MYTHIC

A QUARTERLY SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY MAGAZINE

ISSUE #15 | SUMMER 2020

Editor’s Note

By Shaun Kilgore

HERE IT IS the final quarterly issue of MYTHIC, Isusue #15. The next time any of you see MYTHIC it will be in a different format—in fact multiple formats. As the new aim is to publish bi-monthly, I hope to deliver six quality issues of the magazine every year, all of them stuffed with awesome ficiton and some intriguing nonfiction content. Subscribers and patrons will have the option of receiving all of that content up front in electronic and print editions while others may wait for the stories and nonfiction to drop over the course of eight weeks on our website. I’m providing more options to help get the word out about MYTHIC and get more eyesballs on the stories.

My deep, heartfelt thanks go out to the many people who have support MYTHIC over the last four years and I hope I can count on you in the coming years as we regain our footing and prosper. I believe we can forge a new path and eventually achieve the goal of becoming a professional short fiction market.

Onward!

The Third of Two Paths

by D.A. D’Amico

“YOU SHOULDN’T ANTAGONIZE Andeanus. He holds the power around here.” Juletto wiped Lish’s brow with a damp cloth that smelled of horse and sour sweat, concern written in his vivid green eyes.

Those eyes reminded her of spring, and of the high grasses that sprouted like mold along every crack of the crumbling and uneven roadbed of her village in the Tuplets. He looked like a farm boy, but his tall lanky body and spiky blonde hair marked him as a son of the Borderlands. He was Aaerilian. She was from Oewduy.

Not that it mattered. She wasn’t a slight young woman by anyone’s measure. Boys didn’t look at girls like her. They preferred them slender, small and fragile, petite porcelain dolls like the girl who’d shared a sleeping pallet with Lish when she’d been brought in several weeks back. Her name had been Pim. She’d been a precocious waif who’d wrapped the conscripts around her little finger the moment she’d arrived, the boys fawning over her as if she were one of the petty gods who strode the docks at Ardis Jumd outside Oewduy’s capital of Oshienne.

The registrars had picked Pim up on the main track leading out of the Crumbles as just another refugee of the collapse, but she’d been too headstrong, too vibrant to be broken by these strange men. She’d protested the trials and refused the ink. They’d beaten her, of course, but it’d only made her more rebellious.

Then she’d vanished. One day, Pim just didn’t return from the trials. Nobody spoke of her, and it was as if she’d never even existed. Lish knew the same would eventually happen to her. She had one more day to prove herself, and she would not fail.

“Andeanus is nothing. It’s the registrars who make the rules,” she said as she struggled to keep her voice down. She’d been told it boomed when she got excited, like the bleat of a hornfox.

An apprentice worked among the relics at the opposite end of the large open chamber, waving what appeared to be shards of colored glass against smooth metal housings that looked so much like framed mirrors, but depthless and without reflection. Lish knew those relics to be sinister monuments of a time in Aaerilia’s long forgotten past, a time before her home had been shattered, and the whole length of the standinglands had been of one piece.

The apprentice had done this chore daily since Lish had arrived. Occasionally, a faint muddy light would emanate from one of the oval devices. The apprentice would then place that shard in a special box of black iron and carved abbas wood, and call for a registrar. The registrar would then come and take the box away. Lish had never been told what the shards were for, or what happened to them after they’d been removed.

Juletto dropped the damp cloth into a burlap bucket at Lish’s feet and started to rise. His posture made him seem reluctant to leave. She smiled, blushing. Her fingers caressed her necklace. The long irregular teardrop of dung-colored brown stone was shot through with spittle-shaped splotches of greyish-yellow. It was ugly, but it was all she had of her past.

Her smile faded. Her thoughts seeped inward, reality replacing the fantasy she’d begun to build in her mind. Long, irregular, and ugly; those were the same words she’d use to describe herself. She knew her body, and she wasn’t a fool.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, lowering her gaze and glancing away. She felt stupid, chiding herself for even thinking a boy like Juletto could be interested in a girl like her.

Anger replaced embarrassment. Not at Juletto, but at herself. The necklace in her fingers seemed to warm as her face grew flush and her ire rose. She’d lost so much already. Her life hung in the balance, but she wasted time fantasizing about an Aaerilian boy.

“Lish, I—” Juletto started to say something, but she grabbed his arm, all shyness gone.

“I can’t master the focus on my own,” she said trying to keep the frustration out of her voice. She needed guidance, and he didn’t have to like her for that. “I need your help. Please.”

“It’s too soon. The ink hasn’t had time to cure.” Juletto’s voice was apologetic, but his features had hardened. The moment between them had changed.

“No, not the art. That can wait. Qisma. Sing with me, Juletto.”

He sighed, glancing around the wide circular stables. The apprentice stood with his back to them, speaking in low tones to a tall muscular man wearing a black sash through the braids of his greying hair. Tattoos rippled like heat across the big man’s forearms and bare chest. Several conscripts mucked stables. The sound of their wooden shovels scraping in unison with the banging of hammers and the odor of dung and wood fire swirling throughout the building. Nobody paid them any attention.

“Are you sure you’re ready?”

“Ready enough,” Lish said, closing her eyes and exhaling deeply. She sat back, letting her muscles go slack, freeing her mind from the concerns of her body as she’d been taught.

“It’s just... I remember the last time...” He trailed off, his face suddenly red.

Lish remembered her previous attempt to coax Qisma, the softer side of the twin-edged nature of magic. It had been clumsy and embarrassing. She’d been as hopeless with Qisma as she’d been with the art, but time was running out, and that needed to change.

“I’ll do better. You’ll see.” She needed to show some sign of ability in one or the other skills before tomorrow. There were only two ways to escape a death sentence in the Tip, and she wouldn’t give up.

Juletto bent and grabbed a flat iron nail from the hay at their feet. He held it between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand as if inspecting it for defects, his eyes shining.

“Watch.”

He tossed the nail into the air. It landed flat on the birch slab with a thunk. He did this three times, and each time the nail hit the wooden table on its long end, horizontal, flat against the bark as gravity intended. Lish was about to interrupt, her patience on edge, when Juletto started humming.

His voice started as a whisper, soft and rhythmic, never growing strong enough for Lish to understand the words, if there were any. The air around them felt thick. The stench of ozone and animal faded. The movements of the conscripts seemed to slow, as if she peered out through clear molasses.

Juletto tossed the nail. It tumbled slowly in the air as if unsure which way it should fall. Then it struck the table point first, standing vertically, its balance so perfect even a breath would make it fall.

“I see it...” Juletto sang tenderly, as if to a lover, his eyes never leaving the nail, his features smooth and somehow more masculine. “I will it, control it...”

He snatched the nail off the bench, tossing it again and again. Each time it balanced on its head. Each time it landed at that improbable angle, mocking the laws of nature.

Juletto paused, hissing out a long breath. The nail dropped. Everything seemed to fold back into focus. Hammers clanged. The sound of shovels scraping mixed with the stench of dung wafting through the stalls behind, and a shaft of sunlight struck the gleaming relics lining the curving far wall.

“Show off.” Lish grabbed the nail. It felt hot in her fingers, magical energy streaming off it like smoke.

“I know you can do it too. Try.”

“I will—I am, just give me a second,” she said, self-conscious now. She seemed to go from brazen to shy with little warning these days. It was as if she couldn’t make up her mind, uncertain of her feelings, uncertain of her place in the world.

“It’s all about focus,” Juletto whispered. He leaned in. She could feel his breath on her ear, and the light scent of cloves. “The sound isn’t important. Neither is the tune. Create an image right behind your eyes, nothing specific. Qisma doesn’t work that way. It works like luck, altering odds, changing outcomes if you’ve done it right. Start small.”

Lish exhaled, preparing. She concentrated on the brazier sputtering on the beam behind Juletto. The flame flickered seductively, throwing thin shadows across the blacksmith shop, shading the young men nearby in fingers of grey. She imagined a breeze curling through the wide doors. The flame shrank in her mind, her imagination snuffing the light, stifling the heat, stilling the burning oil.

Then she sang.

Softly at first, like Juletto, and then louder as her focus solidified. Her tone warbled with her initial faltering notes. She changed pitch, weaving bits of many songs together, pieces of tunes she’d heard as a child in the Crumbles and on the Tuplets, snatches of the inelegant melodies she’d picked up from other conscripts, and even a touch of the humming song Juletto had sung as he made the nail dance against the pull of the world.

She did all these things exactly as she’d been taught, exactly as Juletto had done them. She poured her soul into the tune, feeling it wash over and through her, struggling to make the fire die in her thoughts.

“The tongue stills...” Low words, sung softly from a male voice behind her, gently intruded on Lish’s own song.

The melody seemed to come from everywhere at once, echoless, overpowering. Lish’s own tune wavered. She skipped a note, then another. She bit her lip. The pain caused her to lose the rhythm, and she faltered, her song lost.

“Hey!” She leapt to her feet, spinning in search of the interruption.

The blacksmith who’d been speaking with Andeanus stood behind her, his large arms folded, a light sheen of sweat covering his bare torso and scar-streaked tattoos. The tattoos were a mark of his mastery of the art. She knew that much. This man was far more than a simple smith.

Lish lowered her gaze immediately, her heart pounding. “Sorry, registrar. I didn’t realize it was you.”

The registrar’s hard grey eyes surveyed her. The jagged lines of his angular face compressed, his thin lips puckering as if he smelled something vulgar. “The only outcome to be gained by that amateurish cacophony would be to scare the horses. Don’t do it again.”

“But—” she started.

He held up a meaty palm to silence her.

The melody didn’t count. It wasn’t about the music. The tune was only an aid, a way to focus, nothing more. It shouldn’t matter that she couldn’t sing.

“But...” She stammered. The registrar’s expression told her she shouldn’t argue. Juletto’s face echoed the big man’s, his gaze pleading with Lish to keep silent.

For once, she listened.

“Yes, registrar.” She kept her voice even, although she wanted to scream. How could she hope to master a skill she wasn’t allowed to practice?

The man reached out. For a moment Lish thought he’d strike her. She braced for the blow, but his fingers slid almost gently along her collar, brushing over the sweeping curve of the hieroglyph Andeanus had tattooed there, before clutching the elongated teardrop of her necklace.

“This looks like a before thing.” He turned the ugly pendant in his hand.

“It belonged to my mother.” She trembled, holding her breath. What would she do if he tried to take it from her? “It has value to no one except me.”

He seemed to lose interest after that, letting the bauble drop heavily back against her chest. Lish exhaled. The registrar turned away, pausing briefly to stare back at her one last time.

“You will never master Qisma. That much is clear,” he said with a finality that made Lish’s heart stop. “I hope the art is kinder, because there are only two paths before you, and you must show promise in one before tomorrow ends. Some singular act is required of all. Do you understand?”

Lish nodded. She understood all too clearly.

“HOLD HER STILL!” The apprentice, Andeanus, set the ink. His fingers shook as he held the faintly glowing needle, heat wavering in the air like ghosts around it.

Lish tensed. She bit the inside of her cheek, blood sliding like cold gruel in her mouth, but she never trembled. She wouldn’t let them see her fear. She had nothing left but her courage, and they wouldn’t steal that from her.

She lay face up, one arm crossed over her wide chest to hide her bare breasts from the seven conscripts holding her flat against the rough birch slab, her other fist clutching the drab chunk of her necklace, the only remembrance she had of her parents and of a life now lost. The dirty fingers of the conscripts dug into the folds of her dark skin, their hands sinking into her ample flesh like tines from a pitchfork into newly tilled earth. She swallowed, clenching her teeth as cold droplets of sweat plastered her against the unforgiving bark.

This was her last chance at the art before they sent her back to the prison, and to a certain death in the tunnels under the bleak wasteland of the Tip. She’d come too far. She knew too much to think they’d ever let her tell. The registrars had made it plain. There were only two ways to pass from prisoner to apprentice, and Lish was quickly running out of time.

“Do it already.” She grunted, twisting to kick the short boy with the close-cropped Aaerilian-style hair before his fingers could wander any higher up her thigh. He stumbled, losing his grip. A few of the others chuckled, and when he returned his boney hands were anything but gentle.

“Do that again, Rog, and I’ll do more than kick you.” Juletto growled, glaring at the short boy. “This isn’t a game.”

Rog shot Lish a withering glance, squeezing his fingers even deeper into her soft flesh. She smiled. It’d been worth it.

She’d been better than the rest, more agile, faster to understand and even quicker to react. She’d bested them all more than once in the ring. She’d done everything they’d asked, everything she’d been capable of, but she couldn’t fathom the art, and Qisma was an even more implacable mystery. She wanted to cry, but swore they wouldn’t see weakness from her now.

Magic had been nothing more than a story told around the fire before she’d been taken, as fanciful as the tales of the before times, where wondrous machines flew, the mists hadn’t swallowed the world beneath, and the standing islands stretched unbroken far beyond the horizon. It was a time before she’d ever heard of the Library of Rull, the registrars, or their search for those who could wield magic. Now, it was her brutal reality.

Andeanus moved slowly closer. The needle smoked like a cigar in its wooden sheath, its tip bloated with the special ink. His hesitation made her wonder if he thought her shortcomings were his fault, and she almost chuckled.

He’d treated Lish and the other conscripts as if they were something he’d found on the underside of his shoe, something he wished he could just scrape off and ignore, and he hadn’t been the only one. Refugees from the destruction of the Tuplets had become something less than human. She’d seen it even in the poorest towns she’d passed, like Orr and Ohtep. What should’ve been pity had become contempt, open hatred of the scattered survivors. The people of Oewduy blamed the victims, and not the army’s incursion for what had happened in the south. If she could get back there someday, she’d set it right.

“I can do it myself if you’re afraid.” Lish grunted, her mouth suddenly dry. This wasn’t her first round with the smoldering needle. She knew the ink, knew where to strike and set the burning wire. She knew everything she needed to know, except how to make it work.

Andeanus opened his mouth as if to speak, but his expression turned into a cruel smile. Then he rammed the red-hot needle into her right shoulder just below her collar bone. Lish blinked rapidly, but didn’t let her body react. She could handle the pain, she told herself. She could.

“It’s your third and final try,” Andeanus sneered as he stitched the ink under her tender flesh, not even pretending to be gentle. “It should make you humble, not haughty.”

“WAKE UP!” LISH hissed into Juletto’s ear, placing a hand over the boy’s mouth to muffle his startled complaints.

A cool breeze bullied in from high slit windows, pushing loose strands of hay through the dark loft, bringing the pre-dawn scents of Coal Astor and Jasmine. Shebble wasps clacked rhythmically nearby. There must be a nest in the roadbed outside, she thought as she released her hold on Juletto.

“What are you doing?” His eyes seemed huge in the dim light thrown by large torches in the blacksmith shop below, thin tendrils of illumination reaching up through wide spaces in the floor boards.

“I didn’t know who else to ask,” she whispered. “I need your help. I’m leaving.”

Lish had decided to make a run for it rather than be sent to the Tip, and to a short brutal end. There had to be somewhere she could flee, some part of the Aaerilian standing islands where she could be safe.

Juletto’s gaze traveled to the other conscripts scattered on sleeping pallets throughout the loft. They slept singly and in small huddled groups, exhausted from the long day of trials. Beyond them stood the narrow ladder caked in shadow.

“I’m coming with you,” he said.

Then he kissed her.

Lish jerked away. If surprise hadn’t stolen her breath, she’d have screamed. Shock and disbelief kept her still, unable to even think. She’d wanted this since he’d first smiled at her the day he arrived, wondered what it would feel like to press those chapped lips against hers, but not now. This wasn’t the time. Dawn was rapidly approaching, and she’d spent too long agonizing over her choice. She wasn’t even sure she could escape at all.

“There’s no time.” Lish gathered the strength to speak again.

She pulled him to his feet, rough and impersonal, ignoring the kiss as if it hadn’t happened. How could he want her anyway? Disappointment clouded his pale features, and she turned away so he wouldn’t see the conflict written on her face. They had to leave now, or there’d never be a second kiss.

“You still have one chance,” he said.

“I don’t. You know that. I botched two tries already, and I won’t do any better with a third,” she replied.

“You’re giving up?”

“I failed. It’s different.” Lish grabbed a few small cloth-wrapped packets of rations, throwing them with force into an overly large burlap sack. Juletto started to say something, but thought better of it. He moved quietly, falling in behind her as she moved purposefully through the workshop.

“We’ll take nothing except food and water. We’ll travel quickly, head for the Lesser.” She pulled the sack over her shoulder. Its weight was comforting, but the odor of salted meat and dried bread made her frown. It’d be better than starving, she supposed. “Once we’re through the pass to Aaerilia, we’ll head north.”

“You’ve thought this out,” he whispered, grabbing a blanket from the door of a nearby stall. The horse within snorted, expecting its breakfast.

“I don’t have a choice.” She stopped, turning toward him. “But you do. You’re skilled with Qisma. You can stay if you want.”

He shushed her. “Less talking, more escaping.”

She almost laughed. He slipped his hand in hers. She took it cautiously, still unsure of his motivations, still unwilling to let herself believe in happy endings. A cool breeze blew through the open doorway, and they stepped out together.

MASSIVE PRESSURE FORCED them back. The air thickened, quickly becoming so stifling she could see it as a swirling cloud around them. She pressed forward, harder this time. Juletto yelled. His body bent as if fighting a gale. Lish pulled back, panic stealing her resolve. Her body trembled from the unknown force.

“I can’t...” she started to complain, but her voice was lost in the raging torrent of air.

Sparks, like cold metal being struck, flared in the alcove to their left. The registrar lurched forward. Magic shimmered around him like a sheen of rain. Sweat beaded his forehead and his grimacing, distorted features. One of the tattoos on his chest blazed with an iridescent silver light, four long pillars intersected by a bar, a representation of a locked gate that seemed to pulse with Lish’s attempts to flee.

“If anyone should know better...” Andeanus spoke from behind her. Lish’s hope dissolved. She fell to the ground, defeated, still staring at the glowing shapes scriven on the registrar’s broad chest. He staggered when she fell. The fire on his skin dimmed, and she noticed a thin silver pin piercing the tattoo. With effort, the registrar reached up and withdrew it. Then he fumbled a delicate-looking razor, a wafer of steel engraved with filigree and tracings of gold. His eyes never left hers as he drew the blade quickly across the tattoo, severing his connection to the magic.

The air stilled. The pressure around her collapsed, as insubstantial as a soap bubble. She gasped. The registrar smiled, and placed two long fingers against his bleeding wound.

“The art is much stronger, but the cost is high. Pain adds a dimension of focus that Qisma can’t match, but endurance suffers.” He sauntered over to join Andeanus and a group of the conscripts who’d gathered to observe the commotion. “That is your final lesson, I’m afraid.”

“Let us go, please. We’re nothing.” Juletto knelt beside her. Lish could feel the heat of his body, and wanted to cry. Not because they’d been caught, or even that she’d end up in the mines under the Tip, but because she might have been happy for the first time since her parents died and her home had fallen into the mists beneath the road. She’d lost her one chance, and that’s what made her cry.

“We’re preparing for something you can’t even imagine,” the registrar said. “Sacrifices must be made. If you’re unable to serve, there’s no place for you.”

“There are two paths, and you’ve failed at both,” Andeanus interrupted, a smug smile on his thin lips. “You’re done here. You’ll be sent to help out in the north.”

“The Tip is a death sentence!” Juletto spat.

Andeanus stepped closer. “Not for you. For her.”

Juletto protested, but Andeanus ignored him. Lish just stared at the registrar, waiting. She wouldn’t be allowed to continue here. She couldn’t fight the registrar’s power, and running would be a waste of time. Frustration made her want to scream, but it’d do no good. She was smart enough to know that, at least.

“Do what you want, I’m ready.” She stood, holding back tears.

“No. It doesn’t end like this!” Juletto grabbed Lish’s arm, wrenching her around and toward the opening.

Andeanus unfolded a knife with no blade. Its hilt glowed like a stoked coal, and it shrilled like the wind through a pipe as he pushed it at them.

Lish gasped. Every inch of her body suddenly stung, the pain intense and electric.

Juletto dropped, rigid.

“There are more things than magic you don’t understand.” Andeanus cackled, raising the weapon again.

“Stop!” The registrar stepped between them.

Lish staggered, backing into a corner, her body numb, her thoughts a haze of agony. They couldn’t even let her admit defeat without humiliation. She wished she’d never come here. She wished it would all just end.

The weapon went still. Its light vanished, and the burning numbness seeped out of Lish’s bones. Torches flared, and went out. Darkness overpowered the blacksmith’s shop, causing cries and the sound of running feet.

Then a ray of sallow emerald light erupted behind her. Lish whirled. She’d fallen against the metal cases of the relics, the before things sitting like silent sentinels to a lost time. Pinpoints of color seeped from sleek oval frames, illumination growing stronger and brighter as she backed away.

The registrar moved close. Lish hadn’t heard him approach, but she could feel his presence like a mountain beside her in the dark. His breath smelled sour, like garlic and fish. The frantic pounding of his heart sounded so loud Lish almost mistook it for tapping on the wooden floor. He shifted uneasily, as if suddenly wary of her.

“Use your will. Return the light,” he whispered. His voice held a tone of awe, and it frightened her even more.

Lish exhaled. The sound echoed like a ghostly voice, forlorn and distant. Was this her doing? Impossible, but somehow, she felt it. A spark shimmied deep in her thoughts, waiting for her command.

She wished the torches hadn’t extinguished, and as quick as she thought it, flame burst to life in sconces around the chamber.

She choked back a sob. It seemed too unreal to believe. “How... How am I doing this?”

The registrar touched her pendant. It glowed with a faint orange radiance, no longer the ugly thing it had once been. “Some before things are keyed to other objects, some to locations. Very, very few respond to people or bloodlines.”

“Me?” Lish gazed at the relics. Kaleidoscopic colors swirled across mirror-like surfaces, reflecting strange characters and symbols. She felt if she stared long enough, she could understand them.

“Yes, Lish. You.” Juletto huffed. He’d been helped to his feet by two of the conscripts.

Andeanus, sensing retribution, had fled. She couldn’t decide if that was the right thing for him to do, or not. She didn’t know the limits of her new power yet, of if she was the type of person who cared about revenge. She liked to think she was better than that, or at least better than Andeanus.

“When I spoke of only two paths to acceptance, I may have spoken too lightly,” the registrar said. His tone had softened, and the way he stood as he stared at her had changed. He seemed afraid. “There is a third path, and I believe you hold that key.”

