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  • Issue 26
  • Issue 26 Stories

Published by Associate Editor on June 1, 2015. This item is listed in Issue 26, Issue 26 Stories

The Hounds of Zegna

By Arthur Davis

Of course, I knew they were coming, though I refused to believe I was the only one who possessed such knowledge. Had I made an adequate effort instead of my typical halfhearted attempt, the earth might have been spared. Maybe it was simply too late by the time I accepted what was happening.

dogAnyway, here we are under the thumb of Dremlins, ungainly creatures who look like giant golden retrievers standing erect on their hind legs. Except for the absence of a tail and a considerably shortened snout, the resemblance was uncanny. Their long, glistening reddish coat and small toy-like animal heads gave them an air of innocence, of childlike vulnerability.

And that’s how they first presented themselves. As space travelers who had gotten lost, had “taken the wrong turn at Mars,” as a west coast reporter smugly described their arrival eight months ago. First, came the small patrol ship, supposedly off course, filled with a dozen scrawny, fragile adolescent creatures, then, as we were seduced by our collective need to believe the best instead of being cautious about the worst, larger transports filled with yapping, affectionate Dremlins arrived in mass. But a lot can happen in eight months, like the end of civilization, as we know it.

I’ll tell you more later, but right now, I’m late for my appointed rounds. My name is Michael Joseph Denner. If you want, you can call me Mickey. I like that nickname, although I was never successful at getting even my best friends to use it. I used to be a high school history teacher. Not a good one mind you, but adequate enough to get the facts straight, though not much for inspiring young minds. I was never challenged as a child and left that legacy to each adolescent who passed through my eleven tenured years of teaching. Now, laser lamp in hand, I walk the barren streets of my city making sure that they are cleared by sunset like other Walkers, as we are called, do in every other hamlet and great city on earth, by order of the Council of Supreme Dremlins.

For that meager effort, I am rewarded with certain gifts, such as continued sight and breath. Trivial as it may sound, most other humans fared much worse by comparison. By the end of the fifth month, with dozens of battle cruisers hovering like dark clouds over every major metropolis, we should have known. But there really wasn’t any warning. So when the death knell tolled, it was a terrible surprise. Whole villages were consumed by violent plumed bursts of laser light. People and produce were incinerated in the millions like so much fried chicken. We thought they were trying to make an example of us for some yet untold reason until a pattern arose. But there was no rational reason, unless you wanted to accept the destruction of our race as the unadorned focus of their ambition.

The first wave of Dremlin dogs, as they were once referred to, quickly aged into mature adults whose only need was procreation. To perform that function successfully, we learned later, required all their bodily efforts and toward that end they reached out to signal others with the most hideous high-pitched howl imaginable. That searing, biting, ear-wrenching cry did not abate for days and only reached its peak during the darkest hours of their sexual compulsion. That should have been our first warning. Those who approached them to question this process were attacked on the spot. There were no regrets or apprehension on their part. When a Dremlin was in the process of mating, as more and more were, even coming close to them was reason enough for them to fire on you. Those closest to a Dremlin pair at the height of copulation were driven mad from the sound. First thousands, then tens of thousands, took their own lives in order to avert the wracking auditory pain their howl caused.

In defense of our kind, it should be mentioned that the governments and scientists of all nations did their best, but it all happened too fast. Within a period of a few months, the first wave of adolescent Dremlins had matured into ten-foot tall creatures with rapier-like talons and highly evolved ability to sense when they were in danger, if even by strangers hundreds of yards away. By then others had arrived with weapons powerful enough to begin the subjugation. They shot down fighters and missiles, as you would swat a fly from your shirtsleeve. They were impervious to our nuclear weapons, our strength, or interest in unity. We behaved as if we had a choice. They behaved as if we were born to be captives.

Hundreds of millions died in the sixth month alone. It was estimated that four billion vanished in the seventh month under the bright yellow rays their ships flooded the earth with from high in the darkened heavens. We were unable to negotiate or protect ourselves. Still, from what I heard, ten or fifteen million of us remain. For what purpose and to what end I do not know.

“How are you?”

It was my counterpart, Sam Levin. Sam was about seventy years old. He walked his ten square block patrol every night as I did. I walked my route, which bordered his for three blocks of greater Charleston, North Carolina. We spoke twice a night, cautious not to spend too much time together, lest we be detected and relieved of more than our responsibilities. There was no possibility of insurrection. We possessed no weapons except our own imagination, no interest except in our own pitiful survival. The Dremlins routinely purged towns and let us know of the decimation as if we needed any more convincing of the limitations of our capacity or future.

I flicked on the beam from what looked like an ordinary flashlight, except the bright red beam that shot out of the front could be projected a thousand yards or more. I traced the light up against some apartment buildings and down an alleyway just to make it look like I was securing the neighborhood. “I’m tired every day. I can hardly get out of bed anymore.”

“That’s the way I feel too,” Sam acknowledged.

“But you’re pushing seventy.”

“And look at what it’s gotten me,” he said standing up and scanning his laser beam along a row of second floor windows to make sure they were closed. “I think they’re watching us.”

Defiantly I said, “So what?”

As he walked into the night I heard his response, “So maybe I want to live another day, even if there is nothing left to live for.”

“You think this is living?”

“It is until I find something better.”

“I’ll see you at the meeting,” I said, though I doubted that he heard me.

We were fed our food, left to our own meanderings; those few hundred or so desperate souls within earshot of each other. Every week a representative gathered us up, measured our resistance, proffered directives, and reminded us of our precarious position. I sat through these meetings numb with disbelief and sadness. Why us? What made earth the perfect breeding ground for these beasts?

When the mating howls inflamed an already indignant world, there was an outcry that fell upon dogs all over the world, especially golden retrievers. They were hunted down, killed on sight by citizens with guns who needed to take out their frustration on somebody or something. When the slaughter escalated, people went around and broke into homes and apartments where they knew dogs lived and killed them, and then their owner if there was any interference. Of course, this displaced aggression meant nothing to the Dremlins. They went on copulating in halls, on streets, in public spaces, and especially near restaurants where food was plentiful.

The sight of a Dremlin pair having sex sickened most, if the howl didn’t quickly immobilize them with pain. One frightened legislator in China claimed the Dremlin howl was their most potent weapon. It was the highest sign of their evolutionary power and, at the same time, subjugated all those who would interfere with their design for domination. As they populated the world and long before the dimension of their aggression became evident, those sounds became a normal, if not arresting, part of our everyday lives. After a while, if you were fortunate enough not to come too close, you shut out the sounds as you would grating street noise late into the night.

I had married early and divorced later than was sensible. My wife had been a woman devoid of sentiment and possessed of seriousness so profound that to this day I wonder why I asked for her hand, and why she accepted my initial overtures. Our sex life was uninspired as was our fervor for each other. We never made much noise when having sex. At first, there were muffled groans and some spasms of excitement. In some strange way, I envied the Dremlins their exultation. To be so exuberant, so unabashed in their lovemaking was a true work of wonder. I had never known such sexual glee. I believe few had. I now realize few of us would ever again.

One friend, and I heard this only after my divorce, said my wife and I were “suitable” for each other. Suitable. I thought about that word for years. Now, nothing matters but working myself through the next day. The capacity for survival in humans is quite remarkable. I never thought of this until I saw dozens of newspaper pages filled with pictures of the most notable cities on earth flash up in a cauldron of red and yellow dust. First Geneva, London, Moscow, and Washington vanished. Before the shrieks of international outrage were broadcast, New York, Chicago, Paris, Rome, and San Paulo Brazil were incinerated.

Their laser weapons surgically dissected each city so as not to disturb utilities, transportation networks, and all forms of communication. These weapons systems were far beyond our military’s grasp as were their defensive screening network. They never resorted to nuclear weapons, which surprised most of the military experts. Outside major metropolitan areas, there were no sensitive targets that could benefit them in their conquest. The human devastation was complete. Of course, the slaughter of millions was no longer a topic of conversation for the survivors. We accepted the wanton destruction, always believing that sometime in the future we would coalesce into a lethal fighting force and overthrow our captors. What most found impossible to accept was being cut off from one another. The weekly meetings helped, if only to see the faces of those who had survived.

“Don’t turn around,” the voice directed during the last town meeting. “I’ve been watching you. My name is Sara McKinney,” she continued from behind me.

My imagination flared, but only momentarily. In the last few months since the destruction rained down upon the earth, I was purged of not only my past, but also my need for a future. However, as Sara’s voice filled my ears with words, her spirit filled my chest with possibilities. I nodded slowly to indicate that I had heard her words, though there was no way to communicate to her how desperate I already was for making human contact.

“Ask old Sam Jennings about me. I am not one of them. Please. We need to stick together.”

That was all I heard. That was all I needed to hear. “You know a woman named Sara?” I asked Sam when we next made our rounds, not fully appreciating how dangerous even that question was.

Sam dropped his flashlight, wiped his brow, and then bent down to tie his shoes. He went through the motions, but I knew he was simply tired and needed an excuse to stop walking. I had no idea if he would respond, or even if he could be trusted. If he hadn’t first engaged me a month ago, I would never have allowed myself this one temptation.

“McKinney?” he asked.

“Her first name is Sara.”

“She lives over on Townsend?”

“Sam, I don’t know anything more than her name.”

“How do you know her?”
“I don’t really. I just thought you did,” I said and walked away quickly. I was stricken with fear. How many Sara’s could he know? How could he put me through that? We were standing in an open space. Patrol ships glided overhead. The night was bathed in moonlight.

Was I mad? Why couldn’t I have waited until the moon was less radiant? When the sky was completely overcast. No, I had to know immediately. I was never going to make it to Sam’s age. However, I didn’t consider that an onerous limitation.

I slept poorly that night. In the morning, I ate breakfast and called into central control. The ritual was the same every day. I was asked to repeat everything I saw and did the day before. The voice interrogating me was different every day, though it always sounded feminine. When I said I was done, the connection was broken. The phone was in limited service and was only to be used by the Dremlins or to contact them.

Was Sara a Dremlin plant? I suspected those were around, though it never made much sense. If they considered us a threat, why keep any of us alive? Of course, I had no answer to this. I didn’t believe anyone had. Moreover, if so, it was too late to save ourselves or our dying planet.

But Sara was a voice. A Spring voice imparting possibilities that I had long ago given up. I waited eagerly for the next town meeting. I sat down and waited until the regional director read through his report. But all I heard that night was his rasping, biting voice, and a film of what had been done to those in other villages who did not heed their code. I allowed myself the opportunity to glance around, but only with my eyes. They knew when you turned your head. Guards positioned on either side of the church aisles in which we were housed for our weekly meetings came over and struck down anyone who turned or nodded off. Some were pulled from the crowd and never returned.

“You will do what you are told or you will be purged. We have made that clear to you and every other member of your mongrel race,” the regional director said in his strange English. The hideous animal was an old Dremlin. His coat was shaggy and unkempt. His talons were horribly long and less aligned with the others than we had seen on younger ones. He stood on the dais, as had an ordained priest only a month before. Only this messenger spoke of destruction and damnation as though he was the representative of the underworld. All vestiges of the church had been stripped from the walls, all signs of God or holiness or religion had been purged from sight. I imagined others believed as I did that those closest to religion and God were on a select list to be extinguished first lest they foment unrest and defiance.

