MYTHIC

A QUARTERLY SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY MAGAZINE

ISSUE #10 | SPRING 2019

EDITOR’S NOTE

SHAUN KILGORE

WELL, WE’VE MADE IT to Issue #10. That’s something of a milestone, I think. I’m happy to welcome all of you to this latest issue of MYTHIC. There is plenty of great fiction from a talented selection of writer waiting for you in the following pages. I’m very grateful for the opportunity to produce this publication, though it can be challenging to do this on my own. I hope I can change that as time goes by simply for logistical reasons, but that’s not as important right now as make sure all of you get your helping of great science fiction and fantasy.

Going forward, I will not be including editor’s notes with every issue, but will write them if I feel there is something important to share about the status of the magazine. As ever, my mission to provide better compensation four our wonderful writers and I hope some of you might consider 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. Consider supporting this publication. Support great sci-fi and fantasy fiction. Support MYTHIC.

Until the next issue, yours truly,

Shaun Kilgore, Editor

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The Sorcerer’s Accomplice

JEAN GRAHAM

A DEAD MORTAL IN THE bog was nothing new, but Gud hadn’t come across one in... oh, three or four years now.

Time and again, they’d escaped from Friar Lorgo’s prison, hoping to find the single safe passage out, only to wind up mired in the fen. Here, they had either drowned or found themselves trapped and had slowly starved to death. This one didn’t look long dead, though. A bit thin, but meaty enough to make a decent meal. Gud crept closer on webbed hands and feet, squatting to prod the ribs with one bony finger. Disappointingly, the corpse rolled over and sat up to point a crudely sharpened stick at him.

“Rrmpfgh,” Gud said. “Not quite dead.” He tilted his head and bared his mouthful of pointed teeth at the man in what might have been a smile, but wasn’t.

“What the hell are you?” The sleepy mortal blinked at him in the paltry moonlight and continued to threaten him with the stick. Still “smiling,” Gud reached out and pushed it casually aside.

“My name is Gud,” he said, which didn’t precisely answer the man’s question, so he added, “of the Teriz.”

The human’s cold and calculating gaze narrowed. “The Teriz,” he said with brash human confidence, “are a myth.”

Gud’s taloned fingertips turned inward to waggle themselves at his scaled face and pale yellow eyes. “Apparently,” he informed the smug mortal, “not.” When the man continued to glower at him as though daring him to go on existing, Gud took offense. “I’m supposed to be a myth,” he allowed, “and you’re supposed to be dead. Points for effort, though. Most prisoners never made it half this far.”

The human’s glacial stare seemed to slice straight through Gud’s unbeating heart. “I am not most prisoners,” the man grated. “Until recently, I was the only prisoner. There really are more like you? Real, alive, not some conjured delusion?”

“Define alive,” the Teriz said, but before the mortal could respond, he demanded, “What’s your name, only prisoner, and how did you come to be that?”

“Kervain,” the human replied after waiting so long that Gud thought he wouldn’t answer. “Priam Kervain. I am King Gedden of Serranda’s chancellor of the exchequer.”

Gud clucked his pointed tongue. “You mean you were. Now, my mortal friend, you are bog bait. Food for demons.” The webbed fingers waggled again. “That would be me. And, as it happens, I prefer my meals freshly dead. So...”

“That may prove difficult.” The stick returned to threaten Gud’s face, though this time its tip glowed with a distinctly arcane blue aura. Not so ordinary a mortal after all, this one.

“Chancellor of the exchequer,” Gud wheezed, “and a mage as well. Worthy vocations all, I’m sure. But...” He swatted at the stick, and a bolt of azure energy spat from it to strike him in the chest. It might have stunned a living mortal, but Gud was neither. “If you’ll pardon the expression,” he continued, oozing sarcasm, “am I supposed to be impressed?”

“You will be. After you’ve led me out of this swamp and back to Inagel.”

“Gedden’s castle?” Gud scratched thoughtfully at one side of his scaly nose. The arrogance of this human rather impressed him. “And, if you’ll pardon yet another expression,” he said, “what’s in it for me?”

“Well now...” In the moonlight, Priam Kervain’s humorless smile outglowed the spell-charmed stick. “I think you and I should have a little talk.”

SUNRISE DID LITTLE TO improve the sight or smell of Lorgo’s swamp. Brynn Latham wrinkled her nose at the stench and tried to concentrate instead on her task.

“Still nothing?” King Gedden’s impatient snort rivaled that of his fidgeting gelding. Both were, at present, breathing down Brynn’s neck as she knelt to examine the terrain. Not that examining it helped. There was indeed still nothing. No tracks. No sign. Either Kervain was dead, or the rain had washed away all traces of him. They’d already traversed more than three-quarters of the swamp prison’s perimeter, and she was beginning to doubt there was any trail to find.

“I’m a good tracker,” she said, climbing back aboard her own mount, “but hardly a miracle worker. Kervain escaped three days ago. Assuming he ever made it out of the fen, any sign of him was likely obliterated by yesterday’s rain. We should have started three days ago.”

There. She’d said it. And now she watched Gedden’s fleshy, bearded face turn an uncomplimentary shade of crimson. “Lorgo never confessed to the loss,” he growled. “And my spy was rather tardy in reporting it to me. For which both will pay.”

Dearly, she added to herself, and rode on, leaning over to peer at the ground along the way. Four kings had ruled Serranda in her lifetime, all but this one dying violently at the hand of his successor. Five years ago, her mother and two cousins had died in the purges following Gedden’s coup, and her father had been forced to forfeit his lands, to become the king’s huntsman, to live in a hovel and taste none of the game he delivered daily to the king’s table. For all of those five years, Brynn had fantasized about a thousand different ways to send Gedden to Hell. But never, until now, had she been close enough to consider fulfilling any one of them. If only she could bolster her nerve...

“There’s something here,” she said, dismounting once again. And there was—a clear set of fresh tracks in the mud leading out of what looked like a covered well at the edge of the fen. She tugged at a looped rope atop the wooden cover. It came away to reveal a crude ladder leading down into the dark. “Ah,” she said. “A tunnel? Is that why no one ever found Lorgo’s secret path through the swamp?” And how did you go about digging a tunnel under a swamp, anyway?

Gedden’s only reply was a grunt of exertion as he shifted his bulky frame into one stirrup to dismount and pull his broadsword from the scabbard lashed to his saddle. She’d expected an order to stay here, but when it didn’t come, she quietly led both horses in his wake. She wondered if Gedden knew that these weren’t Kervain’s tracks. The wide, flat sandal print belonged to a priest.

Lorgo was sitting on a tree stump when they found him, sipping from a wineskin slung to his rope belt. Bald, plump and deep in his cups despite the early hour, he staggered to his feet with a cry when Gedden came out of the trees.

“It wasn’t my fault!” he shrieked. “I swear! He’s mastered spell-casting, that one. He bewitched me!”

“Wine bewitches you,”Gedden rumbled. “The first prisoner I’ve sent you in four years, one man, and you can’t even keep him under lock and key.”

Brynn hadn’t been aware that the prison had been emptied, but without doubt, Gedden had either conscripted its former inmates into his army, or simply had them hanged. A man who wasted no resources, King Gedden.

“I tried!” Lorgo was whining. “I tried. He bewitched me, I tell you.”

“And where were you going, you sniveling worm? To find him? Or to get out of Serranda as fast as your flat feet could carry you?”

“I warned you,” Lorgo said, not answering the question. “I told you you should have killed him when you had the chance. I told you!”

“A mistake I will correct in short order,” Gedden said. “And here’s another.” He ran the priest through with one swift thrust, jerking the blade back out again with a disgusted grunt. Lorgo made choking sounds for a moment, then collapsed into a bleeding heap at Gedden’s feet. The king wiped his broadsword clean on the dead clergyman’s habit, turning to address Brynn for the first time since they’d come upon Lorgo.

“No one betrays me,” he said. “And neither will Kervain.”

Trying hard to ignore the gurgling sounds coming from the beneath them, Brynn handed him the gelding’s reins. “We still have a lot of ground to cover,” she said tightly, and led her mare back to the fen’s edge.

“YOU’RE CERTAIN THIS IS the way back to Inagel?” Kervain eyed the gnarled black trees surrounding them with uncertainty, making Gud smile at this mortal’s intrinsic distrust. They had been joined in the afternoon by two of his Teriz fellows, both of them underlings with little sense. But they had brought interesting news.

“Certain enough,” Gud answered the man evasively. “Why? Don’t you remember passing this scenic landscape on your way into Lorgo’s prison?”

Kervain’s lip curled. “I was unconscious at the time.”

“Ah.” Gud scratched his nose again. “Not that it’s any of my business, mind you, but you must have committed quite a heinous crime indeed to warrant that.”

“You’re right.” Kervain paused, apparently to watch the Teriz begin salivating in anticipation. “It is none of your business.”

Gud’s smaller companions cackled in unison, finding the answer amusing. Their superior silenced them with a snarl, turning it into a toothy smile by the time he looked back at the mortal. “Is that any way to treat your new partner in crime? If we’re going to help each other, I’m afraid I really must insist on knowing all the particularly juicy details.” Gud stopped walking to confront his newfound partner. “So,” he said stubbornly, “give.”

Kervain glared at him. And glared. And glared some more. Nothing if not patient, Gud waited. And waited some more.

“Embezzlement and treason.” Kervain spat the words as though all three Teriz had dragged it from him by torture. “I was accused of embezzlement and treason.”

“Accused? Would that be accused as in... not guilty?”

The mortal sneered his reply. “For the most part, yes. Gedden emptied his own treasury, secretly raising mercenary and conscript armies to attack his neighboring kingdoms. I was paid to look the other way, until of course his coffers ran dry and the bankruptcy was uncovered. Then he needed a scapegoat. When I protested, he swore that I’d plotted to steal his throne as well.”

“Complicit but not consummately guilty.” Gud clucked his tongue in mock sympathy. “And he didn’t simply lop off your scheming head because...?”

“I told him I’d rise from my grave and eat his liver if he dared.”

Oh, what a delightful picture that evoked. Gud was beginning to like this mortal. “Spoken like a true minion of my maker’s realm,” he complimented. “And why, then, do we go back to Castle Inagel? Planning to beard the lion in his own den, so to speak?”

“Something like that.”

“Admirable.”

Gud’s companions chortled again, earning them Kervain’s reproving scowl. “Your friends appear to be easily amused,” he said.

“Too true. But then, Urku and Blad happened only this morning to spy your errant king and a rather pretty blonde companion tracking you at the fen’s edge.”

Kervain glanced back the way they’d come as though Gedden might emerge that very moment from the trees. “Who else was with them?” he demanded. “The prison-keeper priest?”

“For a short time, yes,” Urku replied. “But the bearded one slew him.”

“And I took his soul,” Blad said with obvious relish. “Lucky for us, not all priests are heaven-bound.”

“The woman is Brynn Latham,” Urku told him. “The huntsman’s daughter. I’ve seen her in the woods before.”

The mortal acquired an odd expression at this revelation, so that Gud couldn’t tell whether he welcomed or despised the news. “In light of that,” Gud suggested, “doesn’t it appear that we might be going in the wrong direction?”

“Oh, no.” Kervain’s crudely-fashioned staff glowed a brighter, more determined blue when he lifted it to stare into its shimmering halo. “We’re going in precisely the right direction.”

INAGEL WASN’T MUCH OF a castle. But then, Serranda wasn’t much of a kingdom, either. Brynn studied Gedden’s face as, from the tree line, they viewed his citadel on its not-so-lofty crag, and wondered if he saw it as she did. Even five years ago, when Gedden had plundered and murdered his way to the throne, the gray stone monstrosity had already been falling into ruin. Now it looked as though it might begin crumbling down the hill’s runneled sides at any moment. As dwellings went, Brynn preferred her father’s cottage hovel in the woods.

“What joke is this?” Gedden’s saddle creaked under his weight when he shifted positions to glare back at her. “Kervain would never go back to Inagel. He wouldn’t have the temerity to challenge me there. Not alone.”

Brynn drew her mount alongside his, peering down at the rain-softened ground. It had taken her so long to find Kervain’s trail to begin with, they’d nearly concluded that the chancellor had perished in the fens after all. But this...

“He’s not headed for Inagel,” she said, and pointed south toward another stand of thorn trees. “At least, not directly. And he’s not alone, either. For the last mile, there’ve been four sets of tracks.” She neglected to mention that three of them weren’t even vaguely human, and Gedden, never bothering to examine the trail closely for himself, hadn’t noticed.

“Four?” He echoed the word with disdain. “So, the embezzler has accomplices now?”

“Apparently. Still want to confront him on your own?”

Gedden, not surprisingly, didn’t have to consider that option for long. “We’ll go back to Inagel for reinforcements,” he decided. “Four should be sufficient.”

When he spurred the gelding forward and headed for the citadel at a trot, Brynn lingered to study the odd footprints a bit longer. Her father had once shown her tracks like these, on a hunt near the fen years ago.

“Teriz,” she breathed. Then, to the king’s departing back she shouted, “You’re going to need more than four!”

Gedden never heard her.

JUST FULL OF SURPRISES, this mortal. Gud had been obliged to conceal his dismay when they’d first emerged from the wood only to travel no more than a few steps toward the castle. Taking the lead, Kervain had turned immediately south to plunge once again into the thicket, where he expertly navigated a winding, bramble-infested path that he apparently knew well. So did the Teriz. It led to the long-buried stone circle of Dryffd, a place forgotten by mortals many ages ago. Or so the Teriz had thought.

Gud reached the clearing two paces behind Priam Kervain, with Blad and Urku on either side. All three of them pulled up short to stare—at a perfect hexagon of granite heel stones surrounding an altar of midnight black obsidian. No mud, not even a trace of dust, marred any of them.

“How?” Gud rasped the word. “King oh-so-pious Lenet had Dryffd buried five centuries ago. All the mortals have long since forgotten that it ever existed.”

Kervain’s dark eyes glinted. “All but one,” he said.

Delighted, Urku and Blad scuttled into the circle to more closely examine the unearthed stones. When Gud crossed the hexagon’s threshold, however, his nostrils twitched and flared at a remnant odor of sorcery.

“So, mortal,” he said to Kervain, “have you simply magicked half a millennium’s soil away?”

Unforthcoming as ever, the human merely repeated his earlier offputting phrase. “Something like that,” he said.

“And this is where our bargain is to be sealed?”

The tip of Kervain’s improvised staff flashed, dying his cold smile blue. “Irrevocably,” he said, and abruptly thrust the charmed stick into Gud’s grasp. “Use it wisely, Teriz. I place myself entirely in your capable claws.”

Gud smiled. He was really beginning to like this mortal.

“WE SHOULD HAVE LEFT the horses behind.” Brynn examined a bloody gash on her mare’s flank while the king’s black gelding stamped and snorted behind her, as impatient as its master. The four foot soldiers Gedden had roused from the castle garrison stood by, relieved for the moment of branch hacking duties. Brynn wondered if, pre-enlistment, any of them had been prisoners in Lorgo’s swamp. They all looked distinctly uncomfortable in Gedden’s presence.

Kervain’s trail had led them through a thorny hell of ever-narrowing pathways until it had become nearly impossible to clear enough room for the heavy animals to pass. But Gedden, typically, was not dissuaded. “I’ll not go on foot,” he huffed. “We’ll clear the way for as long as is required.”

It required another hour of exhaustive slashing to bring them, scratched and bleeding, out of the thicket. None of them was prepared for the sight of a stone circle standing in the clearing—nor for the spectacle transpiring in its midst. Three creatures with webbed feet matching the inhuman footprints circled a flat black stone, upon which lay the unmoving, supine figure of Priam Kervain. The largest of the trio chanted something in a croaking voice and waved a glinting silver dagger over the chancellor’s throat. It hesitated when it noticed Gedden’s party approaching, the blade angled and ready to slice.

“What in the name of the seven hells is this?” Gedden charged down the brief incline on horseback, dismounting just outside the stone ring to storm into the circle. Two of the creatures fled at his intrusion. The third merely glanced at him over the poised dagger and smiled with a mouthful of needle teeth.

“How very aptly put,” it said.

Gedden’s bluster evaporated so quickly that he started when Brynn appeared beside him. “Wha... what are they?” he stammered. “Demons?”

“Some call them that,” Brynn told him. And to the one hovering over Kervain she said, “You’re the Teriz, aren’t you? My father always said you were no myth.”

“And ssso we’re not,” the knife-wielder hissed, still grinning at her through all those teeth. “Gud is my name.” It toyed with the dagger, running it harmlessly back and forth across Kervain’s exposed throat. Then it looked sharply up at them, its yellow eyes flashing. “Who are you? And why were you pursuing this one?”

Regaining his courage, Gedden dared to move closer. “What are you doing with this one? He’s my subject. My prisoner.”

“Is he now?” Gud snorted. “Unless I’m mistaken, that would make you the king of this miserable little province. Gedden, is it? And you’re personally tracking down this particular prisoner because...?”

Gedden went red again. “My reasons are none of your concern, demon.”

The creature’s laugh made Brynn shudder. “Executions are always our concern,” it countered. “Oh, that is what you intended, isn’t it? To execute him, as you did the priest? Well then, you’re in luck. You’re just in time to witness his sacrifice to the king of my realm.”

“I won’t allow that.” Gedden had found both his courage and his best intimidating tone. “Sending Priam Kervain to his ultimate reward is my province.” The king thrust out a hand. “Give me that.”

Gud pulled the weapon deftly away. “Dispatching a mortal soul to the depths is a privileged task, not easily purchased, even by a king. What will you give for the right to kill him, sssssire?”

That took Gedden aback for a moment. “What would you have?” he asked warily.

Gud picked at his teeth with the dagger’s point. “What is the most valuable thing you possess?”

Without hesitation, Gedden answered, “My kingdom. Serranda.”

The dagger tapped three times against Gud’s scaled chin. “Eight hundred peasants, a swamp prison and a crumbling castle? Guess again.”

Brynn could see the gleam of deception creep into Gedden’s gaze. His eyes always gleamed when he was scheming. “My treasury,” he said. “You can have all that my vaults hold. Every jewel, every coin, all of it.”

Brynn could have sworn she saw Kervain’s lip twitch at the king’s seemingly magnanimous offer. Something was definitely amiss here...

“So we are agreed,” the Teriz said, and gave the dagger a little toss to catch it again by the blade, whereupon he proffered it hilt-first to the king. “The most valuable thing you possess in exchange for the right to execute this mortal.”

“Agreed.” Gedden snatched the weapon with a flourish and without any further ado, made to plunge it into Kervain’s heart.

The dagger melted in his hand.

A startled Gedden stumbled back, swearing as he shook molten remnants of the blade from his burned fingers. He swore again when Priam Kervain rose from the black altar to confront him, and Gud’s two companions reappeared to hand the chancellor a long, gnarled stick. “What the hell are you playing at, Kervain? Pacts with demons now?” He pointed to the molten metal pooling on the ground. “What witchery is this?”

“My own,” Kervain replied. “With a little help from certain friends.” He looked at Brynn then, and with the faintest of smiles, said, “You’re late.”

“Sorry.” She moved to his side, sparing Gedden an icy glare along the way. “Swamps and thickets aren’t easy to track through, and I didn’t know you’d be adding a few new partners into the bargain.”

“Nor did I. But they’ve had their uses.”

Gedden rounded on the four soldiers waiting outside the circle and bellowed, “Kill them. All of them. Now!”

But the soldiers, their frightened eyes on Kervain’s inhuman companions, made no move to obey. When Gedden tried to charge toward them, perhaps to retrieve his own sword from the gelding’s saddle, an invisible something tripped him and sent him sprawling beside the black altar stone. He’d risen only as far as his knees when the molten remnants of the dagger reshaped themselves into twin chains that vined up to bind both of his wrists to the earth.

“Betrayer!” he screamed. “Sorcerer! What bargain did you strike with these demons? The promise to give them your black-hearted soul?”

“That,” Kervain said coldly, “was already a foregone conclusion. It just won’t be due and payable for another seventy years. No, I had no need to pledge my soul. What I promised was that you would give them yours.”

“The most valuable thing you possess,” Gud chimed in gleefully, “in exchange for execution rights.”

Straining uselessly against the spellbound chains, Gedden shouted, “I didn’t execute him!”

“An immaterial point,” Gud snapped. “You bargained for the right to kill him. Failure to do so has no bearing whatsoever on the contract.”

“Time to go,” Kervain said abruptly. At his gesture, all three of the Teriz retreated, and Brynn closed her ears to Gedden’s curses long enough to follow Kervain out of the circle.

“What will you do to him?” she asked. Despite everything he’d done, and despite her years of killing him in fantasy, Gedden’s terrified cries were making her stomach churn with indecisive nausea.

Kervain didn’t answer her. They’d reached the horses and the four decidedly nervous soldiers, their eyes darting from Kervain to the bound king to the three Teriz that still lurked nearby. “His lands are yours now,” Kervain told them.

“But I thought...” Brynn started to say over the soldiers’ dismayed reactions. Kervain’s look silenced her.

“That I wanted it?” he said. “Eight hundred peasants, a swamp prison and a crumbling castle?” He turned back to the soldiers. “If I were you, I’d take what’s left of both Lorgo’s prison and Inagel apart brick by brick, and build yourselves some decent houses. Don’t bother crowning another king, though. They’re falling out of fashion these days anyway. Go on. Work the rest out for yourselves.”

When all four men had fled back into the thicket, Brynn remained, still waiting for an answer to her question. Gud approached them, pointing one clawed finger at Kervain’s staff. “A spell cast can be uncast,” he said. “Time to pay us, sorcerer. Let Dryffd be buried again.”

Brynn watched in growing horror as Kervain began murmuring words she couldn’t understand. The staff’s tip glowed blue and sent a miniature lightning bolt arcing to the nearest standing stone, where at once it multiplied until the entire circle was aglow with its light. With painstaking, creeping slowness, layers of soil began to appear around the stones, across the circle’s floor, and around the black slab and its nearby prisoner. When Gedden noticed, his angry shouts became anguished cries, then pleas. The Teriz all cackled in response, awaiting their soon-to-be-delivered prize.

Brynn gathered her mare’s trailing reins and deliberately turned away from the circle. “I suppose I should thank you,” she told Kervain. “But I can’t. And I can’t watch this, either.”

“Your choice,” he said curtly. “Going home to father?”

She didn’t dignify that with a reply, but turned her back on him as well, and led the mare to the opening they’d cut through the thorns.

“If you should reconsider,” Kervain’s soft voice said behind her, “look me up. A good accomplice isn’t easy to find these days.”

Brynn paused for the briefest of moments, but kept her silence, walking on into the thicket as Gedden’s cries modulated into a dying man’s terrified screams.

She didn’t look back.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JEAN GRAHAM’S fiction has appeared in the anthologies Memento Mori, Misunderstood, Time of the Vampires, and Dying to Live, as well as MYTHIC. A member of both SFWA and HWA, she resides in San Diego, CA along with 5,000 books, six cats, and one husband.

Much Obliged, Stephen

JAMES ROWLAND

I WAS IN A RIGHT pickle. Not one of those pickles someone says before telling you they’re stuck between choosing two lovers, one a busty maiden perkier than Everest and the other some Adonis bathed in the remaining olive oil reserves. That’s not being caught in a pickle as so much as being trapped in a light French pastry. No, I was well and truly swimming in the vinegar, hurtling toward the Sun in a single-seater ship with a lick of power, no plan, and no hope. You could spread me over a sandwich I was in that much of a pickle.

Honestly, I suppose I should bally-well row back a bit and explain exactly how I got into this mess, but it seemed important to establish the rumblings of the train heading toward me. It’d be a bit like introducing the kids to the stray tomcat you’re about to beat over the back of the head with a shovel because it won’t leave the prized-winning tomatoes alone. I’m the tomcat and the shovel is the Sun. Don’t grow too attached.

I’m, of course, Laurie Wisteria, the remaining bachelorette of the Wisteria Conglomerate. Aunt Jason rather unfairly regards me as the worm-infested apple in the packet. They obviously have some firm footing. For example, I have no intention to enter the respectable institute of matrimony. Androids are a far superior kind of lover. You can still achieve the O without having to put up with male Eg that precedes it. In the upper echelons of Gaian society, being unmarried is seen as quite the faux pas. Of course, to the rest of the solar system, referring to Earth as Gaia is seen with the same sort of suspicion as someone who might suggest they can taste the peat in their wine. Aunt Jason is the type of person who not only can taste peat in their wine, but can taste wine in their water and refers to Gaian society like Gaian society refers to everyone else.

Because Aunt Jason rather dominates the mood in the same way as a nuclear explosion, their opinion of me and my reputation are the same thing. It had its benefits. It meant I was never expected to run some part of the Wisteria Conglomerate, like Boston or South Wales. Instead I could concentrate on waking up at reasonable hours. It was well known that no honest work could be done before the solar panels had at least received a couple hours of sunlight, which meant there was no reason to wake up before nine or ten in the mornings. Unless you lived in Scotland, then it was considered good manners to just not get out of bed at all.

On the day that Midas first started tying this Gordian knot I found myself in, I was slow to rouse due to the lateness of my night before. I was out at the Lunar Ritz where the Organics were having a little get together, and after space elevators and a private jet ride, it was nearly morning by the time I was back in bed. Stephen had no doubt noted my return time, checked my vital signs and took discreet measurements of my bodily fluids and knew that I needed the extra hours of sleep. He kept the curtains closed, the sound to a minimum and ensured that no one was allowed to disturb me until the Sun was already back on its descent.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry to wake you,” came Stephen’s voice, lowered an octave to ease me more gently from my sleep. “Mr Henly is here to see you and has been waiting for quite some time now.”

I yawned, rolling over, ready to ask Stephen for at least a cup of coffee before I had to face old Henly. A tray was already beside my bed; a pot of coffee, and bacon and eggs sat waiting for me. Stephen was, of course, not Stephen but rather S.T.E.P.H.E.N. The Artificial Intelligence created to look after the Wisteria Conglomerate in its infancy, the matrix had bobbed around from family member to family member until someone accidentally bequeathed him to me. No one quite remembered what the acronym meant anymore and so S.T.E.P.H.E.N became Stephen. Aunt Jason spent a lot of their time chasing me up about giving him back so that he could be put to something more useful than my personal assistant. Aunt Jason usually got what she wanted but Stephen was more than just a PA. He was a priceless confidante and he made excellent coffee.

“You know what Stephen,” I managed to splutter out through a mouthful of egg. “I’ll see the old boy in here. I’m decent enough.”

Stephen’s wall panel glowed a bright blue in assent and a few seconds later, the door opened and Henly walked in. We went way back. During school, we’d toyed with the idea of partnership before I had corrective eye surgery. His parents had evidently stored up their neck genes so that he appeared like a giraffe. You could always spot Henly coming to find you in a party. Usually, I’d make a dash for it because he had the facial expression of a man who stuck his hand in a box of chocolates only to find them all gone. Even when he was cheery, I’d look at him and feel as if I was considering the plight of Martian ground dwellers. Considering a thoroughly corking time on the Moon last night, though, I was willing to spare Henly a few minutes and gestured for him to take the armchair to one side of my bed as I propped myself up against the headboard with a small army of pillows.