About the Author

D. A. D’AMICO is a crazy mix of clumsy mad scientist and failed evil wizard, leading to spectacular displays of truly unremarkable brilliance. Occasionally, the stars align, and a coherent storyline is born. He’s had nearly eighty works published in the last decade in venues such as Daily Science Fiction, and Shock Totem, and his personal favorite, MYTHIC. He’s a winner of L. Ron Hubbard’s prestigious Writers of the Future award, volume XXVII, as well as the 2017 Write Well award. Collections of his work, links to anthologies and magazines he’s be in can be found on Amazon at: https://www.amazon.com/D-A-DAmico. His website is: http://www.dadamico.com. Facebook: authordadamico, and on painfully rare occasions twitter: @dadamico.

The First of Fifteen

by John Leahy

TWO SHEETS TO the wind, with it only being a little after five o’ clock, Keith Oden returned to his table on the terrace of Moosa’s. It was another beautiful Californian October evening, with not a cloud in the sky. Keith loved being half shit-faced at this time of the day, the alcohol in his system helping him to tune out the building commuter traffic on Sunset Boulevard about thirty yards behind him.

He sat down and studied the paragraph before the cursor flashing on his screen. He was working on a sitcom, a zany thing that involved a runaway cyborg from a government facility becoming a Los Angeles bank manager. Keith had high hopes for it – he felt it would be the opus that would finally get him some studio attention. His wife Candice – soon to be ex-wife (her call) – also a screenwriter, had gotten in the door six years earlier, and was now a contract writer on two big crime shows. The way Keith saw the impending divorce was that Candice – at the instigation of her friends in success-land – had gotten all uppity and saw her husband as basically weak baggage that needed to be discarded. Candice used the excuse that Keith was too fond of day drinking followed by drugs at night, which kept him in bed till after noon. All of which meant that his writing was shit and would never contribute anything to their welfare (her words).

Keith was ok with this theory. The way he looked at it, the two of them had had nothing when they met, the only difference between them being that Candice had had the misfortune of being the more driven, less prone to addiction worker. For the four years of their marriage, Candice had brought in more than seventy percent of their collective income. According to Californian law, in divorce one was entitled to a fifty-fifty split. With the sale of a house worth nearly a million dollars and nearly two hundred grand in a joint bank account, Keith was ecstatic at the prospect of having a lump sum to cover renting a place for years whilst being able to devote all his time to writing. Even though Candice no longer loved him, Keith certainly loved her – she was giving him some serious creative space.

He lifted the half drained double vodka and coke beside the laptop and drained it. It was his fourth. Too busy savouring the lovely warmth going down his throat he merely blinked at the momentary and unfamiliar bitter taste that coursed its way to his stomach along with the fire.

Upon seeing Keith return an empty glass to the table, two men at a nearby table rose and left the terrace. A bolt of inspiration hit Keith and he pecked speedily at his keypad.

A FORTNIGHT LATER, Keith felt a dull pang in the upper part of his stomach while swimming a length in his local pool. When he came to the end of the length he held onto the plastic lane divider waiting for the ache to subside. When it did, he embarked on another length.

WHEN THE PAIN came back a few days later it was a little worse and stayed for longer before abating. After that, the intervals between the recurrence of the pain shortened, and it grew in intensity each time.

His doctor referred him to Cedars Sinai where he came under the care of a doctor Adrian Baker, a gastroenterologist, who performed an endoscopy on him.

“It’s cancer, isn’t it?” Keith said afterward, in Baker’s office.

“There’s a large mass in there, alright” Baker said, his hands folded on the desk before him. “I can’t tell if it’s cancerous though. I haven’t seen anything like it before. I’m going to refer you to the oncology department right away.”

AFTER PERFORMING A biopsy, Doctor Kwon informed Keith that whatever it was that was growing in his stomach was not cancer as they knew it, but was growing at an alarming rate and was taking energy and resources from neighbouring tissue.

“We need to remove it as soon as possible” Kwon said in his office.

“How soon?”

“Don’t go home tonight. We’ll do it in the morning.”

“Ok. Is this because of the drinking?”

“I don’t know.”

AS THEY WHEELED him to the operating theatre the following morning, Keith was more excited than afraid. Kwon had said that whatever was in his stomach was something that hadn’t been seen before so he could sell the story of his uniqueness to the tabloids. He didn’t feel ill or wasn’t losing his appetite so he didn’t think he had an old-fashioned nasty cancer. When they injected him with the anesthetic he savoured the trip to blackness before there was nothing.

WHEN KWON ENCOUNTERED the tumour in Keith’s stomach it was the size of a mango. Even from a quick visual study of it he could see that it wasn’t a typical malignant type of tumour. As he was bending toward it to inspect it more closely his eyes widened.

The tumour – if that was what it was – was getting bigger before his eyes. Truth be told it was lengthening quicker than it was increasing in bulk overall. As he watched it, transfixed, the speed of growth began to increase exponentially. He backed away as the growth – or whatever – expanded outside of the surgical wound he had made, growing in a roughly cylindrical manner, one end coming toward him and the other end toward the opposite end of the operating table. In a much slower manner the cylinder was thickening. The assistant surgeons backed away as the northern end of the thing moved toward Keith’s unconscious face. One of the nurses shrieked as it pushed against his right nostril in its expansionary process over his face. For all the world it was like a horrible cucumber growing from the man’s stomach.

As the speed of growth amplified, both nurses and surgeons ran for the exit, eager to be away from the impossibility. What was happening behind them was something their minds could not entertain. The growth aided their escape by smashing a huge hole through the operating theatre wall beside the doors. Both ends of the growth expanded eagerly, the ends increasing their speed of expansion all the while as they moved, smashing through the walls of wards, other operating theatres, bathrooms and nurses stations as they probed enthusiastically forward. Offshoots sprouted from the primary north and south growths, heading off at all angles for new territories, these new tributaries in turn producing new growths of their own. Nurses, doctors, patients and visitors screamed and ran while the thing from Keith Oden’s stomach continued its amazing development, smashing walls as it went. Eventually its tentacles burst through windows, sending glass showering down into carparks and shocking staff and visitors heading toward the building. These amazed individuals stared at the newly freed growths as they spread out at lighting speed, eager to conquer all before them.

AT EDWARDS AIR Force Base, General Stan Ehrlich was in his office talking with two of his colonels when his aide burst in the door.

“General, something weird’s going on in Los Angeles. Some sort of…giant root thing, or something.”

Ehrlich’s brow furrowed in irritation.

“What?” he snapped.

His aide rushed to the television at the opposite end of Ehrlich’s office, picked up its remote and switched it on to a news channel. Ehrlich’s jaw dropped and he found himself rising to his feet. The view was an aerial one of Los Angeles, from a news helicopter. The metropolis beneath the helicopter was being smashed through and covered at the same time by some sort of…to Ehrlich it seemed not terribly unlike a vast potato root, something he had seen quite a lot of as a kid in Iowa.

“Jesus” Lana Vedmore, one of his colonels said. She and her colleague were staring at the television with Ehrlich.

“Christ” Ivor Simms, the other colonel exclaimed. “What kind of terrorist shit is this?”

As Ehrlich gazed helplessly at the mass that was spreading at alarming speed in a chaotic mess of tentacles over the city at all angles – the shit was heading out over the Pacific too, whatever it was – the general became aware that the phone on his desk was ringing. The emergency phone. It was the first time it had ever rung during his eight-year tenure in the office. He picked up the receiver.

“Yes?”

“General Ehrlich, this is Pentagon Chief of Staff General Bart Sweetman.”

“General.”

“You are to immediately send all your aircraft to engage this…entity that is enveloping the Los Angeles area.”

His eyes glued to the TV screen before him, Ehrlich saw that the tentacles of whatever it was were already pushing east over West Covina and north over Angeles National Forest and Santa Clarita. The thing’s growth, whatever it was, was almost hypnotic.

“General!”

Ehrlich blinked back to attention.

“Yes, General Sweetman” Ehrlich said.

“You have clearance to engage with this entity using all means at your disposal”.

Ehrlich could hear the panic behind Sweetman’s tone.

“General Sweetman, I need presidential authority to engage an enemy on American soil-.”

“Ehrlich, at this thing’s current rate of progress, it’s going to be in your office in under fifteen minutes!!! Get your goddamn planes in the air!!! NOW!!!”

That was enough for Ehrlich.

“Yes, Sir” he said and put the phone down. He looked at his aide. “Get everything we have, even the experimental planes, in the air. Tell them to fire at will at that thing, whatever it is.”

His aide, a terrified look in his eyes, nodded and ran from the room.

A FEW MINUTES later, over a hundred warplanes began raining ordnance down on the entity that was now enveloping Palmdale, Victorville and Palm Springs. Where the missiles struck the thing, it stopped growing, but alternate growths would immediately sprout at another angle from the halted extension.

Immediately after the loss of San Diego beneath the growth, Mexico began begging for help. The White House and the Pentagon, being more concerned with San Francisco, Las Vegas and Phoenix, put their phones down. Meanwhile, Hawaii readied itself for what was coming toward it over (and under) the water at alarming speed. Behind it, in the distance, Japan and New Zealand were doing the same.

With every second that passed, thousands of people were either killed as a result of being impacted head on by the surging growths or they were trapped beneath warrens of tentacles. Some of the imprisoned screamed for help against the thunder of explosions as missiles and rockets slammed into the growing mass overhead.

With the loss of Albequerque, Salt Lake City and Portland - the President, with the taste of vomit at the back of his mouth - authorized the use of all the nation’s nukes. Silos opened up in North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and Colorado – while they still could – and nuclear payloads smashed into the advancing mass. The result was thousands of square miles of obliteration of the growth, but well over half of it survived and continued to proliferate at speed.

With Kansas City buried beneath the advancing horror, the smoke from its remains barely emerging from between the tentacles that buried it, the president fled to Air Force One and headed east. His friends in London would give him sanctuary. Hopefully.

ON AND ON it went. With the Canadian prime minister’s jet only half an hour behind the American president’s on its flight east, the drug cartels of South America allied with their respective government forces, using every weapon of destruction they could muster against the bizarre invader. Two nuclear explosions detonated in Colombia (this surprised the rest of the world – Colombia was not known to have possessed any atomic weapons) stopping the expansion of the mass over the cities of Cali and Medellin for a few minutes. Then the growth renewed its surge over the two areas.

A YEAR LATER, a spaceship appeared above Earth. By now, Earth was not the blue planet that was normally viewed in a satellite photo. There was no blue of water, there was no white of the poles, there was no dull brown and green of continents. There was only a spherical shape wrapped in what looked like an ugly off-white bandage. In essence, a ball-shaped mummy.

The ship that surveyed Earth was gigantic but only contained two beings. A year earlier these beings had appeared on Earth in the form of men and one of them had placed a tiny pill in Keith Oden’s vodka and coke while he had been in the bathroom of Moosa’s bar on Sunset Boulevard. Now the two beings, Gunichee and Laeon, were in their true form – basically giant purple starfish with six arms each. From base to apex both entities were a little over twenty feet in height. Their arms were triangular in shape like an Earth-based starfish but at their centre was a white circle that flashed when each creature communicated with the other. Gunichee was in command.

From the bridge of their ship, both beings studied the wrapped planet before them. The white circle at the centre of Gunichee’s form flashed and a button on the console before him pressed downward.

NO LIFE PRESENT appeared on the screen before him.

“Well” Gunichee said. “Vorn’s pill worked.”

“Indeed” Laeon said. “Eight billion sapient entities plus their lower-intelligence partners liquidated.”

“And not much collateral damage” Gunichee said. “Only a little over seven thousand square miles irradiated.” He paused briefly. “Vorn has certainly delivered. It’s just a pity that his weapon is destructive to all a planet’s life.”

“Yes” Laeon said. “Well, sir. Should we transport down there and see exactly what’s left to us?”

“Yes” Gunichee said.

“Sir…before we go down there…I’m just a grunt…could you tell me why the High Council wants to eliminate all the planets that have humans on them?”

“Well, Laeon, it’s like this. There are seventeen planets in our known universe that have humans – or should I say have had humans as their masters. Two of these planets have been laid to waste as a result of civil war between various human factions. Four more human-dominated planets are currently at war with each other. Four planets I might add that are very resource-rich, and all these resources are currently being frittered away in a human conflict. Out of the remaining eleven planets that are human-controlled, eight are in expansionary mode, slaughtering the inhabitants of their neighbouring moons and planets in a quest for new living space and resources. The High Council believes that it’s only a matter of time before the remaining three human-dominated planets achieve the technological level required to take over and absorb their neighbours.” He paused. “There is no other species in the universe that exemplifies such a voracious appetite for conquest and absorption.”

“Except maybe…the virus” Laeon said.

“Indeed” Gunichee said.

“Maybe that’s what the growth is. A virus”

“Maybe” Gunichee said. “I don’t know. Come on. Let’s go to the shuttle and get down there.”

A FEW MINUTES later the shuttle landed on the growth. Gunichee disembarked first, Laeon following behind him. They moved in a cartwheel manner, the ends of their arms coming into contact with the surface of the growth, propelling them forward. Suddenly Gunichee stopped moving.

“About fifty feet below me is the spot where they opened Keith Oden’s gut.”

“Where the super-cycle was initiated.”

“Yes. The growth is a voracious oxygen devourer, the feeding causing its tissues to divide at an exponential rate.”

“It’s such an unusual organism. To start off feeding on the hydrochloric acid of a human’s stomach…growing relatively slowly…then becoming a…monster upon emerging into the air.

“Indeed it is.”

“But it’s dead now” Laeon said, a note of mild concern in his voice.

Gunichee chuckled. “Yes. It died a little over a month after it emerged from Keith Oden. Vorn programmed that into its DNA. You notice the way our arms sink a little bit into it?”

“Yes” Laeon said, looking down at the curved end of his arm that was creating an indentation about two feet deep in the surface of the growth.

“If we came back in three months’ time we’d basically be walking over a sponge” Gunichee said. “We’d hardly be able to move. Assuming we could even land the shuttle on it in the first place. In six months’ time it’ll disintegrate into dust and vanish into the atmosphere. Then the High Council will bring in crews to erase the traces of human civilization that remain beneath.

“Fascinating” Laeon said. He looked to his left at the compacted lines of tentacles that lay where once had been the Pacific Ocean. He remembered the day a year earlier when he and Gunichee had walked along a path through the sand and he had watched people skimming over water-waves on pieces of plastic called surfboards, while human males on either side of him hoisted themselves up onto metal bars, seeking the attention of the opposite sex of their species. An interesting day. At the end of which, they had sat into a primitive metal transportation cage that had taken them to a beverage house at which Gunichee had placed Vorn’s weapon into Keith Oden’s drink, thus setting in motion the end of this world.

“Alright” Gunichee said. He began moving toward the shuttle. “Let’s get back. We’ve got fourteen more planets to go.”

About the Author

JOHN LEAHY has had four novels published - Harvest, CROGIAN, Unity and The Faith. His story The Tale In The Attic attained an honorable mention in L Ron Hubbard's Writers Of The Future Contest. His short story Singers has been included in Flame Tree Publishing's 2017 Pirates and Ghosts anthology, alongside tales by literary greats such as Homer, Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, H.P. Lovecraft, and H.G. Wells. He lives in Abbeyfeale, Ireland.  

Corvus the Mighty

by Simon Kewin

(Originally published in Vitality Magazine, 2015)

GEDRIC FOUND THE ramshackle hut half way up the hillside. He tethered his horse, the best they’d been able to spare, to one of the low stone walls marking the garden out from the sweep of sloping land. He stood and waited to be spoken to. The man he’d come to find, stripped to the waist, powerful but grey-haired now, dug a trench in the heavy soil with rhythmic swings of his shoulders. The man didn’t speak, didn’t appear to have even noticed his visitor.

Gedric had grown up with tales of him. They all had: the exploits of Corvus, Corvus and his trusty Shieldsman Way, were the stuff of children’s bedtime stories and mead-hall roister. Corvus, who had saved the seven clans again and again, defeated marauding nightmares then drunk for a week to celebrate. And now here he was, tilling the reluctant peat of this desolate hillside, this man who could have lived out his days in golden palaces had he chosen to.

While he waited, Gedric turned away to look out over the land. Now that he saw Corvus in the flesh, his doubts returned. Could one old man really save them? He regretted this fool’s errand more and more. He should be down there, fighting the invaders. At least he’d be doing something. Dimly, in the far distance, he could make out a line of smoke cutting into the sky. Some homestead or town burning. Impossible to say where from up there. But it might be Ravn. Ravn, with its walls of spiked pine trunks and its stone tower. Ravn where he’d left Eliane two days earlier, vowing he’d return with help. The invaders had been sighted even as he’d galloped away. Was she still alive? She and their child she carried within her? Were any of the people he’d grown up with still alive? He imagined her calling out his name in desperation as she died, surrounded by shrieking bone-men.

Corvus speared his shovel into the earth as if it were a beast he had slain. He regarded Gedric, an irritated look on his lined face. His chest heaved from his exertions.

“I come in search of Corvus the War Chief, Lord of the Seven Clans,” said Gedric.

“Have you now? Well, you’ve come a long way for nothing, boy.”

Gedric had been warned Corvus had turned his back on everything he’d been. Wanted only peace and solitude now. This reaction was only what he’d expected.

“My lord, the clans are in great need,” said Gedric, giving him the speech he’d practiced in his head as he rode up the hill. “The bone-men have come out of the west, hundreds of their white ships making landfall on the coast to pillage and destroy. We fight them, but they keep coming, more and more every day.”

“Sorry to hear it. At least they shouldn’t bother me all the way up here.”

“But the clans, my lord. They fall, village by village, town by town. Soon there will be none of us left.”

The man shook his head.

“And I told you. I’m not the man you’re looking for.”

“But you could be him once more, my lord. You are still Corvus. You could unite the clans, lead us against the foe.”

The old man laughed. He looked up at the sky in the manner of farmers and homesteaders everywhere, assessing the chances of rain.

“Young fool, I mean I’m really not him. Corvus died six winters ago.”

Gedric smiled. He’d been told to expect this, too.

“You mean, he died and this humble crofter I see before me was born at the same moment. I understand your desire for solitude, Corvus, but times are desperate.”

“I mean he died, boy. Corvus the Mighty, Lord of the Seven Clans and so on and so on. He gave up his ghost. In his sleep. He was just a ragbag of wounds by the end, anyway. Couldn’t feed or clean himself. Don’t mention that in the sagas, do they?”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I’ll show you his mighty bones if you like, buried on the hilltop.” The man nodded up the slope. Gedric saw the line of a well-worn path leading up there.

“But I don’t understand. Everyone I spoke to said Corvus lived here. And here you are. Yet you claim you’re not him.”

“I am not Corvus.”

“Then who are you?”

“Are you really the brightest one they could find? My name is Way, boy. Obviously.”

“No, but, I’m sorry, Way was a small man. Clever and agile as a cat. It’s in all the sagas.”

“Let me tell you something about storytellers,” said the old man. He looked around in an exaggerated way, as if there were anyone within thirty leagues who could overhear. “The thing is this. They make things up. That’s what they do, what they’re for. I can assure you I am Way. I should know. I’ve been me all my life. And for the record, I was a hand taller than Corvus. Better swordsman too, truth be told.”

Gedric had never even wondered what had happened to Way. He was just the constant companion in the tales: the one who broke into the dungeons to rescue Corvus the night before he was to be executed, or who cut his ropes when the Pirate Kings thought they had him bound and trapped belowdecks.

“But I don’t understand, Corvus came here for peace and solitude. Everyone knows that. And yet here you are. What, you came up here to rescue him from these ferocious sheep?”

The old man shook his head.

“I see the storytellers got that wrong, too. We came here for peace and solitude. They have me as, what, Corvus’s faithful companion? His servant?”

“His Shieldsman.”

The man laughed. “Do you really think we could have stood each other all that time if we’d been just comrades? Or master and servant? The world was ours to roam together. I was his lover, not some Shieldsman. Ah, he was a beautiful man in his youth, let me tell you. People would do anything for that smile of his. I know I did.”

A weight of dread filled Gedric at these words. Corvus had been their last hope. A remote hope, to be sure. He thought of Eliane and the bright, fearless look on her face. The swell of her belly. Her gentle touch.

“Then I am sorry,” said Gedric. “You have lost a lot more than just a hero.”

Way shrugged. “We had our time together, down there in the world and up here in the quiet afterwards. It barely matters now. He’s gone. Isn’t a day goes by I don’t miss him, but pining won’t bring him back, will it? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get these stonefruits planted before the rains come. Make yourself useful and I’ll let you rest here the night. You can leave in the morning.”

Unable to think of anything else to say to the old man, Gedric climbed over the wall to help.

THAT NIGHT, GEDRIC lay on a mattress of springy heather beneath the furs Way had provided. The old man was outside somewhere, tending to his tatty, distrustful sheep. Gedric sighed. He had failed in his quest to find Corvus, failed to bring him triumphantly back to the clans. They would all die now, sooner or later.

He leafed through the sheaf of dispatches he’d brought with him: descriptions of the skirmishes fought against the bone-men, plans for future battles. He sought good news, some flaw they’d missed, some new strategy they could adopt. He found nothing. The bone-men came in their hundreds and left behind a trail of the dead and dying. Gedric read for an hour or more by the flickering light of Way’s fire until his eyes began to prickle. Exhausted by his journey, by his labour in the field, he lay back and fell asleep.

HE WOKE TO rain drumming on the wooden roof of the hovel. He thought, still half-asleep, the bone-men had come for him, had set fire to their house. Imagined Eliane there beside him, reaching for her axe to fight off the invaders. But when he opened his eyes, he was alone. It was early morning, the inky darkness outside just beginning to shade to purple. Embers of the fire glowed orange in the old man’s hearth.

It took Gedric a moment to realise the despatches were gone, plucked from his hand as he slept.

How could he have been so foolish? The details they contained would be invaluable to their foe. He had vowed never to let them out of his sight, had been allowed to travel with them only in the hope they might goad Corvus into action. Now Way had them. If he really was Way. Perhaps he was someone in league with the bone-men, set up there as a trap. Alarm hammered through Gedric at what he had done.

He rose, quickly, thinking to chase after the man, catch up with him. He would be hours away by now. Gedric stood there in the early morning chill, naked, trying to decide what he should do.

“You’re in a sudden hurry, boy.”

The man sat unseen in a shadowy corner of the room. Gedric heard the rustling of paper.

“Return the despatches to me,” said Gedric.