The audience of two hundred or so looked on in muted bewilderment. It was only a year ago that we lived in peace and innocence, unaware of the plot being hatched against our towns and villages, against cities swarming with humanity, against the survival of the planet. Then, in only months since first landing and being welcomed by most of humanity, these small endearing visitors from space, from a planet our scientist called Zegna, for want of a better word, and from a galaxy that we thought devoid of life, as though we possessed the powers of such infinite knowledge or insight, descended from the sky in untold hordes.

The first animals looked like fairy tale-like gremlins one scientist observed. Except when he wrote a real-time internet article about the most important event ever to have impacted humanity, he pressed the wrong letter on his keyboard. Instead of hitting a “g” he struck a “d, “and in one stroke these once cute animals were transformed, and shortly thereafter became the hideous raptors they are today.

“We will be conducting experiments in this town and in nearby towns. No one will be hurt, but there will be some changes in members of your friends and family.”

No one will be hurt. What choice was there? We are all doomed, I thought, no longer searching the crowd for Sara. There probably was no such woman. Sam must have been thinking of someone else. If he knew of her, if she told him she was going to speak to me, to take such a risk in the first place, he would have known.

What does it matter? Tomorrow we will be melted down as the Nazis did the gold teeth of six million Jews a hundred years ago or wind up in a test tube on planet Zegna. I couldn’t recall where the astrophysicists told us the galaxy was that harbored such a malevolent race. We still didn’t know what they wanted from us. Those who were curious enough to ask were now dead. There was no rhyme or reason to their viciousness. There just was, or was not, depending on your point of view. As for myself, I saw no future in my future. Sooner or later, I will do or say something and disappear with the pull of a trigger. I will not be missed. I will simply not be.

I settled into my bed that night no longer thinking about Sara, just the bleakness of our world, of my puny existence. I suspected there was some sort of resistance forming out there. Younger men with more motivation and skills were cloistered in barns and caves around the world. First, they would have to secure themselves then find a way to communicate with others in nearby towns and villages. They would be bold and brave and, I believe, doomed. The Dremlins would have already anticipated this reaction. If they had the ability to sense danger or clandestine activity from across the town center, they might be able to extend it miles and miles from their headquarters. No, we were lichen compared to their intellect and creative superiority. We were no match for their ambition no matter what it was and in what form it was manifested. I glanced outside my window. There was a full moon again. The last time it had appeared, I had asked Sam about Sara.

“Hey Michael, you want another?” a voice barked against a background of music and scrambled words.

I spun around on a tall stool slamming my right elbow into the edge of the bar as my wrist struck the glass of beer I was nursing. A bolt of pain shot up into my shoulder, a splash of beer landed against my right sleeve. I gasped. I must have struck a nerve. The pain was so sharp I felt a tingling in my fingertips. I immediately recognized the bar and most of the patrons staring up in shock at the pictures on the television behind the bartender’s stooped shoulders. It was the afternoon news. The date indicated on the giant television monitor was September 16, 2037. Cameras panned in stony silence as scientists from the Army surrounded what looked like a flying saucer the size of a city block that seemingly had crash-landed in the desert outside of Tempe, Arizona.

“I knew it would happen sooner or later,” the bartender noted.

“I wonder what they’re going to look like?” someone behind me questioned.

“Like small dogs standing on their hind legs,” I offered without thinking.

A smattering of laughter was heard all around followed by some even more bizarre conjecture about what the aliens from outer space would look like. I cleaned off my sleeve and massaged my elbow. I studied my shoes as though I needed more evidence of who I was and where I was. I knew the bar and bartender. I recognized faces in the crowd though none seemed to acknowledge me. I paid my tab and removed myself from the crowded bar, walked into the street, and looked up at the bright blue heavens. It had finally happened. We were not alone. In all our collective arrogance, we were not alone. I had not dreamt it for nothing. I must have known. A police squad car was parked at the curbside near a fire hydrant. I walked over to the blue and white car. Their radio was tuned into the local news. Both officers were listening intently, though not so engrossed so as to ignore my approach. I noticed their bodies stiffened defensively.

“Maybe you can help me officer,” I said. They nodded politely. “I’ve been watching the news about the spaceship and I know what’s going to happen. I saw it all before. I want to tell somebody about it.”

“You just come out of there?” one of them asked.

I turned to the bar. “Yes, but I’m not drunk.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“I’m not a crackpot and I’m not drunk. And I can tell you what they’re going to look like. I can tell you what they’re going to do. That might have some value, even if I came out of a bar.”

“With all due respect sir, I’m sure a million other people can also speculate on what they look like.”

“I’m not like a million other people. I saw into the future and I know what they’re going to do.”

“And what’s that?” the same one asked, only this time he was less threatened by me and obviously not taking a word I had to say seriously.

“You know,” I said standing up against the car. “I think I’ll try the newspapers. Maybe they’ll be more receptive.”

They watched me cross the street in front of their car before focusing their attention back to the news. Within an hour all the Dremlins will have emerged from the saucer. Their small demeanor and unstable gait will be instantly endearing to billions worldwide. They would be perceived as unthreatening, an accident from outer space that would change our world forever. Scientists would be ecstatic to have these live samples of other life forms who could communicate with us if even in a rudimentary manner. The fact that they will need our care will throw us off guard. How dangerous could these little creatures be? And their voices, their little squeaky utterances, would sound so much like a human infant, mothers all over the world would feel a maternal instinct towards the furry dog-like misfits. How deviously cunning and manipulative.

I walked six blocks to the offices to the Charleston Times. The usually silent building on the corner of Decatur and Mitchell Streets was a hotbed of nervous fervor. Every window in the building was lit. Camera crews and reporters milled about outside. I had seen this before, or at least been aware of all the commotion when the saucer first landed in what now appeared to be my dream. One of our satellites picked it up coming in from beyond our galaxy. Hundreds of telescopes and sophisticated space probes picked up the incoming ship. Some scientists speculated that it might be something far more ominous, such as an asteroid hurtling towards earth. I thought about that while two reporters rushed from the building and sped away in their car. What could be so important? Didn’t they know what was coming? Didn’t anybody else know what I knew?            All this was for nothing. We were doomed from the beginning. There were no defenses and what made it worse, we wanted so desperately to believe these aliens were friendly and not the kind we’d been exposed to in the movies and television for a hundred years. It just couldn’t be those kind one Hollywood reporter mentioned when he first caught sight of the immature Dremlins. However, if they were so callow how could they pilot their ship halfway across our galaxy?

I made my way past the throng to the city desk on the third floor. Phones were ringing on every desk. Everybody was screaming directions and vital information at each other. Every desk and tabletop was occupied. Every ounce of energy was being expended to cover the most important story since the creation of the earth itself. I looked about as though I was a spectator to my own death. Who would listen to me?

“Have you ever heard of the planet Zegna?” I asked one of the reporters who rushed by so quickly he couldn’t possibly have heard my inquiry. Three police officers were huddled around one of the dozen television sets mounted around the room which looked more like one of the late twentieth century commodities trading pits. There was an unmatched excitement in the air. The world as we knew it, the entire universe, and most importantly the religious leaders of the world were going to have to rethink their history. Apparently, God was hard at work in other planets too.

A young man with a fist full of papers bumped up behind me. He apologized and was courteous enough to ask if he could help me even though it was apparent that he had no real interest in being that patient.

“I want to talk to the editor about the space ship.”

“Right now I don’t think the president himself could get through to the editor,” he said with some pride.

“I have some information about who they are that might be valuable.”

“Who they are?”

I caught myself here, lest I sound as energetic and vested as I believed I was to the two police officers. “Yes.”

“But we haven’t even seen them yet. In fact, we don’t even know if anybody is alive on that ship.”

He was right. “I see your point.”

“You know, why don’t you come back tomorrow? Maybe things will settle down around here so you can find someone you can talk to.”

I took a sudden liking to this young man. He was showing more patience and respect than I had seen or would have expected under these conditions. I also finally realized no one was going to listen to me today, or if I came back tomorrow.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.” he said and quickly loped away.

I walked out of the newsroom. I was also too uneasy with what I knew to expose myself to potential ridicule. This incident was going to bring out every crackpot and lunatic on the planet. From evangelists, who would chastise us with the “I told you so’s” to those who believed this marked the end of the world. How was I going to tell them they were right? How could one man warn the world? Moreover, did I really care to? I struggled with this question as the elevator let me off on the ground floor and I wandered into the pandemonium on Decatur, which was taking place in every village and hamlet on earth.

A crowd ten deep surrounded a giant television monitor in one of the windows of the news building. An Army general was approaching the downed saucer. Slowly, a hatch opened at the other side of the gleaming gray spacecraft. Minutes passed until there was discernible movement. Everyone had an idea who or what was going to fill the screen and change our lives. When a small dog-like creature wobbled out into the daylight and fell to its knees a cheer rang out, with women oohing and aahing as the general’s aids rushed to help right the creature.

I knew the rest of the tale. I wandered into a small park and found myself a bench. Across the park, I could see the tall, ornate steeple of the Confederate Army clock tower—a landmark in Charleston. I was born not far from here thirty-eight years ago in a hospital that has long ago been converted into a major office building. Charleston was South Carolina’s oldest city, a major Atlantic coast port and the first city to adopt a historic preservation-zoning ordinance in the country. We had a major military college, internationally renowned arts fair in the Spoleto Festival and one of the East’s most visited tourist attractions. Seven months from now, like a thousand other cities, it would lay in ruins.

We were so desperate to believe, especially the politicians and scientists. After an extensive medical examination, the original group of young Dremlins toured most major capitals of the world. Every politician and important head of state wanted to be photographed with these lovable, if noisy creatures. Even as the animals grew, only the most astute behaviorist noticed that they became less friendly, less forgiving of being petted like tame pets. The scientists, especially the physicists and the Pentagon’s highest-ranking weapon’s wonks, wanted to know everything. The heads of the major religious groups waited patiently. Some suspected they wanted to prolong any interaction with the Dremlins for as long as possible. Official statements were handed out to the press that these denominations were glad no one was actually injured in the landing. Other than that, there was a notable silence from the religious leaders.

A panel of international astronomers and doctors was organized by the United Nations to pose questions to the Dremlins. What was so unusual was that the panel was organized, convened, and ready for their first presentation within six weeks of the landing. What was equally unexpected was that the Dremlins were open and responsive to every question from the location of their planet to the propulsion system of their ship. They invited inspection of their craft to any number of engineers and aeronautical experts. The scientific bounty from these early interactions was heralded as a quantum leap for humanity. A body of knowledge was being amassed at a startling rate, though not as quickly as the Dremlins were growing.

Then of course, there were the cynics who, in this case, were right from the beginning. They urged prudence, but in the face of how the first ship of Dremlins was embraced, their cause was drowned out by the international carnival atmosphere that swept the planet.

“If it hadn’t been for a slight navigational error we would have remained alone in our world, possibly forever,” the chairman of the Latin American Treaty Organization lamented. The most enthusiastic supporters hoped other Dremlins would follow to rescue the survivors of the Tempe Landing, as it was often referred to. They got their wish.

