aoife`s kiss - White Cat Publications

AOIFE'S KISS
December 2012
Stories
5
13
21
30
36
40
42
48
60
67
70
72
79
D. Gansen: Just Another Cochoc Vys
Wayne Carey: Property Values
Ken Liu: The Messenger’s Tale
Meryl Ferguson: A Life In Trade
Jen Hansum: The Seal King
Daniel Algara: The Mage Of Manera
Lorraine Pinelli Brown: The Heisenberg Principle
Jennifer Rachel Baumer: Harp’s World: Finding
Lives In The Balance
Jennifer Juneau: Broken
Bryan Wein: Lakeside: An Old Dream
Jamie Lackey: Sleeping Beauty
Chris Zollner: The Kindred
Tim McDaniel: Season’s Greetings
Poems
00
20
55
56
00
66
71
78
84
90
Wanda A. Wallace: Switches
Suzanne Sykora: Rune Stones
Christina Sng: Gaea’s Eulogy
Shelly Bryant: Jade-Tiger
Christina Sng: The Monolith
Rone Wisten: Forever Love
JD DeHart: Rusted World
Amanda Jo Angleberger: Suffocation Between
Octopus Arms
Richard H. Fay: Pixies In The Porridge
Shelly Bryant: Apocalypse, Now And Again
Features
18
Sweet Tooth reviewed by Ryan David Muirhead
Illustrations
00
Richard H. Fay: Pixies In The Porridge
THE STAFF OF AOIFE'S KISS:
Tyree Campbell - Editor
HERIKA RAYMER - ASSISTANT EDITOR
J ALAN ERWINE - WEBMASTER
Cover art “Spirit of the Tsunami” by Laura Givens
Cover design by Laura Givens
Acknowledgements:
Vol. XI, No. 3
December 2012
Aoife’s Kiss [ISSN 1558-9749] is published quarterly on the 1st day of March, June, September, and
December in the United States of America by Sam's Dot Publishing, P.O. Box 782, Cedar Rapids,
Iowa, 52406-0782, a White Cat Publications, LLC, Company. Copyright 2012 by Sam's Dot
Publishing. All rights revert to authors and artists upon publication except as noted in selected
individual contracts. Nothing may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from
the authors and artists. Any similarity between places and persons mentioned in the fiction or semifiction and real places or persons living or dead is coincidental. Writers and artists guidelines are
available online at www.samsdotpublishing.com/guidelines.htm. Guidelines are also available upon
request from Tyree Campbell, P.O. Box 782, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, USA, 52406-0782, if request is
accompanied by a self-addressed #10 envelope with a first-class US stamp. Editor: Tyree Campbell.
Subscriptions: $25 for one year [4 issues], $44 for two years [8 issues]. Single copies $8.00 postage
paid in the United States. Subscriptions to Canada: $30 for one year, $54 for two years. Single copies
$9.00 postage paid to Canada. U.S. and Canadian subscribers remit in U.S. funds. All other countries
inquire about rates.
Meet Nyx.
She’s alone on a remote world in the midst of a struggle for resources.
She’s been ordered to kill someone who has not been identified.
The nemesis who haunts her past is in charge of the opposition.
An anthropologist wants her ass.
A professional killer wants the rest of her.
And she can’t swim in the rivers.
She’s a special operative with carte blanche to stack bodies like cordwood, if necessary, to
accomplish her mission. Training and a dark past have emptied her of all emotions. Trust is a tool.
Sex is a weapon. Loyalty is a blunt instrument. And there is no place whatsoever for sentiment in her
work . . . until now.
Meet the Malasy. Lemuroid, humanoid, intelligent, sentient, sentimental. Truth is a must in
interpersonal relations, and erotic stimulation is the human equivalent of a handshake. They are
covered with chinchilla-like fur. And you won’t believe what they do with their tails. Nyx has to work
among them. Her life is about to change. It’s dangerous, even fatal, to become her friend. But it is
always fatal to be her enemy.
Meet Nyx. Carefully.
" . . . uncompromising . . . enough fights, chases, and explosions to slake the thirst of
any lover of high-octane SF . . . a bloody good science fiction story."
~ Edward Cox, [UK] reviewer
Order your copy of Nyx: Malache today from The SDP Bookstore. Simply log onto
www.sdpbookstore.com and go to the Novels section.
Nyx: Mystère
It's the second SF novel of its kind.
It won't be the last . . .
Nyx is ordered to find and kill Mystere, a bomb-maker. Nyx has zero information
regarding the bomber's true identity or the motive behind the attacks. At a blast site she
meets an amnesiac, Zinc, who may possess info about Mystere, if she could be made to
remember. Meanwhile, intrigue at Blacklight Section finds the section chief, Deven,
replaced with a double, and rogue agents have been sent to turn Nyx or kill her.
Isolated, and under impossible orders, Nyx has few resources to marshal...until a
surprise from her past shows up.
" . . . racing action, a twisting plot, and locations and characters that are nothing short of
intriguing . . . " Edward Cox-Gardner, reviewer [UK]
www.sdpbookstore.com . . . in the Novels section
Fear Stalks the City
“Rolls over you like a raging storm out of the Gulf of Mexico. Hold on or be swept away! Charles Gramlich, author of
Witch of Talera
“Full of suspense, Russian spies and a monster as old as the Tsars.” Jeani Rector, editor of The HorrorZine
Switches
By Wanda A. Wallace
Light switches are disappearing, replaced by computer chips,
Gadgets to sense presence, then prompt "needed" illumination
Do you not find it just a tad eerie as that light switches on all by itself?
Or worse, the responses are too often delayed within windowless offices
As computers deign to detect you, waiting there in the dark
Worse yet, you could be in a latrine and register surprise
That natural movement's not movement enough to keep on lights!
Programmers' sadistic decision rules presume timing and shifting, hard to do…
Leaving you abandoned, groping for exits as jutting sinks yield little mercy
Stumbling, sprawling, flickers finally make all the difference
No clue how to turn on or keep active motion detectors
How long or how much to gyrate left a complete mystery…
Were there instructions posted alongside, would serve little purpose without some light
So instead, you must dance alone in pitch black, hoping it might prove to be enough
Once lit, watch out! If you sit, think, don't stir, that causes "lights out!"
Must now learn clear paths out the door of places without switches
As treks, when left in the dark, prove increasingly treacherous
Those sophisticated sensors malfunction, easily fooled by overcast days
They burn at high noon, go out at midnight, become insensitive or too much so
Wearing down 'til unreliable in avoiding hazards
The reality is computer chips may weaken or fail
Give no security or safety, without real-time repair
Inevitably leading to demands for real "progress" toward some backup device
Until we find "new" conveniences, at each doorway, just a bit off to the side,
Rediscovered manual switches permitting override
Just Another Cothoc Vys
by D. Gansen
Sapper fire began to spray the field. Lt. Renfro and his
men dived into craters and ditches along the line. “Shit,”
Renfro said between clenched teeth. He crammed himself
against the wall of the shallow crater and breathed hard.
The mingled odor of explosives, sweat, burnt hair and
flesh assaulted his nostrils. “War stinks,” he muttered. War
was hot, too. Even morning was stifling on the planet of
Banador. He pushed up his face shield to wipe a drop of
sweat from the tip of his nose and made eye contact with
the five men who had jumped into the crater with him.
They expected him to know what to do. He was only six
months out of Patrol Academy, but it had been six months
of hard fighting in First Unit of Patrol Second Division,
always among the first salvos to be fired at the enemy.
Unlike the mock combat at Academy, real combat was a
learn quick or die kind of education. Renfro had learned
quick and become one of the good officers needed for this
galactic war that had raged for hundreds of years.
He knew the enemy, even if he didn’t understand
them. The Cothoc Vystrians who were trying to kill him
were humans in that they had emigrated from Earth in the
Great Exodus with the ancestors of everybody else who
now lived in the galaxy. There were, however, subtle
differences between Renfro and them. He had green eyes,
a normal human color, while ninety percent of the
Vystrians had yellow eyes and just as many had bright red
hair. He didn’t like to point it out, but the majority of
Vystrians were left-handed, and so was he.
The professors at Academy had called them an
“insular people”. More like “inbred” Renfro thought. They
had isolated themselves on their galaxy-edge planet for so
long that they were all very much alike. These Cothoc
Vystrians who were trying to kill him today were the
worst, though. They were a zealous and proselytizing sect
which had goaded their people into empire-building. It
ticked Renfro off when prisoners tried to preach to him. He
would’ve killed a few of them, but he was one of the good
guys and he could only kill them if they were armed.
Being a good guy sucked sometimes. But today, they were
all armed and he could kill them until they gave up or until
they killed him. At least, that’s how Renfro saw it.
The lieutenant keyed his helmet mike and shouted
over the pop of the sapper fire. “Ferber! Where are you
and how many men you got?”
“Jesus Christ!” the sergeant replied in an equally loud
voice. “I thought the rapid sappers were cleared!”
A shell exploded fifty yards away and showered the
crater with dirt. Renfro spat out some of the dirt and
said,”Obviously, they weren’t.”
Ferber reported, “I think I’m on your nine. I got six
men with me in a goddam small crater! Can hardly move!”
Another sweep of incandescent missiles screamed
over the heads of the huddled men. The sapper shots didn’t
pierce like metal projectiles; they hit and burned like hot
needles. Body armor could absorb them, but a direct hit
cooked flesh well done.
Renfro looked up at the tiny bright lights that were
streaming over his head. The sweep lasted three seconds,
passed over, then returned three seconds later. From his
observations he could tell that the gun was directly in front
of his position, about fifty yards away, and manned by
idiots. The regularity of their sweep said it all.
He considered all the weapons in his personal arsenal:
long range sapper rifle, sapper sidearm, bayonet, dagger,
and a selection of grenades. The grenades would work, but
he had used his most potent ones already. “Anybody got an
H4?” he asked towards the five dirty faces close to his. He
was offered three.
“Have to stand up to get ‘em that far,” Private
Gilliland said, then flinched with the rest of them when
another shell exploded and another shower of dirt
threatened to fill their hiding place.
Renfro had already decided that of the men in the
crater, he was the most likely to be able to make the throw.
He was tall and fit and he liked to blow up Vystrians. He
would have three seconds to spot the sapper. Plenty of
time, he told himself.
“Get ready to go!” he ordered. “We’ll have to get
through before the other emplacements can react.”
He could hold two of the powerful explosive devices
in one hand, so he might as well throw that many. He
adjusted his face shield and waited for the spray of white
pinpoints to pass, then he sprang up. “One thousand one,”
he said. He spied the sapper. He pulled the pins that
started the timers on the grenades. “One thousand two.” He
paused to let the timers run, and pulled back his arm. “One
thousand three!” He hurled the weapons. His timing was a
little off and the explosion bigger than he had expected. He
heard the roar, saw the flash, felt the impact, and then . . .
and then he slowly became aware of voices. He opened his
eyes. A med tech was leaning over him.
“You’re okay, Lieutenant,” the tech said. “Just
knocked out for awhile.”
Renfro sat up. He was beside the crater, but the guns
had gone quiet. The injured and dead were being removed
from the field. “Looks like I slept through the whole damn
war,” he complained.
“That was quite the boom, L.T.,” Sergeant Ferber said,
crouching beside Renfro. “Knocked you on your ass and
blasted the Vys into molecules. Two H4’s mighta been
overkill.
“No such thing,” Renfro grunted.
*
*
*
Late in the afternoon, Renfro emerged from his tent
and tried to inhale some fresh air, but there wasn’t any.
The only air available still smelled like war. The searing,
dusty atmosphere was saturated with the fumes outgassed
by the sun-heated plastic fibers of the tents; the stomachturning smell of the potent antiseptic Patrol sprayed
everywhere, and the accumulated body odor of thousands
of men who were as sweaty as he was. At least he had
gotten rid of the body armor and put on a clean uniform,
though it was already damp and beginning to cling to him.
“Goddam Banador,” he muttered.
His division had been on the planet for sixty days,
beating the Vystrians back into a few fortified cities.
Across the sea, Second Division of Female Patrol had
slashed its way through the continent and even now was
bombarding one last stubborn outpost. On this continent,
the fortified city was Arkanda. Patrol was negotiating for
its surrender and at the same time preparing to besiege it.
From where he stood, Renfro could observe the line of
Vystrian civilians who were escaping the city before the
war could enter it. They emerged from the human size
door in the aircraft hangar size steel gates and hurried
along the hundred yard paved road. They were shoulderto-shoulder, for to step off the eight foot path, was to enter
the minefield. After a hundred years of occupation,
Banador was more like a huge explosive device than a
planet. But Renfro wasn’t in the minesweeping business,
and he didn’t worry about the safety of these or any
Vystrians.
The refugees were directed into a corral constructed
by the Patrollers so that each one could be scanned for
weapons before being released to seek safety elsewhere.
Renfro strolled towards the corral. He had seen plenty of
Vystrians in his six month career, but he wondered what
these were saying. Sometimes Vys civilians were relieved
to get away from the battlefield and some resented being
driven out of their homes; all of them were sullen.
Major Bergen, Renfro’s commanding officer, was also
watching the proceedings. He turned to the lieutenant as he
passed. “Not a bad job today,” Bergen offered, “for a
civilian.” It had not been a compliment, but an opportunity
to use the derogatory epithet of “civilian” on his least
favorite officer.
It didn’t faze Renfro anymore. He had heard it too
many times; from his first day at Academy until now, and
it wasn’t going to stop. Because his parents had not been
Patrollers, the multi-generationals would always consider
him an outsider. He made no comment and kept his eyes
on the growing crowd.
The barricade was just a two-wire fence about four
feet high, but the armed Patrollers around it discouraged
the non combatants from making a break. Strangely, there
were only a few children among the refugees. They clung
to the clothing of their elders and stared around with wide,
golden eyes.
“Not many kids,” Sgt. Ferber said. “Kinda strange.”
He had stopped beside Renfro to look at the Cothoc
civilians.
The lieutenant was not mystified, but he was cynical.
“That’s what happens when siblings breed together for a
few generations: low birthrate.”
“Sure, but ya gotta feel sorry for ‘em.”
Renfro shrugged. “Why?” No one had felt sorry for
him when he was a kid, growing up on a pebble of a planet
in a large, neglectful family. “They could be out there
shootin’ at me in a few years.” He turned away. “Just more
goddam Cothoc Vys.”
Another lieutenant joined him. “Well, everybody’s out
who wanted out,” he said.
Renfro put his hands in his pockets, which Patrollers
were not supposed to do. Sooner or later, someone would
yell at him about it, but it gave him satisfaction to be a
little insubordinate. “Siege set?” he asked, though the
activity around him was his answer. Men in body armor
were gathering to be deployed around the walls. The troop
carriers creaked on their axles as the heavily armed men
piled in. When filled, the vehicles buzzed away, their
Krutzfeld motors powering them over the cratered
battlefield to the siege barricade where the war awaited
them.
“Yep. And we have the midnight to nine shift,” the
other lieutenant said in parting. “And I’m going to sleep
until then.”
Renfro studied the metal and concrete city walls. The
air between him and them was so hot it wavered, and they
seemed to be alive and taunting him like a kid on a
playground wiggling his butt and saying, “na na, you can’t
catch me.” But when negotiations failed, as Renfro knew
they would, that simmering playground would become a
battleground.
*
*
*
The bluish sun of Banador was twenty degrees above
the horizon and already burning hot. It was a bleary, angry
eye opening on the battlefield of foolish mortals. One of
the mortals was Lieutenant Renfro. He tried to shrug the
trickle of sweat from the back of his neck as he and five
thousand other Patrollers waited behind the sapper fire
resistant barricade as they had for the first four hours of
their shift. He made a mental note to complain to Bergen
about how hot the new “advanced fiber” suits were when
covered with black body armor.
A hundred yards away, across the mined no-man’s
land, lay the twenty foot high steel gates of the walled city
of Arkanda where the Cothoc Vys were weighing the
“surrender or die” ultimatum they’d been given. They had
two hours left to decide, and then the Patrol engineers
would start to fire the Bangalore torpedoes which would
skim the ground like expertly skipped stones across a lake,
detonating the mines. And, like the ripples generated by
the touches of the stones, one detonation would lead to
another and another.
Renfro shifted his long range sapper to his right hand
to wipe the sweat from his forehead, but his helmet was in
the way. He cursed the stubborn Cothocs. Why not just get
to the shooting, he wondered. Experience had taught him
that Cothoc Vys don’t surrender, but no amount of
experience could have prepared him for what came next.
The human size door of Arkanda slid aside, but only a
few feet. Renfro pulled down his face shield and tightened
his grip on his sapper. Then he witnessed the event that
would make the name of Arkanda infamous across the
galaxy. Children emerged and the door closed. About two
hundred of them, from toddlers to teenagers holding
infants, huddled together outside the gates. There was
silence for a few heartbeats, then from the top of the wall,
the Cothoc parents of the bewildered children began to
shout at them, telling them to run to the Patrollers to be
saved. Run through the minefield! Those Cothocs whose
gods must be psychopaths, were sending their children to
their death because they knew how much it would horrify
the Patrollers.
“Good god,” Renfro murmured.
He watched helplessly as they began to run. He and
the other Patrollers screamed at them, trying to direct them
to the paved path, but they were terrified and confused.
They ran with their arms out, as though reaching for that
far away safety. Their eyes were wide; they screamed,
cried, fell and scrambled to their feet. Some of them
disappeared in roars of clouds and smoke.
Some Patrollers ran out but were fired on and had to
retreat. Renfro couldn’t take his eyes off the sight of the
doomed children. Sure, they were just Cothocs, but they
had been cruelly swindled into performing the last spiteful
act of these hate-filled fanatics. At last, they had garnered
his pity, and he had to do something. He looked at his flak
shield: five feet tall, light, transparent, sapper fire proof.
“Come on!” he yelled. “Make a tunnel!”
Everyone within earshot ran out, and others followed
when they saw what was going on. A crouching man on
each side of the path and one standing in the middle
overlapping their flak shields formed an escape route thirty
yards long. Any longer and the Patrollers would be too
exposed, and running seventy yards was easier than
running a hundred. Renfro stood at the end, catching the
children as they stumbled in and shooing them towards the
barricade. They were crying or in mute shock; exhausted
and at the end of their endurance.
Sapper fire and projectiles battered the flak shields.
The Patrollers expected that, but they did not expect the
Cothocs to shoot down their own children. There was the
“crack” of a conventional rifle shot from the wall, then
another: aimed at the children. They had escaped the
mines, but not their parents. Instantly, more cover fire
burst from the Patrol line. Fewer shots were fired from the
wall, and more children reached safety.
A nearby explosion staggered Renfro and he was
pelted with dirt and blood. Then, through the remnants of
brown smoke burst the last survivor: a teenage girl. In her
arms she clutched a bundle--her little ward. Renfro reached
out and shouted. They made eye contact. She was only a
few feet away when a projectile fired by one of her own
people struck her in the back.
In Renfro’s mind, above all the other noise on the
field, he heard that one sound: the thud of that projectile
hitting her flesh. The girl’s golden eyes grew round and
she started to fall. The maniacs had killed her. The final act
of her young life was to toss the bundle towards the
waiting Patroller.
Renfro snatched the bundle out of the air and hugged
it to himself. As he retreated, the Bangalore torpedoes
fired.
*
*
*
In the med tent, a nurse tried to take the bundle from
Renfro, but he was still on the battlefield. He could still see
the girl with golden eyes and outstretched arms. He was
abruptly transported back to the med tent by a touch from
the nurse and only then released the bundle. There was
blood on the blanket so he looked down to see if he’d
gotten hit, but it wasn’t his blood.
The nurse opened the blanket and Renfro went cold.
The baby’s little face was so placid, as if he were sleeping
and dreaming that he was still in the arms of the girl and
she was warming him with her smile. But beneath his
dreamy face, his little clothes were drenched with blood. In
spite of her brave effort, the girl had not saved him. The
projectile had pierced her heart and his. The nurse shook
his head and carried the bundle away.
In Renfro’s mind, he was shouting, “No, no, no!” but
he held it in. He hurried out of the tent and kept walking.
He didn’t see the men who were rushing about. He didn’t
feel the heat or smell the stink. He didn’t hear the
bombardment of Arkanda. He swallowed hard and bit his
lip. He could not allow himself to look like a fool in front
of men who would laugh at him and say, “See? He’s just
another pathetic civilian.”
*
*
*
“Shit,” Major Bergen muttered wearily. It was dark,
the battle was over and Arkanda was rubble. The Cothoc
Vys were in the presence of their exacting gods while he
was in the presence of some of his officers in one of the
staff tents. They all had to submit reports to the next
person up the totem pole. “Goddam Cothocs,” he added.
“Fricking Cothocs,” another officer chimed in.
“Hey, Renfro,” Bergen said, “you better take some
leave.”
“What? No!” Renfro exclaimed. He had been looking
out the door of the big tent, observing the glow cast by the
embers of Arkanda.
This was another opportunity for Bergen to deride this
“civilian” officer. “You look pretty crappy.” By which
Renfro and everybody else knew he meant weak.
“No crappier than anybody else,” Renfro snapped and
hoped.
“That thing with the baby could get to anybody,” a
more sympathetic officer offered. “Sucked.”
“Yeah, I saw it,” another guy said. “That girl, geez,
she tried so hard to save him.”
Renfro wished they would shut up. His stomach was
churning. Through clenched teeth he said, “Just another
Vys who won’t be shootin’ at me in a couple of years.” He
couldn’t expunge from his mind the sight of the placid face
of the little dreamer who would never again wake. He
turned back to the glow in the sky so the others would not
see his eyes water. “Just another goddam Cothoc Vys.” 
Property Values
by Wayne Carey
I didn't see the necessity of my joining the entourage
as it trekked through the forests of Enyo from the landing
site. Robert “Bobby” Carter, owner and CEO of Carter
Industries, led the way, his huge form in its cream-colored
suit stomping along the path. I followed dutifully behind,
wishing to be back in the yacht and out of the stifling heat.
Behind us came an assortment of characters, from the exmilitary security man grumbling that he should be in the
lead, to the personal assistant who tripped over every root
with her expensive shoes, to the university professor who
was the only one who understood the language of the
locals. They didn't need a lawyer.
“Why don't I just wait back at the yacht,” I said. It
may have been the third time.
“Naw,” Carter drawled. “I need you there. You drew
up the documents, you can explain the details, answer any
questions.”
“I don't speak Enyoan,” I said.
Carter shrugged as he pushed a low branch out of the
way, stepped past it, and let it swing back. I ducked to
avoid it.
“Don't need to,” he said. “That's why we have
Professor Hinkle. He helped you draw up the Enyoan
translation of the document, right? Besides, these Enyoans
may be primitive, but they learn fast. They speak English
better than Major Pain.” Known to everyone else as Major
Paynowski, his security chief and a former military officer,
who stopped grumbling long enough to scowl at both of
us.
I scraped something from the bottom of my shoe and
followed along, clutching the old leather briefcase that
contained the hard copies of the documents, one in
English, the other in Enyoan. Or an approximation, since
they didn't seem to have a written language. I wasn't
certain how that translates legally. My job was to draft the
document and make it as airtight as possible. And I got
paid very well for doing it. Eventually, some save-theindigenous-sentient-lifeforms-from-corporate-exploitation
group would get wind of it and throw all sorts of lawyers
at it. By then, Carter Industries would be so entrenched
that no one would be able to evict it, and no court could
fight Carter's legal rights. I put so much into that document
that there would be no way to dispute it in the future. Add
to that the evaluations that the Enyoans were well aware of
what they were doing. Their rights were protected, in a
sense.
In less than an hour, Bobby Carter would own their
planet.
Rustling among the brush caught my attention. I
glimpsed movement, shapes scurrying through the
undergrowth. I was reassured that Paynowski was armed,
though there was not supposed to be any dangerous
wildlife on the planet. The survey team that had located the
Enyoans two years ago had also declared the planet mostly
harmless. Surveys have been wrong. Not so much wrong
as incomplete. Inadvertently missing the occasional
carnivore.
The path broke into a clearing that dipped down to the
sandy shore of a shimmering blue lake that stretched out so
wide that the further shore was a thin discoloration on the
horizon. Small islands covered with tall, straight trees
dotted the crystal surface of the lake.
“Ah!” Carter exclaimed. “This is what I mean. Look at
it! Beautiful. Like Earth used to look. Name any other
planet that has a vista like this. I challenge you. And just as
soon as those papers are signed, we'll start breaking ground
for construction. I'll put the first hotel right here. Half the
rooms will have this view. The other half will be looking
over the canopy of the forest.”
“Um,” I said, “what about the village?”
To the right, along the edge of the forest, was a cluster
of small huts made of branches, leaves, and mud.
Carter waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, we'll find
another place for them. Or they can stay here. Great for the
tourists, seeing the aborigines. People like that sort of
thing, love to take pictures of the primitive aliens.”
“Whatever,” I said. Not my problem. If the locals were
stupid enough to sell all the rights to their planet to
someone like Carter, then they deserved to get whatever
came to them. Consider it an evolutionary process,
decreasing the dumb gene.
The little village, made up of about thirty huts, was a
buzz of activity. Enyoans were all over the place. Some
were running around, some tending cooking fires, some
splashing in the water of the lake, and others were on the
lake in small crude boats. A few burst out of the forest to
our left, probably who had been haunting us on our hike.
Between our bedraggled group and the huts, six natives
were playing a game with a large ball. They made two
lines in the sand and tossed the ball back and forth,
members of either side running to hit the ball back so that
it didn't touch the ground. All six players were laughing.
Their laughter was more high pitched than that of
humans, though actually pleasant to listen to. In fact, it was
contagious. I found myself smiling as I watched.
Enyoans are tall and lanky, their skin a toasty brown
from exposure to the planet's sun, Capello. They wore
loose-fitting clothes which included a short-sleeve top that
seemed optional and a pair of breeches the came to the
knees, each in different pastel colors that were mixed and
matched. Only a few wore sandals, the rest going barefoot.
As we approached the village, the players turned their
attention toward us, missing the ball. It hit the ground,
bounced in the sand, and rolled to a stop. It uncurled into a
three foot long segmented body and scurried into the forest
on dozens of tiny legs.
Carter waved at the Enyoans and they waved back.
Their hands have six long fingers, an opposable thumb on
each side. One ran enthusiastically toward us while the
others ran into the forest after their ball.
“Hobs ol' buddy!” Carter called. “Good to see you.”
“And you, Carter my friend.” The Enyoan stretched
out his hand, enclosing Carter's in a handshake. He
pronounced each word with precision.
Enyoans are not an ugly race. I have met too many
beings that were difficult to look at, which was not the
case with Enyoans. Their features are symmetrical. Two
small, angular eyes on either side of a long nose that
widens into a short muzzle with a mouth that sports
extended canines. What looked like short bristly hair on
the crown of the Enyoan's head were actually stubby cilia
that flowed back and forth, independent from the breeze
coming from the lake. When he shook Carter's hand, the
cilia paused, then leaned toward Carter. I had read the
reports from the survey scientists, who suggested the cilia
were sensory organs, acting in place of external ears,
which they lacked. The cilia may reflect their mood by
changing color. This Enyoan's cilia was changing from
bright red to a cool blue, which I hoped was a good thing.
“Hobs, this is my lawyer, Murphy,” Carter said.
“Hobcyntorux,” the Enyoan said. He extended his
hand. It was cool and dry to the touch, despite the warmth
of the day and the exercise he had just finished. “A
pleasure to meet you, Mr. Murphy.”
Hobcyntorux smiled, showing off the sharp canines
and crinkling his eyes into narrow slits.
I smiled back. “Nice to meet you, too, Hobsee …
Hobsin …”
“Hobs will be fine, Mr. Murphy.”
“And just Murphy is okay. You tackled our language
easier than we have yours.”
“We are naturally curious. Languages come easy to us.
Even our young ones are learning , though your survey
team had very little that they could leave us. We are
hoping to alter that.”
“Yes indeed!” Carter said. “Why don't we find a quiet
place and get down to business. Iris! Are you recording?”
Iris Stucky stumbled out from behind Paynowski and
waved her computer pad. “Yes sir, Mr. Carter. The eye is
active.” She pointed skyward with one manicured figure.
The small dot hovering about twenty feet in the air
could have gone unnoticed, but Capello was bright and the
sky was a deep blue. It looked like a ball that had decided
to contest the law of gravity. Those small vid scanners
weren't made for the great outdoors. One good burst of
wind and Iris would never find it.
Hobcyntorux led the way into the cluster of huts. I
haven't seen many primitive races, only a few on vid
documentaries. They always seemed to be struggling to
stay alive, find enough food for everyone, fighting nature
and other intelligent races. Not normally a happy lot. The
Enyoans were different. Smaller ones, which I took to be
children of various ages, ran around playing games and
laughing. The adults smiled and laughed, and often took
part in the games. Even the very old Enyoans were happy.
No grumpy curmudgeons. No arguments.
Near the center of the village stood a curious artifact
that was anachronistic to the level of Enyoan technology,
or lack of. A metal cylinder ten feet high and two feet in
diameter, planted in the ground like a pillar. The metal
surface that was not hidden by moss and lichen showed
signs of corrosion.
“What's that?” I asked Hinkle.
He wiped perspiration from his face with a
handkerchief and looked at the blackened metal with its
splatter of green. “Don't know.”
He continued following Carter's group.
I hurried after him. “Wait, I thought you spent weeks
here, learning about the Enyoans.”
“Learning the language, yes.” He seemed annoyed to
even talk to me. I wasn't very high on his agenda. “I'm a
linguist, Mr. Murphy, not an archaeologist. I of course
looked it over for samples of their written language, but
there are only a few readable symbols on it. Not enough to
decipher. The Enyoans told me it was here before the
village was built. Off hand, I'd say either it was erected by
early visitors to the planet or it had been created in an
earlier age by an Enyoan society that knew metallurgy, and
they devolved technologically to their present primitive
form. I'm not a sociologist. It has nothing to do with the
present day Enyoan language, so I won't waste my time
with it.”
Carter called me to join him at a long wooden table
resting on a carpet of woven grass mats outside one of the
huts. A number of Enyoans, including Hobcyntorux were
seated on the mats around the table. Colorful fruits of
various shapes and sizes filled wooden plates scattered
over the table. At the head of the table, Iris helped Carter
lower himself to the ground. His belly pushed against the
edge of the table. Hobcyntorux slid a plate of mixed fruit
toward him and took a small, juicy red thing for himself.
“Murphy, the papers,” Carter said.
Iris tucked herself neatly under the table next to him,
across from Hobcyntorux. She tapped on her pad, bringing
the vid scanner closer. Hinkle sat next to her and grabbed a
large green-skinned fruit and took a loud bite from it.
Paynowski stood off to one side, arms folded and eyes
glaring at each native as though awaiting an uprising.
I opened my briefcase and handed Carter the
documents, then stepped back and leaned against one of
the huts. My job was done.
“Now what we have here, Hobs buddy,” Carter said,
presenting the documents, “are legal forms stating that you
and your people grant me and my company all the rights to
your property in this system. In exchange, all you want are
books. We have those available right here. Iris!”
Iris pulled out another pad from inside her once-stylish
jacket, now wrinkled, sweat-stained and muddy, and
handed the pad to Carter.
Carter tapped the activation button. “On here is an
extensive library. Science, technology, literature, history.
All at the touch of a finger. Thousands of books, right
here.” He passed the pad to Hobcyntorux. “We can give
you as many of these as you want. And they are constantly
updated and charged by sunlight.”
Hobcyntorux pursed his muzzle as he fumbled with
the pad. He looked at the screen, tapped the buttons, turned
it over, then passed it back.
“This will not do.”
“What!” Carter bellowed. “You said all you wanted
was books. That little thing has thousands upon thousands.
Why, you couldn't read that many in a lifetime.”
Carter would be lucky if he read one.
“That is very generous, Mr. Carter, but we prefer to
have actual books. With pages. You're technology is very
nice, but we prefer not to accept it. The survey team was
nice enough to give us some books, which is how we
learned to read your written languages. If you are not able
to provide us with books, then ...” He slowly unwound his
legs to stand up.
Carter waved his hands. “No, no! I can do that. I just
wasn't prepared for trading hard copies. We can do that,
can't we, Iris?”
“Yes sir,” Iris said, tapping on her pad.
“It'll take some time to make the arrangements,”
Carter said. “We'll get you whatever you want.”
Hobcyntorux stood and smiled. “Good. As many as
possible. But no science and technology. History, yes. And
literature. Especially literature.”
Carter slid the documents toward the spot where
Hobcyntorux had been sitting. “Maybe you can sign
anyway, and we'll rush those to you.”
Hobcyntorux picked up the papers and leafed through
them. The cilia on his head wiggled and turned red. “I will
read these, and sign when our books arrive.”
He paused before turning away and pulled out one set
of documents, dropping them to the table. “We won't need
these,” he said. “Is this what Mr. Hinkle believes our
language is like when it is written? I apologize, but that is
a most childish attempt.”
Hinkle's face burned red.
The other Enyoans at the table drifted off, leaving
Carter and Iris to bend their heads together and form a
strategy, which consisted of Iris working out the logistics
of purchasing and transporting thousands of hard-copy
books and Carter paying the bill. Hinkle was ignored. So
was I, as a matter of fact. But my work hadn't been
insulted by an uneducated aborigine, so I wandered around
and enjoyed the day.
Iris found me sitting on the beach, watching a horde of
immature Enyoans playing in the water. I was tempted to
join them. The sun was hot and the breeze from the lake
cool.
“Enjoy it while you can,” Iris said as she stood over
me, silhouetted against the sun. Her ruined shoes were
danging from their straps gripped in the fingers of her left
hand. Her ever present computer pad was in her right. Her
hair was a mess, half plastered down with perspiration,
half curled from humidity.
“Why?”
“Once Bobby gets those papers signed, he'll break
ground for the hotels and resorts. He won't need you any
more and you won't be able to afford to vacation here.”
I nodded toward the Enyoans playing in the lake.
“What about them?”
She shrugged. “You know what the contract says
about them. You wrote it. They basically will have to live
where Bobby tells them. He already has ideas for an
aborigine village resort amusement theme park. And any
of them that don't want to work for him, they can live on a
reserve up north. They'll have to stay on the reserve.”
I watched the kids splashing each other, listened to
their laughter.
“They don't know what they're getting into,” I said.
“Hobcyntorux knows what he's doing. He just doesn't
care. Primitive races live in the here and now, they can't
contemplate future consequences. They just don't have the
intelligence.”
“He seems pretty intelligent to me,” I said.
“Then he definitely knows what he's doing. He wants
those books, and that's all that matters to him. We've
arranged for a huge shipment to be sent out, and it should
arrive in a week. After that, this planet – this whole system
– will belong to Carter Industries. All thanks to you and
your little document. So enjoy paradise while it lasts.
You've got a week.”
“Care for a swim?” I asked.
“Me? In that filthy water? You've got to be kidding.”
Actually, I was. I already knew what her reaction
would be.
“I'm going back to the yacht,” she said. “Climate
control. Showers. Fresh water. Filtered air. Real food.