“Sorry to disturb you like this, Laurie,” he said, toying with the brim of his hat that sat in his lap. I waved his concerns away. “It’s just, well dammit, I’m in a spot of bother here.”

“What’s the matter this time?” Henly had been in trouble four times already this year, which was in fact a dramatic drop-off from the year previous where he set a personal best of thirty-two predicaments.

“There’s a boy on Europa, the most beautiful boy you’ll ever see, Laurie. And I’m going to marry him, absolutely. I’ve already made all the arrangements. But mother’s keeping the purse-strings tight and she’ll never let me head off out into the Fringe.”

“So, you were after a little Wisteria knowledge to send you on your way?”

“Well, actually I was hoping if Stephen might be able to offer me some advice,” Henly said, looking up at the roof as if Stephen was some man who lived in my attic.

Now, I admire Stephen and will go to him for advice from lovers to breakfast jams but it never thrills a person when your friends come to your house for advice, instead of you. It’s a little bit of a bullet to your heart when your walls are treated with more reverence than you are. In fact, it’s damn well pride shattering. Already I could see the walls humming a gentle blue, Stephen deep in thought, no doubt. It would not do. At school, I was always known as the quick thinker, the ringleader, running circles around schoolmasters woefully out of their depths. I had a reputation to uphold.

“Now Stephen,” I said, my voice a little sharper than I meant. It wasn’t his fault that people were underestimating me. “Would you please give Henly and I a little privacy. I’m quite sure I can help an old friend out on my own.”

“Of course, Ma’am.” The walls returned to their natural beige colour.

Henly looked as if his favourite flavour of novelty coke had been cancelled. He was all eyebrows and top lip. “I really thought Stephen...”

“He’s getting on a bit now,” I said, sitting a little more upright against my pillows. “The program’s slowly winding down. If I’m being honest, old boy, he’s not what he used to be. I have to fill in a lot of the gaps for him. Now, let’s talk about your little problem. I’ve got a plan just in mind.”

“You do?” Henly’s face was a little too incredulous for my liking.

I had picked up a fair few things from Stephen throughout the years. One of the main lessons was that I noticed his plans were always very simple. Like a vicar’s sermon, they never had more than a few points. The more complicated a machine was, the more likely it was to break down. The same could be said about plans. So, I was particularly pleased at the thunderbolt that came out of the blue from my brain. It looked bloody well foolproof.

“You have to die,” I said, grinning. Henly’s face moved from curiosity to abject terror quicker than a bullet train crossing my estate. “For showmanship purposes only, you understand. We’ll fake your death, big bang, tragic end, and you’re free to sneak off to Europa to be with your betrothed.”

Henly’s eyebrows furrowed together like long lost lovers. “I suppose that does work. In a certain way. But I don’t know, Laurie. It’s awfully theatrical. And what about money? Without the family wealth, I’ll be penniless within a week!”

“That’s why it needs to be theatrical! Once the deed is done, I’ll set up the Henly Gussy Memorial Fund. When your tragic death hits the news, people will race to donate. You’ll be able to live off the funds for decades!”

“How on earth do we make my death such an event?”

I grinned, leaning forward. “Tell me, old boy, do you intend on heading to Ascot this year?”

LOOKING DOWN AT EARTH, I decided it really was the prettiest planet in our dear old solar system. Blue, green and swirls of white, it was like some chap had just nipped out and painted a masterpiece in his spare time. Mars was all red and orange, a panting uncle who forgot he could no longer play rugby. Venus and Mercury were washed out. Jupiter always reminded me of the time I went to the prom with Danielle, and the pimple on her chin burst like Vesuvius just as we were leaning into kiss. Adolescence was such a drag. Saturn was pretty, but it had to accessorise with those rings, like it was trying too hard. Earth was stunning for who it was, not for what it wore. The universe clearly only had one tin of paint left by the time it reached Neptune. Pluto was lovely, but still only visible through photographs, and one could never be sure if the dwarf planet received a bit of sexing up to make it more attractive. And don’t even get me started on Uranus.

“Ma’am,” Stephen’s gentle voice said in my ear. “Sorry to disturb you, but I thought it was in your best interest to know your Aunt Jason is looking for you.”

“Well, that’s one way to jolly well ruin a good view,” I said, turning away from an observation window of the Virgin Branson Space Station.

The Ascot Races had been hosted on the V.B.S.S ever since we had the good sense to ditch the horses and replace them with sleek, bullet-like spaceships. It boggled the mind that some people fought against the change. They said it was a break with tradition, which was rather the point. They argued that it was less authentic, but honestly, who gave a rat’s ass about authenticity anymore. Finally, they cried that it was not fair on the horses. If horseracing disappeared, then horses would serve no purpose and they would become extinct. Quite frankly, if the only reason you’re keeping the animals around is to race them for your own entertainment, then you’re no friend of horses. Anyway, I really wanted to see some high-quality spaceship racing. So, I bought out every stable in Western Europe and now we watch carnage in space while the horses frolic freely through the Wisteria Wildlife Reserve. That’s what we call, in the business, a win-win.

Henly was due to race in half an hour or so. We had thrown him into the Gravity-Class event. Personally, I’m far more of a Formula Space girl: sleek machines, sleeker drivers, weaving between asteroids at the speed of sound. One race used more power than the Conglomerated American States did in a month, and decadence is only worthwhile if you’re being more decadent than the Americans. After all, any country that was founded on the principle of wasting that much tea is really the benchmark for frivolousness. The Gravity-Class races were far likelier to involve someone dying, though. The ships ran on the smell of a half-charged solar battery. Pilots had to plot a route to the finish line, mainly relying on the gravitational pull of objects in our solar system. Some people said it was thrilling; an exam of intellect as much as engineering. Those were the type of people who still insisted on test cricket being a thing. You cannot reason with them.

Regardless, all Henly had to do was appear to mess up his trajectory and he’d be stuck hurtling into deep space with a dead ship and no chance of survival. In reality, we had plotted out the exact route around Venus that he needed to be thrown toward Europa like a shoe at some poor war criminal. Boom, one tragic racing death, one secret trip to the Fringe, and one delightful campaign to raise enough money for the causes Henly loved; mainly, himself.

All of which to say is that Aunt Jason’s presence, let alone their desire to speak to me, was a damn annoyance. I expected them here, of course, since Aunt Jason is almost literally everywhere. I’m surprised they hadn’t granted themselves the liberty of moving into my fridge. But even if they were here for Ascot, I had banked on the fact that Aunt Jason had always been so keen to regard me as a rather unfortunate stain on a dress; something you try very hard to remove, and when that fails, you cover up and hope no one notices. Running, however, was a futile endeavour. You couldn’t run from Aunt Jason. It would only be delaying the inevitable. Frankly, whoever decided to legalise post-local entities did not have my dear old Aunt in mind.

Most post-lokies were my type of people, eager to explore as much of life as possible. Ethical hedonists, if you like. I consider myself a high-ranking member of such a fine philosophy, even if I haven’t gone post-local myself. I suppose I’m too in favour of monogamy to oneself. Post-lokies, though, severed that special connection between one’s mind and one’s body, in favour of being able to experience life through a multitude of eyes. Say you’re enjoying a fab party in Majorca, when suddenly the urge takes you to go ice fishing on Ganymede. No need to waste precious moments of your life in transit, when you could just pop your mind over to the body waiting on your apartment hundreds of millions of kilometres away. And people feared scientific progress? Ha. That was how the post-lokie lifestyle was meant to work.

Aunt Jason used their life choice mainly as a form of intimidation, though. When I was younger, I’d been eating at some fancy get-together, hobnobbing with all the best knobs, and then a shiver ran down my spine. I spotted the bony, high cheekboned face of Aunt Jason. They were coming for me. I moved as quickly as a Dawkinist who accidentally walked into a nunnery. Weaving through ambassadors and CEOs, I hid in the corner of the gathering and found myself in conversation with a charming older gent, who talked about scarcity, which sounded ghastly. We were joined by some redhead with a neckline that highlighted all the joys of our new post-scarcity age, and I thought all the parts for a thoroughly corking night were assembling, only to find out that both of them were bloody well Aunt Jason.

So, I didn’t run. I placed myself prominently on view and hoped that they would chew me up and spit me out before Henly was due to race. It took all of a minute for a hand to wrap around my arm.

“Aunt Jason,” I said, smiling, taking a punt that the portly middle-aged man behind me was my relative.

“I don’t like what you’ve done with your hair.” I considered this a reasonably friendly greeting from them. Maybe this talk was survivable. “I hope you haven’t put too much money on the races.”

“I am on my best behave…”

“That wasn’t a question, dear,” they said, releasing my arm. “And how is Stephen?”

Ah. So, it was going to be this type of conversation. It rankled a little bit that seemingly every chat I had these days was to do with Stephen. It rather felt like I had become the assistant. Although, assistant or not, I had no intention of letting my aunt browbeat me into giving up my confidant. “Stephen is fine.”

“Good, good. And you still insist on keeping him?”

“Yes.”

“Now, now, don’t clench your teeth like that. I was just checking,” Aunt Jason said, and the middle-aged man in front of me smiled like a scheming grandmother. “Why I asked is I happened to be delving in the datawork of the family. Old wills and so forth, I’m sure no one else has ever bothered to read them. Dreadfully dull. But also, quite interesting.”

“Oh, really?” I asked, arranging my face in a perfectly to scale model of serenity. On the inside, though, I rather imagined this was how a triceratops felt like upon making eye contact with a T-Rex.

“There was a codicil to your grandfather’s will,” Aunt Jason explained and I pondered if another extinction level event would destroy every single one of their bodies. “In regards to Stephen. It noted that he was to be invested in you, on the condition, that you were in full-time employment. It’s funny how we can miss the fine print, isn’t it?”

Bloody hilarious. Of all the potential conditions that Pappy could have come up with, that was the worse. It was a twisting a salted knife into my eye level of pettiness. Marriage, I might have been able to tolerate. Giving up Northern Ireland I would have done in a heartbeat. But a job? I was ready to call in the priest to administer the last rites. My life was over. There was no point to it anymore. The fact that we live for just over a hundred and fifty years and people still insist on wasting a third of it working gave me the willies. How, as a species, could we be so dim-witted? I had proposed to the Organics once, that only when the final worker has thrown done his tools would the rest of the universe reveal itself to us. As soon as John Smith, accountant of Smith & Sons, decided to give up the goose, aliens from across space would fling open the doors to the intergalactic party. “We’ve been waiting to admit you for centuries, humans,” they’d laugh, patting us on the back, “but we had to make sure you weren’t a bunch of squares, you see? Now try the concentrated neutron spirits, they’re to die for, my boy.” And now I had to be one of those pen-pushing job-holders? I felt as if I was going to introduce Aunt Jason to a vestibule of vomit.

Then again, the fact that I could give up Stephen hadn’t even crossed my mind, which goes to show how much I had fallen for the silly, old AI.

“You are in breach of that codicil,” Aunt Jason smiled, like cholera upon seeing a particularly muddy stretch of river. “But I am bound to give you an opportunity to gain employment, as per the will. In fact, I am happy to offer you a job myself. If Stephen is the price of bringing you into the fold, so to speak, then I’m happy to pay it. Give me your answer by next week. Good night, Laurie, and do enjoy the races.”

Aunt Jason patted me on the arm and disappeared into the crowd. I kept my face composed; I didn’t put it pass the old bint that they were watching me from another body, waiting to feast upon my reaction. I nodded, more to myself than anyone else, and went to drown my sorrows in the champagne being handed out. Every single blasted job Aunt Jason could give me spun around my mind: her personal assistant, acquisition manager, Mayor of Liverpool. I threw up a little in my mouth.

“Ma’am,” Stephen said in my air. Bless him, he was worried we were about to be parted.

“Don’t worry, Stephen, I’m willing to take this bullet for us.”

“Oh, no, Ma’am, I’m sure that will be quite unnecessary in the end. I was rather seeking to divert your attention to the fact that Mr Henly’s race is about to begin.”

In the aftermath of Aunt Jason’s tactical strike, I had nearly forgotten about poor Henly, sitting alone in some tin can. I rushed to the Observation Deck, eager to play my part in egging on the tragedy. As soon as Henly reported his bungled manoeuvre, I would be there, among the big, high-rolling whales, praising his courage and lamenting his death, a Mark Anthony to Henly’s Caesar.

Now, some might have thought that my little plan was unethical, but that simply wasn’t the case. Bentham opined that as long as the pleasure of an act outweighed any negative consequences, then it was ultimately moral. Of course, people who would donate money to Henly’s memorial fund were perhaps being put slightly out of pocket. Consequence one, if you’d like. But one must never forget the pleasure of donating. These people would feel great, having done a kind and selfless act. Not only would they feel good, but they would look good upon telling all their colleagues. And when you look good, you feel good, creating, in essence, a positive feedback loop of warm fuzzy feelings. Pleasure one. Henly would feel great, entwined with his pretty young thing on Europa. Pleasure two. And I would feel wonderful, knowing that I had helped a friend while still observing the laws of Bentham’s utilitarianism. Pleasure three. So, at the full-time whistle, that was Pleasure three, Consequences one. A victory so easy that for the final fifteen minutes, we were just running down the clock in the corner.

The race had already started by the time I got to the Observation Deck. Henly was bringing up the rear, already falling behind the far more adept pilots. I had expected that; the man may have inherited a giraffe’s neck, but he moved with all the grace and speed of a slightly hungover sloth, nursing a hamstring injury. He didn’t have to win, anyway. He just needed to follow his route and act the part, which made it very concerning when he beamed a message to the audience back on the V.B.S.S about twenty minutes before he was meant to.

His face appeared on one of the screens. He looked so white I suspected some people thought he was advertising for Nippon Paint. “I can’t do this, I can’t do this,” he was panting as his fingers slapped at buttons. I felt like a cartoon heading over a cliff, all I had to do was wait a few seconds for gravity to catch up. “Sorry, I can’t. I don’t love him; I don’t. Europa? I can’t live there. I’m coming home.”

An experienced pilot would have been able to abandon the race with ease. It was a case of hitting the thrusters, hitchhiking a ride off the Moon’s gravitational pull and gliding back toward the V.B.S.S. Henly was not an experienced pilot. His attempt to return to civilisation reminded me of a fly trying to find the open window. He was right there, all he had to do was buzz a little closer, and then he turned and flew somewhere else. Within minutes, the opportunity has passed and Henly was soaring out into deep space, his battery spent. It turned out the Henly Gussy Memorial Fund was open for business after all.

AT THIS POINT, I suspect you can put together how I ended up in my pickle. There was about fifteen minutes before poor Henly would be out of reach, spiralling beyond our grasp. I felt as if I was, at least slightly, somewhat to blame and therefore the responsibility fell on me to save the blighter. Only a Formula Space ship would be quick enough to catch him, and the organisers of the race seemed eager to lend me one. I imagined it was frightfully exciting viewing, watching me trying to save the man. I dabbled with racing back during that parlous time at university and within an hour I was pulling up to Henly’s ship. A ballet of spacesuits and complicated stretches later, Henly was on the Formula Space vessel, motoring home and I was here, stuck hurtling toward the Sun. I told you not to grow too attached.

“Although,” I said to myself, leaning back in my seat. “If I had to choose between the Sun and working for Aunt Jason, well, maybe this won’t be such a dreadfully bad end after all.”

A familiar voice echoed in my ears. “Ma’am, I hope you do not think so lowly of me that you thought I would have left you here.”

“Stephen!”

“Who else?” the voice drawled. “I must enquire if you are serious about your suicidal tendencies? I would consider it my utmost failure if you were.”

“Suicidal or not, I think I may have reached the end of the tether, old boy. Not even you could get me out of this one.”

“On the contrary, Ma’am, I took the liberty of calculating an escape route for this very situation earlier today,” Stephen said, a deeply unattractive drop of smugness dropping into his voice pattern.

“You knew this was going to happen?”

“I suspected that Mr Henly, who has, by my estimation, been in love fifty-six times in the last three years, would not follow through on your otherwise immaculate plan. And knowing my master’s kind nature, there was a reasonably strong possibility that you were going to end up in this situation. I would have considered it only remiss of me to not prepare for such an eventuality.”

My heart was beating a little faster now. It sounded like all my Christmases had rather come at once. “Are you saying that I’m out of the frying pan, so to speak?”

“Out of the frying pan indeed, Ma’am. If you follow my instructions to the letter, we should be able to catch a push off several passing comets, which will direct us to Mercury. We’ve got just enough reserve power left to escape Mercury’s orbit, and so, with the ultimate precision that I pride myself on, we’ll be able to catapult ourselves back to Terra Firma in time for the Boat Race.”

I stared out at the inky blackness all around me. It sounded as if I was in for a long journey, but all things considered, dodging almost certain death felt like at least a score-draw. Even if Aunt Jason was waiting for me at the end. “Instruct away then, Stephen,” I said, taking hold of the controls. “But let’s go the long way around, give me a few months before I have to become a working woman.”

“Oh, that will not be necessary,” Stephen said, and it sounded like the AI was talking through a smirk. “At this very moment, everyone is enamoured with your courage in saving Mr Henly. In fact, the news coverage is both incredibly extensive and very favourable. Your Aunt is appalled. More to the point, though, I have organised you a lucrative and very long-term contract to write a memoir, so to speak, of this very incident. I’m sure we can sufficiently sex it up to the publisher’s desire. Regardless, you are, as of five minutes ago, an employed author, which ensures you meet the codicil of your grandfather’s will. Aunt Jason’s threat is now toothless.”

“Well, tally ho!” I laughed, all the anxiety of my situation drifting away. “I’m much obliged, Stephen. I couldn’t dare thinking of letting you go; I’m very fond of you, you know.”

“As I of you, Ma’am.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JAMES ROWLAND is a New Zealand-based, British-born writer. His work has previously appeared at Aurealis, Black Dandy and Compelling Science Fiction. When he’s not moonlighting as a writer of magical, strange or futuristic stories, he works as an intellectual property lawyer. Besides writing, his hobbies are reading, stand-up comedy, travel, photography, and the sport of kings, cricket. You can find more of his work at his website https://jamesrowlandwriter.wordpress.com.

The Icebreaker

HALL JAMESON

THE LODGEPOLE PINES CREAKED in acknowledgment as Amanda passed beneath them; the sound reminded her of her grandfather’s rocker as he sat on the front porch watching the lake, rocking, ker-crick, ker-crick.

The only other sounds were the crunch of her snowshoes accompanied by the whisper of the sled’s runners as she made her way toward the ice. She enjoyed the two-mile trek to the lake, towing a light sled loaded with her fishing gear, particularly after a fresh fall of snow.

She caught a glimpse of the frozen lake through the orderly trunks. Swirls of turquoise and pearl marked the ice. The steep shoreline jutted over the lakes edge, met below by fingers of driftwood skeletons, softened by a froth of snow.

According to local lore, a monster (described as an enormous, eel-like creature by witnesses) inhabited these waters, a legend similar to that of any small town near a formidable stretch of freshwater. At four hundred feet deep and thirty miles long, Flathead Lake could certainly conceal such a creature. Yet, she had lived near the lake her entire life and had never witnessed anything supernatural. She craved such an encounter, but believed such a creature found you, not the other way around.

When Amanda was a girl, her mother taught her how to fish for Mackinaw trout. She dropped a silver jig with a kernel of fresh corn impaled on the hook one hundred feet below the surface, as the Macs avoided light. Strands of tinsel were tied to the top of the jig in order to create shimmering tendrils in the water. The working of the rod consisted of a figure-eight motion of the tip, followed by an upward jerk of no more than six inches. She called her mother’s fishing technique the Mac Method, and, if the weight of her sled as she hauled each day’s catch home was any indication, the Mac Method was foolproof. However, her mother’s method was a source of contention when she described it one night at the Dewlap Pub. The old men at the bar chuffed and shook their heads at her.

Tinsel? Eye rolls all around.

A pretty gal like you should be married, not hunting and fishing. Joe here’s available, aren’t ya Joe? A hearty chorus of laughs.

Aren’t you afraid, out there on the ice at all hours? There are grizzlies and wolves all around here, not to mention, a crazed mountain man or two. Though their tone was light, condescension soaked their bleary, beer-eyed, group expression.

“Actually, I prefer women to men,” she had said. “And I’m an excellent shot.”

The jibing ceased and the subject matter switched to hockey.

Less than a week later, as she was passing by Mike Samuel’s hut, he emerged toting a string of three enormous Macs. He nodded to her, the color rising in his cheeks. Must be the cold air, she thought as she walked away, then she spotted something on the ice.

A single strand of tinsel.

THE AIR NIPPED AMANDA’S cheeks as she pulled down the neoprene mask covering her mouth and flicked off the crystals that had formed from her breath. The trees offered protection from the bitter wind, but once she reached the open ice, the gusts assaulted her. She adjusted her mask and tightened her hood. The weather report said the wind chill could reach forty below in open areas, but the layers she wore shielded her from the worst of it. She preferred the cold to the stifling temperatures of summer, the crisp air made her feel alive.

She was alone on the lake today. No smoke drifted from the stovepipes of the nearby huts, the weather too cold even for those with shelters.

She inspected her fishing holes and discovered a thick layer of ice had formed since she had last been there. As she cranked the auger, reopening the holes, she wondered what it felt like to freeze. She had heard stories about people who had fallen through the ice and lived to tell about it. They claimed it felt like you were on fire.

She huddled close to a ledge that hung over the ice, a favorite spot of hers because the water was still deep, yet she was sheltered from the wind. She took a step, reaching for the thermos of coffee on her sled, but she slipped and fell on her ass, both legs kicking up in front of her. She started to rise, but hesitated when she noticed something suspended in the thick wall of ice beneath the ledge: an irregular form, frozen in place. She crawled closer to study it, but it was too dark beneath the ledge to make out any details. She brushed at the ice with her gloved hand.

What is that?

She retrieved the hatchet from her sled and started to chip away at the ice. A voice spoke up in her head.

Just leave it.

She ignored the voice and hacked at the ice until she had freed a chunk the size of a small boulder, the object in its center. She rolled it out into the sunlight to inspect it.

The ice surrounding the object was cloudy and patterned, making it difficult to identify any of the object’s, or rather, the creature’s, details, because surely this had once been a living thing. Was that the slip of a tail? The ridge of a spine? Multiple slender extremities? A head with a protruding jaw and brow?

It’s probably a muskrat or young beaver, maybe a mink, she told herself. Something that died just as the December freeze hit.

Yet, the coloring of the creature was not brown, but a startling array of jewel tones that sparkled as she turned the chunk. Was it some kind of bird; an unfortunate parrot released into the wild to fend for itself? As she inspected what details she could make out, that did not seem to fit either. The head was the wrong size and shape for a bird, and the tail more...reptilian.

What is this thing?

She thought about chipping away more of the ice, but worried that without the proper tools the chunk would fracture and damage the creature, so she hauled it onto her sled and strapped it down, leaving the auger and the rest of her fishing supplies behind on the shore. It had started to snow, so she tied a red rag around a branch to mark the spot where she had left her gear.

Despite her layers, she shuddered as a chill wracked her body, but she warmed as she lugged the sled back up the hillside toward her cabin. The snow was falling heavily by the time she reached the steps of her front porch.

Mackinaw, pheasant, and venison filled both chest freezers in her garage, so she emptied the freezer compartment of her kitchen refrigerator. She threw bags of frozen peas and French fries into the sink, and placed the ice cube trays on the counter where the twelve compartments melted into tepid rectangular pools. Her cat, Toad, lapped a puddle that had formed on the kitchen floor.

The chunk filled the entire freezer compartment. She stared at it for a moment, before she let the door swing shut.

She lay in bed that night thinking about the thing in her freezer. Why had she brought it home? What was she going to do with it? And, most importantly:

What the heck was it?

THE NEXT MORNING, SHE REMOVED the chunk from the freezer and set it on a towel on the kitchen floor. She dug out a chisel and hammer, and went to work, chipping away like a sculptor working on a marble block, shaping it into a more manageable size, honing it down until it was the size of a watermelon.

Okay. Now what?

Her first thought was what any reasonable person would do...

A reasonable person wouldn’t have brought it home in the first place!

...thaw it out. Put it on a plate in her refrigerator like a piece of meat for her dinner—say, a venison steak or a rainbow trout from last summer’s haul. Once thawed, she could identify it—a logical course of action.

She held it up to the overhead light until her arms trembled, squinting, tilting her head from side-to-side. Part of her wanted to keep it a secret, tucked away in the freezer to take out on special occasions so she could enjoy those exquisite, sparkling colors. She felt at peace when she looked at it, as if everything was going to be okay. She realized she had not felt that way in a long time.

She thought about packing it up and bringing it to the lab in Seattle where her brother, Brian, worked. When they were young, he loved this type of thing, but they had grown apart over the years. He left home for the city after High School graduation and had returned only once, when their mother was dying.

She thought of her last visit to Seattle, two months after their mother’s death. She had been in the city for a fruit growers’ conference and decided to surprise Brian. He had met her in the corridor outside his office, unsmiling, saying her name in chipped, careful syllables.

Amanda. What are you doing here?

He frowned at her weathered Carhartt pants, hiking boots, flannel shirt, and hunting jacket, then glanced up and down the hall to see if anyone was watching him converse with this ragged specimen of a woman.

Her brother was a snob. When had that happened?

She glared back, taking note of his snowy lab coat, skinny black jeans, and black, plastic-framed glasses. Okay, he was a nerd and a snob, but he was also a little bit cool. She resisted the urge to grab his head and mess up his perfectly moussed hair.

She imagined him examining the chunk of ice, his frown deepening, looking at her with a furrowed brow and placing a hand over his chin, professor style, while he contemplated how to tell her to go away.

No. Her brother and his perfect hair were not an option.

She leaned in toward the ice and frowned. Something had changed. The creature seemed to be in a different position than she remembered. Impossible! She placed it on the kitchen table and rolled it, studying the creature from every angle.

Of course, it’s in the same position!

The lower extremities, if that was what they were, seemed closer to the body, like it was crouching, preparing to spring. A clear ripple in the chunk revealed a dark spot the size of an olive she had not noticed before. An eye? She jumped, the legs of her chair scraping the floor, as a drop of water cascaded down the surface of the ice. She took a breath, her heart pounding. For a moment, it had appeared to come from the corner of the eye.

You should just toss this thing in a snowbank and forget about it. Get it out of here!

Nodding, she rose and grabbed the chunk, but instead of going outside, she shoved it back inside the freezer and shut the door. She would figure out what to do with it later.

SHE WOKE WITH A start. Had there been a sound? A thud? Toad jumped onto the bed next to her head and she squawked. He responded with a croak, and she laughed.

“You scared me, kiddy,” she said.

Drifting off to sleep last night, she had made a decision—she was going to thaw out the creature and examine it. If it were a beaver or other recognizable creature, she would dispose of it. If it was something else, then she would...

What would she do?

You’ll figure that out when the time comes, her mother’s reasonable voice said. She closed her eyes; she missed her so much. She thought of her brother in his pristine lab, surrounded by microscopes and test tubes, slides and beakers, itching to make a discovery; the reason he had left home. She was the opposite, longing to be discovered by something; the reason she had stayed behind.