A strange peace settled over me. I stretched out my legs as far as they would go and shook myself like a dog working the muscle spasms out of his awakened body. There was really nothing to do. Nothing for me or anybody that would change the course upon which we were headed. Unless I had some kind of first-hand evidence and could convince someone in authority, we were all going to die. But of course there was none. There was no way to prove what I knew sitting here this bright Fall day. Even I came to question myself. Was it all a dream? No, of course not. Clearly, I had already experienced something that had not yet happened. The memories were too vivid and omnipresent, the facts and circumstances of the past months I had just lived through were all too pure and unwelcoming to be the byproduct of a twisted and corrupt mind.

In my reverie I could easily conjure up images of the earliest Greek wars with Epaminondas, Philip, and Alexander; the great Roman wars with Hannibal, Scipio, and Caesar; the Byzantine and Medieval wars and the French revolution with Napoleon Bonaparte; the European conflicts of the 19th century along with the American Civil War followed by the “War-to-End-All-Wars” and the most horrible Second World War. I can easily recall the wars that infected the Mideast a quarter century ago.

And in every one of these conflicts there was the same strategic territorial or xenophobic rationale. Why was this invasion and subjugation so different? The answer was as obvious as it was opaque.

What would have happened if Hitler had the weapons these monsters possessed? What if Stalin—whose dictates were reportedly responsible for the death of 20,000,000 people—had these weapons at his disposal? The difference here is that there was no one Dremlin leader, no general or politician to which we could forward an appeal for leniency. What they had done, what they intended to do, was so far and away more calamitous, it made two of the most vicious murderers of the twentieth century seem tame by comparison.

“You don’t seem very excited,” the woman said as her dog dragged her to the side of my bench.

I was startled at the sight of the German Shepherd. She had a sweetness about her. I wanted to reach out and pet her head but decided against it. The woman looked familiar, though I was in no condition to press my memory for details. “About what?”

“The space people. The aliens,” she clarified. Her Shepherd sniffed about the tips of my shoes then looked up at me. Her soft bright brown eyes and active expression was so compelling, and yet all I could think was that she was somehow related to those who were going to destroy us. “A spaceship landed outside of Tempe, Arizona.”

“Yes, I’ve heard.”

“My goodness, you seem so detached.”

There was a freedom about my attitude that even I was aware of. I was also aware of the number of dogs in the park. It gave me a terribly unsettled feeling. “I guess I am.”

“How can you not be excited?” she said tightening the leash around her hand and falling onto the bench. “The president was on television trying to reassure the nation.”

Thank goodness he wasn’t trying to get through to the editors at the Charleston Times. “I guess I missed it.” I began to massage my right elbow. It was quite sore and a little stiff. Tomorrow it was going to be a lot more tender. By next Spring, I will look back on this bruise as a very temporary and inconsequential inconvenience. By next Summer, who knows?

“He was so confident. It’ll be on again. You’ll catch it.”

“Was he reassuring?”

“Yes. Very.”

“That’s important.”

She straightened her hair. She was wearing baggy jeans overalls over a baggy white sweater. She was an inch or two taller than I was. Her face had an open sharpness about it as though she would listen but would not be easily convinced. “I’ll catch him later.”

“Well, Jillian here is really interested in the spaceship, aren’t you honey?” she said bending down to nuzzle her cheek against her dog.

“That’s a beautiful animal you have there.”

“That’s my best friend. She’s been with me for three years. She’s my lucky charm.”

“Have you ever heard of the planet Zegna?”

“No. Can’t say as I have. But you should know, I’m not one for science.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a fitness instructor. I have my own gym in North Charleston. I’m just visiting my sister over on McMurtree.”

The young woman was thin, athletic, the very personification of health, and if I may say so, a beauty. She was pretty in a soft, mellow way. Her looks weren’t as flagrant as so many young women’s were these days. From her style and grace, I imagined her to be somewhat of a throwback to a kinder, gentler era. “My name is Michael Denner.”

“I’m Jennifer Winslow. Friends call me Jenny. And of course, you already know Jillian here.”

If I told her what I knew she would nod politely and run for the bushes with her dog yelping at her heels. I would expect that of anybody. “Pretty name.”

“Why thank you. No one ever said that to me, not in just that way.”

“I can assure you, it was meant as a compliment.”

“Oh, I know.”

“Isn’t McMurtree behind the Confederate clock tower?”

“Yes. It’s one of my sister’s favorite places.”

“I love that memorial too.” The Confederate tower held out more than just the momentary flicker of time to me. It was a destination. The symbol of what I perceived could be my resting place if I decided to change my history.

“How come you’re not glued to a television set?”

“How come you aren’t?”

“If you’ve ever had a pet, you know their needs come first.” Jillian looked around the park with a curious eagerness.

I tried to assemble the details of my day before being shocked out of my reverie in the bar. How did I get there in the middle of the afternoon? The last time I was in a bar, I was watching the opening game of pre-season professional football in August with friends. I couldn’t recall anything before slamming my elbow. Hard as I tried, I seemed to have no past and if that was correct, no future either.

“Jennifer, did you ever share a secret with a stranger?”

She glanced around the park. Nearly everybody was listening to a pocket radio or collecting in small clumps discussing the news that had rocked the world. “What do you have in mind Michael Denner?”

“Well Jennifer, I’ll tell you. Firstly, the game works best when played by total strangers.”

“Even those who have shared a park bench together?”

“Those are the best kind.”

“Oh, this sounds really exciting, and please, it’s Jenny.”

“It’s simple Jenny. You tell me something that you’ve been dying to confess to someone, knowing that it will mean nothing in particular to me, but it will relieve you of the burden of holding onto it by yourself.”

“Strangers meeting on a train share a little part of themselves and then move on. No strings. No consequences.” She patted Jillian who quickly became less obstreperous. She continued to stroke her forehead until the dog’s energy was calmed. “Sounds mysterious.”

“You’re free to walk away anytime you feel so inclined. And I can do the same.”

“But you wouldn’t, because I think you want to tell me something really important to you. Am I right?”

“You’re much more than a gym teacher, Jenny.”

“And you look like you’re about to burst unless you don’t get something off your chest.”

“That obvious, is it?”

“Sorry, but it is to me.”

“It’s important to me that you trust what I say and there is no way for me to say what I have to say without possibly frightening you.”

“Me in particular or to anybody you want to tell your secret?”

“Oh, anybody.”

“Good. I just don’t want to be the object of a stranger’s secret.”

The use of the word “stranger” bothered me, then again so did the word “suitable.” “That’s not what this is about.”

“Well, if you ever wanted to get my curiosity going, you’ve succeeded.”

“I will ask you for one thing.”

“Which is?”

I pulled back from her. “That you give me enough time for me to finish my story even if you want to leave before it’s over.”

“I don’t know if I can do that.” She sounded guarded now. Her light, frothy manner had dissolved into a heightened hesitation.

“I know. It’s something that I shouldn’t have asked of you,” I said crossing my arms across my chest. “Well, if you’re game, so am I.”

“I’ll let you know when I’ve had enough.”

“Fair enough,” I said and began. The tale of the hounds of Zegna was told as I had witnessed it. I left out no detail, no unpleasantry bound to frighten or sicken. I spoke over the course of an hour with clarity of detail that had eluded me all my life. I spoke from the heart and when I was finished there was a period of time when all that moved were Jillian’s attentive ears. If Jennifer had been one of my pupils she would have never walked out of class when the bell rang.

“How would you feel Michael, if a stranger told you that story?”

“As disbelieving as you probably are,” I answered.

“I don’t know what to say to you.”

“I think you would have been better served if I had said nothing.”

“I don’t know,” she said and, with a gush of air that surely emptied her lungs, added, “My God, if you’re right!”

“There is no doubt in my mind.”

“I can see that,” she said staring down at Jillian.

“But you know, what does it all matter?”

“If someone told you that you had less than half a year before your life would change for the worse and forever; well, that would certainly matter.”

“I never thought of it like that.”

“It’s like being told by a doctor that you only have four or five months to live and after that everything you’ve known and come to rely upon will start to collapse all around you. Now what do I do?”

She was right. “I told you something that might help you.”

“But what if I believe you and don’t want to be helped?”

“Then I have done you a terrible disservice.” I had told her more than my secret. I had given her the power to adjust her life before it ended, but she would have preferred to be kept in the dark. I had given her a chance to prepare. And in saying what I had said, gave myself the same gift. Except that it seemed to mean more to her than to me. “You know if you tell anybody else they’re going to think you’re crazy and you might suspect I am.”

“I’ve been thinking about my mother in Pittsburgh. I have other relatives there and so many friends. My God. Every city is going to perish?”

“Every large city on the face of this planet is going to be incinerated in the first week. There is no defense. Thousands of smaller villages and the remnants of smaller communities like this are going to be kept alive but I don’t know why.”

“Just like that?”

“Nearly six billion people gone in less than two months. Most of modern civilization lost in a vapor. I lived through it Jennifer. I know what it’s like.”

A shadow descended upon this pretty young girl. I was overtaken by pangs of guilt. I didn’t have to say what I said, and yet I desperately needed to talk to somebody. I had friends, but in this case, unusual as it was, I really was more comfortable with a complete stranger. I thought a moment about the possibility of her and I meeting again, but it was apparent that what I had told her needed to be digested, and not in the company of the messenger. We both had to prepare for what was about to descend upon us.

“Jennifer?” I asked bringing her back from wherever it was that she had spent the last few moments.

“Yes. I’m sorry. I was just thinking about my baby brother. He just finished up his residency in medical school in California. We’re all so proud of him. He worked so hard to get what he has, and now it’s all for nothing.”

At that moment, I didn’t want this girl to believe me. Maybe not one word of what I had said. “He should know too.”

“I don’t feel well, Michael,” she said getting to her feet. “I think I should go now. I don’t mean to dispute what you’ve said but, you know it’s very hard to believe.”

“Impossible actually. I really didn’t expect you to believe me, and I’m not going to share my story with anybody else. I don’t need to wind up in some sanitarium and miss out on the death of civilization.”

“That sounds sick.”

“What else is there left but to be a credible witness to the destruction? What would you do?”
“Kill myself. Maybe.”

“I thought of that. And it may come to that. But for now I have time. Not a lot. You have time too. If you have loved ones go to them.”

“Then I would have to leave Charleston. Maybe go to the countryside where it is safer?”

“Just don’t forget to take Jillian with you.”

She came to my side and softly kissed my cheek. “Thank you. I mean it. If I didn’t believe you before, I do now.”

“Why?”

“If you had any intentions other than honorable you wouldn’t have wanted me to leave. You’re a good man, Michael Denner.”

I thought about asking her to call me Mickey, just once, but it was really too late for that. “Sometimes I am.”

“Did you ever think of contacting Sam Levin?” she asked and got up.

“No. No, in fact I hadn’t.”

“You might try.”

“You know, that’s a great idea. I have the time and he probably lives somewhere around here.”

“Good luck.”

“You too,” I said. Jennifer loosened the dog leash. Jillian turned and gave me one last playful glance before they disappeared around a thicket of bushes.

I spent the rest of the day in the park, more relaxed and renewed than I could recall. The pulse of people around me picked up with each new interaction with the aliens. By the time I got home, every channel was carrying the same story.