Technology. And I'm not coming out until Bobby has to
talk to Hobcyntorux again. I can't wait until this place is
civilized.”
She stomped off.
I climbed to my feet and wandered around. I found a
long, straight stick and used it to poke at the sand. Three
ancient Enyoans walked past me on their way to the water.
A roughly dug-out boat skidded ashore, and two Enyoans
jumped off, proudly displaying a string of fish they had
caught. They were such a happy people. Their simple life
would soon change forever, just because they were
curious. Hobcyntorux had no idea he was a new Pandora
about to let loose a legion of demons. But that was his
problem, not mine. I was a lawyer – Carter's lawyer – not
an aborigine rights advocate.
“Are you not returning to your ship?” asked a voice.
I turned to find Hobcyntorux. He was munching on a
small, yellow fruit, juice dribbling down his muzzle. His
pale blue cilia moved in calm waves.
“I suppose so,” I said. It was getting late. The sun
would soon set and I'd have a hard time finding my way
back in the dark.
“You are welcome to stay in the village,” he offered.
“I made the same offer to Mr. Carter and the others, but
they declined.”
“Thank you, but I'll go back to the yacht.”
“I have read your documents. Very well written.”
“Thank you. I ...” I stared at him. He had a small smile
on his muzzle and I had the distinct impression he was
teasing me. How could a being who only recently learned
to read a language know the difference between a good
and bad legal draft?
“Were you able to understand it?” I asked.
“Completely.”
“Do you know what you're getting into with this
business?” I asked, walking an ethical tightrope.
“Yes. Mr. Carter is being most generous. We are all
anxious for the books to arrive. We are all very curious
about your literature. The survey team had only a few
books.”
“And you speak for all Enyoans?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Every Enyoan on this planet? Even ones beyond this
village.”
“Yes, but there are only a few outside this village, who
prefer solitude or wish to explore different lands. I am the
elected speaker for all Enyoans. Although we are all in
complete agreement.”
“A hundred percent consensus? No one disagrees with
your decision?”
“No.”
I shrugged. Definitely not my problem.
“If you would like,” he said, “we have a small hut that
is presently empty. You may use it. It belongs to my
brother who has left for a time. In fact, he has left some of
his clothing, which may fit you. It would be more
comfortable than what you are wearing.”
I had a week. I could do with a vacation. Enjoy
paradise before it got paved.
I hefted the stick, swinging it with my right hand to
land onto the palm of my left with a smack. “Deal,” I said.
I looked at the stick, then at the young Enyoans running
around on the beach. “And I'll do something for you. Do
those bug balls you were playing with earlier come in
smaller sizes?”
“Yes. And larger.”
I suppressed a shudder. “I need one about this size,” I
said, opening my left hand as though I held a ball.
“Easily found.”
“Do they break easy?”
“Their shells are extremely resilient. Why?”
“Because I'm going to teach your people a new game.”
Three days later, Paynowski confronted me after a
rousing game of baseball. The Enyoans caught on quick,
learned the rules, and made a fool out of my meager
talents. They not only had fun playing the game, they also
enjoyed watching. They chose teams, often trading
players, and gathered their own fans, who would root for
one team one inning, and the other team in the next. They
understood competition and played to win, but never got
upset when they lost. They congratulated the winners and
strove to be better the next time. They were good sports,
even the children.
“I'm disgusted with you,” Paynowski said.
“So?” I was a lawyer. I was used to that.
“You've gone native!”
I looked down at my bare feet caked in wet sand, my
faded yellow breeches, and the sweat-soaked pullover,
which were courtesy of Hobcyntorux's brother. My suit
and shoes were useless in this climate, and I had nothing
on the yacht that could compare to the comfort. Besides, I
liked the tan I was developing.
“I'm on holiday,” I said.
“You work for Mr. Carter.”
“And he doesn't need me right now. When he does, he
knows where to find me. I'm on retainer.”
“You wouldn't be undermining his work here, would
you?” His voice grew low and dangerous.
“That would be unethical. I could be disbarred.”
“That's the least of your worries, Murphy. Just see that
the Enyoans don't change their minds about signing those
documents.” He pointed skyward, and I saw Iris's vid
scanner floating above the beach, probably to keep an eye
on me.
I could not advise Hobcyntorux against signing, but I
could make him question the wisdom of his actions. Of
course, if he didn't sign, Carter would just assume I was
the cause and sue me. Should the worst happen, maybe the
Enyoans would adopt me and I could live with them. I
certainly wouldn't be able to get a job anywhere else in the
galaxy.
When the drop ship brought down the crates of books,
stacking them on the beach outside the village, the
Enyoans went wild with excitement. I had never seen them
so anxious. More so than for any ball game. But they dared
not open the crates until they were given permission.
Carter and his entourage returned to the village. Carter
sat down at the head of the table, Iris next to him,
Hobcyntorux across from her, my documents between
them, the vid scanner floating above. Paynowski stood
behind Carter, his arms folded, his eyes glaring at me.
Hinkle was circling the metal obelisk, finally showing
some interest in it.
“Aren't you joining the party?” I asked the linguist.
“Huh? Oh, no. They don't need me. All that work I
did, making a plausible Enyoan translation, that was a
waste of time. This thing, though, has been bothering me.
These symbols look vaguely familiar, but I can't place
them.”
“They aren't Enyoan,” I said.
“No, they don't have the technology to build
something like this.”
I now wore my suit, my shoes feeling tight, the shirt
and jacket stifling. My skin itched. I pointed to the nearest
group of Enyoans. “They have the technology to make
those clothes.”
“Cloth and metal are entirely different materials. Have
you seen anything that could be used to fire metals?
You've been here the whole week.”
“I haven't even seen how they make their clothes,” I
said.
“Well, I assure you they didn't make this pillar. The
thing is, I can't figure out who did. And it might be my
imagination, but I think it's vibrating. Humming.”
I left him mumbling to himself when I saw that the
talking was over and Hobcyntorux was about to sign.
“Wait,” I said. “I have something to say.”
“It better be congratulations,” Carter said, “or your
butt is going to be in court for the next hundred years.
You're still my lawyer, you know.”
I tossed my old computer pad onto the table.
“Actually, I'm not. I sent my resignation to the corporate
headquarters days ago and returned your retainer. So I am
officially not your lawyer.”
Paynowski stepped forward, ready to use force the
moment he was given the word.
“I'll still sue you, Murphy.” Carter shoved my pad
away. “You'll never get another job. You'll be disbarred.”
“That isn't up to you. And I'm sure the courts would be
more interested in what you're doing to the Enyoans. So go
ahead and throw whatever lawsuit you want at me. You'll
be in court, too.”
“It's all legal. You saw to that.”
“Yeah. But think of the publicity.” I grinned at him.
Carter opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He
looked at Iris for help, but she only shook her head.
I turned my attention to Hobcyntorux. “Hobs, don't
sign. Carter is doing this to steal your planet from you.
You and your people will be put onto a tiny reserve. You'll
never be free on your own world again.”
Hobcyntorux smiled. “But you were the one who
wrote this document, Murphy.”
“Yes, I know. That was before I got to know you. I
can't sit back and watch this happen to you.”
He tapped the papers. “But this merely states that we
relinquish all rights and property to the Capello System to
Mr. Carter and Carter Industries. In exchange, we get all
those books.”
“That's what it means, Hobs. He's taking your planet.”
Hobcyntorux smiled wider and picked up the stylus.
His blue cilia waved back and forth. “Do not worry,
Murphy my friend. It is a small sacrifice for such a great
reward. All those books. Novels, essays, poems, epics,
histories. And we do not have much time.”
So many books and so little time, I thought.
Paynowski stepped in front of me. “You heard him,
Murphy. Stand down.”
And by that time Hobcyntorux, as duly elected leader
of the Enyoans, signed away all their rights to the planet
and the entire system. For a few thousand books.
Carter laughed at me as Iris helped him to his feet. Iris
looked at me, shook her head, and mumbled, “Idiot.”
Paynowski just glared at me. I don't think he had any other
expression.
“Since you're no longer my lawyer,” Carter said as he
gathered up the documents, “then I don't have to give you
a ride back. But I'm a generous man. You can keep your
berth for the return trip, for a hundred thousand creds.”
“What? I could go on a luxury cruise for less than
that!” I said, staring at him.
He shrugged. “Your choice, Murphy. But we won't
wait all day. Are you coming, Hinkle? Or do you want to
stay with Murphy?”
“Coming, sir. But this pillar. I don't think it's a pillar.
And the inscription. I think its Ursan. It's actually up-side
down, which is why I couldn't figure it out. And it
definitely is vibrating.”
“Don't be ridiculous,” Carter said. “Ursans aren't
anywhere near this sector.”
“Mr. Carter,” Hobcyntorux called, “would you mind if
I kept one of those electronic readers?”
“Not a problem, son. Were you able to figure it out?
Iris could help you.”
Iris pulled the pad from her jacket and presented it to
Hobcyntorux, whose cilia wiggled.
“It's rudimentary,” Hobcyntorux said, “but it might
prove useful. May we now open the crates. We don't have
much time.”
Carter looked up at the sky. The sun wouldn't set for
an hour or so, but the Enyoans were probably anxious to
unpack their new acquisitions as soon as possible. “Have
fun, Hobs. They're all yours. Oh, and Murphy... call us if
you have the cash for the trip back to civilization. Or you
can stay here and see if the construction crew will hire you
to dig ditches. They'll be here tomorrow.”
Paynowski tossed me a comm link.
“Most unfortunate,” Hobcyntorux said as the group
disappeared along the forest path. “They will abandon you
here?”
“Looks like it.”
I sat down on the table. “I just wanted to help. Why
wouldn't you listen to me?”
“I appreciate your efforts, but they were not necessary.
Now you will not be able to leave the planet in time. For
all you have done for us, you may stay with us. Perhaps
you have other games to teach us.”
The Enyoans were busy cracking open the huge
transport crates and removing the smaller containers
loaded with books. Each Enyoan, even the children, lifted
a container and carried it off. But they weren't heading
back to their huts. They were following a path into the
forest.
Hobcyntorux motioned me to join the others. The
cargo crates were nearly empty. Two containers left. He
lifted one, and I took the other. We trailed behind the line
filing through the forest.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Not far.”
We soon came to a glowing rectangle between two
trees. It looked like a doorway leading from a dark room to
the bright outside. Through this the Enyoans walked, from
the gloom of the thick forest to the glaring sunlight of …
somewhere else.
“What?” I said, stopping, dropping my container on
my foot. Good thing I was now wearing shoes. “How? Is
it? That's impossible!”
I walked around the trees. Just the forest. From the
other side I saw Hobcyntorux waiting patiently for me,
holding his container, reader tucked under one arm.
“Is it natural? Does this take you to another part of the
planet?” I asked as I rejoined Hobcyntorux.
“Does that look like this planet?” He pointed into the
brightness.
I squinted, seeing the silhouettes of the last Enyoans
carrying their treasure. Beyond them I could make out the
tall towers and spires of a vast city stretching across the
horizon, glowing in the sunlight. Sunlight different from
Capello.
I pointed to it. “What's that?”
He smiled. “Our home. You may come with us. Every
one of my family likes you. No one cared for Mr. Carter
and the others, so we didn't mind tricking them.”
“Tricking them?”
“This planet is not our home. That is,” he said,
pointing at the city. “We came here seven years ago, and
now it is time for us to leave. We have gateways hidden on
many planets. I'm certain we will be able to get you to your
home without much delay. Certainly long before Mr.
Carter returns there.”
“You've been here for seven years? Why? Why leave
… that?” I had never seen such a glimmering city, of all
the planets I've been on.
“We are technologically more advanced than your
civilization. I am not boasting, merely stating a fact. We
like to keep out of the way of other species and races,
hiding our advancements. Your people have yet to come
across our home world. We told Mr. Carter we did not
want books on sciences or technology because they would
be too primitive. Like this quaint reader he gave me. I
should be able to access its memory chip and make use of
it for our libraries, but the actual books we wanted because
they are priceless. My whole family will never have to
work again, considering what we bring back with us. It
was more than we could hope for.”
“Your family? The Enyoans in that village, they were
all your family?”
“Yes. The survey team misunderstood. Enyo is a
corruption of our family name.”
“But you've been there all these years. Why?”
Hobcyntorux set down his container on top of mine.
“Our race has a much longer life span. We work for many
years at our careers, and then we take some years off to
enjoy our lives. Sometimes we like a more primitive
lifestyle, living the way our ancestors had at the beginning
of our civilization. It is a way of purifying our minds.”
“So you took your family on a camping trip for seven
years,” I said.
“Exactly! Now we must leave.”
“Your vacation time is over?”
“No. We still have two years, but the Ursans are
returning.”
“Ursans. That's what Hinkle said built the pillar.”
“Not a pillar. It is a message. Before it corroded and
became covered in moss, it stated that the Ursans claimed
the system and all planets belonging to it. That was several
years before we came. An Ursan survey team had left the
obelisk as a warning to trespassers. The colony ships were
sent out, but we knew they would take several years to
arrive. We built our village around the obelisk so that we
would hear the warning it emitted as a beacon to the
colony ships.”
“That vibration!”
“Yes. The ships are almost here, so we must leave.”
I fumbled into my pocket for the comm link
Paynowski had given me.
“Carter! Carter! Are you there?”
A crackle came through the tiny speaker. “So you
decided to pay the fee to return with us.”
“Listen you fat idiot! Lift off immediately! There are
Ursan ships about to land. Get off the planet.”
“What? I own this planet.”
“No you don't. All you bought was whatever claim the
Enyoans had on it, which is nothing. They don't own
anything here. The planet belongs to the Ursans.”
“Huh? Oh, wait. The pilot says we have a incoming
message. Probably my construction ships letting me know
how far out they are.”
I said a few choice words when he put me on hold.
When Carter came back on, his tone was a lot less
antagonistic. “Murphy? You still there? Listen, Murphy,
we seem to be in a bit of trouble. That pillar Hinkle was
bothering about, seems it's an Ursan survey beacon
claiming the planet for their colonization. Their command
ship has just informed us that we are trespassing. Be a
good fellow and come on back to the ship. I'll forget all
about the scene in the village and hire you back. Double
your retainer.”
I looked at Hobcyntorux. “What will the Ursans do to
them? Blast them?”
“Oh no. Ursans are very disagreeable but not
bloodthirsty. I'm afraid that Mr. Carter and his friends may
be spending a few years on the planet, imprisoned for
trespassing. Ursans are very territorial. Fortunate for you
that you did not return with them.” He smiled and his cilia
wiggled.
“Murphy!” came Carter's tiny voice. “Come on back,
son.”
“Sorry, Bobby, but I'm on vacation.”
I tossed the comm link into the trees, picked up the
container of books, and followed Hobcyntorux through the
gateway. 

Rune Stones
by Anna Sykora
Dedicated to all the forgotten fallen
The wind caresses, soft as love,
The graves of warriors 'neath the pines;
The broken stones that keep their runes,
The mossy ground that holds their bones;
And in the darkness, like a sigh
You hear: our life has been to die...
The wind caresses, old as love,
The graves of warriors 'neath the pines.
The Messenger’s Tale
by Ken Liu
Once upon a time, a strange little man came to the
Palace and challenged the Queen to a game.
She must guess his name within three days, or else he
would take away the baby Prince, the King and Queen’s
first and only child. It was never explained to any of us,
least of all a lowly messenger like me, how and why the
Queen agreed to such horrific terms.
That first night, the Queen sent us out to gather names
from all corners of the land. In the morning, the names,
written on slips of paper, were presented to the Queen in a
silver bowl.
It took until the afternoon before the Queen finished
reading the last slip of paper in the silver bowl. Then the
professors of the Royal College were summoned. Students
rushed up and down ladders in the Great Library, copying
out exotic names from dusty tomes. The professors
squinted at them, debated each other feverishly, and finally
gave the Queen a compiled list.
“Are you Nebuchadnezzar?”
The strange little man shook his head.
“Ptah? Lacedaemon? Yingzheng?”
Shake, shake, shake.
We were sent out for a second night. This time, we
brought back many fewer names. The Kingdom was not
large, and we had spoken to nearly everyone.
The time, the Queen exhausted all the new names we
found before noon. Then the engineers of the Royal
Foundry were summoned. They built a great machine with
twenty wheels, each wheel imprinted with the twenty
letters of the alphabet. Clockwork within spun the wheels
and printed out new names with each turn of the gears. “If
his name can be written, it will be found by the machine,”
intoned the Chief Engineer.
“Aaabaa? Aaabab? Aaabba? …”
Shake, shake, shake ...
The list wrapped three times around the castle, and as
the sun set and the little man left, the wheels of the
machine went on spinning and printing out more names,
most of them unpronounceable.
The Queen kicked the machine so hard that it toppled
over. “Find me more names!” She screamed. Her beautiful
eyes blazed as though they were on fire, and all of us
averted our gaze.
And so for the third night in a row, we would scour
the land for names: unusual names, unheard of names,
names that existed only in dreams and nightmares.
*
*
*
As a messenger at the Palace, I learned long ago to
trust more in a thing than in its name. Lords and ladies
played all kinds of games with names. “Dearest friend”
sometimes meant the very opposite, and “highest esteem”
often disguised contempt.
If you held a thing in your hand, it didn’t matter what
name you called it. But if you just had a name, you had
nothing.
I was amazed that no one, not the Dean of the Royal
College, not the Chief Engineer, not the Prime Minister,
not even the King and Queen, saw what I thought was
obvious: to find out the little man’s name, we first had to
find him. Maybe the minds of great men and women were
so elevated that they no longer deigned to see the mean
truths scattered at their feet like acorns.
I tried to find out where the little man went after he
left the Palace. The first two days, he always disappeared
in a blur too quick to follow. But on the third evening, I
prepared ahead of time by spilling some water outside the
Palace gates. His wet footprints told me the direction he
took.
I whipped my horse to follow. Long after midnight, as
the moon rose overhead, I came to a hill. On top of the hill
was a house, and in front of the house was a fire, around
which a strange little man danced and sang.
I got off my horse and climbed. The little man was
leaping wildly around the fire, and the words of his song
carried far on the wind.
Today I bake, tomorrow I brew,
The day after I welcome the Queen’s child.
Gold, silver, diamond dust,
She likes rich lies more than poor truths.
“Hello there,” I called out. “I’m a weary traveler, a
stranger to this land. May I partake of the warmth of your
fire and the merriment of your company?”
I held out my hands to show that I carried no weapons.
He nodded. I sat down. And soon we were toasting each
other with sips of ale from my wineskin.
“What were you singing about?” I asked.
“Ah, traveler, you haven’t heard the news. It is all
anybody can talk about. But everybody has the story
wrong.”
“Tell me the true story then.”
The little man’s voice rustled like leaves and crackled
like fire.
*
*
*
The Queen was born a poor miller’s daughter. But she
was beautiful and tall, and very proud.
One day the King happened to visit the miller’s
village, and he saw that the miller was idle. “Don’t you
want to work hard and become rich?”
The miller shrugged. “I don’t need to work hard. My
daughter is so beautiful that she will spin straw into gold.”
What he meant was that he hoped she would marry a
wealthy man, and turn his straw-walled hut into a house
full of coins.
But the King was very greedy, and he took the miller
literally. “If your daughter can do as you say, I will marry
her and make her Queen. But if she cannot, she will die.”
So the miller brought his daughter to the castle, where
the King handed her a spindle and wheel and showed her
to a room full of straw and locked her in.
The girl cried and cried. “Oh, this is impossible,
impossible!”
I took pity and appeared before her. “It is not very
difficult to spin straw into gold.”
She stared at me in disbelief. Then she knelt down and
pleaded for me to help her. “If I don’t spin the straw in
this room into gold, the King will kill me in the morning!”
“I can help,” I said. “But will you promise to tell the
King the truth in the morning and not marry him? When he
sees the gold, he will be so happy that he’ll forgive your
father and you for lying.”
A strange, calculating look came into her eyes. “No,
but I can give you this necklace.”
I sighed, took the necklace, and spun the straw into
gold.
The King was very pleased, but he wanted even more
gold. So he locked the miller’s daughter into a bigger
room with more straw, and made the same promise and
threat.
The girl cried and cried. I came and asked her again
to tell the King the truth.
“No, but I can give you this ring.”
The third night we were in an even bigger room. “Will
you tell him?”
She had nothing left to give me. I was sure she would
now do the right thing.
She clenched her fists. “No, but I can give you my first
born. You cannot refuse the promise of a life.”
I begged her to reconsider. But her eyes glinted as she
imagined herself as Queen. I sighed and helped her.
And that was how she became the Queen.
Three days ago, I went to her and asked her for my
payment. She blanched. “The King knows that I cannot
spin straw into gold. This child, the heir to the throne, is
the only reason he cannot send me away. If I lose this
child, I will no longer be Queen.”
She begged me to take something else, anything else,
even half of her riches, if only I would let her keep the
child. So I again took pity on her, and told her that if she
could guess my name in three days, I would release her
from her promise.
But a true name is hard to pick out of a sea of
falsehoods, and the Queen, so used to lying, can no longer
sense the tingle of a true name on the tongue.
*
*
*
“Thank you for your hospitality,” I said. “But I must
get going. To whom do I owe the pleasure of tonight’s
wondrous tale?”
“My true name is whatever you want to call me.”
I stared at him, not understanding.
“It is the nature of my magic that if you speak to me
with a sincere heart unsullied by guile, whatever you call
me will be my true name. But if you speak to me based on
a seed of deceit, then my name will forever elude you.”
The little man stared at me, his eyes twinkling in the
firelight. My face felt hot as I turned around and left.
*
*
*
The little man did not return the next morning.
The Queen sat still on her throne, waiting in silence.
We watched the clocks tick the seconds until the sun set.
Then she let out a sigh and collapsed to the ground.
We rushed to help her.
“Declare a ten-day celebration,” she whispered. “I am
the Queen, and I will be the Queen forever.”
And I finally understood what I had to do.
*
*
*
I travel now from village to village, and tell the story
of the Queen and the strange little man with no name.
The King and Queen hide in the castle, too ashamed to
show their faces in public. “The Lying Queen, the
Deceitful Queen,” the people shout whenever they catch a
glimpse of her through a castle window. “The Queen With
No Shame.” Whatever names they call her, they’re all true
names.
A true name has power. 

Gaea's Eulogy
by Christina Sng
I never asked to be poisoned.
The core in me now hollow,
Silent as space.
Yes, deathly so.
My crisp green skin
Has turned tarnished gold,
Parched and dry
Like a Martian bowl.
My tears,
My life bed,
A graveyard
Of 9 trillion dead.
Nothing survived
But the extremophiles
Living in my head.
Turning me,
In one mere century,
From paradise
To a wretched hellhole.
Yet, still I spin
In an endless fury,
A red spot of raging agony.
Graven images
Of the abundant past
Etched in bone.
A Life in Trade
by Meryl Ferguson
Rama coughed, spat grit and salt water, then flailed at
the sand as a wave foamed over her. The water's cold
grasp dragged her back into the crashing surf, tearing at
her bruised limbs and aching back. She struggled to her
knees, crawled up the beach as the sea rushed for her once
again.
When she was clear of its grasping claws, she lay
down on the sand. Behind her, beneath the churning
waves of the bay, her ship rested, its cargo of riches now
forever beyond her reach. Overhead the clouds boiled,
whipped into a frenzy by the magics of her enemy.
Rama slammed her fist into the sand. Through the
fading rain she could see the dark outline of the hill that
rose through the heath. She thought she saw lights moving
slowly up the winding road to the summit. Other supplicants, making their way to the temple with their offerings.
Slowly, painfully, she pushed herself to her feet. She
had one gift left. It would have to be enough.
She turned towards the hill and started walking. The
rain washed the salt from her, leaving her skin chilled but
clean. Beneath her feet, the sand gave way to grass. Low
bushes scraped against her pants and enveloped her in the
scent of rosemary.
*
*
*
Rosemary and falling rain and her mother's pasties,
tucked under her tunic, cooling against her skin. As a
child Rama had trudged through the gutters after her father
as he went from house to house, his hand-cart loaded with
clay pots. He in an old coat, well-rubbed with grease, she
in a jacket and pants made from a cut-down oilskin coat.
Rama's job was to collect the animal dung that lay in
the street, an unpleasant task in summer when the dung
dried quickly, but a dreadful chore in winter. Winter in
Janham drowned the streets and swept the gulls up from
the harbour on icy southern winds that bit through her coat
and burned her cheeks and hands.
She had to be fast, darting between the traffic to
scrape up the fresh piles before the rain pounded them into
mush. The dung was thrown into the bag that hung under
the cart, to be taken home and dried and eventually burned
in the kiln.
When their pasties cooled they would huddle against a
building, crouched beside the cart to cut the wind. They
ate the pasties, smelling strongly of rosemary and mutton,
and drank goat's milk from a waterskin. Once it would
have been flavoured with tea, but those days were gone.
A teamster's wagon went by, oxen dropping a
steaming pile onto the street. Rama grabbed her scoop and
dashed out, dodging around slow-moving carts and
pedestrians to scoop up the dung, using her hand to stop it
from falling off.
The sound of bells startled her and she looked up.
Four silver horses paced towards her with clockwork
precision, their sightless eyes made from glittering
precious stones. Behind them came a carriage of fine
wood with rich velvet curtains behind the windows.
Inside, a girl not much older than Rama sat on a
cushion, playing with a doll that walked about and bowed
and laughed with a hand over its mouth. The girl glanced
up as they drew abreast and Rama looked into a pair of
wide and dispassionate grey eyes.
A ringing slap on the side of her head sent her
stumbling forward and she dropped the scoop. The dung
spilled out and broke up in the puddles.
Rama looked up to see the girl watching her. In the
girl's gaze she saw herself, a casteless urchin scrabbling in
the mud for a handful of dung. Then the carriage was past.
"Leave it!" said her father as she scrambled to collect
the dung. He grabbed her by the arm and dragged her back
to the cart. Rama followed her father, her cheek burning,
tears hidden in the rain.
Beside the cart, her father crouched down and pulled
her close as he apologised. "What you saw today is not for
people like us, little sparrow."
That was the first day she began to understand what it
meant to be 'people like us'.
*
*
*
The magic-fuelled storm faded as suddenly as it had
appeared and the sun, bleaching the sky of colour, warmed
her skin. Rama pushed her dark hair out of her eyes,
wincing as her hand brushed a graze on her cheek.
Amusement twisted her lips into a grimace. She had
never been a beauty. Never lived a life of ease with
servants to fulfil her every need. Her work-roughened
hands had never worn gloves of lace, only leather and
coarse wool.
In her warehouses she wore breeches and boots as she
worked, rather than gowns and slippers of silk. She had
worked hard, earned her way, grown strong and callused in
pursuit of the position and security that now lay at the
bottom of the bay with her wealth.
She slowed as the steepness of the hill took her breath.
Practical, hard working, sensible. Those were the words of
her suitors, themselves hard workers. Some honest, some,
like herself, using the truth when they chose. No one had
ever called her beautiful, and they never would.
She met the road, finally, as it turned for the last
ascent, and she slipped in behind a caravan of camels, all
loaded with panniers that coloured the air with the scent of
faraway lands. At the front of the group the heavy curtains
of a sedan chair hid a princess of some far off land, come
to offer herself to a god.
Rama should have been in the procession, with her
horses and carts carrying all the wealth she had
accumulated in her life. Everything she owned, to be
thrown away on one last, great gamble, the businessman's
risk. But now she was just a bedraggled, dirty young
woman with nothing left in the world to her name. Back to
the beginning she had fought so hard to leave behind her.
*
*
*
There was no trace of the urchin in Rama as she paced
regally up the steps on the arm of Therian, son of a
Terakhan and master merchant in his own right. But
tonight he was hers. Not the master merchant, not the
young lord, but the lover.
They walked between lamps of priceless glass that
shed starlight onto the polished marble beneath their feet.
Rama fingered the tresses that whispered against her neck
and caught on the pearl beads of her gown.
"They're perfect. You're perfect," whispered Therian,
squeezing her hand.
"Nothing is perfect." She tossed her hair back.
"So speaks the master merchant!" he teased. He
brought her hand to his lips, left a lingering kiss. "Should I
look for flaws, or sign the contract with goods unseen?"
She flushed and glanced at the crowd. "Best keep
your dealings private, merchant."
Therian laughed, pulled her close to whisper in her
ear. "Too late! Everyone knows." He squeezed her hand,
and she felt the pressure of the ring on her finger.
She looked down at her hand and smiled. "It's not too
late to withdraw from negotiations. The contract has not
yet been signed."
"It is too late for me." His gaze, full of promises, met
hers.
They were distracted from each other by a servant of
the royal house, who indicated where they should stand.
They waited in line for their turn at the top of the steps
leading down into the courtyard.
"Lord Therian, Son of the Terakhan Maradam, and
Mistress Rama Ayadouma, Master Merchant."
Master merchant. Rama's fingers flew to her sash.
Ayadouma was not her father's name, but a respectable
name she had bought for herself, when her birth had
proved an impediment to her advancement.
All eyes turned to them, and she suppressed a nervous
giggle. After a moment's perusal, the courtyard returned to
its conversations. A minor son and a master merchant
were not of sufficient interest. She locked eyes with
Therian. Not yet. But one day, everyone in the courtyard
below would know their names.
They swept down the stairs, to the manicured lawn
dotted with a thousand moving stars. The wine was fresh
and crisp and tasted of pomegranates. They drank more
than they should, and laughed, and danced only with each
other.
And then there was a hush.
At the top of the stairs stood a young woman. Alone.
Perfectly composed under a hundred pairs of eyes. Her
hair floated free like a halo around her. Her dress was the
colour of poppies, glowing against skin the colour of old
honey.
Whispers rippled through the room, but Rama couldn't
catch her name. Therian leaned over to a stout general.
"Who is she?"
It was the general's wife who replied. "Tamalis
Mahande ma Devdar."
Tamalis leaped from the top step and a cry rose from a
hundred throats. But she didn't fall; she floated over the
crowd, drifted down to land in the very centre of the
courtyard.
There was a moment of silence then a roar of
applause. Tamalis Mahande was not just a daughter of
royalty. Tamalis Mahande was a sorceress.
Rama and Therian clapped and cheered with the rest
of the crowd.
"She's stunning," said Rama.
"Amazing." Therian turned to Rama and smiled.
"Shall we dance?"
The couple beside them in the dance told the story of
how, when Tamalis was five, she had charmed a visiting
prince at her father's table by making the silverware battle
each other in between the loaded platters. The prince had
laughed and offered her father a hundred thousand
warriors if she would marry his son.
Her father had agreed, but when the young man came
to claim his bride Tamalis had tossed her head and raised a
great wind that had blown him down the stairs. He went
home alone and now, years later, the prince's forces still
prowled along the southern border.
The general's wife told them the story of how, when
Tamalis was ten, she had gone as emissary to the court of a
distant queen. When the queen spoke to her, words dark
with threat, Tamalis had stamped her foot and made a tree
grow in the throne room, from seed to seedling to sapling
to mighty oak.
While the courtiers gasped in awe, she had thrown
time at the tree until the leaves withered and the branches
fell away and the great trunk broke in two and thundered to
the floor. Tamalis came home and the queen kept her
threats unspoken.
A courtesan in silver and blue told the story of how,
when Tamalis was fifteen, she had gone with her father to
make war against the godless northern tribes. While the
soldiers advanced across the sand she had turned the land
to fire beneath their feet. The chieftains had bowed to her,
not to her father, and called her an empress.
Therian leaned in close to whisper in her ear. "Sounds
like a load of big fish stories to me." They laughed and he
twirled her back into the dancers. When the dance ended
they collapsed onto chairs. Rama fanned herself with her
hand.
"Let me get you something to drink." Therian pushed
through the crowd to the refreshment table. She watched
his broad shoulders, the way his tunic rested on his hips,
and she smiled.
She was so lost in her thoughts that it was some time
before she missed him. Rama pushed her way through the
crowds to the table, but could not see him anywhere. She
circled the room, perplexed. The general's wife caught her
eye.
"You look a little lost, child."
Rama tried to smile. "No, I've just misplaced my
dance partner."
"Isn't that him?"
Rama turned. Over by the window, Tamalis lounged
on a divan, surrounded by a circle of admirers, Therian
standing by her chair. He held out his hand to Tamalis and
she rose from the divan. Together they moved on to the
dance floor.
Rama stood frozen as they twirled among the couples.
One by one the rest of the dancers stepped out until only
Tamalis and her Therian circled in a graceful lover's dance.
When the music stopped they bowed to thunderous
applause and Therian led Tamalis back to her admirers.
Not once did he look in her direction.
Face flaming, Rama moved to intercept them. Therian
looked startled for a moment.
"Rama! I was just coming to look for you. Have you
met Tamalis?"
"No. We've never met."
"Oh, but we have." Even Tamalis's voice was filled
with magic.
"I'm sorry, I don't recall."
"It was a long time ago. You had dropped something
on the street. Something precious to you."
Rama stared into the grey eyes, hard and cold as ice.
Tamalis smiled, and placed a hand on Therian's arm.
"Would you fetch me a drink, Therian?"
"Of course!" He walked away without a backward
glance.
"You know you don't belong here." Tamalis's gaze
drifted over the crowd, the noble and the rich.
"I am a master merchant. I have every right to be
here."
"You know that's not true."
Rama looked down, and her breath caught in her
throat. The pearls on her dress fell in a shimmering wave,
scattering and dancing across the floor. The pale silk was
stained with mud and the scent of dung rose over her in a
tide.
"No." She backed away, stumbled into another guest.
"Look where you're going!"
"I'm sorry," she stammered. "I-"
Tamalis laughed. Rama looked down at her dress, the
pearls unbroken, the silk unmarked. She turned back to
face Tamalis.
"Why do you hate me?"
"I don't hate you. I'm trying to help you, Rama. Go
back to where you belong. Where you're safe, little
sparrow."
Rama clenched her fists. "Get out of my head, you
bitch."
The people around her gasped.
Rama turned and fled, pushing through the cheerful
throng with eyes too full to see. For a moment she
stopped, thought of calling out to Therian. She clenched
her fists and moved on. Never again would she grovel in
the mud for something that had fallen from her grasp.
Outside, the lamps had been extinguished and she
walked back down the stairs under true starlight, cold and
uncaring.
It took three days before Tamalis tired of him and he
came knocking at Rama's door, full of apologies. She
turned his ring over and over between her fingers. She did
not open the door.
*
*
*
Rama jumped as trumpets sounded behind her. Silver
horns blared and shadows swept over the procession. A
score of gilded birds, larger than horses, soared over the
road. Under the thundering beat of their wings she heard
the click and whirr of clockwork. Seated on the first bird
in a throne of rose was Tamalis, her shining hair floating
behind her like a dark banner.
Rama tasted defeat, the bitterness filling her mouth
and nose. Tamalis with her magic had seen to it that her
adversary had not reached the temple before her. Rama
wondered why she had bothered to raise the storm that sent
her ship and her men to their deaths, when Tamalis could
simply sweep up the hill on magical wings, to present
herself to the gods in a glorious spectacle. Taking
whatever she wanted, as she had always done, with no one
to stand in her way.