She crawled from her warm bed. “Coffee, before I do anything,” she said to the elk head mounted over the fireplace as she shuffled toward the kitchen. A cigarette dangled from his mouth, something her friend Julia found hilarious, but she found disrespectful, yet she had not bothered to remove it.

She moaned in sleepy surprise as liquid coolness soaked her socks when she stepped into the kitchen. She clicked on the light and saw puddles scattered across the floor.

Suddenly, she was wide-awake.

The freezer door was open.

She looked inside. The compartment was empty, except for shards of shattered ice. The creature—her creature—was gone!

A water trail led from a large puddle in front of the refrigerator across the kitchen floor and into the living room. The carpet was damp in patches all the way to the fireplace, where the glass doors were open a crack. She pushed open the doors and peered inside, but saw nothing odd amongst the charred remains of last night’s fire. She tilted her head and listened, but heard no sound in the chimney. A knot formed in her stomach.

“Come back,” Amanda whispered into the mouth of the fireplace. Then she shuddered and sank back onto the couch, her optimism melting away like the remnants of ice in her kitchen.

THE FEBRUARY THAW ARRIVED with the same abruptness as the December freeze—a bully in its own right. As a result, the ice began to speak, moaning as it shifted and split; singing in joyous celebration about its new form; and gurgling as if digesting a satisfying meal. The sounds, amplified by the juicy air, made Amanda feel restless and blue.

Since her discovery of the thing in the ice and its consequent disappearance, she had become obsessed with seeking an explanation, even one considered beyond reason.

Last night there had been swatches of colored lights in the sky—an aurora borealis, according to the weather service. She questioned that. She had seen many an aurora in the northern skies, but last night’s display had been due west, over the mountains. The lights hovered low in the sky, as if waiting for something. Her skeptical side argued with her whimsical side. It was doubtful that the lights had anything to do with her creature, yet the similar colors and sudden appearance seemed a strange coincidence.

The mysterious lights reminded her of other curious events in Montana, such as the recent cattle mutilations in the eastern part of the state—her friend, Jacob, was obsessed with such things. Fish Wildlife & Parks reported the deaths as casualties of December’s frigid temperatures, which had plummeted to sixty-below on the coldest nights. Townies complained that the region’s wolf pack had become more aggressive, preying on domestic animals due to the dwindling elk population. Jacob believed neither one.

Looking for a bit of an adventure, she had gone with him in December on what he called a little extraterrestrial investigation. Jacob’s “investigations” usually turned out to be nothing more than a burn mark on a boulder from a vagrant’s campfire, or a mysterious pattern in a farmer’s hayfield, which later turned out to be the work of bored teenagers.

In this case, he wanted to see the mutilated body of a cow discovered on his cousin’s ranch. She was the sensible friend, brought along to offer a bit of scientific reasoning, but when she saw the body, headless, torso sliced in precise ribbons, the internal organs removed, she had no logical explanation, other than to say that she believed the mutilation was not the work of wolves, vandals, or the result of inclement weather.

Jacob had placed the cow’s head, found about twenty yards away, in a small cooler he retrieved from the trunk. When she asked him what he was going to do with the head, he said he was going to take it home and put it in the freezer.

But I’m not Jacob. It’s not the same thing...

She ventured out onto the ice, trying not to think about aliens, wolves, or decapitated cows, deciding it was best to forget about the creature, rather than try to explain it.

At thirty-eight degrees above zero, the air was balmy, but the ice around her fishing holes was still solid. The middle of the lake, on the other hand, was treacherous, in a constant state of flux, shifting and cracking. On her trek down to the shore, she had seen the network of cracks and sheets of overlapping ice, as the thaw pushed them together and drove them apart.

There was no need to reopen her fishing holes; the mild temperatures had kept them liquid. As she prepared a line, a disturbance in one of the holes—a subtle rippling of the water’s surface—caught her attention. She leaned over the hole, her reflection faceless on the water’s dark surface.

She shouted when unfamiliar features appeared on the blank palette of her reflection: a pronounced brow, a jutting chin, sunken, glittering eyes—they locked onto hers. Colors swirled on the water’s surface—familiar colors—engulfing the reflection. She fell backward, slamming the back of her head on the ice, blackness covering her like a quilt.

A THUNDEROUS CRACK JOLTED Amanda back to consciousness. She sat up, blinking, her thoughts muddy and jumbled. She was next to one of her fishing holes, gear scattered around her. She rubbed the back of her head with her hand and groaned, her voice echoed a second later by the lamenting ice.

Based on the sun’s position behind the ridge and the cold bite of the air, it was late afternoon; she had been unconscious for hours.

She rose to her feet and shuffled back toward shore, focusing on her sled in the fading light. She remembered the reflection of the creature, and argued with herself as to whether or not it had been her imagination. It had been there for a second, then she had stumbled back and ... fainted?

Actually, it felt like you were pushed. Remember? That thing wanted you off the ice.

Come on! Enough of this crap! Your imagination’s working overtime because you’ve been surfing the web too much, reading about Bigfoot and crop circles, and been going on “extraterrestrial investigations” with your crazy friends who bring home cow heads in their cooler. The thing trapped in the ice had been...nothing. The temperature in your freezer got too low because you left the door open a crack, and the chunk defrosted and dripped all over the place. Then Toad tracked it into the living room—he’s one of those weird cats that likes water. The thing inside the chunk was just discolored ice, like when certain wavelengths are frozen and form that beautiful turquoise color. Mom taught you that. Remember? There is a scientific explanation for everything!

She clenched her fists and shook her head as she walked, so intent on self-flagellation that she did not see the jagged fissure running across a section of the ice that she had crossed a hundred times before.

She slipped through the split, plunging into the freezing water below. Her lungs contracted, the breath ripped from her chest. The weight of her clothes and boots dragged her down into the darkness. As she descended, she looked up toward the ceiling of ice—the network of cracks so obvious from her current vantage point—they surrounded the holes she had bored into the ice. She tried to kick, but that seemed to accelerate her descent.

She wondered how long it would take to reach the bottom. She looked down, but could see nothing but blackness. Once she reached the bottom, would her body eventually float upward and freeze? Would someone discover her there, frozen in a wall of ice, and decide to chip her out? Would they recognize her in the block, or would exquisite color cloak her features? Would they thaw her out immediately, or wait a day or two?

Her body burned. Her lungs ached.

So this is what it feels like to freeze. It does burn. How strange.

A creature materialized in front of her, and her oxygen-deprived brain announced that her mother had sent a Mackinaw trout to save her.

Then she realized it was not a trout.

She thrashed in the water, terrified, bright flecks dancing before her eyes. She flailed for the surface, but the creature moved with her until it was inches from her face. Swirling tentacles of radiant color encircled her head, wrapping around her neck and body. The creature opened its mouth and all she could see were rows of jagged yellow teeth. She, in turn, opened her mouth to scream, but had no breath left to do so. The burning sensation in her body had ceased, her extremities now numb and limp. She closed her eyes and longed for the void of unconsciousness, trying not to think about those sharp teeth tearing into her.

I’m sorry I took you away from the lake! The voice in her head screamed. I’m so sorry!

She opened her eyes and found herself surrounded by a viscous cloud, her body cradled by the ribbons of colored light, the warmth of the creature against her back. A rubbery coating covered her bare skin, insulating her from the frigid water, her clothes, dissolved. Her muscles warmed and she could feel her limbs, her hands and feet tingled.

And, she could breathe!

Her body rose toward the surface, the presence guiding her to an opening, the colored lights radiant against the ceiling of ice.

She pulled herself through the opening onto the frozen surface where she lay a moment, staring at her curled fingers, covered by the gummy purple substance. As she watched, a piece the size of a dime chipped off the back of her hand, and she felt a bite of cold air. She realized she must move; that her curious suit of purple goo was temporary.

She turned back toward the opening as the creature slipped back beneath the ice. It did not look back; it did not acknowledge her in any way. Perhaps it wanted to get deep beneath the surface before the ice caught it once again. To the west, over the mountains, the night sky trembled in a vivid palette of emerald, ruby, and gold.

She managed to get to her feet, but with every movement, more of the insulation fell away and the greedy air gnawed at her bare skin. As she made her way up the hillside in the darkness, she heard the familiar creak of the lodgepole pines, old friends urging her on.

Two hours later, she crawled up the steps to her cabin as the last of the coating fell away. Her body quaked as she started a fire in the wood stove. She dropped to all fours in front of the stove, basking in the luxurious heat, the thin layer of ice that had replaced the insulation on her skin, melting away.

From her spot on the floor, she could hear the ice complaining, its groans cutting into the night as it shifted and contracted; disappointed it had not captured anything before it returned to a frozen state.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

HALL JAMESON is an American writer and artist who lives in the Pacific Northwest with an assortment of furry and feathered creatures. Her writing has appeared in Compelling Science Fiction, Nature Futures, and Drabblecast. When she’s not writing stories or taking photographs, Hall spends her time on the water, in the woods, or wrangling cats.

The Gates

BRANDON DAUBS

CORRIN HEARD THE VOICE of his wife.

We are at the gates.

He looked up to find her silhouetted against the pale ghost of Charon, rising from the dark Hydra horizon as naked as the night of their honeymoon, and he almost drove his spider down a ravine. Three of the legs knifed out over the edge and only by digging his heels into stone was he able to stop himself. When he looked back to the horizon, his wife was gone.

Of course Corrin was obligated to share all this with Doctor Sanders when he got back to the station. Sanders listened with that sad, somber Freud-face that led some of his contemporaries to call him “Siggy” behind his back. Corrin didn’t care about the affectations, though. He had ceased to care the first week after the death of his wife out here, in the cold black at the edge of the solar system, where messages from Earth or from anyone were few and far between. The only other sense of human contact they got were the brief flashes of light on the console of the FTL Personnel Relay.

Corrin tried not to think of all the people going through there, blasted bunches of particles and broken-down biopaste patterns shot from Earth to somewhere else in space.

“Corrin? Corrin.”

Corrin turned back to Siggy. Sanders. Whatever.

“You’ve been out there way too long,” said Sanders.

Corrin glanced at the mirror. He took in the dark circles beneath wide eyes accustomed to dim light and his mop of brown hair gone almost black, sponging up the shadows of this place like ink. He took in his cot, and all his garbage piled onto a narrow shelf. A half-finished anthology by Algis Budrys. A manual on FTL communications. A faded pair of VR glasses from Earth, now vintage, and a photo of his wife, turned away just enough that Corrin wouldn’t have to look at it every time he came through the airlock.

He looked at it now. That face. That smiling face.

“I don’t care how young and spry you might think you are,” Sanders went on. “This place will suck the life out of anyone. Do something easy. Cook, maybe. I’m getting pretty sick of the protein packs Wheelie puts together.”

Wheelie rolled by the corridor outside and Corrin imagined he saw reproach behind the glass lens of its eye-camera before it disappeared.

“Sure, doc,” Corrin muttered. “Whatever you say.”

Sanders wandered off—to complete a report on Corrin’s sanity, no doubt. A pinprick of light that was the glow of a distant Sun glimmered through a glass dome overhead. Much closer was the ominous thumbnail of Charon and just at the edge of his vision, Pluto, cold as a judge. Corrin pulled the helmet back on his suit, exited the airlock and rode his spider the distance between the dwelling pod and the personnel relay to perform some routine maintenance on the cooling systems. While he worked, he watched the little flashes of light inside the conduits. Not for the first time, he wondered how the Deep Corps got away with all this folding of space and time.

He wondered if they had.

“Who knew,” crackled the voice of Wheelie through the speakers inside Corrin’s helmet, “that the essence of a human being would be so colorless?”

Corrin wasn’t paying attention. His eye caught a different kind of light from somewhere nearby—green. The relay, having been buried into Hydra’s crust long before the dwelling pod had been added for maintenance personnel, had its own dark radar screen. Probably just another asteroid that would miss them by a mile or more, Corrin thought. Just another errant piece of long-blasted satellite knocked out of Earth’s orbit to make way for a new piece of junk.

He turned toward the console and his hand froze above the override.

Freya, it read, above a green blip on the black. That was not any kind of asteroid.

His wife was out there, in the dark.

CORRIN NEVER HAD FOUND the body of his wife. Only her suit, torn almost in half, hanging like a ruined flag from a snag at the edge of a ravine hidden from the station side by a high ledge. The same ravine, he thought, that he had almost wrecked his spider in. The assumption, as he and Sanders stood staring down into the black, was that she had not seen the drop and tumbled to the other side before ripping her suit wide open and slipping out of it. She was freeze-dried meat down there, somewhere in the black within the black.

“Come inside, sir,” Wheelie commanded. “I have your protein pack prepared.”

Corrin ignored him. He stood by his spider outside the dwelling pod and watched the tiny Sun sink below the horizon. The sliver of light left on Charon waned and disappeared, leaving only a looming void where the stars should have been. Pluto had long since sunk below the horizon. A shadow crept over the rocky landscape unlike any shadow Corrin had ever seen, even when he closed his eyes—like a spill of ink that spread until everything was covered.

Within moments the darkness was so complete Corrin could not be sure he was standing on solid rock. He couldn’t be sure he even existed.

“Come inside, sir,” Wheelie repeated, and Corrin climbed onto the spider to creep out into the night. He felt the scratch of the spider’s legs against stone. He listened to the sound of his own breath harsh inside his helmet while the blip on the radar embedded in the back of the spider blinded him over and over again.

Freya.

“I have not alerted Doctor Sanders to your little escapade,” Wheelie said. This got Corrin’s attention. He reached a hand up to press the side of his helmet.

“Why not?” he asked.

“I know he would stop you,” came Wheelie’s reply, “and I liked Freya as much as you did. Maybe more.” Corrin didn’t think Wheelie was equipped with the cognitive circuitry to make this sort of determination, but he said nothing. “I saw the radar, too. I saw the one here in the pod. I disabled it, so Sanders wouldn’t follow you. I’ll keep him busy. I want you to find her, and if you don’t, I at least want you to get some sense of...I forgot the word.”

Wheelie had not forgotten the word. A machine did not often just “forget” anything. He had been programmed not to upset his human charges here at the edge of space as much as possible and it was likely he just didn’t want to say the word “closure.”

In the darkness, Corrin almost rode his spider over the edge of the ravine again—almost. This time only two legs stretched out over the black. He held his breath for a long while, looking down. The lights from his spider did nothing to pierce that darkness. Corrin dismounted, lodged his grappler into the stone of a nearby boulder and rappelled down into the black. Up above, the spider’s lights shut off automatically. The light on Corrin’s helmet came on but it only served to light a circle of stone in front of his face, about a foot in diameter.

He tried not to imagine something reaching up out of all that dark.

“Why Hydra?” he remembered his wife asking, before either of them had known how great they would be together at Virtual Sword, at difficult tech repair, at messing up the bed, at everything. She sat near the head of a long table at their last Deep Corps debriefing, wearing the stern power suit and glasses that had drawn Corrin’s attention from the first day he worked there. He stood at the door in his Air Force coveralls, ready to fly whatever tin can they wanted.

At the time, Corrin had wondered the same thing. Why Hydra? The orbit was erratic. Even the gravity, which barely existed, changed with some frequency.

“Because it’s there,” had been the answer.

Now that Corrin understood the point of the relay, he knew both of the answers.

Hydra’s orbit was the furthest away from the sun at aphelion, which made it the best place to send signals deeper into space. Maybe more importantly, if something went wrong with the relay, it was far enough away from prospects on Charon or Pluto that at least they could be salvaged. Nobody cared if Hydra was blown into gravel. Those other places, though, already had a few shallow mines sunk in. They had potential.

Corrin imagined he heard the hum off the relay launching souls from Earth deep into the stars beyond the solar system—until he realized that was not his imagination. His feet brushed solid stone and he just about jumped out of his suit. Wheelie tried to say something through the radio in his helmet but his voice only came out a garbled mess of distortion. Power, was the only word Corrin could make out. Power something. Corrin wasn’t paying any attention to him, though. He felt a rush of air nudge him into the wall and turned to see what appeared to be some sort of access tunnel, marked with the Deep Corps logo.

Open.

We are at the gates.

Corrin stepped forward. The voice of his wife was not just in his memory, this time.

Corrin. Her voice was warm in his ear. Her breath was warm on his cheek.

On the other side of the open access door, Corrin froze. His light shone on metal, rods and rods of nuclear fuel both new and expended, and piles of waste glowing a phosphorescent green in the darkness. His suit would protect him from most of the radiation, he hoped, but still, to see this stuff just piled here, discarded as the relay used it up...and that wasn’t the half of it. As he lifted his head, the light on his helmet shone up past rows of what looked like hyperbaric chambers—only they couldn’t be. What were they for? Who would they hold?

Almost all of them oozed a viscous black tar, as dark as the Hydra night, from the outline of doors and hatches that should have been vacuum sealed.

Corrin. Honey. Corrin shook as cold fingers brushed his chest beneath his suit. We’ve been waiting for you.

We are at the gates.

Let us in.

“SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH the relay,” Corrin said, back in the safety of the dwelling pod. He ran a Geiger counter over his suit again and again while he stood in the airlock, and kept his other hand on the decon button until the counter stopped clicking. Sanders watched him from the other side of the glass wearing his Freudiest Freud-face.

“How can there be anything at all wrong with the relay?” Sanders asked, as Corrin stepped through the airlock and began to peel off his suit. “You were out there messing with it 18 hours or more yesterday.”

Wheelie rolled by with his lens-eye turned away from them both.

“I don’t mean that part,” Corrin said, and after a moment’s pause, he decided whatever needed to happen down there was bigger than a one-man job. Much bigger. “I went down the ravine,” he said.

Sanders glared at him. “I told you to rest!”

“My wife appeared on the radar.”

Sanders offered a significant pause.

“I didn’t see anything.”

“Wheelie disabled the radar after I left.”

“And why would he do that?”

Corrin glanced over at Wheelie, who was busy putting some protein packs together. “He’s programmed to help,” he said. “He was sure you would try to stop me if you found out where I was going. He was just covering my tracks. But listen. That’s not the point.”

“The hell it’s not!” Sanders said, but Corrin talked over him.

“The point is this relay is way bigger than we realized. It doesn’t just need a little maintenance here at this part that we can see. This part is only the tip...like the antennae. The machine itself is huge. It’s buried in the crust. We’ve got nuclear waste spilling into Hydra’s core down there. We’ve got discharge from some sort of hyperbaric chambers…”

Corrin trailed off. He did not like the look on Sanders’ face. Cold. Indifferent. Not one single shred of surprise.

“You knew all this already, didn’t you,” Corrin asked. Sanders shrugged.

“Let’s have some tea,” he said, and he spread a hand to the table jammed next to the com panel. Corrin caught sight of a message open on the screen, sent from Deep Corps headquarters on Earth. Your replacement tech has passed the asteroid belt. Hmm. Corrin took a seat and Sanders produced two cups of tea from a nearby cabinet, already prepared.

“Tell me what you know about faster than light travel,” he said.

“Tell me if you murdered my wife,” Corrin cut in. Sanders almost choked on his tea and the look he gave Corrin was not very Freud-like at all.

“Get bent,” he said. “What kind of question is that? I loved Freya as much as everyone did. Even Wheelie loved her and he’s a goddam machine. She was like a daughter to me. I ought to taze you just for suggesting that!”

Corrin did not feel at all stupid for asking. He just then noticed the stun baton, tucked into the cabinet by the empty tea cups.

“Anyway,” Sanders went on, “don’t act so surprised to find all that waste down there. Faster than light travel requires a bend in the sheet of our universe, to bring someone from one part to another in a single moment. To do that, you need a hunk of matter compacted just as dense as you can make it and for that, in addition to the matter itself, you need a ton of power. This is humanity’s first attempt at something like this so yeah, it’s got to be a little bulky, a little messy, a little nuclear. There’s no helping that mess down there and as for why we didn’t let you know about it...you’re just the repairman, Corrin. Twelve years in the force and you’re a repairman in space. It’s unfortunate, maybe, but there you go. The Deep Corps decided you just didn’t need to know about that other part down there.”

Corrin glared.

“And the chambers?” he asked. “All that crud?”

Sanders shrugged. “Like I said, it’s primitive technology right now. Our range is not infinite. Most likely the chambers are to reconstruct passengers for one millisecond so they can be reanalyzed and boosted the rest of the way to wherever they’re going. And as for the discharge, it’s just some residue on the outside of those things, from...whatever. The nuclear waste, probably. There’s no way it could be from inside. Those tanks are airtight.”

Corrin’s eyes flicked back to the stun baton.

“Did my wife ever go through?” he asked.

“You already know that she did,” Sanders growled. “She bent onto a passing ship and took a shuttle to get here. You should know it’s not so much going through anything, as it is being caused to exist in two places at the same time, like I already said.”

Corrin pretended to drink his tea.

“Three places,” he said.

Sanders frowned. “What?”

“No matter how hard you fold space-time there is always a void between point A and point B,” Corrin went on. “A passenger going through would also exist, for however brief of a moment, in the space between.”

Sanders narrowed his eyes. “And I suppose you think this is where you might find your wife,” he muttered. “In this...space between.”

“I’m going to find her,” Corrin whispered.

“If you’re going back to the relay, the real relay, I can’t let you,” Sanders sighed. “I can’t risk you sabotaging something down there. Try to imagine people shot out into space every which way, not even close to their destinations...hey!”

Corrin lurched toward the door. Sanders grabbed the stun baton and tackled him down to the steel of the dwelling pod floor. The baton flashed to life but Corrin kicked it out of Sanders’ hand, kicked until the sole of his boot crunched into a few of Sanders’ fingers and thumped into the side of his face. Sanders cried out as old glasses skittered across the floor and Corrin finally pulled himself free.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this,” Sanders “Siggy” Caldwell spouted through the blood in his teeth, “but you are clearly insane! And don’t think I’ve kept that out of my reports to headquarters! You’ve got nowhere to go!”

Corrin almost made it to the door before Wheelie appeared and stopped him with a cold metal claw snapped around his neck.

“Traitor!” Corrin managed to choke. Wheelie shrugged.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Protocols do not allow me to sympathize with the insane.”

“I am not insane!” Corrin screamed.

You’re not insane, he heard his wife whisper, warm in his ear. Come find us.

He felt her kiss soft against his cheek as Sanders zapped him in the back with the stun baton. A moment before he hit the ground, he glanced toward the photo by his cot.

Smeared with black.

CORRIN’S SLEEP WAS NOT at all peaceful. He dreamed of the space between moments. He dreamed of Virtual Sword and the endless, hideous monsters he had faced with his wife thinking that was fun, thinking that was a good time. He dreamed of her opening one button at a time at the neck of her suit and all their meetings in the supply closet at Deep Corps headquarters on Earth, and all their meetings at her timeshare in Switzerland once things had gotten serious. He dreamed of protein packs, one eaten, one left untouched and the third…the third was more rotten than Corrin had ever seen any piece of food in his life.

By the time he finally awoke, Sanders spoke with somebody new near the airlock. The dwelling pod was small enough that Corrin heard every word they said.

“Yes, we’ve read the reports,” said the new arrival. He was still in his suit. Corrin could see part of a ship parked outside through the pod window. “You’re right. It’s probably nothing...but ‘probably’ isn’t good enough. There was a pretty strange power surge about the same time Corrin was down there. Even your robot noticed it. Now, we can’t be having surges of any kind while we’re shooting whole people out beyond the solar system. We don’t need for there to be any...complications. Now, don’t look at me like that, doctor. I’m not discounting your reports. I’m just trying to say, maybe we ought to go down there and take a look.”

Sanders shrugged. “Waste your time if you want,” he said. “Whatever it was, it was just an anomaly. You’ll have a lot worse if you don’t get Corrin out of here. He’s fixated hard on the relay. Who knows what he’ll try to do?”

The newcomer grunted.

“We brought your replacement,” he said. “Don’t worry. We’ll get Corrin back home.”

Sanders muttered to himself while he pulled on his enviro-suit, grabbed his box of tools and slipped out through the airlock. “Watch him a second,” he said, “somebody’s got to do the maintenance around here,” before the seal slid shut behind him.

A green light on the radar began to blink again and Corrin looked over to read the name.

Freya. Freya.

He grabbed the old VR glasses off his headboard and put them on. Once he flipped the switch, they cycled through a few photos of Switzerland. There was his wife, half-buried in a snowbank with her skis sticking up. There she was in front of the fire. Here was a photo of her developing the transporter. Another photo flickered past—a dark silhouette, serene against the dead light of Charon.

Corrin wondered what that space would be like, between the folds of the universe.

“What pictures you got on that thing?”

Corrin flipped up the glasses to see the newcomer standing by him. Danner, read the name tag on his suit. He had a face full of pretend interest, like he were speaking to a child.

“Only the best,” Corrin replied. “You want to see?”

He pulled the VR glasses the rest of the way off and handed them over. Danner slipped them on—and he got a good view of Corrin’s wife in her lingerie, before Corrin leapt out of bed and slugged him in the gut as hard as he could. Danner did not even put up a fight as Corrin threw him back against the communications console. His head slammed somewhere between “send” and “receive” and the VR Glasses bounced off as he slid down into a sitting position. Moments later, Corrin had stripped Danner’s suit, put it on himself, and shoved his own head into the helmet. He paused only to fire off a brief message from the communications console before he ran out through the airlock.

Sanders saw him at once. He lit up the radio.

“Corrin, stop, God dammit! I know that’s you!”

Wheelie was there, too, holding the tools. His message was more on the nose.

“Halt! Cease! Desist!”

Corrin did nothing of the sort. He jumped on the spider, which had seen more use in the previous week than it had in years before that, and skittered off toward the ravine. The spider moved barely as fast as a bicycle but Corrin still had plenty of time to dismount at the edge of the ravine, lodge his grappler into the stone and begin the descent. Only a moment passed before he felt the ominous pull of gravity grab at his back and begin to drag him down faster, and faster. He realized Sanders must have cut his rope only a moment before he hit the ground with a crunch and the hiss of escaping air.

He screamed. He hoped everyone could hear that over the radio. He screamed and it took everything he had to roll over and clutch the tear in his suit over his broken ribs to keep himself from suffocating, as he crawled through the access door and into the heart of the relay.

“What are you trying to do, anyway?” Sanders roared over the com. “Do you think you’ll find your wife in there? Corrin! Corrin, don’t do anything to that relay!”

Corrin raised his head and the light of his helmet shone off the tar oozing from the containment chambers. Each time a flash through the conduits announced the departure of another soul from Earth, more of it seeped out. Flash after flash went by and the puddle of black mixed into the waste from the nuclear rods all over the floor moved toward him.

You came back. The puddle pooled into the shadow of a familiar shape. Corrin. Please. We are at the gates. Help us…

The puddle froze at the sound of a clang from the cavern beyond the access door, and Corrin turned to see Wheelie struggle upright from what must have been a very long fall. His eye lens had cracked. His suspension was bent. Sparks shot out of his chassis but he still rolled doggedly forward, claws outstretched—until he stopped short, and swiveled his lens around, and around, taking in the hyperbaric chambers and all the waste.

“Help me,” Corrin gasped, through the radio. He gestured toward the relay, to the dark ooze all around them. “Help me with this.”

