“C’mon. Stop messing with me. You know where.”

Beaming with pride she showed me her acceptance letter to The New Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“Way to go. Still plan on studying preservation materials?”

“Yep. They have a few professors working on creating sustainable, durable, plant-based replacements for movie film, magnetic tape, and vinyl records. Getting replacement with all three of those qualities has proven very tricky.”

“Well, I wish you luck. It certainly makes this librarian happy knowing we have such bright young people working on this. We can’t keep giving tax exemptions to preserve old audio and video formats forever and I like catching old films and news reels at the cinema on a rainy day.”

WE CLOSED FOR the day shortly after and I felt very light as my feet hit the dirt street. The spring rains had passed and the worst of the mud had dried making travel much more pleasant for people and horses alike. This part of town contained a mix of post peak buildings designed to maximize energy efficiency and retrofitted structures from before the peak. Tiny windmills and radio antennas rose just above the buildings. They all had the deep dark patches of solar water heaters on some part of the roof. A few even gave off the gleam of solar thermoelectric generators.

I decided to stop by the record shop before I headed home. So I walked a few blocks, passing the train station and the Criterion cinema on my way. The marquis proclaimed that they would show Yojimbo and Sanjuro tomorrow for a Saturday night samurai double feature and I debated going as I walked the last two blocks to my destination. The head shop next to the record store advertised ceramic filter style vaporizers in both wood and glass. I thought about getting a glass one to use at home and keeping my more durable wooden vape for traveling before heading in to Prime Cuts records.

Friday visits to the shop had become almost a weekly ritual. I would usually pick up one or two records every week. Sometimes I left empty-handed, but between the local radio stations and all the acts that came through town I had no shortage of albums I wanted to acquire. I picked up a copy of Freddie Hubbard’s Backlash in the jazz section and started looking through the classic rap section for an MF Doom album one of my favorite Djs had played earlier that week when I heard a voice from behind say, “looks like you have good taste in music too.”

A bit startled, I looked up and to my delight I saw the girl I’d had on my mind most of that day. She had a sly smile that I matched when I recognized her.

“Thanks, I.. uh, had really wanted to talk to you earlier today. I noticed you reading one of my favorite Henry Miller books and got very bummed out when my boss came on the desk. Did she end up answering your question?”

“Actually, I had come up to talk to you because I saw you read Nin’s diary. I love her writing. In fact her relationship with Miller is what made me check him out. I had to think of a phony question when you left and your boss seemed a bit peeved when I asked it.”

“Nah, that’s just her personality. But that’s funny because I decided to read Nin for the same reason you picked up Miller.”

We had one of those very awkward pauses. Then I cleared my throat and asked her, “Would you like to get a bite to eat and head over to the Macrophone? Loretta Martin and Jimmy Mack are both playing sets and given the weather we will definitely hear at least one of them play with some electric instruments.”

“I would like that.”

“Great.”

We went up to the counter and I payed for my records. Then we stepped outside my heart beating somewhat nervously. Having a sudden realization I turned to her, “Sorry, I did not get your name. I’m Val...Val Thompson.”

“Alexandria... Alexandria Stands.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

GREG BELVEDERE is a writer, musician, former librarian, and current stay-at-home dad. He runs the youtube channel Never Speak In Absolutes. He lives in New York’s hudson valley with his wife and two children.

The Mummy from R’lyeh

JOHN MICHAEL GREER

EIGHT MONTHS OF the year, Kingsport huddles between the high gray crags of Kingsport Head and the cold waters of the Atlantic. Mist comes flowing in from the sea most mornings, drifting up the narrow streets past houses that were already old when the Revolutionary War began. Later in the day, as the mist dissolves, heavy gray clouds roll in from the sea to march implacably overhead, flinging down rain or snow according to the season. In the half-light, the old families of Kingsport celebrate their archaic mysteries, and the Terrible Old Man leaves his silent cottage on Water Street to buy groceries with centuries-old Spanish doubloons.

Come May, though, the sun straggles through the clouds more days than otherwise, lights go on in the hotels on Harbor Street, and the proprietors of tourist traps on the waterfront give uneasy glances toward the Terrible Old Man’s cottage and stock their shops for the summer. The Friday before Memorial Day, the roads into Kingsport fill with tourists, the carts selling shaved ice and corn dogs roll onto Harbor Street’s sidewalks, and the season begins.

A week into the season, as afternoon spread golden over the old town, a brown station wagon picked its way up Green Lane and turned left into the driveway of a brick mansion of Georgian date. The moment the car rolled to a stop, two girls came pelting out the door to welcome it. The back doors of the car popped open an instant later, and a girl and a boy sprang out to meet them. Thereafter, adults joined them: from the car, a broad-shouldered man with sandy hair and a short beard, and a woman with brown curly hair and a long skirt that didn’t quite move as though it concealed human legs; from the house, a stocky man in an old-fashioned black suit, and then a short plain woman with a mop of unruly mouse-colored hair.

“Hi, Laura,” said the woman from the house, shaking hands. “Hi, Owen. Sennie, Barney, good to see you both again.”

“Hi, Aunt Jenny,” the two children chorused.

“I hope the trip down wasn’t too difficult,” she went on.

“Not a bit,” said Owen Merrill, grinning. “I suspect you had something to do with that.”

Jenny Chaudronnier, who was among other things the greatest sorceress of that age of the world, smiled and said nothing. Meanwhile Laura went to the rear door of the car and murmured something, and another got out: a woman with straight black hair drawn back hard into a braid. Despite the warmth of the day, she had a long scarf wrapped around the lower half of her face.

Jenny came over to her at once. “You must be Anne Gilman,” she said. “Welcome to Kingsport. Can we offer you tea?”

“Thank you,” came the muffled response. “Maybe—maybe in a while.”

Jenny turned. “Michaelmas—”

“I took the liberty of ordering tea in the lilac parlor, Miss Jenny,” said the man in the black suit. “Mr. Merrill, if I may see to your car and luggage?”

“Thank you,” said Owen, and handed over the keys.

“IT’S ONE OF those things,” said Laura. They were sitting in the lilac parlor as evening deepened and the lights of Kingsport came on one by one. “Anne’s family fled Innsmouth during the troubles in 1928. They went to Harrisonville, New Jersey, and pretended to be ordinary humans. Everything went well for a couple of generations, and then Anne came along. She spent her entire childhood in a room in the attic.”

“That’s really sad,” Jenny said. “Did her family finally contact someone?”

“Not exactly.” Laura sipped tea. “When we had to leave Innsmouth, my cousins Sarah and Toby Marsh moved to Harrisonville, and ended up near where Anne was living with her sister Bethany. Toby spotted a sign of recognition in the window—thank Father Dagon they kept up the habit—and so they met Anne. A year later she came to stay with us in Dunwich, to study for the priestesshood. She’d literally never met another person who didn’t look human, and she’s still very shy about her appearance. It took a lot of work to convince her to come with us for the summer.”

“I’m glad she did,” said Jenny. “By Labor Day she’ll have met plenty of people who look a lot less human than she does.”

“That ought to help,” said Owen, and finished his tea. Laura glanced at him and then at his cup. When he nodded, a slender tentacle snaked out from under her skirt. The tip coiled three times around the handle of the teapot and lifted it. Owen held out his cup for the refill.

“I imagine that helped too,” said Jenny, smiling.

“Very much so,” said Laura. “The first time Anne saw my tentacles she quite literally burst into tears, she was so relieved, and—” She glanced up. “She’ll be here in a moment.”

Jenny nodded, and instantly changed the subject to the doings of a mutual friend at Miskatonic University. Owen, who was used to the uncanny abilities of both the women in the room, sipped his tea and waited. After a minute or so, tentative footsteps sounded in the hall outside, and then Anne’s voice: “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

“Not at all,” said Jenny at once. “Please come have a seat. Would you like some tea?”

“Please,” said Anne, and came into the parlor.

She’d taken off the scarf that had shielded her face on the drive down from Dunwich. Though the upper half or so of her face looked fully human, the lower half flowed down into a dozen delicate tentacles that framed her mouth and descended to the level of her breasts. There was, Owen thought, nothing in the least ugly or unnatural about them; it was just that most human beings weren’t used to such things.

Anne settled on a chair, took a cup from Jenny with a murmured word of thanks, then broke into a sudden luminous smile as one of Laura’s tentacles came out again and poured tea. A moment passed as tea splashed, and then Anne raised the cup, let one of her mouth-tentacles wrap around the handle, and folded her hands in her lap while the tentacle carried the cup to her lips. Owen, who knew how much courage doing that in public had cost her, smiled and sipped tea in his own less elegant fashion.

TWO MORNINGS LATER, while the children ran whooping on the lawn outside, Owen came downstairs to find Jenny reading the Sunday edition of the Arkham Advertiser. “You’ll want to read this,” she said. “You know the Cabot Museum in Boston, right?”

“The place with the mummy collection?”

“That’s the one. They just picked up a really remarkable sarcophagus from Ponape. Miskatonic’s archeology department has some people excavating the ruins there, which is the only reason this got into the Advertiser.”

Owen laughed, recalling the parochial habits of Arkham’s daily newspaper. “So what’s remarkable about the sarcophagus?”

“Take a look,” said Jenny, and handed him a section of the newspaper.

Owen glanced at the black and white photo on the open page—a dark oblong shape with strange bas-reliefs and ornate inscriptions on it—then did a double-take. “The writing looks like hieratic Naacal,” he said. “You said it came from Ponape?”

“Exactly.” She considered him. “You know something about it.”

“Maybe. Laura needs to see this.”

Jenny regarded him a moment longer, and nodded.

Later that morning the photo of the sarcophagus sat on a table in the brown parlor as four pairs of eyes pondered it: Owen’s, Jenny’s, Laura’s, and Anne’s.

“It looks a lot like the description in von Junzt,” said Jenny.

“Or certain other descriptions,” Laura replied. Owen glanced at her; she met his gaze, nodded fractionally.

“Do you think it could be—” said Anne, and then stopped in confusion.

Laura gave her a reassuring smile, then said, “I wonder if there’s any way to get a closer look at it—especially the inscriptions.”

“There might be,” said Jenny. “I gather the Esoteric Order of Dagon knows something about sarcophagi like this one.”

Laura nodded. “If it’s genuine, there are certain things we’re supposed to do.”

“I bet Miriam can get me an introduction,” said Jenny.

“I bet she can,” Owen agreed. Professor Miriam Akeley of Miskatonic University’s History of Ideas department had been Jenny’s and Owen’s graduate adviser years back, and was still a close friend of both. “I’m up for a trip to Boston any time you like.”

“I’ll see what I can arrange,” Jenny said, nodding.

TWO WEEKS LATER the Sargent bus left them at Boston’s South Station, and Owen flagged down a taxi out front. The cab wove through traffic and narrow streets, heading for Beacon Hill, and the cabby kept up a lively if one-sided discussion about the Patriots’ prospects that fall, until the cab finally pulled up in front of a nineteenth century mansion on Mt. Verrnon Street. A demure sign out front read CABOT MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY.

Inside, the receptionist was effusive. “A pleasure to meet you, Dr. Chaudronnier, and—”

“My research assistant, Mr. Merrill,” said Jenny.

“Of course. I’ll let Dr. Minot know that you’re here.”

Dr. Edward Minot turned out to be a cadaverous gentleman in his seventies, with a hooked nose reminiscent of the famous mummy of Ramses II and a mottled scalp fringed with white hair. “Ah, good morning,” he said. “Pleased to meet you both. Miriam’s fine? Ah, very good. If you’ll come with me.”

An elevator near the receptionist’s desk had three buttons for the floors open to the public, and a unmarked lock beneath them. Minot extracted a key from his pocket and turned it three audible clicks to the left; the door slid shut behind them and the elevator slid smoothly down. The door opened again on the lowest level of the museum basement.

“This way, please,” said Minot, and led them through a maze of corridors with stark concrete walls. “Ah, here we are,” he said, stopping at a locked door marked RESEARCH STAFF ONLY. “I’m sorry to say that a find like the Ponape sarcophagus attracts far too much attention from the wrong sort.” He sniffed. “Cultists. So we take precautions.”

Inside the door, fluorescent lights glared down on bare utilitarian concrete and steel. Laboratory gear stood around the walls, and two technicians in white lab coats busied themselves with computer screens. In the middle of the room stood a green-black shape maybe ten feet long and four feet or so in width and height, carved on every surface.

“I hope you don’t mind if my assistant takes some notes,” Jenny said then.

“No, no, not at all.” Minot gave Owen a benign smile. “Carry on by all means.”

Owen took him at his word, and while Jenny kept Minot talking about the sarcophagus, he walked over to it and examined it. It matched the description in von Junzt exactly: the stone like greenish obsidian, the bas-reliefs of unhuman figures bearing offerings to the tentacle-faced statue of Cthulhu, the columns of script written in hieratic Naacal.

A glance at Jenny showed that she’d gotten Minot over to the computers. “It’s quite perplexing,” Minot was saying. “Of course the stone defies analysis—we’re used to that here—but we haven’t been able to get an image of the cavity or its contents.”

“That’s really remarkable,” said Jenny.

As Minot bent over a keyboard and put more images onto the screen, Owen pulled a notepad from his pocket and started writing. He knew hieratic Naacal well enough to copy it, and Jenny kept Minot out of the way until the job was done. He said little as they extracted themselves from Dr. Minot’s underground realm, took another taxi back to the South Station, and settled down to wait for the Sargent bus to return.

Once they were sitting in the station, Jenny asked, “And?”

“It’s authentic,” said Owen. “The gear Minot’s got would see straight through it if it was a fake, but the real ones have an inner lining of lagh metal, which stops just about everything.”

“I’ve heard of it,” said Jenny.

“I bet. But the sarcophagus is real, and it seems to be intact—and that means I’ve got to figure out some way to get into it.”

Jenny frowned. “Not a good idea. They’ve had problems with people on our side of things trying to break in for years. There are alarms, guard dogs, that sort of thing.”

“I know.” He shrugged. “That doesn’t matter. If you’re an initiate of the Esoteric Order of Dagon, one of the oaths you take requires you to help—certain beings in certain situations—and those aren’t the kind of oaths you want to break.”

“Certain beings.” Jenny considered him. “So we’re not just talking about a fancy coffin.”

“No. It’s what’s in the coffin that matters.”

She nodded slowly, after a moment. “I should be able to arrange something. It may take a while.” She propped her chin on her hands. “It’s just a matter of talking to the right people.”

ONE MORNING SIX weeks later, Owen was sitting downstairs reading von Junzt’s Unaussprechlichen Kulten under the gaze of a dozen not entirely human Chaudronnier ancestors. He had just reached the chapter on the ancient Pacific when Jenny came in. “You might want to take a nap this afternoon,” she said, “and then dress for underground. We’ve got an appointment in Boston at midnight tonight. Oh, and bring a tennis ball.”

Owen gave her a perplexed look, and she smiled and left the parlor.

That evening, toward dinner, Owen came downstairs from a long nap to find Jenny and Laura huddled together over one of the oldest tomes in the Chaudronnier collection. “Oh, hi, Owen,” Jenny said as he stepped through the doorway. “I’ve confirmed everything with people in Boston. We can go pick up your friend tonight.”

Laura turned to Jenny and said with obvious amusement, “Owen’s friend? You’ve been introducing him to exalted company.”

“I didn’t know what else to call the mummy,” Jenny admitted.

“We’ll settle that tonight,” Laura said, and turned to face Owen. “If you and Jenny can bring our guest, Anne and I’ll get everything ready.”

“Easily done,” said Owen.

At quarter to midnight they got out of Owen’s station wagon in front of a once-elegant building. White letters on a grimy canopy over the door read THUNSTONE AND SONS. Jenny led the way to the door and knocked, and the door opened to reveal a plump old man with protuberant eyes who wore an unconvincing wig. “Miss Chaudronnier!” he said with a broad smile. “And your friend? Please come in.”

Inside was an entry hall lined with wallpaper that hadn’t been replaced since the Reagan administration, and beyond that a large room with a pair of couches framing a round table with a pot full of artificial flowers on top. A tall young man in baggy clothing waited there. His narrow chin, tipped with a curly beard, made his face look remarkably like a goat’s.

“Hi, Will,” Owen said. Will Bishop came from an old Dunwich family, and was finishing up a master’s degree at Miskatonic. “So you’re part of this little adventure.”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” said Will. “Jenny tells me there are some locks that need picking. You know that’s a hobby of mine, don’t you?” He got up, turned to Jenny. “You’re sure the dogs are going to be taken care of.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jenny said. To the old man: “Same stair as before?”

“Yes indeed,” he said with another smile, and handed Jenny an old-fashioned lantern. “They’ll be expecting you.”

Jenny took the lantern and led the way to an unobtrusive door. The cracked and patched concrete stair beyond it soon gave way to stonework of Colonial date, and a little further down the stonework gave way to bare damp rock.

“Just who are we going to meet down here?” Owen asked then

“Ghouls,” said Jenny. “What would you expect under a Boston funeral home?”

Owen gave her a startled look. “And the funeral director’s okay with that?”

“Well, of course,” she said. “Haven’t you read Cultes des Goules? Undertakers have been cutting deals with ghouls for a long time now. It makes life easier for everybody.”

Owen gave her an uneasy look, and she smiled back at him.

The stair ended in a low-ceilinged cavern, and there half a dozen naked figures with grayish, rubbery skin waited for them. They had vaguely canine faces and hooved feet, and the smell that surrounded them reminded Owen partly of wet earth and partly of less mentionable things. They greeted Jenny in a language of meeps and glibbers, and she responded in kind.

“Okay, good,” Jenny said in English after a brief conversation with the ghouls. “They’ve agreed to take us to the Cabot Museum.” To Owen: “They say you look tasty.”

Owen gave her a wary look and said, “That’s not very reassuring.”

“Don’t worry, it’s just a traditional compliment,” said Jenny “They won’t take a bite out of you while you’re alive.”

That wasn’t very reassuring either, but before Owen could think of a response, Jenny meeped something to the ghouls, who glibbered in response and shambled down one of the tunnels. Jenny followed with the lantern, and Owen and Will came afterward, ducking to keep from banging their heads on the tunnel roof. For the next hour or so they followed the ghouls through a maze of damp and malodorous underground passages, until finally their guides stopped at a vertical shaft with a well-aged iron ladder climbing one side.

“Here we go,” said Jenny. “The Cabot Museum’s right above us.”

She glibbered her thanks to the ghouls, who meeped in reply. As they settled down to wait, Jenny started up the ladder, and Owen and Will followed.

At the top of the ladder was a cavern with a slab of poured concrete forming one side. In the middle of the slab a roughly circular opening a yard or so across had been hacked, or just possibly gnawed. A metal surface painted beige blocked the opening from the far side.

“Before we go through,” Jenny said, “it’s time to do something about the dog. There’s just one on this floor—that’s what the ghouls say.”

“I somehow don’t think of ghouls as museum patrons,” said Owen.

“Of course not. They consider mummies a delicacy—and they’re really good at taking just a little from each one, so it won’t be missed.”

“About that dog,” said Will.