Rama clenched her fists. You are wrong, Tamalis. I
may not be great, but I am a threat. I am a threat!
Rage burned where hope had been extinguished. Rama
pushed her way to the edge of the road, and a prince in
glittering finery found himself suddenly rolling in the dirt.
Rama hauled herself into his saddle and slapped the reins
against the horse's side, urging it upwards as the prince's
guards gave chase.
Ahead of her the golden birds swooped into the dark
entrance to the temple. The ramp was choked with people.
She turned the horse and forced him, stumbling and
slipping, up the wide stone steps. She was aware of cheers
from the crowds. Everyone loved a show. Would they
cheer for her if she won her prize?
At the top of the steps she slipped off the horse and
ran inside. No one tried to stop her, all were welcome in
the temple. Gods did not fear the hand of any man.
Inside, not a man was on his feet except the priests in
their hoods of gauze and the blinded servants. Tamalis
kneeled on the carpet before the marble steps that led up to
a throne taller than a house. Rama could see a naked and
perfectly formed foot resting on a cushion of velvet bigger
than a bed.
Her stomach quailed and she looked away before she
lost her courage. To the side, priests unpacked the riches
from the golden birds, measuring their worth for the King
of the Gods.
At the foot of the steps the Godspeaker, blind and deaf
since birth, sat on a comfortable chair. He was ancient
now, his hands palsied, sightless eyes weeping constantly,
but still hearing, in his mind, the voice of the King.
A priest called out the measure of Tamalis' wealth.
Silence fell in the temple.
"What is it that you wish?" asked the Godspeaker.
"My Lord, I offer myself as bride to your son. These
riches are proof of my worth, and my power."
A sigh ran around the gallery, and Rama saw many
heads nodding. Tamalis, beautiful, powerful Tamalis, was
exactly what the consort to a god should be.
*
*
*
The news had spread between the houses faster than
the wind. From master to burgher to servant to slave. The
immortal son Vahrim had announced he would wed, and
his mortal bride, once chosen, would become the next
mother of the line of the gods and share in their endless
power.
The road to the shrine was choked overnight with
families bringing their daughters to present to the gods.
The throng abated almost as quickly when Tamalis
announced her intention to offer herself as a prize. Rumours flowed from the royal house to the streets, of Tamalis
stripping her father's coffers to create a wondrous construction of gold and silver and glass as a demonstration of
her power. Her ascension was considered to be certain.
Rama stood in the dimness of her office and looked
out of the window without seeing the ripples that rose and
fell in the bay under summer's clear blue skies. Another
suitor waited for her attention, but she was weary of
searching for an alliance. Weary of pretending to love.
Outside on the street, a young boy trudged along the
road, carrying a loaded pannier on his back. Whenever
another person approached, he would drop down and walk
along in the gutter, scuffing dust onto stained and faded
pants.
Rama dug her nails into her palm. What would life be
like for him under the eternal rule of someone like
Tamalis? What would life be like for all of them, the
people born without status or worth? She turned away
from the window, her mind made up.
A quarter of her hard-earned fortune went on the
potion that took a year to make. The maker cautioned her
that success was not guaranteed, only that it would
increase her chances.
Another quarter of her fortune bought the man who
ensured his silence.
It took months before she tracked down the son of the
god-king. She made a mess of the seduction, but he
laughed and took her to bed anyway, then left in search of
more attractive entertainment.
When two moons passed and she was sure, she loaded
her ships with every last coin in her possession.
Everything she owned, plus one thing more.
*
*
*
"Wait!"
All eyes turned to Rama as she stepped down onto the
carpet. Her cowardly legs trembled but she walked
forward anyway, under the eyes of a thousand people and
the distant gaze of a god. She drew level with Tamalis,
then stepped in front of her. She dared not raise her eyes.
"I offer m-myself as a bride to your son."
Laughter echoed around the galleries. Rama paled
and sank to her knees. It had never occurred to her that
they would laugh.
"And where are your offerings?"
"I have only one," she whispered.
"Speak up!" said a priest.
Rama raised her head. Never show weakness to your
opponent. That was how it was in business. Act as if you
are bargaining from a position of strength, even if you
have nothing.
"I have only one offering, but it is beyond price." The
noise of the crowd rose in a tide. She looked up the stairs,
focussed on the feet crossed gracefully at the ankles. She
thought she saw, in the corner of her vision, a door
opening.
"And where is this offering?" asked the priest.
"Here." Rama hauled up her shirt, exposing a belly
only just rounding out. "I carry the child of the gods."
She heard Tamalis gasp and then noise erupted in the
temple, echoing off the walls. She kneeled before the
King of Gods with her belly exposed and knew that she
had won.
"Silence!" The Godspeaker's voice was not that of an
old man, but the pale echo of a god. The congregation, the
priests, the servants, all fell on their faces.
In the hush, Rama heard light footsteps. She tore her
eyes away from the feet on their cushion, and focussed on
the figure walking down the stairs.
Vahrim was a god and the son of a god. He looked
like a man. He smelled like summer. "I remember you."
That started a fire in her belly. She damped it. This
was business. "I request a partnership. My offering is your
child."
"My son." He smiled.
"How did you-" She froze. "You knew."
"Yes."
Colour crept up her cheeks. It was Vahrim's right as a
god to bed any woman in his eternal search for an heir.
She had thought she was a passing entertainment. It had
never occurred to her that he might have known the result
of his visitation.
"Why didn't you come to claim your son?"
"I wanted to see if you had the courage to come here
and claim your right."
"And if I didn't?" She raised her chin.
He shrugged. "I would have married Tamalis and
claimed him anyway."
She pushed her shoulders back. So that was how it
would be. But love was not her goal. She wanted much
more.
"And now?"
He smiled. "You are here, and you bear my son."
This was a conversation for a private room, not a cold
temple in front of thousands. But if she went ahead, this
would be her life, forever. She would trade power for
privacy, command for choice.
This was the last choice she would ever make alone.
"I offer myself as your bride."
"I accept."
"Let it be known," said the Godspeaker, "That my son
has chosen his bride."
Cheers erupted in the temple, and then outside as the
news spread. Rama ignored them. The populace would
celebrate a wedding; the gods would celebrate a son.
She turned to look down at Tamalis, still kneeling on
the carpet. "You had better go. Somewhere far from here,
I think."
Rama turned away. There would be changes to come,
for people like her. 
The Seal King
by Jen Hansum
The girl with apricot-colored hair sits on a dock the
color of driftwood, her back against a stone wall retaining
the land against the push and pull of the sea. Buoys bob
and clang. On this small peninsula on the shoulder of the
Atlantic, close-set fishermen’s cottages cluster together for
comfort. When the wind rakes the swells into whitecaps,
yellow foul-weather waders lift on the clotheslines.
It is early September, and the saline haze of summer
still hangs ripe and full over the harbor. Louellen, or Lou,
as she is called, pulls the frayed cuffs of her father’s coat
farther over her hands and presses her spine against the
afternoon of too-busy family and heckling high-school
classmates. The splashing kids have cleared the dock
platform and small swimming beach for another season,
leaving her mind to dance with everything and nothing.
Hidden from the village’s view, she is the only one to
hear the sound of water breaking, followed by the sudden
motion of a weak hand on the dock ladder. When the form
of a young man hoists itself over the edge and collapses on
the sun-baked wood in front of her, she confirms his
body’s unbroken whiteness before darting her attention
away, embarrassment heating her cheeks.
A joke, she thinks. Some prank on a party boat where
they stole the young man’s clothes and threw him
overboard, yelling “Swim!” as their cruise ferried tourists
in a tame circle out to the lighthouse on the point and back.
But the young man doesn’t speak of this. The young
man says nothing, in fact, but stares at his hand spread
against the weather-cured planks, ragged gasps escaping
his throat.
I should leave. I should get help, she thinks, drawing
her legs away. Yet at her movement he jerks aware,
staring her in the face, and she is reminded of a childhood
moment when she held an amber banner of kelp up to the
sun. The stranger’s eyes are the same color, like light
through a brown bottle, and as he takes in her rumpled
pants, baggy work-jacket and checkered blouse, a voice
rushes into her mind like wind through sea grass.
They took my skin from me….
His lips haven’t moved. “How did you--?”
His words, more vehement now, startle her again.
I’ve lost the tribe. I’m forever cast out.
He collapses once more, pale ribcage heaving in and
out, rivulets of water spilling through the planks to the
slow rise and fall beneath.
A drunk. A loony, near-drowned, she thinks. The hair
at the back of his neck swirls in dark eddies, like the wet
sheen of a cormorant’s back.
Some essence of the tides issues from him, ancient and
salt-soaked, as familiar to her as her own village, which
with its single general store cannot be called a town.
Something about the young man is part of the first breath
of air she ever drew, so she sheds the coat and lifts his
shoulder to draw the threadbare canvas around his
unmarked skin. Still, she shudders when his wet head falls
on her leg, like that of a dog.
My skin…
A breeze tickles the hair around her face, and when
she shuts her eyes against it, an image enters her mind of
sleek, dark shapes circling in an aura of light. A rocky
amphitheatre appears to her, far beneath the fluttering
currents, where a colony of seals darts with nervous
curiosity, half-watching, half-hiding from a commotion at
the center of the sand clearing. She beholds in the inner
landscape of his memory a young seal hovering, his eyes
regal like those of the youth in front of her, and knows.
It’s him.
“Your reign of lies has ended!”
The accusation reverberates from a wizened bull, who
rotates slowly, commandeering the attention of a group of
Elders. As he uses the mind-speech again, his eyes
narrow.
“The old king gave up his life to the moon-tide, like
the old queen before him. Gave over his crown to Kells,
here before us, ocean-shifts ago. But at last the truth has
come, on the sacred currents. I say to you, Kells. You are
not the son of the old sire!”
“Rannick, I am as much son as the king ever had.”
“Listen! He does not deny it!” Veeren, the squinteyed mouthpiece of the females, floats to her mate’s side.
Kells’ thoughts boom out to the gathered colony.
“I’ve kept no secrets from the Elder Council. We’ve had
our disputes, but this agitation…. You bring discord.
Pointless turbulence.”
Rannick’s eyes widen in mock innocence. “I bring
nothing but revelation! Are you or are you not the former
king’s blood kin?”
Kells’ eyes lift to the perimeter of dark faces, stirring
in the folds of the walls above. Even as an eavesdropper
on the memory, the girl can sense his indecision.
“I am the offspring he made his own.”
A pock-riddled male with a propeller-scarred shoulder
barks out to the listening assembly. “But not of his blood,
as our tribe requires. How long have we been deceived, all
of us? Have we made one addition to our territory in the
moons since this pup became king?”
“No!”
“He has no right to lead!”
The Elders bob with gratification at the shifting
murmurs around them.
The seal king’s flipper, beyond his control, flicks with
annoyance.
“This is a colony of plenty. Who among you has gone
without? There is no need to seek war and conflict, to
hoard the excess!”
Rannick calls out. “What king would ban from you
your deserved tide-reapings? Not I, I promise you.”
The gray shapes hang nearer over Kells, pulsing with
turbulent fervor. Other voices join in.
“You kept secrets from your Council. From your
colony!”
“Mongrel!”
Rannick circles. “Yes, a mongrel!”
Veeren’s voice speaks suddenly at Kells’ neck, vicious
and close. “You are not selkie-folk.”
Selkies? Lou repeats. Her mind whirls.
Above him, they have begun to slap the rocks, a
rhythm, wild and terrible. As though she is inside his
body, the girl feels Kells’ heart quicken.
“Mongrel! Mongrel!” The colony has unified in a
single voice.
Kells senses the verdict before Rannick speaks. “A
deceiver forfeits his skin!”
“Yes! His skin!”
Impossible, now, to go back. To project his single
thoughts into that maelstrom. The shapes close in, a
vortex of rage, and the blows begin to land. Rough thuds
of shoulders and flanks. In the midst of it, he feels his pelt
begin to loosen. At the sensation of a foreign, cold trickle,
he is gripped with sudden revulsion by the idea of what
will happen. He could with one colossal movement thrash
and dart from them, he thinks. But just at that moment, his
skin ripples and begins to lift.
The change is a sideways, painless dislocation. A
baffling chill presses upon his limbs, loosened from their
mantle. No longer flippers, but forearms. His body twists
at the blasphemy of the sight, every frustrated move, now,
separating him from the velvet folds. The last brush of
that floating warmth is a tender agony. Spread-limbed and
human, he reels with nausea, seeing the other half of his
soul now become a living cape around Rannick’s
shoulders.
“To the shallows!”
What threat is he, this shivering boy-form, to the new
king? Nonetheless, Rannick’s minions drag him, nipping
and buffeting. Through miles of middle water, to the
mouth of the harbor channel, and further in, where their
nostrils clog with wave-dust and strange streams of scent.
Leaving him adrift in water where he can now… stand,
after all, as that is what befits a fallen king. A cast-off
selkie. Now become a man.
He pulls away and fixes Lou with that broken stare.
You see, now, what they have done to me. The sleek
voice, again, in her head. But you cannot understand what
it means.
For the first time he raises himself to stand, swaying
on the balls of his feet.
Without my skin, let the depths take me. Let the ocean
drown this worthless half-body on the outgoing tide.
He drops from the dock, then grits his teeth and wades
(oh humiliation!--she can see the shame on his face), to sit
on a wave-slicked boulder, waiting for the sea to turn. A
pale man in a borrowed coat.
She could walk up the hill. She could return to her
lamp-lit porch. A kitchen steamy with cooking and damp
clothes. A warm, heaped plate. But at the base of the
slope she turns, remembering in the fading afternoon a faroff tale. A rocking chair memory. And she knows she
will not walk up the hill.
In a moment she stands next to him in the shallows,
wavelets slapping against the bulky denim of her jeans.
“What if that’s not the way it has to be?”
*
*
*
Her grandmother’s house with its weathered gray
shingles and evergreen shutters still stands like a
figurehead on the bluff. Before selling it, the small
woman, grizzled, content, lived there alone. Whatever
season--dry leaves blowing from bare trees, first grass
sweetening the hill-slopes--Lou rode her bicycle to find
her mother’s mother sitting on her porch, watching the
play of sun on the water.
Lou would lean on the railing, finger extended
towards the chain of islands they called the Dumplings.
“What is that island, Granny? That last one. With the
trees.”
Her grandmother’s eyes crinkled with mischief. “That
is the island of the selkies. On the far side of it, the old
fisher folk said, you might try to find the Blue Tide. When
the full moon appears, a different current comes up deep,
from Race Reef. Meet it, and then!” She smiled. “Then,
you might dance with the selkies, under the surface of the
sea.”
Race Reef. Bluefishing over it from their little skiff,
the girl had heard the warnings from her father. The
underwater chasm pulled down in strange vacuums
wayward chunks of driftwood, the refuse from trawlers on
their way back to harbor, the accidental swimmer. She had
seen it once. A man overboard who never surfaced. A life
ring drifting on the indifferent swells.
But her grandmother told a different story. “Swim
down, they say, to where you feel the Blue Tide’s pull.
Give yourself over, give up all your breath, and maybe,
that stream will enter you. Then, you will hear the song of
the sea.”
“The song, Granny?”
“I hear it on the wind sometimes, after a storm. Or
that’s my wishing. Such peace, in that sound!”
With no more to offer, Lou stops. During her story
Kells’ face has grown wary. When he speaks the words
aloud, they are accented with a strange lilt.
“Th--That is impossible. For your people to hear the
song. To travel the middle waters. Lou, is it? We have
our own myths of the water visitors, who tried and failed.
They are tales of sunken hearts and drowned bones.”
She shakes her head. “You can see the island from
here. The tide turns after midnight.”
“And the night-orb is coming full circle. What does it
matter?” From behind the coat collar, his teeth flash
bitterly. “As I am, I couldn’t even cross that distance.”
The girl watches him turn away, before her gaze
comes to rest amongst the grasses on shore.
“Not without help.”
*
*
*
So much vocalization for a species, Kells thinks.
Rowing the small skiff alongside the peninsula in the
direction of the islands, the human female, seeming
nervous, has chattered without interval.
“Dad and I scallop just off that marsh. And there’s the
East Light.”
He sits in the stern, amazed at the workings of her
body, tugging the oars, left, right, left, then in tandem. For
a short time they had sought for him to take a turn, but
found his hands weakened and unnerved by the motion.
The foreign garment, too, he had cast up towards the bow
once they left the land, muttering “Not the same.” She had
reddened, then shrugged at his disrobed presence and kept
on rowing.
“Scallops, lobsters…. We eat every kind of fish, ‘til
we can’t stand it, I swear.” She quiets suddenly, and he
spots in her mind the memory-echo of the swimming
shapes, the discomfort of an unasked question. Her brief,
self-conscious glance is the color of a wave-peak.
Where his whiskers would have twitched with
amusement, he feels an odd pull at the corners of his
mouth. “You think we, part fish, do not eat fish?”
“Right. You’re a seal.”
By the day-orb, he scoffs to himself. “I am a selkie.
Seals surface to breathe. They cannot mind-speak. They
live a fraction of our lifespan.”
“Really?” says Lou.
In actuality, he does not mind the talk, which distracts
him from the tease of the green sliding deep on his trailing
fingers. So thin and terribly exposed, he thinks. But
considering the girl’s hands, he is not so sure. Calloused,
square and brown, they slide and tug, slide and tug on the
ocean-splashed handles, punctuating each stroke with the
oarlocks’ clank. She is using her back, now, long wooden
blades feathering through the resistance like fins through
water. He had never enjoyed shedding his pelt at will,
unlike some other selkies, and now, the sight of his human
frame has only just ceased to appall him.
He had asked Lou, when they dragged the small vessel
from the reeds lining the harbor, “Your kind. Who is your
clan?”
“Up there,” Lou had motioned. “In the village. Don’t
worry. I take the boat out all the time.”
“You were--” He tests the word against his meaning.
“Separate. Where is your colony?”
“Colony?” The word was a blank. “Like school? My
class?”
“The others to which you belong.”
She had stared at him then, before busying herself
with the bow-rope. His efforts to explain further flapped
like a dropped shell to the bottom of a shallow silence.
Together they had righted the boat amongst the fleecing
cattails, which were turning bronze in the last of the
daylight. When he felt the bouncing of the boat on the
water for the first time, his gut had lurched with the
sharpest pang of longing.
Now, mirrored coves replaced the harbor, giving off
whiffs of strange vegetation and once, the shuff-shuff,
shuff-shuff of metal rocketing against metal. “Just the train
tracks,” Lou had said, but not before Kells had shamed
himself by flinching like an unweaned pup at the sounding
horn.
A muffled knocking brings his attention back to the
boat.
“Something’s caught on us,” Lou says. “Stupid. I
forgot to pull the bowline in when we launched.” They are
out into deeper water, and she is hanging over the side,
pulling at a massive snarl of rope. At the sight, Kells
shudders. Every loop from the land is a noose. The old
training comes back. Don’t touch it. Rocks, shells, bones,
are playthings. Not this.
“An old trawling net,” Lou says. “Too heavy to pull
into the boat, but I can’t steer with it dragging. We’re
going to need the keel free, once we come around the
point.” Balancing, he moves to her side, surveying with
dread the knotted fibers, green with weeds. He had told no
one, that time, when Tenny had looped a piece around his
neck, playing at something, and they had had to bloody
their gums to free him. His thumb moves to the white row
of his teeth, testing the points.
These land-walker jaws might sever it.
Whether or not he intended to speak into her mind, she
responds, startling him. “No time. The water picks up
past the peninsula. I can cut the net without losing our
line.”
When she rises from the bottom of the boat with
something in her hands, Kells’ heart leaps at the flash of
silver, so like a fish. But no. Only a flat length of metal,
attached to a stout handle.
“My dad’s shucking knife. We’re too far out for
rocks. If you hold the oars flat nothing will swamp us.”
“You won’t be able to stand.” He takes the handles
from her, noticing the smirk on her lips.
“I may be a ‘land-walker’, but I’ve been over my head
before.”
As Lou lowers herself over the side and into the water,
her boots, thrown towards the stern, captivate him for a
moment with their intricacy of undone bows and laces.
Between wet gasps and long silences, the boat tremors
with the force of her sawing.
“It’s just about there,” she says. Get ready for the
current to take us.”
Bracing her feet, Lou reaches below the water and
tugs mightily, and the rope snaps. He feels the knots
bumping free underneath. She calls to him in triumph.
“There!--Huhk!”
Silence presses upon him. Standing, he glimpses,
under the water, a flash of checkered shirt in a tangle of
line, sweeping down and away in the undertow below the
surface current. He does not think. He does not speak.
He plunges into the sea.
*
*
*
No wave-music. No breath. Were these paralyzing
waters the ocean that had once embraced him? The girl
with her empty lungs is borne down easily, the net twined
around her and spreading like a sail on the current,
drawing her body away. Kells kicks after her, fixated on
the tightly pressed line of her lips, willing it not to break.
She ceases striking out in fear as he seizes her ankles,
working swiftly with clumsy hands, teeth, anything, to
loosen her. Lou twists one arm free, and struggling against
the weight of water and rope, they work upwards. Air
splits their lungs, and immediately he dives again.
Somehow, in the fury of his hands, her legs come free, and
the net is gone. At the surface he grasps her close, her
breath frantic in his ear. Her eyes are reeling, fixed on the
heavens.
“We’re safe. You saved me!”
When her grip on him loosens, he barks with concern,
“Don’t stop holding!”
“Where--” Her head lolls, twisting to look. “Oh god,
the boat!”
*
*
*
Rattle rattle rattle rattle rattle…
Lou’s forehead hurts where it rests, mashed against
the keel, and tracing the source of the sound, her brain
awakens with a pinch. The coat is wrapped around her
shoulders, and somewhere a steel cleat is vibrating.
Raising her head, she remembers. The skiff, the size of a
tiny teacup, spinning lazily towards the horizon. Are those
really the first stars? had been her last thought, before her
eyes swam and the darkness swallowed all.
In the stern, the seal king hugs his curled legs,
shuddering uncontrollably, his eyes locked on her face.
“You did it,” she whispers. “How did you…”
Forming the words, he seizes, his voice fluttering into
her head instead. S-swam. I had t-trouble pulling you
back in. I’m s-sorry. He nods at her side, and Lou finds a
bleeding scrape above her hip.
Coming sharply back to herself, she notices that his
features are tinged green with cold. “You’re sick.”
N-no. Just c-c—
“But the water’s still warm, from the summer.”
His thoughts hold no judgment, only a statement of
fact. Without my skin, I – f-f-freeze.
She is shrugging off the coat already, pushing it back
to him. “You knew that. And you--”
“Turn the boat around,” he says, finding his voice.
“The water will take us right to it. We don’t even
have to row.”
“My loss is not your burden. Turn us.”
“Look how close we are!” she shouts, flinging her
hand toward the distant hump of land, low and
symmetrical. When he regards her with confusion, she
continues, the familiar stiffening coming into her throat.
“My Granny was my colony. The only one who
understood me. Why would she tell me of the Blue Tide,
if I wasn’t meant to see it?”
Kells squints over the bow. She hears him exhale,
long and slow. “Very well. Each of our lives is our own.”
Lou flips the end of one oar over the stern to steer
them, hesitating only to press his frigid hand where her
words can’t make the thanks.
*
*
*
Stars above, now, and stars below. Protected by the
island’s lee side, the skiff noses through glossy blackness,
Kells standing in the bow. Despite the resentment he has
expressed towards his human form, Lou notes he has
found the balance of his legs.
“My eyes are different,” he says. “I can see farther
above, now. The sky is deep. How deep?”
Lou, leaning on the steering oar, considers the
glimmering sprawl of the heavens. “I don’t think anyone
knows. Humans used to make up stories about the sea-giant monsters, strange creatures. Funny. Now we’ve
turned to outer space.”
“Is that so?”
She smiles. “I never knew what was swimming in my
backyard.” She lets the boat coast for the last five yards,
then beaches it on the island’s shoal of fine pebbles.
Water lapping at their ankles, they drag the shell past the
scalloped line of detritus left by high tide.
“I’m here. Standing on it,” Lou murmurs.
In the light from the full moon, the slope looms above
them, a handful of wind-sculpted trees here and there
among the whorls of silvery grass. Just as she imagined.
A wild place that countless storms had ravaged, given
over, now, to the hushed sigh of bivalve and wavelet.
“The sea has blessed this place,” Kells says. Yes, she
thinks. There could be no fakery here, where all life is
pared down to its rarefied bones. How long had it been
since a human touched this land? Decades? Centuries?
She summits the hill first, finding, as if in answer, a ring of
standing stones set into the flat knoll.
“Sentinels,” Lou says.
Kells joins her. “Made by whose hand? Selkie?
Human?”
“Both?” she says. “Who knows.” Down the opposite
windward slope, the open sea gradates away from them in
pale shallows, then darker depths. She points. “That’s
where it will come. The Blue Tide.”
He looks back behind them. “You’ll have a long
return to make alone.”
“I’ll know Granny was right. That’s all I want.”
“If your story is true--”
“You’ll have the rest of your life in your own skin,
back where you belong,” she says. “When it’s over, the
sun will show me home.”
“Then you do have a colony,” he says.
“I don’t know.” She sits next to him against one of
the granite spurs to wait for the turning of the tide. “I
watch everyone drudging through the halls at school, my
mom falling asleep in front of the TV, my dad, who
doesn’t really talk. I’m not the same. I can’t stop myself
from wondering. Is this all I should expect? Is this what
life’s for?” She felt the familiar hysteria fidgeting beneath
her sternum. Only Granny had been able to comfort her
when it came.
“Our restlessness is why we’re drawn to the sea,” the
old woman was fond of saying. “Though the water
smothers our sight and sound. We can only make up our
dreams about it from the outside, can’t we?” Just once,
before the end, Lou had noticed wetness on Granny’s
lashes. “If one could slip beneath and breathe oneself a
part of it…. How could anyone resist dwelling in that
peace forever?”
Kells speaks, breaking her concentration on the
horizon line. “Families bring us into the world. Finding
kin is different.” He combs the grass with his fingers. “I
was a bastard. But for a time, I was a king.” She looks
away, afraid to distract him from continuing. “My mother
found her soul-kin in Krinn, a selkie from another tribe,
displaced by a storm. Our territory codes forbid coupling
outside one’s tribe. Krinn’s presence brought tension into
the colony, and he was forced to leave. When my
mother’s belly swelled with me on the next tide, she knew
she couldn’t follow him, vulnerable and alone. So she
sought help from the king. He had been a friend, and he
and my mother loved each other, in their own way.
Knowing his fondness could easily be mistaken for more,
he granted her the favor, taking my mother as his mate and
claiming credit for me. No one would have known I
carried a foreigner’s blood.”
She sees his face darken.
“Except, half a moon ago, Rannick led a hunting party
far from our colony. From another group of selkies, they
heard of an Elder, Krinn, who on his deathbed rambled
about my mother, to whom he thought he’d given a pup.
Rannick recognized what had happened, and it was over.
Banishment is death.”
“You’re alive,” she says.
Kells shakes his head. “A selkie’s skin is his soul. A
tribe takes it away knowing it will call us back to the sea to
drown.”
“If the Blue Tide lets you return….”
“I will fight to convince them. But without my pelt,
they will not recognize me as an equal.”
“I’ll go there with you.”
“To risk your life, like you did in the channel?”
“It’s my choice.”
“What is it about you?” he says. “You’re so young
you don’t even know the world you’re trying to leave.”
She finds her fists clenching. “My world is--” She
jumps as he grasps her shoulder suddenly, inclining his
head.
“Listen,” he says. She strains, hearing only a breeze
lifting the treetops. “The tide has turned.”
Gazing out towards the water, Lou clambers to her
feet. “It’s happening. Look.”
Below them, an aquamarine sliver is shimmering,
tracing the edge of the underwater drop-off with
exploratory fingers.
“The Blue Tide,” she says. “It’s here.”
*
*
*
Running down the slope and charging into the water
up to her knees, Lou suddenly stops. A hundred points of
turquoise light agitate into brightness when she breaks the
water’s surface again, this time with her hand. The
luminous specks, like the rim of eyes on a scallop, cling to
her skin, and tears spring to her eyes. “Phosphorescence.
Jelly creatures. That’s all it was!”
Kells stops short at the water’s edge, staring at her
extended hands. “An old human myth. Explaining
something they couldn’t understand.”
Silly tales to amuse a child, Lou thinks. Blue Tides.
Selkie songs. Her doddering granny, now dead and gone.
“No.” Her voice surges with anger. “It can’t be. The
Blue Tide will follow behind. If there’s any chance--”
She plods forward.
“Lou.” Kells has followed, wincing at the water
encircling his waist. “You’ll drown.”
“I have to try.”
He hollers at her again. “I have nothing to lose. To
go down, not returning, not seeing the sky again, that does
not bother me. But for you…. Lou!”
She pulls free from his hand, striking with her arms
against the resistance of the water. Ten strokes out, her
feet leave the island. Twenty strokes out, no longer
sensing Kells behind her, she takes a last breath and kicks
down, fighting the air’s claim on her body.
Give yourself over, give up all your breath, and
maybe, that stream will enter you.
A new plane of coldness brushes her face, and she
opens her eyes upon bright blue veins, streaming through
the sediment before her. Forgetting herself, she gasps with
surprise. The light meets her lips, dissolving the thumping
ache in her chest, and whether it is death or liquid breath
filling her with song, she cannot tell.
*
*
*
Fathoms deep, the seal king dreams he is a pup again,
dozing in the old kelp grove, sunlight slanting through the
brown ribbons. Something nudges the side of his face, and
he jolts awake to find himself in an azure haze, his cheek
on the ocean bottom. He had followed Lou, fighting his
lungs’ agonized clamor and the coldness tightening around
his skull. But then-You will hear the song.
Some gentle draught moves in his chest. The old
music is back in his ears. His vision clears. Not far away,
Lou hovers, her feet pointing delicately towards the sand,
her face crowned by the wreath of her hair. He has never
seen a human form so beautiful. She beams, her tears one
with the sea, and peers beyond him to the open waters.
“Please,” she whispers into his mind. “I love it more
than ever. Show me.”
He looks down. His body is still human, but the selkie
gracefulness has returned. Hope buoys his heart. With a
grin he takes her hand and they are racing, out beyond the
islands, beyond the reef, to the deeps.
*
*
*
They revel with abandon. He lets his seal-nature
emerge. Playing the merman, showing her gardens of
lavender anemones and sand as soft as fur. He catches her
flying body, riding the currents in a laughing spin. When a
rough surge sends them tumbling, they come to rest with
Lou’s arms around him and his nose buried in the hair
behind her ear. As they separate, their lips brush as
unconsciously as a wave folding onto the land. He forms a
circlet of golden-green pop-weed for her hair and surprises
her with a cave lined in glittering quartz. Breaks open
mollusks, reveling in her reaction to the tastes and textures.
They race across boulder fields and canyons. Only
once does she stop to marvel at the distance they have
come.
“Your homewater. Is it far?”
“How far is far?”
He grins, holding out a hand. But reaching to take it,
she glances up. Two shapes are watching them. Slick fur
and whiskered faces. Wise black-brown eyes, taking in the
levitating pair, joined by hands.
“Look. A human that breathes. And the one
shunned.” Kells starts at the sight of a wound torn in the
larger selkie’s side.
“We have to keep on!” says the other, and musclepropelled, the watchers dart away, dissolving into the
distance.
“Those were tribal Elders,” Kells says. He frowns.
“Time is shorter than I thought. We must go.”
*
*
*
The absence of singing impresses him before anything
else. Where hundreds of voices in the colony would have
been ringing out in chorus, he can sense only hushed
murmurs. Rannick has broken them already, he thinks.
“This is your kingdom?” Lou asks.
“It was,” he says.
She glides to look over the edge of rock, and her eyes
widen at the sight so familiar to him: a massive crater,
extending down through jagged ledges, thronging with
selkies.
“Like a coliseum.” She glances at his body. “There
are so many. Without your skin--”
He draws his fingers into his palm, feeling only frailty
there. “I know.”
“What will you do?”
“Go down and reclaim my pelt. I have no other
choice.”
“All right.”
When she moves to clear the crater’s edge he puts out
a hand. “Alone.”
“Why?” He has come to recognize that defiance on
her face, more selkie-like than she knows.
“Your presence as a human won’t help. Whatever
happens, I’ll bring you back to the boat.”
“We’ll both return.”
“Yes. Before….” An image of a floating, orangehaired body escapes from his mind before he can prevent
it. “Before the dawn ends this,” he finishes, gesturing to
their water-breathing forms. If his darkest thoughts have
transferred to her psyche, there is no indication on her
face. She accepts his hands, ushering her into a rocky
cleft.
“If they murder you?” she asks.
“There would be no purpose. I’m dead to them
already.” He squeezes her hand. “But I promise. Before
the Blue Tide recedes, I’ll bring you home. I owe you
that.”
“Even though I’m human?” she says.
“I know, now, what it is to be both.”
He hovers a moment on the crater’s rim, studying the
look of concentration on her face. Then he swims down.
*
*
*
Kells immediately locates Rannick at the grotto’s
center, with no one but Veeren beside him. He has driven
off the Elders, then, Kells realizes. At the moment he
spies his pelt around the bull’s shoulders, his stomach
twists sharply, like a caught fish. For an instant, those
plush dark folds are all that compel him.
Halfway to the bottom, his presence draws gurgles of
surprise from a nearby selkie and calf. Others turn, and the
gray bodies begin to circle quizzically, the stares like
pinpricks on his sprawl-limbed body.
“Him!”
“The old king’s changeling.”
“Bare, yet he lives!”
“A land-walker, but look--he breathes!”
Closer, now, poking with bristled snouts, curious.
Among them a voice, afraid to hope, pipes up.
“Kells has come home!”
Could I have a chance after all? Kells thinks. He can
imagine the spectacle he presents--an angular boy-man
with black-sheen hair. But behind the colony’s fear, he
can sense wonder stirring.
A voice thunders from below. “Are we a haven for
deceivers?” Rannick whirls, catching the attention of the
assembly, his nostrils wrinkling in disgust. “I warn you!
Do not be taken in by this liar a second time!”
“Rannick,” Kells hears Veeren caution from her
mate’s side. “The outcast breathes!”
“Illusion! Land-magic!”
Kells can hardly concentrate, so close is he now to the
cloak of his own fur.
“No one can take from another the skin in which they
were born, Rannick. I travel here at the will of the ocean
itself.”
“Listen!” says Rannick with a bitter laugh. “The
whelp demands his disguise!” Murmurs of agreement toss
back and forth above him, and Kells stiffens as Rannick
draws close. “What is he? This body--” The old bull
noses intrusively at Kells’ spine, and it is all he can do to
avoid crying out and grasping like a newborn for that part
of him that flutters by his shoulder like a live thing.
“Inefficient. Protectionless.” Rannick’s hind claws rake
across the small of Kells’ back, and for a moment, he
thinks he hears Lou’s voice, above him.
Ignoring the tang of his own blood in the water, Kells
calls out. “It is not my blood that makes me who I am.
Nothing has changed!”