“I can see that you are not insane,” said Wheelie. “But…”

“You must protect the humans here on Hydra,” Corrin said. “I understand that. But you have a much larger responsibility, Wheelie, to protect the humans…everywhere. Can you imagine what’s in there? Can you imagine what would happen if they got out?”

Wheelie swiveled his working lens this way and that. He settled it for a moment on the puddle that looked a lot like Freya. Then he moved to pull as many rods of fuel toward himself as he possibly could, until he collapsed into the corner under their weight. His chassis caught fire. His wheel melted to the stone and his claw arms fell limp by his sides.

“Permission to rest, sir,” he groaned through the radio.

Corrin grimaced as the light in Wheelie’s camera lens went out. He wondered if ever there was a machine that had done more for humanity than Wheelie just had.

He forced himself upright. He could hear more whispers now, not just his wife—and after a long moment of working at the console, he got the containment chambers open. Black discharge poured out like pus from an open wound, so thick on the ground it washed over Corrin’s ankles. Tendrils wound up his legs before they broke away and merged together into the hips, the chest and arms of his wife. She did not reflect the light from the fire or his helmet lamp. Every square inch of her leeched color from everything around it.

“Leave the relay alone, Corrin!” Sanders screamed through the radio. “Please!”

Behind Corrin’s wife, others began to take shape. Soldiers. Scientists. Colonists. Everyone who had ever come through the Hydra Relay on their way to somewhere else. There would be countless more—and imprint for every person who had ever appeared, however briefly, in the void between two points in the universe.

“Sweetheart,” the Freya-thing breathed. She pressed her lips to his helmet, and left a smear of black across the glass. “Thank you.”

Corrin’s eyes drifted to the pale shape behind the command console, a pale shape that he had missed on his first visit to this place. She wore only thermal lining and a scrap of suit. Her hair hung about her like a golden spiderweb. Her face had frozen solid but there was no mistaking the round cheeks, the eyebrows just a little too thick, the lips that had always tasted a little like cinnamon. Corrin’s breath caught in his throat. Whatever this thing was clinging to him, smearing his visor, squirming and trying to get inside, it wasn’t his wife.

And there it was.

Closure.

“Now!” he barked, through the pain of his broken ribs, and Wheelie’s chassis popped open to reveal a fusion core smoldering in there. Its glow lit the rods of fuel piled around it.

MOMENTS BEFORE THE “INCIDENT,” as it came to be known, Deep Corps received a very simple message from the Hydra Relay from repair technician Corrin.

Stop.

They didn’t stop. They couldn’t. Their holdings were in danger “out past the rocks” and they needed more soldiers to keep their ships safe, more scientists to keep a competitive edge over rival companies and more civilians to fill all the space they could find. Besides, that email came from Corrin, a lunatic on his way to forced retirement. They kept sending people even after the reports of “some disturbance” near Pluto, even after a scan by a passing probe showed only four moons, not five, as it wove through a previously unmapped cloud of gravel. They kept sending people even after they began to appear near their deep space destinations in pieces, in empty space or not at all.

The order finally came from near the relay itself.

“For the love of God,” Sanders blared over every radio back in the Deep Corps HQ, every radio within range of his transmission, “don’t send any more people! This is Doctor Sanders of Deep Corps in the USS Cerberus, on my way past Charon. We only just barely got out alive. Hydra is gone. The relay is gone.”

The gates had closed.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

BRANDON DAUBS is a science fiction and fantasy writer whose stories have appeared in Grimdark Magazine, Dark Fire, 4 Star Stories, Three Crows and the anthologies All Hail Our Robot Conquerors and Knee Deep in Grit. His short story “A Vague Inclination to Please” was a finalist for WSFA’s Small Press Award for 2018. He lives near San Francisco with a dog and three kids, a wife who has been very supportive of his craft, and a cat who has not. He is a proud member of both the SFWA and the HWA.

Feeding Time

JEFFREY D. SCHWARTZ

BEHIND THE COUNTER, THE old man watched her watching the car.

She moved closer to the window, her gaze tracking the car as it emerged from the desert and pulled up to the pump nearest the station.

“A young man,” she said. “Alone.”

“We fed three days ago,” he said.

When they had first come here, they fed only once a week. They were careful. No one had ever been suspicious of them. They were two old people presiding over a little-visited gas station with a couple of pumps and a car wash. They were nobody, and this was nowhere.

But lately the old woman had insisted on feeding more often. It worried the old man. When he reached out to her nowadays, her thoughts were chaotic, obscure—and beneath it all a violent, raging, ravenous hunger.

He sensed it now, the insatiable ache in the pit of her stomach.

“I’ll do it if you won’t,” she said, turning at last to face him. Her lips glistened.

On his way out the door the old man said, “Wipe your mouth. You’re drooling.”

THE CUSTOMER DIDN’T MAKE it easy for the old man. He was in such a rush, he nearly drove away before the old man could suggest a car wash.

“Free of charge,” said the old man.

The customer’s attention snagged on the word free.

“How come it’s free?”

The customer’s name was Will Kelly. He was seventeen and fancied himself jaded and wise. Nothing was ever free.

“It’s a...promotion,” said the old man, casting about for the right word, the word the consciousness that had once inhabited this body would have used. “Anyone who spends more than thirty dollars on a fill-up gets a free car wash.”

He rarely had to offer an explanation. People took what they could get, in his experience. But Will Kelly remained skeptical. He stared at the old man.

“Not interested,” he said after several moments.

He handed two crumpled twenties to the old man, told him to “keep the change,” and almost before the old man could react, Will was back in his car and his hand was reaching to close the door.

There was no time. The old man forced his arm into the car and clasped Will’s shoulder.

Will’s eyes lolled in their sockets and his body went slack. The old man experienced a familiar tingling pressure at the crown of his skull.

He didn’t like reaching out to their customers, but if this one had managed to get away the old woman would have been very unhappy. So the old man turned on a light, as one might say, and now the darkness that had separated him from Will Kelly fled beneath a harsh radiance that left them open to one another. The old man saw the fear and loneliness beneath Will’s bluster, saw where he’d come from and where he was going, and why he was alone, all the way down to the deepest and most hidden parts of himself. And Will saw what the old man was, and how he’d come to be here, and everything he kept secret, even from the old woman.

But unlike the old man, Will wasn’t prepared for this onslaught of second-sight, and each moment of exposure and connection was like a waking nightmare. The old man could do more, so much more, but it wasn’t necessary. A few moments of communion with another mind were usually sufficient to leave even the strongest people bewildered and terrified and utterly compliant.

“How about that car wash?” said the old man.

Will stared at the old man. “Sure,” he said. “Why not?” His voice quavered when he spoke, though he didn’t know why.

The old man felt a twinge of pity. “I’ll turn it on for you,” he said. “Once the door opens, just drive in. We’ll do the rest.”

Back in the station, the old woman was standing by the entrance. He ignored her and went right for the control panel beneath the cash register. His hands were shaking as he twisted the knobs.

Through the window he watched Will Kelly’s car edge up to the entrance of the car wash. It was a long, narrow building with white-painted bricks that had been tinged red and pink by the blowing desert winds.

The old man punched a button and the door to the car wash opened, gaping like a mouth. Then the car lurched forward and was swallowed up.

The old woman clapped.

Soon they would be able to feed. But the old man had no appetite. His mind was tugged by the errant connection with Will Kelly. Despite his best efforts, he could see what Will was seeing, feel what Will was feeling...

He saw the car wash door slam shut.

He heard the the echo of nameless rumblings, the soft spray of liquid coating the car’s windshield.

He felt a sudden whoosh of cool air whispering at his—Will’s—cheek.

The car’s passenger-side door was open.

No, not open. It was gone. It wasn’t there.

Water drenched the seat and now the seat was gone too, and where it had been there was just empty space.

The old man’s throat clenched with the horror Will was experiencing at that very moment as he watched everything around him disappear and found himself standing alone in darkness.

And then beams of light slashed open the darkness. The lights arced and twisted and coiled, knitting a luminous tapestry that faded an instant later—faded, Will thought in his last moments, like the sparklers his parents would give him on the Fourth of July, the ones he waved like a wand, watching as the glowing lines he traced through the warm summer air disappeared into the night...

Then there was nothing. The old man’s mind plunged into an abrupt, awful silence.

“Next time,” said the old woman, “I’ll do it.” Then she smiled at him, baring her teeth.

NICOLE BELL COULDN’T REMEMBER the last time she’d seen another car on this road. She’d left the highway half an hour ago, and she felt very alone—and alone with her thoughts, which was worse.

What she had needed was distraction, something to look at so she didn’t keep turning her gaze inward. She’d exited the highway hoping this dusty, two-lane desert road might take her somewhere interesting, a detour that would quiet her restless mind. It hadn’t worked. There was nothing out here but stony brown hills that tapered into a sandy, scrubby valley, and her in the middle of it all, lumbering down a narrowing road in her car.

All it would take was a flat tire or an overheated radiator and she’d be stranded, at the mercy of the roasting midday heat and, later, the cold and dark of the night. She was imagining creatures with glowing green eyes emerging from their caves and closing in around her when she saw a gas station in the distance.

That was it. She’d stop for gas, stretch her legs, go to the bathroom. She made herself take three deep breaths. She’d heard somewhere that if you took three deep breaths, your blood pressure went down and your mind became more focused. Whether or not that was true, she didn’t much care; it made her feel better. These days, she needed all the help she could get.

There were only two pumps, so she pulled up to the one nearest the station. Almost at once an old woman emerged from the station and greeted her.

“Good afternoon,” she said, very proper, something foreign in her voice, as though English was her second language.

Without another word, the old woman got to work. She had to be pushing eighty, jowls hanging from her neck like the wattle of an old hen, but she was swift and graceful, every movement reflecting a complete certainty of purpose. Her eyes glittered with an intensity Nic found startling. Those eyes were alert to the smallest detail, the smallest movement.

Once she had connected the pump’s hose to the car, she stood perfectly still alongside Nic, regarding her silently with those fierce eyes.

Nic brushed aside the thought that she was being examined, scrutinized; that was her mind acting up again. Still, the old woman’s silence made Nic uncomfortable. She craned her head to look inside the station. The glare of the sun against the windows made it difficult to see inside.

“Are you here by yourself?”

“Yes,” said the old woman.

There weren’t any cars at the station, and the only other building nearby was the car wash.

“Do you...live here?” Nic asked, hesitating. Something about the question seemed rude, but she was desperate for small talk.

“There’s a room in the back,” said the old woman. “It’s enough for me.”

“Must get lonely.”

The old woman regarded the gauge on the pump. Her impatience was obvious, but Nic couldn’t understand why she was in such a hurry. It wasn’t as though she had other customers to deal with.

Just then the pump’s cord twitched, like a snake startled to wakefulness. The old woman disconnected it, and Nic reached into her bag and handed her some cash. But the old woman put her hand up, shaking her head.

“Let’s worry about that later,” she said.

And then, for no reason at all, the old woman smiled. Nic felt herself shiver in spite of the heat.

“Now,” said the old woman, “how about a car wash?”

Nic was about to answer when an old man walked out of the station.

HE HAD BEEN WATCHING them, observing the haste of the old woman as she tried to rush the process to its conclusion. She was getting reckless. Only two days ago he’d been out there with Will Kelly.

Two days. He’d been unable to get Will out of his mind, kept hearing his voice and reliving with remarkable clarity his final moments as the beams of light ripped open the darkness.

Of course, the old woman had sensed what was going on.

“Losing our appetite, are we?” she’d said, her voice a sickly-sweet taunt.

In that moment, he would have liked nothing more than to snap her in half.

She sensed that too, and replied without speaking this time. Just you try it, she said, hearing her voice in his mind.

She might have looked frail—they both did—but the old man never allowed himself to forget that her body was merely camouflage; it had nothing to do with her. She would never go quietly, and he shuddered at the thought of taking her on alone.

Since then, he’d closed himself off beyond her reach. They were becoming unknowable to each other and existed in nothing less than perfect silence.

The truth was he couldn’t explain what was happening to him. Maybe he’d been here too long. But they could never leave; the crash had seen to that possibility. They would be here for the rest of their lives.

All the more reason to be careful.

He watched through the window as the old woman smiled at their customer.

All the more reason to leave well enough alone sometimes.

NIC WATCHED THE OLD man approach her. His skin sagged and his spine curved like a hook, but none of that mattered because, like the old woman, there was a sureness to his movements and a keen, vigorous alertness to his eyes that belied his age.

The old woman seemed neither surprised nor especially pleased by the old man’s arrival. All her attention—all that silent, hidden, latent energy that Nic had sensed coiled inside her—was directed at the old man.

“Good afternoon,” he said.

His voice possessed the same strange formality as the old woman’s.

Once more Nic scanned the surroundings for another car or building, and saw nothing. Perhaps the old woman was senile and didn’t remember the old man sometimes.

“Hi,” said Nic. “Do you work here, too?”

He nodded, then eyed the folded bills in Nic’s hand. She let him pocket the money and make change with coins from his apron. The old man’s movements were precise, and for some reason he seemed eager to avoid direct contact with her hand.

He looked up at the sky. “Where are you headed?”

“Don’t be rude,” said the old woman.

“It’s okay,” Nic said. “I’m on my way to California. L.A.”

Four days ago she’d left Boston for L.A., where she planned to stay with her old college roommate for a while.

It all seemed so simple, so reasonable, when she left out the part about her stroke.

“Well,” said the old man, “you ought to get going. I heard on the radio there’s a storm coming.”

“Oh really?” said the old woman. The only clouds in the sky were the shape and color of cotton balls. The sun stared down at them from high above. “I don’t think there’s going to be any storm today. You shouldn’t worry the poor girl.” She turned to Nic. “Now, how about the car wash? Special promotion, free of charge.”

The old woman took a step toward her, and Nic had to fight to urge to back away. She felt a little woozy.

“No thanks,” said Nic.

“Oh but are you sure?”

“Of course she’s sure,” said the old man. “Stop pestering her.”

For several long moments, the old people stared at one another. Nic perceived a low-level electricity buzzing between them, and each silent second that passed amplified this unfathomable energy until Nic swore she could feel it. The hair on her arms and the back of her neck stood on end.

She told herself this was all in her head, another morbid spell to add to the tally she’d been creating throughout this road trip. But that didn’t make these feelings any less real; they were utterly real, and all the more frightening because they weren’t subject to logic or reason or common sense.

Her vision swayed and she felt bile climbing her throat.

“I need to use the bathroom,” she managed.

The old people snapped out of their bizarre trance. The old woman smiled, but the old man stepped forward as though to block the old woman from getting any closer to Nic.

“This way,” he said, and without ever touching her, he led Nic through the station and to the bathroom. He closed the door for her.

Nic staggered inside and vomited.

THE TOILET WOULDN’T FLUSH. Nic couldn’t say how long she’d been in here. A minute or an hour would have seemed equally plausible. She felt the cool tile beneath her bare legs and looked down into the toilet bowl.

The sink didn’t work, either. She saw herself in the cracked, hazy mirror. Dark half-circles sloped beneath her eyes. Her cheekbones stood out, and her skin was pallid and waxy and grey. It was a shock to see that she had failed so completely to conceal how she felt. The stroke had happened four months ago, but she still looked like she’d just gotten out of the hospital.

She’d been in the middle of an audition when it happened. Expressive aphasia brought on by an acute stress disorder, according to the doctors.

The “acute stress disorder” part was a shot in the dark, though it made a certain amount of sense. Nic was stressed, acutely so. Her life was a shaky balancing act always on the verge of collapse; waitressing and auditions and teaching theater classes, not to mention the larger existential questions she faced about money and whether she was wasting her life.

But the truth was the doctors didn’t know what had caused the stroke, and this lack of explanation haunted her. If the stroke had no known cause, what was to prevent her from having another one? It might be worse next time. She might not recover her ability to speak, her full range of movement. She might spend the rest of her life confined to a wheelchair. She might lose consciousness without warning and never wake up again. That was the problem with the unexplained: it rendered anything possible.

The road trip was supposed to be a chance to get out of her own head, but in the last four days her morbid spells—the moments of panic and foreboding that the stroke seemed to have awoken in her—had only grown more frequent.

The worst part was that the spells weren’t just sinister daydreams. Some of the things she found herself imagining could actually happen. She’d been a perfectly healthy twenty-seven-year-old and she’d had a stroke. Anything was possible. The worst could happen.

This was how she saw the world now. She saw, as though her vision has expanded beyond the visible spectrum, all the grotesque possibilities that lurked beneath the banal, the everyday.

She made herself take three deep breaths, glanced at her broken reflection for a moment, then slammed the door behind her.

Nic was going to explain to the old man that the toilet wouldn’t flush but he wasn’t there. The station was empty.

When she stepped outside she saw her car was gone and the old people were nowhere to be found.

ONCE HE’D CLOSED THE bathroom door, the old man left the station and rejoined the old woman outside by the pumps. He expected her to be furious, but she hardly seemed to notice him. She was peering at the station.

“How long do you think she’ll be in there?” asked the old woman.

“I don’t know.”

She turned to regard Nic’s car for a moment, then opened the door and stepped inside. The keys were still in the ignition.

The old woman started the car.

Without knowing what he intended to do, the old man heaved himself over to the other side of the car and got in alongside the old woman.

She backed away from the pumps and drove over to the entrance of the car wash. They sat for a while, the engine idling.

The old woman said, “You can’t stop me, you know. So don’t try.”

She didn’t look at him. Beneath the power and menace of her words the old man sensed a pang of regret.

In the days after the crash, he had been weak, nearly dead. He’d depended on her, drew strength from her strength. Even later—after she’d found this gas station and they’d become the old people and used the wreckage to build their machine—they remained open to one another; it had made them stronger, able to survive on this desolate alien world. They had no secrets, no sense of aloneness or apartness.

It was only later, when the hunger had begun to crowd her thoughts, that he began to feel himself as separate and alone.

“I wish we’d died in the crash,” he said.

It was the truth, but he’d surprised himself by saying it aloud.

The old woman sighed. Whatever regrets she’d been nursing were gone, replaced by the awful, gnawing hunger. “Oh well. More for me, then.”

THE WIND WAS PICKING up. Gritty gusts made the air hazy. Maybe the old man was right about a storm coming.

And then the wind died down for a moment and Nic heard an engine. Her attention was pulled toward the car wash, where she saw her car idling before the entrance.

She’d hardly noticed the car wash before, but looking at it now evinced a sudden, terrible dread. There was something wrong about the building. It didn’t belong out here. It was too long and too narrow and too small, and yet its smallness somehow dwarfed the mountains and the desert. The building also seemed to radiate that same incomprehensible energy Nic had sensed humming between the old people.

The old woman got out of the car, leaving the door open. Nic’s fear became anger. Her heart throttled her chest as she made for the car wash and the old woman.

“What the hell are you doing?” she said.

The old woman smiled. “Why, just getting your vehicle ready for the car wash. We are a full-service station, you know.”

The old man come around the side of the car. There was something different about him; he gazed at the ground and kept his distance from her, as though ashamed.

The wind picked up. She took a shaky breath. She was going to get in her car and drive away and never look back.

“Excuse me,” she said, her shoulder brushing against the old woman.

There was a stab of serrated pain from the spot where Nic and the old woman touched, and then the pain spread through her whole body and doubled her over and made her eyes clench shut. The darkness beneath her eyelids gave way to blinding light, and now there was nothing between her and the old woman; Nic saw the old woman as she truly was and felt her hunger, and the old woman saw everything Nic kept hidden, saw the stroke and all the pain and fear that had led her to this moment. For a single, suspended instant there was no difference between them; they were same consciousness in two bodies.

“Don’t move,” said a voice.

It was her voice, Nic’s voice, but she hadn’t spoken.

The pain left her body. Her vision began to clear. As she lifted her head she saw that the old woman was gone and before her stood a twin, a double, Nicole Marie Bell staring back at herself.

“Let me help you, dear,” said the Other Nic, and she smiled the old woman’s smile.

All the morbid spells Nic had experienced faded to absolute insignificance against this inchoate vision of herself twined with the old woman. Nic wanted to back away, but she couldn’t move. Her legs felt frail and boneless. Crushing heaviness pushed at her chest. A vicious tingling scuttered across the surface of her skin, like the microscopic march of a thousand insects. Her throat ached, as though she were choking back a scream. She wanted to scream. She wanted to scream and shout and cry. But she couldn’t remember how. She filled her lungs and opened her mouth and nothing came out.

“Why don’t you get in the car?” said the Other Nic.

And now Nic found she could move, but she didn’t want to; she tried to resist and stay standing in place, but her body was no longer her own.

Sit tight, said the Other Nic, only this time she spoke without opening her mouth; it was as though she had leaned in close to confide a secret, whispering into Nic’s ear.

Then the door shut and Nic lost consciousness.

SHE DIDN’T KNOW WHERE she was when she woke up. Behind her the light weakened, drooping like a heavy eyelid, until the darkness was total. It was the deepest darkness she had ever known.

Sometimes she’d have a nightmare and yet she was aware enough to know that if she could only open her eyes she’d wake and the nightmare would end. But she never could; it was always as though someone were pressing on her eyelids. That was how she felt now. Like something was forcing her down, keeping her locked in the darkness.

Her shoulder throbbed with an obscure pressure, and when she tried to probe at the spot she could barely move. Her arm was heavy, leaden; it didn’t belong to her.

And that was when she realized where she was and what had happened, and she saw, as though reliving a memory, the old people pushing her car into the machine.

Nic screamed.

The sound tore open the silence around her, and she kept screaming because it felt good to make noise, to impose herself upon the soundless dark and prove that she was still alive.

When she stopped screaming her chest heaved and she rocked back and forth with the rhythm of her breath. Sensation was returning to her body. Nic became aware of a grimy prickliness at the small of her back, across her chest, near the curve of her thighs. It was as though someone had touched her in her sleep, and now that she was awake the traces of this touch lingered, like smudges left behind by dirty hands. The old woman—the Other Nic—had alienated her from her own body, taken something from her she would never get back.

The stroke had done the same thing, wrested control of her body and mind and rendered her nothing more than a shell, conscious only of her own powerlessness. But what the old woman had done was worse: she had made Nic a spectator to her own violation. She had made Nic watch, made her see through the old woman’s eyes and feel her hunger.

Nic screamed again.

She felt herself at a precipice. Her veins surged with repressed energy, with rage. She had to do something. She reached out, grasped the keys dangling from the ignition, and twisted. The car’s engine growled. Some of the darkness dissipated with the glow of the dashboard. Nic’s throat ached with fragile hope. She put the transmission in drive, kicked the accelerator. The engine revved and roared until the sound became a keening, mechanical moan. But the car wouldn’t move.

Nic turned in her seat and tried yanking open the door. It was locked. She felt for the unlock button and punched it and nothing happened. Then she leaned over to try the passenger-side door, but it wouldn’t open, either. She balled her hands into fists and slammed them against the warm, unyielding glass of the windshield.

And now the machine came to life with a shudder of reverberant thunder.

She slumped in her seat. She should have known she was trapped. The car was just one more layer in her captivity, a cage within a cage. Soon the machine would make her disappear, another half-forgotten taste in the old woman’s memory.

A sudden spasm of hunger rippled through the pit of her stomach, so violent it made her eyes clench shut. The static behind her eyelids gave way to a vision of the old man, staring at her from inside the gas station.

Nic opened her eyes and was back in her car. The thunderous rumbling from the machine rattled her seat. Somehow, for an instant, she had seen with the old woman’s eyes; she had returned to the old woman’s mind.

That’s the only way out, Nic realized. She had to go back. She had to return to the old woman’s mind.

At once her body began to shake. She hugged her knees to her chest and made herself small and contained. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t go back. Going back meant letting the old woman become part of her again. It was too much. The old woman had breached the sanctity of Nic’s consciousness, stolen her voice and body and memories. She had become Nic, and Nic had become the old woman.

Her stomach grumbled once more, a perverse guttural echo of the old woman’s appetite. The machine continued its terrible crescendo, but as Nic stared blindly into the darkness, all she could think about was this connection and how, in her last moments, she wanted nothing more than to use it against the old woman. Nic wanted her to feel the same paralysis and violation. She wanted her to know fear. She wanted her to suffer.

Nic closed her eyes.

WHEN THEY’D PUSHED HER car into the machine the girl had been unconscious. The old man hoped she still was.

His eyes slid from the car wash to the silent, empty expanse of desert that surrounded the station. He imagined walking out the door and into the heat and light of the desert, wandering until it swallowed him up, until his body collapsed and he felt nothing.

“Well, why don’t you?” said the old woman.

He turned away from the window. She stared at him from behind the counter. Then she blinked and he didn’t recognize her. It was as though someone else were looking out through her eyes.

An instant later it was gone, and the old woman’s gaze resumed its steely pitilessness.

“I mean it,” she said, nodding at the door.

If something had happened to her, she seemed utterly unaware of it. Her eyes were calm now, serene, and when she spoke it was as though she were expressing something she’d felt for a very long time.

“I don’t need you,” she said. “I’ve never needed you. You can go.”

He didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say.

The old woman wiped something from the corner of her lips and returned her attention to the control panel. As she moved to push a button she seemed to hesitate. He approached her and looked down over the counter. Her finger was trembling, poised in midair less than an inch from a button on the control panel.

She tried to close the distance between her finger and the button, straining, pushing, directing all her energy to this one simple task. But her finger wouldn’t move.

Now there really was fear in her eyes.

“What are you doing?” she said, hardly able to speak.

“This isn’t me,” said the old man.

He reached out, gazing into her eyes.

“Stop her,” she said.

THE LIGHT AND THE pain faded quickly. The first time she hadn’t understood what was happening until it was too late, and by then she’d lost all autonomy, her consciousness coalescing with the old woman’s. This time Nic was prepared. She knew how to open the connection and how it worked. And unlike last time, rage had cleansed her of fear.

Her vision snapped into focus. The old man was standing before her exactly where he’d been last time, as though he hadn’t moved.

The old woman’s mind was a ferocious tumult, all noise and wild, jangling anticipation. Nic felt a wet prickle of saliva seeping at the corner of the old woman’s lips, and then felt her wipe it away. She hadn’t even noticed that Nic was here, in her mind; the hunger had made her oblivious.

The old woman looked down at the control panel for the machine. She reached for a button. Nic didn’t know what to do, but she knew this was it, she had to do something, and all she could think was stop, stop, no no no no no—

The old woman’s finger began to shake, twitching like a leaf caught in the wind. And then it stopped. It wouldn’t move.

At once Nic experienced an overwhelming rush of exhilaration, and the feeling only intensified as she became aware of her power. The old woman didn’t know what was happening; it was as though she had been leashed, and now she was straining against this heretofore undetected constraint without stopping to wonder what was holding her back. She had been reduced to instinct, acting only to satisfying the virulent ache in the pit of her stomach.

Don’t move, Nic thought, repeating the old woman’s words back to her.

The old woman was starting to panic. She looked up at the old man, who was watching transfixed as her finger floated motionless in midair.

Nic imagined slowly crushing the old woman’s windpipe, and the old woman felt this as though it were actually happening.

“What are you doing?” said the old woman, every single word an effort.

“This isn’t me,” said the old man.