The old man ignored him. “Tell me, who commands the warbands now?”

“Each clan chief leads their own.”

“Well, they’re all fools. See here, they turn and face the bone-men with the river to their backs. And here, again, in the High Passes, where scree-falls can easily be set off to crush a pursuing enemy, nothing is done. The warbands flap around like gaggles of geese.”

“We do what we can. There are too many of the enemy.”

The man stood and stepped out of the shadows into the orange glow from the fire. He wore full armour. Gedric recognized it immediately.

“So … you are Corvus after all.”

The man looked at him for a moment, not speaking. He shook his head.

“No. I am Way. Didn’t I tell you? But I kept his armour, boy. That’s all I have left of him. I get it all out and buckle it on sometimes. Had to loosen the straps a little. Ridiculous, I know, but it makes me feel he’s still here, makes me feel close to him again.”

“You miss him.”

Way shrugged. “Also, I look rather good in it. Don’t you think?”

“You look like Corvus.”

“That’s what you see?”

“I … I thought you were him, stepping out from the sagas. That armour with those crows emblazoning it.”

“Good.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you saw that, others will see it too,” said Way. “They’ll see what they need to see. All those stories about us. A lot of it was just people believing in us, believing in him: the black-haired hero who always won, despite the ridiculous odds.”

“You’ve decided to help us now?”

“I read your despatches,” said Way. “The bone-men. I thought you were just some lad who’d seen one battle and run for the hills. But you’re right. The clans need Corvus once more.”

“You mean, you’re going to pretend to be him?”

“Riding out of the old tales, just when the clans need him most. Don’t you see, boy? The story is irresistible. The bone-men won’t have a chance. And … I would see Corvus at the head of the warbands once more. In a manner of speaking.”

“Can this work?”

“I won’t tell anyone if you don’t. They’ll want to believe I’m Corvus. Now get dressed, boy.” Way glanced down and back up, an amused grin flashing across his face. “I can see from here how cold you are.”

Gedric began to struggle into his clothes. Way pulled Corvus’s helmet over his head and the illusion was complete.

“Come,” said Way, his voice muffled by the helmet. Changed. “Let us ride. We can’t just sit around on this hillside when the clans need us.”

Together they stepped out into the morning light. The rain had passed over now and shafts of sunlight lit the world. The whole land lay stretched out before them, like a map waiting to be drawn on. Way opened the little wooden gate that kept his sheep penned up, giving the creatures their freedom.

“Will we have a chance?” Gedric asked. “Is there really any hope?” The fate of all the clans depended on this old man, but he could think only of Eliane. Eliane and their child.

Way laughed. “The situation is hopeless, the odds ridiculous. How can we fail? We will ride to Ravn and rally their defences. And then we will ride to every other town. The story of the return of Corvus will spread like a fire across the land and we will be unstoppable.”

Then Way – Corvus – nodded, climbed onto his horse and set off down the hill to do battle.

About the Author

SIMON KEWIN is a fantasy and sci/fi writer, author of the Cloven Land fantasy trilogy, cyberpunk thriller The Genehunter, steampunk Gormenghast saga Engn, the Triple Stars sci/fi trilogy and the Office of the Witchfinder General books, published by Elsewhen Press.

He’s the author of several short story collections, with his shorter fiction appearing in Analog, Nature and over a hundred other magazines.

He is currently doing an MA in creative writing while writing at least three novels simultaneously.

Things To Save In A Fire

By Chris Kuriata

(Originally published in Audient Void, November 2018)

THERE WAS NO hope for the house next door to Olivia. By the time her neighbour’s screams awoke her, vicious orange light crackled through her bedroom window. Fire trucks were yet to arrive and already the rollicking flames devoured a hole the size of a pond through her neighbour’s roof. The structure would soon collapse, leaving nothing but charred timbers and ash to sift through in the morning.

Olivia lowered her aching knees over the edge of the mattress. Most days it took her ages to drag her ravaged joints off the bed. Sometimes the shadows cast in the folds of her quilt by the rising sun reached the floor before she did. At this age, having her original legs was a handicap, and she often thought how much more efficient her final years would be if she could only find the strength to saw off everything below the knees and outfit herself with sturdy peg legs like a pirate. In the old days, she easily found men just as desperate as they were talented, who for the price of a hot meal and a rejuvenating night sharing her bed, were willing to undertake any odd-job Olivia requested, no matter how much spilled blood was involved, but the neighbourhood had changed the last thirty years. Too many young families with children, and green lawns, and two of those ridiculous automobiles in every driveway. These neighbours demanded heightened security in order to sleep well at night, so they called the constabulary at first sight of any desperate man who came sniffing around Olivia’s house. Such stupid people thought they were doing Olivia a favour. They sent their awful children to cut her grass and rake her lawn and shovel her walk, never once taking into consideration she enjoyed the barters made with the desperate men. More than the jobs they performed for her, she enjoyed their company. Some of them possessed beautiful singing voices, others knew the filthiest jokes that sent Olivia laughing so hard she felt fifty years younger. Think any of the neighbours provided such entertainment? Please. They couldn’t wait to get out of her company. They took care of her house less to help her than to brag about their generosity—charity for an old woman who couldn’t survive on her own otherwise. Dirty sons-of-bitches.

Well golly, who was the survivor now? Seventy years perched atop Queenston street, since the days when the rail tracks ran through her backyard, yet she managed to avoid burning down her house, even though she lit more fires than her neighbours had bowel movements.

“Missus Olivia! Missus Olivia!”

The neighbour man pounded on her front door, banging so hard he might have been trying to break the door right off its hinges. She didn’t like him treading barefoot on her porch, emergency or not. Olivia hated barricading her door, but the busybody neighbours come snooping around every time she slept for three or more days straight, concerned she had passed away or slipped in the bathroom. Locking the door was the only way to keep them from barging into her house.

The new houses were built too close, squishing against her original home like unwanted wisdom teeth butting into your molars. Olivia knew the encroachment would be a problem one day, but she had been unable to persuade the builders. Men from the city came by, armed with maps pinpointing with precision where her property ended. The city tore down fences a trio of desperate men spent a glorious August week erecting. Where her garden once sprouted healing herbs was now built over with obnoxious houses. Still, Olivia blamed herself for establishing her home within the city instead of out in the country. Foolishly, she bet on the factories going bust and the fledgling city becoming a ghost town. Instead, she had lived long enough for the land surrounding her to grow valuable and over populated. Shit.

Smash!

A rock flew into her bedroom window, cracking the glass. The neighbour child flung whatever garden stones he could get his grubby little hands on against her window to try and wake her up. Blasphemies—the whole neighbour family thought they needed to rescue her.

Smoke black as a miner’s lung began to pollute her bedroom, and Olivia could feel heat radiating down from the ceiling. Flames from the house next door blew onto her own roof. Olivia could hear the pitch tar beneath her shingles bubble. For a moment, she remembered the desperate man who re-shingled her roof for her, finishing the job on the day the King died in Memphis. She remembered how she and the desperate man sat up until dawn, sobbing as they played the King’s records over and over on her hand crank phonograph. Olivia never collected anymore records after that. As far as she was concerned, once the King was dead, there was no reason to bother making any more records.

Olivia hated situations that called for snap judgment. The secret to longevity was never instinct, but careful planning; weighing the past to anticipate the future. Those who relied on instinct always came to foul, often humiliating ends. Sure, they may thrive in the short term—Olivia knew of many sisters who rubbed their temporary good fortune in her face—but all of them eventually were consumed by bad snap decisions. Living that way was like a blackjack player who hit a hot deck; they may enjoy a fat time, but sooner or later the house wins it all.

Because the idiot neighbours next door left too many devices plugged into an outlet or put their trust in a coffee maker with faulty wiring, Olivia was now faced with having to make a snap judgement. Her two arms could only save two items from the inevitable conflagration. There was no time to think. As soon as the neighbour man battering her front door broke into the house, he would run upstairs and throw her over his shoulder, showing no consideration to her brittle, aching bones. He’d certainly break her in multiple places and imprison her in one of those germy hospitals. Just so he could feel heroic. Brag to all the other numbskull neighbours how he risked his own life to rescue her from her burning house, in order to downplay the fact he was the one responsible for burning her house down to begin with.

Olivia knew she had to save the cat. The was a given. The blue-haired Chartreux kept her company and informed of the outside world. Fortunately, the cat—though half-blind and mostly deaf—had already evacuated itself, crawling outside through the hole burrowed in the kitchen floor. That still left Olivia with two free hands again.

The great bank beneath her mattress warranted not a moment’s consideration. The gold rings and bundles of dollar bills could easily be recouped. Olivia collected wealth easily and spent it sparingly. A single afternoon along the ship locks could replenish her with more wealth than she could spend the rest of her lifetime.

She supposed the most responsible thing to do would be snatch up the hand bound book of incantations propping up the left leg of her wobbly mahogany bed. She spent years attending Una’s deathbed, painfully extracting each spell and setting it down on paper. Una’s spells were important for the continued grace bestowed upon the region. Her boiled potions and equinox whispers kept the ground protected against poison, otherwise nothing nourishing would grow. Thanks to the knowledge passed down by Una, the sloppily built canal never flooded during the rainy seasons, which would have washed away the idiotically placed hamlet of Virgil. And the angry dead, who’d chewed their fingertips into sharp claws for breaking through the lids of their coffins were kept complacent and innocuous thanks to Una’s ingenuity.

Olivia dropped the book to floor beside the lopsided bedpost she’d plucked it from. The front page was depressed from the weight of Olivia sleeping in the bed. How long had it been since Olivia needed to consult Una’s book? Five seasons? Ten?

She kicked the book beneath the bed. Ecch. Una’s spells were such a chore to perform. While Olivia made no complaints about their effectiveness, they were a dry ordeal. There was no poetry in Una’s incantations. Olivia never felt the elation of performing magic with the same miraculous grace one sees in a blooming flower or the persistent turns of the tide. Frankly, if she never performed one of Una’s spells again, Olivia would be happy. Why should it fall to her to keep the neighbours protected from their own poor planning? Let them rely on chance for a awhile.

The bedroom grew brighter. Beads of flame leaked through the ceiling like drops of water on a rainy night. There was enough light in the room to read by, and enough heat Olivia didn’t need her nightgown.

She focused on the great horned crown the walking-stick people presented her with in thanks for her intervention in the woven-wood war. The sparkling crown was too large for her to ever wear and the inner rim was covered in a caustic black mold, but whenever descendents of the walking-stick people came to visit it filled them with great pride to see Una possessed the gift of their ancestors. Not that any of them came around anymore. Travel through the cities had become impossible for their people. They preferred to stay close to the woods.

The glass on the front door broke. The neighbour man thrust his arm through the window and fumbled for the deadlock on the other side. He cut himself badly, spilling blood down the inside of Olivia’s door. She could hear the warm blood shriek as it suffocated and began to solidify in the intense heat.

Olivia sighed. There was only one thing to do. She couldn’t kneel, not with her stiff joints, so she balled her hands into fists and pounded her knees. The pain was incredible, as bad as anything she had experienced since the failed stoning attempt in the year before she was a full-fledged woman. Olivia’s knees crumbled like brittle China cups, and she collapsed to the floor. Tears streamed down her cheeks, salting her lips. She did her best to ignore the agony. She could complain about what she had endured later. Right now, her hands clawed at the rug, exposing the hardwood floor.

She found the loose plank at once. One good rap pushed the nails from their holes. Olivia gripped the risen nail heads between her teeth and pried them out. She scattered the planks and plunged her arms beneath the flooring. She didn’t have to reach far before her fingers came in contact with the stiff brown canvas that swaddled the compacted bones of Leslie Gordon.

Solving the problem of Leslie Gordon gave Olivia no pleasure, not in the way she derived pleasure collecting the bones of Ian Wetherson, or Walter Proksch, or that nasty piece of work Hubert Jayznick. Olivia still thought about Hubert from time to time, relishing the way his skull crushed beneath her bare foot, begging until the last, “Let me up and I’ll go! Let me up and I’ll go!” She kept his body hanging over her bathtub for months, charting the maggots that burrowed up from his skin. At night, she fell asleep peacefully, lulled by the wet smack of each chunk of putrefied flesh falling off his bones. She wished she could have told her neighbours what that sounded like. It seemed selfish to hoard such joy for herself.

Leslie Gordon had been a different beast all together. Just a fresh child, but already irreversibly corrupted.

She got drunk on wine before the task. She hadn’t indulged booze for years before Leslie Gordon and she hadn’t in the years since, but she wanted to have her mind stolen during his disappearance. She went on a weeklong bender to ensure she wouldn’t remember him the way she remembered Hubert.

The neighbour man gave up on the front door. Using the stone lion from the steps of her porch, he shattered the front window and climbed into the house. He crawled along the floor, keeping low to avoid the black smoke, choking, “Missus Olivia! Missus Olivia!”

The bones of many troubled men rested beneath the floor of Olivia’s house, but they were from years forgotten, belonging to families who had abandoned their memories long ago. Only bones as fresh and wicked as Leslie Gordon would be found in the wreckage of the fire. Meddlesome firemen would rake them out of the ashes, trained to recognize a child’s tibia or fragment of jaw. Olivia would be made to account for these bones. People today were so good at putting together information they would be able to determine who the bones belonged to—that missing neighbourhood boy. The fact people had perfected the ability to identify old bones impressed Olivia as much as any spell out of Una’s book.

Olivia lifted the remaining fragments of Leslie Gordon and held them close to her bosom, just as she had held him before guzzling the last flask of wine. Once out of the house, she would hide him in a storm drain or up in the trees. A safe place where he would go unnoticed while she watched her house burn.

From the bottom of the stairs, Olivia heard the neighbour man coughing. He ceased calling her name. His heroics had failed. There would be no exciting story of rescue to share with the rest of the neighbours, only a sad tale told by his grieving wife and son.

On her broken knees, Olivia crawled down the stairs. She still had an arm free to save something. She thought about the picture on the wall, drawn in charcoal by a sensual desperate man she kept the service of in the year two Popes died. She also thought of using her free arm to grab the grandfather clock set by her own mother, the last member of her family to have disappeared into the great beyond so many years ago. Olivia noticed that when everything was in danger of burning up, they all become equally valuable, and at the same time equally worthless.

In the end, she wrapped her free arm around the convulsing neighbour man, hugging him and Leslie Gordon’s remains close together, before dragging him safely from the deadly fire that had been all of his own making.

“Missus Olivia,” he choked, trying to lift her onto his back as though he were the one rescuing her. It was embarrassing the way the neighbours clung to their fantasies. Their minds made whatever gloried them most into the truth.

She dumped the neighbour man into the gutter before crawling off into the undeveloped woods, toting Leslie Gordon’s remains clutched between her teeth. She wouldn’t waste time hanging around just to watch her house and all her old junk burn up. Instead, she pointed herself in the direction she should have traveled years ago, along the phantom memory of the old railroad tracks after the desperate men. They must live still, out in the furthest reaches of the forest. She could only imagine how much more desperate and sensual the harsh years made them. Already, she could feel her useless legs being hacked off and replaced with glorious carved pegs on which she would spin and dance in the arms of the desperate men until she crumbled to dust.

About the Author

CHRIS KURIATA lives in and often writes about the Niagara Region. His stories about time-traveling kittens, whale-hunting clowns, and haunted massage parlours have appeared in many fine publications such as Weirdbook, Hermine, and Shock Totem.

The Demon Piper of Holy Hill

By Sean Patrick Hazlett

GOD MIGHT FORGIVE Chuck McDonough for letting a leaky faucet go this long, but his wife, Linda, had higher standards. Throwing on his bathrobe and stepping into his slippers, he girded himself—retrieving a wrench required an icy excursion.

He entered the garage from a door in his den. The wind rattled the garage windows; its chill seeped through the cracks with a bite burrowing so deep, Chuck could feel it in the hollows of his bones. It was that old New England warning: when the wind whistles, a storm is nigh.

When he crossed the threshold, something rustled in the darkness. Chuck shivered. He flipped on the light. Trudging past cardboard box columns, old computer peripherals, and broken appliances, he noticed nothing out of the ordinary. So he grabbed a wrench from his workstation, then headed back toward the den.

He stepped onto something soft. He lifted his foot and looked down.

Rat droppings.

He cursed, then wiped his slipper on the concrete. He returned to his workstation and gathered some rattraps he’d kept there for emergencies.

For the next thirty minutes, Chuck set the traps. When he finished, he went to the kitchen to tighten the faucet.

Linda was cooking eggs while watching the morning news. Chuck hugged her from behind.

“Where’ve you been?” she said.

He shrugged. “Seems we have a bit of a pest problem.”

“What? Like termites?”

“Rats, I think. I’ll know for sure later today when I check the traps.”

Linda’s eyes widened. She put her hands on her hips, elbows flaring outward in her classic my-husband-is-an-idiot stance.

“Shouldn’t we call a pro?” she asked. “Rats get in the walls. They could chew the wires and burn down the house. Not to mention we have a small child.”

He nodded. “Yeah, yeah. I know. And technically, they’re in the garage, not the house. Let’s see what turns up this afternoon, then we can decide whether to call someone in.”

She rolled her eyes and threw her hands in the air. “Fine. Do it your way, Chuck.”

Deep down he knew Linda was right; she usually was about these things. But he refused to admit he might be wrong.

A female newscaster’s voice filled the lull in their conversation. “The recent break-in at the American Red Cross Blood Center in Leominster has local officials scrambling for donations this holiday season. So please call the number below to make an appointment.” She faced the weatherman. “Well, Bob, any updates on the big storm?”

The camera panned to a man who wore a smile like he was auditioning for a late night infomercial. He gestured toward a map where lime blobs shimmered toward the town of Harvard. “It looks like the good folks of central Massachusetts will be celebrating a white Christmas. And by all indications, this one’ll be the blizzard of the century. So make sure you stock up on supplies.”

Linda tapped Chuck on the shoulder. “You going to the dump today?”

He smiled. “Guess I am now.”

“Good. Make sure you also stock up for the storm.”

A piercing shriek echoed from the second floor.

Chuck and Linda raced upstairs to Missy’s room, where they found their four-year-old cowering in a corner.

Lifting Missy from the floor, Chuck hugged her with fierce intensity. She trembled in an unsettling manner. “What’s wrong, Missy? Tell Daddy what happened.”

Hyperventilating, she struggled to speak.

Linda grabbed Missy’s chin and tilted it toward her. “Tell Mommy what’s wrong, dear.”

Missy’s breathing had gotten more regular. She opened her little hazel eyes, regarded Chuck, then shifted them to Linda. “I saw a tiny gray man.”

Chuck tensed up. The rat infestation was worse than he’d thought. “He still there?” He stood up, balling his fists.

Linda shot Chuck an annoyed expression, then faced Missy. “How big was this little man?”

“I don’t know, Mommy, ’bout as big as your hand?”

“You sure it wasn’t a rat?” Chuck added.

Missy shook her head emphatically. “No, Daddy. It was definitely a man—a gray man.”

WILFRED TULLY ACKNOWLEDGED Chuck’s arrival at the Harvard Transfer Station with a sullen nod.

“How’s it going, Wilfred?” Chuck said, flashing a polite smile.

Wilfred grunted and continued dumping his plastic bottles into a hunter green bin.

Chuck tried to fill the silence. “How’s Joanie doing?”

Wilfred shook his head. “That gal will be the death of me. But she’s getting better. Been hiking a lot since rehab. Guess that’s something.”

According to the town gossip, Wilfred’s daughter had been doing a lot more than hiking. One of the more salacious rumors Linda had relayed from her book club was that some of the older teens—including Joanie—had been holding orgies on conservation land. Small towns being what they were, the local police had investigated the allegation—though they’d never managed to catch the teens in the act.

Chuck bit his tongue, managing a “well, that’s good to hear she’s getting back on the horse. Speaking of horses, did you ever find your mare—what’s her name—Duchess?”

Wilfred wiped away a tear. “Yeah. We found her.”

“What happened?”

Wilfred rubbed his eyes. “They found Duchess’s rotting carcass up in Shaker Village. Inside the Stone Barn ruins.”

Chuck put his hand on Wilfred’s shoulder. “Jesus, man. I’m sorry.”

“That ain’t the worst of it neither. Vet said somebody had shoved a pumpkin inside her womb. Some twisted bastard kept her alive like that for weeks. It was only recently that she died.”

“How’d they keep a horse up at the Stone Barn ruins without people noticing?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. I figure they kept her somewhere else then moved her to the barn just before she died.”

“What kind of a sick animal would do something like that?”

Wilfred held up his forefinger. “Wait. I ain’t done. When the vets performed their necropsy—fancy word for a horse autopsy—they found a placenta inside her.”

“Duchess was pregnant?”

“When the lab tests came back, the vet told me they found semen inside her—human semen.”

Chuck wanted to vomit. “Sweet Jesus.”

Wilfred spat. “Well, with all them pentagrams and occult symbols carved into the ground and chalked on the old stone walls, I’d say we got ourselves a bunch of Satanists.”

“Is Chief Denmark on the case?”

“He is, but he’s ‘bout as far from a clue as the sun is from Saturn.”

At a complete loss for words, Chuck just nodded. The two men passed the next half-hour in silence as they sorted and disposed of their garbage.

WHEN CHUCK RETURNED home, Linda nearly tackled him with her hug. “I’m so glad you’re home.”

He stepped back. “What happened?”

“We can’t find Mr. Whiskers.”

“What about his GPS collar?”

“It was in the den—torn off,” Linda said in choppy breaths. “The dog’s also pretty shaken up.”

He rushed to the den to find his dog quivering on the couch and covered in his own filth. Chuck patted his knees. “Come here, Duffy.”

Duffy whined and quaked, refusing to budge.

“C’mon, boy.” Chuck whistled.

Convinced no amount of encouragement would get Duffy to move, Chuck grabbed his dog by the collar and dragged him across the carpet and into the kitchen. Duffy squealed in protest.

“Can you clean Duffy up?” Chuck said to Linda. “I’m gonna check the traps, then look for Mr. Whiskers.”

Normally Linda would have chided him for the request, but instead she just nodded. Now Chuck was certain she was terrified.

Chuck stepped into the garage. A sharp pain stabbed his foot. “Son of a bitch!”

He removed the trap from his shoe and leaned against the wall while he waited for the throbbing to subside. Once the initial shock had passed, Chuck began to wonder. He’d never set a trap there. Yet there it was, right where someone would step on it.