“Right you are. You remain a liar.” Rannick rears up
to his full length. “A liar who in twelve moons did nothing
to expand our territory!”
The selkies close by are averting their faces. But
they’re still listening, Kells thinks. I haven’t lost them yet.
He presses forward, projecting his thoughts to the upper
ledges.
“This is what it’s about? Not bloodline after all, but
territory? What plenty results from greed, and tribe
warring against tribe? Not more to eat, but fewer mouths
to feed!” He feels their dark gazes back upon him, the old
loyalty emerging. “It was not my father’s way. It is not
our way!”
“Hush, outsider!” Veeren hisses, and then, with a
bulleting rush of muscle, she and Rannick have slammed
Kells against the crater-wall.
“Half-breed,” the bull taunts. “Your rags are no use to
me. I’ll send your hide on the outgoing tide. You’ll stay
and watch it dissolve in the day-orb’s light.”
“Stay?” They would hold him here. And then-Kells’ dread spills the words from his mouth. “No.
Destroy my skin, but she must return.”
“She?” Rannick scoffs. “Mother? Mate? You have
no one. This colony will prosper long past the memory of
you, the bastard son. Do you hear the waters turning,
impostor? Do you feel it?”
With Veeren’s bulk pinning him low against the rock,
Kells notices, for the first time, how the sky-circle has
lightened above them. Then Rannick shrugs his pelt from
around his neck, shoots upwards and sets the garment free.
The colony quiets, and Kells’ heart keens. The mantle
waves away, further with each moment, a dark void
against the surface.
“Watch the dawn take it!” Rannick cries, delight in his
eyes.
But like an arc of light, a girl shoots across that silvery
sky, catching the yielding pelt in her arms. With
uncontrolled speed, Lou flies to Kells, racing downwards,
flinging the skin over him and sprawling headlong over the
sand.
And there is a hush.
Like the soft fragrant flank of his mother, under her
flipper, where no roughness could ever be, the velvet cape
enfolds him, and he is home again. He tests, and yes, there
are the webs between his claws, there is the contained
might of his tail. He opens his eyes, and the colony
resumes its song.
“His skin. Regained!”
“The king! The king!”
Rannick’s roar splits the melody. “He is not your
king!”
Kells whirls to find that Veeren has already ground
Lou into the grotto floor. Before he can think, he has
barreled into the other seal, striking with his teeth again
and again. Veeren bawls in panic and bolts, streaking
unbalanced over the rim.
He turns to find Lou dumbstruck, taking in his new
form from nose to tail. She scrambles against the rock as
Kells, back in touch with the power of his body, takes his
place before her.
“I want my kingship returned.” He glares fiercely at
Rannick. “You had no right. You never had a right!”
“You’ve already lost everything!” the bull retorts.
At this, the selkies’ voices resound as one from the
walls. No. You have sought for yourself alone, Rannick.
Though you are born of our blood, we do not know you.
“Moments ago, this was a man!” Rannick bellows.
When the singing continues, he rockets into the seal king’s
right flank. Kells’ side explodes in pain, and in a frenzy
they roll, jaws fastening and shaking. Then the bull’s teeth
clench deep into his neck.
“No!” Lou shouts.
Wrenching free, suffering the tearing of his flesh,
Kells knocks the Elder clear with his tail.
“Rannick,” he pants, rising, haggard. “Stop this
madness.”
The selkies echo around them. You are offered mercy,
Rannick. Take it. This colony will heal.
Shaking with rage, Rannick sneers. “And let him
muddy our path? Your skin may be your own, but I
promise, I’ll take it from you piece by piece!”
With a roar, Rannick sets upon him. A fury of
adrenalin courses through Kells’ limbs, and he loses
himself momentarily, savaging the older selkie’s body
with his claws. Coming back to his senses, he discovers
Rannick tiring, one flipper dangling half-free. Blood
clouds the water.
“Don’t make me, Rannick. Yield,” Kells says.
The fallen Elder lurches upright, his ripped muzzle
twisting in a grin. “I will not yield.” His gaze drifts
sideways. “And if I cannot kill you, I will do the next best
thing.”
Setting his head, the bull courses towards the girl with
his remaining strength. Kells sees Lou draw her knees to
her chest in fear and cries out, his every fiber seizing at the
impact. But Rannick’s massive body inexplicably lifts,
floating upwards in a dead spiral, revealing Lou, his
human girl, her fists around the silver shucking blade’s
hilt. Her smiling eyes meet his a moment, before
following her departed breath up to where the gold of
dawn has just broken the Blue Tide’s spell. And she is
gone.
*
*
*
Current, pulling on their bodies. Dragging against
them, but Kells fights it, muscles afire. Streaking through
the middle waters, past the last traces of the Blue Tide,
now expended and receding. Past the reef, to cast her onto
the pebbled shore of the island.
He has shed his skin once more, all cold legs and
hands, now, pulsing upon Lou’s heart as he has seen the
humans do. Water dribbles from her mouth. Gone. She is
gone. Like the night-orb. Like the scent of his mother.
Like the foolish tide that led them from the land. On the
barnacle-scabbed beach he rubs her in the folds of his
mantle over and over, and as the full force of the sun slants
over the horizon, he feels her limbs twitch. She shudders
and coughs, her face full of disbelief and pain in the
coppery rays of morning.
“I don’t have to wonder anymore,” she gasps. “Where
I belong. What life is for.”
Tears stream into her wet hair, his sob is a bark in his
throat, and she is caught in his kiss.
*
*
*
Miss Lou, they call her. The lady running the corner
store with the milkshakes and the jars of penny candy is
one of the young who stayed. Of which, in the village,
there are few.
Was she married? She acted married. But no, no one
had seen her wed. Through the years she had lovers come
and peaceably go. But whether they never got close
enough or whether she favored her solitude more, they
never knew. She waited customers at the breakfast
counter. She sewed doll clothes for the local children and
kept up the flowers by the docks, where the boatmen ate
their lunch.
In middle age she bought back her
grandmother’s house with the narrow steps down the hillslope to the foot of the sea, where there was a tiny dock
and beside it, a tiny boat.
The locals paid scant attention to the island. Not
much more than a low hump of earth, grass, trees, and
stone rising out of the Atlantic. Nothing there but bird
droppings, a man said to his son, from their lobster boat
passing through on the far side of the channel. Can’t stop.
Too busy. Oh, and that story about the Blue Tide? That
was just a fable.
But month after month, year after year, she saw him.
Leaving the fabric of her land-bed, no matter who shared
it, leaving the gray-shingled house with the evergreen
shutters. Rowing out, though she could never be a part of
his world again. That was all right. For that was her great
secret. Her great surprise, discovering, after he had pulled
her from the sea, that he could return. Each time, walking
up the slope to meet her, carrying his skin. Each time,
laying her on the grass amongst the standing stones,
beaming, smelling of that beloved foreignness, tasting of
the tide. They laughed like children, girl queen and seal
king, and the moonlight melted all else away. Out of all
her life, and for all her life, that would be the best part.
For the girl with the apricot-colored hair, it would be
enough to know, at the end of her story, there would be a
full moon, and an outgoing ebb, and a note, reading:
When I am too old to keep on, take me to my little boat
and push me out to the arms of the deep. Let the current
carry me, where going out meets coming in, and the Blue
Tide will take me. To my home. To my soul. To the sea.
Nyx is back!!!
. . . .and this time she’s caught in a
war between developers and
environmentalists in
Assignment #3: The Protectors



Jade-Tiger
a response to Juel’s oil on canvas,
Jade-Tiger, 2009
by Shelly Bryant
leaping
from saber-toothed maw
hopping through hoops
of myth and magic
dream and reality
into near extinction
a lined beast on crusade
across the rings of hell
A corporate hierarch is en route to Adenne, the
world where Nyx is spending her furlough.
Because the corporation plans to exploit certain
ore deposits, environmentalists from the radical
group Ecotect are planning protests and violence,
and Nyx is ordered to protect the hierarch from
them. Also on Adenne is a top-ranking mortifice
named Silver LeMay whose contract seems to
include killing both Nyx and the hierarch, and
who is aligned with Ecotect. Nyx has just two
days to prepare for the hierarch's arrival. With
the local constabulary and the environmentalists
pitted against her, Nyx's only ally might be the
one person on Adenne who has specifically been
assigned to kill her.
www.sdpbookstore.com
. . . in the Novels section
SWEET TOOTH REVIEW
by Ryan David Muirhead
Disaster and dehumanization have always gone handin-hand in apocalyptic fiction, but few works in the genre
pair these concepts with such elegance as Jeff Lemire's
Sweet Tooth, an ongoing comic book series from DC's
Vertigo imprint. The series literally embodies this duality
in its premise: a lethal virus has put humanity on the
endangered species list, but, as the few survivors of the
initial outbreak await their inevitable extinction, they give
birth to a new generation of half-human, half-animal
children immune to the disease. In an eleventh-hour
attempt to find a cure for the plague, the last remnant of
the scientific establishment collects these animal children
as specimens for the vivisection table. Meanwhile, tribes
of neoprimativists dressed in animal masks hunt down the
hybrids to serve as blood sacrifices to their new gods. This
premise underlines the dialectic at the heart of the book,
which explores the tensions and concordances between the
civilized and the primitive, the artificial and the natural,
and the human and the animal.
The protagonist of the series is a deer-human boy
named Gus who finds a protector in Jepperd, a former
hockey player who promises to lead the antlered preteen to
a reserve for animal kids. Jepperd's cynicism contrasts with
Gus' naivete, and the rocky father-son relationship that
develops between the two as they each face their own
personal struggles creates an emotional connection to the
work often absent from similar action-adventure stories.
Suspicion soon falls on Jepperd as it becomes clear that his
true motives are not what he first presents. Together with a
handful of other survivors, they brave their Midwestern
wasteland against dangers both human and otherwise.
Sweet Tooth towers above Lemire's most recent
graphic novel, a retelling of the H. G. Wells classic The
Invisible Man titled The Nobody, but falls just short of his
magnum opus, the Essex County trilogy. To Sweet Tooth's
credit, the series avoids the occasional sentimentalism
found in Essex County. The emotional beats in Sweet
Tooth are sparser, but always poignant. Lemire puts his
Canadian pedigree on display with Sweet Tooth's grueling
depiction of endurance amid a harsh environment, a--or, as
some critics have argued, the--defining theme of Canadian
literature, and the comic taps into this national tradition
through the conventions of its postapocalyptic setting.
What marks the series as outstanding within this glutted
genre is the skillful way Sweet Tooth uses these shopworn
tropes to raise interesting questions about human nature.
While comparisons to Cormac McCarthy's The Road might
not be entirely unwarranted, Sweet Tooth is closer in
literary quality to another postapocalyptic comic series
with a similar approach, The Walking Dead. Lemire's title
offers a much fresher take on the genre than either, though,
and for that alone deserves attention from fans of these
types of stories.
The plot revolves around the problem of what defines
humanity, whether our ability to reason, our capacity for
faith, and our need to honor our dead, or, less
optimistically, our readiness to exploit one another, our
tendency toward bloodthirsty zealotry, and our temptation
to despoil the natural world. With the hybrids, Sweet Tooth
takes a page from H. G. Wells' The Island of Dr Moreau to
show the beast within humanity. The animal children are a
welcome change from the atomic horror style of mutants
that end-of-the-world fiction has for so long used to put a
deformed face on the degradation people suffer in wars
and other catastrophes. While this innovation by no means
revolutionizes the genre, the way the hybrids symbolize
the connection between humanity and nature with such
succinctness points to Sweet Tooth's level of sophistication
above most of the recent crop of ecodisaster works, which
tend to squander their literary potential on blunt homilies.
Although taking an ecological slant to the apocalypse
is far from groundbreaking, Sweet Tooth also combines
religious overtones with its hints of environmentalism to
generate an intriguing ambiguity as to whether the story
will settle into a pure science fiction mold or offer a more
supernatural explanation for its mysteries. Sure, one could
read Sweet Tooth as a retelling of the Garden of Eden story
set in a deep ecology milieu, but the series is far less
tedious than a greenwashing of Genesis might sound. The
tension between the material and the spiritual is one of the
many binary oppositions that Lemire establishes, only so
that he can dissolve the division between the two.
The artwork complements the subject matter well.
Lemire's sketchy lines bound stylized designs that also
possess a realistic sense of rounded depth. His style
captures characters with the expressiveness of cartoons,
but also the imminence of live sketches, a combination that
generates just the right amount of creepiness, given the
narrative context. Sweet Tooth departs from the black-andwhite art of Lemire's previous titles to offer full colors by
Jose Villarrubia. The tones range from vibrant to muted
according to the mood of the story, and so on rare
occasions seem too dull for the always-nervous line-work,
but otherwise the pallet serves the book well. The
compositions are for the most part free-ranging and
possess a vivid sense of childhood whimsy, disrupted at
appropriate moments by visual brutality. In traditional
comic fashion, the covers have tended to amp up the
symbolism, perhaps a bit too much, but overall they give
the series an expressive face that portrays the subtle
changes in mood between story-arcs.
Every issue of Sweet Tooth experiments with form in
some way, for the most part through novelty in
panelization, but sometimes the series switches formats
entirely, such as the issue designed like a children's picture
book. Sweet Tooth's narrative seldom outright demands
that Lemire play with the rules of comics in these ways, so
the liberties he takes sometimes come across as gimmicky.
That said, the formal inconsistency gives the comic an
endearing quirkiness, and in the long run grants the series a
paradoxical uniformity. Other artists have already
attempted many of the experimental aspects of this work
before, but to see all these oddities together in such
concentration creates a new effect.
Sweet Tooth is about as good as comics get and ranks
among the best titles ever published by DC's Vertigo line.
The mature-readers imprint has always faced stiff
competition from indie publishers, but this series proves
that Vertigo can still hold its own. The way Sweet Tooth
unites action-adventure with intellectual depth plays to the
strengths of the comics form, and makes this title a great
place to start for anyone curious about what alternative
comics have to offer, since the potential for the medium
that Sweet Tooth demonstrates stands to impress readers
more accustomed to prose.
New from Sam’s Dot Publishing!!
J Alan Erwine’s masterpiece:
A Problem In Translation
What is humanity to do when faced by aliens
whose language is vague at best? What is
humanity to do when faced by aliens that are
worshipped or feared by almost every other
species in the universe? What is humanity to do
when faced by aliens that make decisions that
seem completely illogical?
These are the questions that must be
answered by Captain Shiro Takahashi and the
crew of the Astrid, and failing to come up with
the right answers could lead to the annihilation
of humanity at the prehensile limbs of the
Lemec.
Governing, but not governing, most of the
nearby galaxy, the Lemec are a powerful species
that no one really understands, and this is just
how the Lemec want it. Captain Takahashi is
trying to understand, but the Lemec try to block
his actions at every turn. How can he ever hope
to save humanity, and do the Lemec even care if
humanity is saved?
www.sdpbookstore.com
. . . in the Novels section
The Mage of Manera
by Daniel Algara
If anyone ever discovered what Meryl did here they
would have him hanged; or sent before the firing squad, or
whatever the hell they used nowadays. The old sorcerer
felt his way around the bulging black matter floating
before him. It breathed and pulsed, as if it belonged in the
chest of the great Black Beast that roamed the Planes. He
hated the odd collection of odors peculiar to this end of the
river: rain, excrement, and budding dogwoods. It distracted
him. The incantation was difficult enough, and if he got
even one thing wrong…
The stench wasn’t the only thing, this wretched excuse
for a house didn’t help either. It combined the worst
features of a log cabin and a thatch hut. Very distracting.
But, for all its filth and must, this end of the Potomac had
the requisite privacy–seclusion was more like it. From
here, Meryl could be in the capitol within an hour, while
remaining hidden enough to conduct his experiments.
The electric chair, he thought. That’s what they’d use.
A rap at his door pulled him from his gloomy reverie.
After so many years in seclusion, no one would blame him
for jumping from his only stool. The black smoke he had
called up suddenly sucked into itself and disappeared.
Meryl shut his eyes and awaited his death. Several seconds
passed…he was still alive. Of course, just because he was
alive didn’t mean that thousands of others had not shifted
Plane’s in the recoil. Meryl could only hope. The last thing
he needed was the attention he’d get if a couple thousand
people disappeared because of one of his experiments.
His guest knocked again. Coupled with the constant
rumble and threat of storms, the knock sounded hostile.
Meryl took exception to the threat.
He flattened his filthy clothes, retrieved his cloak, and
covered himself, pulling the hood over his eyes. In a time
when t-shirts and sandals clothed the masses, he found his
cloak an appropriate contrast, if not a small statement
concerning his own profession.
Opening the door, he looked up at the man who stood
before him: suit, tie, dark sunglasses, and a small curly
wire cascading from behind his right ear. Meryl, unable to
hide the look of disgust on his face, said nothing.
The agent, taken aback for only a moment said, “You
know why I’m here.”
“I know where you’re taking me, but I do not know
why you are here,” Meryl replied in his finest sorcerer’s
voice.
“Don’t you read the papers? It’s all over the news,”
said the agent.
“I don’t read the papers, because there are books with
both static, and more importantly, accurate information in
them.”
The agent didn’t seem to hear. He only stood with the
legendary stoicism of the Secret Service.
“I don’t suppose I have a choice in the matter,” Meryl
said.
“Of course you do, sir. It is the United States of
America, after all.”
“That used to mean a lot more.”
“It means the same thing it always has.”
“You and I both know I have no choice but to go with
you, which means you are wrong, Mr. Secret Service
agent.”
Meryl peeked around the agent’s broad shoulders.
Two more agents lingered near the limousine, hands folded
in front of them, keeping watch like square-jawed Stalin
statues.
“Fine, I’ll go peacefully,” Meryl said. “But I wouldn’t
be a real American if I did not first tell you to go fuck
yourself.”
“Understood, sir. Righteous indignation, right to
protest, and all that.”
“Let’s go then.”
*
*
*
Meryl had been to the White House many times, but
no matter how austere he seemed to others, a childish
splendor tickled his guts when it came into view. It seemed
to him a work of pure majesty, so simple, square, maybe
even a little clunky in design, but still beautiful in its
demand for reverence. He attributed these feelings to the
history of the place, not the architecture itself, he had
never been an admirer of neo-classicism, or that maladroit
north portico that now appeared through the window as the
limousine pulled up.
“The President’s son is sick,” one of the agents said
before getting out. He came around and opened Meryl’s
door.
The sorcerer joined the agents under the portico ,
stepping smoothly towards them hoping that his efforts,
coupled with his trailing cloak, lent him the illusion of
hovering. He had worked very hard on it.
“That’s why I didn’t have a choice?” Meryl said.
“You had a choice. The President didn’t think you’d
refuse,” the agent said opening the door.
“He was wrong,” Meryl said, knowing it was a lie. He
would have done anything for the boy, but sorcerers can’t
go around being soft all the time.
“Then I suppose you’re the selfish ass we all thought
you were.”
For the first, time Meryl turned to meet the agent’s
eyes from under his cloak. The agent lowered his gaze and
cowered as much as a man with a gun could. The agent
knew.
“I think he means–” began another agent.
Meryl ignored him, saying to the mouthy one, “How
do you know what I am?”
“We are the President’s personal detail,” he said. “He
told us. He considers it a matter of national security.
I’m...sorry that I...”
“Don’t be a coward,” Meryl said. “Perhaps what the
President has not told you is how I adore the First
Amendment. Say anything you please, though if you ever
pull that gun on me you’ll be sorry. And anyway, you are
quite right. I can be, I suppose, uncharitable–sometimes.
I’m not perfect, you know? This isn’t Harry Potter.
Sorcery is serious business, and solitary besides. You’ll
forgive me if I am unwittingly rude.”
The agents shifted nervously. “Understood, sir,” they
said in turn.
Meryl rolled his eyes and followed them into the
house. Taking an immediate left they came into the East
Room, a wide reception hall, bright and gold and smelling
perfectly of aged wood mixed with the unrelenting
staleness one expects of old buildings. Coming to meet
them was the President of the United States. He gestured to
the agents and they immediately broke off, leaving the two
men alone in the luxurious gallery.
Elderly is how most saw the President, but also
steadfast, principled, and a few other political distinctions
Meryl thought naive. Meryl could see nothing but
treachery, though he could not deny that he also detected
suffering and wisdom in his sober countenance.
“Meryl,” said the President, keeping his hands behind
his back.
Meryl was a little put off by the lack of aids, advisers,
or any other ostensive entourage. He could not remember
the last time they were in a room together, alone.
Removing the hood of his cloak, he nodded his head,
“Eragyn.”
The president sighed. “I know you hate me, but please
do not call me that here. I won’t ask you to call me Mr.
President–”
“Ha! I should hope not! Emperor, though. Now that
fits.”
“–but I do ask that you call me Aaron.”
“Alright, Aaron of Manera,” Meryl said just to goad
him. He knew the mention of their homeland would irritate
him even more than his true name.
Aaron allowed his chin to rest on his chest for a
moment. The man had been defeated, but not by him. His
son was sick. Perhaps it was more serious this time.
“Will you please take a look at him?” the President
said at last.
“After you…Aaron.”
Meryl followed him through a few galleries and up
two flights of stairs until they came to a small room with a
canopy bed. The curtains had been drawn closed, though
the patio doors were open, welcoming in the undefiled air
that precedes a storm. Presently, the clouds released their
excess, the rain performing a dirge on the patio.
Meryl entered the room last, he could taste the disease
on the tip of his tongue, it was bitter and Potomac. The boy
had gone far into the Bleak this time; a rather harmless
illness on Manera, but here it could grab the strongest
Maneran and kill him in hours. This boy had endured a
few bouts before and had somehow come out of it all right.
Though, Meryl had wondered more than once if he had
anything to do with the previous recoveries.
A woman emerged from the corner of the room and
came near him. The sorcerer tightened his jaw, preparing
himself for the sting of a cuff to the face. It didn’t come.
Instead, the woman bowed her head, letting her thick,
coffee hair hang like the Temple Veil over her aging face.
No one would mistake the sound of her tears striking the
wood floors of the White House for the raindrops that fell
just outside.
Her display might as well have been abject beggary.
Meryl understood it as a plea to save her son. He pictured
himself cupping his hand, then tapping it to her shoulder as
an allotment of sympathy appropriate for the moment–but
the moment passed.
The boy lay in a bed.
Was this the room Lincoln’s boy had died in? he
wondered.
Immediately, he chastised the thought. His nephew lay
in a stupor, his own blood, his brother’s son; his face
ghostly, ugly, and stripped of the warmth that abides with
youth. Why had they not called him sooner?
The boy thrashed beneath his covers, moaning
between incoherent whispers. He was inches from death. It
had never before been this bad.
Meryl hurried to the boy’s side, placing his hand on
his head, ice cold. “How long has he been like this?”
“Just today,” Rene said. The Temple Veil had torn
down the middle, her hard and attractive face emerging
from the curtain. “It came on so quick. We didn’t think he
would get this bad so fast. Please, Meryl, can you help
him?”
Meryl thought about his answer carefully, then
decided on, “I’m afraid not.”
The boy’s mother collapsed, stricken with grief.
To defend his abilities, he explained, “The disease is
Maneran. Our bodies…our bodies,” he said to his brother
the President, “cannot create the antibodies on this Plane.”
“What are you saying, Meryl?” the President said.
“You can make fire from thin air, pull down F-18s from
the sky and fling them like soda cans across the sky,
evaporate the Washington Monument, but you can’t heal
my son?”
“Good, you were listening,” Meryl replied, annoyed at
having the more awful parts of his sorcerer’s resume
recited to him. He had special abilities. He had been able
to develop those abilities into something like sorcery, but it
had taken a great deal work to make them useful. The
experiments had not always turned out favorably.
“There must be some way, Meryl,” Rene said, seizing
a wisp of hope from thin air. Humans always seem to
conjure it up when there couldn’t be any less hope to have.
“Please,” the President said.
The child’s breath rose up and rattled in the silence, a
hollow sound to corroborate the staleness of the air
between them. His mother went to him, dabbing his head
with a warm cloth. It wouldn’t help, of course, but one
must do something.
Meryl thought of his smelly cabin and his secret, his
black matter. Another month and he would have it, maybe.
Anyway, the boy didn’t have that long. He needed to do it
the old fashioned way: the dangerous way. But how to get
it without asking?
“The disease is Maneran?” the President said, as if
reaffirming the fact to himself. “Why don’t we get it?”
“We did get it,” Meryl said quickly. His brother
wasn’t an idiot, he knew very well that they had contracted
it as children. Though, Rene may not have been aware.
Perhaps the explanation was for her benefit. Fine, Meryl
thought, I’ll play along, but we’d better come to it quick,
this boy has seen his last day.
“We grew up on Manera,” he said. “We contracted it
like they do the chicken pox, or measles, or used to
anyway. Once you recover, it never returns again, your
body having memorized how to fight it off. It could be that
a single breath of air could help him, or a drink from the
Hessyl River. I would be lying if I told you I knew what it
was about our homeland that gives us the ability to fight
the Bleak. But whatever our bodies need to fight it, we
can’t get it here.”
“You are telling us that our son’s only chance at a cure
is on a planet that your own people destroyed?” Rene said.
Meryl let the derision in her tone pass; her son was
dying after all. “It’s not a just planet, and yes, that’s about
the sum of it.”
Aaron gave his brother the slightest nod. Meryl
understood that he should continue. What is he up to? he
wondered.
“You remember why we came here, brother?” Meryl
said.
Rene threw her ire at him from across the room. Her
posture, her glares, her tone, was a bitter enmity so thick
he could bite into it. She was too skeptical. She always
assumed that he was scheming and deceiving.
That’s fair, Meryl thought. I am, in fact, scheming. But
so is your husband, First Lady.
Meryl decided to get on with it, the boy would not
survive his usual games. “I need one,” he said, studying his
brother’s reaction.
“You want a Sundran?” the President scoffed.
Meryl couldn’t tell how real this reaction was. In fact,
he wondered if he had misread his brother’s signals
altogether, and whether he might be in the process of
executing something his brother had no intention of going
along with. Then the President touched his nose.
That was it! They understood each other perfectly
now. When they were children, they played war games on
the plains of Kussyred. They had devised a series of
signals. One of them would signal a plan and the other
would touch his nose. It meant, I understand and I am
ready. Now the plan was set, they just had to keep Rene
from discovering the true objective.
“We came here to destroy the Sundran, Meryl,” the
President said. “They no longer exist. Not here anyway.”
Oh my, brother! You should have been an actor.
“Are you telling me, Mr. Leader-of-the-Free-World,
that you destroyed every last one of the Sundran? The
thing that could both keep the greater peace and destroy
the entire Plane? All one hundred eighty-three? None
remain?”
“What the hell is he talking about, Aaron?” Rene said.
“Is there a way to save our son? Give it to him. Why is
there even a question? Aaron, please, if he can–”
“You don’t know what you’re asking, Rene,” the
President said. The fear in his voice was real enough.
“These things destroyed our homeland and nearly
destroyed this place. I can’t–”
Aaron paced for a few moments, donning the serious
and adorable face that won him his first term, and his
second term, and his third. In a feat that had torn the
brothers apart, Aaron had managed to recall the twentysecond Amendment, which limited a president to two
terms. He had also done away with the Electoral College,
making the popular vote the law of the land; the purest of
evils, Meryl had told him. The brothers had only
exchanged a few words since, mostly about his son and his
continued susceptibility to Maneran illnesses. Aaron had
told him that he had good reason for taking the measures
that kept him in power, saying the consequence of not
doing so was far worse than his atrocities against the
Constitution.
It was all behind them now. Only the boy mattered.
Even Meryl could not deny his affection for the child. The
boy was supremely intuitive, had a talent for sorcery, and
possessed a brain like no one else, including on Manera.
He had to admit that he would do anything to save him. He
also had to admit that it was quite possible that the boy
was the only one who understood him, and loved him. He
loved his nephew in return, maybe too much. How far was
he willing to go to save his life? There was a good
possibility that if he opened a Sundran many would die, or
at least evaporate into another Plane. Either way the
casualties couldn’t come back; they might as well be dead.
Then again, there may be no casualties at all. It all hinged
on the recoil and how small he could keep the opening.
Still, one must consider, how many lives for this one boy?
Meryl could see that Aaron agonized over the very
same thoughts. How many, Mr. President? How many?
Aaron apparently had his answer. He called a Secret
Service agent from the hall and instructed him to bring the
‘Tenant’. A minute later, an agent entered carrying a metal
case. Setting it on the boy’s desk, the President dismissed
the agent. He punched in a code on the case’s keypad,
something clicked, and the case hissed open. Rene left her
son’s side and joined the brothers at the desk. She placed a
hand on her husband’s shoulder. Aaron motioned for
Meryl to open the case. He did, slowly, as if any sudden
move would release a second round of the Spanish Flu.
“I need to ask you, Meryl. Is there any other way?”
The question deserved consideration. Meryl mulled on
it again for some moments. “There is no other way,
Eragyn. I will tell you that I have been trying to open a
way to other Planes without a Sundran. I have come a long
way, but I have only been able to create a small
disturbance. Nowhere near enough to get two of us
through.”
Immediately Meryl realized his mistake. There grew a
short silence, but Rene had at last caught it.
“What do you mean two of you?” she said.
Meryl had to think, “Me and Scruffles, of course. My
fish.”
The President could not hide his irritation. That was
quite possibly the worst lie ever told on any Plane. Rene,
however, became distracted by the continued moaning of
her son. She did not press further.
Like many things that can destroy lives, what lay
inside the case looked simple and harmless. A glass ball,
nestled into the foam that kept it secure, stared up at Meryl
like a condescending eye, mocking his power, ridiculing
him for calling himself a sorcerer. At the center of this
glass ball was true power. The power to rend the universe.
The power to put any amount of things on a Plane so far
out of reach it was thought to be a place of perfect nonexistence.
“A crystal ball?” Rene said.
“No,” the President said. “The glass only holds it. Do
you see at the center?”
“It looks like a rock. It’s moving…”
“It is a Sundran,” Meryl said unable to hold back his
enthusiasm.
“What does it do?” she said. “Does he eat it? Will he
be okay now?”
Meryl had to keep from laughing aloud. What would
happen if someone ate it?
“This,” the President said, “creates a hole between
Planes.”
“Planes?” she said. Apparently she knew her husband
was not from this world, but had not explored the details.
“Galaxies hold the planets. Dark matter holds the
galaxies. Universes hold the dark matter. Planes hold the
universes.”
“I see,” she said. Clearly, she did not.
A cry came from behind them. The boy was fading.
His brother gave him a look that pleaded with him to
begin.
Meryl moved to the center of the room. He called the
glass ball to him. It obeyed, floating across the room,
stopping to hover just before him. The glass shattered in an
impressive explosion. The pieces flew in all directions, but
then retracted and reformed into a ball, though without the
Sundran at its center. He pushed the ball back into the
case, keeping the Sundran afloat before him. He looked to
his brother one last time. He may have been asking
permission to proceed, though he did not know why he
should need it. This is what he wanted, right? Then why
did he feel so nervous? Maybe because he only thought he
had found a way to control the whole process of creating a
breach–a thing no one else had been able to do–but if he
was wrong, many people would die, and his heart and
mind were not so sterile that the thought did not affect
him.
His brother nodded. Meryl proceeded.
The incantation was easy. He had performed the
beginnings so many times he could do it without thinking.
A small black cloud appeared below the Sundran. Next, he
would add power. The universe obeyed. Lightning now
flickered silently within the black cloud. The spell began
to take shape; now came the decision.
“I will do the best I can to keep it small,” he said.
The President nodded, touching his nose once more. It
was the affirmation Meryl needed. The First Lady looked
confused.
Meryl floated the Sundran down…slowly…settling it
into the black matter that pulsed and bubbled before him.
The White House shook and a hole opened, exposing a
Plane.
A lump formed in Meryl’s throat. And if I open up to
the wrong Plane? he thought. It had never really occurred
to him while experimenting because he had never gotten
this far before. Calibrated machines had brought them here
using the Sundran’s power, this was very different, he was
not a machine. How could he have overlooked this?
He thought of closing the breach, but to do so now
would cause a recoil, and he would not have the lives of
those who might die sacrificed for nothing. No, he was
committed.
Meryl called the boy to him.
As if on an invisible floating bed, the boy levitated,
then drifted towards Meryl and his breach.
“What is happening?” Rene said quietly at first. Then
she screamed. “What the hell is he doing to our son,
Aaron!”
The President didn’t answer. He didn’t even look at
his wife.
The breach was big enough now. Meryl hoped he had
poured enough of himself into the incantation to take them
to the right place. Still, the recoil…
The boy’s feet disappeared into the black matter. Rene
now shrieked and cried. Aaron went to her and held her;
she said many things to her husband in the moments
during her son’s transport. Most of them Meryl hoped she
would apologize for later. She fought his grasp; he wept on
her shoulder. In that moment they both knew that their son
might as well be dying, he would not likely be able to
come back, this place being a biological anathema to the
boy.
Four Secret Service agents stormed the room. Aaron
ordered them to stand down.
The boy was gone.
Meryl shot one final look to his brother. Eragyn
nodded his thanks. Just then, a shiver ran through Meryl’s
bones. He did not want to go. A tremendous feeling of
regret came over him. Why had he always been so spiteful
toward his brother? How many years had been wasted?
How many meals might they have shared together if he
hadn’tbeen so stubborn? How much could he have done to
heal the fractured bond between them? Could he do it all
now, in this instant?
Of course not, he affirmed to himself. This was the
end. He had a son now, and he would be the greatest of his
race, the Maneran race. Perhaps the boy would return one
day and rectify what his father had unwittingly ruined.
How wretched he felt. Why were all these things coming
to him now? None of it mattered. He had to go. The breach
shrank even as he hesitated for the tenth time.
“He is my son, Meryl,” the President of the United
States said.
Rene wept bitterly.
“I know. I will not forget it.” But somehow Meryl
already had.
He extended his hand into the black cloud, his hand
now in one Plane, his body in another. Something flashed
within the cloud, a thing darker than the breach itself.
Meryl thought of the great Black Beast, the Plane-drifter of
legend. “Just a legend,” he whispered.
The final thing he heard as he stepped into the breach
was the cry of both a mother and father who have lost their
only son.
*
*
*
Meryl’s feet hit a surface. It was soft, but very painful,
as if the ground and his feet were making a serious attempt
at defying the laws of physics and trying to occupy the
same space at once.
How many? he thought.
“Where are we?” came a voice from behind him.
Trying to suppress the relief he felt at being alive, the
sorcerer answered, “Manera.”
A city stood ruined before them. It appeared
abandoned, but there had to be someone left. The boy
came to his side, healed, whole, and with eyes that had
already regained their former brilliance. It worked. Meryl
had guessed correctly. Then again, he had guessed wrong
so many times in his career that he was sure to get one
right sometime. He was glad it was this time.
“Manera?” the boy said. “Was I named after this
place?”
Meryl looked him. This bright spot in the universe was
now his son; his blood, therefore his son, according to
Maneran tradition. There were so many things his father,
the president of a country in a faraway Plane, had never
told him. Where to begin?
“Was I, Uncle Meryl, named after this place?”