ALIEN CRAFT CRASH-LANDS IN THE UNITED STATES. AMERICA AND REST OF WORLD REACHES OUT TO EMBRACE INHABITANTS OF ANOTHER PLANET LOST IN SPACE.

How naive. How completely typical of our race, I thought. They would soon learn. They would witness the spectacle on television as reports came in from a smattering of cities. Ships landing, supposedly to locate the first one that had fallen off course. By the time their search was completed two dozen ships would have canvassed most of the earth’s surface. Satellites picked up their movement in our atmosphere but since we could not communicate with them, we could only wait. And we did. And as we did, we became more comfortable with those first dozen Dremlins. It all seemed so innocent, so much of what we all wanted to happen.

They would learn. First about the howling in the night, then all day long. They would learn not to look or hear and most importantly not to listen to the rumors of what these creatures were living off of. Smaller animals, some said. Rats and mice, others said with a note of appreciation. Dogs and cats was the most common speculation. And through it all, no one recognized a flesh eater for what it was.

I watched attentively on my television until I could no longer keep my eyes open. I recalled every event that took place from the first encounter to the first military interaction when the first warning was given and the first human life was taken.

I turned to the calendar on my kitchen wall. I had five months, maybe a little more before the purge began. I would live my life to the fullest in that time. I would take deep breaths, walk up to strangers, and tell them how important it was to live life to the fullest.

I would play in the park. I would divest myself of all my savings and travel and when my meager wealth was gone, go into debt until the very end. I would sing and dance and try to find someone who believed me and in our closeness share the need to wring every ounce of life out of the time remaining.

I would live as if there were no tomorrow, if only because I knew that there wasn’t.

 

– end –

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Published by Associate Editor on June 1, 2015. This item is listed in Issue 26, Issue 26 Stories

Bluebeard

By Molly Lazer

bluebeardIf you were to turn the hourglass back eighty years, long before you and I walked the forest paths of the Vale, when King Philip’s grandfather ruled over Colandaria, you would find the stream in the woods running in the same direction it does now, slow enough that children could chase after their wooden boats as the current took them away. The mists still sat low to the ground, snaking around the trees and hiding small forest creatures from predators overhead. And on most days, you would find Anelle sitting at her loom in her mother’s small house, hands flying across the frame as she pushed her shuttle through the warp.

By the time Anelle was twenty-one, she had woven thirty-six tapestries taller than her father. One, which showed knights battling a large dragon, hung in Lord Briadach’s front hall. She didn’t know where the others were displayed, but she hoped they gave pleasure to their owners.

Anelle watched her two older sisters marry at sixteen. Now she waited for her turn to stand with gold and silver threads twining her hands together with her husband’s. Summers passed, but her turn never came.

* * *

She heard about him first from Kira.

“They call him Bluebeard. He’s not handsome, but he’s rich. He spent five hundred lil on a fortepiano and another hundred to have the shop boys carry it to his cart for him. And he’s from the Vale! He’s young, too. Young enough, anyway.”

With her delicate, bird-like features, Kira flitted from suitor to suitor. She had already turned twenty, and her mother worried that if she didn’t settle, she would grow old alone.

“Did you speak with this Bluebeard?” Anelle asked, taking the scarlet threads that her friend brought from the Market and winding them around her shuttle

“No. There was something cold about him. I was afraid to.”

“But you think he’d be right for me?” Anelle poked Kira in the ribs so she laughed. “You think I’d be happy with the ugly, cold, rich man? We could spend evenings sitting by the fire so he could warm up, not saying a word. He sounds perfect!”

Kira stopped laughing. “It would be better than nothing, wouldn’t it?”

* * *

She saw him a week later at Lord Briadach’s ball. Kira pointed him out as the girls gazed into the crowd of whirling dancers. There were faces Anelle recognized—sons and daughters of the lords and ladies her mother would visit, girls she played with when she was a child. Lord Briadach stood on the other side of the room, one hand on his large belly as he spoke to a tall stranger in a midnight blue tunic. Kira leaned her head on Anelle’s shoulder. “It’s him.”

“Look at you!” Anelle exclaimed, “Lovesick over the cold, ugly man!”

As if her words had been carried over the crowd, the stranger turned and met her gaze. Anelle’s breath caught in her throat. His face was long and thin, and his hair and beard were so black they shone blue in the glow of the candles on the walls. His eyes were pale and frozen. She shivered.

The stranger bid farewell to Lord Briadach and crossed towards the girls. Briadach followed, making his own way through the crowd.

“I’m going to talk to him. How do I look?” Kira twirled. Her golden skirt spread out around her.

“Fine,” Anelle said, distracted as the man wove between the waltzing couples.

“Here I go.” Kira squeezed Anelle’s hand for luck and set off to meet the stranger halfway across the ballroom. Anelle called out, but her friend had already disappeared into the throng. The man wasn’t coming for Kira. Anelle could feel it deep in her chest. He was coming for her.

“Enjoying yourself?” Lord Briadach’s deep voice made Anelle jump.

“It’s a lovely ball,” she said. “The musicians are wonderful.”

Briadach chuckled. “They are, aren’t they? They can’t hold a candle to my boy, though. I almost have him convinced to take a turn at the crwth tonight.”

“Aidan is here?” Anelle asked. She played with Amena, Lord Briadach’s daughter, when they were younger. But Aidan had been older, wanting nothing to do with girls and their games.

“He came home in the spring,” Briadach said. “He’d been studying for so long I barely remembered what he looked like. When I was his age, I had a wife and family, but Aidan has his books and music.” Briadach scratched his moustache. “There have been ladies, but‒”

Lady Rowena appeared behind her husband. “Is Briadach boring you?” she asked, giving him a playful kiss on the cheek. “You’re scaring off all of this lovely young woman’s suitors. How is your mother, Anelle?”

“She’s well, thank you. She’s sorry that she couldn’t come tonight. She’s on her way to the Summit. My sister is due to give birth in a few weeks.”

“Wonderful news,” Rowena said. “Goddess bless the mother and child.”

Another childhood friend passed by and asked Anelle to dance. With a nod of encouragement from the Lord and Lady, she took his hand. As he led her out to the floor, she glimpsed Kira’s gold dress shining as she danced with the dark stranger. He was surprisingly graceful given his long, reedy limbs, and he twirled Kira with practiced ease. After one turn around the floor, Anelle decided that she was wrong. There was some color in his cheeks after all.

Later in the evening, Lord Briadach climbed onto the musicians’ platform and spread his arms to his guests. “My friends,” he said. “We invited you tonight to celebrate our son’s homecoming. He’s been gone five years, and we’re overjoyed to have him back in the Vale. Aidan, come up here.” With reluctance in his step, the young man came out of the crowd. Candlelight glinted off his blue-black hair.

“Bluebeard?” Anelle said. Kira blushed next to her.

Aidan shook his father’s hand and took a seat next to the musicians. The lead player handed him a crwth. The pale wood glowed against his dark tunic as he leaned the bridge against his shoulder. Anelle drew in a breath as his bow touched the strings. As the music washed over her, she pictured rain falling on the gently rolling hills of the Vale, the water bubbling out of the ground, making an ocean of the grass.

The crowd remained silent after Aidan finished. Anelle wiped away a tear. The only one who seemed unaffected by the song was Aidan himself, who gazed out at the crowd with a numb expression. Lady Rowena started to clap, and the mood broke. Aidan smiled and embraced his mother. It was a strange, slow smile, as though he were just learning how to turn the corners of his mouth up and show happiness.

Briadach nodded to the musicians, and they began to play again, a jolly reel this time. By the end of the night, Anelle battled exhaustion. She pulled Kira out of the crowd and told her it was time to go.

“Aidan asked me to stay. He’s going to play the fortepiano.” Kira glanced back at where Aidan stood, speaking with his parents.

Anelle could see the delight in her friend’s eyes.

“All right. Send word in the morning that you got home safely.”

“I will.” Kira bounded off with a skip and a wave, leaving Anelle to search out someone with whom she could ride the dark forest paths home.

* * *

Kira sent word that Aidan invited her to his estate, a quarter-day’s journey from Lord Briadach’s home at the Vale proper. Anelle knew the house; she passed it when she took the northeastern path on her long walks through the woods to find the plants she used to dye her threads.

She heard from her friend infrequently after that, as Kira spent more time with Aidan and bare winter branches sprouted spring buds. Anelle filled her days sitting in front of her loom. Her mind, most of the time, was elsewhere.

When she finished her weaving, she took the tapestries to the Market. She made the day-and-a-half-long trip once each season, loading her cart and setting out hours before dawn. When she was young, her father took her to the Market, hoisting her up to sit beside him on the wagon seat. Now, she made the journey down the shady paths of the Vale, along the border of the Runes, and past the Castle alone.

Anelle arrived at the Market in the evening and set up camp with the other wagons at the edge of the forest. She made small talk with the people around her and joined a family from the Ken at their fire for supper. Before going to sleep, she tied a string of bells around her wagon so that she would wake up if thieves came during the night. She slept with her head on a sack of yarn.

In the morning, Anelle found Madylen setting up her table. Madylen came to the Market twice each month to sell hides that she and her sisters tanned. Once each season—just before the Solstices and just after the Equinoxes—Madylen cleared off half her stand so Anelle could lay out her tapestries.

The Market was jammed with customers. Anelle’s stomach rumbled as the scent of the breads, meats, and spices being sold a few aisles away wafted over the crowd. She regretted only eating a slice of bread and a piece of cheese for breakfast. Music sounded from the gold entertainment tent, and when no one browsed their wares, Anelle and Madelyn danced to the bright rhythms, twirling each other around and laughing. They ducked under the table when explosions sounded from the other side of the Market and glittering smoke blew up into the air. Anelle had been down that strange, mystical aisle where casual Market-goers did not venture. The magics were beautiful, but Anelle always went home empty-handed.

After the midday meal, the mood among the vendors shifted. Anelle had to shout to be heard over the vendor across from her, who was selling cloth that he loudly advertised as the smoothest satin in all Colandaria.

Madylen haggled with a servant from the Summit over the price of an elk hide.

“My lord said I should only spend thirty.”

“It’s worth at least sixty.”

“I won’t pay a lil over thirty-five.”

Anelle leaned over Madylen’s side of the stand. “Make it sixty, and she’ll throw in one of the horns. Or take the hide and both horns for seventy-five.”

The servant dug into his sack for the coins.

“That hide was worth forty, at best,” Anelle said once he left.

Madylen shrugged. “He didn’t know that. You have a customer.”

Anelle turned and was ensnared by pale eyes and blue-black hair. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

“Anelle!” Kira, who Anelle hadn’t noticed hanging on Aidan’s arm, bounded around the stand to give her a hug.

“You look beautiful!” Anelle said. Kira stood back so Anelle could admire her dress, an expensive blue satin affair. Everything about her seemed more refined.

“Thanks,” Kira said, taking Aidan’s arm again. “We’ve been well.” He smiled at her, and Anelle was ashamed of her jealousy. “Aidan,” Kira said, “this is Anelle, one of my oldest friends.”