“Not a problem.” She pulled an old-fashioned perfume atomizer out of her purse, said, “Close your eyes,” and squirted him with the fluid, which had a curious musky smell.

“Your turn,” she said to Owen then, and squirted him with it, then applied it to herself as though she was putting on perfume. “There—that’ll take care of it.”

“Dog repellent?” Will asked, clearly dubious.

“No, nothing so clumsy.” She put the atomizer back in her purse.

“You don’t like dogs?” Owen asked Will.

“They don’t like me,” said Will. “They bite me whenever they think they can get away with it. It kind of runs in my dad’s family.”

“If one of you can push that filing cabinet out of the way,” said Jenny, “we can go on.”

THE FILING CABINET slid away so easily that its underside must have been lubricated—with what, Owen didn’t want to know. He crawled through the opening and stood up in darkness. When Jenny followed, the lantern showed a bare room full of filing cabinets.

“Okay, good,” said Jenny then. “We’re on the right floor, and only about half a dozen rooms away from the one we want. Come on.” She went to the door, opened it, and headed out into the dimly lit hallway outside.

They were about halfway along it when the sound of claws rattling on concrete sounded not far away. “Jenny—” Will said in an agitated voice.

“Don’t worry about it,” she replied, and kept walking.

A moment later the dog, a big black and tan Rottweiler, came barreling around a corner in front of them and started toward them with bared fangs. It covered half the distance, slowed, then stopped, and a dazed expression creased its face.

“Oh, you’re such a good dog,” Jenny cooed at it. “Such a good dog.”

The dog pondered this assertion and decided that Jenny was right. It lowered its head, whined, and wagged its little stump of a tail in apology, then trotted over to Jenny, who scratched it behind the ears and motioned with her head the way the three of them had been going. They went to the door marked RESEARCH STAFF ONLY, and the dog trotted amiably alongside them, pushing his head up under Jenny’s hand as they went.

The door was locked, but Will pulled a set of slender steel tools from his pockets and made short work of it. Inside, the sarcophagus from Ponape gleamed.

“Can you keep Fido occupied for a while?” Jenny asked Owen. “It’s going to take us a bit to get the sarcophagus open.”

“Sure,” said Owen, and started scratching the Rottweiler’s ears. The dog responded by flopping down on the floor and offering its belly to be rubbed. Owen sat down beside it, and in the process discovered the tennis ball he’d tucked into a pocket of his cargo pants. After he’d finished paying due attention to the dog’s belly, he got out the tennis ball and held it up, and it immediately became the Holy Grail at the center of the Rottweiler’s world. Owen chose a patch of bare wall well out of the way of the Ponape sarcophagus, and threw the ball that way. It came back to him clenched in the dog’s powerful jaws and well coated with drool, but a game of catch was clearly required, and Owen picked up the damp object and flung it again.

Meanwhile Jenny intoned certain arcane words to open the seals on the sarcophagus, and her careful probing of subtle details on the carvings resulted in a sudden click loud enough to startle the dog. As the ball bounced again and the dog leapt after it, the lid of the sarcophagus pivoted silently up. Jenny leaned over the opening. Even over the rattle of the dog’s claws on the concrete floor, Owen could hear her breath catch.

“That’s an impressive mummy,” she said to Owen.

“I bet,” said Owen. He paused to extract the wet and punctured tennis ball from the dog’s jaws and toss it. The dog came bounding back, and Owen had to attend to the tennis ball. He glanced back once it was flying across the room with the dog in hot pursuit, to find Jenny and Will lifting a not-quite-human shape out of the sarcophagus. It was wrapped tighly in strips of a bluish-white membrane—pthagon, the tomes said, the inner skin of the long-vanished yakith-lizard—with incantations in hieratic Naacal down the center of each strip. Lumps here and there inside the wrappings suggested amulets of peculiar shapes.

“There we go,” said Jenny then. “Your friend from Ponape can come with us.”

“My friend from R’lyeh,” said Owen, and then extracted the mortal remains of the tennis ball from the dog’s teeth and threw it again. When he glanced back at Jenny, right about the time the ball landed on the floor with an audible splat, the sorceress was staring at him.

“Seriously?” she said. “It’s actually one of the spawn of Cthulhu?”

“That’s what the sarcophagus says. I compared it with the text in von Junzt.”

“And—is he—”

Owen glanced up at her. “Dead, yet dreaming—at least in theory. Supposedly all Great Cthulhu’s spawn can manage that trick. The oaths I mentioned require us to try to revive him.”

She took that in. “Will he be okay outside the sarcophagus?”

“Yeah. The periapts and phylacteries that matter are in the wrappings.”

The Rottweiler came prancing back with a torn yellow-green shape in its jaws, and Owen resumed the game. Meanwhile Jenny and Will closed the sarcophagus and picked up the mummy. “Okay,” said Jenny. “Let’s get out of here.”

Owen hauled himself to his feet, persuaded the dog to surrender the fragments of the tennis ball, and followed the two of them into the hall, where they retraced their steps to the room with the filing cabinets.

“Sit,” said Owen, as Jenny and Will hauled the mummy inside. “Sit. Good boy.” He slipped through the door behind Jenny, and closed it. A moment later claws scratched on the far side of the door, and a muffled whining sound came through it.

“I hope the dog’ll be okay,” Owen said to Jenny as she and Will slid the mummy through the hole into the cavern. She ducked through after it, and Owen followed.

“Oh, he’ll be fine.” Jenny straightened up—a privilege not granted to Owen or Will, who were both more than a head taller than she was. “Fifteen minutes from now, the spray will wear off, and he won’t remember a thing.” Then: “I hope you didn’t leave the tennis ball behind.”

“I’ve got it,” said Owen, displaying the well-chewed fragments. “I think it’s just about ready for the ghouls, though.”

“I suppose you could see if they want it,” said Jenny. “You never know with ghouls.”

“I hope they won’t try to take a bite out of this mummy,” said Owen.

“With the amulets he’s got on him? Not a chance. Ghouls aren’t stupid.” She started down the ladder. Owen glanced at Will, who gave him an amused look and followed.

IN THE SMALL hours of the morning, the station wagon pulled through the Chaudronnier mansion’s carriage port, and kept going up the gravel drive alongside the rambling northern wing, to stop just outside a side door. The room inside had an altar over toward one wall, incense smoldering in a burner, vessels of strange fluids on a table nearby. Lines drawn in four colors traced patterns on the wooden floor. Laura and Anne had already donned ornate robes and gold tiaras. It took only a few moments to get the mummy settled in its place at the center of an irregular heptagon surrounded with written incantations.

“Should I leave?” Jenny asked.

“You don’t have to,” Laura told her. “If you want to get a chair from the next room, and sit over there, that should be fine.” She turned. “Owen, there’s an acolyte’s robe by the door—could you help out with the libations and the incense?”

It wasn’t a common experience for Owen to watch Jenny sitting on the sidelines of a sorcerous operation while he took part. Still, this was the Esoteric Order of Dagon’s work and no one else’s. As the salt-scented incense smoke rose and the priestesses began to chant, the dim light in the room took on a liquid quality, as though filtered through waves, and half-seen shapes clustered around the room’s edges, peering in through the smoke with pale unblinking eyes: the servants of Dagon, Owen knew, come to keep watch over his human and half-human children.

“The first libation,” Laura said then. Owen brought her one of the bowls, and she handed it to Anne, who poured a thin stream of wine-colored liquid on the mummy from head to foot. The pthagon wrappings soaked up every drop, darkening and swelling as the fluid spread.

For another quarter hour or so Laura and Anne chanted, Owen fed the coals with more incense, and Jenny watched. “The second libation,” Laura said then, and Owen brought her another bowl full of clear fluid. She took it and poured it in the same way as the first, a thin stream tracing the length of the mummy. Where it touched the pthagon wrappings they shriveled and split, until withered flesh the gray-green color of the ocean showed through a gap in them.

“The third libation,” said Laura. There were two bowls full of fluid, one greenish, one the pallid hue of the moon, and Owen brought them one at a time. Laura and Anne each took one and stood on opposite sides of the mummy. Laura caught Anne’s glance and nodded, and at the same moment each of them began to pour a thin stream onto the gap in the wrappings, moving slowly from head to foot. Pale vapors rose where the two fluids mingled, and beneath—

Though the pages of von Junzt had taught him what to expect, Owen’s eyes still widened. The ocean-colored flesh visible through the split wrappings had begun to swell.

The priestesses finished pouring the libation, gave the bowls back to Owen, and took up positions at the head and foot of the mummy, resuming their chant. By the time he got the bowls on the table again and went back to tending the incense, the gap in the wrappings was widening moment by moment as the body within filled out.

The chant wound to its end, and then Laura and Anne went to the mummy’s head and began peeling aside the brittle remnants of the pthagon wrappings, uncovering the naked form within. He—the pronoun was impossible to evade—was humanoid in shape, but hairless. Blunt claws tipped his fingers and toes, and his face, roughly humanoid on its upper half, descended from there into a thicket of tentacles that reached well down his chest. At brow, throat, chest, hips, and ankles, phylacteries of iridescent lagh metal were tied with cords of braided snakeskin.

Working together, the two priestesses took off the phylacteries one at a time, and then Anne got to her feet and Laura rose on her tentacles. They stood back and waited. Owen glanced at Jenny, who was staring at the scene with fingertips pressed to her mouth, and then watched the creature on the floor.

A long moment passed, and another. The priestesses waited, unmoving. The last of the incense hissed and spat on the coals. Then, almost imperceptibly at first, the unhuman chest began to rise and fall. The clawed fingers stirred, and the eyelids twitched and opened, revealing golden eyes with crescent pupils, like those of an octopus. The mouth-tentacles twitched, and a faint whisper sounded in the still room: “Iâ.”

“He’s thirsty,” Laura said to Anne in a low voice, and knelt beside the creature and said in Aklo, “M’wlgh kn’â-gwî y’au ph’hwlau.”

The yellow eyes turned toward her, struggled to focus. “Agh’wlh m’nau dhû’kh?”

“Kh’ŵlth y’au ûm’shwai,” she replied in a reassuring tone.

He closed his eyes, opened them again as Anne knelt beside him, holding out a glass of water. The first trace of an expression showed as he stared up into her tentacled face, and with an evident effort, he caught her wrist in one clawed hand. “Akh-ke m’nwa?” he said.

Anne glanced at Laura in confusion, and Laura said, “He wants to know who you are. I can tell him if you like.”

She considered that, and then shook her head. “Anne m’nau.” His grip on her wrist didn’t slacken, but he let her bring the water closer, and his tentacles deftly took the glass from her hand and guided it to his mouth.

THE LABOR DAY holiday came and went, and all the roads out of Kingsport filled with tourists heading back to their homes and their lives. The big hotels on Harbor Street sank into their autumnal afterlife of weekend conventions and half-price specials, the carts selling shaved ice and corn dogs headed for their winter’s sleep, and the proprietors of tourist shops in the old waterfront district gave one last uneasy glance toward the Terrible Old Man’s silent cottage on Water Street and closed up their premises until spring. In the Chaudronnier mansion on Green Lane, though, the residents and guests had other concerns.

“You’re sure it won’t be any kind of difficulty?” Laura asked, as she refilled the teacups with a deft movement of one tentacle.

“None in the least,” Jenny reassured her. “They’ll both be welcome here as long as they want to stay. My nieces really like Anne. As for Zh’kau—” She sipped tea. “He’s going to need a safe place to stay until he knows enough to get by in today’s world.”

“I don’t think he’ll have any trouble learning English,” Owen said. He was standing by the window, looking down at the rose garden below. There, two figures with tentacled faces sat on a stone bench, apparently deep in conversation. One of her hands folded around one of his.

“I imagine not,” said Jenny. “And Anne’s getting a first-rate knowledge of Aklo.” With a sly smile: “The family library has an old manuscript of Aklo love poetry; I think it was originally from the Chateau des Faussesflammes, part of the Malinbous collection. I’ve considered leaving it out for them to find sometime.”

Owen turned to face her. “I didn’t know there was Aklo love poetry.”

“Of course. Mind you, it’s very graphic, and some of the metaphors are a bit unsettling to people nowadays, but it’s really sweet.”

“I suppose it was inevitable,” said Laura then. “Waking up after all those millions of years in a place full of strange beings, and there’s one face that looks familiar.”

“And he wasn’t the only one to respond to a familiar face, of course. I wish them well.” Owen downed the last of his tea. “Time to load up the car.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

BORN IN THE gritty Navy town of Bremerton, Washington, and raised in the south Seattle suburbs, John Michael Greer began to write as soon as he could hold a pencil. A widely read author and blogger, he has penned more than forty nonfiction books and seven novels. He lives in Rhode Island with his wife Sara.

A Mystery for A Mystery

L. JOSEPH SHOSTY

THE WOMAN SAT in the colorless, empty room. Her chair was designed with discomfort in mind, to give the person in it no respite. Despite this, her face was empty, her posture steady and constant. Her eyes lacked curiosity. A certain type of philosopher might describe her, saying she simply was, and this would be accurate.

A section of wall slid backwards and opened, revealing a robot sitting in a long, dimly lit hallway. It resembled a rectangular block, about five feet tall, set on a four-wheeled magnetic system. Its front was black, shiny, and slightly concave, with a set of three circular “eyes” near the top that functioned as its sensory array. It rolled forward, its wheels silent.

The robot stopped three feet from the woman and said, “Stand up.”

The woman complied.

A thin cone of blue light from its middle sensor caressed her from head to toe. She observed the robot with the same lack of curiosity she’d shown her environs. She knew its use here on Green Scorpio and required no further observation. The government employed the model as administrators of criminal affairs, sent in when the courts were certain they had an inevitable conviction.

“Sit.”

Again, the woman complied.

“You are identified as Mother Mom,” the robot said. Its voice boomed, its every word like something from a great and powerful being, full of wrath. “I should begin by saying that I am both shocked and curious to find that, in my investigations, I have discovered no other name for you. Are you an illegal here?”

The woman said nothing.

“Reply.”

Still, nothing.

“Everyone and everything has a name. Even I have a name. I am called Heinrich Waddle, and I am an artificial. I have citizenship and an identifying code. If I have an identity, it seems that you should, too, and if you do, I should be able to determine it through my research.”

The woman finally spoke.

“Mother Mom,” she said, her voice thick with a strange accent. “Is that my name? When you are self-sufficient, names are superfluous. I’m not even sure if that is who I am, or not. Perhaps it doesn’t matter.”

“Stand.”

She did.

“Sit.”

As Mother Mom took her seat again, Waddle explained, “You are charged with multiple acts of ecological terrorism, specifically attempts to unbalance key economic exports through indirect genocide. These commands I have been issuing prove your natural compliance under the will of the State, which I assure you is quite powerful indeed. Please keep this in mind as we continue our interview, and that attempts to obfuscate or deceive are futile. The truth will eventually be laid bare.”

Mother Mom concentrated a moment. Rings of blue tinge, which, in their striations, gave the abstract appearance of ocean waves, rolled across her skin.

Waddle processed this.

“You are demonstrating your autonomy through an act the State has not required of you.”

“If you like.”

“It does not detract from the fact that, when commanded, you automatically comply. Your indoctrination into our system is clear, so rebelliousness is irrelevant.”

“Perhaps. Do you do as you are told?”

“I am programmed to do so, yes.”

Waddle processed the data in a different fashion.

“Can you make this discoloration occur at will?”

“I can do what is necessary for the moment.”

“You’re not human.”

Mother Mom said nothing.

“You are in direct violation of planetary code, which stipulates that sentient non-humans may not utilize adaptations not analogous to human ones. Are you aware of this?”

“Humans blush.”

“Yes.”

“Consider this a blush, then.”

“Blushing is an involuntary act. You have just stated that yours is not. Therefore, it is not blushing, and you remain in violation.”

Mother Mom said nothing. The blue tinge appeared again, this time as fireworks exploding.

“The State knows you are guilty in providing materials to radical political groups for the specific purpose of eradicating the species known informally as kuppel fish. Confess to this.”

“Blushing is a form of non-verbal communication. Did I not communicate something to you by changing the color of my skin?”

“Your guilt or innocence will be determined when you are brought to trial. Now, confess to the crimes for which you have been charged so we may continue with due haste.”

“I am curious. On whose authority are these charges brought?”

“The human interplanetary government representing Green Scorpio.”

“And humans have authority because...?”

“They make their claim through being the first sentient race to inhabit this planet.”

“And if they are not the first sentient race?”

“They are. It has been determined. No other species was deemed sentient upon examination, as fit current guidelines.”

“Whose guidelines?”

“The Exo-Terran Interplanetary System.”

“So, humans have authority here because they have determined what constitutes having authority, and in this case, it is them. That is convenient.”

“Sarcasm is counterproductive.”

“What is sarcasm?”

“You have provided the substance known informally as street mist, which has a strong narcotic effect on kuppel fish, influencing them to copulate less frequently. This diminishes their availability, which in turn disrupts populations of a number of kuppel fish predators, specifically behemoth monk waiters, whose adrenal by-products form a significant portion of Green Scorpio exports. While it is a subtle form of attack, one which has taken years, and it admittedly took the State a long time to suss out what was occurring, you have been discovered.”

“When you are self-sufficient, there is no concept of trade,” Mother Mom said. “Two decades now I’ve been learning these concepts. For two decades I have been trading with the humans. What you call street mist is but one of the products I sell. Humans come to me for it because it also has a mild effect on them. It’s pleasurable, and humans seek pleasure.”

“So you admit to selling it.”

“Of course. It’s not illegal to sell. How it’s used is not up to me. I’m only doing what I’ve been taught by your culture, which is to sell in order to acquire.”

“You have no identifying number.”

“None. I am not a citizen.”

The robot’s voice went up in both pitch and volume, the way a human’s would when it sensed triumph was near.

“So you admit to being an illegal and to tax evasion!”

“This is something I’ve never been able to learn. Tell me, how do the humans determine a planet has no sentient beings?”

Waddle’s voice immediately resumed its flat, bureaucratic tone. “Eighty-five percent of a planet’s known species must be examined. Once this occurs, and if none meet the conditions of sentience, human colonization is allowed with no restrictions.”

“With human law being the law by which all is governed.”

“Yes. This is correct. If a sentient species is detected, Exo-Terran law stipulates that interested parties must negotiate fair treaty with said species for rights to create a colony here.”

“And what if, in the other fifteen percent, there is a sentient being?”

“That is unlikely. Eighty-five percent is a telling sample size.”

“But it’s possible.”

“How do you make street mist?”

“Do you mean how do I make street mist so your human government can replicate it?”

“Admittedly, the drug’s synthesis has thus far been beyond The State’s ability. If you were to make its process known to us, leniency in your sentencing would be considered. You are facing a severe penalty.”

“To make up for the lost revenue incurred by the behemoth monk waiter’s depopulation.”

“Which is nine percent of an export trade of over three thousand individual products. This is not an insignificant number.”

“The process is like scraping away dead skin.”

Waddle responded immediately. There was no recrimination in its voice, but even to a non-human mind like Mother Mom’s, which did not have constructs analogous to emotions, Waddle nevertheless sounded aggressive. “Your explanation does nothing to illuminate the process. Remember my warning, that misdirection or deception is futile.”