Meryl turned his gaze back to the ruined city and said,
“I think it is quite possible that this place was named for
you.” 

Syllogisms for Reading #1
IF
You’re giving reading material
for Christmas gifts . . .
THEN:
www.sdpbookstore.com
. . . Simple!
The Monolith
by Christina Sng
And there we saw it,
Looming on the horizon,
Black against granite black:
A gargantuan tower rising.
It hovered statue-like, mid-air
And then a shrill resonance
Thundered through Earth
Imploding water into gas.
Inside and out we geysered,
Rivulets of death splattered
Across our blue planet, splotches
Of red against the green and brown.
The crimson seas
Raged with the blood of innocents.
Millions of years of evolution,
Life's masterpiece,
Washed away in the snow.
Those who burrowed, survived.
Underground in lead boxes,
We lived on stale food and filtered air.
Never again to touch sunshine,
Not with our bare skin,
Nor feel the dew
On soft green grass
Underfoot at dawn.
The years passed
And the survivors passed.
This is not life,
Whispered the last,
Climbing out of her metal shell,
Dead children in her arms.
She stood on charred land,
Thick fumes choking her lungs.
As she fell, the monolith
Slipped quietly back into the sky.
She turned her face towards it
And softly asked, "Why?"
Then
As quiet as the sunrise,
I closed my eyes,
And faded into the light.
The Heisenberg Principle
by Lorraine Pinelli Brown
He knew the stages.
Kubler-Ross's writings had been etched into his brain
when he was an undergrad at Cornell, but knowledge of
what was to come didn't ease his mind or alter his
responses. He hated the doctor who broke the news to
him; he found himself hating all those who were young.
"Why ME?" he asked himself again and again, though he
understood there was no why--just randomness. Then he
found himself vowing good deeds, to himself really, for he
knew there was no God. If only he had another chance!-his project at the lab was yet unfinished. All he needed
was time. Okay, more time than they said he had, but was
he asking for so very much?
He pictured the laboratory in which he had worked all
his life. He visualized his workstation, where he spent his
days following the evidence, using his instruments, casting
aside all other things, in search of truth. He had lost his
family because of it. He had no friends. He knew
someone was sitting on his stool, using his petrie dishes,
throwing his microscope out of focus. The Director was
never one to waste time.
Time.
Not enough of it in which to live, too much of it left in
which to die.
Winston Small looked out of the window from his bed
at St. Jude Community Hospital. He saw a road. Beyond
it . . . Acceptance would not come . . . A cemetery. Row
after row of headstones . . . no hope . . . last stop . . . no
reprieve . . . He shuddered.
An orderly appeared in the doorway. "Do you need
anything?"
"A different room," Winston said.
"You know we can't do that. Except for this one bed
here, this hospice ward is all full up."
"People are just dying to get in, eh? Is that what
you're trying to tell me?" His voice boomed.
The orderly ran his hand across his thick lips, which
resulted in a look more serious than was usual for him,
after he wiped the smile from his face. "I didn't mean
nothing. Chill, okay? Nurse Kateland is on loan again
from the psychiatric ward, and you know she don't take
your crap. Remember last time? She pumped you so full
up with dope, you didn't even know where you were."
Winston looked out the window. "Maybe I should
have thanked her."
"Say what?"
Winston swallowed hard. "I said, close the damn
blinds and get out." He pulled close the TV and turned it
on.
--Know the peace of having your funeral pre . . .
He switched stations.
--Don't grow OLD with your kitchen. For a complete
remodeling . . .
He switched stations.
--Will he get better, Doctor? Will my husband get
better?
--Now Milicent, we've been all through this.
--I know, Doctor Bob, but the children and I just can't
give up hope! Our prayers won't hurt anything--will they?
--Well, uh . . .
Winston snapped it off. He closed his eyes and
groaned. Wait, he thought. There was something going on
in the hallway. Laughter? Here? That was outrageous!
He frowned and threw closed his bedside curtain. The
voices were nearing.
"--and the young man said, 'Blessed are the crosseyed, Father, because they've been marked to see God
twice!'"
More laughter.
They were in the room.
Winston curled up, pulling his blanket to his chin. He
didn't want a roommate.
"I have another one," the man said.
"Oh, no! Stop. Pleeeease!"
That was Martha--a pretty Hispanic girl who was
working her way through school as a Nurses' Aide. She
would make a good nurse someday, Winston thought,
maybe even a Nurse Practitioner. She was bright, if not
perpetually effervescent.
"Mr. Small? Would you like to meet your new
roommate?"
Winston stiffened.
He made a snoring sound,
pretending to be asleep.
"That's funny," Martha said. "Kile just told me . . .
Oh, well. Let me help you out of this chair."
Winston heard the creak of leather and the rattle of
metal footrests as Martha helped the man to his bed. "Can
you settle in by yourself?"
"Don't fret, lass. I will be fine."
"Put this on after you undress and get right into bed-you look a little shaky."
"Aye."
She left the room.
Winston listened as the man undressed and put his
things away. He moved slowly; each movement seemed a
deliberate act. The bedsprings groaned under his weight,
then, as though he had known all along that Winston was
awake: "Am I alone in this room?" he asked. "Or be ya
wantin to accord me a complex?"
Winston felt his cheeks redden. Okay, so he wasn't
fooling anyone--so much the better. He sat up and turned
the TV on again.
"I'll say a prayer for your recovery, lad," the man said.
Winston spitefully turned up the volume.
--And the answer is . . .
Struck by a thought, Winston lowered the volume and
pulled back the curtain. The man revealed was tall and
thin with a shock of soft white hair; his eyes were light
blue, a color transparent almost, like the blue one sees in
ice. "You're a priest?"
The man beamed at him. "That's what they tell me."
He extended his hand from his position in bed. "I'm Father
Raymond Dunager."
Oh, God.
"And you are?"
"Winston, Winston Small," he said, but he let the
priest's hand hang in the air. "What are you in here for?"
Father Dunager touched his head. "I have the cancer."
He said this plainly, without bitterness. "And what be your
trouble?"
Winston sighed. He dropped his head onto his pillow
and stared up at the ceiling. He felt the priest's eyes on
him, but he didn't care.
After a minute, the priest asked: "Why are the blinds
closed? I would think it fortunate to be given a bed by the
window."
Winston laughed and was immediately sorry. His face
flushed as a coughing fit overtook him. These attacks
lasted just long enough to lead him to believe that he had
breathed his last. Damn cigarettes. When the spell
subsided, he spat into a tissue and looked at what he had
brought up. The phlegm was yellow and tinged with
blood. Pieces of his own lung? He didn't want to know.
Winston squeezed the tissue into a ball, tossed it at the
wastepaper basket and missed. He considered the priest,
making sure his expression stayed flat; he didn't want to
telegraph his newly thought up mischief. "Open it up if
you want. I can't get out of bed. See?" He raised his arm
to show how he was tied to his IV bottle. "Better hurry
before they do the same to you. I wouldn't want you to
miss the great view."
Father Dunager walked innocently to the window and
pulled up the blinds.
The cemetery came into sight.
Winston laughed again. "Some joke, huh?"
"Good morning, gentlemen," Martha said as she
wheeled a blood pressure machine into their room.
"Good morning, lass," said Father Dunager.
She monitored his breakfast tray. "VERY good,
Father."
The priest smiled and held up a piece of toast.
Winston frowned. He knew the man was eating more
to please than because he was hungry. The priest looked
older and sicker than he did just twenty-four hours ago.
Martha walked over to Winston's tray and lifted the
lid. Winston looked away. "Dietary will be coming in
soon to clear this up--you should eat something." She
pushed the table to his mid-section.
"Indeed?" Winston looked at her hard. "To keep up
my strength, I suppose."
"Well, if you don't feel like eating now, I could keep
your dish for later. We have a micro--"
Winston pushed the table away; it crashed loudly into
the radiator just under the window. "You obviously don't
understand me, young lady. Take your tea and sympathy,
coddled egg and dry toast, and SHOVE THEM!"
Martha's face turned bright red. "I only thought . . . "
There were tears in her eyes.
Winston screamed, "Get OUT!"
Martha straightened and left the room without taking
their blood pressure. One wheel of the portable apparatus
squeaked as she hurried down the hall.
Winston coughed. It was always worse when he got
excited. He closed his eyes and fought for control. All
right, he thought. What he did wasn't fair, she had always
been kind, but what was happening to him wasn't fair
either. She would be okay; the staff was used to his
outbursts. And so what if he was making them all slower
to come when he called. He didn't need them. He rubbed
his temples. Jesus, she had given him one Hell of a
headache. No. What was he thinking? He had hurt her.
He felt ashamed.
"It willna help to be unkind," the priest said.
Winston scowled. "Spare me the Sunday sermon,
Father. I'm not interested." He glanced at the door before
he sat up. "They tell me I only have a few months left.
I'm fourty-five-years-old! I should have years left to work
and live and study. Those years have been taken from me,
stolen. Why should I be kind?"
The priest looked at Winston sympathetically. "You
do not mean to be cruel. 'Tis the worry of the unknown
that weighs heavily upon your mind, lad--of that I am
sure." He pushed his breakfast tray down by his feet.
"Unknown?" Winston laughed. "No, Father, that's not
my trouble." He shot a glance out the window. "I'm all too
aware of where I'm going. And I know where you're
going, too." He pointed to the cemetery. "There." He
coughed. "Right there!"
The priest shook his head. "Oh gracious, no. That is
only where the body goes, Winston, and the body is our
least remarkable part. You see, 'tis by the fall of the flesh
that the soul rises--and when we depart this earthly plain,
we go back to God."
Winston passed his hand over his recently shaved
head, annoyed at the priest for soliciting his religion.
"Look, if it helps you to believe that, then fine. You go
right on deciding things from your own private dreams. I
just can't subscribe. I'm a scientist. God, for me, is just
another dead hypothesis."
Father Dunager looked as if he soon expected a
lightning bolt from Olympus; Winston looked pleased.
"Why do you deny He who has created you?" the priest
asked.
"Because there's no EVIDENCE for him--that's why."
Winston leaned over the bed-rail. "I've cut up more bodies
than people you've confessed. I've looked into their hearts,
their minds, their livers, and never once did I happen
across a soul. Where do they live, Father. Where did GO-D put them?"
"The soul is not a flesh and blood organ as would be
found in the body."
"How convenient for you," Winston said.
All at once, the priest looked amused.
"And
convenient for God."
"What?"
"What canna be seen, canna be removed. Woe unto
the scientific community, Winston. Think how it might
have prospered as it cranked out row after row of barren
men."
Winston blushed. "Sarcasm, Father? I'm astonished.
I thought you were a saint."
Father Dunager chuckled. "Oh, not yet, lad--but I'm
working on it." He winked up at the ceiling.
--Oh, thank you, Doctor Bob, for giving me back my
husband! I always knew we had the best brain surgeon in
the world.
--I wish I COULD take credit for his remarkable
recovery, Milicent.
--You mean . . .
--Yes, my dear. It's a miracle.
Daytime TV was sure the pits. Winston snapped off
the television as he pushed it away. He looked to the priest
for help. He felt bored.
Father Dunager lay comfortably, reading a book, and
it angered Winston that he looked so totally content.
Winston huffed his annoyance and looked around.
The priest's nightstand boasted get-well cards of every
shape and size, which began arriving in a steady stream a
few hours after his admission. Flowers and candy
followed, with stuffed animals, and in just a few day's
time, his roomate's side of the room had turned into a riot
of color and false cheer like every hospital's cluttered gift
shop. Winston compared his half of the room with the
priest's and felt way superior. "Do you know what life is,
Father?"
The priest turned a page without looking up. "I think
I'm about to be told."
Winston blinked. Smart ass. He recited loudly, "Life
is a consequence of the carbon atom." Winston gloated as
he waited for the priest's response.
"Hmmm," the priest said.
Winston frowned. "Well, didn't you hear me?"
Father Dunager nodded.
"So, aren't you going to say anything?"
"Hmmm?" He looked at Winston. "Oh. Yes. Well,
that may be so." He went right back to his novel; he had
only a few pages left.
Winston craned his neck and read the title. A spiteful
smile stretched his lips. "They ALL did it, you know."
The priest seemed to droop a little. He looked up. "I
confess I know little about such matters, but yes, there
could have been this atom in the beginning." He stretched
and set the book on his night table.
Winston raised his eyebrows. "What's this? You're
agreeing? Aren't you going to break out your bible?"
The priest chuckled. "After seventy-two years, lad,
there's no need--the bible is here." He pointed to his heart.
"But there is one small point of which I am unclear."
"Yeah, what's that, Father?"
"If, as you say, there was this atom, Who put her here
in the first place?" He looked at Winston innocently.
Winston rubbed his stubble hard. "Just forget it,
okay? Good God! I don't even know why I bother with
you. It's always by nature of faith that logic is avoided."
Father Dunager frowned. "No, Winston. 'Tis ever by
nature of logic that faith be slain." He pointed to the
window. "Look there. What do you see?"
Winston looked out resentfully. "Headstones. I see
headstones."
"No," the priest said. "Look better."
At first, Winston didn't know what he was talking
about, then he saw the bird. "Oh. There's a common bird,
a sparrow, singing on the ledge. So?"
The priest pointed at him. "You, boy, would pick
apart this wonderful creature to understand the truth of it.
In the end, it would lie open upon your table a mass of
bone and flesh and feathers, and God wouldna be there
because you wouldna expect to find Him. And having
learned the structure of a sparrow, you would slit the
bellies of robins and pull the wings off butterflies until you
were surrounded by the stuff of them, and still, God
wouldna be there.
"But God is there, as He is for all things, though to
look with your eyes will deny you the sight of Him." He
clasped his hands in an attitude of prayer. Priest and
scientist looked at each other. The sparrow had stopped
singing.
"Who would have guessed it?" Winston said, breaking
the silence. "I'm to die with a priest who should have been
a poet!"
They both laughed.
Winston coughed. He reached for a tissue and spat
into it. Phlegm. More blood. His mood darkened. "I
never should have consented to that biopsy," he muttered.
He tossed the tissue at the wastepaper basket and missed.
Winston looked at the priest, who was smiling as he
watched the bird bathe in the spring snow. "What are you
thinking about?"
"The sparrow has a story, lad. Would you like to
hear?"
"Sure," Winston said, brightening again. "Just make it
better than what's been on TV."
Father Dunager made a tent with his fingers and
cleared his throat. "When mankind was young," he began,
"the angels were many--and God watched over us through
the eyes of His most beloved helpers. But, man became
prolific, and the angels, who had always been finite in
number, had to be assigned multiples of our souls so God
could see. God, soon noticing how they grew cranky and
lack-luster in this service, became saddened for He
realized that He had given them an impossible task. There
were just too many of us to keep track of, and, we were
becoming more each day. But what could He do? He
needed to know when we were ready to come back to Him,
and our souls needed guides lest they lose their way. So it
was that God plucked a feather from an angel's wing and
created the sparrow. He balanced their number with our
own so that none of us would ever be rendered invisible to
Him. He made them unremarkable, so He wouldna intrude
on our lives . . .
And the angels rejoiced at their
unburdening, grew bright again, and loved God more, for
now they could laugh and play and sleep a little--and need
work only when they were called.
"'Tis said that sparrow song is a call to Heaven which
will bring an angel, when death of the body is near."
Winston smiled. "Tell me, Father. Are all priests like
you?"
Father Dunager winked. "We are nothing, laddie, if
not mass produced."
"What?" Winston chuckled. "You know, with you
around, the majority of practicing atheists might not be
safe."
The priest rubbed his neck. "What about you?"
"Now look, Father . . ." Until now, Winston had been
enjoying himself.
Beads of sweat began breaking out on the priest's
forehead.
Winston knitted his brows. "What's wrong?"
"'Tis nothing, lad. It will pass. I--" He grabbed his
head with both hands. "Mary, Mother of God!"
Winston groped for the call button. "Nurse!" Where
was the damn thing? "Nurse!"
The priest dropped into convulsions.
There seemed no air left in the room.
--But how could he die? You said it yourself--it was a
miracle!
--It's cruel, I know, but sometimes it's like that,
Milicent. They come back to us for awhile, rosy-cheeked,
then they slip away.
--No! We were going to make a fresh start. He said
he would never leave me! He said . . .
--Calm yourself, my dear. Here, take this--it's a
tranquilizer.
--Thank you, Doctor.
--Better?
--Yes. A little.
--Good. Now about this check you wrote me . . .
Winston heard a noise. He lowered the volume and
looked toward his roommate. The priest was awake and
watching him. "You slipped into seizure," Winston said.
"You've been out for two days."
The priest nodded.
Winston frowned. "I suppose I should ask you how
you feel."
Father Dunager removed his oxygen mask.
"Terrible," he whispered. He cleared his throat.
"Well, that's how you look."
The priest smiled wanly. His old man's skin was gray
and papery. "Lying is but a venial sin."
Unexpectedly, Winston's eyes filled with tears. He
blinked them back, embarrassed, but not before the priest
saw them.
"It is permitted to like a poor parish priest, Winston-that is not a sin."
Winston looked away, saw the headstones, and knitted
his brows. "Do you need a nurse?" he said softly.
"No, lad. If you don't mind, I would like to talk for a
bit."
Winston turned. "Talk? What about?" He coughed
into his hand and looked at what was there.
"You. Do you have a family?"
"No. Uh, I've been divorced a long time." He pulled a
tissue from its box and wiped out his palm. His phlegm
now had a greenish tinge. Fungus infection?
"Where there any little ones?"
"Two boys," Winston said. He squirmed. "You won't
have time to finish my biography, you know."
"Ah, family," the priest said. "A man is truly blessed
who has one. 'Tis the one thing I missed in this life." He
cocked his head as if suddenly puzzled. "Why have I not
seen them?--your boys."
"They don't know I'm sick. Anyway, I'm sure they
wouldn't come to see me even if they did know. They
don't like their father very much, you see. Never did."
"Surely you are mistaken!" Father Dunager propped
himself up on his elbow.
Winston laughed.
"I seldom am, Father." He
smoothed out his blanket. "Their cheating mother can
attest to that. Satisfied? You have enough for your book
now."
The priest rested his head on his pillow and sighed.
He seemed spent, and his eyes looked strange, more
chilling than before, as if something were continuing to
drain them of color. "The book has already been written,
lad."
"Good God!" Winston said, annoyed. "More incense.
More smoke-wreaths. Don't you ever give up?"
"No." The priest smiled.
Winston reached for the TV but stopped in midmotion. "Wait a minute. If you wanted kids so much, then
why, for Pete's sake, did you become a priest?"
"I'm afraid He left me little say in the matter," Father
Dunager said, closing his eyes. "I'm not complaining,
mind you, but I do think . . . I would . . . have . . . enjoyed .
..a
son . . ."
The priest snored sharply.
Winston shook his head.
That night, Winston couldn't sleep. It was always bad
in the dark; there was nothing to occupy him; but he was
especially miserable this night, for hours, he'd been
listening to the priest's labored breathing.
Winston looked to where he lay; there streamed in just
enough hallway light to make out his features. It was clear
that he was suffering, yet, his expression remained
peaceful; one might even say, trouble free. This man had
lived his faith just as Winston had lived his own. Winston
couldn't help liking him.
His mind wandered and the Heisenberg Principle
popped into his head. He recited silently: To what extent
does the instrument of discovery change the discovery?
He was pleased with himself for remembering it so well.
He was still a scientist. Nothing wrong with his brain, he
thought. Not yet. Strange, Winston thought, how he and
the priest seemed the very incarnation of this principle; he,
an instrument of the scientific method, the Father, an
instrument of religious faith.
Both instruments of
discovery, in search, of truth . . .
The priest stirred, and for a moment, Winston turned
hopeful.
When the priest fell still again, Winston sighed. In his
heart, he knew there would be no more from him. The
man was spent. How ironic that he should make a friend
just to watch him die. He would soon follow, he knew, his
lungs burned all the time now. Life was as harsh and
empty as life on that ridiculous daytime soap. What was
he hanging on to? He turned on his side and faced the
window.
The headstones were visible even at night; the
streetlamps reached a good portion of the cemetery, and by
some trick of light and stone, they glowed eerily. Odd,
too, how they seemed to have neared, as though a single
step would take him there. His heart pounded hard within
his chest. No, he thought. Better this.
"Winston?"
"Huh?" He rolled over.
"Come with me."
"What?" Winston squinted.
"Your sparrow has been murdered, lad. 'Tis been the
trouble all along." Suddenly the priest sat up. "Look! Oh,
laddie! Is She not beautiful?"
Father Dunager combed his hair with his fingers.
Winston turned on the light.
"Aye," the priest said. "Aye, I am he." He held his
head as though looking at someone very tall. His face
seemed younger, beautiful almost.
Winston rattled the bed-rail. "What are you doing?
What's wrong with you?"
Father Dunager smiled at the ceiling. "Thank you," he
said. "I've tried hard to be good." He looked over his left
shoulder then he looked over his right. "You know, I've
always wanted wings. But would you be happening to
possess a mirror? I canna really see . . . What? Now? So
soon?" He shot a worried look at Winston, then, he raised
his face to the ceiling. "May the lad come, too?"
Winston shivered.
"Well, yes, he did do that--but I had read the book
before." The priest winked at Winston. There was no blue
left in his eyes.
"Nurse!" Winston called. "Nurse!" He rose to his
knees. Where was that damn call button? He tore sheet
from blanket; he threw his pillow to the floor.
The priest looked at Winston lovingly. "Aye, 'tis true,
there be a bit of the devil in him, but down deep he's a
good--"
Winston growled. "Stop it, you old fool! Do you hear
me? Can't you see there's no one there?"
"--boy."
Winston's light blew out. He unplugged himself from
his IV bag, jumped out of bed, and began swiping at the
dark. "See? Look! Nothing. Nothing! He waved his
arms frantically. Don't go. "Nurse!"
"He can? He's forgiven? Oh, Lordie, that's just
wonderful news!"
Father Dunager stretched toward Winston and
extended his hand. "Come, my son. We shall see the face
of God." 

Forever Love
By Rone Wisten
In Once Upon I heard your call
And hurried to your side.
Kindred souls of common birth
The world was ours to claim.
Until one night death struck us down
And ripped us from our living flesh,
Our essence lost among the stars.
“Love is forever,” you had said,
And I carried it in my soul
Into another body of flesh,
Where I wait to hear your call.

Rusted World
by JD DeHart
Gentleman made from spare parts
A bit of toaster here, calculator there
Lady made from finest quality
No black tape and bolting to be seen
He’s got a sort of life planned
Works daily at the factory
Moving in time like clockwork
Like the rest of the world
At end of day, his gift
Some rusted metal roses
Lady takes them with a whir
Gentleman clicks and hums
Outside, the rattling of ads
A constant threat of rain
Blinking, honking busyness
Inside, a quiet evening
With a warm cup of engine oil
And a few small repairs.
Harp's World: Finding Lives in the Balance
by Jennifer Rachel Baumer
When she crossed the last river and started up into the
rolling desert foothills, Harp gave a sigh of relief. Four
days she'd ridden, from the Earth Keep in the north across
a desert valley and the fire lands, through two small towns
where no one welcomed – or understood - her, following
half-spoken instructions whispered by a bard whose name
she didn't even know. She'd traded horses daily in those
weather-beaten towns, each horse a little slower and more
lethargic than the last. They'd left the last town behind
three days ago and she'd stopped at every patch of green to
let this last horse eat, to search for water and to get herself
out of the direct sunlight.
And to run her hands over Lisle, the rosewood harp
that rode nestled against her back, part of the reason she'd
come.
Now, crossing a turgid stream and looking down
between two peaks toward the valley floor, she knew she'd
come the right way. And that she was almost there.
The terror of being lost switched imperceptibly to the
terror of almost being there.
On the far side of the river stood a copse of poplar or
some other water insistent tree. She made her way there,
the horse plodding, head down, and slid from the creature's
back to land on hard desert dirt beside the short stretch of
green. The horse instantly began to crop grass and Harp
slid down on her belly, drank from the stream until she felt
bloated, then straightened to dig through her pack for one
of the apples she'd found farther down the foothills.
Against her back, the harp Lisle gave a single sullen chord
in the oppressive heat.
Harp settled back on her ass, kicked off her boots, put
both feet in the water and took the harp in her hands.
Under the uneven light of poplar shade she strummed
instructions to the horse – don't wander; neither of us can
survive without the other – that it wouldn't understand
even if she could speak. She ran her hands over the
instrument and it voiced her complaint: If we are Essence,
why can we not tame the fire lands? She played mourning
for her family, her father who fell four days earlier. At
last, she played herself comfort, and slept, for less time
that she initially feared when she burst awake, terrified she
would have lost the daylight.
The sun remained steady in the sky, full killing heat.
The Elements rushed through her, reinstating their claim,
and twisting away again. The gray horse stood nearby,
muzzle wet from the stream, head turned to take in the
land around them.
Harp rose. She had miles to make and a sorceress to
find.
Four Days Earlier
Drayden, Lord of the Earth, ruler of the Earth Keep,
sagged against her. Beaten, bloody and lord only of his
own domain, he staggered and Harp held him, reaching out
to his sons, begging for help.
Drayden's stolen Land Rule, control of the Four
Elements and Rule of the Four Keeps – he'd lost it all in
the battle and the loss left him bloody as if he'd battled the
heir of Winds and Air.
Harp ached. Not for Drayden. Father he may be, but
he'd stolen the rule. She ached for the boy driven half mad
by the sense of the rule, Sean D'Aurele, Heir of Winds and
Air, the one Drayden had stolen the Land Rule from. She
ached for herself.
When the Land Rule went into flux, Harp had touched
it. Three different times.
It had nearly driven her mad as the Heir to the City of
Dreams.
Help me, she shouted to Donal and Aiden. Against
lurid sunset they stood among fallen soldiers of the Earth,
bloody swords yet unsheathed. Two enormous men, like
their father, and they would take Drayden's weight from
her.
Help me, she shouted but nothing came from her
throat. Her mouth made no sound. She staggered under
Drayden's weight, her footing uncertain on the rocky
ground around the Northern Keep of the Lords of the
Earth. One hand left Drayden and she touched her throat,
felt it working, moving under her fingers. When she cried
out again, the brothers heard her and came to her. She had
made sounds.
She had not made words.
"Has he been cut?" Aiden caught his father's head,
strong hands guiding him down to the litter as Donal
lowered their father's body. No blood. No obvious
wound. Yet the Lord of the Earth breathed in shallow
pain, his eyes closed, skin pale. "Harp?"
She shook her head No. She'd been there through the
battle. She'd seen the young heir of the City of Dreams
come across the barren rocky headlands to the Northern
Keep, only Sean D'Aurele and his brother, Merk, or
something, she thought. Only the two of them, and a host
of angry soldiers held back by Sean's Rule over the winds.
He was a powerful boy, and fair, and Harp felt the Land
Rule struggling to get back to him, Drayden's hold on it
slipping until the Lord of the Earth took his sons and his
soldiers and turned a peaceful headland into a bloody
battlefield.
"He hasn't been cut." But her voice was nothing but
notes, musical, soaring, a babble of sound like a creek over
rocks and the harp she carried made errant sounds against
her back, as if plucked. The same as had happened during
the battle at the City of Dreams, when Drayden stole the
Rule.
Aiden glared at her, confusion crossing his face. One
eye had swollen shut. A long thin cut crossed one cheek.
His hands were gloved in blood and no way for her to
know if the blood was Aiden's or someone else's.
Donal grunted, ignoring Harp, said, "There's no blood
on him, Aiden. Let's get him back to the keep," and Harp
fell behind, staring after them, voice caught in her throat,
and no one yet knew it.
The Land Rule hit her then, swirling through her like a
water spout, blowing with Sean D'Aurele's winds, burning
in her. She felt her father's own rule, the Earth, strong,
solid, the dragons overhead dodging down toward her, a
steep dive with leathery wings tucked close and she
ducked as they soared away, blinked and the world twisted
out of true. In the scrabbled bushes of the headlands she
fell to hands and knees and vomited the breakfast she'd
eaten so many hours earlier, before Sean D'Aurele made
his gesture of peace and found it met with a gesture of war.
The world tumbled out of balance. The land rule slid
from her, back to the Elements. Harp opened her mouth to
try and call to her brothers, to beg them to wait for her.
It didn't matter if she couldn't speak. They'd all gone
on ahead with their father.
Harp stood. She had miles to make and a sorceress to
find. The Land Rule alternated between the Heirs of the
Elements, Lords of the Earth, Fire, the Winds and Water.
For it to have touched her should have driven her mad.
Maybe it had. Maybe she really could speak, was
speaking, and only imagined she had lost her voice.
On her back, laced into pack, swathed in oil skins, the
rosewood harp Lisle gave a disconsolate cry.
Right. Time to go. The horse had taken his fill of
stubbly desert grass and grown restless.
Harp had grown restless as well. In the hills yet above
them, in a tiny town that overlooked graveyards and silver
mines, that understood little of magic but much of death,
the sorceress was said to live.
Two sage hens exploded out of the scrub almost
directly at the horse's feet. To his discredit, the horse
barely blinked. Not well trained and calm, just too
damned dumb to realize there was danger in the world.
*
*
*
Four Days Earlier
On a battlefield, the man whose family she'd joined
had fallen into a shallow, pained sleep, from which no one
could wake him. Drayden lay, mourned by his wife,
watched by his sons, not dead, not yet still alive.
The horse plodded, steady and completely without
enthusiasm. Overhead the sun burned down and Harp
shifted uncomfortably, wanting to stop again, drink water.
Sleep.
Drayden's fall had brought her, the sleep he'd fallen
into and couldn't be woken from.
On her back, Lisle muttered disagreement. The horse
moved so slowly Harp tucked the reins under her thigh to
keep him moving and reached back both hands to bring
Lisle into her lap.
Have something to say, do you, harp?
Her hands gently touched the strings and the
instrument rippled to life, laughing at first, a bit derisive, a
hard jangling bunch of notes that ended on an upswing.
And then, without Harp running her hands over more than
the silky wood, the harp spoke.
It played Drayden, his rage and furies, the way he
stomped into rooms, the querulous questions that did
nothing but put the questioned off balance. Aiden and
Donal called him father and she, the foundling, called him
father because she had no other.
Come on your quest for the sorceress because of
Drayden? The notes mocked, dancing back and forth
between the heavy chords of Drayden and the light, simple
dances that meant Harp herself.
She had come for Drayden, she thought, ducking the
lowest branches of an evergreen the horse had cleared for
himself but seen no reason to steer Harp, her head or her
right leg away from. She had come for Drayden. Because
he had plucked her from the battlefield in the City of
Dreams, the Keep of the Lords of Air, on the day when the
Land Rule was stolen from the Lords of Air, Philip
D'Aurele and his heir, Sean. Stolen by Drayden, Lord of
the Earth, when Philip D'Aurele was distracted by a honey
colored girl with long fair hair, light eyes and a harp. Born
that day on the battlefield. When she tried to remember
before, she found images of desert, and rocky headland,
forest and mountain, lakes and rivers. When she tried to
speak, words lined up on her tongue.
But she made no sound. The harp spoke, creating
music to communicate with Donal and Aiden, with their
wives and children and the people in her life and with
Drayden, Lord of the Earth, who held the Land Rule in an
iron fist, controlling the Lords of the Elements and
bending them to his will.
Though the Heir of Winds and Air, Sean D'Aurele –
he didn't bend. Sometimes she felt him, those times when
Drayden, sleeping or drunk and passed out, let the Land
Rule slip and Harp would run to the tower parapets, harp
in one hand, playing to the storms, the winds, the sharp
and rock strewn ground under the Earth Keep. She'd play
to water, enticing the ocean just off the headland, play to
the Fire Lands, the deserts to the south, where lightning
flashed and heat soared. Those times she'd feel the stolen
Land Rule flutter in her hands, in her mind, battering itself
against her, trying to get free of Drayden's hold and Sean's
claim.
When she touched the Land Rule, she didn't feel
insane. She felt calm. Whole. Peaceful. Everything came
together. The melodies blended, brought together the
sound of water over stone and wind through trees, the
somnolent silence of a summer in the desert, the dense,
distant rumble of stone on stone in Drayden's rocky Earth
Keep. Those times she almost knew who she was and why
she'd come.
And the Land Rule would snap away from her, and
there would be only confusion, and Drayden waking,
raging as he felt the return of his stolen Rule, aware that
for a few minutes he had lost control.
Harp came out of her thoughts. The horse had been
toiling continuously upward and the air had begun to
change. Around her was a breeze cutting through the heat
and it smelled of sweet pine rather than the hot spice of
desert sand. She was only miles from the sorceress' house,
miles from the small town of graveyards and mines. She
could see flecks of mica on the foothills she climbed
toward and each hill she crested dropped her less far down,
each hill she climbed took her higher.
She slid Lisle back into the pack on her shoulders,
took the reins and began to climb carefully, watching,
playing guessing games with herself. As she came over
this hill, would she see town and sorceress? Or over this
one?
Watching ahead, counting hills, making bets, she
almost missed the change. The horse didn't shy but lifted
his hooves in dislike and Harp jolted back, aware again.
The salamanders ran through the sage and scrub,
jeweled bodies flaming, legs furiously working. They
shimmered in the unrelenting sunlight, scurried fast on
four legs, long tails twitching lines of flame.
Harp sucked air between her teeth. The Fire Lords,
sending their familiars. But she'd been told to come this
way, by the bard who had come to the Earth Keep to play,
sent away by a red faced and furious Donal. It was Aiden
who caught him in the hall, though Harp would have.
"Don't go. Our father is sick and my brother worried
for him. Music. We could use music. Would you play for
my father?"
The bard, looking up from the bag of coin Aiden held,
caught sight of Harp.
"Aye. Music has been known to heal the sick. I'll
play. If she'll play too."
And Harp, her father sick, her brothers disgusted with
her inability to speak, had blushed and pulled Lisle tighter
in her arms and nodded.
They'd played together, fast pieces, desert pieces,
those with hawks in flight in the mountains and hard, harsh
Earth pieces with dragons circling the Earth Keep and
during those Drayden had twitched but he never woke.
For Harp, every Elemental tune was familiar, every ballad
her story, every love story confusing. The bard was dark,
with short hair almost blue in its black, with stubble on his
square jaw and long lashes like a woman's and something
about him rang wrong in the notes but Harp still blushed to
look on him and played to impress.
Donal came through the door after an hour, when the
rushes in Drayden's fire pit grew weak.
"What idiocy? I sent you away! You dare to stay?"
The bard, backing slowly away, holding flute and harp
and lute carefully, saying the young lord of the keep had
bade him stay and Donal, roaring, took a step forward.
Harp stepped between them. She brought up Lisle and
scattered notes and when she could not make herself
understood, trying to relay too many messages, Drayden
had responded, somewhat, a little, that she had been asked
to play with the bard, that Donal may not hurt a fellow
musicer, when all that proved too much to communicate,
she bought the harp up again and played the light frothy
notes that meant Harp, playing in essence: I. I. I.
"Get him out of here," Donal snarled, and he turned on
his heel and strode away.