He flipped the light on, then limped carefully through the garage, checking his traps. The rest remained right where he’d left them. And every single one had been sprung. But that wasn’t the oddest thing; nothing had taken the bait.

Chuck scratched his head. What kind of rat would spring a trap but ignore the bait? Coming up with nothing, he reset the traps. Then he returned to the kitchen to find Linda comforting a bawling Missy.

He kneeled and stroked his daughter’s hair. “What’s wrong, honey?”

“She’s worried about Mr. Whiskers,” Linda answered.

With nothing to say, Chuck just shrugged.

Linda shook her head. “Catch any rats? From all that commotion, I’d say you did.”

“Nah, I just stepped on a trap.”

Linda raised an eyebrow.

“Okay, fine. I surrender. I’ll call an exterminator first thing in the morning.”

“Good.” Linda ran her fingers through her hair. “I don’t think the cat’s in the house. Can you post some flyers?”

“You mind if I do that tomorrow? It’s getting cold out.”

“Exactly,” she said with confidence. “If we’re cold, he’s cold.”

Defeated, Chuck shambled to the closet, put on his coat, and left. For the next hour, he canvassed all Harvard’s public spaces from the Transfer Station to the Town Common.

He wasn’t the only one.

Photos of missing dogs, cats, and the occasional rabbit papered every flat, public surface in town in a collage of sorrow. Like a broken man just going through the motions, Chuck added his cat to the grim menagerie.

His last stop was Harvard’s General Store. There, a teenage boy clad in black snickered as Chuck posted his last sign. He wanted to throttle the kid, but a scowl was all he could muster.

CHUCK COULDN’T SLEEP. The vents had been jiggling all night. He cursed himself for not calling the exterminator the instant he’d discovered the rat droppings.

As he dozed off, a piercing shriek catapulted him from his bed. Before he could think, he was barreling down the hall toward Missy’s room.

“Daddy!” she howled. “The monster men were coming to take me away!”

Moments later, Linda arrived, bleary-eyed. Missy wailed. Linda struggled to calm her.

Chuck grabbed his daughter’s arm. “What’s this?”

Linda squinted. “Oh my God! Do you see what I see?”

“Are those...bite marks?”

“Jesus Christ, Chuck. Why didn’t you call the exterminator? If you’d only listened to me...Now I have to take Missy to the hospital. God knows what diseases those rats were carrying.”

Linda’s words stabbed Chuck’s heart. He had to do something. Anything.

“I’m calling Pete Hollowell,” Chuck said.

Linda checked her watch. “It’s three in the morning.”

“I don’t care. Pete will understand. Go ahead and take Missy to the ER.” It suddenly occurred to Chuck that the dog wasn’t around. “Where’s Duffy?”

He sprang to his feet and searched throughout the house. “Duffy? Here, boy. Duffy, where are you?”

Chuck clenched his teeth, trying to decide which crisis to tackle first. Once he calmed himself down, he dialed Pete Hollowell.

After three attempts, a woman finally answered. “Who the hell is this and why are you calling at this hour?”

“This is Chuck McDonough. I have a serious rat problem.”

Mrs. Hollowell took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Chuck. Folks have been calling at all hours. Pete’s been working ‘round the clock. I haven’t seen or heard from him in two days. When he checks in, I’ll let him know you called. To be honest, I’m real worried. Pete has never gone dark like this.”

“I understand,” Chuck said. “I’ll try again tomorrow.”

Something wasn’t right. Against his better judgment, Chuck called 911.

To his chagrin, he got a pre-recorded message directing him to “press one” only in the event of a life-threatening emergency. He hesitated to go that far. Instead, he threw on his coat and drove to the police station.

TO AVOID THE mob surrounding the police station, Chuck parked about half a mile down the road at the end of a long line of cars. A light dusting of snow from earlier that evening had covered the roadside in slush. He trudged through it toward a crowd of nearly a hundred screaming townsfolk.

When Chuck reached the crowd’s edge, old Jim Cooney, the town rabble-rouser, motioned for Chuck to join him.

“What the heck’s going on?” Chuck said.

Cooney shook his head. “People won’t admit they’re seeing the gray men in their homes. I didn’t believe it neither till I seen one of them eating a rat in my garage.”

Chief Ed Denmark walked out of the station carrying a megaphone. “Please disburse. We’ll be holding a public hearing in the Town Hall this evening to discuss our effort to contain the infestation.”

Cooney jutted his chin toward nine figures hovering just outside the edge of the crowd. “Wouldn’t be surprised if those Satan-worshipping mongrels had something to do with this mess.”

While Chuck put no stock in such superstitions, he did find the teens creepy. Then, when he saw Wilfred’s daughter, Joanie, among them, he felt guilty for thinking that way.

The crowd dispersed as if slowly awakening from a dream. Chuck was making his way back to his Jeep when a woman sprinted past him yelling, “My boy! They’ve got Noam! Snatched him right outta his bed.”

He stopped dead in his tracks. The poor woman made him sad and intensified his sense of urgency for his own family’s welfare. He got in his Jeep, determined to send his family out of town. Instead of driving home, he headed to Worcester, intending to book a hotel room. On the way, he called Linda. “How’s Missy doing?”

“Fine, considering...”

“She get any shots?”

“No. Just antibiotics. The doctor told us to monitor the wounds and call him if the swelling doesn’t go down over the next several hours.”

“Good.” Chuck took a deep breath. “I want you and Missy to meet me at the Holiday Inn Express in Worcester. We’ll stay there for a few days until I get this rat problem sorted out.”

“Okay,” she said. “There’s one other thing.”

“Go on.”

“The doctor said he’d never seen bite marks like these.”

“He have any idea what had attacked our daughter?”

There was a long pause. “No.”

Chuck sighed. “All right. Take good care of Missy. I’ll see you in Worcester.”

AFTER CHECKING INTO the hotel and catching a few hours of sleep, Chuck drove to Ayer. He wanted to stop by to see his mother at the Nashoba Park Assisted Living Center just to make sure she was okay. It was always a struggle seeing her; it broke his heart. Sometimes she was sharp as a tack; other times she’d barely recognize him. And as she got older, the bad times were beginning to crowd out the good ones.

“Who’s there?” his mother said.

“It’s me, Chuck.”

“But you’re a full grown man. Chuck’s barely thirteen.”

Chuck groaned. This was gonna be a rough visit.

He set a chair against his mom’s bed. He grabbed her hand with both of his and kissed it. “How ya doing, Ma?”

A flash of recognition lit up her face. “Oh, Chuck! So good to see ya. Why don’t ya come see your Ma more often? Sometimes I feel like ya stuck me in a corner and forgot about me.”

He smiled. “How could I ever forget you, Ma?”

“That’s my boy. How’s life treating ya? How’s that girl you’re seeing? What’s her name again?”

“Linda, Ma. Her name’s Linda. We’re married with a daughter. You remember Missy, don’t you?”

Her face reddened, but like a good Irish woman, she played it off brilliantly. “Oh, sure. I remember Missy. How’s the family?”

“To be honest, Ma, not great. Things are crazy in town. We got rats in the house, and all our pets are missing. Heck, most of the town has a rat problem.”

Her jaw tightened. Her eyes seemed to sharpen as if her mind had become suddenly lucid. “I heard this story before. Did the stranger come yet?”

“The what?”

“The stranger. This isn’t the first time it’s come, and it sure as hell won’t be the last. And it’ll keep coming long after we’re all rotting in the ground.”

“You’re not making any sense, Ma.”

She glared at him. “Back when the Shakers were here, a mob beat them at the Whipping Stones for their beliefs. Your grandma was always saying that that mob didn’t come out of nowhere. A stranger had appeared on Holy Hill where the Shakers worshipped. That stranger had riled up the townsfolk to torment the Shakers.”

“The stranger?”

“It is drawn to places of terrible sorrow. It feeds off the pain of good folk. It comes here to sire its offspring. Your grandma once told me about the disturbing ritual. The stranger collects the seed of its henchmen and seals it in a rotting gourd inside a horse’s womb. The stranger’s followers then force-feed the mare a diet of human blood. Forty days later, the abominations are born.”

His mother’s story sounded insane. Yet she was more coherent now than she’d been in weeks. “What are you saying, Ma?”

Then, just as quickly as her eyes had brightened, they lost their luster, reverting to a dull and unfocused mess. “Who are you?”

Chuck lowered his head in frustration. He gave his mother a kiss, then left for Worcester to check on his family.

THAT EVENING, CHUCK returned to Harvard. It was snowing so heavily, it was almost impossible to see. When he finally arrived at the Town Hall, it was standing room only. Chief Denmark was already in the middle of his presentation.

He was holding a shoebox.

“We’ve all heard the reports,” Denmark said. “Hell, I’ve seen ‘em myself, the devil men crawling in my walls. But it wasn’t until I shot one that I believed they were real.”

Denmark paused, then opened the shoebox lid and reached in.

He held the thing up to the crowd as if to give the townsfolk sufficient time to fully comprehend the horror. There was a collective gasp, then an eerie pall of silence as the townsfolk gawked at the specimen.

Roughly six inches tall, the creature was covered in coarse gray fur. It had red eyes, sharp canines, and three horny nobs curling from its forehead.

“As some of you are well aware,” Denmark continued, “these things are carnivorous. They started with our pets. Now, they’re coming for our children.”

“We know all that,” Wilfred interrupted. “The real question is what you’re gonna do about it.”

Denmark glowered at Wilfred while he lowered the small corpse back into the box. “I’ll get to that. Right now, we don’t know what these things are, but we do know we can kill ‘em like any other pest. Only difference is they’re smarter.”

Denmark motioned toward his deputy, Bill Farnsworth. Farnsworth brought over an easel and planted a white cardboard poster with a map of Harvard on it.

Denmark slapped the map with an extendable pointer. “Over the next twenty-four hours, each family is gonna pack up what it can and evacuate the town.”

More gasps.

Denmark held up his left hand, signaling silence. “Then, the Harvard police with soldiers and Marines from Fort Devens will cordon off the town until more help arrives.”

“Until more help arrives?” an exasperated voice said from the audience.

Denmark raised his voice. “We don’t know exactly what we’re up against here. Once we eliminate the threat, you can return to your homes.”

The chief’s decree sent the crowd into an uproar. Denmark tried to shout over the commotion, but the furious voices drowned him out.

Three sharp raps resonated through the room. The crowd grew suddenly quiet. Nine teens in dark cloaks fanned out from the entrance, forming a line perpendicular to it. A hooded figure shrouded in a coal black burnoose and carrying an ivory-white staff emerged from behind them. The stranger strode down the aisle, then stopped halfway between the entrance and Denmark’s podium.

Chuck’s eyes focused on the staff. It had tiny holes in it at equal intervals—like a pipe or flute.

“Identify yourself,” Denmark said, his voice wavering.

The figure raised the pipe, drawing it to the darkness within its hood. Then it played the most beautiful melody Chuck had ever heard.

A maelstrom of images, sights, smells, and sounds inundated Chuck’s mind. All around him, Chuck could sense others were receiving the same broadcast. The visitor offered a bargain—an end to the infestation in exchange for nine human lives.

It lowered its pipe and waited.

Denmark’s eyes went wide as saucers. He shook his head as if recovering from a dizzy spell. “Your bargain makes no sense. With enough people, we can wipe out the vermin on our own. And you still haven’t told us who you are.”

The stranger stood like a statue of obsidian for what seemed like ages. Then it raised the bone pipe and played another song—a song so dark it filled Chuck with dread and woe. His heart ached. His stomach fluttered with a murderous guilt. The dirge signaled an end to normalcy and the dawn of despair.

A great gray and greasy flood of verminous men slithered out of the vents and from the shadows. Soon, thousands of them swarmed menacingly on the perimeter of the crowd.

Denmark held out his hands. “Wait! Stop!” He took a deep breath. “Please. Leave. Give us an hour. To deliberate. When you return, we’ll have your answer.”

The stranger gave a slight bow in assent. It raised the pipe to its hidden lips and played again. Chuck’s heart beat with thunderous force in awe of the majesty of the piper’s tune. The filthy, gray masses retreated into the shadows almost as quickly as they’d appeared.

The stranger turned and marched out of the hall, his nine teenage thralls in tow.

There was a brief silence—like the eye of a storm. Then, pandemonium.

“We should just abandon the town like Chief Denmark ordered,” Mrs. Garber said.

“No one’s getting nowhere any time soon,” replied Wilfred. “There’s a storm raging.”

Deputy Farnsworth shouted, “Everyone keep quiet! We’re going forward with the evacuation. Storm or no storm. You’ve seen those things.”

“I seen them kids up by the old Stone Barn!” Jim Cooney yelled. “I say we follow ‘em there and burn that piper with ‘em. I’d betcha dollars to donuts that thing brought the gray men with it.”

Many murmured in agreement.

“Enough!” Denmark bellowed. “We’re gonna hold a vote. The options are: one, abandon the town; two, surrender names to the piper; and three, chase the stranger to the barn and burn it.”

“Wait,” Chuck interrupted. “Aren’t we gonna have a debate? Surrendering nine people is insane. We can’t just decide who lives or who dies.”

“What do you propose?” said Denmark.

“Let’s stick to the original plan. Who better than the government to flush these things out?”

“You dumb motherfucker!” Cooney shouted. “When the Army comes, they’ll turn the town into Fallujah. And when the dust settles, there won’t be any houses to come back to.”

Many folks grunted in approval.

“And you propose what? Chasing some devil piper into its lair, which you think is the old Shaker barn because you once saw teenagers there?” Chuck retorted. “That’s nuts. As for the other option, if we’re despicable enough to sacrifice nine innocent lives, then what? How would we choose them?”

Cooney grinned. “Well, that’s easy, ain’t it? We volunteer some folks who ain’t innocent. Seeing as those teens got something to do with this mess, I say we send them.”

“How dare you, you son-of-a-bitch!” Wilfred yelled. “My daughter just kicked heroin. She’s only beginning to get back on her feet. Just because she started running with the wrong crowd, don’t mean she deserves to die.”

“How do you know that thing’s gonna kill her?” Cooney countered.

Chuck edged in. “Well, if we’re gonna explore this ridiculous line of reasoning, what makes you think the piper would accept his own followers as an offering?”

“All right. Enough!” Denmark shouted. “We’ve had our debate. Now it’s time to vote.”

Denmark repeated the options and asked for a show of hands. Farnsworth duly counted each vote, scribbling on a notepad. When he finished tabulating the final tally, Wilfred fell on his knees, and screamed.

“WE’VE DECIDED,” DENMARK said, a tinge of guilt betraying the firmness of his voice.

The stranger waited.

Denmark continued, “You’re free to take the nine young men and women who’ve accompanied you here.”

Broad grins creased the faces of the piper’s acolytes. From their reactions, Chuck would have sworn they’d been expecting this. The piper lowered its hooded head in assent, turned, then raised its pipe and began to play.

The gray men again emerged from the woodwork and shadows. The stranger marched toward the exit. Entranced, they streamed out of the Town Hall, flowing like rotten gravy. The townspeople followed in their wake. There wasn’t a soul in the building that didn’t want to watch the vermin leave.

The townsfolk followed the piper and its verminous entourage into blistering winds and blinding snow. Faint rivers of dull gray sludge converged on the stranger as it piped its mesmerizing music. Rather than smothering the eerie preternatural song, the winter wind seemed to amplify it.

The townspeople trailed the piper from Harvard Common all the way to the beach of Bare Hill Pond. The piper continued to play while hordes of pest men swarmed onto the ice like maggots on a festering blister. And like a festering blister, the thin layer of ice broke like rotten skin. The gray men drowned by the thousands.

The stranger and his nine minions faded away into the churning blizzard.

The townspeople returned to Town Hall, fumbling through near whiteout conditions. And there they slept, waiting for the storm to pass.

WILFRED SCREAMED.

Groggy, Chuck checked his watch. It was only three a.m. He’d been asleep for fewer than three hours. He tapped Wilfred on the shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

Wilfred had his iPhone in hand. He showed Chuck a live video feed of men approaching some ruins. They carried bottles and rags. A girl’s voice pleaded, “Please, don’t do it. We are prepared to die to protect the Master.”

“If you stay, you’ll burn too,” said a voice that sounded like Jim Cooney’s.

Chuck jumped to his feet. “Chief Denmark, we need to get to the Shaker barn ASAP. Cooney’s raised a mob.”

Denmark hesitated the way people do once they’ve made a decision to look the other way.

Chuck tapped his watch. “C’mon, Ed. We’re losing time. You really want their deaths on your hands?”

“But...I thought they were...” Denmark couldn’t finish his sentence.

“Already dead?” Chuck supplied.

The chief’s face reddened. He averted Chuck’s glare, then nodded.

Denmark led a group of men and women outside. The snow had stopped falling, but the blizzard had piled massive snowdrifts along the roadside. And with the current crisis, no one had bothered to plow the roads.

Wilfred’s keys shook in his hands. “If any of ya wanna come with me, I got a pickup with a snowplow.”

Chuck and Denmark nodded.

Denmark turned toward Farnsworth. “Grab some folks and take the police truck. Meet us at the old Shaker barn.”

“You mind driving, Chuck?” said Wilfred. “I wanna stay in touch with Joanie. Make sure she’s all right.”

Chuck grabbed Wilfred’s keys. Everyone climbed into the Dodge Ram. White-knuckling it all the way down Route 111, Chuck turned on South Shaker Road.

Men were yelling on the video.

“Hurry,” said Wilfred, shuddering.

Chuck slammed his foot on the accelerator. The men arrived at their destination several minutes later.

Screams.

The three men raced toward the ruins. A crowd was closing in on the structure. Cooney lit a rag sprouting from a bottle and lobbed it at ten figures huddled in the ruins.

Denmark pulled out his service weapon and aimed it at the mob. “Stop!”

More rags were lit. A salvo of Molotov cocktails engulfed the ruins in a firestorm.

Gut-wrenching screams filled the air. The smell of meat wafted on the chill wind. All but one hooded figure stumbled from the ruins. The victims flailed in agony until they collapsed and their bodies smoldered in the snow.

Wilfred fell to his knees and wept.

Reaching the crowd, Denmark commanded, “Hands up! You’re all under arrest.”

The mob complied. Cooney tried to bargain with Denmark, “C’mon, Ed. You know they was all dead anyways.”

“Keep. Your. Fucking. Hands. Up,” Denmark warned.

More trucks arrived on the scene. Cops and concerned citizens converged on the site.

Farnsworth recoiled when he saw the charred corpses in the snow. “What the hell happened?”

Denmark pointed at the mob. “Handcuff them.”

As the cops herded the suspects to the police station, Chuck and Denmark stayed behind. The fire still raged in the ruins. Yet amidst the flames, a solitary figure stood watch.

Its cloak had disintegrated into ash, but it still carried the pipe of bone. Much like the vermin it has exterminated, it had three horns curving downward from its brow—a harlequin without a hat. Its face was pure white, and its black eyes stared at the two men with a sinister intelligence.

Though he couldn’t explain why, Chuck was certain the piper could have prevented the murders with its music.

But it didn’t. It had let this happen.

Denmark grabbed Chuck’s arm. “C’mon, we gotta go.”

He followed Denmark, leaving the stranger to wallow in the cinders.

SHORTLY AFTER THE thaw, Chuck had returned to the ruins. There, he found no trace of the dark visitor. When he’d told Denmark the tale, the chief had advised him to let sleeping dogs lie and never to mention the incident to another soul again.

A week after the mob had burned the piper’s acolytes, Chuck felt safe enough for Linda and Missy to return home.

The town had dedicated a single day for grieving. Townsfolk attended the funerals of Pete Hollowell, the nine dead teens, and eight other children who had gone missing during the infestation. A single day to acknowledge the truth of that awful incident before burying its foul memory forever.

Chuck mourned their suffering. He couldn’t imagine the depths of such sorrow, the tragedy of parents burying their own children. Their loss made his reunion with Missy all the more bittersweet. He hugged her with all the love he had and kissed her goodnight. For tomorrow would be the first day of the rest of his life. And for that, he was grateful.

ONE YEAR LATER, the town gathered at the Stone Barn ruins to remember the souls they’d lost on that horrible day. Standing on the snow-covered hill, Chuck was thankful he and his family had survived what had been the darkest episode of his life.

Since that black day, he’d often wondered what had become of the piper. But like all nightmares, the thought faded away, buried by the banality of everyday life.

That evening, Chuck drifted off to sleep lulled by the most enchanting music he’d ever heard.

Linda shook Chuck awake.

“What is it, honey?”

Linda paced frantically, her face ashen. “Missy’s gone!” she said through a burst of tears.

Chuck leapt out of bed, grabbed his robe and slippers. He raced down the steps and stormed out his front door.

Footprints.

A path of small footprints led from the front lawn to the street. Chuck glanced over his shoulder and shouted, “Linda, call the police. I’ve found Missy’s trail.”

Chuck jogged down the street following Missy’s tracks. For once, he thought, the snow would work in his favor.

He traced Missy’s footsteps all the way down to the Town Common. There, he lost Missy’s path to a swirl of other child-sized footprints that converged on Bare Hill Pond.

“No. Oh, God, no.”

Chuck sprinted toward the pond. His breath steamed in the frigid air. In the distance, a mist obscured whatever secrets lay hidden there. He ran harder, desperate to reach the water’s edge.

When he did, he collapsed and wailed.

As far as he could see, small bodies bobbed like buoys among chunks of ice in the murky waters. And among them, floated the remains of his beloved Missy.

About the Author

SEAN PATRICK HAZLETT is an Army veteran and finance executive living in the San Francisco Bay Area. His short stories have appeared in publications such as The Year's Best Military and Adventure SF, Year’s Best Hardcore Horror, Terraform, Vastarien, Writers of the Future: Volume 33, Galaxy’s Edge, Grimdark Magazine, and Abyss & Apex, among others. He also edited the Weird World War III anthology from Baen Books.

Jerry

by Robert Runté

JERRY SAT ENTRANCED, watching out the living-room window of his parents' walkup, as the Rulon worked at building . . . whatever it was they were building. A tower—or antenna, maybe. They were clearly working to a deadline, their expressions not quite frantic, but focused, concentrating, their movements hurried. He could almost swear that they kept checking over their shoulders, though he'd never actually caught one of them doing it. But there was that same sense of urgency.

He supposed there was a string of pickets out there somewhere on their perimeter, keeping watch on behalf of the workers and that none of the Rulon wanted to dishonor those sentinels by turning to look for themselves. Better to just keep focused on what you were doing, to get it done before . . . whatever it was they were anticipating.