“It’s the only way I have of describing it. I scrape with intention, and what I intend forms from the leavings. I’m afraid I can be no clearer than that.”

The holographic screen which made up most of Waddle’s front came alive. Appearing was an abstract image made up of colorful spheres connected by cylindrical rods, rendered in three dimensions and seeming to hover in the air.

“This is a chemical model of street mist,” Waddle explained. “The State has put its best on this problem, yet the substance’s construction defies what we know of chemistry. These elements should not be bonding in this way. It has made synthesizing the substance impossible. You will tell us how to do this.”

Mother Mom sat forward, intrigued.

Waddle went on. “Green Scorpio must have street mist. On-planet demand has risen sharply in the five years it has been available, demonstrating its possibility as an export. It is assumed that you are not a radical element, but a merchant. It is then assumed that, even though you are non-human, you’ll understand the drug’s importance, which is why it has remained legal for consumption. These radical elements with whom you’ve dealt in the past, like the 2 Lo C Coop, feel disenfranchised and seek to pressure the State into certain political concessions, and, barring these concessions, will childishly damage the planet’s economy.”

Mother Mom reached out and touched the image. To her surprise, the model moved. She touched it again, and found that she could manipulate it.

“What is this?” she asked, touching one of the spheres, this one colored a green as deep as the ocean waters which gave Green Scorpio its name.

“It’s a carbon atom. The structure as a whole is a molecule of street mist, as I’ve said.”

“This is one...” Mother Mom paused, unsure of the word to sum up what she was seeing, and so she went in another direction. “Have you ever considered yourself in such a way, Heinrich Waddle? One tiny piece at a time?”

“For security reasons, you will not be given writing implements or technology, but chalk can be provided, if you would like to write the process on the wall. That will be sufficient, so long as your instructions can be replicated in a laboratory.”

“Writing is unnecessary to the self-sufficient. To whom would one write, and what about? Humans, they write when they need something from one another. It’s unnecessary to me.”

“So, you will not cooperate? Even if it means a death penalty?”

Mother Mom glanced from the molecule to Waddle’s sensors.

“Yes. The State has rights under law to ask for death in cases like this,” the robot said.

She went back to manipulating the molecule, twisting it, making it dance on an unseen spindle.

“Is this the same authority which decided there were no sentient beings on this planet?” she asked. “Parts of all living things die every second, but this authority gets to decide to kill a larger part of the whole at its whim as punishment for, what is this we’re discussing? The deaths of other things upon which this authority has placed a higher value?”

There was a click as the hologram blinked out. Mother Mom sat back in her uncomfortable chair.

“We have the shipment of street mist,” Waddle said. “We have members of the 2 Lo C Coop who have said you are street mist’s sole supplier, and that you are aware of their illegal activities. That makes you part of a criminal conspiracy against the State, which means you are guilty of ecological terrorism and genocide, just as surely as if you had killed the kuppel fish yourself. You will comply in our demand that you provide the process of concocting street mist, or you will face execution.”

“I don’t make street mist,” she said. “It comes from me. I am street mist, among other things.”

“To use a metaphor, Mother Mom, you are approaching the gallows. Do you understand? You have only two options.”

“I refuse, based on your government’s lack of authority.”

“Exo-Terran has established--”

“I am the sentient on this planet.”

“Green Scorpio was determined not to have a sentient being, as I have already stated.”

“Because somewhere, within that fifteen percent of species your people did not observe, I was waiting to be discovered. You never came.”

She stood.

“Sit.”

This time, Mother Mom did not comply. She swept around the room, her right hand stroking the walls.

“You resemble a human. You’ve never explained how this is so,” Waddle said.

“I also resemble kuppel fish, behemoth monk waiters, the algae in the oceans, the stone under your wheels. I am street mist, and I am the tiny dust motes trapped in human lungs. I am everything this planet is, you see.”

“Your species was not observed.”

“I am not of a species, Heinrich Waddle. I am me, but me is not this creature before you. I am what was first here when this planet cooled and sprouted life. I am the very first organism, as you would call it, that became both alive and aware on Green Scorpio. I am Green Scorpio, if you like. From me I created the things which eventually became the things you see around you, the way human stem cells become specialized organs. They grew from me and evolved. That is not the correct word, evolve, but it best fits the purposes of our conversation. So, not only does my existence nullify your human authority, it also makes it impossible for your courts to convict me, as the kuppel fish are a part of me. They are not a thing unto themselves. A human does not go to prison for cutting her hair. You cannot imprison me for killing a part of me that I willed to die. Do you understand this, Heinrich Waddle? Does your State, as you call it?”

“So, you continue to play a game of deception,” Waddle said. “The State is not amused with you, Mother Mom.”

“Nor am I with you. I allowed your police to capture me so I could question you. You see, much of your laws and customs were unknown to me, despite two decades among you. There’s a reason for this. Your State withholds information from its citizens so it can use the law against them when it pleases. I could not learn what I needed to know by asking your citizens, and so I had to come here. I had to be captured. The whole time you’ve been questioning me, I have been questioning you, too. You’ve made great show of demonstrating your government’s power to coerce its citizens to do what they’re told, and yet this same government sent to me an artificial creature whose programming insists that it do as told and offer information when asked. Through you, I’ve gotten what I need. I can now begin the process of removing human authority over this planet by way of your own courts, and I will do so.”

“That is impossible,” Waddle said. “No court will hear the case.”

“Then your government is a sham, and your authority is even more so.”

“Questioning the State’s authority is irrelevant to the case at hand. The law will not be changed before you are sentenced. Your only option in possibly staving off execution is to give over the street mist to us.”

Mother Mom stopped her pacing and stared at one of the blank walls. She studied its smoothness. It seemed so unnatural to her. Life and its environs were rough by nature. The imperfections of it were comforting. This room was like the creature before her. It looked like nature, but it was not. It looked like life, but only imitated it, which produced a feeling of unease, not comfort. It was like the humans delighted in the illusion of a thing rather than the thing itself.

She sloughed a part of her. That was really the only way to describe it using the human words, which were so inadequate. What came free was something vaguely pill-shaped. She turned so Waddle’s sensors could observe what was happening, and she swallowed it.

“How did you get a substance past screening?” Waddle asked, alarmed, but only because it had been programmed to mimic the emotion. “If you’ve poisoned yourself, you must tell me how to counteract it.”

It wasn’t poison, but a physical affectation for a process Mother Mom had already begun within this form. It was there, as yet another illusion, for the humans to see so they could better understand what was occurring. They would puzzle over how she had done what she’d done if she didn’t offer some overt explanation of it, and she wanted them to understand immediately.

“This form is only a part of me, Heinrich Waddle,” she said, feeling no pain, but knowing this manifestation was at its end. “You can’t capture me because I’m everywhere. You can’t put me on trial because you can’t prosecute God. And that is where you humans made your mistake. You looked for sentience like your own, but in your arrogance you forgot to look for something greater. I am God on Green Scorpio. You’ll see me again, and until you acknowledge me, your kuppel fish woes will be the least of your problems.”

She said no more. The chemical bonds of this manifestation broke down, releasing gases and rendering Mother Mom eventually into a brown, puckery slime on the floor.

Waddle sat unmoving, muttering the word “Unacceptable,” over and over again, and reiterating the State’s authority in the matter.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

L. JOSEPH SHOSTY is the author of nine books, the most recent being the mystery collection, My Conscience Sleeps in the Doghouse.  His short fiction has appeared in Stupefying Stories, Perihelion SF, and The Colored Lens, among other places.  He lives in Beaumont, Texas with his wife, son, and a dog who thinks it's a cat.

Needs of the Few

KATHRYN YELINEK

A HOT GUST of wind blew down from the mountains, making the alpine poppies and bear grass shudder. Ada Brown shivered and hunched her shoulders as she threw a handful of oats onto the dry meadow grass. Grim Reaper’s breath her husband Micah would have called this wind. The Good Lord only knew what new calamity it would bring.

Even the unicorns seemed uneasy. Of the two dozen feeding around her, only the pregnant mare she called Zoë lifted her head for a petting.

“You’re welcome,” Ada crooned, stroking Zoë’s nose. Any unicorn could lighten Ada’s heart, but fearless, affectionate Zoë was special--the first unicorn that let her touch it. Zoë’s coat shone whiter than the snow on the mountain tops, her horn pale as aspen bark. With Zoë, Ada could forget the wind, the aches of her own pregnant belly, and her worries for Micah, locked in the sheriff’s jail.

A jolt like a bee sting shot up from the ground to her bare feet.

She gasped. She let go of Zoë and pivoted, digging her bare toes into the parched late-summer grass. At times like this she was glad she was a brownie, attuned so highly to her place of home that she could sense when a stranger trespassed into her and Micah’s valley.

Zoë watched, ears pricked forward with unease, as Ada turned, trying to pinpoint the trespasser. The other unicorns pressed close, seeking safety in their herd, the wind thick with their honeysuckle scent.

The honeysuckle receded in Ada’s mind as she located the breach. At least one trespasser followed the river, approaching their cabin directly from town.

Of course. She should have guessed what the wind would bring.

She swore and plunged into the trees at as brisk a walk as she could manage. Direct from town was almost worse than the stealth of poachers who came in search of unicorn horns. Poachers had the decency to hide in shadows while they stole. Humans from town--some of whom had openly celebrated Micah’s arrest--overcharged and shortchanged them with impunity in broad daylight.

She would let them take nothing else. She and Micah had sunk their hearts and souls, their sweat and blood, into this land long before they discovered the last living unicorns on earth hiding in the valley. These few unicorns were worth far more than the fruits of any fields or orchards, and now that a railroad ran through town, she and Micah had only to defend the unicorns long enough for tourists to start coming.

She grabbed the rifle from inside their cabin door and waddled onto the porch as one of the new horseless carriages wheezed to a stop under the closest aspen grove.

Sheriff Bloch sat in the driver’s seat. The air was still.

Ada’s heart sank. She clutched her rifle to her side, not daring to raise it against him. “Come to arrest me, too? Decided it’s time to rid your town of the brownie blot?”

But no. Even as the sheriff ignored Ada, an elegant woman stepped down from the passenger seat. She was dressed in the Eastern fashion, in layers of silken ruffles, her hair piled high on her head. In place of a sensible bonnet she wore a minuscule hat and shaded herself with a white parasol.

“Ada Brown,” Sheriff Bloch called, in the same way he might identify lice crawling out of his mustache. “This is Lady Evangelista Carmichael.”

Ada felt her eyes widen. Lady Carmichael? The Lady Carmichael? Heiress, philanthropist, scientist? Social reformer and advisor to presidents? Here?

Ada waited, expecting more explanation, but the sheriff and Lady Carmichael merely stared down at her--even standing on the raised porch, she couldn’t match their height.

After a moment she realized they expected her to curtsy or ask how she might help them--as any brownie used to servants’ garrets or the backs of shop counters would have.

She and Micah had come west to escape that. “I hope you’ve enjoyed your trip from town, my lady, because you’ve got no business on our land. Take yourselves away.”

Lady Carmichael arched dainty eyebrows in surprise.

“Look here, you,” Sheriff Bloch spluttered, turning red with anger, “you’ll show this lady proper respect.”

“I do have business with you,” Lady Carmichael insisted. “I’m here about your unicorns.”

Of course she was. Why else would a woman of her status seek out Ada? The question was why she would seek out unicorns. She didn’t look sickly, so she wasn’t after the cure that a unicorn horn promised, at least not for herself.

“What about them?” Ada asked.

In response, Lady Carmichael flashed a piece of paper, too quickly and too far away for Ada to read. “I’m leading an initiative at the National Health Service. I need a horn.”

The National Health Service. That was new; Ada hadn’t expected a lady to be working as a government official. The answer remained the same, though. “We don’t sell horns, and we defend our land against poachers.” That last bit she said for the sheriff’s sake.

He took the bait and snorted.

Ada rounded on him. “Yes, poachers! As Micah clearly said.”

“They were harmless, lost hikers--”

“With guns and a saw to cut off a horn.”

“Micah attacked them unprovoked--”

“He fired a warning shot over their heads,” Ada said hotly. “They were stalking the unicorns, but you let them go and put Micah in your cell.”

Lady Carmichael watched this exchange as if she were at a tennis match. Now she snapped her fingers and said a word Ada didn’t know.

Sheriff Bloch froze, his mouth and eyes open, his fist raised, only his chest moving to show he still lived. At the same moment, heat washed over Ada as if the sun had doubled its strength.

“You’re a magician,” she gasped. She’d never met one, but she’d heard the stories: magicians stealing brownies for experimentation since they could sense magic. She backed up, desperate to get inside, aware that wood and glass gave poor protection against enchantment.

“A modest one,” Lady Carmichael said. “Please, I won’t hurt you.”

Ada backed into the cabin and slammed the door, pulling the string lock in behind her. It was dark inside, with only one window by the door. Even with the shadows, there were few places to hide. Any fool would look under the bed or behind the wood stove. Instead she flattened herself against the door and groped for the nails that held the hinges in place. She wrapped one arm around her belly, the rifle barrel digging into her side, and hoped the cold iron of the nails would repel the worst of any magic.

Good Lord, what had that wind brought her? If only Micah were there to back her up.

“I won’t hurt you,” Lady Carmichael said again through the door. “I could tell the sheriff upset you, and I wanted to talk in private. I know magicians have harmed brownies in the past, but I told the truth about why I’m here.”

A swishing sound underfoot made Ada jump. It was only a paper sliding under the door. A glance down showed that the paper identified Lady Carmichael as a master researcher at the National Health Service.

“I’m here because I’m working on a vaccine,” Lady Carmichael said. Her voice came from lower, as if she’d knelt to meet Ada on her level. “Do you know what a vaccine is?”

What an odd question. Ada frowned at the door as she considered the question’s purpose. Either Lady Carmichael meant to lull her into dropping her guard, or she was embracing her role as a dutiful health worker.

“Please, talk to me,” Lady Carmichael said.

Ada chewed her top lip, debating. She’d had enough experiences to know never to trust a human. Yet Lady Carmichael certainly could’ve opened the door by now if she’d wanted. Or turned Ada into a frozen statue, like the sheriff still was.

Quietly, Ada said, “A vaccine is a little bit of bad germ injected into you so you don’t get sick.”

“Very good.”

Ada couldn’t tell if she was being condescending or not. “I read the newspapers. I know what the Health Service is doing against smallpox.”

“That’s not my work. My vaccine will eradicate old age.”

Ada scoffed. “That’s not caused by a germ.”

“Not technically, no. But the body produces its own impurities, which make us age. This vaccine prevents those impurities from developing. Or it will, once I get a unicorn horn to mix into it.”

All at once, Ada wished she had one, so she might see what Lady Carmichael would do. Unicorn horns had that ability, to bring out the best and worst in each individual. She wondered on which side Lady Carmichael would fall if given the chance.

Instead, she sidled over until she could see out the window while still brushing her fingertips against the smooth heads of the nails.

Lady Carmichael knelt on the porch, her head down, her parasol closed beside her. She might have been a supplicant kneeling before the altar of her god. In that moment, Ada could pity her. Brownies lived so much longer than humans, who burned out after mere decades. Already fine lines pinched the corners of Lady Carmichael’s eyes and mouth.

“I told the truth,” Ada said. “We don’t sell horns. I don’t have one for you.”

Lady Carmichael’s head shot up. She sprang to her feet with a rustle of silk.

Ada added, staring up at her suddenly looming overhead: “You should try getting one from a museum.”

“We tried, believe me, but those horns were too old, their power too weak.” Lady Carmichael pressed her palms together as if she prayed. “I’m afraid I need one that’s more potent, one that’s from a living unicorn. So I must get it from you.”

Ada bristled. “Because you humans slaughtered them all.”

Lady Carmichael tilted her head. “It’s ironic, I grant you that. Still, I must insist you give me one.”

“No.”

“And all of our tests, all of our models, all the old records we consulted indicate one thing. The horn must be from a specific kind of unicorn. A mare, a pregnant mare.”

Ada gasped. Something predatory had slipped into Lady Carmichael’s face as she said it. Ada stepped back, her arm sliding over her belly. “No.”

“I know you have one.” Lady Carmichael leaned forward, nearly pressing her nose against the window. “I glimpsed it amid the trees on the way in.”

“Do you people want them all to die? This is the first foal we’ve had in the five years we’ve been here.”

“But think of the suffering you’d prevent. No aches, no degeneration, no senility. Youth and vitality until the very end.”

“Brownies already have that,” Ada said. “Why should I help you?”

In place of some platitude, Lady Carmichael smiled slowly, her grin broadening into a smirk that chilled Ada more than the statue spell.

“Because,” Lady Carmichael said, enunciating every syllable, “I possess the power and authority to have your husband released from jail.”

“You’re lying,” Ada said, a reflexive response, even as she knew Lady Carmichael spoke true.

“Tsk. You know I could wire your governor, your senators, even the president himself. Micah would be free in an hour.”

Shaking, Ada backed up until she bumped into a hard corner of the table. She half-expected Lady Carmichael to shatter the window and stride inside, grabbing her up to force her consent.

Instead the woman held up a document, printed on the same ivory paper as her identification. “Sign this, and you’ll be a hero to both your husband and millions around the world.”

A lie, a least in part. Micah would not want her to do this. Yes, she needed him on the land, to help with the harvest and the winter preparations. But he loved the unicorns as much as she did. And a foal would guarantee a stream of tourists.

“If you need additional incentive,” Lady Carmichael said, pressing the document to the window, “I will have a private law passed, ensuring ownership of this land to you and your descendants in perpetuity.”

Ada’s throat felt tight, imaging losing this land. “It’s already ours.”

“As long as the sheriff and land grabbers don’t force you off. As long as no bureaucrat decides the unicorns are in the best interest of the country.”

“And how much are your promises worth? Less than the paper you have there?”

“I wouldn’t have the president’s ear if I didn’t keep my promises.”

“I won’t sell you a unicorn.”

“You must.”

If she ran, she might make it past Lady Carmichael. She could lure the woman away, get her lost good and proper on the other side of the river where Zoë never went.

Something white moved at the edge of the window pane. As if she’d heard her name, Zoë emerged from behind the automobile. Fearless as always, she sniffed at the frozen sheriff’s upraised elbow.

Ada sucked in her breath. Go away, she screamed inside.

Lady Carmichael glanced over her shoulder. “Well. Aren’t you gorgeous?”

Ada flung open the door. “Zoë, run!”

But Lady Carmichael snapped her fingers. Zoë froze, her head up, face turned trustingly towards the cabin.

Heat rose over Ada. She grabbed Lady Carmichael’s skirt. The woman smelled of iodine and fish oil. “For pity’s sake, at least let her bear her foal.”

Lady Carmichael tore her skirt free. “All the records say the horn will lose its potency after the birth. I need it now.” She opened her parasol and swept down the porch steps like a grim wind from the mountains. She grabbed the base of Zoë’s horn.

“For your husband and your land.”

Ada’s mouth was dry. Her heart seemed to quake in her chest. Unicorn horns could bring out the best and worst in people, and Zoë was right there, Lady Carmichael’s slim fingers wrapped around her horn. How long before Lady Carmichael began to rethink her offer? She could easily go for the worst--freeze Ada, leaving her to die motionless, her unborn child within her. Then she would kill Zoë and take her horn. The rest of the herd would be defenseless when word of a freshly harvested horn leaked out.