Leaving them for the bard to whisper in her ear: "Your
Lord sleeps and will not wake. The music of his home will
not wake him. But there is one who can."
And he told her of the sorceress, the four day's ride,
the magics, the sorceress' own not control but complicity
with the Elements.
Harp, listening. Nodding. Breathless.
Waiting.
"She can tell you what you are."
The salamanders swarmed across the desert. In the
harsh sunlight the flames surrounding the creatures
shimmered in the air, all but invisible, just a bending of
reality like optical illusions.
She shouldn't have been able to see them.
The horse knew something was there. He pranced
sideways, showed teeth around the bit. His ears pricked
forward, his eyes went wide. He sidestepped up the hill
and Harp realigned him. She needed to head straight up
and face what was coming. The next foothill loomed in
front of them.
Harp tightened the lacings on the pack that cradled
Lisle, tightened her hold on the reins with one hand and
pulled her sword from its scabbard with her other. She
was almost useless with a sword, but a sword and her
voice, that might be weapon enough.
Lethargy forgotten, the horse took the foothill at
speed, alert, aware, cautious but moving with surefooted
determination.
The Fire Lord had sent four mounted soldiers,
seasoned warriors who would not blink when told their
target was a girl of 20.
Harp looked from face to face. Two young, too older.
All hard faces, flat dead eyes. Their skin, no matter age,
hard, leathery, brown as the desert dirt. Each sat horse
easily. Each was armed and though she was forewarned,
they circled her easily, a four point surrounding her, as
though each took one of the cardinal points and one
Element.
They did not. These were soldiers from the south
lands that she had ridden through. This was Fire.
She wished she could speak. It would make no
difference. The course of the soldiers was set. But the
Land Rule wasn't. And so she opened her mouth and sang,
the notes echoed by Lisle, still secure in her pack. With
the Land Rule in flux, she could reach for it, from Essence,
from a place where each of the Elements came together in
balance.
They didn't bother to speak. The oldest moved
forward, directly at her, the others only ebbing near her,
moving subtly closer and away, like eddies at a lake edge.
She wished she held her harp instead of a sword.
The soldier who confronted her raised his sword.
Dark hair glinted silver under the searing sun. He wore no
helmet, expected no resistance from what should have
been an unarmed girl.
One strike would remove her head. He brought up the
sword, forcing the horse forward with his knees.
Harp sang, a hard fall of notes, and felt the nausea as
the Land Rule spun around her.
The soldier started his swing.
She flinched, blinded by sunlight off steel.
The ground came up hard, Earth Element throwing the
horse and rider back. Ground rippled under the soldiers,
driving all of them away from Harp. Wind came up,
thunder grumbling loud overhead as lightning turned the
day surreally bright. Rain pelted down, not cooling but
sending needles of water against the exposed skin of each
of the four men. Harp closed her mouth hard. From her
pack, the harp, swathed in oil skins, safely packed, shouted
several notes, the cries Harp might have made if she could
talk.
The notes sounded like words.
This is wrong. The Land Rule is wrong. The coups
and wars are wrong. The Land Rule is wrong. The Lords
of the Earth and Air and Fire and Water should work
together. Should balance. The Land Rule should be in the
hands of Essence.
Rain streaked her face, ran across her mouth. Harp's
lips parted. She breathed the word: "Essence."
The four Elements made one. The Land Rule
consisting of four parts made whole.
The soldiers came up together. The horses stood
behind them now, whites of eyes showing in terror. The
soldiers together raised their swords, four pieces made
whole, and she might have thought again one soldier per
Element but each wore the Fire crest. She'd ridden across
the fire lands to find healing for the Lord of the Earth who
held the stolen Land Rule and the Lords of Fire come after
her. The Heir was Lord of Winds and Air. It didn't matter
to them. The Land Rule was in flux: the Lords hunted.
They moved together, four swords held high, moving
toward her with steely intent, faces grim, eyes squinted
against the blare of wind and water.
Harp, still mounted, took a couple prancing steps to
the side, as if her mount was undecided, and then,
unexpectedly, he gave her a sidelong glance, as if
measuring her up, and Harp, shocked, laughed abruptly.
The horse, satisfied, shook his head free of the bit and
reared, legs thrashing downward at the soldiers.
Harp shouted, inarticulate, and Lisle voiced words,
Stop, and Don't, and Hold.
Harp lunged for the winds, tore them from Philip
D'Aurele's heir, every bit of that rule stripped, all the
Elementals at her command.
She drove the soldiers back before they could slash the
horse's tendons or reach for her and the wind screamed. It
blasted past her and left her untouched. The horse's mane
moved as the wind brushed past them. It caught the
soldiers, threw them back and away, left them tumbled
together against the hard Earth in the mountainous far
reaches of the land of the South.
Harp spared a glance, then patted the horse on the
neck. "Want to stay with me?" she asked but the words
came out musical notes. At least she made sound, could
express pleasure, and on her back, Lisle strummed, seemed
to say Good horse, and fell silent.
The pack horse raised his head, waited for her
command, and faced the foothill. He stepped neatly over
one of the soldiers when they came to him and the man did
not move.
Harp continued up the hill to the small town that
housed magics it did not believe in.
She had met with no success in towns she passed
through before. There was no reason to expect this town
would be any different. Stopping to ask someone to show
her the way was impossible. Her harp might speak, but
that would only frighten anyone she approached more than
her own singing or playing her requests. She rode along
the edges of the town which sat poised on the flat top of a
foothill surrounded by mountains that thrust up and
blocked the afternoon sun.
She'd left the storms behind her, still swirling around
the fallen men. The town here was shadowed by the
mountain peaks.
The edge of town was cleared of scrub and brush. A
river ran through the edges, and willows lined it, poplars
greedy for water, cottonwoods that fell in storms like those
Harp could call.
She rode along the main street, passing people dressed
in rough work clothes, faces wary but not frightened. Men
and women alike, they were lean and hard and well
worked and looked far from needing a bard or a musicer,
far from understanding a girl who spoke with a harp, or
worse, whose harp spoke, or worse still, who spoke the
language of storm.
These people, their Elements were free, or so they
believed. They would not welcome her.
But Harp watched their faces and the way they turned
and spoke to one another and she looked into the
marketplace, the cave-like recesses of black smith and
horseshoer, and she let the horse have his head, watching
the faces that turned to her and recognized something other
and then turned, seemingly without realizing they did, and
looked along the very road she followed, as though linking
other with other inside their minds.
The sorceress' house was small and clean. Built of
native stone, the windows and door were shutters made of
windfall wood and leather, and all were thrown open to the
summer day. Herbs and vegetables and grasses thrived in
profusion in the ground before the house and Harp thought
the low stone walls and iron smith's worked gate were
probably meant more to contain what frightened the town
than to protect the sorceress from harm.
Harp slid from the horse's back, wrapped the reins
loosely through the iron bars of the gate, said, "Will you
wait for me?" too tired, worn and lost to wonder that she'd
just spoken.
The gray nuzzled her neck, put its head over the wall
and began to eat apples from the sorceress's tree. Harp
blinked at that and decided to hope for the best.
She swung the iron gate open and stepped onto the flat
stones that led to the door of the sorceress's house. Every
step kicked up a dry snap of lightning.
Before she knocked or called she paused on the wide
flat rock at the entrance and took Lisle from her pack.
Running her hands over the strings, she started when a
voice called, "Be welcome."
Harp ducked under the keystone and entered.
Inside the house was hot and smoky with cooking
fires. Dazed after the sunlight, she thought the house
seemed dark. Her eyes slowly grew accustomed and she
saw she stood amidst hanging herbs drying from an
overhead line, tapestries in progress, stretched in frames.
Over the fire something bubbled in a pot and farther in the
fireplace a hare turned on a spit. There was little furniture,
two small chairs and a rough hewn table, a bed against the
far wall, but on one wall, from the fire, was lined with
leather books, spines carefully rubbed with oil.
The woman in the room looked like Harp. Tall, thin,
delicate, with light eyes and hair and honey colored skin.
She stood so still Harp didn't see her at first and started
when she did.
She opened her mouth to speak, and didn't, to afraid
that once again she'd be without words.
The sorceress spoke and in her voice were the
Elements, all of them, flowing and blending, tree and rock,
leaf and root, winds and rain and fire and stone.
"I was afraid you wouldn't come."
Harp ran her hand partway across the strings and left
off. Lisle voiced a low cry. "You. Expected me?"
Her own voice sounded strange to her ears, higher
than she would have thought, but stronger, too, and she
wondered briefly if she had ever spoken before or only
dreamed that she had.
"I have expected you for a very long time," the woman
said. She moved easily through the house. From a low
earthen cupboard she fetched water from a bucket, a chunk
of bread, a wrapped cheese, apples from the tree out front
that made Harp think of the horse. She gestured,
forgetting she might still have the gift of speech, and her
hostess smiled, laying the food down on the small, uneven
table.
"He's fine. He'll only eat a few of the apples. His
name's Fleet."
Harp, mid-sip of water, choked, and the woman
laughed.
"I sent him to bring you here." She waved Harp into
one of the chairs and took the other.
"I can talk."
Harp said it experimentally, as much question as
statement.
The woman across the table from her smiled and
looked toward the street and the horse removing apples
from the tree.
"Yes."
"Why?"
It didn't occur to her the sorceress wouldn't know.
Some part of a puzzle was falling into place. The horse
had been sent to bring her to the sorceress. The sorceress
would know, and could heal.
The room spun around her. Her thoughts clattered
together, fragments that fell away without making sense.
"You're exhausted," the sorceress said. "And have
been too much in the sun."
"I can't sleep," Harp said, and the other woman laid a
hand across one of hers.
"No. Just – take a little strength."
Her hand over Harp's warmed like sunlight. The
world sharpened back into place. Her breath came more
easily. Her muscles tightened. She sat up.
"You can heal." Excitement growing. "Then you can
heal Dray – "
"I know why you've come. But I don't know if you
do."
Harp looked from the hand that covered hers and up
into the sorceress' eyes. "The bard told me you could tell
me what I am."
For a few minutes there was silence in the room, the
silence of things unsaid, and then the woman started to
laugh. "Bards," she said at length. "Everything is always
about drama with them." She stood, cut one of the apples
into quarters and put a piece firmly into Harp's hand. "I
can, however, tell you who you are. You are my daughter.
Your name is Ara, which means Harp in the old tongue. I
am Deandra."
She should have questions, Harp thought. Deandra
looked as if she expected Harp to ask questions, and so to
stall she took a bite of apple and thought and then, still
feeling as if the Lord of Winds had blown through her
mind, said, "And who is the bard?"
Deandra frowned, then laughed, and said, "He's a
bard. He was convenient. I could see where he meant to
go, but it was easy to persuade him to go another way."
She winked. "I needed to get a message to you." But she
moved the way the bard had, and her lashes were long
when she looked down.
Harp nodded, a little skeptical. "Why not come to me
yourself?"
"Because good things take some time," Deandra said,
as if exasperated, and she stood, drained her water and
went to poke at the hare on the spit. "You needed to work
for what you wanted."
"Drayden's healing?"
She'd come to her feet,
somehow, and her hands were balled into fists. Drayden
wasn't a kind man. He held the stolen Land Rule by force.
He had killed for it. But he had been father to her, and
turning her back on him would make him no more kind,
only her less so.
"Drayden is ill because he holds what is not his. What
Sean D'Aurele should hold would sicken the Heir of Winds
and Air, because the Land Rule should not be held by the
Lords of the Elements. You can feel the Land Rule, " she
said.
Harp moved to the window and stared out at the horse
and the street beyond without answering. The little stone
house felt too hot, too small. Too oppressive.
Deandra moved behind her, rested hands lightly on
Harp's shoulders. Harp shrugged her shoulders tight and
hard, but Deandra kept her hands away from Lisle.
"You've held the Rule. Used it. You've felt the
balance twist and turn and even in the seconds you held it
to fight, you must have felt the peace that filled you."
The sense that everything was right, as if the Earth had
come into focus, or she had wakened from a dream.
"Yes."
Deandra moved away and Harp felt chilled, as if she'd
stepped into shadow. Her mother moved to the door and
leaned against the frame.
"You don't remember your girlhood. Growing up with
me. The times we spent in the desert, looking for pine
nuts. Hunting. Our life?"
Harp lowered her head. "No. I'm sorry." The burden
of words, suddenly; playing a flurry of notes would have
been easier.
"Because you didn't. It was a dream. I dreamed your
life with me in the hours and days before the battle at the
City of Dreams. I dreamed you into life as the Lords of
Earth and Air fought for possession of something only
Essence should hold: not the Rule, but the balance, of the
Elements."
She took Fleet and rode back the way she'd come and
throughout the small city the people on the streets moved
back from her. She was coming away from the sorceress'
house: she was tainted.
Harp, angry, hurt, existing only at the will of the
sorceress Deandra and only to contain a power she did not
hold, was willing to let them back away, their eyes full of
terror. Let them think she could throw spells and magic
away their lives. It was no more than what had been done
to her.
She shivered. The summer day no longer seemed
even warm. Twilight covered the city. The air cooled.
She urged Fleet faster and he broke into a gallop, carrying
her free of the city and into the foothills where she could
feel the Earth around her, the wind and fire and water. The
feeling of power built in her until she wanted to run or
scream or sing or batter herself against the rocks at the
base of the foothill. As the sensation built, Fleet stopped
completely and locked his legs.
Harp threw herself from his back. "Did Deandra bid
you bring me here?"
The horse lowered his muzzle and gazed at her and
she imagined he urged her not to be stupid.
"Fine." She gathered a handful of stones and hurled
them all together at the boulders, taking one step back
when they flared like lightning. "Be damned. Why? Why
do this?" And words, now she had them, were tiresome.
The harp had expressed what she needed and left her alone
inside to reflect on the rest. If sometimes people
misinterpreted her messages, sometimes too the results
were better than if they had understood her.
She bent to gather more rocks and Lisle let out an
angry series of chords. Harp straightened, pulled the harp
free of her pack, and played.
Why no voice? Why bear her into the world with no
past and no explanation of what was meant for the future?
Why only the harp?
Which was wood, and Earth, and wind as she stroked
the strings and fire as her fingers sparked along it and
water in the sounds of the notes. Music, which brought
together all the sounds of the four quarters, the sound of
brooks and rivers of torrents and calm pools of rain and
rivers and wind that moved the chimes softly or uprooted
trees and smashed down walls.
The Land Rule shifted. Somewhere, something,
someone, had reached for it.
Harp answered. She reached out and felt it trembling
in Drayden's fevered, weakening grasp.
She felt
everything that made up her world, everything too many
had died for. She felt Sean D'Aurele, sickened, exhausted
from the battle, and searching still.
She grabbed. She lunged and tore the Rule from
Drayden, laid a hand on his shoulder in her mind's eye and
when he sickened and started to fall deeper into the
unnatural sleep, Harp sang.
In her songs, the familiars writhed around their
Elements, Fire salamanders, Earth dragons, hawks and sea
serpents, twisting and twining as though they'd come for
battle.
She sang of battles, old and new, the beginning of the
Land Rule and the recent past when Drayden stole it from
Philip D'Aurele when Sean D'Aurele came to reclaim it
and it slipped and slid. She sang Drayden awake, sang him
peace he wouldn't want but might not reject. She sang
Sean D'Aurele, heir of Winds and Air, the peace he'd never
known – freedom from being Lord of Air. She released
them all, the Lords of the Elements, and felt them fight
their sudden freedom. She laughed and offered them
peace they did not yet want but might some day.
And she sang the world, sang her place into it.
In her arms, Lisle the harp brought the Elements
together, and brought Essence to make them whole.
In the morning she woke stiff with cold, curled into
the side of the horse. Fleet snuffled at her, found her
awake, and rose unceremoniously to go crop grass,
allowing Harp to fall back onto the rocky ground. She
grumbled, searched out the last strips of dried meat in her
pack and followed the sense of water to a stream.
When the sun came up she started the trek back to the
Earth Keep, a four day ride.
She did not return the horse. Deandra be damned, she
could come get her own horse.
She thought she heard her mother's laugh inside her
head at that thought.
Midday on her fourth day she crossed the long flat
headland that led to the Earth Keep. She watched the
dragons flying over the towers and wondered at her
welcome from the Lords of the Earth. 
Suffocation Between Octopus Arms
by Amanda Jo Angleberger
Sometimes I see freckles crawl across my skin like spiders
I can feel one squirming in my tightly closed fist
You squint and search my open palm
But to most they go unnoticed
Like teeth marks on fork prongs
I knew it was selfish
You were infinite; you were a bird
And I wanted you caged
I wanted you tamed and trained; my possession on a shelf
I’m insatiable; they plead for your time
Unsatisfied; they grow jealous of my obsession; you’re preoccupation with me
The vines tug at your ankles; the wind screams your name
The envious moon throws down her beam
I push my face into your chest
And beg you to run with me
To pick out parasites, I peel back your skin
And we take turns rolling in dirt, to rid ourselves of society’s oily scent
We sneak behind sleeping guards, while the moon turned her back
Lying under the oak tree; we hide
Watching the stars through the naked branches
I squeeze your ribs tight with octopus arms
Broken
By Jennifer Juneau
She carried three shopping bags full of expensive
clothes and jewelry in shades of liver and old lace—things
she couldn’t afford—out of the store. Maxing out her
credit card would have to be her secret, until the bill came
anyway, but what did she forget? The jingling in her purse
confirmed she had her keys. She reached inside and felt
her wallet. Her skirt swayed as she fixed herself onto the
escalator. Good, she still had that but Mnemosyne
abandoned her now and the crowded shopping center
jarred her nerves. The wisteria walls of the mall gleaned,
or winked mysteriously as if in complicity with some
twisted force out to engulf her sensibility. An awareness
clung to her frame and her aura was a dulled tumbleweed.
Her familiar midnight-blue keen-thinking poignant and
lucid self seemed to have escaped her. The escalator raced
up to the next level. A split-second alarm bell plummeted
to her gut—was it the baby? Had she left the baby in the
changing room? No, she hadn’t taken the baby shopping
today. Others began staring at her as she stood stock still.
A woman rolled her eyes in disgust. A man gazed at her
and shook his head. That was it—it was her head. She
had forgotten her head.
She glided between shoppers up the escalator, took a
U-turn at the top of floor K and glided back down the
down escalator to floor F and back to the clothing store.
The salesgirl—nineteen, twenty, maybe, with jet-black
hair and eyes to match, stood affixed to the cash register
snapping her gum and tallying up receipts, or something.
“Excuse me,” she said to the salesgirl, “have you
found a lost head?”
“Blond?” the salesgirl said.
“Red,” the woman said. “With green eyes,” she
added, as if.
“Somebody left a blond head in the fitting room,” the
salesgirl said. “And her eyes are brown.”
“Shit,” the woman said. Her voice was all essence.
Her senses, too.
“Good luck finding it,” the salesgirl shouted through
her mouth as the woman left.
She couldn’t go home without her head, Bkentz would
kill her. Or stick her on the drug. The drug grew a head
back between your shoulders, but it wouldn’t be the exact
old head, it would be a different head with an R tattooed
on the forehead to indicate “Replacement.” She’d be the
laughing stock of society. And how embarrassing to throw
a dinner party and have your friends, with their original
heads intact, suddenly see you’ve dropped the ball so-tospeak and lost it. It would be the third time she’d lost it,
which would elicit expletives from Bkentz, like, “Rebecca,
I can’t believe you fucked up again. Where was your
fucking head?”
The first time Rebecca lost her head she was at a job
interview with the promise of a huge salary. A position for
salesperson opened up in the want ads and Rebecca
secured herself an interview. This was in their pre-baby
days and she and Bkentz were saving up for a house.
When the interviewer asked Rebecca if she knew how their
new product, SuckDust Ceiling Vacuum, functioned
(which any moron could have found information on) she
told the truth and said No. Through clenched teeth the
interviewer with the austere bun atop her head at SuckDust
explained that one simply affixes the apparatus to the
ceiling, switches on the light switch and all the dust is
sucked to the top in one sweeping rush and how the fuck
was someone going to sell a product they knew nothing
about?
Rebecca left the interview chiding herself,
“Rebecca,” she said, “where was your head?” Surely the
woman inside knew that she had no head during the
interview. “Always the last to know,” Rebecca had
murmured to herself, shaking nothing.
The second time she lost her head she was in the car
driving with baby Whhispt. The baby was cooing in her
car seat and surprised Rebecca by uttering the word
banananana. Rebecca was overwhelmed with joy. All
along she thought the baby wasn’t developing rapidly
enough. She reached into her baby bag, taking her eyes off
the road, for a banananana to reward her cooing baby (who
had at that instant learned to say the word banananana)
and swerved into a tree. Thank goodness she was driving
at a snail’s pace but snails didn’t prevent the front end of
her car from getting smashed. Snails didn’t stop the
insurance premium from rising. When she called Bkentz
from her cell phone to tell him about Whhispt’s
banananana word and the accident he said, “Fuck, fucking
shit, Rebecca. Where was your head?” “I don’t know,”
she responded. “I don’t know.”
Now this.
Rebecca thought she’d been born with a curse. Born
with an uncommon name: Rebecca. How many Rebeccas
did she know? None. How many Rebeccas had she even
heard of? Squat. Why couldn’t her mother have named
her a common name like Bleez or Knmje or Starry-Luz?
Rebecca sounds more like a nickname for Rzibka. The
salesgirl at the store was named Rzibka, her nametag said
so.
And what a name! Rzibka or Bleez or Knmje
wouldn’t have lost their heads. People with names like
that rarely do. But a Rebecca would. Was her name the
problem? What’s in a name? A lot, Rebecca thought with
her spirit, a lot.
Now, Rebecca lost her head for the third time. Bkentz
will hate her for it. Bkentz, the well-bred breadwinner,
never lost his. Was she worthy of a man whose mother
knew better by choosing a name for her son that made him
less susceptible to losing his head? A name that is sure to
climb the ranks in the job sector? Bkentz, president and
CEO of the company he worked for, managed to execute
the responsibilities of his stress-laden job with ease. It
baffled Rebecca that Bkentz could be a genius at what he
did without breaking a sweat. The long hours at the office.
The obscene bonuses at Christmastime rolling in.
Bkentzes made money. Bkentzes made sense. Rzibkas
made money. Rzibkas didn’t lose their heads. She flirted
with the idea of hooking Bkentz up with salesgirl Rzibka
and running far, far away with baby Whhispt. Then she
dismissed it. It couldn’t be her name, how ridiculous! She
was just an airheaded klutz. No wait, she wasn’t. She was
too self-critical. She had baby brain. Everybody said so.
At any rate, she must find her head before Bkentz came
home. Bkentz had a dark side she envied.
Rebecca phoned the nanny from the road to dismiss
her for the afternoon, saying she was almost home.
Rebecca would be ruined if the nanny saw her without her
head. She’d snitch. The nanny didn’t protest. She was
bored anyway, she said. Whhispt was asleep in her crib,
she said. In her haste Rebecca said goodbye and hung up.
Rebecca was astonished she remembered her phone
number. She must be getting better at losing her head.
Could it be that the headless were a developed species of
their own? What a thought—she could be head of the
headless. She’d rename members of the new headless race
with archaic names like Mary-Lou and Abe and Johnny.
The males would have the male names and the females
would have the female names like in the olden days. Not
unisex, as it is. She’d tune the world like an instrument.
Slow it down. The world, as it was, was too much with us,
she thought. Not late but soon.
As she pulled her vehicle onto her street a splinter of
euphoria shot through the blueprint of her frame and she
prayed the upswing wasn’t the better part of her
disposition that would plunge into self-destruction. She
entered the garage which hadn’t been cleaned out in
months. Remnants of vacations past—of past Rebecca—
tennis rackets and solar-propelled rafts leaned against the
walls like dust-caked mummies—were no longer
employed for recreation. All this a symbol of the sinkhole
that swallowed Rebecca’s existence. Her vision was in
focus and she wasn’t about to crack, what with shards of
glumness littering the ground like chunk glass? It was
time to turn the switch. Forget Bkentz. Forget baby
Whhispt. She was on a mission. It would take minutes to
wrap up her before life and head out on the road to her
after life—and she’d better do it fast for fear what was not
visible might soon be lost. 
Pixies in the Porridge
by Richard H. Fay
cold winter morn
hearth flames crackle
breakfast simmers
impish twitters
soft tug draws attention
fire left untended
vaporous sprites
reel across steaming pot
porridge burned
Lakeside: An Old Dream
by Bryan Wein
Peter sat on the veranda wondering whether he should
retrieve his rail gun. Out on the lake, the worrisome
skimmer drew closer, a brightening gleam of silver in the
fading light. Peter had not had an unannounced visitor in
the twelve years since he’d moved his laboratory out here,
to the seclusion of lake country. He couldn’t imagine who
it was. He had no friends, and his rare meetings with
clients and suppliers were scheduled months in advance.
No one lived within a hundred kilometers of him. That left
the possibility that a rival flesher had sent the skimmer.
But why? To examine his menagerie? To steal a list of his
customers? To finally punish him for the incident all those
years ago?
With a sigh, Peter took his cane and limped across the
moldering wooden boards to the front door. The rail gun,
which ought to have been hanging from the other side, was
missing. Stashed somewhere in the basement probably. His
legs balked at the prospect of those steep steps. To hell
with it, he thought. The recoil would break his shoulder
anyway. So he stumped back to the edge of the veranda,
rested his cane against the railing, and breathed in the cool
evening air as he watched the skimmer drift closer.
Trailing wind and water, the flier showed no sign of
slowing. The veranda jutted out over the darkening lake,
and Peter half thought the skimmer would ram it head on.
At the last moment, the underside of the skimmer flared
red as the rear thrusters ignited. The skimmer vaulted the
veranda and settled lightly onto the wet muck of the rice
paddies that bordered his house. A slightly chubby girl
emerged from the hatch, a silver box tucked under her arm.
“What brings you here?’ Peter asked crisply from the
deck.
“Certainly not your social graces,” the girl said with a
cool smile. Her light blonde hair hung ragged about her
fleshy cheeks. “My name’s Dressen. I was hoping to hire
you.”
“You’re a little young for this business.”
“Well, you’re a little older, and a lot less impressive
than I’d been led to believe. Perhaps we should keep our
speculations to ourselves for the moment.” She shivered
and wrapped her arms around herself for warmth. “Aren’t
you going to invite me inside? I have something here-” she
hefted the silver box. “You might find it interesting.”
“I’ve been fleshing creatures for decades. I doubt you
can show me anything that I haven’t seen a hundred times
before,” Peter said, running a hand through his thick white
hair.
“What if I had a raishk?”
Peter’s hand froze amid the silvery curls. Then he
looked around sharply. The dusky paddy fields were
desolate and silent. “All right, I’ll hear you out.”
They sat in high-backed red leather chairs in his solar.
The hard pinkish light of sunset streamed in through the
glass ceiling as Dressen began her proposal.
“I’ll be blunt. I owe money to various creditors.
Nothing criminal, you understand. No one’s hunting me.
But they will report me to the authorities if I don’t repay
them before year’s end. I plan to field the raishk in
Haerbin’s fighting pits and wager on its matches.”
“I don’t flesh animals for fighting anymore. And
besides, psychic creatures are banned from the pits.
They’ll toss you into the hulks if they catch you.”
“That’s why I’m willing to pay you a great deal to
disguise the raishk and its abilities.”
“Even though you’re in debt.”
“Not all my accounts have liens on them,” she said.
“The raishk defeats predators three and four times its size
in the wild. There’s no reason to think it couldn’t replicate
that success in the pits. With a little concealment, the
raishk should never lose. I’m willing to quadruple your
normal rate. My only condition is that I’ll need you pitside,
in case something goes wrong.”
“I don’t visit the pits anymore.” Shadows lengthened
in the solar as night fell. A dozen lamps spread out on
nearby tables came to life, suffusing the room in an orange
glow.
“Why not? From what I hear, you’re a kind of legend
there.”
Peter smirked and shook his head. He knew he should
decline her proposal. Nothing good was likely to come of
it. But years of fleshing the same dull creatures had bored
him. The raishk promised something new, something
reminiscent of the early days when his work still fascinated
him.
“That’s why you want to hire me isn’t it?” he asked.
“Not because I’m a competent flesher, but because if this
goes wrong, you can fall back on my reputation to clear
you from trouble. I don’t mind. Just understand that I’m
not proud of what I did to earn that reputation. I’ll accept
your commission, but I still think you’re making a
mistake.”
After Dressen left, Peter carried the silver box down to
his menagerie. Baboons, panthers, monstrous arachnids,
vultures, sharks, giant squids, and countless other
specimens filled the cages and aquariums. He set the box
down inside a larger cage and unlatched the door.
The creature that emerged resembled a baby kitten,
with white fur streaked with lines of green. Its eyes looked
white as well, so white they almost glowed. When their
eyes met, Peter felt a strange nervous excitement overtake
him, as though he’d just drunk three cups of sweetened
coffee. He chuckled. So they can influence human
emotions, he thought. Peter had just the remedy for that.
He retrieved an electric leash from his supply cabinet.
Then he opened the cage door, and looped the collar
around the raishk’s little neck. The other end he plugged
into an outlet. Immediately, the sense of heightened
excitement vanished. The raishk blinked innocently at him.
Peter saw only the future incisions and transplants that
would transform the little creature into a monster and felt a
pang of regret.
From his simulator, he learned that relatively little was
known about the raishk’s psionic properties. Its neural
network was not isolated to the brain, but spread along the
veins. Every effort to map the animal’s neurons had
rendered it catatonic.
This forced Peter to exercise more caution than usual
when it came to fleshing the raishk. Over the next few
weeks, he injected it with dozens of powerful drugs.
Anabolic steroids lengthened and thickened its limbs. Peter
dared not touch the spine. The brain stem was too sensitive
for that, but he did graft a layering of diamond to the
exoskeleton.
Before long, the little raishk resembled a fully grown
snow leopard, albeit one stripped of all grace and beauty.
Peter flattened its face, widened its maw, and affixed
serrated blades to its teeth. He altered its saliva glands, so
that it drooled and spat purple. Its keratin claws he
replaced with iron ones; these he sharpened to the width of
a few dozen atoms.
Dressen frequently called and even made the long trip
up from Haerbin a few times to keep an eye on the raishk’s
progress. Peter disliked being harried, but Dressen rarely
had anything critical to say. When she viewed the finished
product, she appeared delighted.
“The facial features are perfect! The public never bets
the ugly ones,” she exclaimed. “And we’ll be able to
pretend it’s a snow leopard. But how have you disguised
its psionic abilities?”
Peter noticed that her wide smile never reached her
eyes, which looked as cool and dispassionate as they had
during their first meeting. He waved a hand at the raishk’s
violet-flecked lips. “I changed the color of the raishk’s
saliva to purple. It’s harmless, but it looks rather
poisonous, which should be enough.”
“Ah, because that will lead the audience to suspect it’s
poison that’s disabling the raishk’s opponents and not its
psionic abilities. Very clever.”
“That remains to be seen,” Peter said. “But the raishk
has done very well in the early trials. It’s time to bring it to
Haerbin.”
The raishk may have been ready for Haerbin, but Peter
wasn’t. The morning of the raishk’s first fight, he felt that
old anxiety and guilt welling up. He almost called the
whole thing off, even though Dressen had come in a cargo
skimmer to carry the now sizable raishk to Haerbin. She
spent an hour persuading him to reconsider. Only when her
voice broke and she reached the verge of tears did Peter
grudgingly agree to go. He couldn’t help noticing that she
looked calm and dry-eyed only moments later.
Haerbin stood on a crescent swathe of coastal
marshland. Peter saw the dark outlines of the fighting pits
while he was still a few kilometers out. They towered over
the rest of the city. Most cities shunned fighting pits,
relegating them to the outskirts and sometimes banning
them outright. But Haerbin embraced them, which
explained their prominent downtown locations.
Peter anxiously limped into the largest of the pits. He
wore a long robe with a voluminous hood to conceal his
identity, though he had no idea whether anyone would
recognize him after so many years. Modeled on the old
Martian coliseums from colonial times, the arenas featured
enormous walls of black marble and amphitheater style
seating. Down in the pit, a few laborers raked dried blood
into the reddish clay. To keep things varied, the pit
organizers often experimented with different conditions:
rotting jungles, snowy tundra, uneven slopes, even the
occasional underwater match. But they’d gone with the
traditional orange clay for today, something Peter and
Dressen had agreed was best. No sense taking chances by
throwing the raishk into an unfamiliar environment.
Peter found Dressen in the holding area below, and
helped her administer the usual cocktail of aggression
enhancing drugs to the raishk. With little else to do, Peter
waited by the railing of the lowest level of the pit. It was
late morning, and the arena was empty save for the usual
collection of degenerate gamblers, drunkards, and
overeager tourists.
Half a dozen fights took place before the raishk
appeared. In the last, an armor-plated snake crushed a
genetically enhanced mongoose in its magnetic coils,
drawing cheers from the little knot of spectators. Peter
could barely stand to watch, and he had to look away at the
end.
The raishk’s opponent was an arctother, one of those
staggering bear-like creatures that went extinct a million
years ago. The arctother and the raishk entered from
opposite sides of the ring. Lacking vocal cords, the raishk
could only stamp its clawed feet and toss its head to voice
its artificially induced rage. Then the leashes holding the
two creatures disengaged. With a roar that thundered
through the stadium, the arctother charged the raishk.
Glinting iron paws scrabbled on the loose sand, gathering
momentum as they went. The arctother had almost reached
the raishk when it shuddered and crashed to the ground in
a cloud of orange dust, purple spittle covering its face and
gleaming back. Before the arctother could regain its
footing, the raishk leapt on it with the deadly grace of a
snow leopard. The raishk’s heavy paw found the exposed
skin at its neck and tore out the bear’s throat, leaving the
magnificent creature to bleed out onto the sands. The
spectators beside Peter murmured in surprise, but he was
relieved to hear most of them attribute the quick loss to
poison.
In the holding room afterward, Dressen waved a
betting slip at him. “Tripled my money! The purple saliva
worked brilliantly, Peter. Forget me getting out of debt, I’ll
be able to make a fortune off this thing.”
“You can’t trust animals,” Peter said. “I’ve seen a
thousand upsets in my time. You must have noticed all the
people watching. More than a few are bankrupt. This is a
vile and unpredictable business. You should get out as
soon as you can.” But Dressen’s eyes never wavered from
the little white slip in her hand.
A month later, the raishk had become one of the
biggest draws in the fighting pits. Not once had it lost, and
rumors began to spread about the snow leopard with the
extraordinary poison. The precise nature of the poison was
the subject of much debate. This did not worry Dressen.
She’d paid off her creditors in less than three weeks and
was on her way to becoming one of the most prominent
trainers in Haerbin.
Peter attended every match as he’d promised. Hidden
beneath his heavy cowl, he went thankfully unrecognized,
but he had no stomach for all the gore and death rattles. He
wondered whether that was a sign of weakness, guilt, or
something else entirely.
Then one day in the holding room, after yet another
victory, a pale skinned man with short, dark hair knocked
quietly at the door. Busy roasting an enormous cut of beef
for the raishk, Peter did not notice the man until he cleared
his throat.