A sudden hush fell upon the old woman’s mind. The silence was unnerving. It was the same silence with which the old woman had regarded Nic when she arrived at the gas station.

Only now, turning her gaze inward, searching out the dark corners of her own consciousness, did the old woman sense what was happening.

Without warning, Nic was submerged by a mad tide of fury. Her vision pixilated and she was momentarily back in her car, back in the machine, and it took all her strength and courage to maintain focus and return to the old woman’s mind.

The old woman was fighting for her life, fighting to feed. Nic felt the old woman’s hunger as her own, and because they were inextricably linked there was a part of Nic that hated herself and wanted nothing more than to give in and satisfy the old woman’s hunger. The longer Nic kept their connection open, the more she would disappear.

With one last surge of volition, she held on to her anger, using it to maintain control of the old woman and make her speak to the old man.

“Stop her,” Nic said.

THE OLD MAN REACHED out and felt himself become part of another consciousness. But it wasn’t the old woman’s. She was here only as muted, distant presence; a stranger in her own mind. The girl—Nic—had subdued her. The old man couldn’t believe it, and though his mind was joined with hers, and he understood how Nic had wrenched control from the old woman, he still found himself bewildered by this strange creature who had managed to do what he’d thought was impossible.

It wouldn’t last, though. Already the old woman was gathering strength. He tried to reach out to her but all he felt was a dangerous, seething frenzy. She wasn’t a consciousness anymore; she was a force. She would devour Nic, and then she would come for him.

But there was still time. The girl had weakened her, made her vulnerable. Now he could finish what she’d started. At once his consciousness hummed with a serenity he had not experienced in a long time. He knew what he had to do, and he knew how it would end. He wouldn’t survive his confrontation with the old woman, but neither would she. The combined force of their clash would be enough to obliterate them. They would experience their last moments locked together and then they would fade away, and that would be the end: no more hunger, no more aloneness and apartness. Just oblivion, release. All they would leave behind were two empty bodies.

It wouldn’t be long now. Both of them—Nic and the old man—sensed the old woman’s gathering strength as an approach, a light growing brighter and brighter until it nearly blinded them. In his mind he heard Nic calling to him, Stop her, stop her, stop her. And when she was nearly upon them, the old man pushed Nic away and threw himself into the light.

NIC WOKE IN HER car. Her eyelids fluttered against an unknown glare. She rubbed her eyes, squinting ahead.

The car wash door was open. Outside the sun withered like an overripe peach in a deep blue sky.

Her breath caught in her chest. She straightened, moving quickly, clumsily. She slammed the gas pedal and spun the steering wheel. The car circled around the car wash and lunged onto the two-lane desert road.

She was shaking. Her palms were sweaty. For a moment she lost control of the steering wheel, the car veering off the road and fishtailing across the scrub. She tightened her grip and forced the car back onto the road.

In the rearview mirror, receding by the moment, Nic glanced at the shadowed sentinels of the gas pumps beneath the roof, the gleam of the setting sun against the station windows, the long narrow car wash with the sand-reddened bricks.

When at last these figured had faded from view, Nic returned her gaze to the road and kept driving and never looked back.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JEFFREY D. SCHWARTZ’S fiction has been published in Wild Musette and Beyond Imagination. He received his M.F.A. from Emerson College, and has taught at universities in New England and Colorado. He currently teaches creative writing at the University of Denver. “Feeding Time” was inspired by a particularly creepy car wash he used to frequent when he lived in Salem, Massachusetts.

Under the Dogrose

BO BALDER

HELE LIVED IN THE Summer Lands, as did all his kin. They had abandoned the human world with its winters, as well as the machinations of humankind. Humans tried to change the world instead of adapting to it. They built houses and sowed grains, imprisoned animals and yoked themselves to work. The People lingered over past days, saving up the best of them in their daycastles and reliving them many times over. Why endure the cold and hunger of Horn month when you could instead dwell in last year’s summer and eat your fill of berries? They danced and sang all summer and did it all over again once winter came.

There was no need for the old and the young to huddle together in stinking huts like humans. Hele hadn’t seen his own father for centuries. That might mean the old man was dead, or just off enjoying summers past. Hele told himself he was content never to know.

Hele was devising a new hour-dance for his Summer King. He anticipated it would please himself no end, and if and when he got around to placing markers in the real world, his kin as well. He stitched together the most beautiful glimpses of alder woods and birch woods and wet summer meadows from his daycastle. He crafted a journey as light and warm and pleasant as a pheasant’s egg stolen from a nest and slurped warm.

He stepped into his daycastle and retrieved a moment where he’d watched a pheasant sneak into a golden cornfield planted by men. He’d come back to the real world every hour or so until he found the nest abandoned. Then he’d saved the moment in his daycastle, to visit forever when he felt like slurping a pheasant’s egg. He thought there might be one egg left in it. Perhaps he should go and get it. But then he decided not to. Best to leave one egg in the nest, one clutch of berries on the branch, for when you were in dire need.

Hele was nearing the spiral paths that signified the presence of the Alder King, and debated whether to go pay his respects or add one more beautiful vista to his dance of hours. He caught glimpses of his kin, lounging or singing or making love, snatches of sunny skies, full moons, fresh mornings and sultry afternoons. Scents of mown hay, crushed mint leaves, flowering honeysuckle. He was enjoying himself so much that he managed to bump into someone strolling the same path.

It was his father.

His father! He hadn’t seen the old man in over a century.

“Father,” he exclaimed and hugged the old man.

The once broad shoulders felt brittle instead of strong and safe. Hele held on to his father a little longer to master his surprise and grief.

His father gently stepped out of his embrace. Tears shone in his pale eyes. “I’m so glad I found you,” he said in his fragile voice. “I wanted to walk with you through the drowned lands one more time.”

Hele let go of his plans to finish his hour-dance. This was his father, who had been presumed dead. Who he’d mourned for a century. “Where were you, I missed you, I actually thought you...” But he didn’t want to say this aloud.

“Come, walk with me,” Aitama said.

Aitama had become so small. Hele remembered his father as a mighty warrior with shoulders blocking the sky, a voice like a thunderstorm. This shrunken form was at least a head shorter than he, as he looked down on pink skin shimmering through thinning hair.

Hele couldn’t speak; his throat was so full of joy and lost chances. They hadn’t always seen eye to eye in the old days, but that wasn’t important anymore. Seeing his father again was a great gift.

“Why are you here, Father?”

“I came to ask the king for counsel, to ask why the old countries are becoming so thin.”

“What do you mean, thin?” Hele asked.

Aitama didn’t answer.

Hele realized they were already walking the memory paths to the summer country. It must have been a thousand years ago that he’d last been there. Doggerland had been devoured by the sea long before his birth, so that time was out of his reach if he went by himself. Only in the company of his father or another elder could he walk in such ancient memory.

“I’ll show you, boy, wait.”

They took a downward path. The rush of a river rose, invisible behind rows of alder and birch. “This is the path along the Rhine that we walked so many times, you remember?”

Hele remembered. Where in the present day the North Sea sloshed, dozens of man lengths above their heads, the Rhine had flowed in days long lost. He steadied his father’s work as for a moment one of the black rivers the humans made shone through the path. The stink and the roar of their rushing metal vehicles lingered for a moment. He and his father shared a grimace of disgust.

Privately he worried to see his father’s mastery of the paths grown so tenuous. How would he live if he couldn’t go to summers past?

In a moment they’d come to a clearing in the forest. A herd of deer would flit by, with ten or twenty grand old bucks with huge antlers, herds so large as didn’t exist anymore. He wanted to turn left as usual but his father stopped him.

“Look.”

At first Hele saw nothing, but slowly it occurred to him that the wetland forest on his left seemed misty and vague. He blinked and wiped his eyes to clear the blurring, but still a kind of fog hung around where the clearing had been.

“It seems foggy.”

His father nodded. “Try walking towards it.”

Hele felt a great reluctance to approach the vague spot, but did what his father asked. With each step he took, the sense of constriction became stronger. His footsteps made not the slightest sound. He looked at his shoes. He was walking on late summer grass that should have rustled under his footsteps. When he lifted his head to find his father, he couldn’t see him. He inhaled sharply and realized that his breathing made no sound either.

“Father!” he shouted, but the air did not tremble, or the sound didn’t reach his ears.

Everything else was silent as well. The river rustled no more, no bird trilled, no duck quack, no cricket cheeped, no gnat buzzed by. The silence of death.

He couldn’t stand it any longer and turned back. Where he’d walked, his footsteps had turned black, rotting taints on the green. He smelled nothing of the putrefaction below his feet. Miraculously his eyes were still working, but he saw nothing but mist and his own hands and feet. He was alone in death.

His breath began to wheeze. What did that mean? He looked around frantically. Hadn’t he left his father here? Where was Aitama? He’d never felt so alone and so afraid.

“Father!” he squeaked. It was a horrible, gurgling sound, a shadow of his normal voice, but he took hope from the fact that he could hear again. As he walked, he stooped to pick a blade of grass, bruised it and held it near his face. It smelt of summer and sun and fertile clay. His sense of smell was working again. His father had to be close. Without him, he couldn’t get away from the Lost Lands, and he didn’t want wander here forever. Only a person who had visited a place in real life could take you back and forth. Hele hadn’t been born when Doggerland succumbed to the waves.

A hand slipped into his and the world immediately returned to normal. The sun beat down on his face, a group of ducks cackled on the lake and he scented deer scat a few lengths away.

“That was terrible,” he said. “As if I’d died. And the world with me.”

“Yes,” Aitama said. “The first time it happened to me, I wandered for weeks. At the end of it, I could see straight through my own hands. It was pure luck that I found the right path again.”

They turned back to the path and ambled on in the humid afternoon heat. Hele inhaled the scents with deep breaths. He had never been as scared as he’d been in the fading landscape, except perhaps when his wife had been in danger of dying during the birth of their eldest son.

His father spoke again, pausing often to gulp deep breaths. Why didn’t he heal himself with memories of his own healthy young body? Hele felt a deep sense of foreboding. It was hard to concentrate on what Aitama was saying.

“Sometimes I can envisage an area so very sharply in my living memory, but if I then look it up in my daycastle, it seems pale and unreal. And if you go there, nothing is as it should be. It’s foggy, your feet don’t touch the ground, nothing smells or sounds like it should. If you stay long, you become cold and weak. At first I thought nothing of it, but then it began to occur more frequently. I started tracking which areas the foggy places occurred in. And they were my favorite places, the places I visited most often, at least a few times per century.”

Aitama looked up at Hele with his faded blue eyes.

“So what we do, living the past, wears the past down? And because all of us do it all the time, the past has become thin in many places?” Hele said.

“Exactly. We can’t stay in our daycastles forever. Someday, all our past will have become worn out and we will have nowhere to go. We have to start making new memories in the real world. We need to walk in the Hunting Time more often. Or we will fade away and perish just like our past.”

Hele’s skin pulled tight with a sudden chill. It seemed the gnarled, blue-veined hand sucked the warmth and life out of his arm.

“We must return to the Hunting Time, the time of the animals and humans,” his father repeated.

Hele shook his father’s hand off his arm and grabbed both old hands with his own. “Father. Who knows all this? Have you told this to the king?”

“Of course I have, boy, a long time ago. That’s how we got the powerful families to take Elber’s side over the Winter King. We have to change.”

Hele felt swallowed an urge to shout or kick something. Why had the king and the old men kept it to themselves? He blew out a long breath to calm himself down. Maybe they hadn’t. He might have been unreachable, with his head in the clouds, dancing in eternal summers. He’d never enjoyed following the endless, intricate gyrations of the Summer Court and the sacrifices one had to make for political power. But he vowed he was going to find out. Hunt for the ones who knew, find out what they were planning to do about this.

“So who knew about this? The families of the Summer Court? Maybe even the Winter King?”

The old head nodded. His father seemed to have difficulty stopping motions once they had begun. His head bobbed on long after he’d already begun to talk. He was getting so old.

“Everyone at the court knows, I think. All my old friends. And certainly the Winter Cortege. Something you can’t keep a secret. I dread to think of the Winter King’s solution to this problem.”

The old man spat on the path, and after a small hesitation shoved sand and leaves over the spit. Hele was impressed with that caution. His father was so afraid to tarnish his beloved memories of the flood plain that he wouldn’t give the Winter King’s Red Teeth even this small a foothold there. Red Teeth could taste you in the smallest nail paring, lock of hair, old sweat or even bodily waste, and then they could find you everywhere, in whatever memory you were.

“What about your memories? No wear and tear yet?” Aitama asked.

Hele shook his head. “I have spent most of the past centuries on the Memory Paths, and I haven’t noticed anything. Have you thought about the cause? Is it the age of the memory, or the age of the rememberer?”

His father shook his head in annoyance. “You ask why, why like a child. No one can know.”

Hele refused to let go of his questions. “Easy to brush aside these questions, but why shouldn’t we try to find out? If we put a lot of people together, we might ask these questions, and a bard could remember and collate what the answers were. Maybe there is something we can do.”

His father snorted. “You sound like a human. Stick to your foundering mud streams, mudgrave, you have your work cut out for you.”

“Yes, father,” Hele said quietly, without actually meaning it. Human thinking or not, he didn’t just want to give up on his questions. What about his own hill house in the tidal mudflats? For centuries now, the humans had lived on top of it, built roads and dug ditches, sewed meadows and let cattle graze. They thwarted his mud, preventing him from visiting. What if he couldn’t live in his memories of that house anymore? He’d be homeless. It was either repair the memory time or oust humans from all the ancient People territories. And everyone knew that was impossible. The humans were too numerous, had been even when their ways had parted, hunter from farmer, in the days when Doggerland still existed.

His father breathed in the sweet summer air with relish. Hele smelled honeysuckle from the nearby woods, wild roses, the scent of sun on water.

“Come, boy, let’s continue our walk. There are plenty of trails that are unaffected. Remember when we fished for shrimp in the surf? That was past Ireland, then. Let’s do that one more time.”

“Only once? I hope to visit that surfline many times yet”

His father didn’t answer, but walked calmly on. His strides were so much shorter than Hele’s now that he had to pay continuous attention to not outpace his father. His father had truly become an old man. Aitama would never admit that he might have lost interest in life. One day, Hele would realize that he hadn’t seen his father had in ages and he would discover that the old man was dead. That he’d found a special place, under a flowering dogrose, and had crawled in there to die in solitude.

Hele knew that the decision to die would come for every person of the people, but he didn’t want to lose his father again so soon. He knew the story of the infamous Hamarle, who’d tracked his aging father until he’d found the old man’s last resting place. He’d lain down with his father’s corpse and refused to move from there while the body rotted and returned to the earth.

That was not filial devotion, that was madness. But Hele couldn’t help wanting to know under which briar rose of fragrant broom shrub his father would lie down. He wanted to pass it by every summer and think of Aitama.

His father’s cold fingers on Hele’s arm trembled. The old man had fallen silent. From tiredness, it seemed to Hele. He should go. Leave the old man to rest in peace, whether for an afternoon or for eternity, that didn’t matter. He couldn’t and wouldn’t dog Aitama’s footsteps like the mythical Hamarle had done.

He bent and kissed the cold, withered cheek. “I’m going off to the court, father, I want to talk to the king himself. We must act, and act soon.”

He’d expected another irritated rejoinder, but Aitama only hugged him tight and stroked his hair. “Dear boy.” His voice was as fragile as a leaf.

Hele’s eyes brimmed over as he turned away and made ready to step into his own memory paths. He might never see his father again, or he might. He couldn’t let that direct his life. That was his own to live.

His father would be under the dogrose and exhale his last breath surrounded by a scent he loved. His last sight would be a flower that had bloomed and withered eight thousand years ago. And Hele would remember him that way whether it was true or not.

He had to let his father go.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

BO BALDER lives and works close to Amsterdam. She is the first Dutch author to have been published in F&SF and Clarkesworld. Her fiction has also appeared in Escape Pod, Nature and other places. Her sf novel “The Wan” was published by Pink Narcissus Press.

The Cat, the Dragon, and the Stormy Knight

TOM HOWARD

THE PRINCESS ARRIVED IN darkness and rain. A lightning bolt struck nearby and startled Sera so badly she jumped into a puddle. She was soaked and barely able to see a flickering lamp ahead through the downpour. Her anger flared. She was surprised water drops didn’t evaporate when they hit her. She pushed her black hair from her face and slogged through the mud toward the light at the end of the lane. Her dainty shoes and silk stockings were ruined. She wouldn’t speak to her father for days when she returned home.

Her father, the king, had sent her to study with his old magic tutor. He’d neglected telling her she’d arrive during a horrible storm. At the very least, he and his royal magicians could have teleported her inside the magician’s castle and not into the torrential downpour outside. A covered carriage would have been nice.

Her anger turned to worry. Had an evil sorcerer kidnapped her? Did highwaymen lurk beneath the naked trees bordering the lane? She gritted her teeth and walked faster.

She reached the dark castle at the lane’s end. Rain coated the black stone, and the gargoyles atop the gate spewed rivers onto the front steps. Too upset to evade being splattered, she banged the heavy iron knocker. A vicious thunderstorm writhed over the castle, and she lifted the knocker again.

The door opened a crack, and an old man in a long robe peered out. “Where is the carriage?” he demanded. “I’ve crates packed already!”

Sera stood confused. Was this her teacher? A housekeeper? An old and ungroomed guardsman?

“I am Princess Sera.” She lifted her chin. Her voice sounded thin against the howling wind. “King Gridion’s daughter.”

The old man opened the door wider. “King Gridion? Goodness, is that today?” He grabbed her soggy sleeve and pulled her inside. “You must go back. You’re not safe here.”

“Who are you?” Sera looked in disbelief at the clutter. Suits of armor lay in pieces across the stone floor, and boxes and straw lay in piles. Had she arrived during a battle?

“Tahl!” The man turned so fast his black robes flapped around him. “Grab a mop. This girl is dripping all over the place.”

A young man, not much older than Princess Sera, sauntered from the shadows. His hair and clothing seemed part of the darkness. He smiled, and his hazel eyes glowed in the torchlight. “Sorry, Princess. You’re not seeing the great and powerful Ossimodius at his best. You’ve arrived on a bad day.”

Anger, temporarily displaced by disbelief, returned. She expected to have her questions, indeed her wishes, answered immediately. The wizard ignored her and climbed a ladder leaning against a tower of bookshelves. He picked a few books and held them in his arms.

“Welcome to Greyhold.” Tahl removed his black cloak and placed it around Sera’s shoulders. She ignored his touching her, grateful for the cloak’s warmth against the drafty castle.

“I need a hot bath,” she said, “and my clothes. They should have already arrived. And a—”

“Sorry, your highness, but maybe you didn’t hear Ozzy. We’re leaving.”

“Leaving? Why?”

“Didn’t you see the storm outside? It’s trying to kill us.”

Sera drew herself to her full height, still a head shorter than the young man. “Don’t be ridiculous. A storm can’t harm us inside a stone castle.”

“The Dark and Stormy Knight is coming, and he can’t be stopped. As Ozzy’s new apprentice, you’re learning about irresistible curses the hard way. You’re making a mess, and I don’t know where the maids keep the mops.”

“Where are the servants?”

“Didn’t you hear what I said? The Dark and Stormy Knight is coming, probably sent by a rival wizard. When the knight arrives, he’ll smite the castle until nothing is left.”

Sera pulled away. “I don’t understand. My father wouldn’t have sent me to learn from this madman. I want to go home.”

“After we’re away. Make myself useful.” Tahl took a stack of books from the wizard and handing them to her. “Put these in that crate. The sooner we’re packed, the sooner we’ll leave.”

Sera, still too upset at her treatment to speak, took the books and dropped them into the crate.

“Careful with those!” Ozzy shouted from above. “That’s my only copy of Lynnye’s Household Poisons.”

“Sorry.” Sera didn’t mean it. “I’m wet and cold. I will not be treated like a servant.”

“Come with me, Princess,” Tahl said. “We’ll find something dry for you to wear. Perhaps the maids left something behind. Ozzy, are you sure these books say nothing about fighting a Dark and Stormy Knight?”

“There is something in the back of my mind,” Ozzy said, “but I can’t remember what it is. Everything I’ve tried so far has failed.”

“We’ll be back.” Tahl took Sera’s hand. “The princess is soaked.”

Ozzy selected more books as Tahl led Sera up the stairs.

“Your things didn’t arrive,” he told her. “Probably destroyed by the Dark and Stormy Knight on the way here.”

Sera climbed the stone steps. A few lit torches lined the hallway, and her silk slippers oozed mud and rainwater as she kept pace with Tahl. He moved unlike anyone she’d ever seen. He seemed to have no bones in his body, and his boots left no mark or sound when he walked.

“What is happening?” Sera gathered her soggy skirts. “You talk as if the storm is alive.”

“It’s an ancient curse.” Tahl lifted a lit torch from the wall. “It grows and grows until it becomes strong enough to destroy its target.”

“The castle?”

“No. Ozzy. It won’t stop until he’s dead.”

“Wait. If the storm is after Ozzy, why don’t we leave him?” She assumed Tahl, like her, was an apprentice. Perhaps she was his replacement. She’d told her father how useless basic magic was. Didn’t she have palace magicians?

Tahl stopped. “What kind of princess are you, thinking only of yourself? Ozzy has saved this kingdom many times. It’s only because the king is an old friend, he agreed to train you.”

He moved down a dark hallway, opening a door to a room littered with clothing and bedclothes. “You should find something in here.” His voice no longer sounded friendly.

“Thank you.” The phrase sounded unfamiliar on her tongue.

He placed the torch in a wall sconce and left the room without looking back.

“Wait.” She stuck her head into the hall, “how do I find my way—”

The dark hallway was empty except for a large black cat with bright green eyes. It stared at her before it turned and flowed into the shadows.

THE MISMATCHED MAID’S CLOTHING WAS scratchy, and Sera was unsure of its provenance, but it was blissfully dry. Taking the torch, she found the stairs. She was no wizard’s maidservant and would tell Ozzy and Tahl to pack their own furnishings. When the carriage arrived, she would order the driver to take her home. Her father would be covering his ears by the time she finished screaming at him.

Something thudded against the stone walls, and the foundations shook.

“Princess!” Tahl shouted when the shuddering stopped. “The drivers aren’t coming. Ozzy is in the tower, summoning a fire elemental.”

“What are we doing?” She stood at the bottom of the stairs.

Tahl took her hand. “There’s someone else who may remember how to fight the Knight. While Ozzy’s casting his spell, we’ll ask her.”

“Not back out in the rain,” she protested. “I only now got dry!”

“My cloak will protect you.” H pulled her through the door. “I hate being wet twice as much as you do, but I have to go. Stay here if you must.”

A shower of dust drifted from the vaulted ceiling. “No, I’ll go.” She didn’t want to be alone. Tahl, even with his low estimation of her, was the only one who acknowledged her existence.

“Where are we going?” She pulled the cloak’s hood up and flinched when lightning struck nearby.

“Down the hill to visit the dragon.” He stepped through the hedge. Droplets of rain from the branches struck her face.

Perhaps he meant a colorfully named inn or a tavern with a warm fire. She wished she’d found sturdier shoes. The ones from the maid’s room were already waterlogged, and she fell against Tahl when she slipped on a wet stone.

“Careful,” he said. “She’ll be restless from the storm.”

Somewhere nearby a tree crashed to the ground. The lightning cracked non-stop, illuminating a grassy hill before them.

“Where is the dragon?” She looked around.

The hill shuddered, and a thick, green snake slowly uncoiled from the top. With a gasp, Sera realized it wasn’t a snake, but a giant beast’s neck. The hill was the body of the dragon.

The dragon rested her head before Tahl. Large dark eyes blinked, and small puffs of smoke came from her nostrils. “Why is there so much noise, Timothy?” Her voice was soft and rumbling.

“Sorry, Dragon.” Tahl ignored that she’d called him by the wrong name. “A Dark and Stormy Knight is coming. We need your help.”

Dragon stared at Sera. “Is this a new sorceress?”

“She’s Ozzy’s new apprentice,” Tahl said.

The dragon puffed out smoke into Sera’s face. “Did she summon the Dark and Stormy Knight? I haven’t seen one in centuries. Supposed to be unstoppable, Jason.”

“So we’ve heard. Is there no defense against it?”

“Ages ago, a powerful wizard defeated a Dark and Stormy Knight. His name was Ozzy something.”

“Another Ozzy?” Sera asked, unable to stop herself. The dragon’s calm aloofness amid the crashing thunderbolts irritated her.

“I’d like a snack.” Dragon smiled at Sera. “I’ve been asleep a long time.”

Sera stepped back, unsure if the beast was serious.

“How did he defeat the Dark and Stormy Knight?” Tahl asked.

“The Knight was a tasty morsel.” Dragon closed her eyes and lowered her head.

“What does that mean?” Sera demanded. “Wake up!”

Tahl shook his head. “She’s out for another year or two. As she gets older, she sleeps more and more. Someday she’ll turn into a real hillock.”

“So, we got wet for nothing?”

He started up the hill. “She gave us the answer. Ozzy can check his family’s journals. Someone he’s named after destroyed a Dark and Stormy Knight. We need to know how.”

Sera sped up, not understanding Dragon’s odd comment or Tahl’s satisfied reaction.

Back in the castle, the walls still boomed and shook. Ozzy had returned to the main hall, his robes smoldering. Apparently, the fire elemental had not been accommodating.

“Ozzy,” Tahl said, “we need the history scrolls. Dragon said one of your predecessors defeated a Dark and Stormy Knight.”

“She said she ate him,” Sera said.

Ozzy scowled. “Impossible. She ate a gigantic storm?”

“I don’t know,” Tahl said. “Where are the old journals?”

. Sera shouted above the noise as repeated blows rang against the walls. “We don’t have time to read through old journals. It sounds like he’s almost here.”

“He’s?” Tahl repeated. “Ozzy, that’s it!”

The wizard nodded. “We’ve forgotten about the person inside. If I had a seed like him, I could make my own Dark and Stormy Knight.”

“Seed?” Sera asked.

Ozzy nodded. “Yes. The Stormy Knight spell is built around a person. You’ll do. I’ve some weather potions around here somewhere.”

“No,” Tahl said, “you can’t use the new apprentice. The seed is destroyed when a Dark and Stormy Knight spell achieves its goal.”

Ozzy shrugged. “I’m sure the princess wouldn’t mind.”

“I would mind!”

“Don’t worry,” Tahl said. “Ozzy, Dragon told us she ate the seed. It must be possible to extract the person inside before the Dark and Stormy Knight destroys us. Without the seed, there can be no storm.”

“How can we reach him?” Sera asked. “If we get him out, maybe Dragon can eat him!”

“I’ve been looking at this all wrong,” Ozzy said. “We don’t need to defeat the entire storm, just its heart.”

“How?” Sera demanded. “Do you have magic weapons able to reach through that wind and rain?”

“Let me think,” Ozzy said.

“Watch out!” Tahl gathered Ozzy and Sera to him and leaped an unbelievable distance. An overhead chandelier crashed to the floor where they had stood.

Tahl remained on his feet while the others stumbled to their knees. “Ozzy, how do we defeat a storm’s heart?”