“I remember you from the ball,” he said. “It’s nice to see you again.” His voice sounded like the music of the crwth, textured and melodious, if slightly harsh. Anelle thought that if she closed her eyes and covered her ears, she would still be able to feel his words prickling at her skin.

Aidan ran his hand over one of the tapestries on the table. “Ah, yes,” he murmured. “The weaver. My father has one of your pieces in his hall.”

“It was one of the first ones I ever finished,” Anelle said.

“You’ve improved since then. How much do you charge for the large ones?”

Anelle glanced at the tapestry hanging behind her, which showed lords and ladies at a ball. She was proud of the way the ladies’ skirts twirled off the threads. But her pride changed to horror as she noticed for the first time the tall, lanky man playing the fortepiano behind the dancers. She vaguely remembered winding the inky black threads for his hair around the shuttle. If Aidan noticed his image, he didn’t show it.

“A hundred and fifty lil,” Anelle stammered.

“I’ll give you seventy-five,” Aidan said, and they began the usual dance between customer and vendor.

“A hundred thirty.”

“Eighty.”

“A hundred twenty.”

“Eighty-five,” Aidan said. “I won’t go any higher.”

“She’ll take it.”

Anelle tore herself away from Aidan’s gaze to look at Madylen. “What?”

“Eighty-five. She’ll take it.”

Aidan pulled the coins out of his pocket. Madylen took the tapestry down, rolled it up, and shoved it at Kira as Aidan poured his payment into her outstretched hand.

“Thank you,” he said. “It’s lovely.”

Madylen said, “Have a good day,” and waved Aidan and Kira away. As they left, Kira said she would visit Anelle soon. Aidan smiled at Anelle over his shoulder, and they disappeared back into the crowd.

“What was that for?” she asked Madylen, trying to mask her disappointment at Aidan’s departure. “You were rude to my customers, and you cost me fifteen lil! You know I don’t go lower than a hundred on the big ones.”

Madylen grumbled as she pulled three five-lil pieces from a box under the stand. “Here,” she said. “I couldn’t have that man standing here any longer.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s something wrong with him. I didn’t recognize him right away, but he courted my cousin a few years ago.”

“What happened?”

Madylen shook her head. “My aunt and uncle won’t talk about it. Tell your friend to stay away.”

Anelle caught a glimpse of the Aidan and Kira a few aisles away, arms intertwined, her head resting on his shoulder.

“Are you sure it’s the same man?”

Hatred shone in Madylen’s eyes. “Bluebeard? Oh, yes.” She got up as a customer approached the stand. “Excuse me,” she said and began to bargain.

* * *

Kira didn’t visit that week. When a fortnight had gone by with no message, Anelle began to worry. She shrugged off her unease—Kira was probably off somewhere with Aidan—and threw herself into weaving. But Madylen’s warning weighed on her. When a month passed, Anelle rode to Kira’s house.

Bronwyn, Kira’s mother, always kept the windows of their house open whenever the sun was out. Now, they were closed, and dark cloth hung over the glass. Anelle knocked three times before the door opened.

Bronwyn stood in the doorway. She looked thinner than Anelle remembered.

“Good day,” Anelle stammered.

“Is it?” Bronwyn asked. Anelle didn’t know how to answer.

“Is Kira home?”

“She’s taken ill.”

Anelle tried to look past Bronwyn’s shoulder. “Can I see her?”

Bronwyn shook her head. “You have to leave. I’m sorry.”

“But I—”

Bronwyn’s shoulders sagged. “I’m sorry.” She shut the door.

Three successive visits to Kira’s house met with the same result. Bronwyn looked more haggard each time she came to the door.

Desperate, Anelle turned to the northeastern path. Forest mist rose up from the ground, disturbed by her horse’s swift gallop. Aidan’s estate was set off from the path behind a grove of ash trees. She imagined that the mica in its stone walls might sparkle if the sun were out, but in the dull light of the grey sky, the house was foreboding.

She brought her horse to the stable and tied him to a post inside. The stallion in the first stall kicked over its water bucket, angry at the intrusion. Anelle stroked her horse’s mane and whispered reassurance. He looked at her as if he knew that her words were as much for herself as they were for him.

The grey estate was dark, eerily similar to Kira’s house. Anelle knocked on the large oak door.

The skies opened up as she waited for an answer.

“Aidan?” she called, trying to shield herself from the rain. “It’s Anelle, Kira’s friend.”

The house was silent. The door swung open when Anelle pushed at it.

She held her hands in front of her so that she wouldn’t bump into anything as she stepped into the dark house and called Aidan’s name. Just as she was about return to the stable to wait for the rain to let up, a soft glow caught her eye. She passed through a library, and, ducking under a thick drape, she stepped into the next room. Candles flickered in sconces on the walls. Aidan sat in front of the fortepiano with his fingers resting on the keys. His face was drawn and pale.

“Aidan?” Anelle said. He didn’t look up. “Do you know where Kira is? I haven’t seen her in a month. Her mother says she’s sick, but she won’t let me see her.”

Aidan didn’t respond. Anelle wanted to shake him.

“Where is Kira?” she repeated, more forcefully this time.

He looked up at her. His eyes were lifeless, his face slack and grey, completely devoid of emotion.

“Who?”

Anelle’s knees buckled. She reached for something to hold onto, and her hand brushed against a hanging on the wall. Without turning around, she recognized the careful pattern of the threads as her own.

“Kira,” she said. Aidan looked at her blankly. “My friend. The girl you’re courting.”

A memory flickered in his eye.

“She’s gone,” he said in a scratched monotone.

“Gone where?”

“She ended things with me.” Aidan pressed his index finger down on one of the fortepiano keys, and the note resonated through the room. He stared at the instrument, amazed.

Anelle rubbed her temples, trying to suppress her frustration. “Did you know she’s sick?”

He shook his head, but Anelle couldn’t tell whether he was saying yes or no. The candlelight created dark hollows under his eyes.

Anelle pressed her hand to his forehead. Her fingers froze, and he shrunk away. She imagined Kira at home, covered in boils, her skin turned black and flaking off, or laying in bed, unresponsive, with hollows under her unfeeling eyes, cold to the touch. Maybe Bronwyn had sent for a healer. Maybe she had given up and was sitting by Kira’s bed, waiting for the inevitable. Anelle wondered if the same thoughts were running through Aidan’s mind, or if he was even thinking at all.

Bronwyn wouldn’t let Anelle into her house, but Aidan had left his front door open.

All she could do was focus on what was in front of her.

“Come on,” she said, putting her arm around Aidan’s waist and standing him up. “You’re freezing.” He leaned heavily against her, and his head fell sideways to rest against hers. Anelle flushed at the softness of his hair on her cheek and was overcome with the feeling that, even if their relationship really was over, she was betraying Kira simply by being in Aidan’s house. His legs wobbled as she walked him out of the music room, and she forced her focus on keeping him balanced.

She wondered where the servants were as she fumbled through dirty pots until she found one clean enough to make soup with the meager ingredients Aidan had in his kitchen. The barley and yellowseed broth did little to warm him up, but Anelle thought she saw a bit of color return to his cheeks after he ate.

As night fell, Anelle curled up on the lyre chair across from the divan on which Aidan lay in the parlor. His shoulders and hips cut sharp angles under his blanket. Anelle was sure that she could hurt him with just a touch.

She asked, “How do you feel?”

His eyes were closed. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.

“It’s okay.”

“Sorry,” he whispered, and Anelle thought she saw a smile flicker onto his face as he fell asleep. “…I’m feeling…”

* * *

The sun cast bright rectangles on the stone floor. Anelle’s back twinged with pain from sleeping on the lyre chair. Aidan was still asleep. His resting form reminded Anelle of her empty loom; if she picked the right color and texture of yarn, she could weave him into whomever she wanted. But when he opened his eyes, Anelle knew that his pattern was already woven with a stubborn attention to detail.

She made sure that the candles were lit in the evening and the windows opened during the day. Without her weaving, her hands ached for something to do. She spent mornings tending to the garden behind the estate, mining its rows for potatoes, onions, and sweet maplemoss that she could make into a hearty stew. Afternoons were spent paging through the books in Aidan’s library. She slept in an extra bedchamber with a painting of Lord Briadach and Lady Rowena on the wall.

As the lord and lady stared at her, their smiling faces unchanged from morning to morning, Anelle wondered what she was doing at Aidan’s estate. What would her sisters think of her waking up in a bed that was not her own? What would her mother think of the fact that she was alone with a strange man? What would Kira—Anelle pushed away thoughts of her friend. When Kira was well, she would send word. Until then, Anelle could not help her.

Anelle’s sisters were busy with husbands and travels and babies. Her mother was too wrapped up in the arrival of her first grandchild to return home until after the Summer Solstice. Anelle was alone but for the man for whom Madelyn had shown such distain.

After a fortnight, Anelle came in from the garden to discover Aidan missing from his place on the divan. Her nervous search ended in the stable, where she found him bent over, cleaning the stalls. He stood up, cheeks flushed, brushed the hair out of his eyes, and nodded to her before returning to his task. Later in the evening, she found him collapsed on the divan, overwhelmed by his own determination.

The servants, two men and a woman, returned with the new moon. When Anelle asked where they were, the woman told her Aidan sent them to the Summit to find books for his library.

“All of you?” Anelle asked.

The woman shrugged, and Anelle sensed that this was not an uncommon occurrence.

“Aidan can fend for himself,” she said and went back to cleaning. Anelle pictured him weak and unresponsive and was sure the truth was otherwise. The servants never asked her to explain her presence at the house.

Without housekeeping to do, there was no need for Anelle to remain at the estate, but she could not bring herself to leave. The servants left her to garden, and the plot flourished under her care. On a cool morning, as she dug in the dirt, Anelle heard the glassy sound of the crwth floating from the window. That night, she sat in the dining room instead of taking her supper in her bedroom. Aidan sat across from her with the barest hint of a smile on his face.

“I heard you playing,” she said. Aidan’s pale eyes met hers. “It was lovely.”

He looked back down at his food. “Thank you.”

The next day, dark clouds threatened, erasing Anelle’s thoughts of returning home. Aidan mentioned at dinner that he’d noticed Anelle’s horse limping when he was in the stable. She wouldn’t be able to ride for at least a week. They looked at each other across the table, not saying anything else as they ate.

She became aware of Aidan watching her as she moved around the house. One evening, she found him sitting in the drawing room with a chessboard in front of him. She sat down and picked up a white pawn to make her first move. He asked about her family, and she told him about her mother, who couldn’t contain her excitement at the birth of her first grandchild, and about her oldest sister, who had traveled past the Farlands with her husband and returned with stories of deep canyons, purple sunsets, and people who could shoot sparks from their fingertips. “And your father?” Aidan asked.

Anelle rolled her rook between her fingers. “He passed last summer. He fell from the roof.” She brushed her cheek with the back of her hand. Even though it had been some time, the hurt at her father’s passing still seemed new. Aidan stared at her, and silence thickened the room.

Anelle slid the rook across the board to capture one of Aidan’s knights. “Papa loved the roof. He would go up there just to watch the clouds go by.”

“He sounds like a good man.”

“He was. What about your family?”

“You know them.”

“Not like you do.”