Or maybe, just maybe, Zoë’s proximity would cause Lady Carmichael to see how detrimental taking this horn now would be. Better to return in a few years, once the herd had grown.

Did Ada dare wait to see which way Lady Carmichael went?

Don’t sign, Micah would tell her. Humans never keep their word to brownies.

Zoë’s nostrils flared, panic setting in.

Lady Carmichael simply tilted her head, waiting, the zealous public servant placing the needs of the many above the needs of the few.

Perhaps, just perhaps, in her mind Ada’s needs plus those of Micah and their child equaled the needs of one human.

Perhaps.

And that meant, Ada hoped, that Lady Carmichael would keep her promises.

“I’ll sign your paper.” The words burned Ada’s lips.

Lady Carmichael beamed. “You won’t regret it.” She produced a pen.

Ada looked up from signing in time to hear Lady Carmichael whisper a word and to see her slice the air with her hand.

A cut appeared across Zoë’s throat. She reared, panic in her eyes. Red streamed down her shining white chest and splattered against her legs. The air smelled sharply of blood.

Horror filled Ada, but Lady Carmichael stood back, arms crossed over her chest, her parasol shading her face. Zoë rolled her head down, as if she tried to use her own horn to seal the wound. Of course she could not reach. A mewling sound escaped her throat, a noise Ada had never heard before.

At last Zoë crumpled to the ground. She jerked once, her hoof scuffing against the dry grass. Then she lay still, her swollen belly rippling. Then it too was still, and the light of her coat went out.

Only then did Ada look away.

ON A CRISP autumn day two months later, Ada wrapped baby Emma in a yellow quilt. She took Micah’s hand, and the three of them walked to the meadow’s edge.

Ada sat in the trees, the golden leaves falling around her, as Micah carried Emma into the meadow to meet the unicorns. A bit ragged with their winter coats growing in, they shone with the grayish white of dandelion fluff.

It warmed her heart to see them crowding around Micah and Emma, sniffing the newest addition to their land. She longed to join them, but the unicorns ran from her now, had done so ever since a sudden wind blew Sheriff Bloch and Lady Carmichael into their valley. She stayed on her cushion of leaves instead.

“I don’t regret,” she whispered to the air, and she didn’t. She could never regret having the three of them together in this, their valley. Emma would grow up beloved by unicorns, while Micah led tourists to see future foals. And the humans, preternaturally young thanks to their new vaccine, would have many long years to journey here.

Still, looking at the meadow where she dared not set foot, she couldn’t help but think that without Zoë and the foal her own life had grown that much darker.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

KATHRYN YELINEK lives in Pennsylvania, where she works as a librarian.  She is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop.  Her fiction has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Daily Science Fiction, NewMyths.com, Metaphorosis, and Deep Magic, among others.  Visit her online at kathrynyelinek.com 

Holy Orders

JOHN SYKES

THE GILDED CLOCK struck the hour from its perch on the paneled walls of the antechamber. The deep tones of the chimes embedded in the ornate timepiece echoed back from the high ceilings. Marcus looked around at the other acolytes, all sitting and waiting in the same stiff, high-backed chairs that lined the walls of the antechamber. He counted twenty in all. Twenty graduates of the seminary who were awaiting their reviews. Marcus looked again at the tall doors that separated them from the proceedings within the council chambers. Doctors of theology and ecclesiastical leaders alike had places on the evaluation panel.

Marcus pulled his fingers from his mouth. He’d been biting his nails again. He noticed a few of his fellow graduates were figeting too. They were all right to be nervous. They would be receiving appointments based on the final reviews of their scores and coursework. Despite his nervousness, Marcus felt he had a clear advantage over the others. He was well aware of his placement in the classes and had received glowing recommendations from his instructors. All of the wizened clerics had been noticeably impressed with his understanding and application of official religious doctrine. Marcus had emerged as a stanch defender of the faith. No one had bested him in debate and he had written several treatises that had received perfect marks and were being published by the college. Marcus meditated on the words of the prophets in order to master his jumbled emotions. He had every reason to be confident. With effort, he squashed the doubts down.

One by one, the graduates were called in by the secretary, a ponderous priest named Orvick. He was squat and thick-jowled with hooded eyes that made him seem half-asleep all the time. In the stuffy room the man was sweating profusely so that his white clerical robes were covered in damp patches. In the fullness of time, Orvick emerged again and it was his turn to enter the council chamber.

“Marcus Sanclare.”

“Yes, brother,” said Marcus.

“The elders are ready to see you now. Please follow me.”

As he was leaving the antechamber his eyes lit on one of the paintings that decorated the paneled walls. It depicted the prophet Thaddeus receiving the Seven Scrolls from God. Marcus prayed that he would have the chance to serve as faithfully as the prophet. The doors shut behind him and Marcus followed Orvick down a short hall lined with silver lamps that relieved the darkness of the windowless space. He was ushered into a much larger room covered with more of the same dark wooden panels. The ceiling was awash with colors from frescos depicting scenes from the scriptures. More images and icons covered the walls. A clock identical to the one in the antechamber chimed the hour just as Marcus entered. Orvick beckoned him to a solitary chair in the middle of the room. His eyes were fixed on the seven men sitting behind a long table opposite him. Once Marcus was seated, Orvick bowed to the elders and removed himself.

For a time there was silence as the seven members of the review considered the sheaves of notes set before them. Marcus waited, barely moving a muscle. The elders ignored him mostly, though from time to time, one or another would glance up and look directly at him. It went on for the better part of a half hour. The progress of the clock drew Marcus’s eye more than once.

One of the elders cleared his throat. Marcus gave him his full attention.

“Greetings and God’s blessings to you, Marcus Sanclare. I am Brother Rotham. The other members of this review panel have been examining your records. You have made many achievements during your period of study. From the reports issued by your instructors, you have, by all accounts, far exceeded their expectations and have displayed all of the qualities that the Church expects out of its clerics. I have read your treatise on the prophecies of Thaddeus. It is a superb work of exegesis and linguistic scholarship. I think you will do the church many valuable services in the coming years.”

“Thank you, brother,” said Marcus. He bowed his head slightly to mask his smile at being praised. There were good reasons to remain outwardly solemn before these aged servants.

Brother Rotham continued. “This review is an important step towards your vocation. It is the culmination of all of those years of study and devotion, brother. It is our duty as elders and leaders of this seminary to issue orders to new graduates.”

Marcus waited. His gaze did not waver and he was focused on the panel.

Brother Rotham nodded. A slight smile touched his thin lips. “Good. I am glad the gravity is not lost on you.”

“Yes, Brother.”

“According to Brother Elias, you have expressed interest in continuing your studies in theology proper and hope for placement at one of the other colleges.”

Marcus nodded. “Yes, I am hoping to build on my work and acquire a professorship.”

There was some mumbling among the other elders. One held up a hand.

“Yes, Brother Terrence,” said Brother Rotham.

“Thank you, brother.” He looked at Marcus over spectacles that made his watery eyes seem twice as large as normal. “I have examined your treatises as well, and examined some of your other class work, lad. Additionally, I’ve been present at a few of your public debates. You have a remarkable mind for apologetics, Sanclare. Have you not considered using those considerable talents out in the missionary field? There is always need of men with such skills to confront false teachers, heretics, and the heathens that dwell at the world’s edges.”

Marcus frowned. “I...uh, no. That is, no Brother Terrence I hadn’t considered this prospect much at all. I felt that I would serve God and the Church far more effectively if I were one of its doctors, training those men who felt called to go out into the world to spread the message of the prophets.”

“I see,” answered Brother Terrence. Marcus watched the elder remove a quill from an ink well and scribble something on the pages before him.

There was some muted discussion between Terrence and two of the other elders. Marcus couldn’t make out their words and did not want to get caught trying to eavesdrop. Rotham joined the discussion. There was nothing Marcus could do but wait for them to return to him. Several more minutes elapsed by the clock’s reckoning. His mind wandered some and Marcus recited the first twenty verses of the Martyr’s Song before the consultations ended and Brother Rotham looked at him.

“By the authority we have been vested with by God and His Church, you, Marcus Sanclare, have been appointed a priest with all of the responsibilities that entails. Furthermore, it is our decision that your first assignment will be to serve as a Professor of Theology at the newly established Ravener College in Norandy.”

Marcus smiled and felt like his insides were going to gush out. He was so happy it took a moment for the location of the college to register in his mind. “Norandy, Brother Rotham? You said, Norandy?”

The elder nodded. “Yes, that is correct. Ravener College was established the previous spring. It is an up and coming school in a region in sore need of the light of the Prophets.”

“But, I had thought you would send me back home to Capitalia or to Laraland.”

Brother Rotham did not smile. The rest of the elders all fixed Marcus with the same impenetrable expressions. “No, brother. No, you must meet the Church’s needs in Norandy. Someone with your qualifications and gifts is what is required. Besides, it is good for the soul to serve in the darker corners of the world. Only there will the light of God shine brightest from the hearts of his servants.”

Marcus did not speak at first. After a moment, he bowed formally to the elders of the review panel. “Thank you, brothers. I will perform my duties honorably and give praise to God for His blessings.”

“Excellent,” said another of the elders.

“Very good, brother,” said Brother Rotham. “You’ll find your letters of introduction and other documents waiting for you with Brother Orvick.”

“God be praised,” exalted Brother Terrence.

Marcus stood up. The elders were already leaving the council chamber. They all offered further encouragements and a couple shook his hand in respect. After a moment or two, he was the only one left in the room. Marcus trembled but mastered himself and made to leave. The heavy breathing alerted him to Orvick’s approach before he saw him.

The rotund priest held out a hefty package of sealed letters. “You’ll find everything you need inside to prepare yourself for the journey.”

Marcus acknowledged the priest’s words, took the package, and left in a daze.

“Norandy? Norandy, a land barely subdued by the empire’s armies. A place of darkness and demon worshippers. That is where I will put my talents to good use for God and the Church?”

MARCUS WALKED ACROSS the open campus of the college pausing for a few moments of brief conversation or to exchange a blessing with those he met. He left the seminary grounds still considering the assignment he received. Only after he stopped in one of the plazas to let a parade of parishioners move through on their way to one of the sacred sites that covered the entire district of the city did he remember, with a start, that he was now officially a priest of the Church. Marcus laughed out loud and smiled so broadly his cheeks hurt. The particulars of his coming professorship at Ravener College were ignored for a moment.

The plaza was bright with midday sunlight which sparkled off the waters of the fountain set in the midst of the flow of people that moved about their business. There were flocks of birds alternately making nuisances of themselves pestering the pedestrians and wheeling over the crowds in clumped formations. Marcus leaned on the edge of the fountain to watch the black shapes cast their shadows across the weathered stones. Some minutes passed before he stood up again and continued on his way to his chambers on the opposite end of the campus.

Hemherst College was one of the oldest schools in the empire. It was an esteemed institution that catered to both secular and sacred interests. Marcus had attended the school under the patronage of his family’s liegelord, Lord Cavendish Beck. The choice of the clergy had been made to keep him from being conscripted into the imperial armies. Marcus knew it had been a generous offer and had come to appreciate the costs to both himself and his father with time and reflection.

Walking along the wide stone concourses, Marcus realized how much the college had become a second home to him over the last seven years. Every plaza and pavillion held memories that he would take with him. The full growth of his faith had been shaped by the lessons he learned from the elders who taught the one true doctrine that revealed the words of the Prophets. Marcus sought to take in almost every stone that his sandaled feet tread on as he followed the familiar route. A new life awaited him beyond the sheltering walls. Before leaving the college grounds he would don the vestments of the priest and his life of service would truly begin.

As he entered the dormitories set aside for the acolytes, Marcus broke the seal on his documents. The papers were written in a fine hand and provided information about Ravener including a list of the staff, the founders of the college, and other pertinent details about his position. The church would provide for the costs of his journey, which Marcus recognized would be particularly arduous. Ravener College was situated in Norandy, a border province surrounded by the snowy heights of the White Mountains. The empire’s outer edges lacked access to the established trade roads that made travel swift and safe. He’d read a little about Norandy during his geography courses and recalled enough to know how isolated and how backwards the province and former independent kingdom truly was.

Marcus sighed but barely stifled a groan. How can the elders send me somewhere so far away from the centers of culture and influence? It’s a waste of my talents.

He looked at the writ of credit included. They were providing a him a stipend for expenses and for the costs of the journey. Marcus glanced at a note scribbled in a messier hand—likely Orvick’s hand. The message gave him passage with a caravan of Vangen monks heading west. Marcus shook his head at the image of him riding a horse on lonely, dust-choked roadways with the rough-rider martial order.

“Lord God, forgive my disappointment,” Marcus whispered penitently. “May the Prophets give me patience.” He arrived at his door and gazed up at the stonework of the ceiling. “I just want to share Your truths, O Mighty One.”

THE PREPARATIONS TOOK two days. Marcus was busy most of the time getting his affects packed up, coordinating with the Vangen Master-at-arms, Kedwin Telemar, to make sure that none of his books would be mishandled by the soldier monks. Worries and fears washed over Marcus and his apprehension was barely contained by his nightly prayers. Since he was ordained and issued orders, he couldn’t even find solace in classes. His days were empty except for the frantic preparations. Marcus felt like screaming, but doubled his time in prayer both morning and at night. Finally, when all was readied, it was time to depart the college grounds.

Marcus sat in his vacant chamber. Early morning sunlight blazed through the open shutters. The room had been his home for many years. Now some other student would make it his own. All of his belongings were safely packed up and already on their way to the stables across campus. Morning prayers would commence shortly and Marcus would attend one last service in the college chapel.

The table before him contained a pair of letters. One was for his patron, Lord Beck. The other was to his family—his father in particular. Marcus picked up both letters. He tucked them in his belt pouch and stood up. With a final look around the chamber, the neophyte priest departed. He walked slowly, again taking in the familiar sights, sounds, and smells of the campus. Fellow students, acquaintances mostly, nodded in passing or congratulated Marcus on his accomplishment. The chapel bells began to chime their deep melody. He followed them until he entered the square inside seminary boundaries where the chapel lie. Priests, students, and laborers all flowed towards the open doors and Marcus was swept into that flow.

The chapel’s high ceilings soared out of sight and the great arches supported both stone and a tapesty of stained glass mosaics that shone brilliantly. Marcus stared up as he entered the aisles where the rows of benches were arranged in a great semi-circle around the pulpit. Morning prayers were not as crowded as the midday and evening services, but the room still bustled. A hundred or more gathered in the hallowed sanctuary, conversing in hushed voices, and carrying the usual academic speculations that burdened the minds of church doctors and theologians. Marcus smiled and breathed deeply as he passed former professors and a few classmates who had recently been elevated to full priesthood.

Marcus took a seat just as the last ring resounded through the chapel. The chanting began and he lifted his voice together with the others.

THE VANGEN MONKS were organizing when Marcus entered the stableyard, dressed for the journey and battlin with anxiety. The monks were dressed in identical blue cloaks worn over gray tunics. Each carried the same plain short sword at their hips. Kedwin Telemar stood in front of the perusing the a sheaf of papers clipped to a board he held in his hands. The master-at-arms turned around when he noticed Marcus.

The man smiled. “Ah, ready I see. I just wanted to go over the manifest for the journey to make sure all of the supplies—and your possessions—were accounted for.”

Marcus nodded respectfully. “Thank you, Master Telemar. I am grateful that all is in hand. When shall we begin?”

The master-at-arms pointed to a black stallion loaded with saddlebags and tied to another animal, a gray, loaded with pantiers and other cargo. Several other horses were emerging from the broad stable doors in the hands of grooms.

“We are ready now, honored one.”

Marcus tried to cover his nerves by walking up to the stallion. The horse tossed his great mane and snorted. Marcus looked in to the animal’s black eyes. He smiled. It had been ages since he’d ridden, but somehow the horse’s placid stare calmed him. Marcus reached out and let the stallion nuzzle his hand.

The monks prepared the horses and mounted swiftly. Kedwin Telemar climbed up behind a big brown stallion. Finally, Marcus was the last to mount his horse. The others waited wordlessly. He looked back at the campus buildings. The familiar temples and school buildings, the dormatories, and so much more. Suppressing a sigh, Marcus climbed on the black stallion’s back.

“Let us begin this journey, then,” said Telemar.

“Yes,” said Marcus. “May God grant us a safe journey to Ravener.” The new priest spurred his horse and rode through the outer doors of the college grounds and out into the streets. Without a word, the Vangen monks formed up around him, their blue cloaks flapping lightly, and the glint of their steel reflecting in the sun.

Hemherst College took up the southern corner Hemherst, where some of the structures dated back nearly a thousand years. Marcus rode past the pale brick walls that hid the homes of the city’s academic leaders, the thinkers of the city, the professors who taught the students not receiving instruction in the seminary. Marcus had met and occasionally conversed with the professors, though custom frowned on such easy fraternizing between the sacred and the secular. That tension was something Marcus did not think much on while engaged in his studies, with his nose planted in books and his fingers black with ink from the treatises and reports he had done for class. Now that he was a priest--now that he was outside the school now—he realized some things would need to change.

A priest must be there to weigh in and protect the sacred truths. More so a professor of theology.

The Vangen monks took the main roads out of Hemherst. Marcus noticed that they seemed to be looking everywhere at once, always on guard and ready for anything. He wondered how the members of a martial order that made them more like soldiers could also be clergymen in God’s service, as emmissaries of the Prophets themselves.

“My mind wanders from one query to another now.” Marcus chuckled. “Must be nerves.”

Telemar turned. “Did you said something, brother?”

Marcus smiled ruefully. “Nothing. It was nothing I was just thinking...well, I was thinking or rather wondering how those in your order do devotions and serve the purposes of the Prophets as warriors?”

Telemar looked at Marcus, his eyes intense. “We serve to our last breaths, lifting weapons to defend the defenseless and the weak. It is God’s will, is it now?”

Marcus thought on that. “Yes, word says so. The word divine rule commands it just as it commands us to spread the word and to defend the word.” The young priest held up a finger. “Some with our words while others,” Marcus pointed at the sword,” with that.”

Telemar smirked. “Yes. You speak rightly.”

The master-at-arms spoke on while Marcus listened attentively. In a short while, they had wound their ways across the city and were nearing the outer gates. The great doors were open to daytime traffic. The guards, the men of the watch, wore gray uniforms with the Hemherst sigil on the chest. Marcuw nodded as they rode past, but the men merely stared back flatly.

Marcus frowned but didn’t say anything.

The land beyond the walls of the city was open and hilly. In the far distance, he could make out the shapes of the White Mountains but the haze of the day made it hard to make out the details. There were a succession of villages lining the broad road leading out of Hemherst that was slowly merging together to form a second city of sorts. The traffic was thicker and more congested. The blue cloaks of the Vangen gave them a bit more room to move when it was noticed. The people dwelling in the villages were dressed plainly some in little more than rags at times. Marcus saw children running barefoot through the dirty side streets, kicking up mud and adding to the general muck and filth.