The doorbell rang. Jerry ignored it. His dad would get it or his mom if she were still home. Jerry hadn't noticed if his mom had left for work yet. He'd been too preoccupied watching the Rulon construction. He was a little worried for them because they seemed so nervous today. Something had their wind up.

"Dr. Grey. Thank you for coming." His dad had opened the door to the hall to admit a distinguished older gentleman, a doctor apparently. Jerry could see their reflection in the window glass, faintly superimposed on the hectic activity outside.

"No problem," Dr. Grey assured his father. "As we discussed, it's always best to observe things in situ."

"Well," his father said gesturing towards the living room, his voice heavy with resignation, "things are as you see them."

Jerry studiously ignored them. He knew perfectly well they weren't referring to the Rulons' frantic efforts to finish their construction. Jerry had given up trying to interest his parents in the Rulons' affairs. It was maddening that they wouldn't lift a finger, wouldn't even allow him to do anything, when the Rulon so clearly could have benefited from a little help.

"Jerry, this is Dr. Grey. I've told you about him. And now he's here."

Last month had been the worst. The Rulons' need had been so terrible, the solution so obvious, and his parents had just been . . . callous. There was no other word for it.

"He needs to talk to you, Jerry."

Some of them had died that time. He was sure of it. He had seen them being swept away by the torrents that had smashed through the gap in their hastily erected barriers; he had seen groups of workers trying to hang on to their various structures as the waves sucked them off the scaffolding, carrying them back out the hole like compost swirling down the garburator. They couldn't have survived that. Not all of them, anyway. And it was his parents' fault for stopping him when he could have saved them.

"Jerry, this is important!"

He had refused to listen to his parents ever since. Some things could not be forgiven.

Jerry could see Dr. Grey's reflection holding up his palms in a placating gesture, calming his father's rapidly escalating anger. To Jerry's surprise, the doctor then made shooing motions to send his father away, back to whatever he had been doing before Dr. Grey's arrival. His father hesitated, then shook his head as if washing his hands of the problem—of Jerry—and stalked off down the hall.

"May I sit?" the doctor asked, coming into the living room.

Jerry ignored him too. Jerry’s parents had dragged him to a succession of doctors after last month's incident, as they called it. Jerry had had to listen to them all pronounce on what was wrong with him. With him. As if he were the one being unreasonable. To hell with doctors, too.

When Jerry failed to answer, the doctor—who held himself for a long moment frozen in that odd crouch of someone awaiting permission to sit—sat.

Jerry focused on a group of Rulon attaching a platform about half way up the main structure. They were braving precarious footing to extend the platform out at right angles to the walls, just beyond the limits of the scaffolding. Whatever pressure they were under clearly precluded taking the time to work up new scaffolding.

The doctor pulled an old-fashioned paper notepad from his rear pocket, chose a pen from several in his shirt pocket, and used its tip to rapidly flick through the pages to find the relevant entries. "Ah, yes," he said. "You're twelve?"

Almost thirteen. But Jerry didn't take the bait. You couldn't talk to doctors: they didn't listen, they only had their questions, their diagnostic-tree charts, and weren't interested in anything else you had to say.

The platform was already jutting out an absurd distance, and even as it was being extended, a second crew was busily assembling a slender apparatus spiking up from that base like some sort of crystal needle.

"Your parents took you to Dr. Norris, first, correct? Who tentatively diagnosed a brain tumor based on—" Dr. Grey's tone changed subtly, revealing that he was now quoting verbatim "—'the sudden and violent nature of Jerry’s inexplicable outburst’?"

Jerry spotted a group of Rulon who had emerged another third of the way up the structure and started breaking down the scaffolding there. They had it apart in moments, and Jerry realized there was the nub of a second perpendicular extension pushing out as they cleared away the scaffolding to make an opening for it.

"But when the MRIs came back perfectly clear," Dr. Grey continued reading from his notes, "they took you to see a psychologist, a Dr. Harrington, who diagnosed severe depression. Given your parents assurances that you had no objective reason to be upset—no deaths in the immediate family, no troubles at school, or pets gone missing—one can't really fault him for thinking the depression physiological rather than environmental. Dr. Grey paused as if waiting to see if Jerry cared to comment. Then said, as if defending his profession, "Well, he could only go on what he was told."

As the second platform took shape, Jerry recognized a third platform beginning near the current top of the structure, though the Rulon seemed intent on continuing to build the core higher as well. The three platforms looked to divide the tower roughly into thirds vertically, and were rotated around its circumference from each other 120 degrees. The effect was oddly satisfying.

"So off you went to Dr. Yago, who screened you for just about everything that could conceivably cause depression in a twelve-year-old—except, of course, PTSD, because no one could imagine anything you could be traumatized over."

Again, the long pause as if waiting for Jerry to challenge that assumption. But Jerry knew from experience where that always led. So, no thank you.

The Rulon were definitely spooked now, working faster than he could ever remember seeing. The top of the structure came to a peak as workers hurriedly assembled a fourth of the crystal needles, its base a wheel of blue-green glass. The whole structure was striking, though Jerry still had no idea what any of it was for.

"Yago found an iron deficiency, which sent him off looking for internal bleeding, but of course that was a wild goose chase." He looked up from his notebook and attempted to make eye contact with Jerry through their reflections in the window. "I suppose the good news is you're in perfectly sound health. Sorry about all those tests, though; that couldn’t have been fun. Especially the gastroscopy and colonoscopy, though they were a lot worse in my day before they got the camera down to size."

Focused on the nearly completed Rulon construction, Jerry wasn't interested in Dr. Grey’s insincere sympathy. There was something intoxicating about the sense of balance their structure radiated. Girders like spun glass wove in and out of the central core in a sort of fractal webbing that curved back in on itself, making it difficult for the eye to trace. The colors harmonized perfectly, shading subtly from one level to the next, imparting a sense of movement and flow, as if the whole structure pulsed with alien energies. Whatever else one had to say about the Rulon, their architecture was spectacular.

Dr. Grey had paused, staring out the window, apparently lost in his own thoughts. He shook his head as if to clear it and returned his gaze to his notebook. "So that brought things pretty much to a standstill until your parents complained about the growing frequency of catatonic episodes, which sent you off to Dr. Patters. 'Suffers from bouts of immobility, inappropriate posture; uncooperative.'" Dr. Grey looked up from his notes to Jerry's reflection. "By 'uncooperative', she means you didn't—or couldn't—respond to simple verbal commands like 'raise your arm', not that you were being a jerk."

This Dr. Grey was the worst yet. He wasn't even taking his own notes; he was just reading out other people's. What was the point? He literally had not asked Jerry a single question yet. Unless you counted asking if he could sit down. Which had been rhetorical, because he had sat down, uninvited.

"When—after consulting for some minutes with your parents out in reception—Dr. Patters returned to her examining room to discover you stuck halfway out the window, she immediately dosed you with Benzodiazepine."

Bitch. She had stabbed him with a needle in the butt as Jerry was trying to help a Rulon crew scrambling to secure a loose gyre. Another minute and they would have had it, but he'd been so startled by being stabbed, he'd dropped his end before the Rulon had managed to secure it. God only knows how much damage that'd done! How much had that set the Rulon back? There been no reason for not warning him. It was almost like they wanted to wreck it for him with the Rulon: every time he tried to help out, somebody always pulled him away.

"'The resulting manic phase seemed to confirm the initial diagnosis'," but Dr. Patters was 'reluctant to continue the drug's administration' out of concerns over 'potential dependency issues' and because 'the pattern of infrequent attacks was too irregular to permit any program of continuous treatment.'"

Manic my ass. You poke anyone in the butt, they're going to make a scene. But of course, any time you objected to something a doctor said or did, they wrote that down as yet another symptom! You literally could not win with those people. Like the Salem witch trials he had learned about in history class: once accused, everything you said or did was taken down, twisted, and used against you.

"Significantly, there is nothing in her notes about your being delusional," Dr. Grey said, flipping back in his own notebook to be sure. He looked up at Jerry's reflection again. "Which I found highly suggestive. Because schizophrenic catatonia is almost always accompanied by hallucinations, delusions."

The Rulon were busily dismantling the scaffolding, which suggested that the structure was as good as finished. The remaining workers were clearly scrambling to be done. Jerry still didn't know what was harrying them.

"There are, however, references to 'bizarre delusions' resulting in 'manic and destructive behaviours' in Dr. Norris' notes." Dr. Grey started tapping the page as if to mark its significance. "Which brings us back to your parent's initial concerns. This baffling episode where you 'suddenly attacked and tore up the garden'; and 'manic activity accompanied by frantic and repeated cries for help'; and an 'unprovoked and murderous rage' when your parents attempted to restrain you."

Everybody kept making such a big deal out of his trying to reposition one lousy boulder. So sorry rolling it across the lawn had torn some of the building's precious landscaping. It's just an ordinary lawn, not some bloody shrine. So what, if it didn't look perfect for a day or two? When lives had been at stake?

Jerry could feel his emotions boiling up again, struggled to dampen them before they showed. Before Dr. Grey wrote down how Jerry had 'burst into tears', or 'flung something across the room', or 'punched him'. He couldn't even get upset now without it being a bloody symptom. He snuck a couple of slow, deep breaths he didn't think would show to get control, and focused back on what the Rulon were doing.

The last of the scaffolding was down and being hurriedly carted off. Jerry leaned in further until his forehead was almost touching the pane, then slowly stood on tiptoe trying to get the angle necessary to see the last remaining Rulon crew on site. They were gathered down at the very base of the tower/antenna. After a moment it became clear that they were building a fence around the structure.

"That can't be comfortable," Dr. Grey remarked, pointing with his pen. "Awkward position, I would think."

Well, how else was he supposed to see three stories straight down? Why was everybody always on him about his posture all of a sudden?

The fence ran all the way around the structure without a break. Antenna, then. If it had been a tower, there would have been an entrance. So, whatever its function, it was supposed to do its work without the need of further outside intervention.

"Why were you so desperate to move a boulder across the lawn, Jerry?" Dr. Grey was tapping his chin with the pencil now.

The tapping was surprisingly annoying. No way Jerry was answering his question, though. He'd been through that before. With his parents. With the grounds keeper, who'd been there and practically gone berserk. Then the building super threatening them with eviction because 'what if your kid goes nuts again?'

The Rulon had all vanished, taken cover no doubt from whatever was coming. Without changing position, Jerry shifted his focus away from the antenna to the horizon.

Dr. Grey stopped fidgeting with the pencil, let out a sigh. "I caught right away that any reference to delusions had vanished by the time you saw Dr. Harrington. Figured out what not to say fairly quickly, I take it? Made up some story about being angry at the world to explain about the lawn?"

Jerry focused on Dr. Grey's reflection for a moment, before looking through him to the middle distance outside. What was the doctor on about now? But Jerry couldn't allow himself to be distracted as things came to a head with the Rulon. He began systematically checking every detail of the art deco walkups that followed the road down to the beachfront on the left; the public park/playground directly in front of his building; the marina on the right.

"If I'm going to help you, Jerry, I need to know exactly what you were trying to do. What you thought you saw." Dr. Grey waved his pencil through the air to outline Jerry's bent over position. "What you're seeing right now."

Nothing you can't see for yourself. Jerry was confident that he hadn't missed anything in his scan, but repeated it to be sure, reversing direction. Marina, playground, walkups. With the obvious exception that there wasn't a single Rulon to be seen, everything appeared normal. Some sixth sense kept pulling him back towards the horizon.

"I pressed your parents for details and they confirmed that you had to step over a dozen other boulders to get to the one you pulled up. Why that one boulder, Jerry?"

Because that one had been the exact shape of the hole in the Rulon dyke. The Rulon couldn't have budged it themselves, of course, but Jerry had seen at once that if he could flip it over so the narrow end was down, he could use it to block the hole without damaging more of the surrounding dyke. At least well enough for the Rulon to have a chance to shore up their own work. But his parents had pulled him away—his dad had literally dragged him—while Jerry was still trying to balance the boulder on its narrow end. He would only have needed to make the tiniest indentation in the lawn to set it in place, not even a golf-sized divot, but that was apparently too much for his parents, more concerned over what the other residents might say than with the lives and work of the Rulon. Unbalanced, the stone had flopped over, taking out another portion of the Rulon construction—and that had been that. Instead of helping, he had made the disaster far worse.

This time, with Jerry grounded inside the apartment, the Rulon's were strictly on their own. All he could do was witness. Perhaps it was for the best.

He scanned the horizon, methodically flicking his eyes a few degrees at a time, freezing to process what he saw before moving on. He had learnt that from a WWII documentary about sailors on convey detail watching for subs: if you tracked across the horizon in a smooth pan, you missed things. You had to stop to look at each discreet section of the horizon before jumping to the next. Jerry felt he had mastered the technique.

Dr. Grey was nodding, a resigned expression on his face. "I get it. No reason to trust doctors. Or anyone really." He sighed, stared out the window. "What can you say when no one sees what you do?"

And there it was, off to the far right. A single dot of—call it light? Color? It was tricky to see. If you looked right at it, there was nothing there; you had to catch it in your peripheral vision.

Whatever it was, it expanded rapidly to fill that quadrant of the sky. Coming closer. Not swirling exactly, not moving at all really; just that Jerry’s awareness of it changed so that he sensed it here more clearly. Like zooming in on a picture on the computer: the picture didn't change, just how you perceived it as you drilled down deeper and deeper, until you found yourself staring at a blur of individual pixels.

Then: WHAM.

Jerry jerked back in his chair. It had happened so fast it took Jerry a few seconds to sort out what he had perceived. The 'it' had continued to expand until it had come into contact with the Rulon antenna. And then it had . . . collapsed? Been absorbed by the tower? Sucked inside?

Hard to interpret. Too fast to see.

Jerry felt as if the expanding field had been drawn inside the antenna somehow; but it had looked more like a balloon popping. As if contact with those crystal needles had shredded it, blowing it apart and away, all its dangerous energies propelling the shreds explosively outward.

And then another fact intruded on Jerry's consciousness. He snapped his head to stare directly at Dr. Grey.

"You saw that!" Jerry said accusingly.

"Saw what, Jerry? What did you see?"

"Don't give me that. You jumped! It startled you! You fucking saw that!"

"Don't swear, Jerry. It's unbecoming in a twelve-year-old." The tiniest beginnings of a smile tugged at the corner of Dr. Grey's mouth. To Jerry, it was as much as a confession.

"You saw. You know!"

"I don't know what you see, Jerry. I really don't. It's different for everyone."

"What?"

"Nobody bothered to note down the details of your 'delusion'," Dr. Grey explained. "Not the ones I need, anyway. I couldn't know what you saw. I mean, you might actually have been delusional. Some people are." Dr. Grey leaned forward towards Jerry, as if moving in to share a confidence. "A woman I saw last week complained to me that the man next door was chewing the food in her mouth. I don't know how to interpret that. That's actual crazy. Or at least, tuned into something very different than us."

"Than us," Jerry echoed.

Dr. Grey shook his head. "You have to go first. Otherwise, I get accused of leading the witness. Of encouraging crazy, if the person turns out to actually be delusional."

"Should you be saying 'crazy', quite so much?"

Dr. Grey shrugged. "It's not like I'm an actual doctor. Your parents just believed me when I called because they've been pushed back and forth between so many different specialists, they've lost track of who is referring them to whom."

"You're not a doctor?"

"Nope. I'm a Grey. But you still have to go first."

Jerry considered this. Weighed the risks. But he was sure the doctor—not 'Dr.', just 'Grey', he corrected himself—had seen what Jerry saw.

"I see . . . the Rulon." There. He'd said it.

"'The Rulon.' Sorry, Jerry, that doesn't mean anything to me." He looked expectantly at Jerry.

"The people who built the antenna." Jerry gestured with his head towards the view outside the window. The antenna was still there, but now pulsing with ribbons of color flowing upwards from the base, bleeding off the points of the four crystalline needles into the darkening sky like tiny lightning off a Van de Graaff generator. "That tower outside."

"I don't see a tower, Jerry," Grey said, looking outside.

Fuck! He tricked me!

Then as Grey turned back to look at Jerry and saw Jerry's expression, he held up his hands in a 'take it easy' gesture and hurriedly added, "I can see why you would, though."

"Look," Grey continued, "our brains interpret whatever our senses tell us, but that 'tower' you see out there isn't part of any human spectrum. Somehow, you—and a few others—are tuned into some other frequency completely, and how we translate that into sight or sound differs, one to the next. You say you see a tower; the girl I found last month saw a standing vortex of—well, like a whirlwind. Rushing sound so loud it was hard for her to think."

"I don't hear anything. The Rulon are silent."

Grey nodded. "Some people interpret with sound; most use sight since the visual cortex is the most developed. Smell isn't uncommon, but unfortunately, that overlaps with stroke too much to be diagnostic." He shuddered involuntary as he added, "Touch is the creepiest. It's hard to get through to anyone who interprets it as touch."

Jerry experienced his own shudder in a moment of empathy; then said, "I just get sight."

"So, what do you see? What's Rulon, Jerry?"

Jerry shrugged. "Just these guys. They work all the time."

"Work doing what?"

"Building stuff."

"What do they look like?"

"Construction workers."

"I mean, what do they look like physically?

"Like us. Only smaller. Well, not exactly like us. The proportions are different. They're narrower. And no necks." Jerry wound down. It sounded stupid when he said it out loud.

"Little alien construction workers."

Jerry said nothing.

But Grey seemed pleased. "Fascinating. Great metaphor for something that builds up structure. That girl I mentioned saw them as floating force fields, shapeless waveforms that interact somehow to cause disruptions in our spacetime. That's way too abstract for me to get my head around."

Jerry starred out at the antenna as Grey kept talking. Wondered what it would be like to see the tower as anything other than a tower.

"What do you see?" Jerry interrupted.

"I think of them as 'elementals'. Lightening, tree spirits, that sort of thing. But I really like construction workers. That's an image I could get behind. You can't control what you see exactly, but you can influence it some. If someone paints a compelling enough picture."

"So, it's real?" Jerry asked, trying to get his head around what he was hearing. "It's a real something, but how I'm seeing it may not be quite right?

"Well," Grey said, "that's ultimately the way it is for everything. I call your chair blue, but maybe someone else would see it as more green. Even if we compromise on blue-green or aqua, who knows if we're experiencing the same color at all?"

"And when I see the Rulon and my parents don't . . . ?

"It's like they're color blind, and you're trying to explain color to them when they don't even have the concept. 'What do you mean, this [blue] vase doesn't go with this [red] one?' They're identical vases to them, and insisting they don't go together is just seven kinds of crazy."

Jerry titled his head, considering. That all made sense. He'd known—at some level—that his parents, the doctors, couldn't see the Rulon; but he hadn't wanted to acknowledge that. Because that would have meant that there was something wrong with him. Now, he knew there wasn't.

"You have no idea what a relief it is to hear all this. To know that I'm not crazy!"

"Well . . ." the Grey said, looking a bit uncomfortable, "unless of course I'm part of your delusion."

"What!"

The Grey shrugged. "I feel real, but, I'm guessing that's also true of the Rulon. They probably think they're real too."

"Aren't they?"

"Sure. But you're seeing them as distinct individuals, right? They're not all identical?"

"No two are alike. Any more than people."

The Grey nodded. "Each with a personal history they bring with them when they come into sight . . . They wouldn't look that way—have this scar or that scarf—if they hadn't lived that particular history. And they persist . . . I mean, they continue to exist when you look away, and look back, right? That's a lot for you to visualize, to maintain, unless they take on some of the work of being who they are. Each of the Rulon you see probably believes it is the Rulon you see. Otherwise, they wouldn't be so consistent. Details would shift, bleed into each other, like in dreams."

"You're saying they're real, because—" Jerry shook his head to try to clear it. "—that they think they're real . . . because, I think they're real?"

"It's real, but you're the only one who sees them as Rulon. I see elementals, that girl sees vortexes; others see other things." He shrugged again. "But it's always like that. You saw me as a doctor when I came in, and now you don't. I think I'm a Grey, and that's maybe significant because you don't quite know what that means yet. But I can't be absolutely sure you're not just imagining me."

"That's crazy."

"Little bit," Grey acknowledged. "That's part of what it means to be a Grey, Jerry. We're never completely sure of anything. Not even of our own existence."

Jerry shook his head to clear it. "That's stupid." He hadn't meant to say that out loud, so felt compelled to add, "I know I'm real."

"But what does that mean, exactly? When I look at you, I agree, 'you're Jerry'; but I've met people who, when they looked at you, would just see colonies of interacting cells; or maybe collections of molecules; or complex energy fields, mere vibrations in spacetime. They're not wrong, but some of them can barely comprehend 'Jerry' at all."

Grey reached over and poked Jerry's elbow. "Is this Jerry? Lots of folks see auras. That's almost part of consensus reality. When you're dead, you don't have an aura. Does that mean 'Jerry' is this body you're walking around in, or your aura?"

"You're talking about souls," Jerry said accusingly. "I don't believe in those."

Grey shrugged again. "Sure. You don't have to believe in souls to deal with someone at the level of 'Jerry'. But then you have to be okay with people who don't believe in 'Jerry' either, and see you as only biology or chemistry or physics. It's all just emergent properties."

Jerry's head tilted to the right as he tried to take this in. "You're saying the Rulon are just some kind of energy vortex, and my seeing them as people is what turns them into Rulon."

"It is what it is. You're not changing anything, just bringing out that aspect of it. Just like your dad is 'Dad' when you look at him, and 'Matt' when your mom does. Ever heard of Heisenberg? You can never really know the whole of something; and at least part of what you see is what you see because you see it that way."

"Like my folks see me as crazy?"

"Changes everything, right? You can't tell me that whole silent treatment thing you did when I first came in isn't new. You became like that because everyone decided you were mentally unstable—that you've stopping talking merely confirms the catatonia diagnosis. Perfect self-fulfilling prophecy."

"I want it to stop!" Jerry shouted, his frustration suddenly boiling over. His fists bashed the coffee table as he demanded over and over, "Make it stop!"

"Okay," Grey interrupted calmly.

"What?" Jerry shrieked.

"I can make it stop.

“Not your seeing Rulon," he clarified, reading Jerry's expression. "You're stuck with seeing things that way from now on. Sorry, that's just part of puberty for people like us. Seems to be what turns on that part of the brain, anyway. But I can stop the diagnosis. I'm still Dr. Grey to your parents."

"You can tell them what I'm seeing is real?"