“Your pardon,” he said in a high-pitched voice. “I’m
with the oversight committee here in Haerbin. I’ve been
instructed to carry out a comprehensive analysis of this, ah,
snow leopard. Many of its performances have been quite
extraordinary, so much so that it stretches credulity.”
Little crimson whorls bloomed in Dressen’s plump
face, but her voice did not tremble as she replied, “The
poison is a trade secret, engineered on commission. I can’t
allow anyone to examine the raishk. What if they stole it?”
The man sniffed. “I assure you, madam, the
investigation will be conducted with full decorum. And, I
might add, I find it highly unlikely that a poison exists
capable of penetrating diamond carapaces and sheet metal
alike, as this snow leopard’s poison has seemingly done
over the past week. I would dearly love to meet the flesher
who produced it.”
Dressen waved one fleshy arm at Peter. “Well, he’s
right there.”
Peter sighed, drew back the hood from his face, and
stepped away from the grill.
A look of wonder crossed the man’s face, and
immediately his officious tone vanished. His fingers
twitched nervously as he said, “Oh, my, Peter Collins! I
always hoped to have the opportunity to thank you for all
you’ve done for us.”
“And yet you doubt my ability to fashion a simple
poison?”
The man looked crestfallen. “No, no, not at all. I
should have known. If anyone could have engineered it, of
course it would be you. I’ll inform my superiors
immediately, I apologize for the inconvenience.”
After he’d retreated, stammering and blushing,
Dressen turned to Peter, a serious look on her face.
“I think the raishk needs to die.”
For a long time the words hung there in the recycled
air. Peter smelled dried blood, roasted meat, and old sweat
wafting through the little room. He cast a quick glance at
the raishk, which lay curled up in the corner, its face
strangely graceful in repose.
Then she explained herself. “I know you dissuaded
that man. I’m not surprised, that’s why I hired you. But
others might get curious and I can’t afford to get caught.
Not now, not after finally paying off my debts. Besides, I
think we might be able to make a windfall off one last
match.”
That night, after the laborers had wrestled the raishk’s
cage into his menagerie, Peter did not retire to his solar as
he so often did. Instead, he lingered amongst the cages and
aquariums. Though their denizens howled and hooted and
growled as he walked past, he paid no attention to any of
them. He couldn’t forget the man’s reaction from earlier.
Peter had not deserved it, that much he knew. He
wondered if he was the only one who knew the truth of
what happened that day in the fighting pits, that day which
had ensured his fame and financial success while spoiling
his taste for the fighting pits forever. What had actually
happened twelve years ago was this: Peter had been
commissioned to flesh an enormous wasp with an
especially toxic poison. Without thinking, he modified its
stinger so that the poison could be sprayed as well as
injected. Around that time, a government official had been
crusading against the fighting pits and their affiliations
with organized crime. His campaign had begun to build
momentum, and the fighting pits were in real danger of
closing, when the man came to witness a match in person
as a kind of publicity stunt.
By sheer coincidence, this happened to be the day of
the wasp’s debut in the pits. The wasp had scarcely entered
the arena before it began to spray poison everywhere. The
yellow toxin even reached the front row of the arena,
where it doused half a dozen spectators, including the
official. Despite the best efforts of nearby physicians, all of
the afflicted men and women died, quickly and
agonizingly. Peter spent the next six months expecting to
be jailed, but the summons never came. The official
investigation exonerated Peter of all responsibility for the
deaths.
Without the leadership of the official, the crusade
against the pits ended and Peter became a legend.
Strangers bought drinks for him in bars, and people would
approach him on the streets just to shake his hand. This
had a perverse effect on Peter; burdened with guilt, he
began to avoid the spotlight and rarely left his home.
Eventually, he left Haerbin for the solitude of lake country
and gave up fleshing creatures for combat. The raishk had
been the sole exception in the past twelve years.
Now the raishk was going to die. Peter stopped before
the raishk’s cage and stared sadly at the white-furred beast
that paced back and forth. On a whim, he deactivated its
leash, curious to see if it would try to communicate with
him again. Almost immediately, a flood of shame and
misery overcame him, so powerful that he crumpled to the
ground. With the last of his strength, he powered the leash
on, ceasing the torrent of emotions. Slumped on the steel
floor, he shook his head, trying to make sense of the
raishk’s exponentially increased powers. Then he
remembered that its neural network was spread along its
bloodlines. When he fleshed the raishk and increased its
size, the veins had become enlarged as well, thereby
augmenting the raishk’s brain and powers. For all he knew,
the raishk’s intelligence was now comparable to that of a
human. Peter doubted that, having seen little evidence of
real intellect during the past few weeks. He knew no way
to tell for certain. Any attempt to study the raishk’s neural
network would kill the creature. But the thought of seeing
this extraordinary creature slaughtered in the pits dismayed
him. Peter stayed up late under the glare of the
fluorescents, weighing his choices.
The morning of the raishk’s last fight, Peter did not
wear his typical disguise, the long robe and thick hood.
When he walked outside, his head bare and cold in the
foggy air, Dressen’s skimmer rested in the wet muck of the
rice paddies. Dressen herself leaned against the railing of
his veranda, the lake breezes ruffling her unkempt blonde
hair.
“Where’s the cowl?” Dressen asked, an amused smile
on her face.
Peter ignored her question. “Why are you here?”
asked Peter. “Did you not trust me to transport the raishk
to Haerbin?”
“Not at all,” Dressen said with one of her bright,
empty smiles. “I just bet most of my savings on this last
match, against the raishk, of course. Didn’t want to take
any chances.”
On their way to Haerbin, Dressen told Peter her plan
to throw the match. It was hardly complicated. They would
administer a pair of powerful sedatives and a psionic
inhibitor to the raishk. Peter knew that would more than
suffice to ensure the raishk’s defeat, and felt the strangest
desire to give it a chance.
In the holding room, Peter picked up the syringe
containing the psionic inhibitor. He sighed, flicking it back
and forth between his trembling fingers. The raishk already
looked drowsy. Its head bobbed slightly and purple saliva
dribbled from its mouth. Clearly, the sedatives had taken
effect. Dressen sat at his side, her sharp eyes fixed on the
gleaming needle.
“Don’t feel bad,” she said. “We’re going to make a
fortune off this, and it’s just a dumb beast anyway.”
Peter paused. Then he turned to Dressen and said,
“Why is it that you never wash your hair?”
Dressen gave him a questioning look. “I just don’t
have the time I suppose. Does it really matter?” But she
got up and went over to the little fogged mirror that hung
from the wall. Peter took advantage of that window of
opportunity to slip the syringe into his pocket. He took
another syringe from the dispenser and filled it with water
from the nearby basin.
After Dressen finished looking at herself, she returned
just in time to see Peter inject the syringe into the raishk’s
neck. She said nothing, but Peter could tell the raishk’s
imminent death troubled her not at all. He wondered how
confident she would feel if she knew that he’d just injected
the raishk with twenty milliliters of water. Not that it was
likely to matter. The raishk would still almost certainly die
from the sedatives. As Peter stumped up the stairs, he
sighed and wondered if he ought to have done more to
save the raishk.
Peter had a seat waiting for him in the first row of the
lowest tier. By the time he reached it, laborers were
carrying off the carcass of a fully armored rhinoceros.
Peter looked up at the mammoth projectors that hung from
the ceiling. They showed the details of the upcoming
matches, and from them Peter learned that the raishk’s
opponent was a jaguar. He found this heartening at first,
for jaguars tended to fare poorly in the fighting pits. But as
the informational blurb revealed, this jaguar was different.
Beyond all the usual alterations to its fangs and claws, its
cells had been treated with a highly experimental medicine
that imbued it with almost impossibly high regenerative
levels. Peter half suspected nano-machines were
responsible. Those were of course banned in the fighting
pits, but one could never be sure.
As befitted such a high profile match, the pit
organizers had restored the arena to its traditional red clay.
Spectators filled the stadium, even the nosebleed seats and
the prohibitively expensive booths in the glass ceiling. A
loud cry went up for the raishk, and Peter found himself
cheering the raishk as well.
When the fight began, the raishk showed no
immediate effects from the sedative. It spat its usual purple
liquid until the black and orange fur of the jaguar was
coated in it. The two creatures thrashed and rolled and
threw great quantities of dust up into the air. The raishk
gained the upper hand at first, drawing blood from a dozen
wounds. But the gouts of blood that poured from the jaguar
dried to mere dribbles in seconds.
Peter felt nervous as he watched the match. The raishk
seemed unable to use its psychic abilities. He hadn’t
anticipated that. For a moment, his gaze fell on Dressen,
whose face was pressed against the glass of the cage. Her
fists clenched with every blow the jaguar landed, and she
looked as though her life hung in the balance.
Another huge roar from the crowd drew Peter’s
attention back to the fight. He was dismayed to see that the
jaguar’s claws had torn out one of the raishk’s eyes. The
raishk slumped to the clay, and the jaguar pounced on it,
gleaming teeth reaching for the raishk’s throat. With what
Peter could only attribute to a resurgence of the raishk’s
psionic abilities, the jaguar missed. It crashed head first
into the red clay next to the raishk and lay there dazed. The
raishk struggled to its feet, bracing itself on three legs. The
fourth looked hamstrung.
The jaguar recovered with impossible quickness. It
feinted so artfully that the raishk’s claws found only air.
Then the jaguar leapt at the raishk. The raishk stumbled
and went down in a heap. In moments, the jaguar had
found its throat. This time it did not miss, and its teeth
closed around the raishk’s neck. Peter felt a strange
sadness as the raishk writhed and clawed in vain. Blood
spilled from its throat and darkened the red clay of the pit.
The stands went wild. The jaguar’s owner, a little man
with an obnoxious hat, ran into the arena to celebrate.
Trainers leashed the jaguar and wrestled it back into the
holding area.
Peter watched Dressen walk into the arena. She looked
sad, but from time to time she would raise a hand to her
face as though to hide a smile. Peter wearily climbed the
stairs down to the arena, where he was let inside by a
fawning attendant. The raishk was in its death throes. Such
a waste, Peter thought, as he limped over to it.
Peter was standing a little ways away when he felt
scalding fingers scrabbling inside his skull. He toppled to
the ground, dimly hearing the snap of bone somewhere in
the lower half of his left leg. The raishk had no leash, he
realized, how stupid could he have been not to notice? Its
psionic powers were unchecked, and the raishk itself
looked almost insane with rage and pain. Peter had almost
blacked out when Dressen rushed over to him, a faintly
concerned look on her face. But before she said a word,
her lips froze and then contorted into a grimace. She
craned her neck to stare at the dying raishk, her eyes wide
and filled with tears.
In that instant, the indescribable agony vanished, and
Peter felt only a dull pain pounding through his brain.
Dressen’s mouth moved strangely. Then the cold look in
her eyes faded and she crumpled to the ground. Peter
looked back at the raishk, but the last dribbles of blood had
already been swallowed up by the red sands. Peter called
for help and tried to check on her. But Dressen’s plump
face had turned the color of bone, and though her eyes
moved slowly, there was no hint of awareness to their
motion.
Some months later, Peter took his private skimmer
into Haerbin. Lakeside, well past the fighting pits,
sprawled a medical complex full of low, white buildings.
Peter stumped inside the largest of these, informing the
receptionist that he wished to see Samantha Dressen. After
a brief wait, the receptionist ushered him inside. He
wandered past white-clad guards and down winding plastic
floors that shone with the fluorescent lights from the
ceiling. His guide led him to a door of metal bars through
which streamed bright sunlight. An alarm sounded, the
bars retracted, and Peter stepped into a sunlit courtyard full
of crystalline sculptures and quiet fountains. Dressen sat
nearby on a low bench of chiseled grey stone, watching the
flashing waters of one fountain spill into a trough and swirl
away down the courtyard. Her hair looked clean and even
burnished in the light.
Peter sat beside her, resting his mahogany cane on the
cool grass.
“I thought I should come by, check up on you. Your
hair certainly looks better in here than it ever did out
there,” he told her, a regretful smile on his face. He paused
and stretched, feeling the terrible lingering pain in his left
leg. “I haven’t been back to the pits. Not once, and to tell
you the truth, I don’t think I ever will. People say it’s no
different than hunting. They say it gives the crowds an
outlet for all the rage they keep boiled up inside. But I
don’t think it’s an outlet at all. I think it just pressurizes
that anger, that aggression, keeps it in our systems, in our
minds.”
Dressen’s head rose up and down, but Peter knew
better than to interpret it as any kind of meaningful
gesture. Despite the ache in his leg, he leaned down and
picked up one of the smooth little granite pebbles that
lined the path.
He massaged it with wrinkled fingers, saying, “If you
hadn’t shown up when you did, it would have been me the
raishk drove insane. It was real close. But why’d it target
you instead of me? Was it out of vengeance, rage? Did it
even know that we betrayed it? Or was it as mindless as
the rest of the creatures that fight and die every day in the
pits? I guess we’ll never know, and it doesn’t really
matter.”
Water plunged upwards from the fountain’s basin in
arcs of brilliant sunshine, a thousand rainbows appearing
and vanishing every second.
“Anyway,” Peter said. “I just wanted to apologize. I
didn’t see it coming, not any of it.” He got up to leave.
Dressen’s face lolled to the right, her plump lips flecked
with drool. Her once cold, calculating eyes were empty.
Peter tossed the pebble he held into the glimmering waters
and made a silent wish. Then he walked out. As he guided
his skimmer down Haerbin’s main thoroughfare toward
lake country, he passed beneath the shadow of the fighting
pits. Though he felt their black marble walls bearing down
on him, he kept his eyes fixed on the bright horizon and
the endless gleaming lakes. He accelerated toward them.

www.sdpbookstore.com
…in the Novels section
Sleeping Beauty
by Jamie Lackey
Princess Aurora never had any fairy godmothers. She
wasn't sure what a godmother was, and she'd never seen
any fairies at all. But at least she'd heard of them in the
stories that her Nursie would tell her when she couldn't
sleep through the night. Aurora was never sure why she
woke up, but Nursie was always there on those nights,
sitting by Aurora's huge canopied bed in a rocking chair,
her plump profile just visible by the thin orange light from
the banked fire in the marble fireplace.
"Nursie?" Aurora would whisper.
"Yes, child," Nursie would whisper back. Nursie was
always awake. Aurora didn't find that odd--she expected
to find Nursie awake, but she was well-bred enough to
whisper anyway, just in case.
"Tell me a story," Aurora would demand, then, as an
afterthought, add, "Please?"
"What kind of story would you like me to tell you?"
Nursie's voice, when she wasn't whispering, sounded old
and rough, like the bark of an ancient tree. It was what
Aurora had always imagined a witch's voice would sound
like.
"Something pretty. With unicorns or fairies."
Aurora always asked for the same kind of story, but
Nursie never repeated the same one twice. Nursie had an
endless supply of pretty stories about unicorns or fairies.
Nursie was silent for a few moments. Aurora held her
breath--it made the wait go faster. Nursie cleared her
throat, then began her story.
"Once upon a time, in an enchanted forest, there lived
a beautiful swan. This swan was the loveliest creature in
all the land. Everyone who saw her loved her instantly.
All of the other forest creatures heaped gifts upon her, and
she needed no fear of the huntsman, for there was no man
yet born who would destroy a creature of such great
beauty.
"However, the swan was unhappy. She didn't long for
gifts or safety. She wanted adventure. She wanted to see
the world. But she was under a foul curse that made her
unable to leave the forest. Her world was a paradise, but
her heart was empty because she was trapped."
Nursie’s voice faded. Aurora waited as long as she
could, then gasped for air and asked, "But what happened
next?"
"A handsome swan prince came to the forest and fell
in love with the cursed beautiful swan. He courted her.
She saw that he was brave and true and handsome, but she
could not love him. She knew that if she consented to give
him her hand in marriage she would never escape her
curse. She would be forced to give up her dreams.
Eventually, though, she grew tired of rejecting the good
prince, and she relented to his demand that she become his
wife. She was sure that she would soon die from the
emptiness that filled her heart.
"The day before the wedding dawned, and it was as
perfect a day as anyone could wish. The sun was bright
and golden and the sky a perfect shade of blue. But the
beautiful swan’s heart was heavy. She could feel the
misery pooling in her chest; her heart felt as barren as an
icy winter pond. She could feel her dreams beginning to
crack. All of the creatures in the forest began to arrive for
the ceremony. Their obvious happiness just made the
swan feel more alone and empty.
"The day passed quickly. All of the other creatures
sought their beds, but the swan remained awake, gazing
forlornly at the full moon. 'There’s nothing that I wouldn’t
give to be able to just fly away,' she whispered.
"A rough caw sounded above her. The swan looked
up to see a crow, stooped and black, sitting on a branch
above her head. 'Where did you come from?' the swan
demanded. 'I thought I was alone.'
"The crow gazed down at the swan for a moment, as if
memorizing her features. 'Are you truly willing to
exchange anything for your freedom?' it asked, its voice
harsh in the swan's ears.
"'Yes. I am,' the swan said, her voice ringing like a
bell.
"'Give me your beauty and I will give you my
freedom.' the crow said.
The swan hesitated. She did not know what it was like
to not be beautiful. She was afraid that it would be
difficult. But could it be more difficult than losing her
dream? 'I accept,' she said quietly. 'My beauty for your
freedom.'
"'It is done,' the crow croaked.
"The moonlight shimmered, and the swan suddenly
found herself perched on a branch, looking down at what
had been, until moments before, herself. 'Wait!' she called.
The roughness of her new voice surprised her. 'What do I
do now?'
"The swan looked up at the crow. 'Fly away.'
"And so the crow spread her wings and flew away in
the moonlight. In the morning, the beautiful swan married
the swan prince, and there was rejoicing throughout the
land."
Nursie fell silent again. Aurora took a deep breath.
The story was obviously over. "But what happened to the
crow?" Aurora asked.
Nursie smiled gently. "That’s a story for another
night, child."
Moments later, Aurora was asleep.
*
*
*
Aurora's mother fell ill the next day. Aurora waited
by her side for weeks, willing her to get better. But soon,
Aurora found herself mistress of the castle. Within a year,
she was expected to take on all of her mother's duties.
Aurora stopped asking Nursie for stories. But the story of
the crow was never too far from her thoughts, and as she
grew older and the weight of her duty and her title began
to settle upon her, she began to understand more and more
why the swan would be willing to exchange anything for
her freedom.
Then, one night, just after she had turned fourteen,
Aurora woke suddenly and found that Nursie was not
sitting in the rocking chair beside her bed. She sat up
quickly, and as she did, she thought she saw the door to
her bedchamber closing. Aurora kicked off her goosedown, silk-lined comforter and crept to the door in nothing
but her white satin nightgown. She opened the door just in
time to see the door out of her suite close. She followed
out the door and caught a glimpse of Nursie's cape and
long gray hair as she turned a corner. Aurora hesitated for
a moment, but her curiosity urged her onward. After
navigating a set of narrow winding stairs, Aurora found
herself in the kitchen.
She hadn't been allowed into the kitchen for
years--ever since it stopped being cute for her to sneak
down and steal sweets. She threaded her way past the
ovens and the tables, and followed Nursie out another
door. She was outside the castle. The moonlight reflected
from the freshly fallen snow that pulled the warmth out of
Aurora's bare feet. I should turn back, she thought. But
she'd come this far, and her curiosity had only been
increasing with every step. Without deciding to, she took
a step out into the night, then another. Before she knew it,
she was running after Nursie, trying to step in the old
woman’s footprints to save her feet from freezing.
The scenery slid by. Most of Aurora's attention was
taken up by the aching pain in her feet and the
concentration it took to keep running. She'd never put
herself through so much physical exertion--she'd never
been in so much pain. Cold air stabbed her lungs with
every breath, and her feet screamed in protest with every
step.
Aurora often left the castle to do errands in the town,
but she had never walked the distance. She knew that the
castle was surrounded by a small plain, and the plain was
surrounded by forest. The town was beyond the forest to
the west. Aurora had no idea which direction she was
running, and as she left the open plain for the dark forest,
she could see nothing but an endless stretch of trees. At
least there was less snow on the ground here--most of it
had been caught by the massive branches that groaned
overhead. Again, Aurora was tempted to turn back. She'd
never been in the forest at night before, and she could
imagine all manner of beasts lurking in the shadows. But
as before, she felt compelled to continue. Her breath was
coming in ragged gasps, her stabbing pains burned her
sides, and she could no longer feel her toes. She kept
running.
After a few more minutes, Nursie's trail led into a
black cave. Aurora crept cautiously in after her. At first,
the only light was the tree-filtered moonlight that faded
with every step Aurora took, and the floor was covered
with slimy, ice-kissed leaves. But then the cave opened up
into a long chamber. The floor was swept clean, and the
stone was warm under Aurora's feet. The sudden heat
stung almost as much as the cold had. Aurora could see
firelight up ahead. As she approached, she could see a
figure dancing around the blaze.
"Nursie?"
"Aurora! What are you doing here?"
"I followed you," Aurora said as her body began to
shake from the cold.
"Well, that was a right silly thing to do without a cloak
or any boots." Nursie wrapped her own cloak around
Aurora’s shoulders.
"What’s going on, Nursie?" Aurora asked, clutching at
the cloak's velvety warmth.
"Tonight is a night of great magic. I am performing a
ceremony to honor the moon."
"A ceremony to honor the moon? Magic?" Aurora
had finally decided that she couldn't believe in magic
anymore. She was getting too old for such things.
"I am a witch, child."
"Witches exist? You’re a witch? Does my father
know?" Aurora asked.
Nursie hesitated. "No. Your mother might have had
an inkling, but your father has no idea that old, faithful
Nursie is a witch. He thinks that I'm merely a sweet, if
slightly peculiar, old woman."
"Are you a good witch?" Aurora’s voice trembled a
little. She felt like her whole world had suddenly started to
dissolve under her still-cold feet.
"Of course I am," Nursie said. "If I wasn't, don't you
think you would know it already?"
Aurora sniffled. "I suppose so. If you'd wanted to kill
me or anything, you'd have had ample opportunity."
Nursie nodded. "Exactly. Why don't you come in and
warm up a bit, then I'll teach you a bit about magic."
Aurora and Nursie walked toward the jumping flames.
Aurora warmed her toes by the fire for a few minutes, then
Nursie asked, "Would you like to dance and honor the
moon with me?"
"Is it hard to do?"
"No, child, it's easy." Nursie grinned, her wrinkled
face looking younger than Aurora had ever seen her, then
began to spin around the fire. After a moment, Aurora
joined her.
As Aurora twirled around the fire, laughing and
dancing, she felt happier than she had ever felt before. The
pain and cold of her run were forgotten. Joy bubbled
through her, starting in her toes and reaching all the way to
the golden tips of her hair. I wonder if this is what magic
feels like, she wondered.
She wasn't sure how long they danced. It seemed like
no time at all before Nursie was pulling her away and
telling her that it was time to be getting back.
"Will I ever be able to come back?" Aurora asked.
Nursie smiled. "You can accompany me every time I
come here. And I can explain about magic as we walk
back to the castle."
Aurora picked up Nursie’s cloak, which she had
dropped while she'd been dancing. "You'll need this."
"Keep it, child. I can do without." Nursie pulled a
pair of Aurora's shoes out of her pocket. "You'll need
these, too."
Aurora gaped at the shoes for a moment. Then she
smiled, accepted them from Nursie, and slipped them onto
her feet. She wrapped the cloak around her shoulders then
followed Nursie back out into the night.
They walked in silence for a moment. "Nursie?"
"Yes?"
"Don’t tell me about magic. I don’t want to know
how it works. It’s enough that I know that it does."
"Very well." Nursie sounded disappointed, and
Aurora wondered if she'd been hoping that Aurora could
be a witch too. She wondered if being a witch was terribly
lonely. "Would you like to hear a story as we walk back to
the castle?" Nursie asked after a few moments of silence.
"Tell me what happened to the swan after she turned
into a crow."
"The beautiful swan found herself transformed into a
crow. She had lost everything she'd ever known--the swan
prince’s love, the forest creature's adoration, her home, and
her beauty. But she was free to go wherever she pleased.
She flew up into the air and spread her black wings in the
moonlight. She flew toward the rising moon. She flew
past the edges of the forest, past the point where she'd
never been able to pass. She flew until her wings were
tired, and then she landed in a tree that was like no tree
that she had ever seen before. Instead of soft leaves, its
branches were covered with long, sharp needles. The
swan-turned-crow tucked her head under her wing and fell
asleep.
"When she woke, she was hungry. She'd never been
so hungry before in her entire life. She looked around,
hoping that someone might have left her something to eat
while she was sleeping. But there was no movement
anywhere around her, and she didn't see anything that
looked like food. Of course, she thought. No one would
leave me food now. I'm not beautiful anymore. She felt a
sudden wave of sorrow and regret.
"She sat for a while, alone in the strange tree, and she
felt sorry for herself. Then, she heard a strange rustling
below her. She turned just in time to see a human man
aiming an arrow straight at her heart. She cawed in fear
and leapt into the air. The arrow missed her by inches.
She flew away as fast as she could, paying no attention to
which direction she was flying.
"She caught sight of a lake in the distance. Maybe I
can find food there, she thought. She landed on the shore
and began to look around for food. It took her some time,
since she'd never had to find her own food before, but she
eventually found enough small sour berries and coarse nuts
to make a meal. Her sorrow was forgotten in her feeling of
accomplishment.
"Time passed, and the crow learned how to hide from
hunters and how to find food. She flew to someplace new
every day. One day, she found a waterfall that fell into a
beautiful lake. There were nymphs living in the water, and
she watched them for a few hours before she left to see
what was waiting for her over the next horizon. As she
traveled, she saw a herd of unicorns and a procession of
fairies and a manticore battling a knight hundreds of other
wonders that she couldn't have dreamed of before she left
her forest.
"It was more than a year before she inadvertently
returned to the forest that had been her home for so long.
She flew over and looked down on the swan prince and his
beautiful bride. She saw all of the forest creatures who
had loved her so much, and realized that none of them had
noticed when she had left. None of them had loved her for
herself--they loved only her beauty, and that she'd left
behind. They hadn't noticed when the soul within the shell
changed. That hurt her more than she'd expected it to.
Even though she'd known that no one would notice her
absence, but it was somehow different to see proof of it
before her. She circled over the forest once, taking one
final look, and then she flew away to continue her
adventure."
They walked silently for a few moments. "That's the
end?" Aurora asked.
"Yes," Nursie said.
"So, she was happy. Her choice to give up her beauty
and everything that she knew was right," Aurora mused as
Nursie opened the door that led into the palace kitchen.
"Following your dream is always harder than giving it
up, but it's always the right choice."
"Nursie, do you know what my dream is?" Aurora
asked as she followed the old woman up the winding
stairs.
"You've never told me, child. How would I know?"
Nursie said.
"Well, I thought that maybe you used magic to find
out," Aurora mumbled.
"No, child. I would never intrude on your thoughts
like that. Your dreams are your own, and private, unless
you wish to share them."
"I want to love. That's my dream. I want to find
someone that I love and who loves me and live happily
ever after with him. I mean, I know that things don't just
end, and that some things would always be hard, but I
think everything would be better if I had love." Aurora felt
silly saying it out loud. It made her sound so young.
"That's a reasonable thing to ask, I think." Nursie's
answer surprised Aurora. "Princess or no, the whole idea
of arranged marriages has always turned my stomach."
"Well, maybe my father will pick someone who I can
love."
"Maybe he will." But Aurora didn't think that Nursie
sounded convinced.
After that night, Nursie would always wake Aurora
before she would leave to go out and do magic in her cave.
Sometimes Aurora would decide to go with her;
sometimes she would just stay in bed. Aurora learned a
little bit about magic, but not enough to really understand
it. She wanted it to remain a mysterious thing--it was
something that she didn't need to understand to believe in.
On Aurora's sixteenth birthday, her father announced
her engagement to a prince of a far-off country. Aurora
had never met him. He would be arriving soon so that they
could be married, and Aurora would go away to his
kingdom with him. She wasn't sure if she would ever be
able to come back home after her wedding, even to visit,
and she was to train one of the servants to take her place in
the household.
On the day that her prince was due to arrive, Aurora
waited up on the battlements, straining to catch her first
glimpse of her betrothed. She wanted desperately to fall in
love with him at first sight. Nursie stood beside her,
huddled up her heavy cloak against the chill wind that
belied the warmth of the spring sunshine.
They waited most of the day. Servants brought them
goblets of hot cider and lunch in a picnic basket. Aurora
couldn't bring herself to eat anything. She was too
nervous. She was glad of Nursie's supporting presence,
even though the two of them hardly exchanged a dozen
words all day long. The sun had almost set before Aurora
caught sight of her prince. He was riding a great black
stallion at the front of a long column of followers. As she
watched him approach, Aurora’s heart fell.
"Nursie, he's old!"
Nursie squinted. "How can you tell that from here?"
"He looks older than my father!" Aurora exclaimed.
She could see a ring of white hair edging his bald scalp.
She was finding it hard to breath. "I can't marry him! I
can't love him!"
"Well, he can't very well help his age, can he?"
Nursie said, still squinting. Aurora was silent. Both of her
hands were balled up into fists. One was clutched over her
stomach, and the other was in her mouth. She wanted to
scream. She wanted to bite her fingers until they hurt
enough to wake her from this nightmare. She wanted to
throw herself from the battlements.
"Oh my," Nursie said after a few minutes of silence.
"He is old, isn't he?"
"Nursie, what am I going to do?" Aurora cried. Hot
tears filled her eyes. "I can't marry him! But I can't
disobey my father's wishes, either! He's a good diplomatic
match." Aurora's sobs died in her throat. She felt a cold
calm fill her. "It’s for the good of the kingdom," she
whispered.
"If you marry him, it will secure the peace of the
kingdom. But you'll be giving up your dream."
Aurora's cold calm evaporated like dew on a hot
summer morning. "But then what should I do?"
"Well, you could marry your betrothed and go off into
the unknown with him. He might be a sweet old man.
And he probably won't live very long, so you might be
able to find another younger husband someday." Nursie
was silent for a moment. "Or you could ask me to help
you."
"Help me? How?" Aurora asked.
"There is a spell that I could cast. It would make you
sleep until your one true love arrived and kissed you on the
lips. You wouldn’t age as you slept, but I don't know how
much time might pass before you wake, if indeed you ever
do."
"You mean I might never wake up?" Aurora asked.
"Well, if your true love never arrives and therefore
never kisses you, you would never wake."
"What would I have to do?"
"The only thing required of you is a drop of blood.
All you'd need to do is prick your finger." Nursie raised
her hand. "But think before you choose. When you wake,
it could be hundreds of years from now. Everyone you
know will be dead. You won't be a princess anymore. The
whole world will have changed in ways that we can't
possibly foresee. And you'll be choosing your dream over
the good of your kingdom, and you'll have to live with
that."
Aurora thought for a moment. She pictured a life with
the ancient prince that she couldn't love. Even knowing
that she'd secured peace for everyone in her kingdom
didn't make it a happy picture. Then she pictured going to
sleep and opening her eyes to see her one true love. "I
don't know anyone where my father wants me to go either.
I'd rather go into the unknown future if I have the promise
of realizing my dream."
"Come on, then. We'll perform the ceremony in your
bedchamber."
Nursie wedged a chair beneath the handle to Aurora's
bedchamber door as soon as they entered. "We don't want
anyone disturbing us," she explained. Then she began to
bustle about the room, whispering magic phrases to
herself. "Aurora, help me pull the bed out into the middle
of the room," she ordered.
Aurora clutched the carved bedpost and pulled. It took
all of her strength to budge the bed, but then it seemed to
move a little easier. "Good, good," murmured Nursie.
"Now, climb on the bed. Lie down."
Aurora obeyed, and Nursie fluffed pillows and
arranged them around her. "You're going to be sleeping
for a long time, so I want you to be comfortable."
"Nursie?" Aurora whispered. "I'm not going to see
you ever again, am I?"
Nursie patted Aurora’s hand gently. "I'm afraid not,
child. I'm even older than your betrothed; I won't live to
see you wake."
"I'll miss you." Aurora's mind suddenly filled with
thoughts of all of the things that she'd miss. Things that
she might never see again if she married, things that she
definitely would never see again if she fell into an
enchanted sleep. She didn't know how to be anything but
a princess. Aurora took a deep breath.
Nursie interrupted her thoughts. "I have a confession
child, before you go through with this."
"What is it?"
"When I came here, I intended to train you as a witch.
Years ago, long before you were born, your father
outlawed witchcraft and made my life, and the lives of
everyone like me, complete misery. I wanted to get
revenge on him by turning his daughter into one of the
things he hated most."
"I didn't know that my father hated witches," Aurora
said, not liking the thought of her father doing such a
thing.
"He hasn't knowingly dealt with one since before you
were alive. As far as he knows, witches are extinct.
"But what I'm doing now is even worse than training
you to be a witch. As far as your father is concerned, I'm
killing you. I want you to know that I want this very
badly. But you are a sweet child, and I do love you.
You're more important to me than my revenge. I want you
to have all of the facts before you make your choice."
"I've made my choice already. Choosing my dream is
always the right decision, even if it's hard. You taught me
that, and I don't think you did out of desire for revenge.
What do I have to do?"
Nursie held out a small golden needle. “All you have
to do is prick your finger.”
Aurora thought of the swan. Despite herself, her hand
shook as she reached for the needle.
She felt the shock of the pinprick through her entire
body. She tumbled into her dreams. 

Apocalypse, Now
and Again
by Shelly Bryant
And it came to pass
when he had opened the seven seals
there was silence in heaven
the waters of the flood were upon the earth
I saw the seven angels which stood before God
and to them were given trumpets
the same day
were all the fountains of the great deep broken
up
another angel came and stood at the altar
having a golden censer
and there was given to him much incense
the windows of heaven were opened
that he should offer it
with the prayers of all the saints
the smoke of the incense
ascended before God
And the rain was upon the earth
forty days and forty nights
the angel took the censer
filled it with fire of the altar
and the Lord shut him in
and cast it into the earth
the flood was forty days upon the earth
and there were voices
and thunderings
and lightnings
and an earthquake
and the waters increased
the seven angels which had the seven trumpets
prepared themselves to sound
there followed hail and fire
mingled with blood
and it was lift up above the earth
the third part of the trees was burnt up
all green grass was burnt up
the waters prevailed
and were increased greatly upon the earth
a great mountain burning with fire
was cast into the sea
the third part of the sea became blood
and the ark went upon the face of the waters
the creatures which were in the sea and
had life died
the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth
the ships were destroyed
all the high hills that were under the
whole heaven
were covered
there fell a great star from heaven
burning as it were a lamp
the mountains were covered
it fell upon the third part of the rivers
and upon the fountains of water
all flesh died that moved upon the earth
the third part of the waters became wormwood
many men died of the waters
because they were made bitter
all that was in the dry land died
the sun was smitten
and the third part of the moon
and the third part of the stars
every living substance was destroyed
they were destroyed from the earth
Woe, woe, woe
to the inhabitants of the earth
the waters prevailed upon the earth
The Kindred
By Chris Zollner
The lateral fuel tank had exploded, and Olsen was the
first to see it. A silent shower of flame sparkling up the
night. It would have been beautiful had it not been so
deadly. Olsen jumped up, leaving his post. He could
receive the death penalty for that. “Spec-5!” shouted his
commander. “Get back to your position!” Olsen didn’t
listen; he knew what was about to happen.. The next blast
knocked a hole in the hull of the spacecraft, which
careened off course, almost flipping over.