Some of the plain folk gave Marcus hard looked as he rode past which bothered the young priest. There was no proper reverence for a servant of God. It pricked his sensibilities. The world was a harder place beyond the cloistered walls than Marcus had remembered.

“Good as time as any to reacquaint myself with it all,” Marcus said softly.

The Vangen continued to act as something of a guard until they had left the last of the villages behind and were truly out on open country. The road was broad and traffic still passed them going towards Hemherst. Soon, though, even that tappered off as they climbed the hills and left the sight of the city. Marcus only looked back a few times. A sense of discomfort much like the homesickness he felt when he’d first arrived at the school as a boy stole over him. The priest sought some solace in prayer.

He recited the True Verses to himself until he was calmer and then turned his attention to the landscape itself. Telemar was talking with one of the other monks so Marcus was left to his own devices. The rolling gait of the horse was disconcerting at first but he slowly regained the proper balance in the saddle. He smiled at the faded memories of riding lessons he’d gotten, again, through the generosity of Lord Beck.

I’ll honor you in my prayers tonight, my lord. Marcus smiled and drew out a small bound notebook. He pulled loose the pencil that tucked within and started jotting down his impressions thus far. The activity served him well. Marcus compiled his thoughts frequently and usually used them for outlining sermons and other works. Perhaps, I shall write a memoir?

They rode through lonely country for a time where there was no one on the broad road but their small caravan. This gave Marcus plenty of time to ruminate on his past and spent a few moments to consider the shape of his future. The position at Ravener College would be like nothing he had ever experienced. Marcus jotted down notes about that too. He would be responsible for creating the curriculum for the erstwhile students of the backwater institution. Norandy truly was the edge of the known world, a rugged province butted up against thick, ancient forests and wildlands. What was beyond what locals called the Blackwall remained a mystery. Old superstitions discouraged any exploration. Those courageous enough to venture into the tangled shadows—well, Marcus had been led to believe that those sorry souls had met their ends in the forests. Or so the stories went.

“What’re you scribbling there, if I might ask?”

Marcus jumped slightly. Telemar was riding next to him again. “Oh what, ah yes, I was writing dow a few notes on what I’ll be teaching students at Ravener.” Marcus smiled.

The master-at-arms didn’t return his easy expression. Instead he gave Marcus heavy look. “Be wary of how you approach those that attend the new school, brother. The old folk ways of those Norandians run strong still. They are very new to the light of the Prophets.”

“Yes, uh brother. I’ve taken to studying the province and the old pagan religions of its people. Thank you.”

Telemar grunted. “Not old pagan ways, but present ones lingering among the plain folk. Some are resentful of the school’s establishment. You’ll be looked upon as an intruder. Perhaps an enemy.”

Marcus frowned. “An enemy? Surely not that. I’ve come that they might know the truth. So they can put away backwards superstitions. Our God will prevail, brother Telemar.”

“Yes,” said Telemar. “Yes, He will... given time and through our efforts.”

Marcus tamped down his annoyance at the man’s tone. He wasn’t sure what it was about the man’s practical comments that bothered him. The Vangen monks were well traveled and knowledgeable about the lands of men. They were bound by oaths and sanctioned to use force in their mission. The will of the Prophets and the one true God was enacted in many ways upon the earth.

“Has there been violent resistance?”

Telemar nodded grimly. “As recently as six months ago.”

Marcus swallowed the lump in his throat and felt a cold chill ripple across his skin. “I see.”

“Those responsible for the governance of the province adopted a more liberal policy regarding the traditions of the Norandians. It went a long way towards smoothing things over.”

Marcus tried to hide his shock. “You mean they compromise the beliefs of the church elders?”

“More than that,” said Telemar. “They allow some of those folk ways you mentioned to carry on unhindered. So you see, it is likely you’ll have a lecture hall filled more than halfway with unabashed pagans.”

Marcus was unnerved by the monk’s matter-of-fact point. More so because I’d never considered it.

The young priest rode on silently.

DOUBTS ABOUT HIS ability festered inside Marcus so that he reviewed different methods for evangelism he’d learned or read on during the course of his studies. All were theory. Marcus had never had to practice them. He’d been cloistered in that seminary.

I’m not ready for this. I’m a scholar not a witness.

A high-pitched whining sound startled him. There was a blur of motion. There a sucking sound. Suddenly, one of the monk’s riding near him gasped. An arrow protruded from his throat. Blood splattered Marcus’s face. Everything after happened quickly. There were shouts. The monks whipped their horses about. Telemar pulled the reins from his hands and dragged both he and the black stallion roughly off the road and down the side where the ground slopped.

Marcus heard more shouting and the sounds of bows being drawn and fired rapidly and methodically. Telemar pulled him from the saddle and pressed him against the rocky side of embankment.

“Stay down, brother.” Then Telemar ripped his own bow and quiver from his horse’s saddle and joined the other monks.

Marcus couldn’t think straight or move so he slide to the dark earth and covered his head with his arms. The fighting grew more fierce to his ears and at least three times he heard the scrape of steel on steel. In a little time, the fighting ceased. Marcus stayed crouched and couldn’t stop from trembling. He prayed in a raspy, desperate whisper, pleaded to the Lord of Life to preserve his life. The words of the Prophets tumbled through his head in mess.

Someone touched his shoulder. Marcus flinched and pressed himself harder against the embankment. “No! Please don’t kill me.”

“Peace brother. All is well now. Peace, I say.”

Marcus opened his eyes. Telemar was kneeling beside him. The monk was a bit dusty but otherwise unharmed. He held his bow in the other hand.

Marcus looked into the monk’s eyes. “What happened?”

“An ambush of sorts,” answered Telemar. He held out a hand. “Come. We’ve caputured one of them. Let’s see what he has to say.”

Marcus opened his mouth but nothing came out. Instead, he let the Vangen monk pull him up and the two of them walked around the embankment and up the short hill to the road. There was no sign of their attackers. Just the fallen monk’s body laying still on the ground with blood glistening from the wound in his ruined throat.

“Where?”

Telemar pointed into a small copse of blackwood trees. Marcus walked towards them and saw the bodies of the other attackers more clearly. They were scattered here and there, some sprawled on the ground, a few other still tangled in the branches of the trees. Telemar went a little further into the copse. Marcus followed behind him. There was a slight clearing. Two of the Vangens were standing guard over another man dressed in dirty and ripped clothes. He clutched his arm where a blood darkened the fabric. There were gashes on his face and forehead.

The man had a sullen, angry look on his face. He became aggitated when he saw Marcus in his priestly robes. “Damn the lot of you! Filthly churchmen. What gives you the right to rule over free men and tell them how they should approach the Holy One? A curse on you and your lot. A curse! Death to the priests!” Spittle flew from his mouth and his eyes bulged from his head. The man struggled to get up, but was hastily restrained by the monks.

Marcus was aghast. He took a step backwards.

This man hates me. He would kill me. Marcus suddenly realized something. No, they were trying to kill me. But why?

Marcus moved away but Telemar grabbed his arm. “You must stay.”

“Why?” Marcus wanted to get far away from the man and his angry vitriol.

“You must talk to him, brother. Ask him why he and his accomplices would try to murder a priest.”

“Can’t you,” Marcus asked at first.

The monk grimaced. “No. It must be you.”

Marcus didn’t understand.

“He won’t speak to me, Telemar. He’d sooner spit on me.”

“Try, brother.” The master-at-arms apparently had a stubborn streak.

Marcus hesitated. The man stared at him, his eyes smoldering with hatred, his teeth bared in a contemptible sneer. Marcus forced himself to look at the man. The would-be assassin eyed the Vangen monks that surrounded him and let his shoulders slump.

Marcus knelt before the prisoner. The man’s sleeve was saturated with blood—the wound barely staunched by the pressure of his hand. He glanced up at monks. “Can you tend his wound?”

“Yes, brother.”

The man gave him an odd look but said nothing.

Marcus chose to speak instead. “What is your name?”

The man gave him a sullen look.

“Do you dwell nearby? Perhaps, Dunleavey?”

“Aye, that’s right? Lived there my whole life. Me and the lads you lot killed.”

“But why attack us in the first place? We’re merely travelers passing through the country. I myself have done nothing to wrong you. I’ve barely been a priest a week. What set you and your friends on this madness?”

The man slumped even more. His eyes clouded. “T’was a priest that wronged my sister Cate and when she tried to tell others what he’d done, the bastard denounced her and stripped her name from the church rolls. No one will have her and she is lost.”

Marcus felt his chest tighten. He looked back at Telemar. A monk came with a mending kit helped the man remove his jacket to reveal the wound. Marcus stood up and beckoned Telemar away.

“You heard what he said.”

“Yes, I did,” said Telemar.

“Dare I believe it,” said Marcus. “It is an accusation against a holy priest. Dare I let it stand?”

Telemar put a hand on his shoulder. “Bare this in mind, brother. The world is an imperfect place. Even those named the servants of God are flawed beings. It could be that this stranger feels slighted for some imagined offense. It could also be that the priest has acted against the laws of the church. Such conduct would deserve severe punishments—though not worthy murder I should think.”

“What can we do? It isn’t our place to interfere. The matter should be directed through the appropriate channels.”

“It is true,” said Telemar.

Marcus realized what he must do. He fetched his satchel from the hourse and drew out a thin sheet of paper, his bottle of ink, and a quill. With those in hand, he went back to the prisoner and sat down on the ground in front of him.”

The man eyed him suspicously. “What’s all that for?”

“I’m going to take your statement. Once written down, I will have one of the monks ride back to Hemherst so it might be delivered to church authorities.”

The man frowned. “But why would you do that? He’s one of your own, one of you bloody priests. Why would you...,” his words trailed off.

“Because it is the right thing to do,” Marcus answered. “Now, shall we begin?”

The man could not conceal his shock. In time, he made his statement in full, supplying as many details as he could. Marcus dutifully copied every word—including his name. Once the statement was done, he had the message sealed and with Telemar’s leave, one of the Vangen monks left the clearing and rode back towards Hemherst.

Marcus felt a sense of relief. He stood up and started to leave, but the man, called Larris, held out a hand. “Wait, please.” His hand shook and his eyes glistened with unshed tears.

“Yes,” said Marcus.

Larris smiled. “Thank you. I don’t know what else to say. I don’t deserve any of this for what I’ve done—for what me and the lads did.”

“I can’t excuse what you’ve done. Men have died here today. You will face judgment for your part in these crimes.”

Larris bowed his head. “I accept my fate, priest. And I’ll say a prayer of thanks to God that one such as you heard my plea.”

Marcus bowed his head reverently. “May God be merciful to you.”

Telemar sent a rider to Dunleavey and in time a party of men accompanied the monk back. The matter was explained to the local authorities who then took Larris into custody. Marcus wrote a notice of the church’s involvement and what steps were being taken to address the town priest’s misconduct. The whole affair took up the rest of the day, leaving them little light to travel by so they chose to accept the hospitality of Dunlearey for the night.

“I HAVE MUCH to learn about the ways of the world,” said Marcus.

“Indeed you do, brother,” answered Telemar.

The caravan rode on a rougher, gravel road through rocky hillens. The ground was covered with patchy, yellowing grass. Occasionally, Marcus saw a small flock of goats eating what grew from outcrops above them. Dunleavey was three days behind them now and they had entered the Waymark Flats, a sparsely populated region that marked the edge of the province Woldensia. The Flats were claimed by three other provinces but none had a very strong presence in the desolate palce.

“It takes time,” Telemar added. “The journey to Norandy will take several more days. I’ll wager you might get more than your fair share of such an education on these roads.”

“Yes,” Marcus answered. “You’re right,” he added wryly.

The caravan moved at a slow, steady pace through the Flats. They encountered only a handful of fellow travelers and stopped at a lone homestead to water their horses and rest. The owners were more than happy to provide the clergymen with what they needed. After a short rest, they were moving again. Marcus had long talks with Telemar about his journeys and the wars he and his warrior monks had been engaged in over the years. Marcus was held in rapt attention by the exploits.

“You say that the Ferenditsi live in their wagons and never stay more than a few nights in the same place. They’re always traveling the byways?”

“Yes, the people have been nomadic since time out of mind, brother. No one knows when they started their traveling ways or why.”

Telemar told him of strange customs and even stranger societies of peoples living on the fringes of the known realms, some outside the rule of the Church and the high lords. The light of the Prophets shone dimly in such isolated places of the world. Marcus realized that Norandy, under the supervision of the armies of the four realms, would be much more secure. His thoughts returned to his pending position at Ravener College. With a writing desk perched on the horn of the saddle, Marcus jotted down more notes as they ambled on.

THE CARAVAN ENCOUNTERED other obstacles on the way, many of them Marcus interpreted as tests from the Holy One. His friendship with Kedwin Telemar was a source of comfort to the young priest. His counsel was important when dealing with a civil dispute or a charges of blasphemy or witchcraft. They left the Waymark Flats, traveled in across the province of Benedad. The White Mountains grew larger and more imposing. When they reached the foothills, Telemar turned them onto a different road, that wound through a series of passes. The landscape was rugged, dark stone and the grass was coase and tall. Thick, leathery evergreens hugged the sides of the passes and high above them, the mountains sparkled with snow.

Two days later, they rode into Norandy.

On the morning of the third day, Marcus caught sight of Ravener. The city’s building were oddly built, an ancient architecture strange to behold. The priest was immediately intrigued.

“There’s certain beauty to the buildings,” he said.

Telemar nodded. “No doubt. Ravener is a very old city. At least, three hundred years, from what I’ve read.”

Marcus smiled. “Didn’t take you for a scholar of architecture, brother.”

“There’s a lot you do not know about me, brother.”

Their conversation became more spirited. Marcus felt relief wash over him. Their travels were nearly at an end. But the priest realized something. If the journey was over, would not his time with the Vangen monks--his time with Telemar--before over too?

“Brother, what will you do once we reach the city?”

“I will make sure you have been safely delivered and installed into your new quarters. After that, my brothers and I will check in at the chapter house of our order. From there, we shall receive new assignments.”

“Then it will be goodby then,” said Marcus.

“So it will,” Telemar replied. The monk turned to him. “It has been an honor to serve you. You have the makings of a fine priest and an even better professor.”

Marcus smiled again, broader now. “Thank you. I pray to God that I’m up to the task.”

“He will provide you with all that you need. Like He did on this journey.”

“Yes, yes, He will,” said Marcus simply. He felt the truth of it deep inside.

They continued their slow pace to the city. Marcus Sanclare was filled with confidence. He would hold fast to his oaths and stay true to his holy orders.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JOHN SYKES lives in Central Illinois and writes all sort of stories in his spare time.

The Sunset Special At Midnight Mary’s

M. MICHELLE BARDON

IN THE CITY there is a restaurant, a little diner hidden away between tall tenements on a damp side-street, where they will feed you the meal that your spirit needs most. No reservations are required. To get there, all you need do is step out and take a walk around the city with no particular destination in mind. Let it lead you there. Follow the subtle, hidden signs encoded in the slopes and cracks of the sidewalks, the construction detours, the secret code of flickering streetlights, the pull in your heart to go just one more block.

A man named Jago once took that meandering route, departing in the pearlescent post-rain dusk from the peeling, white-painted front stoop of his townhouse. He elected first to walk through the riverbank park that bisected the east half of the city from the west. The air carried the clean, calm scent of nourished trees. The sound of blue-grey water lapping at the concrete walls below the cyclists and the geese had always simultaneously soothed and invigorated him in a way nothing else quite could.

When the sun dipped low enough over the skyline that the streetlights hummed to life and Jago shivered in his impractically light jacket at the first gust of evening wind, he turned down Paramount Boulevard towards the relative warmth that spilled from the doorways of taverns and shops in the dense, coiling belly of the city. Restless, Jago paused nowhere and spoke to no one. The places he walked past seemed colorless and dull, faded into the fabric of the city like leaf prints and interesting in the way that bits of chewing gum melded seamlessly into the sidewalks are not. Still, his feet stepped so certainly in the fading light that Jago knew he would not turn back towards home until his undefined wanderlust had been sated.

So it was that when he saw a small mottled cat stride purposefully into a shadowy alleyway, Jago stepped away from the evening crowds and followed the furry shadow down that dark, puddle-lined path until he saw a flicker of pink neon call out to him from above a simple wooden door: MIDNIGHT MARY’S CAFÉ.

Jago stopped a discreet distance away from the entrance to consider this intriguing prospect. The café did not appear to be popular. Save for himself and the cat, the alley was abandoned. No one came or went. The scarred and rain-stained wooden door did not open once. There were no windows, either, to hint at what lay beyond or how many people were enjoying an evening meal. All the same, the hum of the neon settled in his teeth, an urban siren’s song that Jago was not inclined to resist. And something did smell delicious. And Jago was quite hungry.

He left the cat to its business and pulled open the door. Soft, sensuous lamplight, distant jazzy music, and a tall, ostrichine woman greeted him on the other side.

“Welcome to Midnight Mary’s!” The woman smiled. She was an avatar of her profession, all warmth and unhurried interest in their new guest, commanding the entrance to the establishment as gatekeeper and ward.

Jago nodded hello and gawked openly at the interior. Whatever he had expected the café to look like, this was not it. Lush crimson carpet, like something out of an old spy movie, spread out in all directions from the clean beige entryway beneath his feet. A long dark wood bar beneath warm lights and trailing strands of pothos was lined with wood and leather counter stools, and a series of cozy tables and high-backed semi-private booths stretched deep into the back of the restaurant. He saw a plume of smoke waft out of a booth to his left and Jago wondered at the ventilation the windowless café must have. All he could smell were the safe, warm scents of pie and fresh pots of coffee.

“Bar or table?” The host asked.

Jago opted for a seat at the bar, and said as much. He felt uncomfortable at the idea of taking up a whole table just for himself, and anyway, solo dining was always less lonely in the company of others in the same situation. If the menu was too expensive or not to his liking, a stool at the bar gave him easy access to a hasty exit.

“You’ll be in good hands there,” the host assured him, as though she sensed his reluctance to stay. “Calix will take care of you.”

The moment Jago settled onto the firm avocado-green seat at the counter, a glass of ice cold water was placed carefully on a coaster before him, closely followed by a napkin and a set of flatware. The bartender’s cologne lingered, unexpectedly feral in such an urban locale: pine resin and the earthy bank of a woodland creek over an animalic musk that set Jago’s nostrils flaring.

“Hello, friend.”

Jago looked up to reply to the owner of the peculiar scent and amicable voice, but found he could only muster a confused furrow of his brow, his lips frozen around the letter ‘w.’ The brocade-vested satyr on the other side of the bar smiled patiently and waited for Jago’s brain to process the situation.

“We’ve been expecting you for so long. Can I get you some coffee? Maybe make it an Irish coffee?” Calix suggested helpfully when Jago remained stunned.

Jago looked to his left, his right, over his shoulder, searching for any witnesses to acknowledge this creature before him, offering him a drink, but no one else was at the bar and the host had disappeared. He turned back to the satyr and attempted words again.

“…Sazerac?” Jago tried. He felt absurdity bubble up in his chest.

Calix smiled like a sunrise breaking through tree branches.

“I can do that,” he said, and reached for a clean glass.