“My father is a loon, but he means well. He’s much smarter than people give him credit for. My mother is his oldest friend. They never tire of each other. I envy them.” He seemed surprised at this admission. It was the most she’d heard him say at one time.

“And Amena?”

Aidan took her rook with his other knight. “She’s married and living by the water in the Ken. I visited her while I was studying. She’s very happy. You knew her, didn’t you?”

“We played when we were girls.”

He looked up at the ceiling, eyes half-closed, a smile creeping onto his face. “Yes,” he said, “I knew it when I saw you at the ball. You were familiar, but I couldn’t place you. I remember the two of you playing by the river at my parents’ house. You’d always play at—what was it?”

“Being sailors,” Anelle said. “We had grand adventures. We even found some treasure. But as I recall, you never wanted to join.”

“No. You and Amena always ended up covered in mud. I didn’t want to get my books dirty.” He laughed, a strange guttural sound that caused Anelle to erupt in giggles.

“That’s the first time I’ve heard you laugh,” she choked out.

“I forgot what it felt like.” He studied her face until she had to turn away. “I remember you with your hair plaited all the way down your back. There was one strand in the front that would always break free.” He reached over the chessboard and tucked the stray lock behind her ear. “Some things don’t change.”

Anelle looked down at the game, blushing. She moved her queen to his side of the board.

“Checkmate.”

* * *

They talked about the books Anelle read and the flowers and vegetables in the garden. When it rained, Aidan taught her melodies on the fortepiano. She watched as he leaned into the instrument, his fingers dancing across the keys, reminding Anelle of her surprise at how gracefully he’d moved at the ball. On sunny days, she showed him how to make dyes from flowers in the woods. Their hands were stained ochre for days.

He rode with her back to her house to fetch clothing and her loom. There was a moment of hesitation before they returned to his estate, as if they both realized the absurdity of her staying at his house when her own was so close by. This time, there was no storm, no fog, no coming night or lame horse to keep her. The pieces of her loom were wrapped up in a cloth under his arm.

“Are you ready?” he asked. She nodded.

They did not talk about Kira.

When a thunderstorm shook his house, they sat on the divan, knees touching, using their laps as a table for the chessboard. The next evening, Aidan took Anelle up to the top floor of the house, cracked open a window in the roof, and hoisted himself outside.

He extended his hand into back the room. Anelle balked, unable to decide if he was being callous.

“My father–” Tears stung at the corners of her eyes.

“You said he loved going on the roof.”

“Yes, but–”

A wonderful, innocent smile played on his mouth, but not in his eyes. There was an emptiness in him that she couldn’t grasp. Sometimes she thought she had it, had him, but then whatever was lacking fell further away. He hadn’t thought that going on the roof would cause her pain. But it did. And she went anyway.

She took his hand, letting him help her up. The Vale spread out before them, the mists on the ground making the forest floor glow blue. The sky burned crimson. Aidan lay on his back, staring up at the purple clouds streaking the horizon.

“I can see why your father liked this,” he said.

Anelle pointed out constellations and told stories she learned from her father of how foolish birds, wise kings, and lithe fairies came to be hung in the heavens.

Aidan propped himself up on one elbow. “You’re always doing that. Weaving. Tapestries or stories, it doesn’t matter.”

Anelle brushed her hair back behind her ears. “Tapestries and stories have minds of their own. I just bring them to life. Each color or texture says something different, and even if I choose the wrong one, it’s a happy accident. I end up with something that’s different from what I intended, but whatever comes out is right. It’s like your music.”

Aidan watched a sparrow fly overhead, silhouetted on the moon. “Not exactly. The wrong notes are the ones people will remember. I can’t unplay a mistake. I have to get it right the first time.”

“Aidan,” Anelle said, “how is it that you’re almost thirty and you’re not married?”

He didn’t answer. She rolled over to look at him. He lay on his back, his face a mixture of tension and confusion.

“Why is it,” he asked in return, “that I’ve been well for more than a month and you’re still here?”

The questions hung between them, thickening the air.

 

 

With the Summer Solstice and another trip to the Market approaching, Anelle focused on her tapestries and thought about going home. Her threads wove a turbulent ocean with a ship rolling in the waves. She had only seen the sea in pictures, so she let her imagination fill in the gaps. She made a point to show clear sky in the distance to give her sailors hope.

The evening before she left for the Market, Aidan sat next to her as she tied off the fringe at the bottom of her loom.

“I was married,” he said. “You asked why I wasn’t married. I was, once. She ended it.”

“I’m sorry,” Anelle said.

Aidan’s voice was strangely emotionless, as though he were talking about something that had happened to someone else. “We were young. She was lovely in her wedding dress.”

When he didn’t continue, she began to remove the completed tapestry from her loom.

“And you?” he asked, inflection returning to his voice. “I answered your question. You answer mine. Why are you still here?”

Anelle folded the tapestry, avoiding his eyes for fear he’d see how nervous she had become. She was overcome with the sensation that something significant was about to happen. “I’m not,” she said. “I’m going to the Market tomorrow.”

“Are you coming back?”

Anelle traced the line of one of the waves crashing across the tapestry. “Do you want me to?”

He covered her hand with his.

“Yes.”

“Yes,” she repeated. She reached up and placed her hand on his cheek. He shuddered for a moment, and his eyes gleamed with something that might have been wonder. He leaned into her.

His beard tickled her chin.

* * *

At the Market, Madylen remarked upon Anelle’s good mood. Anelle only said that things were going well as she sold another tapestry.

“Your friend who was with Bluebeard. How is she?” Madylen asked as the girls sat around Anelle’s fire at the end of the day. She unbraided her long, red hair and began to comb through the snarls. “Say she left him.”

Anelle tore a piece of bread off of the loaf she bought as the Market closed. “She left him.”

“She got out in one piece?”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“She’s sick. I haven’t seen her since the Equinox. Her mother wouldn’t let me. But I think she did something to Aidan. He was strange after she left.”

“You saw him?”

Anelle nodded, and Madylen read the guilt on her face.

“You’re not‒?” She took Anelle’s hand. “Please, don’t.”

Anelle was silent.

 

 

Aidan was in the music room when she returned to the Vale. They sat side-by-side at the fortepiano.

“Play with me?” he asked. She began to tap out one of the melodies he’d taught her in counterpoint to his more complex song. She thought about the fear in Madelyn’s eyes when she said goodbye that morning and hit a series of wrong notes.

Aidan stopped playing. “Were those ‘happy accidents?’” he laughed.

Anelle looked at him. She thought about the two months she spent in his house and made the decision once more to focus on what was in front of her, what she could see, and what she felt.

“Very happy.”

But a seed of doubt had been planted in the back of her mind. Before the new moon, she would try to see Kira.

* * *

“I have to go.” Aidan walked into his bedchamber. “My father invited me to the Vale proper.”

Anelle looked up from her book. Aidan sat on the bed and put on his boots.

“Do you want me to come with you?” she asked. He lay back so that his head rested on her lap. She combed her fingers through his hair.

“It’s going to be a group of old men. My mother won’t even be there. You’d be bored. I think I’m going to be bored.”

“Fine.” Anelle pushed him off her. “I’ll stay here, all by my lonesome.”

Aidan pulled a key ring out of his pocket. “So you can lock the door if you go anywhere. The house key is the big one.”

Anelle twirled the ring around her finger. “And the little gold one?”

Aidan stood and turned towards the door. “You don’t need it.”

“What does it open?”

He didn’t look at her when he answered, so quietly that she wasn’t sure she’d heard him right.

“My heart.”

“What?”

“You don’t need to use that key, I said.”

“No.” Anelle got out of the bed. “You said it opened your—”

He pulled her towards him, pressing her hands to his chest. “So don’t use it,” he said forcefully, then, softening, “because you’re already here.”

After he left, Anelle dressed and set about her chores in the garden. She kept the keys on a chain around her neck. She threaded her loom, finished her book, and went for a walk in the forest, locking the front door behind her. By evening, she found herself pacing back and forth in the drawing room. She glanced her loom, but it held no interest. The forbidden key pulsed against her chest.

She counted rooms in her head: the drawing room, music room, library, kitchen, two bedchambers, the servants’ quarters. None of these had doors that locked. She grabbed a candle off of the wall. Guilt burrowed into her heart as she searched for a hidden door. She found it on the top floor in the corner where the moonlight from the window in the roof would never reach.

She fit the key into the lock.

She thought about Madylen and her cousin and about Kira. Even though she didn’t want to, she thought about Aidan’s wife, lovely in her wedding dress. Finally, she thought of Aidan. He asked her not to, trusted her not to. But that part of him that was missing–whatever it was–lay behind the door. She couldn’t do without it anymore.

Anelle turned the key.

Her candle had almost burned out. She winced as wax dripped onto her skin. The dark room stank of fetid, old metal. A broken, twisted form covered by a sheet rested on a low platform in the center of the room. As Anelle approached, what she had thought to be a shroud revealed itself as a long, white dress, stained dark red. The woman’s blonde hair, caked with gore, covered her face. Gold and silver wedding threads sliced into her wrists.

Anelle stumbled backwards as bile rose in her throat. She dropped the keys, which splashed into a pool of viscous liquid. Cold fingers brushed her neck. She wheeled around to face another form leaning up against the wall, head tilted at an unnatural angle and red hair cascading onto the floor. A jagged stump of bone protruded from the shoulder where an arm should have been. Anelle tripped over the missing limb as she went for the door, falling and landing hard against the ground. Her candle flew out of her hands and rolled into the center of the room.

There were nine bodies, bloody and mangled. Light shone on a figure in a blue dress slumped in the corner with a single gash across her cheek. Kira’s cold eyes stared back at Anelle as the candle shuddered and went out.

Anelle felt along the floor. Her fingers brushed against fabric, hard and crusted with dried blood, against hair and cold, waxy flesh, and, finally, against the doorway as she crawled back into the attic. She ran down the stairs and out of the house, gasping to fill herself with sweet evening air. The image of Kira, cold and alone but for her eight silent sisters, floated in front of her.

Anelle’s horse perked up as she ran into the stable and threw a saddle on his back. Wind tossed her hair as they galloped down the forest path. As soon as she could see Kira’s house, she leapt off her mount, ran across the clearing, and pounded on the door.

“Bronwyn!” she shouted. “Open up!”

Anelle heard soft voices as someone approached from inside. Bronwyn threw the door open.

“Goddess, girl, it’s the dead of night!”

Anelle’s hand flew to her chest to stop her heart from fluttering out.

“You said Kira was sick! She’s dead and locked up in a closet in the attic!”

“What are you blathering on about? Kira is here.”

“No,” Anelle stammered, “She was dead and there was a gash on her cheek and—”

“Kira is here.” Bronwyn placed a gentle hand on Anelle’s shoulder. “See for yourself.”

“Anelle?” A weak voice came from inside. Bronwyn stood aside as Anelle rushed by. Kira sat in bed, hair ringed by moonlight from the window behind her.

“Kira! But I just saw you‒”

Kira’s arms were pale and thin, covered with the fresh scars of pox marks. Her shoulders jutted out under her nightdress as she leaned forward to take Anelle’s hands.

“What are you doing here so late?” she asked.

“I thought you were dead,” Anelle said as a mixture of relief and confusion flooded through her. “I saw your body.”