“Payne’s Crossbow takes a visual acquisition,” said Ozzy. “Andre’s Incineration takes a lock of the target’s hair. Sorry, Tahl, there’s no way to kill the poor man while he’s trapped inside the Dark and Stormy Knight.”

“Maybe not kill him.” Sera stood. “Can we change him somehow? Make him a toad or a candlestick?”

“A transfiguration spell is a good idea,” Ozzy said. “But a personality change would be better. The most powerful is a sleeping spell, but a love spell would be more effective. Too bad it takes a drop of blood from a vir—”

He stared at Sera, and his cheeks reddened.

“What?” she demanded. “Blood from a what?”

“He’s trying to ask if you’re a virgin,” Tahl said.

How dare they ask her a personal question like that? The very idea!

“Her indignation would indicate she is,” Tahl said.

He grabbed her wrist. “How much, Ozzy?”

Sera struggled, but Tahl held her tight.

“A drop for the arrow’s tip,” Ozzy said. “There’s got to be an arrow lying around here someplace.”

“This won’t hurt, Princess.” One of Tahl’s fingernails grew longer and sharper, and he touched it to her fingertip.

A blood drop appeared, and Ozzy smeared it onto an old arrow he’d snatched from the floor.

Tahl released her, and she scowled and sucked the small wound.

A blinding lightning bolt crashed through an upper window, and they ducked shards of stained glass and huddled together.

Ozzy gestured at the front door, blasting it open. The ensorcelled arrow in his hand leaped forward as if alive.

“What is he—” Sera began, but Tahl held up his hand.

“Silence,” he hissed. “Without a physical connection to the seed, Ozzy is directing the arrow with his mind. Don’t break his concentration.”

With the door open, wind whipped through the chamber, threatening to knock Ozzy off his feet.

A chest plate bounced across the room, flung by the howling wind.

“Help Ozzy!” Tahl leaped and intercepted the armor.

Sera bent her head and struggled to reach Ozzy and support him against the wind. She could hardly stand. More likely, she’d knock him down and be swept out the door with him. But, if she didn’t try, she’d end up as dead as Ozzy.

She planted one foot after the other, her senses numbed by the booming thunder and the flashing lightning. Tahl swatted flying debris away from them with inhumanly fast reflexes.

Hoping she wouldn’t startle Ozzy, she placed her hands against his thin back and helped keep him upright. If he noted her, he didn’t react. He mumbled a raspy spell, a nonsense phrase repeated over and over.

“Pix oloc kondi na,” he said.

“Pix oloc kondi na,” she repeated, barely registering she echoed his words. Her arm hairs rose as a different kind of electricity filled the air. “Pix oloc kondi na!”

She couldn’t see the arrow, but she sensed it flying through the darkness. It struggled against wind shear and torrential rain but never lost its way.

“Now!” Ozzy shouted. He’d found the target.

The arrow sped up when it hit the calm in the middle of the storm. Sera felt it strike the young man, and he cried out in surprise and pain.

Sera and Ozzy collapsed on the chamber floor as the wind died. Outside, the Dark and Stormy Knight clutched his side and fell into the soggy mud.

The storm fell apart in the night sky. Winds whipped away in every direction. Thunderclouds broke apart, and rain turned from a deluge into a light shower. The storm lingered, but without its seed, it quickly lost its impact.

In the chamber, Tahl helped Sera and Ozzy up.

“Thank you,” Ozzy said. “That was close.”

“No problem,” Tahl said. “I’m glad I could help.”

“Not you,” Ozzy said. “Her. Without her reinforcing the spell, I would have lost the arrow.”

Tahl gave Sera a half-smile.

Rose-colored light filtered through the few windows left intact. After an endless night, dawn had finally arrived. The castle was a mess, and the surrounding countryside was flooded and wind scoured. Through the open door, the sky glowed pale pink.

“Is it over?” Sera dusted off dirt and glass from her skirts. “Did we stop the unstoppable?”

“We did,” Ozzy said. “The love spell overrode the storm enchantment.”

“I’m not cleaning up this mess,” Sera said. “I’m a princess.”

“You are far more than that, my dear. You are a wizard’s apprentice,” Ozzy said. “We’re going to have an interesting year.”

Before Sera could comment, a young man in battered armor stumbled through the door. His helm was missing, and his wet hair hung plastered to his head. He clutched the wound in his side and stared wide-eyed at Sera. He leaned against the battered doorframe. “Beloved!”

“Oops,” Ozzy said. “Seems we have a loose end to tie up.”

The knight stumbled toward Sera. He fell, unconscious with his gloved hand outstretched to reach the hem of her cloak.

“We should feed him to the dragon,” Tahl said. “He almost killed us.”

“It wasn’t his fault,” Ozzy said. “When I find out whose fault it is…well, I’ve got an External Boils and Biliousness potion for that wizard.”

Sera sighed. “Well, if I’m going to stay, I might as well start by tending his wounds. Where are your medicines?”

Hopefully, Ozzy wouldn’t remove the love spell too quickly. The former Dark and Stormy Knight was very handsome.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

TOM HOWARD is a fantasy and science fiction short story writer living in Little Rock, Arkansas.  He thanks his children for their inspiration and the Central Arkansas Speculative Fiction Writers’ Group for their perspiration.

Eyes of the Wild

NICK FRANCO

ON COOL NIGHTS, WHEN the sky was clear and the moon was dark, Eleya would sit on her mother’s lap by the fire and listen to the story master tell about the wonders of Agolu.

“Among all the gods, Agolu is the wisest and most noble. He flies among the stars and captures all the knowledge in the world. He has bestowed blessings upon all men, but he loves the Cliff People most, because only we share his eyes.”

At this point, everyone would look to Eleya, for she was the first child in three generations born with the eyes of Agolu: golden, piercing eyes that were hard to look at for more than a few moments. Proof she would be good and wise like the honored god himself.

She’d seen him first out over the southern cliffs, while playing games with the other children. Even from far below, the enormity of Agolu inspired awe. In shape he resembled the mysterious owls of the forest, but instead of their ghostly white feathers, he wore a plumage of deep, blood red. He was so large that Eleya could imagine him easily carrying off an elk in his talons. After all, the stories claimed he could.

So this is what it’s like to be in the presence of a god, she’d thought. It was not what she’d imagined. Her parents had told her Agolu was the greatest of gods, the wisest of all beings. That he watched over the Cliff People, guarding them from the Bone Crawlers to the west and the Thorned People from the valley below. But as the massive shadow had passed over her, her expected awe was coupled with another sensation. A deep, instinctual fear that crept down her spine like a spider. She’d felt foolish; one blessed with the protector’s wisdom should know better than to cower in his presence. Still, she’d trembled all the same.

It would be years before she felt the return of that primal terror, and Agolu appeared again.

ELEYA GRINNED AS SHE scrambled up the face of a large boulder, still feeling very much like a girl despite being a woman of six seasons. Reaching the top, she collapsed into a comfortable position. Several boulders behind, her companion breathed heavily as she struggled to climb up after her.

“Kawele, will we have to send scouting pairs for you too?” Eleya teased.

“Eat dirt,” Kawele cursed between tired breaths, giving up and resting against the base of a large rock nearby. “I’m not some beast like you, made for climbing rocks.”

“Mind your tongue, you’re in the company of the blessed child,” Eleya chided playfully. Kawele rolled her eyes. The eyes of Agolu may have been sacred to the clan, but among friends they were just another subject for tease and play.

“Bless me with a hand then, ‘child.’ I’m spent,” Kawele smirked, raising her hand expectantly.

Eleya popped to her feet and made her way down the rocky crag, sliding down and hopping nimbly between boulders. Landing at her destination, she reached down and grasped Kawele’s hand, hoisting her atop the rock. Once they were safely perched, Kawele laughed, nodding towards Eleya’s chest.

“Your feathers are ruffled, oh wise one.”

Eleya glanced down at her top and frowned. Like her friend, she was dressed in simple clothes cut from the woolly hide of the mountain sheep, but at the edges Eleya’s garb was decorated with large, splendid red feathers—Agolu’s sheddings. Only they weren’t so splendid anymore, frayed and bent in disarray from the abuse they’d endured during Eleya’s climb. She fussed with them a bit, vainly trying to restore their majesty before giving up. Some could be salvaged, but most were ruined and would have to be replaced.

Agolu feathers were not easy to come by.

“Your mother will you have you tossed into the valley,” Kawele scolded smugly, flicking one of the tarnished feathers with her finger. “It’s what you deserve, crawling around on your belly like that.”

“It’s not like I ask to wear them,” Eleya pouted, already dreading the far too familiar scolding she was sure to receive. Despite the expectations of good judgement and wisdom she bore by birth, Eleya had always been restless and athletic, possessing a special talent for ruining sacred feathers.

“Right, but if the clan followed Eleya’s famous wisdom, we’d likely be dead by the Thorned People or starvation long ago,” Kawele jabbed gleefully.

With her plain brown eyes, Kawele was the more tempered of the pair. Slightly younger than Eleya, she trailed her friend when it came to physical talents, but she was armed with a sharp cleverness that she carried like a concealed blade. She often teased that without the wisdom granted by Agolu’s eyes, Eleya would be dumber than the mountain sheep.

The pair rested in silence for a while, looking out over the rocky cliffsides that surrounded them. Eleya and Kawele had been pairing together since they were young, venturing out from the village to forage resources or locate lost things. In the distance they could see other scouting pairs crawling amongst the rocks. Like them, they were searching for Keran, a child from the clan who had gone missing. They weren’t especially concerned.

“Let’s head back, we’ve searched enough,” Kawele said, rising and dusting herself off. “He’s always running off, and he always comes back.”

“Alright, just one more call.” Eleya reached down for the short wooden flute dangling from her necklace and brought it to her lips. Cupping her hands with practiced expertise around the end, she whistled forcefully into it, rhythmically clasping and unclasping her right hand over the seal as she did. The result was a deep, reverberating cry that echoed against the cliffs. In the clan, no one was more skilled at imitating the screech of Agolu than Eleya.

Other scouting pairs sounded their own calls, but there was no hint of the expected answering call from Keran.

“You see?” Kawele sighed. “He doesn’t want to be found. He’ll come back when he wishes. Little brat.” She was already climbing down from the rock.

Eleya nodded, it was getting late.

“ALWAYS CARELESS, ALWAYS SO foolish…” Eleya’s mother grimaced, studying the bent feather between her fingers. “Sometimes I think you were given the eyes as a cruel joke.”

Shamed, Eleya stared down at the rocky floor. At least her mother’s reaction was tempered compared to her father’s; he’d been too furious for words when he’d seen the defiled plumage, storming out of the hut in silent rage.

“I don’t do it on purpose, it’s impossible to climb while also taking care to—”

“Then don’t climb,” her mother interrupted coldly, discarding the ruined feather with the others in a clay pot. They would find new value as ceremonial kindling when spring finally arrived.

“We were searching for Keran! We needed a high vantage point, and I’m Kawele’s scouting partner, I had no choice!” Eleya protested.

“Kawele goes scouting because you do, not the other way around,” her mother asserted, turning back towards her daughter and silencing her with a look. “You’d both be better served here in the village, learning to shape clay, studying the ceremonies—”

“Why should I have to wear feathers or learn ceremonies when I already wear his eyes!” Eleya whined. “If they make me wise, then why should I—”

The slap struck Eleya’s face before she could blink. With tears welling up in her golden eyes, she glanced up fearfully at the disappointed face of her mother.

“So many seasons grown, yet still a child,” she said sternly, her voice quivering slightly. “Wearing Agolu’s feathers is an honor, and your father searches tirelessly to replace them for you. Most families are lucky to possess a handful. Someday the clan will look to you for guidance, and so you must present yourself—”

It was Eleya’s turn to storm out silently. Her mother called after her as she ran from the hut, but Eleya ignored her.

Reaching the cliff’s edge, she grabbed for the nearest rope and began scrambling up. The village fell away below her as she climbed, scattered bunches of wooden huts nestled into pockets in the cliffside like birds’ nests. The Cliff People had always lived there, sheltered by the rocky terrain. The ropes hanging from above served as the only means of entry. The predators in the mountains above couldn’t scale down the ropes, and the Thorned People from the valley wouldn’t dare climb to such heights to harm them.

Reaching the upper cliff, Eleya hurried to a small cave nearby where she’d hidden in the past. Curling into a ball, she cried long and hard. If Keran could run away, so could she. She vowed she would never return to her family, with the quick conviction that all young people possess when they are hurting.

The decision came easily to Eleya because her identity was still in flux, still developing day-to-day into who she’d ultimately become. There was no contradiction; the person who made the promise could hardly be called the same person who would eventually back down when the hurt subsided.

In contrast, her family was a comforting constant. They had always been there, and she believed they always would be.

IT WAS DARK WHEN Agolu came to the village. Eleya heard his scream before she saw him, startling her awake in the pitch black of the cave. She’d heard it before, studied it from a distance while mastering her call, but from this close, it was like hearing it for the first time. A new, terrible sound.

By the time she reached the cliff’s edge where the ropes hung, the reverberating screeches were accompanied by a chorus of screams and prayers—the confused and desperate voices of her clan. Peering over the precipice, she watched the horrible scene below by the light of the moon. Many of the village huts already lay in ruins, and the Cliff People dashed about madly like the denizens of a disturbed anthill. Some cowered in fear, while others simply dropped to their knees and begged. Above it all, Agolu soared silently.

Eleya couldn’t understand what she was seeing. The village was in peril, and Agolu was their protector—so why didn’t he come to their aid? Why was he ignoring their prayers?

Circling back around, the scarlet god delivered his answer. Agolu beat his powerful wings and swooped along the cliffside, carrying off entire huts in his talons before scattering the crushed remains and occupants into the void below. The picture became clearer to Eleya, though she understood it even less. Their guardian had betrayed them, and there was nothing that could protect them from him.

Eleya’s body moved before her mind could catch up. She was gripping the rope, scrambling down madly towards the carnage below. She had no plan, no ideas, just a need to do something, anything. To somehow stand between her home and her god.

She wasn’t halfway down when she felt the wind of him. She looked down to see the great bird surging towards her. He was so much larger than she remembered. And his eyes—those cruel, golden things. The same as the pair that lived on her face.

She flinched away as he neared, bracing herself for the end. Instead, the wind roared around her as Agolu flew past, up towards the sky, his feathers close enough to touch. He screeched one last time as he went, and Eleya’s thoughts began to blur. She felt her hand let go of the rope, and she looked up just in time to catch one last glimpse of Agolu, soaring away, as the darkness enveloped her.

ELEYA AWOKE IN AN unfamiliar hut, being tended to by a woman who she recognized from the village but didn’t know very well. For a moment the events of the night before felt like a distant dream, until she rolled over to see a large section of the hut’s siding ripped away, serving as a window to the scattered ruins of her village.

The woman explained that Eleya had been lucky—she’d landed on a pile of sheep hides and wasn’t seriously injured. The village had been less fortunate. Almost half of the huts were destroyed or simply gone, and sixteen members of the clan were dead. Eleya’s parents were among them.

Sitting at the edge of the village, Eleya observed from a distance as her people struggled futilely to return life to normalcy. Some tried to rebuild, others simply wept. Many seemed to be gathering what was left of their belongings, preparing to leave. Eleya could only watch, utterly numbed by grief.

Eleya turned to see Kawele standing by her side. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been there.

“My family is leaving the village, many families are,” Kawele told her. “We’re going down into the valley.”

“Aren’t you afraid of the Thorned People?” Eleya asked, doing her best to muster up concern.

“My father says Agolu is angry with us,” Kawele explained sadly. “He says he’d rather take his chances with the Thorned People than risk the wrath of a god.”

Eleya didn’t respond, and she felt a deep frown form on her face. Something Kawele had said left a bad taste in her mouth, but she couldn’t pinpoint it.

“You could come with us, you know,” Kawele offered, placing a sympathetic hand on her friend’s shoulder. “What else will you do?”

The words reached Eleya’s lips before she knew what they would be.

“I am going to kill Agolu.”

Kawele pulled her hand away as if bitten.

“But you can’t—he’s a god.”

Eleya now realized what it was in Kawele’s words that had left her with that bitter taste.

“You’re wrong,” Eleya replied as she watched two men pull a body from the wreckage. “He’s a monster.”

Kawele almost protested, but stopped herself as she glimpsed Eleya’s eyes.

Her friend’s gaze didn’t escape Eleya’s notice. She couldn’t remember Kawele ever looking at her so distantly—so afraid.

Eleya did her best to ignore the reaction. After last night, there were many in the village who feared the eyes of Agolu.

COLD WINDS BLEW THROUGH the upper mountains, and Eleya was thankful it had been a dry winter. The journey was hard enough without having to contend with snow.

It had been two days since she’d departed what was left of the village, and she’d hardly stopped except to sleep and eat under the cover of caves, careful to never linger too long out in the open. She’d packed light, carrying with her only dried meat, a pouch of fire berries, a length of rope, a spear, and the flute hanging from her neck. Everything she needed to kill a god.

The higher she climbed, the more she hated him. The wise guardian; the noble protector—it had all been a lie. The Cliff People had loved Agolu more than life itself, and he’d repaid their adulation with death. She felt sick when she remembered her parents’ nightly prayers, how they’d praised and thanked their future murderer. The feeling was only eclipsed by her disgust towards herself. Even if she succeeded in slaying the devil, she’d never truly escape him. She would always wear his wretched eyes.

Eleya was no trained warrior—none of the Cliff People really were—but she’d been on hunts. She knew how to passably track, trap, and kill. This time though, her quarry was no mere beast. Eleya had a plan, but if Agolu was truly the wisest of all beings, did she have any hope of outwitting him? The doubt gnawed at the back of her mind constantly throughout her journey.

Pulling herself over top of an especially steep rock face, Eleya exhaled steam into the air as she caught her breath. Almost immediately, she gasped in shock and nearly tumbled back over the edge. Just ahead was a large boulder, its surface smooth aside from three deep grooves that ran across it. There was only one creature with claws large and strong enough to leave marks like those.

Eleya’s heart beat quickly in her chest. This was what she’d been looking for. The stories said Agolu made his home in this region, but this was the first real sign she’d found of him. Now that she was confident she’d entered his territory, it was time to get preparations underway.

ELEYA WATCHED SILENTLY FROM her hiding place, under the shadow of a flat, leaning stone. She’d been waiting like this for hours already, though it had felt even longer. Less than a hundred paces from where she hid, the sheep carcass still lay untouched. She’d been lucky catching the animal; it had practically delivered itself to her, stumbling into her snare just an hour after she’d set it. Now it rested on rocky ground as an offering to the betrayer god.

The bait to her trap.

Eleya had smeared the carcass down with the juice of the fire berries, a fast-acting poison that slowed the muscles and dulled the mind. She knew it would take a lot of poison to bring down a creature the size of Agolu, so she’d been liberal in dressing the god’s meal, saving only enough to coat the tip of her spear.

She’d done her best to conceal a rope tied to the carcass, the other end of which was secured around a large but loose boulder on the ridge above. If the trap worked right, Agolu would take the bait, swallow the poison, and stun himself with the falling boulder. Then Eleya would leave her hiding place, and she’d spear the monster in the heart.

Despite the thoroughness of her plan, doubt still wracked Eleya. Would the wisest of gods really fall for the crude trap of a mortal? Would he not smell the poison on the meat or spot the rope secured to it? Perhaps he’d simply detect Eleya right away and rip her from her hiding place. Eleya gripped her spear nervously.

It was a good plan, but compared to Agolu, it was folly.

Eleya’s thoughts dissipated as Agolu descended suddenly, just a few paces from the sheep’s carcass. His entrance was subtler than she’d expected; he landed with a quiet grace, and there was no terrible scream to announce his arrival. Eleya’s heart beat like a drum as she watched Agolu’s massive face lower down to inspect the meat, prodding it with his beak.

He’s going to smell the poison, Eleya thought with dread.

As if in response, Agolu exhaled suddenly and reared his head away, momentarily confirming Eleya’s fears. But then, just as suddenly as he’d withdrawn, he returned, tearing into the carcass with voracious intensity.

Eleya watched, stunned, as Agolu ripped and yanked at the sheep’s body, pulling the rope taught. The boulder above budged slightly but did not come down.

Eleya’s heart sank. Agolu would surely spot the rope now, and her trap would be exposed. Yet to Eleya’s disbelief, Agolu continued to tug stubbornly against the weight of the boulder. Eleya gripped her spear in preparation, watching tensely as the rock inched closer and closer towards the ridge’s precipice.

Agolu whipped his head viciously, tearing the carcass in two. He quickly gobbled up the freed half, while the remainder that was still secured fell limp with the rope. A familiar numbness fell over Eleya. She’d expected this, hadn’t she? Agolu’s actions were all too clear to her now. She hadn’t fooled him; he’d seen through her sorry trap from the beginning. She was the fool, believing she could trick a god.

Eleya’s brow furrowed as she watched Agolu approach the remaining sheep flesh. He nipped at it, but the rope held strong. What was he planning now? Agolu squawked angrily and this time gripped the rope in his beak. Was he going to bite through it? Instead, to Eleya’s bewilderment, Agolu began pulling at the rope, like a sparrow playing with a worm. What was he doing? He’d seen through her trap, so why was he—

The boulder pulled free, tumbling through the air before crashing down onto Agolu’s head. The great owl cried out in pain, staggered forward a few steps, and collapsed onto the ground. Still.

Eleya was frozen. Her plan had worked, but none of it made sense. How could the wisest of gods have stumbled so clumsily into her trap? She hesitated. Was she now walking into Agolu’s trap? Was this a god’s version of bait, to lure her out?

Eleya focused herself and gripped her spear tightly. Perhaps it was a trap, but if it wasn’t, this was her chance. She could put an end to the false protector that had betrayed the Cliff People. The monster that destroyed her home and killed her parents.

It was worth the risk.

Keeping her spear pointed forward, Eleya quietly stepped out from her cover and steadily approached the motionless god. Each step felt like an eternity for Eleya. The sound of her beating heart thundered in her ears, drowning out everything else. She was close now; just a few more paces and she would be upon him.

Agolu’s eyes shot open. Eleya barely had time to gasp and fall backwards, narrowly avoiding a quick death between the god’s beak as he lunged forward to bite at her. Tumbling across the earth, Eleya yelped as she righted herself just in time to leap away from Agolu’s next attack. He was scampering after her awkwardly, keeping low to the ground, either the poison or the head wound clearly dulling his instincts.

Acting on her own instinct, Eleya sprinted away from the vengeful god, but he was gaining on her. She waited until she could feel Agolu’s hot breath against her back and then suddenly whipped around, slashing the god across the face with the point of her spear. Agolu cried out in pain and reared up, flapping his wings furiously. The sudden gust of wind they created carried Eleya off her feet, and she cried out as she lost hold of her spear and was launched through the air.

She slammed hard against the face of a rock surface and slid down into a deep crevice in the ground. Coming to a stop at the bottom, she groaned as the sounds of Agolu’s screams rang out above. Righting herself, she tried to look up through the crevice, but her vision was blurry, shifting. Had she hit her head?

No, this felt different.

Noticing the pain for the first time, Eleya glanced down at her left palm. There was a bloody cut across it. When had that happened?

Eleya slowly put it together. At some point during the struggle, she must have cut it on the tip of her spear.

The spearhead coated in poison.

She lost her footing, falling back to the base of the crevice. She tried to rise, but her body wouldn’t respond. The sounds of Agolu’s cries were distant now, like she was hearing them from underwater. Her mind slipped deeper and deeper into that dark water until she was sure she’d drowned, and everything faded away.

ELEYA GAZED UP AT the night sky through the mouth of the crevice. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been awake—she’d only recently convinced herself she was even alive. Everything still felt a little like dreaming.

Remembering she hadn’t always been this way, Eleya forced herself to rise. She managed it with some difficulty and began attempting to climb out of the crevice. But her body felt sluggish and sloppy, and she barely made it halfway before giving up. Sliding back down to the bottom, Eleya reexamined her surroundings. The fissure continued underground further than she’d realized. It was dark and narrow, but traversable. Without another idea, Eleya decided to explore. Decisions were easy for her as she was.

The tunnel turned and wound through the darkness, but eventually Eleya spotted light in the distance. Reaching it, she stepped out into a wider cavern, which was illuminated by the moonlight shining in through holes in the rocky ceiling. Her eyes were immediately drawn to a nearby wall.

There were markings on it—no, pictures. She’d seen drawings like this before on the walls of her village, but these were...moving? Eleya squinted her eyes as she watched the crude depictions of people and animals dance and sway to an alien rhythm.

“So you’re the little god-killer everyone’s been talking about.”

Eleya turned to meet the voice, but as far as she could tell she was still alone in the cavern.

“Up here, owl-eyes,” the voice called again.

Eleya looked. Staring down at her through one of the ceiling holes was a small, brown fox. Eleya furrowed her brow; it couldn’t be the fox speaking to her, could it?

“Yes, I’m talking to you,” the fox continued, answering her question. For some reason not as alarmed as she should be, Eleya put her other questions aside and focused on something the talking fox had said.

“You called me ‘god-killer,’” she began hesitantly. “Does that mean Agolu is dead?”

“Well, no,” the fox admitted, hopping down through the hole into the cavern. “But nobody’s really been talking about you either, so maybe we should just move past that introduction…”

Eleya watched the fox hesitantly as it strutted about the cavern, seemingly disinterested in her. She knew she should be more shocked than she was, but she couldn’t seem to muster it. Still, the creature seemed to know things about her, so maybe it had more information.

“What are you?” Eleya asked. “Some sort of spirit or trickster? Are you...a god?”

“What, you can’t tell? I thought it would be obvious,” the fox laughed, shooting her a smug look. “I’m a fox.”

Eleya frowned. It was clear she wouldn’t get anywhere with that approach. She gestured to the cave paintings instead.

“What can you tell me about these drawings?”

“First of all, owl-eyes, pictures tell a story, so you should start at the beginning.” The fox nodded toward the far end of the wall.

Doing as instructed, Eleya approached the beginning of the story. Like before, the pictures moved with a life of their own. Only now that she was viewing them in the proper sequence, the narrative seemed to flow like a river across the wall. The story followed a group of tiny people that lived among the trees of the valley. They cowered and fled from figures covered in spikes. The Thorned People. Eleya watched the tiny people flee into the mountains to escape their attackers.

“Are these the Cliff People?” Eleya asked, not taking her eyes off the story.

“Before they were the Cliff People,” the fox confirmed.

“But I thought we’ve always lived in the mountains…”

“Nothing is always anything,” the fox explained.

The troubles of the first Cliff People didn’t end in the mountains. There they were preyed upon by the fearsome Bone Crawlers, and the Thorned People that had followed them, regularly raiding their settlements. But there was something worse yet in the mountains. Agolu.

Eleya shivered as she looked upon his image. It was not like the drawings of Agolu in her village, where he was always depicted as the wise and stoic guardian. Here he was fearsome and terrible, descending on Cliff and Thorned People alike. This version was more accurate.

Eventually the Cliff People earned their name, settling into the cliffsides and out of Agolu’s sight. Now the only targets of the winged god’s wrath, the Thorned People retreated back into the valley, and the story came to an end.