"No chance! There would be no point, because they can't see the world that way. They'd just report me too." He gestured air quotes with his fingers: "'Dangerous lunatic impersonates doctor, endangers child.' Then I'm the one on benzodiazepine and suddenly, I'm not a Grey any more, just a pathetic zombie on a ward somewhere. No thanks!

“But I can organize a placebo for you and tell them you're cured."

"Things go back to normal?"

"If you're smart. No watching the Rulon any more when people are around."

"But—"

"But nothing. You want to re-join consensus reality, you have to play along. But you don't have to stop using your talent completely. Just not in front of normals."

Jerry didn't have to ask what normals meant. "How then?"

"You become a Grey. Like me. We teach you what we know; you teach us what you see. Together we work out what's out there; and whether and what we should be doing about it."

"What if the Rulon are in trouble?"

"You call us."

"And?"

The Grey shrugged again. "And sometimes, if we think we have a handle on what's happening, we can send out a crew to help. Greys dressed as construction workers come out to fix the broken water main. People see what they expect to see."

"And sometimes . . . not?"

"We can't help if we don't know what we're supposed to stop, what encourage."

"We have to help the Rulon!"

The Grey nodded slowly. "Why you're important, maybe. Hard to take sides between vortexes, competing disruptions in spacetime. If we could determine that the Rulon are the 'good guys'. . . ."

"They are! I'm sure of it!" Jerry found himself standing, his fists balled at his sides.

"Better sign on, then."

Jerry hesitated only a moment. "I'm in."

"I'll get your Dad, tell him about our miraculous breakthrough, give him the placebo prescription." The Grey gave Jerry the merest grin. "Act normal."

About the Author

ROBERT RUNTÉ is Senior Editor with EssentialEdits.ca and was formerly Senior Editor for Five Rivers Publishing, a small Canadian press, for which he acquired and edited 30 books, primarily science fiction and fantasy. A former professor, he has won three Aurora Awards for his literary criticism and was shortlisted again for 2020. His own fiction has been published in more than thirty venues, and three of his short stories have been reprinted in ‘best of' collections, most recently Canadian Shorts II.

Meeting of the Genres

by John Haas

“WHERE IS SHE?” the science-fiction writer asked, looking at his watch for the third time in ten minutes.

The fantasy writer shrugged his beefy shoulders, not looking up from his hands. “Late.”

She was the romance writer and, it seemed, late was not unusual.

Science-Fiction and Fantasy joined the other two at the rectangular table. The mystery writer being there was expected, but the horror writer was a different matter. Everything about that man scanned as anti-social, yet there he was with his long unkempt beard and hair, black robe-like clothing and enough junk-jewellery to make any tween girl jealous. Was he a writer or the mad monk Rasputin? Last night, when they’d all arrived, Science-Fiction had disliked the man immediately.

Across the table Mystery sat pencil straight, watching the entry door, fingers drumming against the handbag resting in her lap. She, Fantasy and Romance shared some sort of professional friendship, coming from the same geographic area and crossing paths at these conventions before.

Sci-Fi let his eyes drift to the banner across the far wall which declared Genre Writers of America; as if the whole nation were about to descend on Springfield, Wyoming. Sci-Fi snorted quiet contempt at the banner and at his fellow writers. Oh, he knew the work of the others and it was adequate, but he was the one who had won a Hugo. He was also the only one who made a living from his writing while the rest still had day jobs, that was why he was Guest of Honor.

“Do you hear them gathering out there?” Mystery said, glancing toward the one curtained window.

Their glances shifted to the far end of the room then back, Horror’s lingering there.

“I hope she’s okay,” Mystery added.

“She’s fine,” Fantasy replied. “You know she’s always late.”

Small loss if she doesn’t show, Sci-Fi thought. Romance was fluff writing, more formula than fiction. He turned toward Fantasy, wondering. He had that one pegged as a farmer who’d discovered a small talent in writing. Was it his ticket out or just a hobby?

Horror stroked his beard with long ring-covered fingers. The man seemed unable to speak without moments of introspection first, going out of his way to cultivate an air of dark broodiness. The hand not caressing his beard rested on a stack of print-outs.

Sci-Fi could not read the red scribbled pen-marks on that top page, but realized from the layout that the story was his own. Red pen-marks? On his story? How dare this man...

Deep breath. He forced himself to remember he was dealing with amateurs and had no one to blame but himself.

When they’d all met last night the topic had come around to critiquing groups and the difficulty in finding a good one. Romance suggested they all share a story among themselves. Now, after a career spanning three decades Sci-Fi hardly needed his stories critiqued, but found himself magnanimously agreeing to the idea anyway. The thrill these hopeful writers would get from his feedback, their gratitude, would make it worthwhile. Besides, adoring praise was always welcome.

The group drifted into silence. Sci-Fi leaned back in his chair, listening to the steady muted drone coming from outside. He would wait five more minutes then get them started.

“Sounds like a good crowd out there,” Fantasy observed.

Sci-Fi snorted.

“You don’t look forward to meeting your fans?” Mystery asked.

“Not particularly.”

“But without them...”

“Yes, yes. Without them I wouldn’t be where I am today,” he waved the idea away. “And without me they wouldn’t be nearly so entertained. Why should I give my soul to every kid who thinks he can write and old lady who wants to tell me how a story touched her?”

Horror coughed, one short bark of sound meant to draw attention. When everyone turned he nodded. “As a younger, unpublished writer I approached an experienced author, thinking he would read my work or give me advice. Another pompous ass as it turned out.”

Did this guy just call him a pompous ass? Sci-Fi’s mouth opened with an angry retort just as the door sighed open. Romance breezed into the room, an air of unworried serenity surrounding her. For such a bulky woman she moved with grace and ease, sashaying over to them and taking the final seat at the table. Sci-Fi wondered if she was some sort of new age fortune teller in her day job.

“Good morning all,” she breathed, her voice a honey soaked marshmallow.

Sci-Fi rolled his eyes behind closed lids. “Did everyone have a chance to read the stories?”

One night to read four stories was a lot to ask but Sci-Fi had done it and so could they. He’d found potential, well written for the most part though sharing an unexpected common theme.

“Zombies,” Horror said slapping his hand against the wooden table with each word. “Zombies, zombies, zombies.”

“Do you have a point?” Fantasy asked, papers dwarfed under one ham-sized paw.

“A point?” Horror’s piercing eyes flashed. “Yes. A point. I had hoped... but no, there’s no comprehension, no original thought. Not even here.” He stroked his beard.

Next to him Fantasy’s hand curled into a fist. To accuse writers of no original thought was past insulting.

Horror continued. “One trip through the bookstore shows how dangerously overused these creatures are. Movies. TV. Comic-books. They’re everywhere.”

Dangerously overused? Sci-Fi wondered at the phrasing.

Horror circled the table with the marked print-outs, dropping them in front of each writer as he spoke. “A zombie solves its own murder; Adventurers guided through the swamps to the king of the dead; A zombie crew that pilots a starship in search of a new food source; And most bizarrely, a zombie love triangle tale.”

Sci-Fi opened his mouth to object but Fantasy got there first. “What, like your own original rise-of-the-undead splatter-fest?”

“None of you see.” Horror stroked his beard again. “Mine is not a story, it is prophecy.”

“Prophecy?” Sci-Fi laughed.

Horror nodded. “Your dead will live; their bodies will rise. You who dwell in the dust, wake up and shout for joy. The Earth will give birth to her dead.”

“George Romero?” Fantasy asked.

“Isaiah 26:19,” Horror said in a subdued voice.

Sci-Fi closed his eyes. He should have seen it coming. The man was a religious nutter, mad monk in more than just appearance.

In the silence of the room the outside world could be heard. The crowd was growing.

“Well,” Romance said, getting to her feet, “this has been fun.”

“Wait,” Horror said, his hand out, “think about the power of belief.”

“I am sorry,” Romance headed for the door, “I am not a religious woman.”

“I didn’t say faith, I said belief.”

Romance slowed then turned back toward the man, a begrudging curiosity on her face.

“Belief?” she asked.

“Yes,” Horror talked with surprising gentleness, “you are a woman who knows the power belief can have.”

Her eyes wavered. “Yes.”

“What happens when you believe something fervently?”

Romance hesitated, “Well, when you believe you try harder,” Romance said. “You know it could be, should be, will be.”

“And when others believe the same thing?”

Sci-Fi was amazed at the speed Romance fell under the man’s sway.

“It becomes expected. The power of their belief is added to your own.”

“Yes,” Horror hissed, “now what if hundreds of thousands believe? Millions?”

“It becomes fact. At least as far as they’re concerned.”

“Now… what if a billion people believe it?”

Romance’s mouth snapped shut. Horror glared at each of them in turn.

“What happens when that many people want something to be true, and spend their free time considering the situation and what they would do? When an idea is constantly bombarding people and reinforcing their thoughts through all the various forms of entertainment? What happens when more people believe in something, want something, than those who don’t?”

Sci-Fi glanced from face to face, each of them contemplative. Were they buying this new age hokum? The power of belief? He stood. “Oh, come on, just because a bunch of people believe something doesn’t make it true.”

“No?” Horror rounded on him. “Haitian voodoo works because the people believe it will. People die because they believe it can kill them. The individual mind is powerful, while the group mind is wild and uncontrolled.”

“People used to think the world was flat but that didn’t make it so,” Sci-Fi countered.

“And many of those people sailed off and were never seen again. Who’s to say what happened to them?”

The force of the man’s personality was intense, his eyes fierce, and Sci-Fi broke away like a child losing a staring match. He hated the man in that moment.

Mystery and Romance both stared at the thick curtain covering the window. In the silence, the babbling noise of those collected outside drifted toward them.

“This is ridiculous,” he said to Fantasy. “They’ve lost their grip.”

Fantasy inspected the table top and shrugged.

“There are recorded cases,” Horror added, like a preacher at his pulpit, “of people worrying so much about something that they made it happen.”

“Recorded cases?” Sci-Fi said. “Recorded where?”

“Parapsychology journals.”

With a huff and a roll of his eyes Sci-Fi jumped to his feet.

Horror was a lunatic and these others were backwoods bumpkins.

He stomped to the far side of the room. “So if I pull this curtain back it will expose—what? The zombie apocalypse?”

The noise of those gathering outside had grown and he listened. Where were the laughs and the shouts? This sound was one monotonous drone.

He glanced back at the others.

“Society is crumbling,” Horror whispered. “It is only a matter of time.”

Sci-Fi grabbed the curtain. He stood, unmoving, while something tickled the back of his brain; a memory of those early years when all he had was self-belief that success would come.

The curtain was thick and rough in his clenched first.

When things had started happening, when stories began to sell, one led to another as if by magic. But it wasn’t magic, it was his own faith, and the belief of his new and growing group of fans. How many fans did he have now? Hundreds of thousands?

What could he do with a billion fans?

Before he could follow that thought further he pulled the curtain with a quick jerk. The heavy fabric ran along the rod with a clitter-clatter, moving under its own momentum until the window was clear.

“No!” Sci-Fi recoiled, a squeaky scream escaping him as he stumbled away.

It’s true! His mind screamed. All true.

Feet tangled together and his butt slammed against the floor. Once there he back-scrambled from the window and what waited there. An actual zombie, close enough to touch, outstretched arm, reaching for him. For him!

Adrenaline flooded his body.

Have to get away.

The sound of laughter broke through his terror. He spun toward Horror who rocked back on his padded fabric chair. Great screams of joy came from the man to the point where tears coursed down his face. The other writers hid their smiles behind hands or focussed their attention elsewhere.

Sci-Fi whirled back toward the window. The zombie hadn’t stepped toward him, hadn’t attacked. A picture? It was a life-sized cardboard cut-out taped to the window’s glass.

“You... you, hack!” Sci-Fi gasped. Composure forgotten he jumped to his feet and stormed across the room.

Seeing the rage on Sci-Fi’s face seemed to delight Horror more. The man fell backward out of his chair, overcome with laughing spasms.

Sci-Fi seethed before the man, his anger a tangible thing. If desire could have struck a man dead then Horror would have ceased to be. He glared around at the other writers then drew himself up to full height, recovering what dignity he could. He turned and headed out the doors to the hotel beyond.

Behind him the other writers joined Horror in his laughter.

About the Author

JOHN HAAS is a Canadian author published in many excellent publications, including Writers of the Future volume 35. He has seen his first three novels, a humorous fantasy trilogy, published by Renaissance Press. Currently he is working on the novel prequel to his WotF story, titled Cults of Death and Madness. His goal is to become a full time writer (rich and famous would be nice too but not the main goal). He lives with his two wonderful sons who continue to give him lots of motivation.

The Princess and the Fly

by Trista Steele

SHE HADN’T MEANT to kill him. Oh Goddess, what had she done? The black, charred corpse before her was almost unrecognizable, if not for the tattered remnants of Yaza’s unmistakably foreign red silk scarf, a mark of his rank. Keznaya stood frozen in fear and shock, her hand still outstretched, palm facing out where she had thrust it instinctually. After a firestorm of energy had just surged through her, leaving her devoid of even a single gram of warmth, she felt colder than she had ever felt before.

“Princess, what happened?” Lieutenant Paq burst into her room, eyes wide and staring at what was left of Yaza. He looked flushed, as though he had been running.

“He... he had been drinking,” she said. She had smelled the bread wine on Yaza’s breath when the lecherous old man had lunged at her.

Paq swallowed. “I know, Princess, some of my guards overheard him... what he was going to do. To you.” His voice took on a deadly, dark tone she had never heard him use before.

Keznaya lowered her arm and looked at him, though he was distinctly avoiding her eyes. “You knew?”

“What happened here?” he asked, avoiding her question.

He had always tried to protect her, even when they had been children, and she loved him for it. She couldn’t let him know what she had done.

“It was an accident,” she said. “I don’t know what happened.” She needed to get her story straight. “He lunged at me, Paq! You don’t understand what it’s been like since he came here. All the comments, the looks he gives me. Or did you know?” she accused.

“Princess, Kez, it’s alright. You just need to tell me what happened.”

She barely noticed the use of her nickname, the one only Paq used, that usually made her heart flutter. Instead she felt her blood begin to warm in relation to her panic. She felt her finger tips tingle, then saw tiny sparks of blue lightning dance between her thumb and forefinger. It was happening again! Quickly she clasped her hands together in attempt to both extinguish the charge and hide it from Paq.

She had to get out of here, get away from people until she figured out what was happening to her. “Paq, you have to let me go.”

He cleared his throat. “Kez, you know I can’t do that. Just tell me what happened and I’m sure everything will be alright.” His voice had lost its edge, returning to the smooth, reassuring timbre she was used to.

“Paq you don’t understand! I have to go, please! I didn’t mean it!”

“You didn’t mean what?” Paq’s lovely, coffee-colored eyes narrowed slightly, breaking her heart.

“Just let me go!” Keznaya shouted as electricity shot from her hands. She managed to direct it away from Paq, blasting a hole through the wall and into the stairwell beyond. Paq knelt, shielding his body from the debris. She took the opportunity and ran.

KEZNAYA SANK DEEP into the hollow of the dead tree trunk that she hoped would provide her with both shelter from the rain and cover from her pursuers. Her tired muscles were grateful for the respite, dangerous though it was. She had been running for almost a week.

Raindrops fell through the thick canopy of the dark forest, swelling to a roar and fading away to a distant trickle before swelling again. An endless cycle of mind-numbing sound. If the noise masked the sound of her pursuers... Great Goddess protect her, she didn’t want to think about the consequences of getting caught. Maybe, though, the heavy rain would conceal her trail.

The air grew cold with the setting sun, and she imagined being buried beneath her silks and furs, fire crackling in the hearth. The only comfort that she found in this wilderness was the sweetly warm sensation that trickled up from the ground and into her skin, reminding her that the great Goddess Zorl was with her, giving her the energy of the Earth to aid her in her flight.

It was the same energy that had killed Yaza, the same that had blasted a hole in a stone wall. But yet, even when she had lost control, it felt strangely comforting and familiar, similar to the feeling that came when she prayed. It was a power over her own fate that she had never had before. Over the past week, she had tested it, learning how it came through the earth, drawn to her, synced with her breath. It was a part of her, a gift from the Great Goddess for her years of devotion.

Her thoughts of warmth were interrupted by a buzzing sound. Great, here come the bugs. She swatted around her head half-heartedly, hoping that not to get bit. Life inside the castle had been constricting, but it had been comfortable. It had not prepared for this life in the forest, no matter how much she wanted to get away.

“That’s no way to treat a guest, princess,” a whirring voice said in her ear.

“What? Who’s there?” she said, forgetting caution in the midst of panic. But there was no one around her, just the towering evergreens, the damp ferns, the crows cawing in the distance. The air smelled different though. It was still musty and damp, but it had a tinge of sulfur that made her nose crinkle.

“I suppose that’s the best greeting I’ll get,” the voice said. “My name is Pip, princess.”

“Who are you?” She looked around, frantic. “Where are you?” The energy flow from the Earth quickened with her fear and the gentle warmth became a heat coursing through her veins. The sensation brought back images of Yaza burning, reaching out to her, screaming. She saw the fear in his eyes, felt sickened by the satisfaction in her heart. She closed her eyes and breathed slowly, trying to calm her emotions.

The buzzing got louder. Finally, Keznaya opened her eyes and saw a fly making figure eights in front of her face. Then, deliberately, the fly slowed to a hover and looked her in the eyes. “You are not a very polite princess.”

She swatted at it. Was she losing her mind? First, she suddenly had the ability to use energy from the earth to burn a man, and now she could speak to bugs. “Are you... talking to me?”

The fly buzzed up and down. “Who did you think was talking to you?”

“How is that possible?”

“How is it possible that you burned your betrothed from the inside out?”

Keznaya cringed. The smell of charred flesh burned her nostrils, strong even in memory. “I didn’t mean to!” she said instinctually defending herself, realizing too late that she was admitting guilt. “How do you know about that anyway?”

The fly buzzed around her head, thinking? “Oh, I was there,” he said finally. “I thought it was interesting so I followed you.”

“I didn’t mean to,” she said again, repeating it more to herself than for Pip’s benefit. “It was the Will of Zorl.” That was the only explanation.

Pip laughed. “Sure, princess. We’ll pretend that you didn’t have anything to do with that.”

The implication felt uncomfortably true. “Shut up,” she said. “Why are you even talking to me? You’re a fly! Be a fly! Go buzz around some dead meat or something.” She threw a pinecone at nothing in particular, and imagined it hit Pip.

“Fine, I’ll go away. I just thought you could use some company.”

Keznaya closed her eyes to shut it all out. She tried to remember the prayers and meditations she had learned during her years of studies under the High Priestess, but they seemed lost beneath the weight of the events of the past few months. Her religious training had ended with the arrangement of her marriage to Yaza, an arrangement forced on her by her parents in order to establish a political alliance. That’s all she was to them, a pawn to throw away when she was no longer useful. She curled up as tightly as she could and let the warmth of the earth’s energy and the sound of the rain lull her to sleep.

“KEZ, WAKE UP!” Pip’s voice was urgent, and Keznaya woke up with such a start she smacked her head on the tree stump.

“Ow, what is it? Why are you still here?” It irritated her that he had called her Kez. That name was precious, a representation of the intimate bond between her and Paq. The rain had stopped and the long rays of an early sun shone through the trees.

“Someone’s coming,” Pip said. “You have to get out of here!”

“Are you sure? We are in a forest. There’s a million things that make noise here.” The words came out before she could stop them. They sounded petulant and spoiled. A result of the fatigue, no doubt, and a sign that what little sleep she had gotten had not been enough.

Pip buzzed right into her ear, the fly equivalent of smacking her in the face, she assumed. “I am not an idiot!”

What if they had found her? She rolled out of the hollow and ran.

“Wrong way, Kez,” Pip buzzed.

She spun on her heel, the slick forest floor making the maneuver easy.

“There she is!” a deep voice shouted from behind her. She willed her legs to carry her faster. They burned with exertion, but she could not afford to rest.

She dodged branches, roots, and rocks, deftly maneuvering through the thick forest. With each step, she pulled a little bit of the Earth’s energy up through her feet, fueling her muscles. Her body ached, but she was almost certain she could outrun them with Zorl’s assistance.

“Keep it up princess, I think you’ve almost lost them,” Pip said.

“Stop calling me that!” Keznaya shouted. “I’m not a princess. Not anymore.” She had left that title behind when she ran, and she had no desire to reclaim it.

Keznaya risked a look back to check on her pursuers. Scorched earth marked each step she had taken, forming a trail clear as day. Was it the result of her draw on the earth’s power? Had she taken too much? Her foot caught on a root and she flew forward with impossible-to-overcome momentum, slamming into the ground. Pain radiated through her body and then the rich smell of mud and leaves and pine needles filled her senses as she lay face first on the ground.

“Kez get up! They’re coming, you have to get up!”

Keznaya pushed herself up to a sitting position and looked behind her. Three men wearing the deep blue uniforms of the royal guard ran up her scorched trail. No matter how far she ran, they would be able to find her with so clear a path marking her position. She had to face them. She took a deep breath and laid back down, sinking into the mud.

“Kez, what are you doing?” Pip buzzed.

“Shhh, all is peace, all is good.” Breathing in, out, in, out, she repeated the mantra of the Great Goddess, soaking up as much energy as she could. She pulled it up through the earth, through her skin, into her veins. She let it flow through her, molded it, formed it with her thoughts and her will. Her skin tingled with power. She could control it this time, she just had to stay calm.

Keznaya stood up and faced her pursuers, mud coating her body. The three men faced her: two in the back, tall and lean with dark hair and dark eyes, bows drawn, and a third who broke her heart. Lieutenant Paq’s black hair fell in waves around his face, framing his thick eyebrows and his beautifully dark eyes. Disheveled and flushed from the hunt, he was still as handsome as ever. “I am Keznaya, Princess of Luminia, and I demand that you stop at once.” Her voice, as regal and commanding as she could manage, rang through the cool air.

“Princess,” Paq began. He looked as pained as she felt. “Please forgive us, but we must bring you back to the capitol.” He stepped forward.

“He’s bold,” Pip whispered.

“You are under arrest for the murder of Yaza Ruminoq.”

She swallowed the fear and anger that Yaza’s name caused. What he had done to her was unforgiveable: all the suggestive whispers, his lingering gaze, the way his hands always seemed find a way to brush her body when they were near each other. She wanted nothing more than to get away from the memories. Hopefully, superstition and fear would save her.