Jago tried not to be rude, tried not to stare at the fog-colored moss-tipped horns that curled ever so delicately at the tips. Tried not to gawk at the little grey-and-white dappled tail which wiggled now and then as Calix selected ingredients from the liquor shelf behind him.

“Uh.” Jago cleared his throat and tried his hand at speech again. “You got a menu I could look at, maybe?”

“Menu?” Calix said over his shoulder. “Oh pal, no. This is Midnight Mary’s. Didn’t anyone tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

Calix returned turned back with Jago’s drink and placed it neatly upon a small square of napkin. His eyes had goat-like horizontal irises, writ large with mirth. He leaned in close, those eyes now level with Jago’s and wrinkled up at the corners, smiling. Calix spoke with a quiet, conspiratorial intensity.

“We’ve got one plate you can order, and that’s the Sunset Special. But it’s easy to customize. What is it you hunger for?”

“Um…”

“There must be something that drew you here, some tug at your soul.”

“A cheeseburger, maybe?”

Calix sighed and pulled away, drew himself up to full height. Sensing he’d made a mistake, Jago tried again.

“You guys got waffles?”

Calix pursed his lips together. Jago looked around, unsure of what the correct response might be. He spotted a passing waiter bearing a steaming bowl of something that smelled rich and savory.

“Okay, what’s that over there?” He pointed out the bowl.

“Ah, that is a very popular dish—house-made ramen noodles in a comforting broth of forgiveness for past sins, spiced with a few memories of small joys long forgotten, topped with chashu pork slices and a creamy soft-boiled egg infused with seven happy birthdays.”

Jago frowned, uninterested in hipster fare.

“Okay but, what are your specials?”

Calix took in a deep breath, let out a long-suffering sigh.

“Try again.”

“I—” Jago floundered helplessly.

Calix rolled his head around to throw a glance at the space behind the bar, and Jago followed his gaze. He noticed for the first time that between the jewel-hued liquor bottles and glasses, there was a space where the café kitchen was visible. In that space, a pair of dark, velvety brown eyes peered back at him.

“Who—” Jago began to ask, but when the mystery eyes met his they went wide and abruptly dropped from view.

“That was the chef,” Calix explained. “No doubt wondering what you’re planning on ordering. Hum.”

Calix stared at Jago at length. Jago stared back, the most out of his depth he’d ever felt eating out.

“What is it that you truly hunger for, my dear boy?” Calix asked.

Jago shrugged helplessly.

“French fries?” He ventured.

“No. Try again.”

“A malted milkshake?”

“…Cheating. Everyone wants those.”

“Can I have one, though?”

Calix sighed, defeated.

“You haven’t even touched your cocktail,” he pouted. Jago, who had forgotten about the drink altogether, dutifully took a sip.

“It’s delicious,” he said truthfully.

“But not what you hunger for.”

Jago shook his head and took another drink in a bid to appease the satyr. A bell sounded somewhere in the back. Calix perked up his ears and twitched his tail.

“We may yet satisfy you,” he said, leaving his post to head towards the kitchen. He returned a short time later with a malted milkshake and a basket piled high with perfectly crisp, golden fried logs that looked almost like French fried potatoes.

“The chef sends her regards,” Calix said, somewhat disapprovingly Jago thought, and set the dishes on the bar.

“Thanks,” Jago looked to where he had seen the brown eyes, but all he found was empty space. He took a fry and dipped it in the shake, like he and his kid sisters used to do when they were young.

The taste was savory, sweet, and salty, with a thread of melancholy at the end. It tasted like the end of the last sunny day of summer before the autumn leaves began to turn; when the pavement under bare feet was still warm from the day but the air was just beginning to cool. It pulled at Jago’s heart so acutely that he could barely swallow the first bite. Stricken, he looked up at Calix who stared intently at him, and nervously rubbed one hand over the other.

“Well?” Calix prompted.

“What is this?” Jago managed. He had never felt such longing for one last sunset. It felt like a memory he couldn’t quite place. Something out of time.

“A family backyard picnic on the last day of a summer vacation long-missed, seasoned with the salty light of fireflies at dusk. And a malted chocolate milkshake.”

The pull at Jago’s heart intensified, and he remembered all of the times he promised he would be home for summer vacation but never managed to make the trip happen.

“How?” He asked.

“It’s what we do here.” Calix waited as Jago ate some more. “Feeling any different? More at peace, perhaps?”

Jago paused, another fry poised halfway between the basket and his mouth.

“Did you drug this food or something? That why I feel so weird?”

“Not in the way you mean, no,” Calix shook his head.

Jago sensed Calix was hedging around some more important truth and set the fry back in the pile, waiting for the bartender to elaborate. Calix tried a different tack.

“What do you remember about today?” he asked.

“What d’you mean?”

“It’s none of my business, I know, but please indulge me. Would you walk me through your day?”

Jago picked the fry back up and chewed it thoughtfully while he stared at the satyr.

“Well, let’s see. I left the house, went for a walk down by the river, got hungry, found this place. Not a lot to tell, really.”

“What about before your walk?” Calix pressed.

Jago shrugged.

“Not much to tell.”

“Humor me anyway? What does your house look like? What time did you wake up this morning? What did you have for breakfast?”

Jago rolled his eyes but realized that he could not remember a single detail of the day before stepping outside for a sunset walk.

“Well I—that is, this morning… I’m fairly certain… Hum.”

“Yes?” Calix watched Jago with sympathetic eyes.

“It’s the strangest thing, but I can’t remember. Any of it.”

“And this meal does nothing to assist your memory?”

“It’s delicious, and makes me feel… like I haven’t felt in a long time. But no.” Jago shook his head. “It doesn’t remind me of anything recent.”

“Well, that’s a pity.” Calix’s disappointment was obvious. Jago felt an urge to apologize for letting him down.

“How much do I owe you?” he said awkwardly instead. Calix shook his head.

“On the house tonight. But, tell you what—make it up to me by coming back tomorrow?”

Jago thought to give a noncommittal response but found himself nodding.

“Yeah. I suppose I will,” he said.

Calix moved on to help other customers who had settled at the bar, and Jago ate the rest of his meal in silence. He thought hard on his day, fishing for any memory. Nothing. He finished up soon after and slipped outside back into the city.

IT RAINED THE next night, and the water streaming down the neon sign amplified the pink glow, reflected cool and buzzing off Jago’s face at the entrance to Midnight Mary’s. He paused at the door and argued with himself if this was where he truly wanted to be, or if he wouldn’t be better off just going home and ordering a pizza. He let go of the handle and as if on cue, the rain and wind grew twice as fierce. Streetlights spasmed nearby. Jago sighed, stepped in from the weather, and hopped up onto a seat at the bar.

“Ah, you found your way back,” Calix said. “Get you a drink?”

Jago ordered a glass of red wine this time and rolled the first sip around his tongue, savoring the opulent texture, the cigar-box smokiness that warmed his limbs and left him feeling much better about his decision to stay. Calix, perhaps sensing Jago needed a minute to collect his thoughts, busied himself with other patrons and left Jago to his wine for a time. Just when the bottom of the glass appeared and hunger had begun to set in, Calix rematerialized in front of him with a refill.

“Remember anything from yesterday yet?” Calix asked.

“Nah. Just not a memorable day, I suppose.”

“And what about earlier today?”

Jago set his wine down. Once again, the more he tried to think about his day, the more elusive the memories became. They swam away, swift tadpoles in the shady coves. Jago looked up and saw that the chef was watching him again through the small gap between the kitchen and the bar.

“No,” he said, looking directly at those eyes. “I can’t remember a thing.”

Calix smiled and leaned against the bar conversationally.

“Well that’s alright. Keep trying and I’m sure you’re bound to remember something. Maybe not from today or yesterday at all, but… at some point, in your recent past. Memories sometimes like to hide away in the places we don’t have fully mapped.”

Calix saw someone take a seat at the bar out of the corner of his eye. He turned to see a tall, wide, feminine figure slip out of her trenchcoat and fold it neatly over the stool next to hers. She sat down, smoothing out the wool of her skirt, and gestured for Calix’s attention.

“She’s blue,” Jago blurted out. The woman pretended she hadn’t heard, but his exclamation had been embarrassingly loud. Calix pursed his lips and clicked his tongue against his teeth.

“Don’t be bigoted, Jago Milgavrey. And quit leering.”

Calix left to take the woman’s order and Jago sunk deeper into the collar of his jacket, trying to hide his face. He was fairly certain that blue was an unusual skin color, but then again, he couldn’t seem to remember the events of the past two days, or any other day. Maybe blue was normal. Maybe most people were blue. He looked down at the light sepia brown of his own hands. Was he the unusual one? Calix was fawn-colored, but Calix also had hooves and a tail.

Jago wracked his brain for memories of faces, of bodies, but all he found were shadows, vague silhouettes. What did his siblings look like? Small and annoying yet loveable blobs. What about his parents? Taller blobs. Teachers? Friends? Was he dating anyone? Girlfriend? Boyfriend? Both? Jago couldn’t remember. The kitchen bell dinged, pulling him out of his memory-hole. Calix came back with a plate of food and set it in front of him on the bar.

“One Sunset Special,” the satyr said.

“Steak?” Jago ventured. The meal looked fancier and more elaborate than anything he had ever eaten. Or at least, it felt that way to him. Truthfully, Jago had no idea. Perhaps he ate artistically arranged beef every night.

“Try some,” Calix prompted.

Jago picked up his cutlery and sampled a forkful laden with a little bit of each item on the plate. It tasted of warmth, but not the warmth like summer sunset before, or the simple warmth of a good meal—this was the smoky warmth of a fire in the hearth on a cold winter’s day. A pair of cozy slippers on his feet. A hot drink and a hefty novel, curled up on the couch while a hushed snowstorm chilled the windows but could not reach him, no matter how it piled up outside.

The sauce was rich and fragrant, savory with a kiss of spice: cocktails and a hot bath, a pair of warm and eager lips, bodies pressed against one another in the wetness beneath the fragrant bubbles. Jago’s face flushed and he washed the first mouthful down with the heady red wine. He took another bite.

Deeper into the kiss, pressed up against the wall. Where was this memory coming from? Jago felt the cold tile against his back and his heart ran laps beneath his skin. He was gripping someone, a face unseen but their hips dug into him, their mouth was on his neck and his was on their forehead, their cheeks, their lips. Steam from the bath clouded everything, muffled echoes of their lovemaking as the snow piled up against the window.

This was someone he knew intimately, almost as well as himself. Someone he laughed with. Someone he hugged with his entire heart. They had come up to this cabin and spent more than they should have on a weekend of luxury sheets and skiing. When had he learned how to ski? They were up there celebrating something…

Jago fell into his meal, a man half-starved and desperate for each bite to last just a little longer—just a few more moments of that bliss! Sweat beaded along his forehead and back. Every time he stopped eating long enough to return to his wine glass, his breath came hard. Too soon, the meal was over and with it, the memories. The weekend in the snowbound cabin faded from his mind, leaving him with a full belly and a pleasantly muddled head.

“What was that?” he asked when Calix appeared to clear his plate away. Not one smear of sauce remained on the dish. Calix smiled gently.

“A well-crafted passion, forged from friendship and shared adventures, cooked medium-rare, accompanied by a fricassee of scholastic accomplishments, topped with a carefree, celebratory demi-glace.”

“Whose memories are these?” Jago pressed.

Calix hesitated. Just as it seemed like he might answer, a muffled sob cut between them. They both turned to see the blue woman, face in her hands and her elbows akimbo on the bar, crumpled over her meal.

“Oh, dear. Please excuse me,” Calix murmured, and left Jago to his wine.

Jago didn’t know what else to do, so he finished his glass, got up, and left. Walking always cleared his head, rain or no rain. He thought about the blue woman, the meal, the memories that were his but weren’t, all the way home to his darkened front stoop.

THIS TIME HE dreamt, and he remembered. The night stretched long and airy, cool river air on soft curtains. In that space of evening, Jago remembered the faces of his siblings and their names: Naera, Vio, and Jade. He remembered, of all things, skinning his knee when he tripped on the huge front steps leading up to his first day of school. The sound of birds in the morning. Crunching through autumn leaves and splashing through spring puddles. He remembered turning eighteen, graduating, getting accepted to a good college several states away, packing up and moving into his first apartment. The way his first coffee tasted from the pot on the morning of his first day living on his own. Independence at last.

Jago felt a twinge, a line out of place in the story. A glitch of fuzz and repeating noise where memories once lay. He moved to college, got an apartment, got an evening job, and then… what? Breakfasts of Pop-Tarts and the cheapest coffee, sometimes reusing the grounds to squeeze an extra pot or two out of the bag. Afternoon study groups. Failing his first mid-term. Closing up for the night at the sandwich shop where he worked. Binge-watching TV shows on weekends. A shadow lay across every memory, an uneasy feeling that there was something just behind him.

The next evening, Jago set out to find dinner and tongued at the memories all the while, as if his thoughts were a persistent aching tooth. And although he had made up his mind to find somewhere else to eat that night, somewhere lighter and more modern, where the sandwiches were made of sandwiches, Jago nevertheless turned a corner and found that the city had led him back to that familiar neon sign.

Hand on the door, greet the host, tread the spotless carpet. Grab a seat at the bar: water glass, napkin, flatware.

It had begun to feel to Jago like nights at Midnight Mary’s were more part of his life than anything else. What was he doing with his days? Surely he had some sort of job?

Calix looked Jago over and seemed to divine that something had changed.

“Ah, you’re remembering things now! It’s all over those big, gorgeous eyes, my boy. They’re much livelier today. You’re not quite so glazed.”

“My eyes have been glazed?”

Calix only laughed.

The meal, when it was served, looked as though someone had managed to waffle a portion of the midnight sky. There were two of them, almost the size of the plate, dark as the inky blackness of space with flecks of white that glistened irresistible constellations of sugar in the lamplight. Butter melted into the little crags of each, and a tiny pitcher of syrup with the color and depth of a rainbow nebula nestled against them. Next to the waffles sat a fruit salad made of no fruits Jago knew the names for, save for the pineapple chunks. He hesitated.

“I’m allergic to bananas,” Jago said, gesturing uncertainly to the salad. Calix smiled and shook his head.

“There are no bananas in this dish, I assure you.”

Jago ate and was only dimly aware of Calix setting an Irish coffee next to his plate before the food seized ahold of his mind and he spun into memories that did not quite belong to him.

He was older, grey hairs taking hold at his temples and his beard. When had he grown a beard? It was neatly groomed, a careful maintenance that Jago felt certain he had never mastered. A golden mound of fluff and happy ears lay by his feet, a dog he did not know but knew with certainty to be his.

Apollo.

-That’s his name?

Yeah. Look at him, so sunny.

Jago reached through the echoes of conversation to pet the dog and in so doing, noticed a wall on the opposite side of the room covered in framed certificates and photographs. He got up and Apollo followed at his heels.

Diplomas from good schools, awards, honors, all with his name on them. Had he ever been so driven and high-achieving? He saw himself in the photographs, too, at various ages. Groups of people he knew to be his friends, family members, colleagues.

In each crisp bite of waffle he tasted domestic joy. Here was his space, his life. Here was that which he had carved out all for himself from the chaos of the world. A storm had raged on for millennia, made up of people—their fears and hopes, insecurities and desires—and he, Jago, had weathered it long enough to make a safe haven from the onslaught. The cool, creamy saltiness of the butter melted into the warm syrup. Here was contentment and peace. Here was order and a clear path.

He tried the fruit salad and it cut through the rich sweetness with sharp, bright acidity. A friend’s fiftieth birthday party materialized, where gin and tonics flowed freely and all the lamps burned bright. Laughter, music, the ecstatic shared joy of a group of peers who had made it this far through the years and still could not quite believe their luck.

When the last wisps of memories had faded, Jago pushed his plate aside and pulled the coffee towards him, languid with the satisfaction of a full belly. The meal sat heavily and he wanted to linger over his drink before leaving for the night. He glanced down the bar, looking for the blue woman but not expecting to find her, wondering what had happened to her after he had left.

She was nowhere to be seen. Instead, two small children no more than ten years old with identical locks of straight black hair and dressed in identical linen tunics sat on boosted bar stools tucking in to enormous bowls of colorful cereal.

“Calix,” Jago gestured for the bartender. “Aren’t those two a little, you know, young for this place? Where are their parents?”

One of the children set its spoon down in its bowl and turned to regard him with solemn yellow eyes. Its face was humanoid, yet the nose seemed out of proportion, a bit too big, and its ears were long and slender, pointed at the tips.

“Don’t you know where you are, mister?” the child asked. Its voice was an androgynous lilt that carried an echo at the end, as though two people were speaking at the same time.

“Do you?” Jago asked. The child picked up its spoon and resumed eating and its sibling turned to answer his question.

“This is where the wrongfully dead receive their last rites,” the child explained. “Your last sustenance.”

“You’re at the end of time,” the other added.

Jago laughed.

“Kid, I’m not—you’re not—we’re here, okay? It’s raining outside, it’s warm and dry in here, and we’re eating real food. You don’t look like a ghost, do I look like a ghost? Or a—a zombie? No.”

“Look behind you,” one child said, and pointed to a wisp of a man just walking in.

“That’s the ghost of an idea for a best-selling romance novel.”

“Now you’re just being silly,” Jago scolded. “Ideas don’t have souls, therefore they cannot be ghosts.”

He felt ridiculous explaining this to a pair of children, but they had already grown bored with him and turned back to their meals, uninterested in Jago’s objections. They closed their eyes and he wondered what flavors of memory the cereal and milk brought them.

“Last sustenance,” he scoffed and returned to his coffee.

And then more memories came, unbidden—true memories, this time, like the dreams he had been having. He was back in college, working the last shift at the sandwich shop. A woman waited for him in one of the empty booths as he closed up and he remembered the way the dim lights reflected in her green hair, on her tortoiseshell glasses.

“Elle,” he says.

Elle looks up at him, smiles and sets down her phone.

“You done yet? I have an exam at eight in the morning.”

He rushes to sweep the last crumbs from the floor, but still laughs, “It’s sociology. How hard could it be?”

It’s the wrong thing, and he knows it by the look in her eyes. But when was he ever a smart guy? Elle squeezes his hand. A sharp breath, angry tears. The slam of a door. Elle leaves forever. Elle takes out her phone. He makes a ham sandwich for an impatient customer. Elle slaps him.

No—that was out of order. Jago struggled to remember how that night went. There was a woman, peering into the shop to see if they were still open. That’s the part he remembered most clearly. He closed his eyes and tried to focus.

Elle steps back and takes a sharp breath like he’s punched her. This isn’t the first time he’s made fun of her studies, which are so much more interesting than the business degree he’s slogging through. He wants to apologize, wants to explain he’s just a dumb asshole, but she’s already pushing through the doors, pushing past the woman looking in at them. The woman grabs the door as Elle passes and lets herself in. Jago tries to explain they’re closed but she holds up a gun and it takes him a moment to realize he’s being robbed. He yells for Elle to call the cops. The gun goes off.

“I’m really gone,” Jago murmured, and he knew he’d said it aloud at the bar, because the twins turned and nodded at him, smiling the way children do when a grown-up finally acknowledges that they were right. They crunched their cereal and spoke to each other quietly between bites, comparing visions of futures that would never be.