“I’m not. I had the pox. I don’t remember much of it. But Mama took care of me. She said you came by a few times. I’m sorry she wouldn’t let you in. She was afraid you’d get sick, too. What happened? Did you have a dream?”

“No!” Anelle said, much louder than she’d intended. Bronwyn came into the room with a cup of tea and encouraged Anelle to sit.

“At Aidan’s house,” Anelle said, gritting her teeth. “There’s a room in the attic, and you’re in it. You’re dead.”

“Well, I’m not.” Kira laughed nervously. “I haven’t been at Aidan’s since a fortnight after we saw you at the Market. I was starting to feel sick, and he never noticed. I told him I wouldn’t be coming back.” Kira gazed at Anelle with amused suspicion. “Why were you there?”

Anelle’s hands trembled, and she fought not to spill her tea.

“I sent a message to your house when Mama said I could have visitors. Did you get it?”

“No,” Anelle said. “I haven’t been at home.” She ran her thumb around the edge of the cup. “Did you ever go up to Aidan’s attic?”

“Why would I?”

Hot tea splashed onto Anelle’s hand as she placed the cup next to the bed.

“I have to go.” She leaned over and kissed Kira’s forehead. “I’m glad you’re feeling better. And I’m sorry that I didn’t come around for so long. I’ve been—” She closed her eyes and Aidan smiled his wonderful, unreachable smile before the image decayed into something horrific. “I have to go. I’ll come again soon, I promise.”

She bid farewell to Bronwyn and guided her horse away with her hands locked around the reins. The horse trotted instinctually down the path back to Aidan’s estate, and Anelle turned him away.

Her mother’s house was almost unfamiliar as she put her horse back in his old stall. He whinnied, unhappy about the stale oats that had been in his bucket for the last two months. Anelle stroked his neck, promising she’d get him something fresh in the morning.

Rainwater streaked the windows. Anelle imagined her mother’s words of chastisement at how neglectful she had been. She picked up a paper stuck under the door. Was sick, the note said in Kira’s careful handwriting. Am getting better. Come by. ~K. Anelle folded the parchment and went inside. She walked through the rooms, brushing her hands over dusty tables. Leaving her dress on the floor beside her, she crawled into bed, pulled the blanket up to her chin, and stared up at the ceiling. For the first time that night, she cried.

* * *

It was all Anelle could do not to think about the hidden room as she spent the next day cleaning her mother’s house. She had come to think of Aidan’s estate as her home, comfortable and warm. Now, her memory made the structure dark and dismal. She had discovered what the house had secreted away and feared that there was worse yet to find within its master.

The dress that she wore the day before lay at the foot of her bed; the hem was caked with blood. A sob caught in her throat. She ran to the river that cut across her family’s land. No matter how much she pounded it against the rocks, the stain would not come out. As the sun set, she realized how much time had passed since she came down to the water. Her fingers were wrinkled, and the hem of the tainted dress was in tatters. She stared at the stream rushing below her and felt terribly alone.

Anelle hooked her hair behind her ears and turned towards the northeastern path.

* * *

The stairs creaked as she walked up to the attic, carrying a candle from the drawing room. Her shadow loomed in the narrow stairway. The door to the hidden room was still wide open. Decaying scents permeated the attic.

Kira’s body slumped against the far wall, wearing the same dress that she had worn when Anelle had seen her with Aidan at the Market. Anelle crouched on the floor before the corpse and touched its face. The skin was solid, waxy, and cold, but the body bore no signs of harm other than the gash across its cheek. Kira may have been alive and well, but this body was undeniably hers. As Anelle looked around the room, she tried to remember if Madylen said if her cousin was alive; the red-haired corpse on the opposite wall bore too strong a resemblance not to be her relation.

“Anelle?”

The voice came from downstairs. Aidan was home.

He called again, this time from the second floor. The stairs creaked as he ascended. Snuffing her candle, Anelle pressed herself into the shadows in the corner of the crypt.

Aidan stopped in front of the open door. His candle illuminated his hands and face, which crumpled as he looked into the room. “No…” he whispered. His breath blew out the flame for a moment before it caught again. He picked something up from the ground. Anelle saw the keys he had given her two days before, sticky with blood. He clutched the ring to his chest, streaking his tunic with the blood that covered the house key. From her hidden corner, Anelle could see that, just like her ruined dress, the key to the crypt remained tarnished no matter how much he rubbed at it.

Aidan’s motions became frantic, and he cried out as the metal ripped through the fabric and bit into his skin. With an anguished yell, he threw the keys against the wall, where they bounced off the stone and landed in the lap of a raven-haired corpse.

He walked with leaden steps towards the platform in the center of the room. Anelle shrank back against the wall to stay in the shadows. Aidan sat, regarding his wife’s bloodied body with indifference, and buried his face in his hands. He murmured Anelle’s name, sending a shiver down her back.

Aidan wiped at the tears that streaked his cheeks and spoke in what sounded like a foreign tongue, repeating the incantation with a rising cadence. The candlelight intensified as he spoke.

Thunder sounded inside the room, and Aidan’s body arced violently backwards. His candle fell to the floor. His eyes froze to the ceiling, and his arms spread wide as light shot forth from his chest. As the glow shifted above him, a female form swam in the air, made of light, dust, and starstuff. Aidan shook as the figure solidified. The form’s hair, which darkened to a reddish brown, waved about as though it were underwater. Her hands clutched at his chest.

Aidan’s face twisted as he contorted his torso in an effort to make the spectre relinquish her hold. A scarlet stain crept down the front of her dress. Blood sprayed across the floor as violent slashes appeared on her cheeks, but her expression remained loving. Her face floated down to brush against his cheek with a ghostly kiss. Aidan tried to pull away. His movement bent the spirit’s hands in an impossible angle. With a terrible snap, one of her fingers broke off, flying across the room to land next to Anelle.

She stared in horror at the broken digit. Without realizing what she was doing, she picked it up. The finger was warm and soft, like it was made of real flesh and bone. Blood dripped from the severed end onto her palm. She shoved it into the pocket of her dress as Aidan screamed again and panic rose inside her.

With a final cry, Aidan broke free, the spirit expelled. They both dropped to the floor. Aidan’s face smashed into the stone, and his nose gushed blood. The spectre, now solid, thudded to the ground with her neck bent at an odd angle. Anelle rushed over and rolled Aidan onto his side. His face was cold as she brushed his cheek with her fingers. He moaned. Anelle crawled back to the corner of the room, wrapped her arms around her knees, and rocked back and forth. Aidan’s body shook as he raised himself up, mechanically wiping away the blood that dripped from his nose. He stumbled out of the room with all the grace of a marionette with half its strings cut.

When she was sure he was gone, Anelle went to the new corpse. Her front was covered in crimson blood that was warm on Anelle’s fingers. She wore a gown the color of new grass, edged in cream-colored lace. Anelle recognized it as the one she had worn at Lord Briadach’s ball. She smoothed back the corpse’s thick, brown-red hair and found herself staring into her own lifeless green eyes.

She wanted to scream. She was staring into a mirror of what could be, where how she felt on the inside matched what she looked like on the outside, and for a moment, she wasn’t sure which body she belonged in. Her mind flashed back to Aidan’s exit, his indifference to what he had birthed, and everything came together. “His heart,” she murmured. “He said the key unlocked his heart.” She ran out of the room.

Aidan stood in the attic, staring at the wall. Anelle yelled at his back.

“Coward!”

He turned around, cocking his head as his blank eyes tried to decide what to make of her.

“On your wedding day,” she demanded, “how did you feel? Were you scared? Happy? Nervous? What were you?”

Aidan’s cheek twitched.

“And when she left you? How much did it hurt? You don’t know because it’s all locked up in that room. What about when you kissed me? How did that make you feel?” Aidan’s focus turned inward as he searched for an answer that she knew wasn’t there. “What about right now? What do you feel, Aidan? Tell me!”

“I don’t know,” he whispered in the dry monotone that Anelle hadn’t heard since she first entered his house. She rushed at him, pushing against his shoulders. He crumpled to the floor in a tangle of limbs.

“Did you feel that?” she yelled. “Is this some kind of test that you give all the women you court? You tempt them with the key and then see if they’ll look in your little room and find your secret? And when they fail, they end up—” Anelle grabbed the finger out of her pocket and shoved it in his face. “This is wrong!”

His eyes followed the finger with muted interest. Anelle hurled it at him. The finger hit him in the chest, where it vanished in a flash of blue light. Anelle took a few steps back in surprise. Aidan gasped, taking short, pained breaths. When he looked at Anelle, it was with the dim light of a far-away memory.

“What do you feel towards me right now?” she asked.

Panic sliced across Aidan’s face. He shrank towards the wall. “I don’t know,” he croaked. A bit of emotion returned to his voice. “It hurts.” He clutched at his chest where the finger disappeared.

Anelle sank down against the opposite wall, next to the door to Aidan’s heart, unlocked, its gruesome contents open for everyone to see.

“All those women,” she struggled to say what she was almost unable to fathom. “They’re not women. They’re you. Your feelings.”

“My wife.” The effort of recalling the memory showed on his face. “We were married three months. She said she loved me, but she just wanted status. And I—I wasn’t enough. I wasn’t right. So she left. I remember what happened, but it’s like a story that someone told me. It hurt, I think. I think it hurt like it does now. It’s like there’s just a little bit of feeling inside me, but it’s blown up to fill the whole space, and it—” He closed his eyes. “It’s too much.”

“And what is that feeling?” Anelle spat. “I hope it hurts. Because then you might understand how I feel.” Her cruelty shocked her. Tears sprang to her eyes. “But you can’t understand that. How could you think about anyone else when you keep having to learn how to feel again yourself?”

Aidan looked past her into the hidden room, breathing in ragged gasps. Fresh blood pooled on the floor near the entrance, mixing with the dried gore.

“It was so hard. She didn’t want to go,” he said. “Or maybe I didn’t want to let her. And she ended up like that. Some of them…are harder to let go.”

Anelle followed his gaze back to the room, where her figure stared at the ceiling with lifeless eyes. She felt a sick comfort at the idea that she had been one of the difficult ones.

“You can’t just magic away your feelings and put them in a room every time you get hurt.” She leaned back against the wall. “Those women—your wife, the others—what did they do when they found themselves in the room?”

“The ones who saw the room never came back. And the ones who didn’t—they never came back either. It was only when they were gone that I—”

Anelle felt heaviness in her chest as the last piece fit into the puzzle. “You thought I’d left for good,” she murmured. “So you got rid of me. And now you feel nothing.”

They sat in silence but for Aidan’s gasping breaths. Dust hovered in the shaft of moonlight above his head.

“I didn’t say you could do that,” Anelle said. “Put it back.”

Fear rose on Aidan’s face. “What?”

“All of it. The finger went back. Everything else can too.”

“I can’t.”

“You can’t, or you’re afraid to?”

He covered his heart with his hands. “Just putting that little bit back, it’s almost unbearable. All of it? I can’t—”

“You don’t know what you can do,” Anelle said. “You’re just a shell of who you’re supposed to be.”

“It hurts.”

“I’m sure it does. But you learn to manage it. That’s what we do when we lose someone. You got rid of everything, even the good parts, and you’re left with nothing at all.”