“You dare interfere with a priestess of Zorl, the all-powerful goddess of all that exists?” She let a little bit of the earth energy crackling inside her show in her eyes.

“That’s it, let them fear you,” Pip buzzed.

Paq stepped forward again. He really was bold; it was one of the things she loved about him. “I’m sorry, Princess, but it is the laws of your mother and father that require us to arrest you and bring you back for justice to be done. As a priestess of the goddess, and a princess, I’m sure you understand.”

She did understand. Both the laws of Luminia and the moral codes of the priesthood were clear: a life for a life. She hadn’t meant to kill him though, and that should matter. She didn’t deserve to die. All she wanted was her freedom. Why wouldn’t they just let her leave?

“I understand that you are trying to do what you feel is right, Lieutenant. But it was not I who ended the life of dear Yaza.” Keznaya let some of the energy spark through her fingertips. “It was the will of Zorl herself. You see her power flows through me; I am but a conduit for her great works.” She paused. The two unfamiliar soldiers looked around uncertainly, but Paq did not flinch. She let the power façade soften a bit. “I loved Yaza, as was my duty.” The lie nearly choked her, but she went. “But if the will of Zorl is that he should join her in the afterlife, then who am I to say otherwise? And if I, a princess and a priestess, cannot speak against Zorl’s will, then what chance do you have?”

The two soldiers lowered their bows slightly and avoided her crackling eyes. Hope boiled up out of the fear. It was working, they were scared. But then Paq stepped forward and spoke again. “I’m sorry, princess. It is not my place to determine your guilt. It is my duty to bring you back to the capitol.”

“They’re going to put you in a cage,” Pip whispered. “Probably even kill you. Do you want to die?”

She didn’t want to die. She wanted to live, far away and free from everyone. They would never forgive her. She felt her breath quicken, and with it the power coursing through her veins grew warmer.

She reached her hand towards Paq, the only man who had ever shown her kindness, her lifelong friend. She knew she could send out a small spark, something she had practiced on her journey. Just enough to scare him and give her a chance to run. She hesitated, remembering a very similar moment when she had reached out to stop Yaza. She remembered how the fire and electricity had flowed freely from her, unexpected and uncontrollable. That would not happen to Paq, though. This power must come from the Great Goddess, and She would never take the life of one beloved to her faithful priestess.

Perhaps sensing her hesitation, Pip whispered in her ear again. “You have no other choice. If they take you, you will die.”

She reached out to Paq, the man she was not allowed to love, just as she had reached out that fateful day to the man she was not allowed to hate.

“Just a small spark. Just enough to scare him. All you need to do is keep your emotions under control,” Pip whispered.

Movement caught her eye and she heard the unmistakable twang of a bow string being loosed. All of her panic and anger and fear flared and suddenly, once again, she felt the power inside her flow into Paq. They screamed together, an intimate and horrifying moment, as she tried to pull away, but it was too late. The smell of charred flesh once again overwhelmed her senses as she collapsed, her energy reserves completely depleted.

KEZNAYA WOKE UP alone in a stone room, dark and dirty. Cold iron chained her to a large, square plate, also made of iron. They had cut her off from the earth. Maybe that was for the best. The image of Paq’s terrified eyes, and the feeling of intimacy as he burned alive, was all she could think about, and she fought the urge to vomit.

A familiar buzzing swirled around her. “Who are these men to think they can take away what was yours? Who are they to defy the will of a deity?” Pip whispered.

“What are you still doing here?” she whispered. She appreciated his effort to help her escape, but now that it was all over, that she was about to die, she longed for solitude.

“You know, you really didn’t have a choice,” Pip whispered.

She did have a choice. She could have run, she could have given herself up. She could have done anything. Paq was dead because of her.

Pip landed on her shoulder, and to her surprise it comforted her almost as much as if a close friend had placed a hand there. “Look, princess, I understand you’re upset. But you were just defending yourself. They shouldn’t have chased you. You should be allowed to go wherever you want.”

Pip’s words struck her hard with their truth. Was she not the chosen servant of Zorl? Why else would the Great Goddess bestow these gifts upon her? Yes, she had loved Paq, but he had threatened her. She just wanted to be left alone! The iron began to heat beneath her, her rage drawing the Earth’s energy like a magnet.

The door to her cell opened and a guard she recognized as one of her pursuers stepped in. “What are you doing?” he shouted as the iron began to glow red. “You better learn your place, Witch. You’ll get what you deserve.” Then his fist came down hard on her face and she fell into darkness.

KEZNAYA STOOD BEFORE a large crowd of her own people. She was still chained to the iron plate despite her demonstration in the prison cell. It was surprising to see so many gathered, and she wondered if they were for or against her.

“Princess Keznaya, you stand on trial with the people of Luminia for the murders of Yaza Ruminoq and Lieutenant Paq Kugal. How do you plead?” Her mother’s voice cut through the cold, silent morning air. The fact that her mother was the judge at her trial did not surprise her. There had never been any love between them. Only control and obedience.

Keznaya looked around at the crowd. Familiar and unfamiliar faces filled the Central Square. Young and old watched her, waiting for her to speak. Behind them stood the palace, her home. It looked cold and bleak, with its dark gray walls and sharp edges.

Maybe a reminder of her status and an appeal to their devotion would save her. “I am princess Keznaya, priestess of Zorl, and I am guilty only of love and devotion.” A gasp rippled through the crowd. “The one responsible for these deaths is here among us. Look around you, each and every one of you can see Her. She is everywhere; She is everything. I do not presume to know Her motives, but it is clear to me that these deaths were the will of Zorl, and I just Her tool.” She breathed, letting her words echo through the square. The crowd murmured uncomfortably.

“Nice speech, princess,” Pip buzzed.

Keznaya ignored him, waiting for a sign that her words had had the intended effect.

“Blasphemy!” The shout came from deep in the crowd, where she could not see its source.

“Witch,” another called. Once these people had pretended to love her, their princess, and she had thought she had loved them. But how quickly they turned on her. People wanted to see death, they wanted to see someone punished. It gave their simple minds closure. She would show them no weakness, nor mercy.

If rage drew the power even through iron, she would rage. She thought of the despicable Yaza, the way his breath smelled like the rotten soul she was sure he had inside whenever he leaned in and whispered his disgusting desires in her ear. She thought of the way her parents handed her to him and then turned a blind eye to her misery. “It’s for the good of Luminia,” they had said. She hated them almost as much as she had hated Yaza. She felt the iron heat up, it was working!

But then her eyes met those of the two soldiers who had captured her, the ones who had watched her murder Paq. She truly hadn’t meant to kill him; he was a good man. He had always looked out for her, and she had often thought that he would have been a good husband, were she able to choose her own future. Grief stopped the rage like a rainstorm stops a wildfire, and she felt a tear slide down her skin as the iron cooled beneath her feet.

“It was Zorl’s will that they died,” she said softly. As she spoke, her rage and resolve faded. “And if it be Zorl’s will that I should die today, then let it be so. I do not know why she chose me to be her conduit, but it is clear I am not strong enough to bear this burden.” The silence was striking. No murmur from the crowd, no shuffling. They had not expected the change in her tone, it would seem, and were unprepared to react to it.

“Aw, come on Princess! We were having so much fun, you were doing so well!” Pip buzzed in her ear.

“What?” Keznaya asked. She was doing so well at what?

“I heard your call, your anguish screamed through the heavens. I thought you were strong, and fun! You had so much anger, so much potential! Don’t disappoint me now!”

Her heart stopped. “What do you mean?” she breathed.

Pip landed on her shoulder and laughed. “You are not a priestess of Zorl, my dear. You are a priestess of Pipinka, Lord of Mischief and Mayhem.” Then slowly he grew. The taunts and insults from the crowd became screams as Pip’s buzzing wings became giant and leathery. Talons dug into her shoulders like scythes. A huge, scaly, lizard-like head loomed over her with a long snout that billowed smoke. Razor teeth chomped down on her chains and flew away, wrenching her hard as she hung by her wrists. Below her the Central Square faded quickly away, as did her cold, grey home. The buildings and streets of the capitol shrank away as they flew out over the same forest that she had attempted to escape through. Her wrists and shoulders screamed in pain from hanging and fear gripped her, but also, deeper than that, she felt awed. She had been on the brink of death, and now she lifted away from her doom and delivered to the freedom she had always desired.

After what felt like hours of bone-breaking flight, Pip, or rather Pipinka, Lord of Mischief and Mayhem, dropped her in a field of white flowers and unceremoniously ripped the chains off her wrists.

“Ow!” she said, eyeing him nervously. In this form, Pip towered over her. He was larger than some of the buildings in the city. Sharp, shimmering black scales covered his body making him almost glow in the sunlight. “Who are you?”

“I told you, I am Pipinka, Lord of-“

“Yes, yes, I heard you before. But really, who are you, what is going on?”

His deep, rich voice was no longer the tiny, whirring voice she had grown accustomed to, but the tone and the cadence were the same. She found that oddly comforting. “You are my priestess. My disciple? I don’t know what I want to call it. I’ve never had a follower before.”

“But I studied, I worked hard to become a priestess of Zorl.”

“I like you, Kez, but that is one decision I will never understand. Why, exactly, did you want to team up with her? She’s so boring.” The way he drew out the word “boring” made him sound like an annoyed adolescent.

“Zorl is everything, she is beauty and life. She is these flowers, and the sun in the sky, she is-“

“Yeah yeah, she is everything. That’s what she wants everyone to think anyway. She’s such a perfect little good-all-the-time waste of worship space, though. You, on the other hand, my dear Kez, are one of a kind. You are power and rage and passion all bundled together in a nice little package.”

“I don’t have rage,” she said, but her words held no conviction, nor her heart. It had been so easy to build up the rage when she had needed it.

“Stop fooling yourself. You’re angry! You were raised in a world you had no choice in, you were screaming for me! I listened, and I came to your rescue. I am your hero!” He batted his lizard-like eyes at her. “You can’t tell me you didn’t like it at least a little bit.”

“Like what?”

“You know, the control, the power. You killed a man. Two men actually. I’m so proud of you! Taking control of your life by inflicting chaos on others. Amazing.”

Was he purring? Keznaya cringed. He was right. She had killed two men. As much as she tried to convince herself that she was not at fault, that she had no control, she knew she had wanted it to happen. Yaza needed to be punished, and Paq, despite how much she loved him, had stood in the way of her freedom.

“Oh, come on, Kez. Don’t be like that! We were made for each other. I can only do so much. People take one look at me and either scream in terror--not a terrible response, I suppose--or they swat at me like a bug.”

“You are a bug. You are literally a fly.”

“Dragon,” he corrected. “I just look like a fly when I make myself small like that. I find it’s less intimidating for other people.”

“Ok, you’re a dragon who chooses to look like a fly. Fascinating. Now tell me why I should listen to you after you made me kill two people?”

Pipinka laughed and little spurts of fire escaped his mouth. Keznaya ducked to avoid getting singed. “I didn’t make you do anything, dear young one. I simply gave you the tools.”

“I did not want to murder Lieutenant Paq! I loved him!”

“Did you really? Well I suppose that is unfortunate. Desperate times, desperate measures though, right?” He caressed her cheek with his long, thin, snake-like tail. She shuddered. He looked her straight in the eyes and gave her a toothy grin. “So it seems to me, dear Kez, that you have two options. You could stand firm in your ridiculous morality, reject me and what I offer, and I will gladly return you to the city to be hanged for witchcraft.” He paused as Keznaya considered this.

“What’s my other option?” she asked hesitantly.

“You join me, of course, and reign as queen of mischief and mayhem. Your days will be filled with frivolity and chaos. I promise an immortal life of excitement.” His eyes glittered. “What do you say?”

Keznaya dug her feet into the Earth and felt the fire and electricity trickle up her spine. It felt good. She thought of Lieutenant Paq as she considered Pipinka and his offer. She wanted to blame the dragon for the death of such a kind man, a man she loved, but in reality, Pipinka was right. He had only given her the tools. Society had created the circumstance, the pressures, which had forced her hand to use those tools.

Pipinka had been the only one who had helped her. He had tried to protect her from being face to face with her pursuers, with Paq. It was society that had murdered them. It was her parents, the king and queen of Luminia. It was the people of her country. Those were the ones who deserved to be punished. She thought of the faces of those she had once called friends taunting her as she faced death. She thought of her mother coldly condemning her to death for defending herself. “Zorl forgive me,” she said as she climbed up onto Pipinka’s back. His scales felt warm, and the way his giant muscles moved beneath her was exhilarating. “Show me the world, Pip. But first, Luminia will burn.”

About the Author

TRISTA STEELE is a writer and speech-language pathologist who can sometimes be found meandering the forests of the Pacific Northwest with her husband, son, daughter, and puppies.  When she’s not crafting stories or getting inspired by the children she works with, her
hobbies currently include knitting, gardening, and playing the ukulele.

The Magistrate’s Pillow

by Gordon Linzner

(Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine March/April 1985 )

WHUMP!

The palanquin was deposited with a jolt at the gateway of Lord Nakima’s residence. Its four bearers collapsed, panting, at the roadside.

Within the curtained cab, Fujiya yelped a protest at this final, painful indignity. Then he moaned in harmony with the creaking bamboo frame.

Fujiya thought he would have made better time traveling afoot. Certainly he’d have been more comfortable. His buttocks ached from jouncing over rough and hilly rods, his fingers were cramped from gripping with one hand the overhead strap and with the other the silk-wrapped package on his lap, and his legs were all but numb below the knees. The crimson of his traveling cloak was hidden by a layer of gray and yellow dust. Fujiya wanted a hot bath, a massage, and a bowl of warm rice wine.

His master wanted the package first.

Two youthful guards in light wooden armor and with but one sword apiece drew back the curtains and helped Fujiya out. Fujiya staggered as though drunk for the first few paces, almost tripping over his kimono, but his stern grey eyes cut short the laughter of Lord Nakima’s less-favored retainers.

“Our orders were to conduct you to Lord Nakima the moment you arrived,” said one guard, almost apologetically. “May I carry that package for you?”

Fujiya shook his head. He, too, had orders. Wordlessly, the guards hastened him through the garden in the forecourt, up the short flight of steps to the main building, and along the familiar corridor to their master’s private quarters.

Lord Nakima squatted on a straw mat in the center of the room, body bent forward, long chin thrust out, rubbing his hands together, a human praying mantis clothed in a dressing gown of plain grey cotton. His lips curled up and his brown eyes glittered as the door panel slid open. Fujiya just had time to kick off his sandals before crossing the threshold in his white toe-socks.

“You have it!” exclaimed the lord, clapping his hands.

“As you commanded.” Fujiya held out the package with both hands, while he knelt to bow.

Lord Nakima waved him forward. “Never mind the formalities now. Bring it here.” He glanced past the traveler’s shoulder at the two guards waiting uneasily outside his chamber. “Well? Have you no other duties?”

The pair bowed deep and closed the door. Fujiya heard the scrape of their sandals fade along the corridor.

The silk ripped beneath Lord Nakima’s long, anxious fingers. He tossed the cloth aside and lifted his prize into the afternoon light streaming through the lattice window.

It appeared to be an ordinary block of wood, painted black, splintered along the edges. The concave support of the neck lacked the silk padding to which Lord Nakima was accustomed. There was a drawer in which the user could store a notebook for recording stray impressions – a bedtime diary – and this slid open easily at the lord’s touch. Inside was only a scrap of paper on which one of the eight beautiful views of Lake Biwa – the one of boats sailing back from Yabase – had been sketched. Lord Nakima crumpled this into a ball and tossed it after the rent silk.

“Fool,” he muttered. Then, addressing Fujiya: “There was no difficulty about the price?”

“None, my lord. How should there be? For what you paid, you could have purchased half the pillows in Edo.”

“None like this, Fujiya. This pillow has unique properties.”

Fujiya’s head bobbed. “The seller claimed it could induce restful dreams through soothing images. He’d been renting it out nightly to local bureaucrats.”

Lord Nakima shook his head. “What a waste of potential! What a banal use for the fabled pillow of Magistrate Okinobu!”

Fujiya made no response.

Lord Nakima sighed. “I sometimes forget the gaps in your education due to your rough origins, Fujiya. In his time, Okinobu was the most renowned magistrate in Honshu, in fact in all the islands. He never resorted to torture to extract the confession required for an execution. Do you know why?”

Fujiya shrugged.

“Because at the trial he could describe every criminal detail to the guilty party, as clearly as if he’d been there. As he was, in a sense. Look at the workmanship of this pillow, Fujiya. Consider that it is more than a century old. Does it not surpass any you have ever seen?”

Fujiya bent forward, eyes focused on the object clutched by his master. “It appears quite fine, but my experience in such matters is limited.”

“Come, Fujiya. A masseur, blind from birth, could see the quality. This pillow was crafted by tengu. Those elusive, long-nosed forest goblins gave it to Okinobu after he risked his life and position to protect a favored grove of sakaki trees from woodcutters, and of course they incorporated their magic in the gift. It does far more than preserve an elaborate coiffure and keep the mattress free from hair-grease while one sleeps! The magistrate would place scraps of paper bearing the names of the disputing parties into this drawer before retiring. When this was not possible, as in the case of an unknown murderer, a paring from the victim’s nails often sufficed. The crime was re-enacted in his dreams. By dawn, Okinobu knew exactly what had happened!”

Road dust tickled Fujiya’s nose. He stifled the sneeze. “A valuable pillow, if that is so. The price still comes high. Rarely is my lord required to settle such matters personally.”

Lord Nakima lowered the pillow to his lap. “Of all my retainers, only Fujiya is permitted to speak so freely, and not only because you saved me from the earthquake. I value your advice. Listen. You know that for some time I have suspected the Lady Saisho of betraying me with a lover. More than once, I enlisted your aid setting traps for them. They proved too sly. I kept close watch these last few days, while you were away, but the man did not appear, did not so much as send a poem! Tonight, Fujiya, I shall place my wife’s name in the drawer. By morning we shall see whose head decorates a pike outside my gate!”

Fujiya took this in with widening eyes. “Such a plan outshines in subtlety the humble workings of the mind of this faithful servant of Lord Nakima.”

The lord chuckled at this overdone flattery, a private joke between himself and his retainer. “The rough journey has addled your wits, that’s all. I’ve kept you from your bath long enough. Go, Fujiya. I need you fresh and rested tomorrow.” His fingers drummed along the pillow’s edge. “It promises to be a busy day.”

AS THE LAST light of day seeped through the lattice windows of her chamber, Lady Saisho touched up the blacking on her teeth with a soft feather brush. She did not glance from her mirror as the door slid open. The serving-girl had come unbidden, but the lady recognized her modest tread.

“Forgive me, Lady Saisho. I bear distressing news.” The slight young woman prostrated herself in apology.

“Dear me,” replied the lady, after another application of the brush. “It must be serious, to upset you, Etsu. You are my rock.”

The servant nodded vigorously. “Lord Nakima knows you have a lover.”

“Really, Etsu! That is no news.” Satisfied with her teeth, Lady Saisho put down the brush and reached for a nukabukuro. The small cotton bag, filled with rice-powder, was dipped in a shallow dish of perfumed water before she smoothed it over her face to enhance her pallor.

“But now he will discover his identity!” Etsu blurted out.

Lady Saisho hesitated a fraction of a second before continuing her toilet. “How? Will you tell him?”

“I, my lady?” Etsu’s face turned pale as rice-powder at the suggestion. “Not even if I knew his name. Truly, if I did not see evidence on certain mornings that I tidied your chamber, I would not believe there was a lover.”

“So?”

“The reason for Fujiya’s trip to Naniwa is known. Lord Nakima sent him to obtain an enchanted pillow that will disclose all. He intends using it tonight.”

“This, too, is no news, Etsu. You are not the only person under this thatch roof on whom I can rely.” She smiled gently. “Your warning is no less welcome, though.”

Etsu licked her lips. “What will you do?”

“What can I do? What happens, happens. At least I will look my best. Come, Etsu, do not cry. The sun is down, and my lantern’s light uncertain. I need your help if these stubborn eyebrows are to be properly plucked.”

“EEE-YAH!”

The shout echoed in every room, heard even by the sentries at the gate. Feet, sandaled and unshod alike, caused corridor floorboards to shiver. From either wing of the main residence came confused shouts.

“What is it? What happened?”

“A fox has made its den beneath the house!”

“Beneath the lord’s chamber!”

“Nonsense! It is the old lord’s ghost! I heard the priest warn Lord Nakima not to neglect his father’s shrine!”

“Superstitious fools! It is only a burglar!”

“What! A band of brigands!”

“Ninja! Assassins!”

In Lord Nakima’s chamber, there was no need for rumors and wild guesses. Fujiya reached the door panel at the same moment as two of the night watch, who approached with swords drawn. Another pair came up as the retainer yanked the panel aside, tearing the opaque paper. Behind them were Lady Saisho and her servant Etsu.

“My husband! Is he ill? Is he killed?”

Fujiya silenced her with a gesture. Taking an iron lantern from a guard, the retainer entered the dark room. His candle’s flame flickered weirdly, reflecting off the sheen of perspiration that coated Lord Nakima’s bare torso.

“I see you!” cried Lord Nakima. He knelt with one knee on his sleeping mat, covers thrust aside. The long sword kept by his bedside was gripped tightly in both hands. He brandished the weapon at his visitor.

Fujiya flattened against the wall, well out of his lord’s reach. Foolishly, he had neglected to bring his own sword. Although he would not have dared to use it against his master.

The armed guards followed, also staying beyond Lord Nakima’s range. They were good warriors because they knew how to kill. They were not great warriors, because they did not know how to best an opponent without killing.

Lord Nakima’s pupils were dilated. His mouth was twisted in a horrific grin. A dry cackle escaped those lips. His head jerked from side to side, like a wild fowl’s.

“Monster!” he shrieked. “I know you lurk here! I hear the rustle of your footsteps! I see the great green scales of your body, smell the acid of your breath! Come! Try to grasp me in your pincers! I’ll chop off your legs one by one! Your armor will not save you!”

“Amaterasu preserve us!” moaned a guard. “Our lord is mad!”

“Not mad,” whispered another. “Possessed by some demon!”

Fujiya pondered this. “If so,” he said, “the devil must be exorcised, and our lord ritually purified.”

Four guards now stood within the chamber with Fujiya. Lady Saisho and Etsu watched from the threshold. More guards and half-dressed servants filled the corridor. Their whispered speculations on the nature of the disturbance reminded the lady of a swarm of crickets.

In other circumstances, she’d have smiled at the image.