“I become a doctor, I save so many lives,” one said. “I live with eight fluffy pet nabronas.”

The other laughed.

“I write for magazines and crash on your couch a lot. I make the best macaroni & cheese whenever you come home late from the hospital. Three cheeses and spiral pasta, just how you like it.”

“And every year at the solstice we road trip to the Eye of Shan’ravel and take stupid selfies together in front of the Elder Ones! Drives them so mad!”

The children giggled together and smiled when Calix came by with two tall glasses of chocolate milk.

“Thank you,” they sang in unison, creating four voices from two mouths.

Calix turned to Jago.

“Anything else tonight, friend?”

“Yeah. I think tonight I’d like to stay for dessert.”

He glanced at the space behind the bar and saw that the brown eyes were back. Calix clapped his hands and bounced on his hooves a few times.

“Ooh, Chef has been waiting for this moment! And so have I, I might add.”

Calix trotted back from the kitchen a short time later bearing a mountainous wedge of chocolate blackout cake, three perfect layers tall and dressed in a heavy, velvety coat of crumbs. Jago’s all-time favorite.

He bit into a tender, bittersweet mouthful. Elle was with him again, older and changed as he was older and changed. They had parted ways not long after the weekend in the snowbound cabin; a fight neither of them could exactly explain except one or more egos were involved and they left in separate vehicles and lived out separate lives. Until one day, decades later and without any preamble or build-up, she was there in front of him at a cocktail party held by a mutual acquaintance in a city far from their college days.

The memory of that party blurred in the frost on the outside of his cocktail glass. Elle and Jago stepped outside for air, to catch up. Her hair had greyed too, and she held herself with a formidable grace. A chef, with three restaurants under her belt and a crown made of awards. He fell in love with her all over again, captivated by this magical creature and kicking himself inwardly for every day they had lost apart. Before either of them realized, the sun was rising and they found that they had at some point left the party and gone to an anonymous all-night café to chat.

The cake’s flavor was complex and anything but one-note. Tangy buttermilk, a hint of coffee—like the dark, complex brew poured into their cups at that café—used to amplify the depth of the rich chocolate in all its forms. Smooth, creamy frosting melded into long and sensual nights spent rediscovering each other’s bodies. The soft cake, yielding in his mouth was her tongue against his, first one pair of lips, then the other. They gasped out oaths to never leave each other again.

-Who’s this gentleman?

This is Apollo. Say hello, Apollo!

-I knew there was a good reason to give you another chance. Hey there, Apollo.

Elle looked up into Jago’s eyes and the rest of her fell into place around them, deep brown eyes so full of bright thoughts and hope. The chef, the maker of wondrous and nourishing moments that might have been.

She blinked, her face close to his against the cold floor of the sandwich shop. True memory crashed all around them, punctuated by sirens, too far off to make it in time. He reached for her and the effort cost him dearly. She hadn’t called the cops, hadn’t run for safety. She’d gone back into the shop when she saw what was happening. Jago’s hand shook against her skin while their warmth bled out and mingled together, reflecting fluorescent beams.

“She’s been watching for you,” Calix said. “She ate her last meal, then took over the kitchen on the spot. I’ve never seen anything quite like our Elle.”

Jago sobbed, choked on a laugh, and Elle settled onto the barstool next to him. She put her chef’s hat on his head and smiled.

“You’ve been here this whole time?” he asked.

“Only a little longer than you, I think, but time’s funny here.”

“How long did it take you to figure it out?”

“A lot faster than you, pal,” Calix interjected. He poured each of them a flute of creamy-gold sparkling wine and left them to sink into their bubbles. They alternated sips with kisses and Jago kept one of his hands free to retrace Elle’s fingertips.

“Elle, I’m so sorry,” Jago said after possibly many hours.

“I know,” she said. “It was a fucked up way for us to go.”

“I can’t believe you waited for me.”

Elle’s eyes grew wide and she guffawed, joined in chorus by Calix’s tittering.

“Honey, no. I wondered how long it would take you to show up, sure, but we’re not together, you know?” Elle gestured to the restaurant around them. “This is my heaven. Helping others put their souls to rest. I’m staying, kid.”

“I had no idea one could be dead and still feel absolutely mortified,” Jago laughed, embarrassed. Of course she hadn’t stayed for him. They’d known each other less than a year before the end.

“So what do we do now?”

Elle smiled in the way that always crushed his heart then made a new one in its place. “Well, I’m not going anywhere and you’ve got some soul stuff to put to rest before you can move on so… I guess it’s time you start making amends for that last fight.”

Jago thought on this. “So, you want to go find some pizza, beers, and a rollercoaster made of angel wings?”

“Bingo.”

“Let’s get out of here.”

They were there in one heartbeat, gone the next. Before Calix could finish clearing their glasses away, the doors to Midnight Mary’s opened again and the host was greeting the next hungry, lost soul.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

M. MICHELLE BARDON writes speculative fiction from her home in Oakland, California. When she's not creating new worlds, she's prowling the town for good coffee, running trails with her Aussiepoo, Gadget, gaming, or reading—always reading. You can read more about her latest projects at www.magicrobotcarnival.com.

Temple of the Damned

SHAUN KILGORE

THE WORLD WAS asleep and wrapped in the cold embrace of late winter. The snow was deep and bowed even the thickest branches of the trees so they crackled and moaned in protest and lent an eeriness to the land. The air was icy and cut through the thick layers of fur and other hides draped across the weary bodies of the men marching along the remote passage through the highlands. They looked like a pack of beasts. Beasts bearing long sharp teeth in their cloth-wrapped hands.

Ten wearied souls trudged together in a ragged line, climbing the steepening path into the craggy hills that formed natural barriers to all who wished to pass. The snow was much deeper and higher than they had thought when setting out from their camp that morning. The winds that scoured the jagged cut that was their road sought to peel away their pitiful attempts at protection.

These ten bore up under the pain, trusting to their warrior strength to move them forward to the temple that waited above them in the heights where the rock was naked of all but the heartiest shrubs and the mountain goats roamed along their own solitary runs.

As the road sloped up further one of the ten stumbled forward, plunging into the drifting snow bank that was slowing everyone. The warrior was lost for a moment, but broke the surface and started brushing the snow from his furs. He bellowed loudly and kicked at the snow. Another of the warriors stopped and came back to him.

“Are you well, Master Fendreg?”

“Ha! Am I well? Am I well? Damnation’s foot, Rolas, do I look like I’m bloody well? I’m tromping in the bitter cold up the side of a mountain just to have the privilege of speaking with these high priests. The privilege, I tell you.”

Fendreg brushed away the snow from his arms and dug into it ahead of him with the tip of his blade.

Rolas said nothing but set out beside him. They caught up with the other eight who were making their way along with mutters and curses of their own, though they were apparently respectful enough to keep their blasted voices down.

Fendreg bit his lip and kept moving though the wind stung his eyes and numbed his cheeks. He traveled the last few miles with the other nine warriors from the village of Nebany wondering what else he could have done to avoid such an entanglement. The Senagran knew the reasons. It came down to bloody honor. He should have been on the roads further south where the Orealian Crossroads cut a wide swath in the heart of a kingdom called Al’Benwat. But fates or the gods, or a little of both steered him into the business of strangers. Again.

“You act like you couldn’t have refused when Nila asked for your help to get her merchant caravan around the Crossroads. But no, you were swayed by pouty lips and and fluttering eyes when word of some warlord demanding tributes from passersby gets mentioned. ‘Oh, Fendreg, you wouldn’t leave me without a coin to do business in the ports of Wessala, would you?’” Time and time again, for Fendreg, the pleas of strangers had drawn him all directions since he’d left Senagra. One task led to another and soon he was far afield of his original course, the beautiful Nila a fond memory, the welfare of the simple folk of Nebany now his primary concern—that and the purse of coins promised should he fulfill his mission there to ease his burden. Fortune and glory were fine things, but the luster had worn off and Fendreg had decided it was time to return home to Everhold and his duty in its hallowed halls.

“Blessed Mothers, why such a meandering road?”

With the wind gusting and tossing the snow at him in blinding sheets, Fendreg though he’d received a sort of answer. Stop asking and just keep walking, maybe?

Fendreg growled and picked up speed again, stabbing his sword into the snow so hard that it struck the stony ground beneath and rang dully. He grumbled and carried on until the wind died away and he could see the top of the temple far above them. The tips of the jagged roof pierced a dense curtain of fog that wreathed the hills of the surrounding country and was creeping downward towards them. There was something odd about the fog, something that made Fendreg’s skin crawl. A glance at Rolas confirmed he wasn’t alone in his thoughts. The ten men eyed the fog as they marched on. In time, they were swallowed up and only vague details of the land were visible. The air grew colder, strangely and disquietingly cold. Fendreg covered the last steps with the other warriors breaking a rime of ice that covered the snow. The furs he’d wrapped around himself did little to hold back the deep, bone-biting frost.

“What madness is this? Sorcery?” Fendreg’s voice seemed muted like the fog was holding back. None of the other warriors answered him.

They seemed entranced by the cold, white curtain that roiled around them. Rolas grunted softly and clenched his jaw. The man was having a hard time putting another foot in front of the other. Fendreg breathed deeply though the icy air entering his chest made him cough noisily. The crunch of the snow was suddenly very loud.

“Rolas?”

The wind suddenly blasted, hurling snow and ice into a blinding storm. The man looked at him and mouthed something but the sound was lost over the howl. Fendreg closed his eyes for a moment, feeling the strain mounting through his body. He pushed harder, so that hot sweat poured from his skin only to freeze in moments. Fendreg was almost completely blind now, eyes squinting in the half-light. There was no way to know if he was still heading in the right direction. Only the dim shape of Rolas trudging beside him anchored and kept him moving. The other eight warriors were nowhere to be seen.

An uncomfortable feeling passed through Fendreg: fear. He’d learned long ago to master fear, to subdue it, and even banish it. But this fear was powerful, a palpable force that pressed him. Suddenly, he lost sight of Rolas. Fendreg searched in vain, but the man was swallowed. The storm raged on, battering the Senagran. He could not make out even a trace of the others, not one print in the snow.

“Damnation’s foot, what is this?”

Though his throat strained and his jaw creaked with the desperate cry, Fendreg could not hear his own voice in the midst of the maelstrom. He plodded forward in the snow, even as the winds reshaped the powder into drifts that deepened until they reached Fendreg’s knees, then above them and the frigid winds hardened so that the passage was becoming difficult. Fendreg struck out with his blade to keep moving. His thick cloak grew heavier as snow clung to it and froze. The devilish storm was almost playful. The winds rose and fell, spiraling around and striking him head on then from behind, keeping him off balance. The storm was a living thing—a cursed, monstrous thing bent on his destruction.

Fendreg felt his strength ebbing away with every labored step through the hardened snow. Somehow, the Senagran endured and kept moving in what he thought was the direction of the temple. He would not be defeated by some bloody snow!

The howling around him intensified, the sound piercing though the layers of the hood, the wind-blown snow so intense he had to keep his head almost facing the ground just to stave off blindness and frostbite on his cheeks. A muttering turned to a moaning.

Fendreg stopped, wrenched back his hood, and lifted his head to the skies in a wordless yell. “Enough, damn you! Gods curse you. The Mothers take you!”

The keening ceased suddenly. The winds slowed until they were but a shadow of what they’d been moments ago. Soon, only the fog remained. Fendreg stared him, dumbfounded by the change. A calm settled on the land, then he heard something. No, he heard someone calling faintly.

“Master! Master Fendreg? Are you here?”

The Senagran called back. “Rolas, is that you?”

“Yes, it is.”

The hillside trail transformed. Fendreg wasn’t sure at first but as he looked around him the fog retreated and the outlines of the crags gradually resumed their solid shapes and colors. The sky returned and with it the sun. The deeper cold faded a bit. The retreat of the fog also revealed his companion. The other man was kneeling in the snow, barely recognizable beneath the blanket of snow that clung to his own hide cloak. Fendreg made his way to Rolas’s side and drew him to his feet.

Rolas pointed. “Look. I see the temple.”

Fendreg looked too. There now looming above them, built from the surrounding rock of the highlands, the Asashi Temple seemed to reflect the sunlight that filtered through the winter clouds. The golden glow was certainly inspiring. Fendreg heard Rolas gasp beside him.

“It’s beautiful. Just like my mother said.”

“Thank the Two Mothers.” Fendreg realized he was relieved. The pressure on him was gone and he could breathe easier despite the coldness of the air. His eyes found the furred shapes of the other warriors lying in half-buried in the snow. One by one they began to stir, shaking themselves off. One of the men pointed back at them and the men waved. The same man motioned towards the temple gates. Fendreg waved back and nodded to indicate he understood.

Rolas shivered. “Master Fendreg, that storm. It didn’t seem natural. The storm, the cold, it all closed in around me and I sensed something lulling me to sleep. I don’t know what it was.”

Fendreg nodded gravely. “Some kind of sorcery, I think. Maybe a way to dissuade visitors?”

Rolas shrugged his shoulders. “Yes, you may well be right, Master Fendreg. It is said that the priests of Ashashi have mysterious ways. We rarely seek their counsel.”

Fendreg snorted. “I wonder why?” Wind gusted and snow sprayed him in the face. “Come, my friend. Gather up the others. I’m ready for a warm fire and some wine if we can find it.”

THE GATES OF the temple were tall and rugged, the features of the stone had been worn away by generations of cold winds so that only traces of the beautiful carvings were visible. Fendreg admired them all the same as he passed between them and into an inner courtyard where the rest of the warriors waited. The walls were high enough that much of the wind was blocked and stillness rested over everything. Fendreg pulled the fur hood off his head and his long dark hair spilled out. The chill had made him stiff.

The Senagran looked around the courtyard. “Where is the welcoming party? Surely whoever manages the affairs of this place would have someone watching for visitors.”

Rolas shrugged his shoulders again. “As I said, little is certain with the priests and those that care for the temple. Contact has been sparse in recent months, Master Fendreg.”

Fendreg grunted. “Seems awfully quiet.” He adjusted his grip on his sword and trained his eyes for any sounds.

The other warriors exchanged glances. They had sheathed their blades. One gave Rolas a sharp look. The man bowed his head and turned to Fendreg hesitantly.

“Please, Master, put your sword away. It is disrepectful to bring a naked blade into the sacred temple.”

Fendreg gritted his teeth again. There were reasons to tread lightly. He knew he was in the temple grounds to get answers for these men from Nebany and for himself, hopefully. Looking around him at the seemingly deserted stone buildings, hope was fleeting. Fendreg put his sword away, grudgingly.

“Thank you,” said Rolas.

Fendreg growled. “Now what? Do we wait?”

Rolas shrugged and started to speak.

“Who are you? Why have you come here?” The voice was deep and resonating, echoing off the stone walls like one of the great amphitheaters home in Senagra.

Fendreg sought the bearer of such a voice. His gaze swept the perimeter, slowing on the shadowed spaces between the pillars beneath the porches. The Senagran decided to speak first, naturally taking the lead. He stepped away from the others, placed his hands together and bowed at the waist. His earlier irritation at the whole situation rekindled and he had to rein in his mouth.

“Honored one, keeper of this sacred temple. We have come seeking aid for these men of Nebany and their kindred.”

“What is your name stranger? What sort of aid to you seek?”

The Senagran hesitated. While he did not think he was widely known in Al’Benwat, he wasn’t eager to announce his presence. Fendreg sighed. “I am Fendreg of Senagra, honored ones. The folk of Nebany are suffering from a terrible sickness that corrupts the flesh and leaves barren the mind. A wasting disease that the common healers in the valley below cannot cure. Those that suffer we have had to lock away unless the sickness spread to the others.”

Fendreg bowed his head. Rolas and the others did the same. “Please, might know some way to treat this?”

“Yes. We have heard of this sickness,” the disembodied voice replied. There was a catch and a clearing of a throat. “Those touched by it wither away, their minds twisted with madness. They show an unnatural strength...and many are prone to excessive violence.”

Fendreg grew wary. His skin prickled and his muscled tensed. He wasn’t sure why. “Yes, this sounds like the same thing. Do you know how to stop it?” A scraping sound resounded in the silence of the courtyard. Fendreg’s hand reached for his sword.

Deep, rumbling laughter spilled out and bounced off the walls and pillars of the temple. “Stop it? Why...why would we wish to stop it?” The priest of Asashi stepped into the light. His flesh of his face was twisted and covered in a sheen of sweat. His toothy smile and wide-eyed gaze struck Fendreg like a punch to the gut.

The plague. Blessed Mothers!

More scraping sounds and rattling erupted around the warriors. Other men in robes and an assortment of foreign garb appeared from the shadows, surrounding them, all armed with spears or swords. All were taken by the disease. The lead priest stepped forward, clutching a black staff, the ghastly grin pinching his withered cheeks.

“When travelers from far beyond the mountains came to our doors, seeking shelther, we as we always have, provided them a refuge and sustenance. But, these strangers brought a gift with them, hidden in the guise of sickness. A man among their group was bitten by a creature in the forests of Rivan far to the east of this place. Or so the story was told. But none of that matters.” The priest breathed in the frigid air, his nostrils flaring, head thrown back, eyes, closed. “What matters was the gift that he gave to us. Just a single bite while we attempted to treat the wretch and it spread. Yes, a great gift. It has awakened us. Freed us from the shackles of our paltry morality. Now we serve ourselves. We are pleased that the gift has come to them below. He that left us has been fruitful in sharing. Nebany will know its pleasures.”

“A gift!” Fendreg spit the words. He was flushed with rage. “You’re mad, priest. This must be stamped out, here and now. It is an abomination. A curse.”

The air rang with the release of the Senagran’s blade. The other men in his company hesitated only a moment before their weapons were drawn. Fendreg eyed Rolas who was looking around at the priests. There were twenty or better, all of them ready to kill.

“We’re outnumbered,” Rolas whispered.

“Ya think?” Fendreg growled.

The men of Nebany gathered about Fendreg, backs straight and weapons at the ready.

“You will not leave this place, Fendreg of Senagra. At least not without our gift.”

“Ha! I beg to differ,” Fendreg spat.

The priest smiled. “So be it.” He chopped the air with his hand. The priests and other victims of the foul plague leveled their weapons and came like a single wave.

Fendreg and others met the attack with their swords, swinging and thrusting wildly, shuffling to and fron in the confines of the temple court. The din of battle was tremendous amidst the weathered stones. Slowly the snow-packed ground was tinted pink then red with blood. The battle grew heated as scores entred the fray, taking the places of those fallen to Fendreg and the Nebani warriors, inching the tide against them. The Senagran knew they could not keep up under the onslaught. Between blows, he searched the perimeter of the court and eyed the priest watching the fight, his gaze cold and calculating. The calm surrounding the man unnerved Fendreg.

A scream returned his attention to the battle. One of the men from Nebany stumbled to one side, his sword dropped to the crimson snow. A spear had gotten through his defenses and protruded from his shoulder. But, that wasn’t the worst part: the one that attacked pawed at him, and reached in to bite his exposed hand. A second later, one of the other Nebani sheared the man’s head clean off.