He was thinking only of survival. Nothing out of
character there. He ran into the command center just as
the control panel was being sealed automatically. The
metal shields closed in, guarding them from the fires
spreading through the rest of the ship. He looked through
the surveillance camera at the other members of the crew
as they pounded on the metal walls pleading to be allowed
in. Nothing he could do now. He turned away, not
watching the men on the left as their skin blistered red
from the intense ultraviolet radiation of space and the men
on the right as the engine fires burned away their suits and
then their hair and skin. He turned off the sound. They
were all dying, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do
about it. Why listen?
He navigated while Andrew Zelaya drove. They
piloted their way through the atmosphere, burning away
the sandpaper-like coating on the extant wing, creating a
firestorm nicknamed the supernova, that caused men to
panic the first time they saw it. The craft had slowed down
enough to skid across the dunes of the planet. Olsen felt
euphoric, a rush of adrenaline coursed through his veins.
He had lived to fight another day. What more could a man
want?
Andrew Zelaya didn’t see it that way. His hands
gripped the steering wheel with white-knuckle intensity.
He stared ahead, glassy-eyed. Olsen had to pry his hands
off the wheel. “Everything’s okay,” said Olsen. We’ll
radio for help.”
“This planet is death,” said the commander. A ghost
from the great beyond could echo the words with the same
monotone resignation.
“We could have been killed,” insisted Olsen. “We are
the lucky ones. The unlucky ones froze to death or were
swallowed by the flames.”
“They were lucky. Their death was quick. We will
die slowly… horribly.”
“We’re not dead yet.”
“Kill me now.”
“No, sir. No more talk about death. Focus all our
thoughts on survival. I’ll help you.”
Zelaya spoke like a drunken man. “You wouldn’t
help your own grandmother. I saw you abandon your post.
You let everybody die.”
“I didn’t cause the explosion. I did what I could to
save my own skin. If they couldn’t do what they needed to
do, then they were a bunch of damn fools!”
“We should have died with them.”
I’m alive, thought Olsen. That’s all that matters.
Doesn’t this damn fool know anything? Job number one is
to survive.
*
*
*
After they got out they hunted around for a lake or a
river, but the desert sands revealed no water, no life, and
no hope. Major Zelaya was beginning to hyperventilate.
“Where are we going to get food? Where are we
going to get water?” he yelled at the sky.
Olsen pulled out his military issue canteen. He smiled
and told the officer, “You’ve got one, too. I sent out a
distress call after we were crash-landed. Two days and
they’ll show up to rescue our sorry asses.”
“There’s no rationale for sending somebody out this
far!”
“Rationale? To save our lives. How’s that for a
rationale?”
“There is no profit in it. They’ll let us die.” There
was a finality to his voice that resonated with Olsen. What
if he was right? Why would they give a damn about two
people?
“We’re not dead yet.”
Zelaya noticed Olsen’s canteen. “Give it to me,” he
insisted.
“You got one. I got one.”
“I need them both.”
“Not gonna happen.”
Zelaya reached a shaking hand into a pocket in his
space suit and came out with a Foldable Military Issue #3,
a razor sharp six-inch fighting blade.
Andrew slashed wildly, tearing the flimsy Kevlar
cloth of Olsen’s spacesuit. The big man had a hard time
keeping his balance on the shifting sand. He saw the cut in
Olsen’s suit, and wondered if the atmosphere would poison
him. He waited, praying for Olsen to collapse, clutching
his side, face purpling, blood oozing out his nostrils.
No such luck. Olsen Tubig stayed there and caught
his breath, watching and wondering. Andrew was no good
at the waiting game. Olsen stepped backwards a few feet
and removed his headgear. Commander Zelaya stumbled
forward and fell face down. Olsen smashed him on the
side of the head with his helmet. Andrew saw red and a
flash of light and felt a dull, heavy, pulsing pain. He
clutched his knife as he lifted up on one knee.
Olsen said, “It doesn’t have to be this way.” He felt
his cheeks flush as he said it, like he had said something
important without understanding why.
Tottering up and stumbling forward, knife in hand,
Andrew lunged at his opponent. Olsen grabbed his arm,
and they wrestled over the knife. They collapsed to the
ground, and Olsen plunged the blade into Andrew’s chest.
The fight was over.
He saw traces of dark red blood on his hands and
wouldn’t look back at the corpse of his fallen squad mate.
Olsen staggered back to the wrecked spacecraft, exhausted
by the struggle and shaken by the fact that he had just
killed a man. Had he looked back he would have seen an
unearthly sight. Andrew’s body was face down on the
ground, his blood flowing into the soil, which seemed to
creep close to him and surround him. Miniscule grains of
sand were accumulating around his corpse, slithering into
the blood trails and working their way into his open
wounds. While his clothes melted away, his body
crumbled down into a humus-like silt, which in turn,
seemed to boil into a fine mist that floated around briefly
until it was inhaled deep into the ground.
Olsen reached the spacecraft. Strange, he thought.
The blood on his hands had evaporated somehow. He
found the Transmitter and typed in a message sending it
out across space, having no way to know whether anyone
out there could hear his distress signals. Everything
seemed hopeless.
He sat down on the sand, not knowing that over a
dozen pairs of eyes were on him, watching from behind the
dunes, noting his every move and wondering. They tried
their best to read his thoughts. If one of them could do so,
then it would change everything. Luck—unusual luck.
One of them, a young female of mature age, could hear the
echo of some of his feelings.
Would they feed off of him, wondered the tribe. Not
enough information.
Olsen sat on a rock and thought about the law of the
jungle. It was the one constant law of the universe. Since
joining the Space Corps, he had seen some crazy things:
white dwarfs and black holes where the laws of physics
did not seem to work, a planet where every species
apparently had the same DNA, a stellar system with pale
wraithlike creatures that swirled around its twin stars and a
planet where the offspring of every species ate the dying
bodies of their own parents. The only constant law seemed
to be Kill or Be Killed. Constant vigilance, he told
himself. It’s the only way to survive.
*
*
*
The tribe watched and waited. They could slow down
their bodies and their minds when they had to exercise
patience. A cat waiting to pounce on a rat could not have
been more unmoving than they were.
*
*
*
Olsen got up and rummaged through a metal box of
planetary guides in the ship’s fuselage. One of them was
entitled Teles-4.
The inhabitants are amazingly humanoid read the
manual. They are proof that humans were taken to various
parts of the universe by an alien race in antiquity.
However, they appear to be the only species on the planet
and scientists have theorized that they are communal, selffeeding autotrophs. Avoid contact. This planet is not yet
cleared for corporate colonization. No one who has ever
landed on the planet has ever returned. “Self-feeding,
communal-autotrophs?” he said out loud. “What the hell
is that?” An edgy tremor ran down his spine as he
wondered if the part about nobody returning was true.
He grubbed around in the ship for anything he could
eat and stashed Andrew’s Knife, Foldable, Military Issue
#3 in his pocket. He would be wary. Nobody ever
survived Teles-4? He would be the first. Time to find
some water.
He looked around. There was sand interrupted by
occasional large flat rocks and small hills. Where is the
life, he wondered. If there are humanoid beings, what the
hell do they eat?
*
*
*
Her name would have been translated as Red Sunrise.
She watched him and wondered what he would taste like.
She breathed in deeply, able to detect odors with her
tongue as well as her nose. She could smell his skin and
the pheromones sent out by his body. She closed her eyes,
breathed deeply once more and could discern emotion,
including one rarely felt by her people—fear, and another
emotion never felt by her people—confusion.
Red Sunrise got a fix on his body. She could tell a lot
about his emotions by the scents and odors her body was
collecting from his sweat and his release of chemicals
through the skin--small signals carried along by the wind.
They traveled through to her brain, and she wordlessly
made calculations and felt intuitions that went deeper than
the senses. She felt, within herself, an emotion akin to
lust. Red Sunrise could taste him. He was hers. She
would seduce him, taking her time, taking him into her
world, forever.
Olsen couldn’t have put it into words, couldn’t have
spelled it out, couldn’t understand why he was about to do
it. He knew he had to check the pod for an entrenching
tool. They were required to have one by law, but that cost
money and took man-hours. He felt around on the door to
the right of the hatch. Nothing. Not a damn thing. It
figures! He clambered into the craft, looking around.
Upon impact as the pod skidded across the sands, things
flew around. He was just too busy and excited to notice at
the time. Ass over teakettles, thought Olsen who didn’t
realize the pod had sustained severe structural damage and
wasn’t a safe place to be. He rummaged and rifled around
through more of the equipment strewn on the floor and
found it—the entrenching tool—a shovel that could be
folded in half and latched to a belt. He leapt out of the pod
and went to look for Andrew’s body. He felt like he had to
bury him; he couldn’t just leave him there.
Bracing himself, he unfolded the spade, clicked it into
place and twisted the coupler tight as he walked over the
dunes and saw…
Nothing.
I’ll be damned, he said to himself. This was it—the
death site, the killing zone. He saw the footprints where he
fought with Commander Zelaya.
He didn’t just disappear, damn it!
Or was there another explanation? Was he eaten?
He looked around for drag marks, trails in the sand
where the body was pulled. Nothing. That didn’t mean
anything. There might be airborne creatures that picked
the body clean. No, that doesn’t make any sense either,
damn it—there would have to be blood and bones left
over. Could a flying creature have clutched their talons
around him and flown away with a prize for its hatchlings?
The idea of a brood of young bloodthirsties ripping him
apart and having a feast seemed very real. Revulsion gave
way to anger.
That’s when he heard the noise. On Teles-4 there
were few sounds unless you brought them with you. It
was a footfall, he was certain of that. And it came from
over the small dune. He looked around as if he were
staring at nothing in particular, just gazing at the
panoramic view. He caught the sound of a second step, a
slight crunch in the sand, many feet away from the first.
So there was more than one of the creatures. He measured
his breaths and his movement. Don’t look startled. Hell
no. Let them think they have the advantage over you.
*
*
*
Red Sunrise had full breasts that created a stark
outline against the light brown garment that her people
wore. She had sandy hair and a wispy, dreamy smile.
She would have been thought unusually attractive on earth,
a great beauty. Here on Teles-4, they did not place such
importance on such matters. Other things were held in
higher esteem. She stared at this man who held an
important place in her psyche, her imagination, her
curiosity and her needs and desires.
By now she was reading practically all of his
conscious thoughts. He thought he was so tough, so
ruthless. He had no idea.
*
*
*
Olsen grasped the handle of the shovel and walked
around with it like nothing was wrong. He turned around
and started walking back to the pod, walking close to the
dune to his left. He came to the end of the sand wall, and
with reflexes that earned him the title Lightning Flash in
high school track, he sped around the dune and grabbed the
first man he saw, twisted his arm and pushed him down,
holding the shovel high, ready to cave in the man’s skull.
“What did you do with him?” he shouted, voice hoarse
with anger and fear. The other members of the tribe
scattered.
Olsen looked at the man. He looked human. He had
to be human, but how? It wasn’t possible. It didn’t fit in
with what he knew about the universe. The odds of a race
evolving to look like humans were too astronomical. He
remembered the tail end of an ancient commercial for the
lottery, something about a muted quick voice saying odds
are 1 in 949 million…
Where’s the body!” shouted Olsen. “What the hell did
you do with it?”
The man stared at him, eyes unblinking, staring at him
as if there was no looking inward in this being. He was
trying to communicate, but Olsen had no idea what was
happening. Olsen shook him, forgetting that this being
could not possibly comprehend his language. “What did
you do with him?” He studied the man’s face: dark skin,
black hair with some curly ringlets, the skin was that of a
teenager but the eyes were middle-aged. There was
something innocent and childlike about this creature. He
did not resist at all.
“What do you do with the bodies?” he demanded.
“Do you eat them, you son of a bitch?”
That’s when Olsen heard the words: We would not eat
of him. We would not partake of him.
Partake of him? What the hell did that mean?
It stung his mind when he realized that the man was
not speaking. He was thinking, and the thoughts were
somehow awakening inside Olsen’s mind.
Olsen emitted a howl of shock and dropped the man.
He ran away as fast as he could. When he had gone over a
ridge and out of sight, he slowed down, trudging back to
the wreckage of his spacecraft. As he leapt across a ravine
as wide as he was tall, he thought back to his family. Once
an uncle said to him, “So tell me, Olsen. If you’re such a
disillusioned soul, why don’t you live like it? Why aren’t
you working in reclamations or corporate takeovers or for
one of those companies set up to handle government
contracts in occupied West Africa? That’s where the
money is… If you don’t believe in anything, and you
think there is no such thing as right or wrong, why don’t
you take things to extremes?”
It bothered Olsen that he didn’t, and he attributed it to
a flaw in his character. Maybe he was a loser; he felt like
one now. Why was he thinking of his past when he better
be thinking of his future? There damn well better be a
message from HQ on the pod’s transmitter.
*
*
*
Red Sunrise shut her eyes tightly. Her lips and eyelids
trembled in ecstatic concentration. She was able to shuttle
thoughts back and forth between the two men. It took
energy but not the kind that would drain her. It was a
natural wonderful release.
*
*
*
When Olsen entered the pod, he turned on the Omega
Transmitter. It sent a more powerful signal than the one
on his belt. A message was waiting for him: Received
communication. Not economically viable to send shuttle
to planet, Teles-4.
Hoping the connection wasn’t severed, he typed in a
message: Why not?
He waited, barely daring to breathe, not wanting to
jinx himself. It was almost a prayer. He found himself
whispering, “Please…”
First a blue light, then a red one, lit up the screen,
followed by the message: No resources on the planet.
Can’t justify expense.
Not true, typed Olsen. He took a deep breath and
fought back a wave of self-revulsion. He moved his
fingers with a light, rapid-fire rhythm: They have one.
People. Savages—thousands of them. Buy their land with
trinkets and pay them pennies to manufacture things.
There was a long pause, then a series of sparkling blue
lights on the screen.
It took quite a while, the better part of an hour.
Message: Kicked the idea upstairs to the VP. Gave it the
go ahead. Using the Helo-7. Be there soon.
He had no way of knowing what the population of the
planet was. There might be thousands, there might only be
a couple. Just get the ship here, and get me the hell out of
this Godforsaken place.
*
*
*
“We must find him,” Red Sunrise said, chest heaving.
She was breathing heavily, getting her strength back.
Olsen was too far away now for her to feel his thoughts.
Soon she would be able to draw him in, no matter how far
away he was. He would not wish to get away, once she
had worked her way into his psyche and wrapped the
tendrils of her thoughts around his soul. He would be a
willing host someday.
*
*
*
Olsen found it in the compartment near the control
panel. A blaster. Why hadn’t I thought of this before? My
equalizer, he thought, feeling a little like a western
gunfighter. Let the savages come. I’m pretty good with
this thing.
What if they have weapons too?
He really didn’t know what they had, or what they
were capable of doing. He thought back to the manual.
Self-feeding? How the hell can a species be self feeding?”
he said out loud. What the hell do they eat? Each other?
He thought back to the planet they had nicknamed Ash
Heap where the young shrimp-like creatures fed
exclusively off their dying parents.
Is it worse here, he wondered. He smiled, thinking:
My people can be pretty ruthless too.
He heard a noise. Out he leapt, blaster in hand,
looking up to the right, to the left. Whatever happens, I’m
ready.
*
*
*
Red Sunrise suddenly clutched her chest, emitting a
stifled gasp. He was approaching. First she felt his
emotions: excitement bordering on lust, eagerness,
awaiting a fight.
The tribe crept forward slowly.
Red Sunrise
whispered instructions. Stand and wait.
*
*
*
Olsen had scouted out the area. He was lucky in one
respect: The pod had crash-landed in an open spot where
nobody could approach without being seen.
He heard a metallic, jarring noise. That was not the
sound of human feet. He felt a little easier, but he
shouldn’t have. It was the sound of metal settling in the
space pod, a weight-bearing beam had shifted. The
damage was too much for the support structures to hold. It
would collapse any minute. He had no way of knowing
that; he was glad it wasn’t any of the local savages.
Satisfied, he walked back into the pod, taking a
cautious drink of water. He had better start rationing it.
Who knew whether the flight crew of the Helo-7 would
take their sweet time or not? He sat down in the control
seat, taking the blaster out to guard the entry.
That was when he heard a loud noise, something
breaking violently into pieces, and the world seemed to
come crashing down on him. He felt a metal beam land
hard on his chest and thought he was suffocating when the
world went black.
*
*
*
Olsen opened his eyes and was able to make out the
features of a beautiful woman caressing his face. She bent
down and kissed his brow. She turned and said something
to her people. Several came forward to watch. Olsen was
feeling reality reverberating back into his consciousness in
slow but steady waves. At first, it felt so good to be able
to breathe. Then, he noticed the beautiful woman looking
down at him. Next, he saw several others gather around,
bending down to look at him, something like smiles were
on their faces.
They’re going to kill me, he thought. He tried to
wrestle himself away, certain they would leap onto him
and literally rip him apart. They stepped back, their faces
a study in surprise. He was weaker than he realized. After
the initial burst of fight or flight adrenaline his vision went
cloudy and he fell to the ground. Several of them helped
him get up, including the sandy haired young woman who
was touching his face. “It is all right,” she whispered.
“We welcome you as one of our own.”
But she wasn’t really speaking, only voicing her
thoughts. He tried to get up on his own, and after
stumbling and with some help he managed to stand.
He weakly felt in his pocket for his blaster. One of
the men of the tribe was holding it. He handed it to Olsen
who shoved it clumsily into one of his pockets. The
beautiful maiden was holding his canteen. She moved it to
his lips, and he drank gratefully.
He felt his ribs. I’ll be damned, he thought. Sure as
hell seemed like my bones were broken.
He felt better, but his body was near collapse. What I
need more than anything else is rest, he realized. He sat
down, closed his eyes, and that was all he remembered.
When he woke up it was night. He realized now that
they had changed his clothes during the night. The tribe
was sleeping under the stars and the dark purple skies. He
noticed the woman perk up, sit up and glance around like
she was worried until she could make out his features. He
felt like she somehow knew when he awoke, but that made
no sense. She hurried over to him, looking him over like a
doctor might, with a clinical eye. She reached down into
the folds of his clothes; he was now wearing the thin sandy
colored garment of the tribe. Finally, she looked him in
the eyes, and something like the outline of a smile
appeared on her face. Olsen tried to blink himself awake.
He still straddled the realm between Morpheus and
consciousness. He heard conflicting thoughts:
She is good to me.
She can move inside my mind.
She acts like she loves me.
She might be the enemy.
She could become my lover.
She might be planning to kill me.
“You must feed,” she said simply, speaking in her
people’s language. He was surprised that he understood it,
some of it.
She took him by the hand and led him over the dunes,
stepping over sleeping bodies until they reached a man
who slept on the fringes. She pulled the man’s garment
aside.
He was covered with some kind of brownish growth.
Olsen was not prepared for what he was seeing, although
he had witnessed more than his share of bizarre
phenomena. The man’s arms, upper chest, traps and the
back of his neck were covered in it. It was like some odd
fungus colored brown and tan and white, both banded and
ridged. Up close it more closely resembled tree bark than
fungus, although it wasn’t as dark. On the arms the growth
was thinner, only an inch or two thick. On the back and
chest the growth was three to four inches in depth.
It was sunrise. The other members of the tribe were
slowly awakening and with bleary eyes were haltingly
moving closer and surrounding them.
They all descended on the host ready to feed. Ghouls
eating a corpse, he thought and fought a wave of nausea.
The woman with the sandy colored hair took him by the
hand and led him to the now prostrate host. She gestured
for Olsen to eat, but he felt his stomach lurch. Seeing this,
she bent down and broke off a portion for him. She held it
up, like it was a piece of broken tree bark, about a foot
long, several inches wide and a few inches thick. Like
mammals feeding milk to their babies, he told himself.
He closed his eyes and bit into it.
It was beyond anything he had experienced. At first,
he thought of waffles, then meat. The flavor was like wild
game—venison perhaps, but the texture was definitely
more like bread. He opened his eyes and for the first time
in months, he smiled. Blood seemed to rush to his head
and he experienced a burst of color and the intense feeling
that he was approaching some kind of destination. He felt
his body quivering, shaking from the inside. He had never
felt so alive or so aware. Something inside of him had
changed. This much he knew. For a moment he thought
he was about to start flying, into the atmosphere and out
into space.
He had a sweet sticky feeling of guilt as he drifted
back in time, thinking how he broke his engagement to
Monica to take this assignment. He couldn’t explain the
remorseful feelings or why he would have them; after all,
he and Monica were their own separate systems; yet at this
moment he felt so interconnected with everything.
Irrational feelings, he told himself and opened his eyes,
only to realize that he was lying down on the cool sands
with a dozen or so people looking down at him, some of
them stroking his face. The sandy haired woman looked
pained and said in her own tongue, “We thought you died
to us.”
How could he understand her so quickly? It was as if
every word he heard the tribe speak he remembered. And
what was she saying? Died to us? That made no sense.
Perhaps he didn’t understand the language as well as he
thought. She bent down and kissed him long and hard on
the forehead. One of her teardrops splashed down on his
cheek. Anointing him with her tears, he thought, but didn’t
appreciate why. He made a mental note to try and
understand their customs, later.
*
*
*
That night he awakened to see the men and women
walking away, over a dune and out of sight.
He noticed the sandy haired woman bending down
and kissing him. “They will leave us alone for a time, she
said. She took off her thin garment, put her arms around
him, and he pulled her body close to his. She moved aside
his garment as she whispered, “All is well. We will
become one… in more ways than one.”
*
*
*
The next morning she told him many things. She tried
to teach him to pronounce the word for the mysterious
substance that appeared on the skin of their host member.
It had a name that sounded like Mankha Koy Khotoy that
had to be pronounced quickly, but he couldn’t do it no
matter how hard he tried. He decided to call it manna, and
when he explained she laughed in approval. Only one
member of their tribe would produce the manna from their
body, and when he or she died, another would begin
sprouting the food from their upper torso, always in the
mornings and evenings. The host who produced the manna
from his body was called the Theda, and there must be one
in the tribe at all times. Babies? Yes, they made babies,
“But only when the earth is ready.” She assured him that
she held the children he produced within her the night
before, “They would be ready to bloom when the earth
required it.” He tried questioning her about marriage, and
at first she didn’t understand the word. He asked about
free love, and she seemed horrified by the concept.
Finally, she understood what he meant by marriage. She
told him that after last night, they were one in the eyes of
her people, that he had been set-aside for her forever. She
knew he was the one; after all she could read his thoughts
easily and could become a vessel for his thoughts as well.
At that, Olsen felt that incredible sensation that he had
when he took off in an aircraft, or when entering the
atmosphere.
The next day, Olsen fed off the body of the Theda like
the rest of the tribe, and he no longer had any need for
food or water. His lover revealed that her name was Red
Sunrise. “I must tell you one more thing,” she said. “We
call our people “The Kindred.” She assured him that this
name was important.
Funny things were happening to his memory. He had
perfect recall of anything done or said since coming to the
planet. He found he could perform complex mathematical
equations in his mind, whereas he once fumbled through
math and had always needed pencil and paper. Life took
on a strange quality—it was a combination of dreamlike
sensations and hyperawareness. He felt like he had been
on the planet forever. He felt like he could stay on this
planet forever.
Then a bolt appeared in the sky and shattered the
sensation. A fireball blasted through the clouds and landed
yards away. A UH-3 pod had landed, a sure sign that a
Helo-7 was orbiting in the skies above. He had almost
forgotten he had summoned it, luring it here with the
promise of dealing in slaves. Soldiers jumped out and
faced them. There were only four of them, but they had
crude pistols and began gesturing toward their craft. “Get
on!” they shouted. At first their voices sounded strange
and muted, almost as if Olsen was hearing them with plugs
in his ears or from underwater, but he fought his way to the
surface so to speak and made himself able to hear and
understand.
He began speaking in English again, not in the simple
language of the Kindred. They had to leave, he told
them—these people could not be enslaved. Breaking them
down would kill them. The captain of the crew explained:
There were no resources on this world to speak of. The
only thing they could harvest was the people. They could
take them to a local mining planet and turn them into
forced labor. “We have to find some way to justify the
expense of this trip,” the captain said.
But the tribe would not go. One of the soldiers kicked
the Theda and pointed a gun at Red Sunrise. That was too
much for Olsen. He reached into his pocket and produced
his blaster—like a gun only it shot out flashes of light and
was more effective than any pistol.
The raiders were not ready for this. They weren’t
expecting natives with weapons, and they never imagined
a fight from one of their own. Olsen shot wildly and
quickly, but within seconds all four were dead.
The men fell to the ground; their blood flowing into
the earth, and the earth was swallowing them slowly.
Diminutive granules of sand were gathering around the
bodies, climbing up into the wounds, surrounding and
covering the carcasses. As the bodies were finally buried
in a thin layer of sand, they quivered and seemed to
dissolve into a fine swirling mist. The ground below them
seemed to draw down, inhaling the vapor into itself.
With a shaking hand, Olsen picked up a transmitter
that had been on a soldier’s belt and radioed the ship.
“Take off. Planet Teles-4 is dangerous. You can never
conquer this world; it will take you into itself and never let
you go. Your entire landing party is dead. You either die
here or become part of this world—there is no alternative.
There is a terrible power in the land, terrible and beautiful.
You must escape now or stay forever. It’s your call.”
There was silence. Finally, the ship radioed out. They
were leaving.
He had told the truth. And he understood for the first
time that he was safe; he had a dim vision of the future that
Red Sunrise had in mind for him.
Then, Olsen heard weeping and wailing. He turned
around and realized the enormity of his mistake. In the
excitement he had inadvertently fired a blast through the
Theda himself who was lying on the ground bleeding to
death.
He motioned for Olsen to come closer and whispered,
“Forgiven… all forgiven… but in your mind you owe a
debt. You will never be whole unless you give back.
Must be whole. Whole… Hunger for wholeness…” and
then the Theda died peacefully.
As with the raiders, his body underwent a change and
became one with the earth. That night Olsen’s body
underwent a change as well.
He awoke to find dozens of small tendrils, resembling
thick translucent spider webs, attached to his body,
embedded in his pores, trailing down deep in the soil like
so many hair-like roots. As he awoke they mostly
crumbled into dust, but he grabbed one that was still
supple and pulled it out of the ground. He pulled and
pulled on it—it seemed to go down forever. Olsen let it
go, and it too dissolved into nothingness.
He looked down at his shoulders and chest to find they
were covered with manna. The rest of the tribe came
closer and smiled at him in their quiet way. Red Sunrise
bent down and broke off a piece, feeding him with her
hand. He watched as the kindred knelt down, each slowly,
gently, biting off portions of manna. The meal seemed
like a holy and sacred act—a sacrament of sorts. Everyone
was connected. No, they could not all hear or transmit his
thoughts like Red Sunrise could, but they all felt each
others’ emotions for a moment, and the feeling welled up
inside of them to the point that it almost produced a
euphoric overwhelm. Almost.
He was content to lie down in their midst as they fed
upon him, reviving in body and spirit. Red Sunrise kissed
him. He watched the sun rising in the east, and it was
surprising that it was so bright, so early in the day. 

It’s about a Satanic
telemarketing company
‘Nuff said.
www.sdpbookstore.com
. . . in the Novels section
Season's Greetings
by Tim McDaniel
Dear Family and Friends,
Well, it's hard to believe another year is about to
end! This has been a busy year for the Wilkins family.
Chrissy finished high school – with a 3.6 average! She
is taking a year off before applying to colleges. Doug
is still plugging away in junior high. He won fourth
place in the science fair last March, with his incredible
geyser project. Everyone else did volcanoes, but our
Doug is too creative to do the same thing as everyone
else! Of course, the big news is that in May we
discovered that William is none other than Powerman!
Now I know how he can handle those darn pickle jars
so easily! William is good at keeping secrets, but when
Dr. Villainous captured all of us right out of the allyou-can-eat Chinese buffet where we'd gone for Doug's
birthday, well, the mask had to come off! (Actually, I
should say that's when the mask had to be put on!)
Anyway, things have been kind of hectic around here
since then, what with the giant spider robots in July, the
Dr. Bandazhevsky unpleasantness in October, and that
asteroid thing two weeks ago! But we've all come
though safe and sound, and this coming year I
PROMISE myself that I'm going to get out my
watercolors, and really give that a serious go! William
is planning on joining me for once. He's going to take
a class in beginning watercolors at the Meadow
Community Center. Yes, Powerman is going back to
school! I think we'll have a great time. Of course, I
hear Dr. Villainous has escaped from that asylum, and
he just might bear Powerman a grudge, so we'll have to
wait and see!
May your family have a joyous holiday season.
Much love,
The Wilkins
*
*
*
To Whom It May Concern:
I hope I am doing this correctly. Of course, we've
never sent out any of these yearly chronicles before, but
Zagweek says we should make an effort to fit in with
our new host culture, and I was selected to perform this
function though the use of the rock, scissors, paper
method – certainly the highest achievement of human
culture – which we learned, through the observation of
our hosts, in the detention center.
As is perhaps well known, the year started out with
a bang – literally! -- with the crash. Although we
understand why they dissected brother Prakzot, we
were somewhat annoyed by the detention. Nevada is
so hot, and as we were confined underground in a
desert, with no cable television, the months spent there
seemed interminable. It seemed to us, also, that Dr.
Bandazhevsky need not have used such forceful
interrogation methods. But, as he told us later,
bygones. Still, I confess to a certain amount of residual
fury.
Certainly things have settled down now that we
finally have our own place. We moved in at the end of
August, and Joogwik immediately started painting the
interior and exterior with his bodily wastes. Some of
our new neighbors were perhaps taken aback, but
recovered their equanimity, and even invited us to a
barbecue in early September!
I wish we had
understood about the beef, but after cleaning Joogwik's
bodily wastes off of the grill, everyone had a good
time. I achieved a recipe for potato salad, which will
come in handy with my political antagonists if we ever
get back home.
So I can say that things are getting better and
better. Zagweek's skin condition has nearly cleared up,
Joogwik is teaching an evening class on transcendent
bio-physics, and now that I am no longer getting those
awful headaches, I'm going to start getting together
with a woman I met at the Art Stop, and we're going to
really give watercolors a serious go. She tells me that a
class is going to soon begin at the local community
center, and although she herself would not attend, here
husband is planning on doing so, and the woman
implored me to make friends with this man, as
apparently he is something of a recluse.
I think that the tints of my bodily wastes might
make fascinating additions to the more common colors
available to the artists on this planet.
Wish me luck, and have a happy Christmas and a
merry New Year.
In solidarity,
Mugsoot, Zagweek, Joogwik, and (most of)
Prakzot's brain
*
*
*
Assorted Acquaintances:
Georgette insists that I get out of the lab more often
and take part in social activities, so here goes my first
season's greeting. I understand it is customary to
impart family news in these missives. Very well. Our
marriage occurred in February, presided over by the
esteemed Dr. Batterhham, with Drs. Dubrinksky,
Kodiceck, and Fishlock in attendance. Also present
was Dr. Bandazhevsky, pompously overconfident after
denouncing my trans-temporal regurgitation theory at
the conference in Vienna. Fools! Someday I will show
them all! Also, I believe some of Georgette's relations
were at the ceremony – her father, or uncle, or someone
like that. Since the wedding I have had less time for
my research, and many days can only steal away for
eighteen or nineteen hours before Georgette calls me
back upstairs for meals, conversation, or sex. (If only I
could find a way to combine all three functions!
Perhaps the human body could be genetically
redesigned, so that a single orifice – but I digress.)
However, I did accomplish many of my goals this year.
A working model of my teleporter has been put into
operation, with only minor glitches. My temporal
conveyor is at a promising stage, though the project
continues to eat up much of my time and precious
stocks of uranium. The Thing in the basement has
been quiescent, and my reanimation experiments are
finally showing signs of life. I feel my research will
soon make my name known around the world, and if I
were only able to disclose my findings from my
dissection of the alien in Area 51 last March, I could
astound the world. Instead, the fools kicked me – me!
– off the project, while keeping that fool, Dr.
Bandazhevsky. Lastly, I should mention that I have
taken up watercolors, and expect to find considerable
pleasure in exercising my hitherto untapped artistic
skills. At Georgette's encouragement, I will refine
these skills under the direction of a skilled teacher at a
local institution of informal education. Also, I
understand that Georgette may be pregnant, from
something my lab assistant, Lance, muttered the other
day.
With suitable holiday compliments,
Doctor Hugelmann
and Georgette Weiss-Hugelmann
*
*
*
Dear Friends,
First, I want you all, each and every one of you, to
know just how appreciative I am of your much-needed
support this year. The time in the hospital is almost a
blur to me now; although I am grateful for the therapy,
it was a great relief to be released, and now those lost
months are just a gap in the progress of my life. Which
has now resumed – thanks to your help and love!
I thought I was strong before. I would deal with
stress and anger by bottling it all up, and I thought this
meant I was in control. But when things reached a
certain point, and I exploded and caused such pain and
anxiety among my loved ones, I was forced to admit
that I needed help, and that violence is never the
answer. I am much stronger now – I have real
strength, deep reserves of power that I am certain will
enable me to overcome any problems in the future.
This year, however, I have decided to take steps to
make sure that the stress doesn't even have a chance to
overwhelm like it did before. I am going to change
careers! That's right -- no more accountancy for me!
You must be wondering how I came to make such
a life-changing decision. It was due to a wonderful
new friend. A few weeks ago I was doing my grocery
shopping at the Albertsons, and a annoying little boy
was sitting in the aisle, crying over being denied a
candy bar, and I couldn't get my cart past him. And I
really needed to get some Grape Nuts. Well, the stress
built up and built up. I did my breathing exercises and
visualizations and chants, but nothing was working. I
was this close to braining the kid with a big can of pear
halves when a kindly gentlemen came up beside me,
took me by the elbow, and suggested we get some
coffee and talk.
He just saved my life!
His name is Dr.
Bandazhevsky – such amazing brown eyes! He
allowed me to see that my life choices were becoming
unhealthy. He's become a dear friend. (I call him
"Doctor B," but for some strange reason he says he
prefers "Doctor V"! Isn't that cute?) With his
encouragement, I decided to go back to my first love –
watercolors! I'll be teaching a watercolor class at the
Meadow Community Center. Doctor B – I mean
Doctor V! – says he'll come along to hold my hand, at
least the first couple of days.
I'm really looking forward to the quiet beauty I will
explore with my students. The class will probably
consist of elderly ladies who take the class just so they
can get out of the house a couple times a week, and
who will gossip gently and paint pale daisies. Well,
that just sounds perfect – I need that kind of serenity
just now.
All my love, and may your new year be peaceful
and joyful.
Hilary Marx