“I will send for the priest,” offered Etsu.

Fujiya shook his head. “Minutes may count. We must get Lord Nakima to the temple.”

“Cease your chittering, fiend, and do battle!” Spittle trickled down Nakima’s long jaw. His sword slashed out. Its edge was a lightning flash in the wavering lantern glow. Since the lord held to his mat, however, none of the retainers were in real danger.

So far.

“Easy to say,” an older guard replied to Fujiya, “but I do not think Lord Nakima wishes to go. We could overpower him, but I for one would not risk injuring my lord.”

“Nor I,” Fujiya argued, “though he may do himself greater injury.” Taking a deep breath, Lord Nakima’s most trusted retainer moved toward his master.

One pace.

Two. Three.

“Hai! At last you leave your foul nest, monster! Now know the taste of honest steel!”

“I am man, not monster, Lord Nakima.”

“Father of lies!”

“Look.” Fujiya raised the lantern until it shone full on his face. “Remember Fujiya? The gambler who dragged you from certain death when the earth opened under your feet in Yakato, and to whom you gave this position as reward?”

“Pincers. Claws. Grinding mouth-parts.” Lord Nakima’s facial muscles twitched. “Fujiya?”

“You’ve fallen into another pit, my lord. A deeper one. You cling to the edge by your fingernails. Let me pull you free once more.”

“Bristles like spikes.” Fujiya stood just within Nakima’s reach now.

The sword licked out.

Lady Saisho gasped, and two guards muttered in astonishment. Fujiya’s dressing gown hung limp where the blade had cut through cotton. None could tell if flesh had also been severed. Still, Fujiya stood. The wound, if any, was not serious.

Fujiya swallowed. “Lord Nakima. Please. Let me help you. Give me the sword.”

Fujiya’s free hand reached slowly forward. The fingers trembled, unnoticed in the dimness. Now, if Lord Nakima chose, he could lop of Fujiya’s hand.

Now his arm, to the elbow.

The guards began whispering again. Lord Nakima’s eyes seemed to glaze.

“Quiet!” spat Fujiya.

The corridor fell silent.

Fujiya took another step, placing his life wholly in his master’s hands. He leaned forward stiffly.

“The sword, my lord.”

Steel flashed. Etsu stifled a scream with her sleeve.

Lord Nakima presented the weapon hilt first to his retainer.

Fujiya let out a breath he had not known he’d held.

“A nightmare,” said the lord through dry, cracking lips. His limbs quavered. “Yet so vivid! I heard the monster stalking me, Fujiya. Even when I’d woken. I was sure...”

Fujiya placed the weapon on its stand. “The priest will cleanse these horrors from your mind, my lord. At the temple.”

Two guards came forward, blades sheathed. Each took an arm to aid Lord Nakima. The lord came unprotesting, pausing only to meet Fujiya’s gaze.

“Come with me, Fujiya.”

“As you wish.”

Lady Saisho slipped into the chamber and busied herself straightening her husband’s bedclothes. Her hand rested for a moment on the wooden pillow. She looked inquiringly at Fujiya.

The retainer nodded sharply and turned to follow the guards. Already a palanquin was being readied for travel, bearers roused, procession lanterns lit.

Etsu watched her mistress from the threshold.

“I want to be alone at the scene of my husband’s tragedy, Etsu. I wish to add my prayers for his recovery.”

“If my lady requires assistance...?”

“I said alone!” Then, softer, “Yes, Etsu. Find my copy of Tsurayuki’s Kokinshu. I will have you read some poetry at my bedside, in a little while.”

Etsu bowed and slid the door shut. Lady Saisho listened to the delicate footsteps wane.

She opened the drawer of the pillow as far as it would go. Her name, in angry calligraphy, stared up at her. Lady Saisho ignored the slip of paper. Bracing herself, she yanked on the open drawer. With a crack, a thin piece of wood snapped in two. She shoved the splintered halves of the false back up her sleeve. A rolled sheet of paper, twisted closed at both ends, now lay exposed. This, too, vanished up her sleeve.

THE DAWN WAS cool and clear. Lady Saisho was awake to greet it. Dismissing her attendants, Etsu included, she walked alone in the garden. She said she wished to meditate.

With the first grey sunlight had come a messenger from the temple. Lord Nakima would recover, but he must stay in retreat at the monastery for perhaps a week, perhaps a month. Lady Saisho expressed the proper sentiments. She was fond of Lord Nakima, and wished him neither mad nor dead – unless, of course, the lives of her lover and herself were at stake.

When she was certain that none observed her, Lady Saisho drew the twisted paper from her sleeve and opened one end. A tiny green beetle landed on her palm. Its shining body, with white spots on the end of the abdomen below the wing cover, contrasted pleasingly with her pale skin.

“Poor thing. You must be hungry.” So it should be, having eaten all the leaves that had been wrapped within the paper to keep it alive. Lady Saisho placed the insect gently on the leaf of a berry bush. “Gorge yourself, little one. You have saved more than one life today.”

She then buried the broken strips of wood beneath the bush, where disturbed ground would be least noticeable.

How wise of Fujiya, to guess Lord Nakima’s plan and take measures to preserve his lady’s life. And, of course, his own. How clever his hands, to fashion that false back in secret on the road from Naniwa!

Lady Saisho smiled, exposing blackened teeth, anticipating other clever things Fujiya’s hands would do tonight.

About the Author

GORDON LINZNER is founder and former editor of Space and Time Magazine, and author of three published novels and dozens of short stories in F&SF, Twilight Zone, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, and numerous other magazines and anthologies. He is a member of HWA and a lifetime member of SFWA.

Three Hundred Pieces

by David Busboom

(Originally published in Heroic Fantasy Short Stories [Flame Tree, 2017])

THERE ARE SIX of them when I wake, just visible within the faint glow of the dying fire. One of them steps closer; she’s short, muscular, her face partially covered by thick bone-white hair. Bright blue eyes. She holds the point of a rich-hilted longsword level with my nose.

I slipped out of Radnahall yesterday morning, as Xer-Noxam and his ilk slept off another night of heavy drinking. It’s nearly a two-day trek to the snow witches’ camp; at the end of the first, when Radnahall was a dim smear of light on the horizon behind me, I sat down for a scant meal of dried meat and a few mouthfuls of melted snow. I closed my eyes for only a moment—

My fingers pluck at my falchion.

“Yphrum has no love for trespassers,” the one with the sword on me says. “His wrath is bitter.”

I almost draw the sword by mistake.

That voice! Familiar, beneath a certain thickness.

I look at her face—what I can see behind her hair in the dim light. It’s far too pale, the eyes too bright-blue—but the features are undeniably hers.

“Droya?”

Her expression falters. The sword tip lowers a fraction of an inch. I watch her eyes search my face, but she doesn’t know me.

Another mentions Yphrum again, says something about outsiders and punishment. This one has a prominent scar on her face, as from the slash of a blade, but her skin—all of their skin—is the same bone-white, their eyes the same bright blue.

I’m not listening.

“Droya. Is that you?”

She stares at me in silence, confused and distressed.

With certainty come tears. “It’s me.” My voice catches. “It’s Koruth.”

“Let’s waste no more time,” a third says. “Yphrum is waiting.”

I look at the rest of them for the first time since Droya spoke. When I stand they reach for hidden weapons below their furs.

“Say to your master that I left his land without a fight. I’ll go at once.”

“You men always plead,” the scarred one says. “It’s always fruitless.” She draws a long dagger.

I take a long breath, weighing my odds of escape. I look at one face, then another, and settle back on Droya’s: she looks away, into the dying fire, lips pursed. After a moment she meets my gaze again.

“We must return with you,” she said.

I hold up empty hands and they close in, take my sword. I can’t help but smile.

Droya is alive!

I WAS A CHILD, dark and thin, wearing a thin and ragged linen shirt. I stoked my small fire in a dark field with rags of snow, listening for wolves in the darker woods beyond. My father was a hewer of wood. I crouched by the fire and thought of him, shot in the back with a Cro arrow and again just below the heart when he swung round. Leaning against our house with blood running out of his shirt. I couldn’t look away. After a while he sat on the ground and didn’t move.

He and my mother dead three days. The Cros. Gods how the villagers had fallen before them. The younger women carried off by those creatures. I watched them carry Droya off screaming, the daughter of my mother’s friend, also dead. Sixteen years old, the sole object of my burgeoning adolescent desires; often I’d thought of her shapely thighs, her shallow navel. She was darker then, her skin and hair only a shade or two lighter than my own. I at twelve could neither read nor write and had only begun to notice women, but in me already brooded a knowledge of mindless violence.

I ran away. I wandered west, a solitary migrant across the flat islands and black waters.

IT HAD BEEN sleeting for six days when I arrived in Radnahall and it was sleeting yet. There were boards laid across the muddy slush and I followed them into town. Another man was coming up from the other way and we met on the narrow planks. The man before me swayed slightly. He held a cup loosely in one hand.

“Get out of my way,” he said.

I wasn’t going to do that and I saw no use in discussing it. I kicked the man in the jaw. He went down and got up again. “I’m goin’ to kill you,” he said.

He swung with the cup and I ducked and he swung again and I stepped back. When I hit him the man shattered the cup against the side of my head. I went off the boards into the slush and the man lunged after me with an immense knife and tried to stick it in my eye. I fended him off with my hands and he almost pierced my leathern gauntlets. I kept trying to reach my belt for my falchion. “Kill you,” the man said.

We slogged about in the dark, almost coming out of our boots. I had my sword now and we circled crabwise and when the man lunged at me I cut his shirt open. The man threw down his knife and clutched his bleeding chest. “Kill,” he said, and waded forward a step before going face down in the slush.

The rain had stopped and several men were standing along the walkway watching. They were all armed with huge clubs and blades of their own. One of them turned the fallen man over, while two others held their weapons on me.

“That’s a nice cut,” one of the men said. Then, to me, “Are you finished?”

“Finished?”

“Finished. ‘Cause if you want to kill this man you can’t do it here.”

I looked at the sky, then at the man in the slush, then at the man who had spoken.

“Is he finished?” I said.

The slush-covered man pushed himself up and spat.

“I am,” he said. “Where’s my knife?”

The town guards—for that’s what they were, I realized—helped him find his knife and sent him on his way, still bleeding. I wiped my sword on my trousers and sheathed it.

“You a sellsword?” one of the guards asked, evidently their leader.

“Maybe,” I said. “Who do you want me to fight?”

The guard ignored me. “Get him cleaned up and give him some food,” he said to the others. “Xer-Noxam will want to see him.”

THE MOON HAD not risen, and torches alone lit the garden as I sat before the table of Xer-Noxam, unofficial lord of the Western Isles. The ancient, sallow-skinned Cro sat on a throne at my left, as much unlike a chieftain of that fierce, fair-haired race as a man could be.

A beautiful girl stood at his elbow, refilling his goblet. He kept her busy.

I drew off my gauntlets and leaned closer to one of the roaring torches, letting the heat soak into my frozen bones.

“The snow witches are becoming a menace,” Xer-Noxam said. “They trudge about like ghosts in their white furs, always in groups, hissing like shades. They still avoid Radnahall, but it won’t be long before they cross the trees.”

I watched Xer-Noxam as he spoke, struggled to hold the contempt from my face.

“You’re sure they’ll come?”

“They’ll come,” he said. “They’re already making life miserable for us with this cold.”

In Xer-Noxam’s den, merriment thundered beyond the low ceiling of smoke, where rascals gathered in every stage of rags and tatters—sly cutpurses, leering counterfeiters, quick-fingered thieves, swaggering bravoes with their strident-voiced women clad in tawdry finery. Native rogues were the dominant element—dark-skinned, dark-eyed Islanders like me, with daggers at their girdles—but there were wolves of half a dozen outland nations there as well, most of them deserters from defeated armies. A few Croan chiefs and warriors, formally courteous but plainly hampered by their tribal affinities, and even a nine-foot-tall renegade giant.

Xer- Noxam continued, “They gather in a big, oval tent in front of their smaller home tents, and chant and moan and—”

“You want me to kidnap one for you?” I let ice into my tone. “I’m sure you and your warriors have more knowledge of woman-stealing than I could ever attain.”

The Cro thrust his muzzle into his goblet of frothing ale.

“By Weh,” he said at last, blowing the foam from his lips. “It wasn’t my tribe that stole your wenches. I haven’t been a true chief in decades, ask anyone here.” He smiled and adopted a sympathetic tone. “We’ve all got baggage. But I’m offering you three hundred pieces of silver to get rid of the witches. Might be best to wait until they’re all inside that big tent and set it on fire.” He laughed and blew a slobbery kiss in the air.

“It would comfort you to kill a few dozen women?”

“Hardly women,” he said. “One or two are a match for a giant. They can freeze a man’s blood from a thousand paces. I suggest you take them unawares. Burn them down.”

I said nothing.

Xer-Noxam leaned closer. “My men say you handle yourself well,” he said. “But I know others who might try it for less, if you’re squeamish.”

I stared at the table and shook my head, remembered learning to fight in places like this one. I fought with fists, with feet, with sticks or knives. All races, all breeds. Men of queer languages and far lands. Standing over them bleeding in the mud, just for a meal.

“Three hundred pieces, then.”

Xer-Noxam leaned back with a comfortable sigh.

“When you bring proof it’s done,” he said. “Heads, fingers, hearts, the like. Now be gone, friend, for the lady and I would converse on such matters as concern not children.” He turned to the ale wench. “Yes, you….”

THEY BRING ME the rest of the way north, into their populous camp, before the canopied throne of their secret monarch. Under the great dome of the largest ratty tent they tremble before the gleaming throne—gold-paneled, pearl-inlaid. An emperor's wealth in gems sewn into the silken canopy.

The splendor of the throne almost overwhelms the glitter of the pale, bejeweled figure upon it. A tall, slim, yet broad-shouldered man, with bone-white skin like that of the women and a stone-bald pate; over his ornate silver armor hangs a loose woolen cloak, dyed purple. He has no trace of a beard, like a child. His thin lips pull back in a wolf-grin that makes his face look like a skull, and he locks eyes with me. His are the brightest blue I’ve ever seen, with neither brows nor lashes.

Is this the man who sent the crazed, slobbering Cros to our village, to kick and swing and cut until the ground was slick with blood?

I stand erect and grim before the throne in a resentful semblance of submission, arms gripped fast by the scarred one and Droya, though the latter’s hold seems less stalwart. I’ve dreamed of her touch since I was a young boy, but never like this.

“I am Yphrum,” the witchmaster says.

Did I watch my house burn because of this man? Did he beget my days of begging, my days of theft? My days of fear and hiding?

He regards me with strange serenity, inclining his long neck, and looks as though he was born with power. “Bend a knee.”

I move in the women’s grasp as the scarred one tries to force me down. Yphrum’s scintillating eyes glow with a feline light. Rage roils in my belly and I glare contempt at him as I allow myself to kneel with the women.

My hope of revenge, abandoned years ago, returns as though I never stopped fostering it.

“I grow old, boy,” Yphrum says. “Is it so bad of you young men to indulge me?”

I make myself bow, not trusting myself to speak. A scornful word could mean my swift death; a retinue of women guards the entrance behind me, all armed with spears.

The women bring me closer.

I look him in the face, now only a few feet away. It almost glows, his eyes sparkling with a cold glimmer that doesn’t match his lazy smile. Something in his expression is vaguely inhuman.

“Do you speak?”

I say nothing, wait for an opportunity. A little closer and I’ll bite the creature’s face off. “Hark, boy,” Yphrum raises an admonitory finger. His hands are long and delicate. “It’s a chancy thing to refuse me. You must speak if you’re able.”

“Yes,” I say through clenched teeth.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Koruth.”

Yphrum scowls, fingers wandering to his shoulder to brush at his cloak.

“You seek fame and fortune? Did the fat Cro of Radnahall send you? We—they—” he gestures to the gathered women, “are preparing to take that place.”

“I was at Radnahall,” I admit.

“I care little for it,” Yphrum says. “Save it will strengthen my fledgling nation. And I hear the women are excellent.”

He half-lifts his hand in dismissal, then pauses, blue eyes resting behind my left shoulder.

Then Droya’s voice, in a barely audible whisper behind my ear.

“I remember you, Koruth.”

And she lets go of my arm.

I reach for the scarred one’s waist and find my falchion where she’s hung it edge-back. I draw it with such speed that the scarred witch’s fingers still grip my right arm for a moment even as blood leaps from her severed wrist.

She howls and clutches at her new stump, and I shift to face Yphrum, intending to cleave the sorcerer’s skull—

—but Droya is faster. She lunges straight-armed, her own sword held out before her.

The blade pierces the old man’s breastplate and pins him back against the chair. Yphrum shrieks, convulsing like an impaled insect. His cry weakens into a ragged wheeze, and then he is still.

Except for the scarred one, who moans steadily on the floor, the women are dead quiet. There are close to thirty of them gathered in the immense tent, and each of them gawks at their dying master—as well as at Droya and I—in stunned silence.

Then all is fury.

They pour towards me, screaming, but their lances aren’t meant for such close quarters, and they didn’t expect Droya’s betrayal. We cut three of them down almost at once, I with my falchion and she with a pair of long daggers snatched from the scarred one.

She is nerves and sinews of steel and fire, bound together with the perfect coordination, the fighting instinct—and such lithe grace. Her blades flash like lightning.

One woman runs full at me, swinging a great two-handed sword, and misses so narrowly that she trims some of the hair from my outermost fur. My own sword, glancing from the thin mail on her shoulder, nonetheless rends the armor and draws blood. The women swarm around me, bring me down, but Droya bears me back out of the melee.

Then the air ripples in the tent and all is still again. The host of witches stops and turns almost as one, as though they all felt hands grip their shoulders at the same moment.

Droya’s stopped, too, staring at Yphrum’s throne with the rest. I follow their collective gaze—and match their gapes.

Yphrum is gone.

Droya’s longsword still protrudes from the chair’s backrest, but the witchmaster is nowhere to be seen. Not even his blood remains on the blade.

I turn, half expecting to see him reappear among the women, when chaos erupts again.

Most of them charge for the throne, stumbling and trampling over each other to claim the precious stones encrusted there, the sword embedded there, the throne itself.

Did they not believe Yphrum dead so long as he occupied the chair?

I fear the opposite. The sorcerer was dead, or close enough. He’s escaped somehow. The thought quickens my pulse and sends a shiver down my spine.

Those not squabbling for treasure or position hack new exits through the canvas walls or hang back in a sort of reserved awe. Droya is among the latter.

She stiffens when I touch her arm, but leads me out after I nod to the nearest hole. I stay close behind her. The rest seem to have forgotten us.

I remember my charge, Xer-Noxam’s demand of proof.

“Give me a moment,” I say, and run back into the tent. I creep around the surging bodies near the throne for a moment, parrying one woman’s half-hearted swing, and emerge with the scarred one’s severed hand tucked in my furs.

Outside, women run to and fro in confusion or joy or madness, bleeding and cursing and sobbing. The tent begins to sway and buckle, and Droya leads me away before it settles and the women reorganize.

At a safe distance she stops and examines me, holding my shoulders at arms’ length.

“I remember you at last,” she says, and sits down in the snow. “Sit.”

I glance over my shoulder, and Droya shoots me a disapproving look. “Look about. We’re alone. You fear me?”

I wince at the suggestion and sit beside her.

“I’m glad you came here.”

“Oh?” Concealing my delight may be the hardest thing I’ve done today. Sitting next to her, even after all that’s happened, I’m almost twelve again.

She recalls to me being dragged from her father’s house to Yphrum’s harem, the change the sorcerer forced upon them all: granting them one strength at the cost of another—near-unnatural prowess and ability replacing identity and free will.

I want to reach out and pull her to me, but dare not. Who knows what strange powers lie dormant in her from Yphrum’s treachery?

“When were you to raid Radnahall?” I ask instead. “There were fewer of you here than many believed.”

“In less than a week’s time,” she says. “Yphrum had agents in the town. Some Cro tribesmen, a giant. They were to help us when we attacked.”

“I’ll warn Xer-Noxam when I return. Maybe he’ll give me more coin.” I pause. “Is Yphrum dead?”

Her face is hard. “I don’t know.”

“You should come with me.”

“No.”

“Because you look like one of them?” I gesture back toward the camp. “I’d see that you weren’t harmed—”

“I am one of them. None of us was born this way. We have that in common, at least.”

I falter, realizing the foolishness of my words.

“What will you do?”

She shrugs. “There were no leaders among us, not even any real friends. Only Yphrum. He made sure of that. We’ll tear each other apart or go our separate ways soon enough.”

“Then why not come with me?”

She stares hard at me, thinking. There is little warmth in her face.

“Because there’s nothing for me where you’re going,” she says at last. “Our families are dead, our homes gone. There’s nothing to go back to, and nothing I want in Radnahall.”

“Then what will you do?”

She looks back toward the camp. “Maybe I can help some of these women. Perhaps Yphrum’s mercenaries left some alive who still hope for their return. If he does still live, I won’t let them return to him.”

“Admirable,” I say, meaning it despite my disappointment. “But what if they just want to kill you?”

“Then I’ll fight and die with them,” she says. “But after this long, my fate lies with them, one way or another.”

“You can’t—” I start to say, but stop at her glare. She looks at me, then, her expression hard but not unkind.

“Perhaps we’ll meet again.” She doesn’t quite achieve a consoling tone, but I appreciate her words. “I hope we do,” she adds.

“As do I,” I say, trying to smile.

The silence settles between us, and at last Droya reaches out and half-holds me in an awkward embrace that’s withdrawn almost as abruptly as it’s extended.

“Until then.” She walks back toward the camp.

“Until then.” I watch her go.

I consider following her, but decide against it. If there’s nothing for Droya in the town, there’s even less for me among those women. I’m certain they’ll kill me if I return to their midst, with or without Droya.

Besides, I have three hundred pieces waiting for me in Radnahall.

About the Author

DAVID BUSBOOM’S work has appeared in such venues as Shock Totem, Unnerving Magazine, the Norwegian American, and the Saturday Evening Post. In 2017 he co-wrote and co-produced the microbudget short film “I Was a Teenage Nosferatu,” and his debut novella, Nightbird, was published by Unnerving in 2018. He lives in Central Illinois with his partner and their dog.

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Copyright Information

MYTHIC

A Quarterly Science Fiction & Fantasy Magazine

ISSUE # 15 SUMMER 2020

Copyright © 2020 by Founders House Publishing LLC

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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and used here with their permission.

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Published by Founders House Publishing LLC

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