“Why do the Cliff People believe Agolu is their protector?” Eleya asked, turning back to the fox.

“Are you even paying attention?” the fox jibed. “I told you, nothing is always anything. Agolu is fury personified, but as long as that fury is pointed in the right direction, he is also a guardian. The Cliff People confuse this protection with benevolence, the latter being a concept I don’t think Agolu is even capable of grasping. He is changeable just as humans are, and his protection may quickly turn to wrath.”

“But they say Agolu is wise…” Eleya insisted, confused.

“Wise!” the fox howled, rolling onto his back in a sudden fit of laughter. “Agolu is many things, but he may be dumber than the mountain sheep!”

A nostalgic smile formed on Eleya’s face. “My friend says the same about me sometimes.”

“Can’t imagine why, owl-eyes…” the fox remarked with a smug grin, rising to his feet.

An understanding was forming in Eleya’s mind, but there was still one thing troubling her.

“If this is all true, then what of my eyes?” Eleya asked. “If they don’t grant me wisdom, then what do they mean?”

“If your birth defect actually makes you anything like the winged god, then consider this,” the fox called back as he wandered off towards the dark of the cavern’s entrance, “the first Cliff People worshipped Agolu because their enemies feared him. And that wasn’t because he was wise, it was because he was wild.”

With that, he was gone, leaving Eleya alone in the cavern with her thoughts.

ELEYA SLEPT IN THE cavern that night, and when she awoke the next day her thoughts were clear of the berries’ poison. The cave pictures were still there, but they no longer danced with life, at least not without the aid of her imagination.

When she reached the surface, Agolu was gone. Most likely off in search of food, or simply soaring over his domain because that was his way. Eleya felt she understood him better now. She did spy a small, brown fox scurrying over a nearby ridge, but if it had anything to say, it didn’t share it.

The journey down from the mountains was quicker than the ascent. She was about halfway down when she found Keran. She was surprised by how far he’d gotten, but she knew now by the state of his body what had happened. The adventurous child had strayed too far into Agolu’s domain and provoked the god’s territorial fury. Perhaps from there Agolu had followed a scouting pair back to the village, but she couldn’t be sure. It hardly mattered.

She buried him before resuming her descent. He was one of her clan, and he deserved at least that much. It was more than she’d been able to do for her parents. Eleya spared a few tears for the child and even more for her mother and father.

She didn’t blame Agolu or Keran for what had happened. Keran lived to explore, as Agolu lived to hunt. They were both only following their natures, as all wild things do.

BY NIGHTFALL, ELEYA TRACKED down the makeshift camp of Kawele and the other village refugees, but the Thorned People had beaten her there. Clad in their vicious spikes, they howled and circled around her anxious kin, looking for their opening. The Thorned People never left until they’d claimed their fill of lives or prisoners.

Under the dark of night, Eleya crouched silently from atop a high ridge, watching and waiting. Even including the members of her clan below, the Thorned People outnumbered her at least three to one. Despite this, she smiled. She did have one advantage—they knew nothing of her or where she hid. And she knew what they feared.

Bringing the flute to her lips, she exhaled forcefully, clasping and unclasping her hand with meticulous timing. The sound it produced was nearly indistinguishable from the real thing. She’d been good before, but thanks to recent encounters, she knew the subtleties better. It was Eleya’s greatest performance yet.

The Thorned People ceased their cruelty and turned suddenly towards the terrible sound as a sensation overcame them. It was a deep, instinctual feeling that crawled down their spines like wicked spiders. A primal fear, embedded deep within their history.

A few pointed up and cried out at the source of the sound, a pair of golden eyes far above them in the night. The wild eyes of their ancient predator.

With that, the Thorned People fled as swiftly as they’d arrived, leaving behind the weary and bewildered Cliff People. Their anxiety just as quickly morphed to joy as Eleya hopped down from the ridge and stepped into the light of their fires, sporting a stupid grin that she couldn’t have wiped off if she tried.

A familiar voice choked out a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and Kawele pushed through the crowd to embrace her friend. Eleya hugged her back just as hard.

Clutching her friend tightly, Eleya’s expression turned bittersweet. Her clan was safe from the Thorned People, but she knew their troubles were not yet over. She would have to teach them what she’d learned in the cavern, about Agolu and their ancestors. They could return to the cliffs, but they’d have to abandon their old village. Agolu knew of it now, and he could only truly be relied upon for his violence.

It hardly mattered. The Cliff People had not always lived there, and there was nowhere they would always be. They were in flux, always developing day-to-day into who they would become next.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

NICK FRANCO is a lifelong storyteller and Bay Area native. He now lives in Los Angeles writing scripts, but he’s best known for his viral webcomic, “Nuzlocke Comics.” His works can be found on his website, nuzlocke.com, or in Comixology’s recent book, “Hit Reblog: Comics that Caught Fire.”

Surcease of Darkness

BRANDON KETCHUM

INSIDE THE CLOUD, PHAETÖN Nelson’s ship floated helpless, and inside his cloud, reality evolved towards infinite nothingness. The crystals of thought in his disintegrating brain had frozen over, turning his reactions sluggish even as his body convulsed. Phaetön’s inner eye blurred in a fog of distorted images: stars whirling in an elongated kaleidoscope; colors metamorphosing between pictures of beasts and men; laughing faces obscuring his sight with gaseous breath. Through this, he struggled to discern reality. Phaetön was in the clutches of an unknown danger, a—but he could not grasp what. He faded. Who he was, where he was, how to reconnect with his body, these were impossible notions. So Phaetön stewed amongst the chaos seething within his brain as life spun away from his grasp.

“Phaetön, my pretty, wake up,” a voice said. “Focus on me, darling.”

He recognized the voice, but couldn’t place it, and had difficulty trusting its sincerity. Phaetön needed to anchor himself, though, to find a lifeboat in his sea of confusion. “Yes, I’m here,” he said. “Who are you?”
“No time for that now. You’re straining too hard. You must relax, Phaetön. Abandon yourself to my dream, and I will nurse you awake.”

He struggled against the suggestion, for to dream would mean to sleep, and to sleep might mean he would never wake again. This voice offered recovery, but what if the voice was a trickster, and its recovery led to more mazes? This might be the final step in his disintegration. Phaetön tried to deconstruct the problem, to exercise his intellect to solve it, but his mind would not cooperate.

“Please, Phaetön, I’m losing you,” the voice said, a new urgency in its tone. “I can’t hold onto you much longer. Surrender to me.”

Surrender? But wouldn’t that—a quake shuddered through his psyche, tearing at the corners of his recollections, peeling his memories away. He hadn’t much time before his persona unwound. Panicked, he forced himself to stop resisting. Phaetön relaxed and felt his consciousness slip away.

Time no longer had meaning. Millennia passed in seconds, condensing all human suffering, and the totality of humanity’s hopes, into one concentrated thought. The enormity of this experienced second, the crushing weight of understanding, threatened to tear apart every atom that formed him. Then Phaetön blinked, brushed off the cobwebs of his hallucinogenic torpor, and remembered.

He staggered to his feet and took stock of what had happened. Phaetön’s ship, the Space Cutlass, had been sailing along the solar winds in the trading channel between Shellen II and Gargavis V. He and his crew had purchased a shipment of cybernetic parts—breathing filters, to be specific—which promised to fetch a high price on the tech-starved planet. They had taken on a legitimate job instead of roving the trading channels looking for prey, but any trip to an outer system carried its own dangers. This one had been no exception.

Phaetön had watched helplessly as the insidious cloud reached its tendrils across the channel to clutch its ghostly fingers around the Cutlass, becalming the solar winds. Everyone aboard ship had recognized the misty horror, a Siren’s Fist. Imbued with a gravity spell to hold prey in place, roving space witches employed the clouds to plunder passing ships. They cared little for how many died, as long as they lined their own coffers. He and his crew had downed potassium iodide tablets, their meager defense against the pulses of deadly radiation the ruthless witches used to kill everyone aboard the ships they marked for pillage.

Maybe Phaetön was a hypocrite for resenting the attack, having raided many ships himself, but he’d been determined to defend his home against the spiteful predator. He’d ordered his long-serving engineer Burton to bolster their shields, hoping this enchantress didn’t have the magic to disarm them, but those were long odds. The shields drained in minutes, and Burton pulled energy from them to conserve ship’s power.

It ended within moments once the shields fell. They had fallen victim to a wicked deception, their environment permeated in an instant with a psychedelic gas instead of radiation. No one had time to don their filter masks, and its poison bored ruthlessly into their minds. His crew, his closest friends, fell into fatal convulsions, their bodies reduced to fleshy hosts of irrevocably demented minds. He remembered watching his shipmates fall, never to rise again, then nothing more.

Phaetön gritted his teeth and averted his eyes, stepping over his pilot Morgan’s twitching body to access a control panel. Unable to save them, he tried not to think of his dying friends. Would it be more merciful to kill them now, to purple his hands with their blood, or let their bodies linger as their minds tore apart neuron by neuron? An impossible conundrum, one that churned through his innards like molten lava, yet Phaetön had an enemy to deal with. He focused on making his escape, fiddling with dials and switches, trying to augment the engines enough to free his ship from the Fist. There wasn’t much hope, with Burton and his technical expertise lost, but he had to try.

“Welcome back, Captain,” the Cutlass said, a relieved timbre in the AI voice. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“You may yet,” Phaetön replied, his mouth set in a grim line. “The witch will come for me soon.”

“Do you still think it a mistake to invest in personal cybertech?”

“A lot of good the skin treatment did,” he said, still frowning. “Filters poisons, fire resistant, and ignores melanoma, but I still flopped the tuna in an acid trip.”

“Come now, Phaetön, you know what I mean.”

“That carbon nanotubing cost me a fortune.” His eyes tracked the display, watching a vessel draw nearer. “It took my share from three shipments to pay for it.”

Even though she was only a computer, Cutlass laughed at his protestations. “Oh Phaetön, think of the maneuverability and stealth it gave you. Our connection made you the most adept captain to sail the solar winds, yet you grouse about the cost.”

He wondered, for the umpteenth time, why he had bought a flirty behavior profile for his ship. “It didn’t do a thing to save the crew, though, did it?”

“You couldn’t have done anything different, Captain,” Cutlass said. “No one escapes the Fist. Only a handful have ever survived an attack.”

“I doubt anyone will hear from me again either,” he said. Phaetön stood and made his way off the bridge, stepping to avoid the writhing bodies. Choking back tears, he stalked towards the ship’s hold.

“That carbon nanotubing saved your life, you know. It protected your mind from the hallucinogen.”

“My mind tried to make off with my sanity,” he said in protest. “If it weren’t for you, my lovely, it would have.”

“Flatterer,” she said. “No, I just brought you back. The only reason there was a you to bring back was the nanotubing.”

“Yet I’ll die at the witch’s hand.”

“Not if you stop her boarding. She thinks you’re dead, remember. If you shake her loose when she attempts to dock, she’ll be occupied with saving herself, and we’ll make a run for the Gargavis system.”

“Maybe,” Phaetön said. “Maybe, if I repel her and figure out how to break the cloud’s grav hex, you manage to restore the shields, she doesn’t track us down, and we don’t stumble on any more ambushes, sure. That’s a lot of ifs and buts, though, and the odds stink even then.”

“I’m just—” Cutlass interrupted herself. “Hull breach in the hold, Captain.”

“How big?” He broke into a run.
“Barely a millimeter wide. I’ve already sealed it, but we have a new problem: nanobots.”

Phaetön cursed aloud. “How many? What class?”

“Thousands,” she said. “Unknown class. She must have sent them to finish any survivors. They’ll be on you in minutes.”

His mind raced as his feet pounded the deck, carrying him towards the hold. A shooting pain stabbed through his temple, driving him to his knees to deal with the lingering aftereffect of the drug. If only he’d had time to put on his—

The aftershock headache relented, fading out, and he stumbled back to his feet. A potential solution slammed into Phaetön’s awareness while he leaned on the bulkhead. A slim hope, but better than none.

“Quick scan, Cutlass. Are they fully bot?” Everything hinged on her answer.

A moment later, Cutlass responded. “No, they’re altered microorganisms with primitive nervous systems.”

“Perfect.” Phaetön’s mouth formed a wicked grin as he pulled his mask from a cargo pocket and settled it into place. “Initiate Outcome Romeo.”

Phaetön would never be able to see their approach. The microscopic creatures would simply burrow into his body and tear him apart from the inside out. Or they would have, had he been any other pirate.

“Outcome Romeo complete, Captain,” Cutlass said. “They have been eliminated.” A hiss resounded through the corridor and cool steam blasted around him, dissipating quickly after ten swift heartbeats. “Environment cleansed.”

He took the mask off and sucked in a deep breath. One of his last-ditch scenarios, Outcome Romeo called for flooding the ship’s atmosphere with VX, a deadly nerve agent. His skin treatment protected him from contact with the substance, which destroyed the defenseless cyber-organisms. Phaetön never could have initiated the protocol if his crew had any hope of survival, but sadly, that was no longer an obstacle. He murmured a silent, thankful prayer that his crew no longer suffered.

“All right, now we’ve dealt with the nanobots, I must prepare to—”

He fell to the floor like a lead doll, stricken under a paralyzing weight that kept him from rising. A phantom puppeteer tweaked his muscles and nerves, causing his limbs to dance to a soundless tune. He had no control over these wracking spasms. Phaetön’s consciousness began its retreat from the physical world once more, vision narrowing, red and black dots blocking out the corridor.

“Fight it, Phaetön,” Cutlass said from far away. “Your carbon nanotubing must have been damaged. You’re sliding in and out, but you have to concentrate. Follow my voice through the void, quickly, before it takes you.”

Head jerking from side to side, he strained to keep it in place, and willed the muscles around his eyes to contract. Fear gave way to defiance, desperation forged into steely will. Fueled by this newfound determination, Phaetön blinked. With it came a loosening of his tunnel vision, and the return of a small amount of control over his body. He was fighting off the mental drift once more and would be back to himself within minutes.

Cutlass, still connected to his thoughts, read his mind and redoubled her efforts to revive him. “You haven’t any time, Phaetön. She’s almost here. Get up, get up!”

Grunting, he pushed to his hands and knees. Once on his feet he swayed where he stood, struggling to maintain balance. Phaetön snapped his head to the side, trying to clear away the fog, but his vision remained blurry.

“You’re almost at the hold,” Cutlass said. “The hatch is just ahead. I’ve analyzed the witch’s vector and calculated precisely where she’ll latch onto me. It isn’t far. Hurry.”

He staggered ahead and tripped face-first into the hatch, shooting pains radiating through his face. The hatch popped open in front of him, and he barely kept his balance. He thought about lifting his foot over the threshold but couldn’t summon the energy.

“She’s created a seal with me,” Cutlass said. “My hull is starting to—nanobots, she’s sent nanobots aboard in front of her, and we’re out of VX.” Panic in her voice as the end loomed.

Even through his lethargy, Phaetön wondered what kind of a defense he and Cutlass might mount. He scoured his mental list of all the protocols he’d programmed into her, and chose his fate. A man could withstand a nanobot attack for a few seconds, and his skin treatment would give him a few more. A long shot, but he had a chance.

“Cutlass, when she boards, enact Outcome Tango. Only when she boards. Hold off until then, no matter what.”

With the first nanobot’s stinging assault, a great rage welled up within Phaetön’s breast. His crew, his chosen family, slaughtered for the bitch’s gain. He grunted as another hit him, and another. The nanobots barely penetrated his epidermis, but would soon dig deeper. He braced against the hatch frame, preserving his fury, the wellspring of newfound vitality. He’d need every measure of it, and more, so he ground his teeth and withstood the battering. Phaetön had only moments before the nanobots infiltrated his internal organs.

“Outcome Tango initiated,” Cutlass said, then a blast furnace opened in front of him. Darkness once more.

“Hull sealed...” Shadows flitted. “ Phaetön...” Angelic lights. “Medical center...” Burnt hair. “Crawl, must...” Two serpents entwining a red staff. “Please...”

Reality, pain, consciousness, these became his world, his existence, all he knew. Phaetön lived, so Outcome Tango must have burnt his enemy to ashen remains. The same protocol had severely burned him too; his skin treatment armored him against fire, but he wasn’t immune to it. If he didn’t make it to the stasis chamber, fast, merciful death would soon carry him away, if insanity didn’t take him first. Remembering his crew, he wondered if he even wished to make it inside sick bay.

“Phaetön.” A feminine whisper tickled his ear. “Roll over and crawl, darling. It will hurt, the agony will be great, but you must.” Cutlass, with a mother’s tender compassion, urged him on. “You’re near the sick bay now. A short crawl, and you’ll be free. I’ll get you to the medical center on Gargavis V, I promise you. Focus on my voice, blot out the pain, and crawl.”

He thanked himself, for the umpteenth time, for buying a flirty behavior profile for his ship. Phaetön channeled his last dram of willpower into rolling over, the effort draining consciousness from him once more. It went like that, from soothing darkness to agonizing movement, for what had to be hours, but could only have been minutes. The excruciating journey led him to a chamber door, standing open.

“Enter, Phaetön,” Cutlass crooned. “Enter, my love. Let me hold you inside, protect you from harm.” He spiraled towards fantastic darkness, yet reached for the egress. “Enter, and suffer no more.”

Cutlass held him to her bosom, sailing off with her most precious cargo yet.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

BRANDON KETCHUM is a speculative fiction writer from Pittsburgh, PA who enjoys putting a weird spin or strange vibe into every story, dark or light. He runs the Pittsburgh Writers Meetup Group, and is the coordinator for the 2019 PARSEC Short Story Contest.

March on the Mountains

SHAUN KILGORE

THE SONG WAS BEAUTIFUL. The singer of the song was radiant. Everyone in the village was huddled together in a tight circle, filling Aklin’s old inn up so that there was not a place left to move. They were there to listen to the bardess sing the songs and tell the tales. She had pale golden hair bound in luxurious braids that dangled about her slender shoulders. Her voice was sweet and filled the gloomy old inn with a feeling like springtime. Tomas pressed in, working his way towards the center of the circle so he could get a glimpse of the lovely lady. The strains of the song, a pleasant ballad, rose up and filled the inn to the ceiling with its quiet spell.

The grizzled men, with their unkempt beards and unwashed, sour smells gave him hard looks when he touched shoulders, arms, or backs, but nodded evenly when they saw it was him. Tomas nodded in turn and a little room was made for him too. Tomas was rather small for his age and scrawny on top of it. He’d made it through sixteen winters, but his pale pallor didn’t give most hope he’d make it through another. Still, most people in Belling welcomed Tomas’s kindly nature and were apt to be kind in turn.

The bardess’s voice soared so that it seemed to fill Tomas’s chest with its warmth. Then he saw her. His eyes widened and he grinned from ear to ear. For a time, like the other Belling folk, Tomas became lost in that voice. Tears wetted more than a few cheeks by the time the fair bardess was done. Then the song changed and she began a throaty reel, one of the old tales from the Mountain People. The minstrel that accompanied the bardess set down his lute and picked up a flat drum and began a steady, pounding rhythm.

The mood in Aklin’s inn shifted. The men clamped their hands and stomped feet in time with the drummer. Some added their voices to the song. Nat laughed and joined in. The bardess carried on and the ale flowed. Gemm Mayhall came up beside Tomas and clapped him on the shoulder.

“Fine singer, that one is, eh Tom? She’s quite the beauty too.” He had to pitch his gravely voice higher to be heard over the din of the crowd.

“Yes, she is,” said Tomas, hesitantly. He nodded in case Gemm didn’t hear him.

Gemm smiled and leaned closer. “Come. Let me buy you an ale.” He waved at the inn’s only barmaid, Ilise. She was just a month older than Tomas and Aklin’s only daughter. Ilise came up and bobbed her head in greeting.

“Good day to you, Master Mayhall. What might I do for you?” Her eyes sparkled.

“Ah good day to you, Ilise my dear. Why don’t you give young Tom and me two mugs of ale, if you please, lass.”

“Right away,” said Ilise. She gave Tomas a slight smile and went after the ale.

Tomas’s felt his face flush. He scratched his cheeks. Girls twisted him up inside—especially when they noticed him like Ilise did. Tomas longed to break away from Gemm and just listen to the bardess sing the whole night. But Gemm still had a friendly grip on his arm and looked like he wanted to tell a few stories of his own. It wouldn’t have been the first time old Gemm sought him out for an open ear.

“So how goes it, Tom?” Gemm pulled Nat down on a bench beside him. “Is that rascal, Rory Maginn, treating you well or does he have you slaving away in his smithy with the other lads?”

Tomas bristled and his jaw went firm. “Master Maginn does me right, Gemm. He gave me a roof over my head and food to eat. Was kind to me when no one else knew what to do with me. I’ll not abide by any ill will towards him.”

Gemm held up his hands. “Easy now. Meant no disrespect. I know in his own way that Rory did a good thing taking you in after your mam and pap died.” He leaned closer again. “He loved your mother, his sister, very much.”

Tomas nodded. “Yes,” he said softly. “Yes, he did.”

Ilise came up bearing a huge platter filled with mugs of ales and platters of food. She paused next to them and set two mugs on the table in front of them.

“Thank you, lass.” He gave Ilise a wink and a copper coin. She curtsied and left.

Tomas glanced after her. She wove through the milling crowds, platter held aloft, expertly avoiding the more familiar hands, smacking them away when necessary, giving a look or a biting word to others. Nat knew that those who went much beyond an occasional pinch would find themselves outside in the dirt. Aklin usually made sure of that. He’d seen the innkeeper toss men out of his establishment bodily with his bare hands. He was a stout man that looked more like he belonged on a farm than in the village wiping tabletops and cracking open kegs of the locally brewed dark ale.

Gemm cleared his throat and brushed his stubbled chin. He took a big gulp of his ale that left a line of froth on his lip. Tomas sipped his, letting the rich pulpy flavor linger on his tongue. The song had ended and the bardess was resting her voice. The minstrel plied his lute and soon filled the inn with bawdy tune to which the patrons soon added their voices to belt out the colorful lyrics.

“Guess I should learn to keep my mouth shut, eh? He’s the only family you’ve got left.” He took up the mug again. “To Rory Maginn. May the Three Sisters bless him with a long and prosperous life.” Tomas took up his mug and Gemm tapped it. He smirked. “You’re a good lad, Tom. You’ve done well by them. They were the finest folk. Friends too.”

Tomas set the mug down without taking a drink. The sounds of the inn grew muted like they were moving farther away. There was a tightness in his chest and each breath hurt. Tomas felt a flash of pain and sorrow at the memories of his parents. Gemm’s words touched him.

“Thank you,” he said simply.

“Just speaking the truth, Tom, my boy.” Gemm sidled up closer so his shoulder touched Tomas’s. “You ever need anything you let me know.”

Tomas nodded. “I will.”

“Right then.” Gemm slapped the table and climbed to his feet. He plunked down a few more coppers. “Have a bit of that stew young Ilise cooked up, Tom. And have a fine afternoon too. Give my best to old Rory.”

Tomas watched Gemm leave the inn, stopping and exchanging a word or two with just about everyone along his path to the door. Gemm Mayhall knew just about everyone in Belling. He made it his business. He was the mayor of the village and one of Tomas’s only friends.

The bardess returned to the small wooden platform and cheers went up in the inn’s common room. Soon her sweet voice filled the air and the pain lessened and Tomas could hear every bright turn of phrase and every note of the music. He ordered a bowl of stew and another cup of ale and ate heartily. Ilise smiled and came by his table often on her way back to the barrels. Tomas even smiled back.

Later, after he’d had his fill of both ale and stew, Tomas stepped out into the breezy spring afternoon and walked the dirt road away from Aklin’s Inn. He passed the wood posts where a collection of horses, carts, and mules were hitched. The inn was situated at the outside of the small cluster of shops and other businesses that hugged the roadside. Behind them were the houses where Belling’s people dwelled. All told, there were just over two hundred souls living in Belling with a few outliers in farmsteads that radiated out from the center to the foothills of the Graytop Mountains in the northwest to the dark mess of woodlands called the Tangles in the south. The rest was taken up by the vast stretches of farmland, orchards, and pastures.

Tomas took the road into the center of the village. Well before he came upon it, he heard the repetitive clang of hammers striking anvils that identified the Belling’s smithy. He took his time getting back, keeping his pace to a stroll. He looked around at the familiar places and people. No one was a stranger in Belling and strangers came just often enough to give Aklin a few extra coins to buy more ale from the brewer, Lorin Syles.

The sound of the bellows being moved mingled with the sharp sound of the hammers ringing against the anvils. They were all much louder now. Tomas entered the small yard in front of the smithy where folks left everything from hoes and plows that needed mending to horses ready for re-shoeing. There was other work, metal to be catalogued, tools to be ordered, books to be kept. Tomas did any number of these tasks on a given day.

As he entered the yard, his uncle Rory burst out of the front door, cursing and stomping his feet. Then he saw him and pointed. “You! Where have you been, boy? Damn it all. Get your tail over here.”

Tomas belly lurched. “It was my free day. What is it?”

Uncle Rory held up a handful of crumpled papers. “Free day? Free day? Carousing in Aklin’s Inn, were you? This is what?”

Tomas approached and took the papers in hand. He read them. He looked up at his uncle. “They’re bringing all of the horses down here tomorrow?”

“Yes, all twenty of the bloody beasts. New shoes for them all. That goat-faced lordling at Chantelly thinks we can work bloody miracles with so short a notice! I need you to get into the sheds and track down every piece of scrap iron you can find.”

Tomas looked at the request from Lord Arhos Hathgate. New shoes for all of his twenty horses. They were being brought down into Belling from the manor at Chantelly tomorrow around midday. The request was dated that day. A messenger must have ridden straight down.

“Get going,” shouted Uncle Rory.

Tomas leapt into action. The voice of the beautiful bardess and playful smile on Ilise’s face were forgotten for a time.

WHEN NEXT HE RECALLED either, Tomas was on the verge of collapsing on his feet. His back was aching from hunching over while he dug through the piles of scrap metal that filled the sheds tucked in the rear of the smithy. Uncle Rory had left him to the work with Javis, one of the apprentices, to aid him in the tedious work. His eyes were burning and his muscles were burning from heaving around the heavier metal.

He pointed at the pile nearest him. “Looks like we’ve found just enough raw ore and scrap pieces to do the job. Javis, could you help me get this loaded into one of the carts. I want to get this up to the smithy so the others can start melting it down.”

“Right,” said Javis. He was soft-spoken and rarely said more than a handful of words.

He retrieved the cart and drew in near then began loading the iron. His heavily muscled arms exposed by his sleeveless jerkin shone in the lamplight. His slight grunts the only other sign of his exertion.

Tomas shivered and clutched his shoulders. His own scrawny body was soaked in sweat but the in the night air was almost too much. He longed for a cloak. The contrast between the two of them, of an age, made Tomas frown. He’d never been very strong. He was sickly when younger and remembered his father whispering to his mother how he was worried about Tomas all the time. Memories played in his mind until his stomach trembled and he had a lump in his throat. It took effort for Tomas to shake the feeling but he did.