The downed Nebani shook his head wildly, eyes bulging, denials rising for a moment above the fighting. He knew what it meant as surely as the Senagran. He was infected.

Damnation’s foot!

Fendreg struck back blades and spear tips in turn, dancing his way closer to the injured man. The other men from Nebany did likewise, their expressions grim and knowing. Anger lent more strength as he bodily shoved the damned out of his way to close the distance. He stepped over severed arms, corpses torn by swords, and other bits of gore until he was standing right over injured Nebani. The man was cradling his hand like it was a newborn child, rocking back and forth and mewling wordlessly. The warrior, Alten, looked up at Fendreg. His face was wet with hot tears.

“Please, Master Fendreg, don’t let me become one of them! I beg you.”

Fendreg grimaced, a pain like a dagger in the gut twisted him up inside. Two Mothers lead this poor wretch into your loving embrace.

The next instance, Fendreg sunk his blade into Alten’s chest. The man gasped but was dead the next instant. The other Nebani spared only a short look back while batting away the remaining attackers. Fendreg met Rolas’s gaze and the other man nodded solemnly and refocused his own defense. It had all happened in the blink of an eye. The calm at the center of storm that came and now went.

Fendreg jumped up, twisting about and lanching himself into the thick of the bloodied priests. His body moved with sinuous grace, slipping through the slimmest break in defenses, deftly striking with his sword, cutting through jugular veins to leave men to bleed out as often as simply ripping out throats. The priests fell in droves.

“Priest!” Fendreg roared. “Priest, do you hear me! I’m coming for you!”

He torn off the fur cloak, now drenched in blood and gore, and advanced towards the steps leading to porch. His polished leather armor gleamed in the torchlight. More of the damned came at him to slow him while the priest stared at him, his eyes almost burning with a feverish light. Fendreg struck again and again, slowed by those pressing in to halt him, to make suicidal attacks just so they could get close enough to bite him. The Senagran beat them down and left them behind. He would not be stopped. Rage burned in Fendreg like a fire in the blast furnaces back home in the fortress forges where all the weapons of Everhold were made.

The priest held his hands aloft, arms open in a mockery of welcome. His sickly smile a taunt.

You will die today, priest!

Fendreg bounded up the stairs, his blade help forward like spear, his voice raised in a wordless roar. Just before he drove the point into the priest’s chest, the man threw up a hand with blinding speed and batted the sword away. Fendreg was twisted off balance by the force of the move. Agony bloomed the next moment as the priest stuck the back of his neck. Rather than falling flat, Fendreg just barely rolled off to one side, holding desperately to the blade in the awkward movement.

He was up on his knees the next instant but his vision was swimming. A few feet away the image of the priest wavered, but the bastard remained in place, waiting and smiling. Not waiting for the world to stop spinning, the Senagran launching a second attack. The priest dodged his sword thrusts and deflected some strikes with his barehands. Fendreg sought a sign of blood from the flesh but found none.

How does he not bleed? Foul dark magics abound! Mothers lend me your strength.

Again, Fendreg rushed the priest, senses barely registering the others still fighting and dying around them. He caught a glimpse of Rolas dancing in the midst of the carnage as it blighted the courtyard of the temple. The sacrilege itself another charge to lay at the feet of the cursed priest. The thought fueled Fendreg’s anger, lending him more strength.

The priest turned aside each attack much like the previous. Minutes stretched out and the rage he felt earlier became like a faded memory of another life. Fendreg mocked him and seemed possessed of an unholy power the likes of which the Senagran ha seldom seen. Knowing he had to stop the plague did not help him know how to stop its creature.

Bruises and cuts multiplied. In time, the blade—so much an extention of him—grew heavier. The truth was plain: Fendreg was nearly the end of his endurance. Yet the priest seemed as fresh and unfazed as when they started. Fendreg came again, slicing upwards with an underhand attack. The priest lashed out, seizing his arm at the wrist, wrench so hard that he cried out. The blade clattered to the stone floor.

Rather than pulling away, Fendreg drew closer. The stench of the man’s breath smelled of rancid meat and decay. Fendreg struck the priest in the ribs repeatedly. Careful of the man’s teeth and the fatal bite, he reached up and strained to get hold of the bare head. Before he could sink his fingernails in to the cheeks, the priest struck him fully with his head. Fendreg stumbled backwards, blood pouring from his smashed nose. Ghe gagged for moments on the coppery flow and tried to keep his eyes on the priest. Fendreg scooted away but the other man did not follow. He merely watched him, his gaze barely human.

Suddenly, hands were grabbing him from behind. Fendreg struggled and beat at the unseen foe until he heard the voice.

“Master Fendreg, please get up. We must run!”

Fendreg was heaving for breath, his vision half-gone as his eye swelled shut. “No. Must stop them. No surrender.”

Rolas pulled him up. “We must retreat.” He pointed towards the porch on the opposite side of the court. A room lay beyond open doors. “There. Let us go there.”

“We’d be trapped,” Fendreg rasped.

“Better trapped...than taken with this curse.”

Fendreg couldn’t could muster a counter-argument. The priest watched as he let Rolas help him to where the remaining Nebani were withdrawing. As they entered the dim corridor and secured the doors behind them, he couldn’t help but think of they had entered their own tomb.

SOME MINUTES PASSED. The only sounds they could hear were their heaving of their own lungs as they struggled to catch their breath. In the reprieve of the temple, no longer borne along by adrenaline and rage, pain flooded Fendreg. Every inch of his body was on fire. Gingerly, he brushed fingers across his swollen eyelid. Wincing, the Senagran waved off Rolas’s help getting to his feet. In the torchlight he could not make out the details of the corridor. Straining his ear, Fendreg could not hear anything from behind the door. The priest and other denizens of the temple had gone still.

“I don’t like this. It’s too quiet. We can’t stay here.” Fendreg shook the blood from his blade and brushed it across his quilted tunic. “They know this place. If we stay in this entrance they may surround us, leaving us no way to turn.”

Rolas and the other Nebani nodded. There were only four survivors. Fendreg felt a twinge of guilt, but felt instantly foolish for it. They’d made their own decisions after all. Grown men chose to follow him and some of them died. It had happened many times. I was just trying to do right by these folk and maybe do a bit of good, he thought.

There, paused inside the cold dry corridor of the winter-bound temple, Fendreg wondered suddenly if he’d reached the end of the journey. Mothers, is this it?

But Fendreg’s gaze met the haunted gazes of his companions. He shivered and the act shook off the moment of despair.

“Let’s get going. We’ll see where this passage takes us,” Fendreg said in a firmer voice, taking the lead with a much steadier gait than he felt in his wearied state.

The sound of boots on stone assured him that the others followed behind.

The lamps that hung here and there burned low, the oil giving off a faint, putrid stink. The only noises were those they made. Fendreg urged them to tread as softly as possible. There was no other way to gauge the presence of the cursed or the chance of ambush. The narrowness of the corridor was a small blessing in the midst of things, Fendreg noted. Our enemies will be as hindered in the closeness of the space as we are, at least.

The sameness of the interior began to wear on him. Fendreg kept his sword at the ready and eyed each dark doorway they passed with wariness. No attacks happened and it continued to seem like he and the Nebani were only ones inside. Idly, the Senagran wondered if they were moving deeper into the rock of the mountains out of which the ancient temple was hewn.

Fendreg stopped.

“What is it,” Rolas whispered.

“Let’s go back the way we came. Or at least part of the way.”

There was no argument from the others.

The air seemed much heavier. Fendreg felt stifled beneath the stones.

“I’d rather take my chances out underneath the open sky than in this infernal murk.”

Ahead, the lamp started going dark.

“Damnation’s foot! What the devil is going on?” The darkness was closing in on them. Fendreg’s eyes sought the nearest lamps. “Get those lamps, damn you! If the darkness falls over us, we’re done!

With two of the lamps in hand, they advanced.

Fendreg and Rolas took the lead. The Nebani with the lamps took middle positions with the remaining two guarding the rear. The narrow ring of the light barely held back the utter blackness. The sense of being entombed was almost complete. Would the earth swallow them whole? Where was the bloody priest and his company of the damned? A tense silence descended. Every step was measured.

Fendreg’s teeth bared in a silent growl.

The corridor was filled with a brilliant light. Then a shadow rose up just before them. It was the priest. Other lesser shadows resolved into a few of the lost souls polluted by the fowlness of the curse.

This is how it ends, Fendreg thought finally. A defiant smile sprouted on his face. So be it!

“For Everhold! For Senagra!” Fendreg’s guttural scream caught the others off guard for an instant.

The next moment, he was driving them all back with his blinding blade, heedless of the darkness lurking at the margins. Not knowing whether Rolas or the others were following, Fendreg keep moving, battering against the men who’d meant to attack him. The lights flickered wildly. Sparks from his blade meeting the stones of the corridor added their own little light. His roar carried on, the sound reverbrating off the walls and the floors. The priest was there, though less active in the narrow confines. Fendreg did not try any one strategy of attack, his mind was beyond caring. Blind animal rage carried him on, battering against the man, driving him backwards. The others were there with him, striking down those they could. Lamps crashed to the ground, glass enclosures shattering, spilling the oil and setting it aflame. Some of the men were splattered with the oil and they too burned. Screams multiplied.

The conflagration spread until nearly all but the high priest were consumed.

In no time at all, they were streaming out into the winter twilight a few of the burning stumbling out into the courtyard, illuminating it with their corpses.

Fendreg leaped at the priest, twisting at the last moment to strike him in the middle. Not pausing, lashed out with the blade, cutting long, bloody gashed in the man’s ankles. The Senagran was rewarded with a ghastly cried as the man rolled down the steps, his bloodied hands clutching at the severed bones.

Sweat-soaked and shivering with deep rage, Fendreg descended the steps and stood over the priest whole struggled to move but couldn’t.

“It is ended, damn you!” Fendreg roared. With all his remaining strength, he struck off the man’s head.

The sounds of the courtyard returned. Flaming corpses were spread througout the immediate area. Fendreg glanced back and saw Rolas and the other Nebani, killing the burning men.

“Are you well, Master Fendreg? Rolas called.

Staring back at the headless body, he nodded. His chest heaved and his breathing was labored. “Damn it, Rolas. What does a man have to do to get a bloody cup of wine around here?”

The other man started laughing, the sound harsh and jarring in the middle of the carnage.

DAYS LATER, FENDREG was reclined next to a roaring fire, a thick wooden mug perched on his lap. He was dozing off when the sound of someone clearing their throat roused him. Squinting to clear his vision, Fendreg saw the familiar Nebani standing a few feet away, head bowed, fist clentched against his chest.

“Master Fendreg. Forgive me for disturbing you.”

Fendreg waved the much. “No need to apologize. Disturb away, my friend.”

Rolas smiled briefly. “I, again, want to thank you for the service you have done my people. Perhaps all of the people in these lands. I am only sorry we could not find a true cure.”

Fendreg sat up straighter. His expression more serious.

“There are not always simple answers, Rolas.” He glanced at the flames, listening to the fire licking the wood within the hearth. “Some times the only way to cure is to destroy. With their bodies committed to the flames, the plague is destroyed. It has served to purify the rest.”

Rolas nodded. “Yes, a terrible price, to be sure.”

“Yes,” replied Fendreg.

The Nebani hesitated then spoke. “What will you do now?”

Fendreg sat back again, the mug held just before him. “I’ll take to the roads again. I am bound to it, I think. My homeland ever the destination. But, who know what the gods have in mind. For now, though, I plan to drink this fine ale and maybe sleep for a month.” Fendreg took a long swallow and emptied the mug.

Rolas bowed his head again and made to leave the Senagran. He turned back again. “Sounds good to me. I’ll have more ale and perhaps a bit of wine brought out to you.”

Fendreg gave him a broad grin. “Good man.”

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.

REVIEW

Lifeline by Catherine McGuire

FRANK KAMINSKI

Lifeline: A Novel
By Catherine McGuire
472 pp. Founders House Publishing – Mar. 2017. $19.99.

IF AN INTENSE Solar flare were to hit Earth today, it would have the potential to halt civilization as we know it. Just as the massive sun storm of 1859 unleashed enough electromagnetic interference to disrupt the global telegraph network, so too could a future solar discharge cause modern-day communications and power systems to fail. People unfortunate enough to be on the side of the planet facing the sun would suddenly find themselves in the situation many Puerto Ricans faced following Hurricane Maria in the fall of 2017. Access to basic things like lighting, refrigeration, heating, modern medicine and water treatment would abruptly vanish.

The scale of the resulting mayhem is almost too much to contemplate, but Catherine McGuire has thought long and hard about it anyway, making it the backdrop for her novel Lifeline. McGuire’s book is an adventure that scores on every front, from its tense action scenes, to its finely realized characters and emotionally involving drama, to its richly rendered settings, to the intriguing irony of its double-entendre title. And while the novel does have moral lessons to offer, McGuire rightly refuses to let these take precedence over the story. For she knows that morals are more effective when subtly conveyed in the background of a believable, moving tale than when spelled out explicitly.

It’s the late 21st century, and communities throughout what is now the eastern United States are still recovering 50 years after a historic solar superstorm. Our main character, Martin Barrister, is a communications company employee in a world without working satellites. All the satellites were ruined by the flare, so non-satellite-dependent means of communication and data transmission are now the norm. Martin’s employer, Commco, is New York City’s communications monopoly, and it has sent him on a journey to search for potential partners in the development of a non-satellite-based relay tower system. Martin’s bosses hope he can persuade at least two outlying towns to provide maintenance on a couple of new towers in exchange for access to their signals.

But Martin soon notices that a number of key things about his mission aren’t jelling. He’s turned down cold by the first town he visits, which suggests either that whoever sent him didn’t do enough research, or that his entire trip has been a sham. Then Martin is abandoned by his guide and attacked by hoodlums. Eventually Martin pieces together that Commco and the New York City government have thrown him into an impending war zone as bait to gather intel about a rebel army moving north from Fort Cumberland. The rebels are intent on breaching Pittsburgh’s defenses as part of an effort by Washington, D.C., to challenge New York’s hegemony. If you’re confused by all this, don’t worry; so is Martin.

Following Martin’s run-in with his assailants, a good Samaritan named Ciera offers to help him find his way back to the nearest railroad terminus, so that he can return to New York. This gesture perplexes Martin, who isn’t used to kindness from strangers. In their days traveling together—going by bicycle and horse—the two become well acquainted. As they converse, they continually argue over their disparate outlooks, Martin with his city-bred individualism and Ciera with her orientation toward nature and community. In one revealing scene, Ciera explains to Martin, “In the country, you don’t play people like options—you treat them like friends…or enemies.” Another telling moment occurs when Ciera and Martin encounter a homeless man. Horrified that any community would let people starve, Ciera says in disbelief, “I’m surprised they allow it.” But Martin misunderstands her, thinking that she means she’s surprised the local community would permit a beggar inside its borders.

Ciera lives in Evansville, a community that prides itself on its self-sufficiency ethic. The people of Evansville resolved long ago to curtail their dealings with other communities, deciding that they would fare best by relying on one another as opposed to the outside world. While they do trade and cooperate with other communities, they’re cautiously selective, which is why their town’s existence is a closely guarded secret.

The place where Martin spent his formative years couldn’t be a starker counterpoint to Evansville. Far grittier and more unforgiving than present-day New York, it’s a city where altruism is a foreign concept. It’s also the exact opposite of sustainable, relying on plunder rather than nature for its survival. The citizenry is lorded over by an authoritarian regime that monitors every block with cameras, behands thieves, performs public executions and sends out Army tanks to crush unrest. New Yorkers accept such atrocities as a tradeoff for the many benefits of city life, which include running water, digitally recorded music, “mu-vid theaters,” antibiotics and the pathogen-free, vat-grown meat known as “pink.” People don’t seem to mind that their experience of nature is limited to a tame, human-made imitation of a natural setting squeezed in between two of Manhattan’s vast, bustling avenues.

Thus, the culture shock Martin feels at the beginning of his trip is extreme. The lack of familiar city sounds and activities, together with the strange customs he observes among locals, brings him great anxiety. He’s especially unsettled by people’s touching behavior and degree of physical closeness, since for city people close physical contact from a stranger is perceived as a threat. But as the days roll on, life outside the city grows on Martin. He comes to greatly admire the new culture, as well as the cunning everyone around him has shown in managing to get by without any help from the city.

Martin’s character arc is believable and emotionally satisfying. At first, he’s motivated solely by self-preservation and a desire to return to the city as quickly as possible. But alas, Martin is cursed with a conscience, and thus is unwilling to be as ruthless as the usual city person. (Indeed, one of the running jokes about Martin back in New York is that he never was vicious enough to be a “shark.”) Martin realizes that with the rebels hard on his heels, he’s jeopardized the safety of every town he’s visited. This makes him feel morally obligated to delay his return home so that he can help protect the local communities against the rebel advance.

Lifeline takes on the feel of an espionage thriller when Martin goes on a series of missions as part of an effort to repay others for the favors they’ve done for him. Martin spent much of his young adulthood in slum gangs, where he learned to fast talk and put on multiple identities like a Roma wanderer. He makes good use of these skills in defending one community against a pack of marauders, and then in helping another group evade Pittsburgh’s elaborate surveillance system in order to erect a comm tower within that city’s borders. This latter mission involves traveling through sewers and secret passageways, walking high-beam style over a perilous chasm and using a long-abandoned subway tunnel to go underneath a river (a disconcerting concept to Martin).

In addition to advancing the plot, Martin’s travels through different communities allow us a glimpse of the technological landscape of this future. The scarcity of the times and the loss of any large-scale manufacturing capability mean that this landscape is mostly salvage. Far-apart communities stay in touch with antique ham radio technology, used hospital scrubs are now fashionable tunics and bone meal made from exhumed human remains is used in some locales to fertilize crops. America’s defunct automobile infrastructure has also been recycled, with asphalt and metal from street signs being melted down to make things more sorely needed.

The dominant technologies of Evansville and other rural communities are defined not only by their retro design but also by their naturelike quality. The communities that thrive are those that know the necessity of cooperating with nature rather than trying to conquer it. So, instead of burning fossil fuels to cook food and heat water, people heat and cook using devices that run on passive solar energy, such as hay box cookers and solar water heaters. In place of our massively wasteful flush toilets, there are composting toilets. In lieu of machines powered by electricity or internal combustion, most devices use human or animal muscle. This is especially true when it comes to travel, with most people getting around on foot or by horse. As for waterway travel and transport, the sail has come back in a big way, as have ox-powered paddle wheel boats.

This novel’s ultimate message is one of reassurance. While it makes no bones about the inevitability of our civilization’s decline—with or without the intervention of a solar flare or other natural cataclysm—it tries to show that this need not be cause for despair. Even under drastically changed circumstances, it will still be possible for future generations to lead the sort of rich, enjoyable lives we see people living in Lifeline.

(Note: This review original appeared on the Mud City Press at http://mudcitypress.com/lifeline.php)

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COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

MYTHIC

A Quarterly Science Fiction & Fantasy Magazine

ISSUE # 9 WINTER 2018

Copyright © 2018-2019 by Founders House Publishing LLC

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