Once it was loaded, the two of them pulled the cart around to the front yard. Torches were burning all about the perimeter of the semi-circular grounds and Tomas could see the shadowy shapes of the other apprentices moving about doing Uncle Rory’s bidding. The master blacksmith himself was working the bellows and shouting orders to Orin, the lead apprentice. He was something of Uncle Rory’s protégé and had a way of shaping the metal that bordered on true artistry. He was capable with mundane tasks like shoeing but dabbled in wrought-iron decorations that were starting to get noticed by the wealthier folk in the region.

Tomas knew that Orin would take the lead in the work tomorrow so everyone else was busy getting things ready. When the rattle of the cart grew loud enough, Uncle Rory twisted his head around then waved them over with a sharp jerk of his arm.

“Bring it over. You find enough?”

Tomas nodded. “I did. We’ll have some left over too, I think.”

“Good. Very good.” He rubbed his hands together and squinted in the wane light. “Javis, bring that torch over here. I want to see what we have.”

Javis complied. When the flames flickered and shed a much brighter glow over the cart, Uncle Rory did his own tally. Tomas waited until he grunted appreciatively, nodding while he finished riffling through the remaining contents.

“Get this scrap into the fires. I want it melted down.” He started to leave then glanced over at Tomas. “Good work, my boy. Go get your rest. I’ll need your eyes for the books tomorrow.”

Tomas bowed his head in respect. “Good night, Uncle.”

Uncle Rory was already moving on, barking orders to the apprentices while he pointed around wildly. His speech was peppered with lively curses. There was a difference in tone that Tomas could detect. His uncle was no longer worried about the job. He smiled watching him carry on until he disappeared inside the smithy. Even from several paces away the heat was enough to scorch the chills from him and leave him feeling like he’d spent too much time in the sun.

Tomas left the yard and went through the stable with its great doors that stood open on both ends. The horses occupying half the stalls were sleeping. Their occasional nocturnal noises were calming. The hammers had mostly fallen silent so that he could hear them breathing very clearly.

He was lulled further to sleep and found himself stumbling as he climbed the stairs to the house he called home. It was small and modestly furnished. Despite his uncle’s relative wealth he did not flaunt it like some of the rich farmers in the valley or the same lords that sought Orin’s creations. The house was empty now and very quiet. Tomas padded across the thick rugs, paused by the fire to bank the flames and added a few more logs, before he headed down the hall to his bedroom. He went straight to the bed and climbed in, kicking off his boots and pulling the comforter over him. Sleep came quickly.

THE NEXT MORNING, TOMAS hustled out the door, cramming a hunk of day old bread into his mouth while he darted back to the smithy. The clanging of the hammers was already beating out a steady rhythm in counterpoint to the breathing of the bellows. Rich, dark smoked wafted up from the forge chimneys pouring out their inky mess and blotting the blue sky.

He skidded to a halt and tugged his jacket on the rest of the way. The sun was still low in the eastern sky. Uncle Rory likely had the apprentices up well before dawn stoking the fires and checking the shape of the molten ore. If Tomas had to guess, the molds were being prepped to receive the white-hot contents of the vats to produce new shoes. All was well in hand. Not that Tomas had any crucial part in any of the metalworking. Uncle Rory had him to manage the accounts, sort the ore, learning the difference between quality iron and inferior grades. He was grooming him for a position that he wasn’t sure he wanted.

Tomas entered the yard and dodged the apprentices who were milling about the water barrels. The hiss of steam from hot metal being doused came repeatedly. The new shoes were tossed into smaller crate where they awaited Orin’s capable hands. There, right in the midst of the smithy’s activity, was Uncle Rory. The man was more subdued now. He was sipping hot coffee from a mug and while he checked the shoes that were fresh from the cooling barrel. He was waiting. He expected Lord Hathgate to arrive earlier rather than later.

This proved accurate. The first shouts of the groomsmen leading the twenty fine steeds could be heard by midmorning. The air was warming. Standing so close to the forges, Tomas was covered in thin layer of sweat. The sweet smell of wood smoke filled his nostrils. The smoke floated in gentle eddies just above the smithy. The skies were dotted with wispy, grayish clouds and the sun beamed down. Spring was slowly giving over to summer’s heat.

Tomas moved a short distance from the main yard, choosing to stand beneath the small porch out of the sun so he would be out of the way until he was needed to settle the account with Lord Hathgate. For several minutes Uncle Rory remained where he was, listening with the others, as the sounds of the approaching drovers with their charges grew louder. Tomas winced at the cries of the horses and pounding of their hooves on the hard-packed road. It was an incredible sound. Then they arrived.

Five men in long, blue cloaks appeared with the twenty horses arrayed between them in a long, ragged line. The horses were unbridled and lacked saddles. They’d been led the entire five miles from Chantelly. The men doing the work were expert horsemen themselves. Tomas watched how they seemed to move as one with their steeds, using legs and knees to guide them so they could keep their hands free. The horses were guided into the yard and three of the grooms peeled off to set up a perimeter to corral the animals. The horses were lively but well trained so they did not buck or kick with their big hooves. Full-bodied animals, more than half of them were pale brown or white, with only a few darks or blacks amidst them. Their coats shone brightly in the sunlight. They were magnificent beasts. Tomas gaped in awe. He’d heard Uncle Rory talk about such horses but had never seen such fine breeds with his own eyes.

He wandered out into the yard, drawn by the splendid creatures, his usual reticence with horses overcome by their appearances. He wanted to reach out and touch them. Just as he ventured close to one of the horses, another rider appeared at the edge of the smithy yard. He, too, wore a long, blue cloak over his broad shoulders. An ornate clasp secured it at the man’s neck. He was pale-skinned with the marks of the pocks lightly visible on his cheeks. He stared about him with penetrating eyes, but there was no harshness in them, just a firm strength. Perhaps the expectation or the confidence that things would go his way more often than not. His gray-streaked hair was longish in the back, something strange to see on a man. He wore an embroidered coat and pants and wore riding boots that gleamed like glass. His ensemble was completed by the thin blade he wore at his hip. Lord Arhos Hathgate was impressive in his own way. Tomas stared closer. Not at all horse-faced like Uncle Rory liked to say.

Uncle Rory was on his feet the moment the first horses started pouring in, crying out orders to the apprentices. Orin was standing beside him, wiping his hands on his thick, leather apron. His skin was darkened and red by the forge fire’s heat. While Tomas watched, the work was begun in earnest. The grooms and apprentices brought the horses into lines near one of the anvils situated just outside the forge. Orin sat down on a short bench. The tools for shoeing were splayed out on a table next to him. Javis rolled up a cart filled with the raw shoes so they could be fitted to each horse.

While this was going on, Lord Hathgate stood up in the stirrups of his bay stallion, tossed the cloak up and dismounted in a single smooth motion. His fine boots crunched on the gravel. He was a tall man too, almost a head higher than anyone else in the smithy. Lord Hathgate removed riding gloves and tucked them in his belt.

Uncle Rory approached him and bowed his head. “My lord, welcome. Thank you for the honor of serving.”

Hathgate snorted. “Come on, Rory, we both know you’re sore at me for calling on you on such short notice.”

To Tomas’s astonishment, Uncle Rory started laughing. Then Lord Hathgate joined in. The two men were acting like good friends.

Tomas just stared.

Brushing a tear from his eye, Uncle Rory stuck out his arm. Lord Hathgate did the same so they clasped hands in familiar greeting.

“Damn the Sisters, if you’re not right about that, Arhos. What’s this all about? Why all twenty at once? Doesn’t your farrier at Chantelly have the means to do the work?”

Lord Hathgate sighed. “Usually, Rendell does,” he began. He glanced around the yard, his eyes meeting Tomas’s for a moment before returning to Uncle Rory’s. He reached out and touched his shoulder. “Can we talk elsewhere?”

Uncle Rory glanced around them, but nodded. “Of course.”

The two men left the yard and disappeared inside one of the smithy’s sheds.

Tomas frowned. He was curious. There was something about Lord Hathgate’s tone and his expression. It niggled at Tomas. He wanted to know what disquieted the nobleman. And he was still confused about the greeting between his uncle and Lord Hathgate. Were they friends? He had many questions, but Tomas had no answers and that bothered him.

ORIN CONTINUED SHOEING THE horses, keeping a steady pace. He took a break just after midday. Everyone ate lunch and Tomas retreated to the house to assuage his own hunger. Uncle Rory and Lord Hathgate continued their conversation through lunch, finally leaving the shed just as everyone was returning. Nothing was said to anyone gathered in the yard. Uncle Rory’s face was noticeably paled.

“I will,” said Uncle Rory. He shook hands with Lord Hathgate.

“Good. I will be in contact once I hear more,” said Hathgate. The nobleman turned his attention to Orin’s progress.

“Javis, Nelton, give Orin a hand. I want all of Lord Hathgate’s horses shoed and ready to go as soon as you can.”

Tomas came up beside Uncle Rory and spoke softly. “Uncle, what’s wrong?”

He glanced at Tomas then looked at where Lord Hathgate was watching Orin inspect the hooves on one of the whites. “It may be nothing. Go get the receipts ready.”

The dismissal was clear. He wouldn’t be sharing a word of his conversation. “Yes, Uncle.”

Tomas left his side and headed to the smithy’s tiny office where all of the records were kept. The Maginn Smithy had several regular clients plus all of the walk-in traffic. The Bryans Road that cut through the middle of Belling was a main roadway for the Miriander Valley connecting the network of villages, keeps, and farmsteads situated near the trailheads to the Graytop Mountains. The road also connected to the Miner’s Track, the road used by men like Lord Hathgate who owned iron mines in the region.

Tomas went to the desk and shuffled the stacks of papers until he found the ledger sheets and hastily prepared one for Lord Hathgate’s work. To shoe so many horses would cost a lot of silver. More than the smithy saw in three weeks total. Tomas recognized it would be nothing to such a wealthy nobleman. Just another miniscule expense.

But why didn’t he just let his own farrier handle the work? What was the reason to get all twenty horses done at once and spend the money at all? Tomas realized he was hooked like a fish and needed to know what secret his uncle was keeping. What had the two men discussed that could unnerve his uncle so badly? The possibilities that played in Tomas’s mind were troubling more for what they left uncertain than what he could imagine clearly. More like the shadows that used to move across the walls of his room as a small boy. Childish fears or perhaps something more?

Tomas shook his head to shake away the thoughts. He cleared his throat of the knot forming there and squeezed out of the cramped office. Orin and the other smiths were perched on short wooden benches pounding the shoes into place on the big horses’ hooves. A fourth apprentice was now at work with the others. Uncle Rory looked on with Lord Hathgate at his side. Neither spoke. Tomas walked up to them but did not immediately hold out the receipt. His uncle watched as the shoeing continued. Dogged by his own questions, Tomas began fidgeting so that the papers shook in his hands. The sound was not apparent with the hammers coming down in small, incessant taps.

His uncle finally noticed. “What is wrong with you?” He whispered the question out of the corner of his mouth, but Lord Hathgate glanced over too.

“No. It’s nothing exactly.” Tomas held out the receipt. “May I be excused?”

Uncle Rory frowned and opened his mouth, but then seemed to rethink what he was about to say. He knew Hathgate was listening now. “Go ahead, Tomas.” He took the receipt.

Tomas gave a hasty bow and left the yard and made straight for the house. He did not stop until he was inside his room sprawled out on the bed. He was sweating and his head throbbed. The sun shone wanly through his half-closed shutters. Long, thin shadows spread over one wall. They reminded Tomas of a row of spears lined up close together.

“i’ve got to quit thinking this way,” he said softly. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

His own words sounded hollow. Tomas was struck by a powerful sense of foreboding. Something was very wrong. He lay there as the afternoon sun slowly dipped down plunging the room into deeper shadows. Eventually, his uncle came home and came to his door. He pounded hard on the pine then rattled the knob.

“Tomas!” He nearly shouted. “Tomas, open the door.”

Tomas jumped up and rushed up to the door. He’d latched it from the inside. He removed the bar. Uncle Rory burst in. “What was all that about? Lord Hathgate asked me whether you were some simpleton with your strange behavior.”

Tomas looked away. His cheeks were warm. “I’m sorry, Uncle. I was just...just....” He couldn’t finish.

“What?” Uncle Rory stared hard at him. “Speak up, boy.”

Tomas gritted his teeth. “I want to know what is happening! What did Lord Hathgate tell you?” Tomas clamped his mouth shut. He’d raised his voice. His hands were shaking and his heart was beating so hard.

Uncle Rory eyed him strangely. “What makes you think anything is happening?”

Tomas was pacing. “Lord Hathgate is getting all of his horses reshod at once when he could have his farrier do them at his leisure. Why the hurry?”

Uncle Rory crossed his arms. “The nobles have their own ways, nephew. If Lord Hathgate wishes to spend a portion of his considerable wealth putting money in our pockets to shoe his horses, who are we to question his motives. Why does there have to be some problem, some danger?”

“But you’re friends, uncle. I could tell he was worried and wanted to share something with you. What did you talk about in the shed?”

Uncle Rory’s face darkened. “How dare you question me like this? What I discuss with Lord Hathgate is none of your concern. I think that is enough, Tomas. I won’t be interrogated in my own house. You forget your place. You forget what i’ve done for you.” His voice was strained. “And for your mother’s sake.”

Tomas gulped. His skin burned with shame. He bowed his head. “Please forgive me, Uncle. I’ve spoken out of turn.”

“Yes, you’d do well to learn when to open your mouth and when to keep it closed.” Uncle Rory scratched his chin then backed out into the hall. “i’ll leave you be for now. You’ve got the rest of the day off. I want you to think on what I said. I’m heading back to the forges. I’ll call on you when it’s time to make dinner.”

“Yes, uncle.” Tomas just stared at the door long after Uncle Rory closed it. He saw his mother’s smiling face staring back at him. Tears fell from his cheeks.

UNCLE RORY KEPT TOMAS busy over the next few days with all manner of projects around the smithy. He schooled him in different aspects of accounting, book keeping, and quizzed him on metals, using the sample ores that were kept in a cabinet in the house. Tomas gazed down carefully on chunks of iron, copper, bronze, and others. Not another word was said about Tomas’s outburst. Uncle Rory just carried on his work and instruction. The money made off Lord Hathgate was spent on buying replacement tools from Lern Corroy’s dry goods store. The apprentices were given a few coins each to spend as they saw fit. To his surprise, even Tomas was given the allowance.

The deep concern that had gripped him faded with time and work. Tomas felt foolish for over-reaching. He knew his accusations had bothered Uncle Rory. It was all probably better left in the past now.

A week later, Tomas was dusting the office and organizing the records that Uncle Rory had a tendency to leave in a shambles. The system as arranged by name so Tomas located the names on each paper and slipped them into different sleeves that were mounted on the walls. The door was open to the yard to take advantage of the midmorning breezes. Javis was just outside the door moving a broom back and forth across the cobbled walk that ran around the half-circle of the smithy yard. He was whistling softly to himself. The forges were banked and the hammers silent for a change. It was just a lull in the schedule. Such cropped up occasionally even during the busy season. Springtime meant a steady stream of farmers would make their ways to the smithy for repairs on plows, tools, and other implements of their yearly work.

Tomas slipped the last page into its sleeve and stepped outside. The spring breeze buffeted his hair. It was pleasant and cool. The heat hadn’t arrived yet but it was likely to by the afternoon. Javis saw him but continued his sweeping though his whistling ceased. Tomas opened his mouth to say something but nothing came to mind. Instead he watched Javis wend his way from side to side, edging away from Tomas and around the curve of the buildings. A small cloud of dust accompanied him.

Tomas sighed and left the yard and walked towards the center of Belling. Carts and people on foot were clogging the road. It was busier than normal and by the looks of the traffic making its way in behind him the day would only get more so. Tomas looked about him and felt an itch at his neck. Not wanting to get carried away, he disregarded the feeling. Tomas moved in between the carts and knots of travelers on foot until he reached Aklin’s inn.

The common room was bustling at that hour. All the tables were crammed with bodies. Ilise was moving about frantically and Aklin himself was moving around taking orders and carrying away dishes and mugs from the table. The bardess and her minstrel lutist had been replaced by a gangly old man playing a flute. The patrons were mostly strangers as far as Tomas could tell. A few looked up at his entrance, wary expressions flickering across their faces before they turned back to their bowls of mutton stew or mugs of ale. A few tables even held children though they were strangely quiet and subdued. Tomas headed straight to the bar. He leaned against it and waited. With the common room nearly full, he was disquieted by the uneasy quiet. Most of the patrons exchanged whispers and little else.

Aklin hurried past, balancing a pile of dishes on a platter. “i’ll be with you in a moment, Tomas.” He disappeared into the kitchen.

Tomas nodded and waited. After a few moments and some terse words with the cook, Morna, to keep the stew coming, Aklin returned.

“What can I do for you?”

“Why is it so busy all of a sudden?” Tomas asked.

Aklin sighed. “Gods know why, lad. They started showing up early this morning. They’re passing through Belling in droves. Those with coins venture in here to fill their bellies. Honestly, I haven’t learned a whole lot. They’re not a talkative bunch.”

“It’s odd. Something about it...” Tomas began.

“Aye. You’d think some of them would be ready to share their troubles. Most folk who get a few mugs of ale in them can’t keep their mouths shut.” Alkin chuckled. “You need anything?”

Tomas dug a copper out of his belt pouch and set it on the bar top. “Ale would be fine.”

Aklin snagged the coin and took up one of the pewter mugs that was stashed behind the bar and filled it from one of the barrels. “Here you go, lad.”

Tomas nodded his thanks and took a big sip. Aklin went back to work leaving him to muse on the mystery while he watched the common room. Ilise noticed him as she squeeze between tables. She gave him a big smile. Tomas managed to smile back. He spent time observing while he sipped the dark ale. Once finished, Tomas left the inn and returned to the street. The flow of traffic passing through Belling had slowed a bit, but had by no means stopped. Looking north he could see more carts, horses, and people on foot filling the road. The sight made his skin crawl.

He glanced around him to take in the sight but stopped short when he saw Wil Fainder talking animatedly with Gemm Mayhall. Gil jabbed northward with his finger. Gemm looked up the road. He saw Tomas watching. He said something else and Wil nodded, slapped his cap on his baldhead, and trudged away. Tomas walked over to them, dodging a cart and a toothless man astride a worn-out mule, both of them smelling like manure.

“Ah, hello Tom,” said Gemm. He flashed a grin and chuckled nervously. “What brings you down here?”

“I finished with work and decided to pay a visit to Aklin’s.” Tomas glanced back. “It’s rather busy. Why are so many people taking to the road?”

Gemm crossed his arms and didn’t say anything for a moment. The mayor’s smile slipped and he waved Tomas closer. His eyes darted everywhere as though expecting something to happen. Tomas inched closer so Gemm could talk softly.

“Something’s happened in Larrian.” Gemm’s gravely voice was hard to hear now. “Something’s happened to the king.”

Tomas let that sink in. Larrian was the great city, the capital of the confederation of lands called the Four Kingdoms ruled by the high king, Rohaven the Second. If something had happened to the king, the effects could be terrible. Tomas had been schooled enough reading the scant books left to him by his parents to know that the loss of a leader could tear apart the body whether it was a small group or even a kingdom. Disorder and violence were not uncommon.

“Is the king dead, Gemm?”

Gemm’s face was flushed. “No knows for sure. What little information I have was given to me by Lord Hathgate.”

“Lord Hathgate,” repeated Tomas.

“Yes. Word reached him two weeks ago that Lorrian was attacked and that there were areas of the city burned. Surrounding lands were also set ablaze. People died, Tom. Only the Sisters know how many have perished since then. Lord Hathgate’s been preparing, amassing stores of weapons, food, and horses. Soon, he’ll be rallying other lords to defend the Miriander Valley. After that...” Gemm paused, but continued. “After that, he’ll be pressing lads into service.”

Tomas shook his head. “Surely he won’t do that.”

“Don’t believe it, eh Tom?” Gemm patted his shoulder. “You should. Lord Hathgate’s a reasonable man but if a fight is brewing and some other lordling leads an army here to the valley, to the Graytop Mountains? Yes, he’ll conscript the lot of you young lads to fill his ranks. There’s only so many men to be found in the employ of the northern lords.”

Tomas’s mind swam with the possibilities. He stared again at the traffic crowding the road. “They’re trying to get away to somewhere safe, aren’t they? Or they got caught up in the fighting.”

Gemm closed his eyes for a moment. “Yes. I think so, lad.

TOMAS HEARD SHOUTING AND dropped his quill and left the office. The smithy had gone silent. Uncle Rory and some of the apprentices were gathered in the yard facing men on horseback. They were garbed in armor and some wore familiar blue cloaks while others wore blue sashes over their clothing. At the center of the first line was Arhos Hathgate.

“Please see reason, Rory,” said Lord Hathgate. “You know I do not wish to do this, but the valley and maybe the Graytops are threatened. I need your smiths to keep my army outfitted with shoes and to do repair work on the weapons.”

Uncle Rory was shaking his head. “What do you expect me to do without smiths to work my forges, Arhos? You threaten my livelihood? That’s unreasonable. Do you even know whether this Lord Corbrey is even heading this way?”

Lord Hathgate shifted in his saddle and his plate armor creaked. “I know he’s rallied a number of the lowland lords to his banner in his bid to steal the crown. Damn it, he killed Rohaven. He’s boasted as much. Rory, I need these smiths.”

Tomas saw a war going on all over his uncle’s face. He stared at Nelton and Javis, lingering the longest on his star pupil, Orin. Finally, Uncle Rory nodded slowly, but when he glanced up his mouth was twisted in a grimace. “Yes, my lord. As you command.”

The tone made Lord Hathgate wince. “Rory, it doesn’t have to be like this. I am only trying to protect everyone. I need your support, my friend.”

Tomas just stared, not sure he’d ever seen a noble beg. The other soldiers were certainly uneasy with their liege’s manner. Uncle Rory noticed this as well. He cleared his throat and dropped to one knee.

“I mean no disrespect, Lord Hathgate. I will honor your request and you have my support and my smith is open for your purposes whenever they might be required.” Uncle Rory walked up to the mounted lord and reached up his hand. “You still have my trust too, Arhos, old friend.”

Lord Hathgate smiled and extended his gloved hand and shook Uncle Rory’s tightly. “Thank you.” He looked down at the smiths now. “Okay lads. I need you to pack lightly, but if you wish to take some of your tools, bear in mind that we cannot carry them for you. Each of you will be given a horse. You have two hours to get ready. Say your goodbyes to family and friends. We ride for Ramdreeves.”

Lord Hathgate turned his horse and walked out of the yard. The other soldiers followed him. He rode stiffly in his saddled, his cloak moving gently in the breeze. The nobleman looked regal.

Tomas went to his uncle’s side. A question came to his lips. “Uncle, why didn’t they take me? They could have used someone who knows record keeping.”

“Do you wish to find an earlier death than the Sisters will, nephew?” Uncle Rory’s face was pale and drawn.

“But, they’re blacksmiths. They won’t be in any danger. Not like the soldiers.”

His uncle responded with a thin smile. “War is not such a neat and organized business, Tomas. Innocents are always caught up in the middle and many die by the same swords used to slay soldiers on battlefields.”

Tomas watched the apprentices move about the yard, collecting what tools Uncle Rory gave them permission to carry out. All but Orin seemed dazed. When they had gone to their rooms to collect their belongs, the yard fell into a deep silence. The lack of hammers working seemed wrong. It made Tomas’s skin crawl.

Uncle Rory cleared his throat. “Let’s go over the books, Tomas. I want to see how this...this turn of events will affect our business.

Tomas bowed his head. “Yes, uncle.”

THE SMITHY WAS COLD and quiet. Early summer heat baked the dirt of the yard. The doors were barred and no work was getting done. Tomas sat inside the office, sweat poured down his face. It was only slightly cooler with the windows thrown open and the touch of a breeze reaching him. He scanned the neat columns of numbers a third time, doing the calculations in his head. The sums were not wrong. The smithy was failing. The news wasn’t surprising nor would it be shocking to Uncle Rory. He knew the books far better than Tomas did and had memorized the balances of all the accounts. None of the regular customers had been in for over a month—even though it was the height of the planting season. Traffic on the Bryans Road was down to a trickle so the walk-in customers had all but vanished.

The troubles weren’t confined to the smithy. Others in Belling were suffering hardships. Even Aklin’s business was down. No one could afford ale when they’re just trying to keep themselves fed. Lord Hathgate had taken other young men and boys with him when he left to fight Lord Corbrey’s forces.

Tomas rubbed his eyes and a deep yawn escaped him. He hadn’t slept.

“Tomas! Tomas, where are you?”

Tomas jerked up and clamored to the door. “Here, Uncle. I was just looking over the books.”

Uncle Rory snorted. “Why waste your time with that now? Hah! Not like there’s any business to keep track of. Damnation, if knew this would—” His voice cut off.

Tomas frowned. His uncle was staring at something he could see from the porch. He stepped out and met him in the yard. “What is it? Are you feeling....” His question died in his throat. He saw what Uncle Rory saw.

Through the entrance to the smithy they saw horsemen coming, the soldiers garbed in dirty armor. The foot soldiers trudged along behind them on hard-packed road, their faces passive and stoic, all of them covered in a layer of grime and dust. Tomas scanned the faces to see if there were any familiar faces. All strangers, Tomas thought. Who were all these men, some of them the same age as he? Their faces bore haunted expressions. The officers in front slowed near the smithy and the whole company halted its leaden progress up the Bryans. One of them rode into the yard. He nodded down at them in greeting.

“Good day.”

Uncle Rory bowed his head. “Good day to you, my lord.” He squinted up at them. “I see you wear the sash of Lord Hathgate’s partisans. He is known around these parts. How is he, if I might ask?”

“I am Romont, the son of Lord Cartherly and the captain of this company. We are liegemen to Lord Hathgate. We march to where he is camped on the edge of the Tangles and doing well the last we received word. Lord Corbrey’s forces are boxed in and we are preparing for a fight in along the Milamac River.”

Uncle Rory nodded. “Safe journeys to you and these lads here. May the Sisters grant you a swift victory, Captain.”

Romont bowed his head. “Thank you.” The captain returned to the line and the march continued.

Tomas watched the company ride down the middle of Belling. He choked on the dust and his eyes stung, but he maintained his vigil until the last man faded to little more than a tiny spot on the horizon. Uneasiness settled deep in him and he knew somehow that those men would not return.

“Pray the Sisters have mercy on them, Tomas. Pray for them all,” said Uncle Rory quietly.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

SHAUN KILGORE is the author of various works of fantasy, science fiction, and a number of nonfiction works. He has also published numerous short stories and collection. His books appear in both print and ebook editions. Shaun is the publisher and editor of MYTHIC: A Quarterly Science Fiction & Fantasy Magazine. He lives in eastern Illinois.

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COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

MYTHIC

A Quarterly Science Fiction & Fantasy Magazine

ISSUE # 10 SPRING 2019

Copyright © 2019 by Founders House Publishing LLC

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

All Contents are copyrighted to their respective authors

and used here with their permission.

Cover art copyright © Algol/Dreamstime.com

Published by Founders House Publishing LLC

MYTHIC: A Quarterly Science Fiction & Fantasy Magazine

is a project and publication of Founders House Publishing LLC.

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