Aidan’s tears mixed with the blood from his nose. It seemed to Anelle that he’d actually become the empty loom she’d once imagined him to be.

“If I took it all back,” he said, “I don’t know who I’d be. All those feelings could make me into someone else, and…”

He looked down at his hands.

“…you might not want me.”

Anelle closed her eyes. Warmth flooded through her. Even now, when he was so incomplete, part of Aidan—the small part of his feelings he’d taken back already or maybe something even deeper—still cared for her. But he was right: if he emptied the room, took that grotesque menagerie back into himself, he could become someone else. His fear cooled her senses.

“You’re right,” she said. “I might not.”

She turned towards the staircase that would lead her downstairs and out of the house.

“But I might.”

She felt him reaching for her, but he stayed, tethered to the shaft of moonlight. She stopped, one hand on the wall, and turned back to him.

“You might not want me, either,” she said. “But I can’t love just part of you.”

As she started down the stairs, the bands that held Anelle’s heart together snapped in two. For a moment, she wished she could forget. But she reveled in the hurt, its strength almost making her smile.

* * *

In the week that followed, Anelle visited Kira every day but kept what happened in Aidan’s attic to herself. The girls went for slow walks along the forest paths. Kira leaned on a walking stick for support as Anelle gathered saplings to make a new loom. She furiously cleaned her house, making sure it was tidy for when her mother returned.

The new moon hid in the shadows when Anelle climbed up to the roof. She lay on her back, feeling the breeze tickle her bare feet, and closed her eyes.

A terrible scream from the distant woods jolted her out of her half-sleep, and she sat up, almost losing her balance. Blue light erupted over the tree line, illuminating the forest with starstuff. Anelle drew in a hopeful breath, but the light disappeared as quickly as it came.

* * *

A fortnight passed before there was a knock on the door. Anelle put down her shuttle, wound with thread to begin the first tapestry on her new loom, and ran to answer it, eager to see her mother after her long absence.

“Mama?” she called as she threw the door open.

Aidan stood before her, leaning wearily against the doorframe. Sunlight glinted off his blue-black hair.

“Anelle.” He looked exhausted. His cheeks were hollow, his undereyes puffy and dark. But fire radiated from within him, even as he looked away to fish for something in his pocket. When he met her eyes again, she knew that something was different. He was more present, more solid. His voice sounded with new resonance.

“I have something for you.” A shiver ran up her arm at his touch. He placed something cool and smooth into her palm and folded her fingers back over it, covering her hand with his. “You can do whatever you want with it. Keep it, give it back, throw it away. It’s yours.”

She opened her hand and looked down to see the small gold key, clean and sparkling in the sun.

She asked, “What is it?”

He smiled, and the man Anelle knew bubbled to the surface.

“My heart.”

 

– end –

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Published by Associate Editor on June 1, 2015. This item is listed in Issue 26, Issue 26 Stories

Moss

by Sara Norja

My father thought me beautiful, for he saw my mother in my deep-set eyes, my russet brown skin, in the sharp lines of my face. I hated each feature my half-remembered mother had given me. As the years laid their heavy blessings on my growing body, my father became restless. He repeated with a misplaced devotion the name my mother had given to me: “Tuar, my exquisite Tuar.” His eyes clouded till his widower’s sight couldn’t tell wife from daughter. His breath was a monsoon on my neck.

That’s when I ran.

I ran recklessly into the forest without thought of future, for the past breathed heavy behind me. The past chased after me on the leather-clad, soft-soled feet of my father’s soldiers. He has gone mad in his chase of my mother’s spirit, I told myself. She was not reborn in me: she still lived for some years after my birth. How could my father be so blinded by my resemblance to her?

He is not your father any more, said a quiet voice deep inside me.

Not after what he did.

◊ ◊ ◊

I kept running till my breath burned and the trees were mere blurs on every side. My muscles were shrieking for a reprieve, but I could still hear the distant clank of spear against shield. I had not lost the soldiers yet. I crossed every stream I could, to hide my tracks and get spiritual distance. The forest’s running water, they say, can rise to swallow up past darkness. I prayed it would.

Near twilight, the din of clanking weapons drew closer. Like a cornered animal I panicked and stumbled on a massive tree-root stretching down to a dip in the ground.

The trees in this part of the forest were as wide as houses, their roots clambering over the earth to reach the streams and still waters. Desperate, I scrambled down and found a deep hollow between the great tree’s roots. Ferns covered the swampy ground next to it. I lay hidden there for a long time, till all I could hear was the forest: the trees sighing, birds chattering, and small animals rustling in the undergrowth. The soldiers had passed onwards. A hot rush of relief washed over me like the summer rains. I climbed back onto drier ground. My black hair reeked of swamp water and coiled even tighter from the moisture. My shirt clung to me, wet and heavy. I stank, but they hadn’t found me.

I stumbled on well into the night, away from my father’s palace and away from the soldiers, till the chase was but a patter of feet, a clatter of spears in my dreams. I ran on till I could run no longer. Ragged-throated, feet bleeding where my sandals had chafed them, I slowed down to a walk.

I didn’t know where I was. I breathed in the marshy, stagnant air and listened to the night sounds of the forest. I was lost, tremble-legged, and so hungry my stomach prickled and shouted.

But I had evaded the king’s soldiers for now. I curled up in another tree-hollow, too exhausted to fear jaguars or other beasts. The moss under me felt softer than any sleeping-mat, and I soon fell into a dark, dreamless sleep.

◊ ◊ ◊

On the third morning, I awoke to the chattering of birds and a growing light. When I opened my eyes, I yelped.

Almost transparent in the moist morning air, a small sphere of light bobbed before of me. I stared at it warily. Perhaps it was just an illusion caused by hunger. During the past days I had eaten all the plants I’d been taught were safe; but in my past life I had been lazy with my woodcraft, preferring to concentrate on the smooth movements of the defensive discipline taught by my bodyguards. I had never expected to wander pathless in the wilds in the wake of the monsoon. Perhaps I had eaten something poisonous. Perhaps I would die. My body, too like my dead mother’s, would rot and be devoured by the smallest creatures of the forest.

The vision before me did not fade. I had heard tell of ghost lights, fool-fires my nurse had called them: trickster creatures that lurked in the deepest forest where humans had not set foot in centuries. I had taken them for a tale spun by my nurse. But the sphere hovered in front of me as if curious.

I rubbed the sleep-bleariness from my eyes with my grubby hands. Panic filled me as I gained full consciousness, as it had done every morning. I listened for the chase, but could hear nothing but the birds.

They’re gone, I told myself. You’re all alone in the world, but you will never have to see your father again.

The thought rang like a bell within me. Despite being hungry and lost in the forest, I broke into a smile. I sat up and contemplated the ghost light. As if it had noticed my movement, it bobbed a little higher and retreated.

I didn’t want it to go away. This strange sphere of light didn’t really count as company, but it was the closest thing I had right now. I got up slowly, muscles trembling. I had run longer than ever before over the past days, and my body told me so with every aching movement. I stumbled a few steps towards the ghost light. It retreated yet again, hovering now at head-height beside a small thicket of young shoots. I limped towards it, yearning to get closer.

The ghost light fled before my steps, but never out of sight, even though the undergrowth was dense and wild. I followed. All day I followed it, aching muscles and hunger forgotten in my desire to catch up to the creature. My consciousness faded, and my body became a tool for getting closer to the shining light.

◊ ◊ ◊

I stubbed my toe on a rock and snapped back into full awareness. The sun told me how much I had lost of the day: it was nearing evening already. And there was the ghost light in front of me, shining more faintly now. The trees grew less dense in this part of the forest and there was more sunlight despite the gathering dusk. I stepped forward to touch the ghost light – and it vanished entirely.

Bitter tears sprang to my eyes. It was too cruel, to lose the creature after such a long pursuit. I fell to my knees bruising them on sharp tree-roots.

Through my tears, I looked up and saw I was at the edge of a clearing. Almost I forgot my disappointment as I saw the great stone walls rising to tree-height and beyond. Where had I wandered?

The forest was dense and vast. My people knew little of other lands or peoples apart from wild rumours. A few times, we had encountered strangers in trade, but my father had discouraged such dealings. My people stayed within the lands of our ancestors.

I heard a harsh voice behind me. I scrambled to my feet and turned to see a man clad in the green of the forest. His eyes were dark as the earth, and his skin was like mine, a rich russet brown. He sounded angry. I couldn’t understand a word.

I had known other languages existed, somewhere, far away, but this reality where someone spoke to me and I was as lost as a newborn – it filled my heart with the swamp water of fear.

“I don’t understand,” I said. His face was open with the same incomprehension mine must have been filled with. He frowned.

I noticed the long knife at his belt, and terror clawed at me. Had I run into deeper danger?

My fists clenched, my teeth pressed tightly together. No matter what happened to me here in this strange new place, it could not be worse than the horror of my father’s love.

◊ ◊ ◊

The man with the knife took me into an echoing hall in the sprawling building of stone that lay within the walls. He was eyeing me as though I were a half-wit. He had kept doing so ever since I had spoken my language and he had not understood. I walked as in a dream, accepting that I understood nothing of the words spoken by these strangers. Strangers, to whom I was a stranger.

At the far end of the hall I stood before an old man sitting in a high seat. Gold bands adorned his wrists and neck, and he wore a tunic of soft-spun linen. He was the king; that I could tell even without language. He watched me for a long time, his eyes half-hooded. He looked nothing like my father, but I could not bear his stare. I was clenching my fists so hard it hurt. My breath came only in small gasps, as though someone were pressing on my chest. I could not look at him, but when I focused behind his seat I saw a young man with gold around his wrists. He flashed a crooked smile at me, and I looked away. I did not want smiles.

Eventually the king stopped staring and started speaking to the man who had brought me to him. As if his speech had lifted a spell, suddenly the room was full of murmuring, the courtiers’ voices rising and falling in an unfamiliar lilt. I was drowning in sounds I couldn’t make sense of. It made me feel dizzy. Or perhaps that was just my hunger, which was rising up to engulf my whole self, as if all I was could be reduced to slavering mouth and gaping stomach.

The king bent to speak with a tall, thin man with a shock of hair and deep yellow robes. After a short whispered conversation he proclaimed something to the hall at large, gesturing at me. I wondered what fate I had just been consigned to. If death, I prayed it would be swift.

They took me to the kitchens, where it was so sweltering hot that I was sure I’d drown in the heat. I was shown to a woman who I guessed was the cook. She took a long look at me and sniffed with displeasure. I realised that the stink of the swamp water must linger on me. But she nodded.

Two servants took me to a small courtyard next to the kitchen. They stripped me of my clothes till I stood naked in front of them. They poured water on me from the well in the courtyard then, and I rejoiced in getting clean. I scrubbed away the first layers of shame and fear. I started to realise that I had not been sentenced to death.

They brought me a green calf-length tunic of a strange material like rough-woven linen. It felt like the forest when I drew it over my exhausted head. The moss-like material scratched my skin, but it was clean. And it was nothing at all like the robes I had worn at the palace I had escaped from.

“Dayi,” the servants said and laughed. I stared at them, suspecting that the laughter was malevolent. But they smiled at me, so kind to a languageless stranger pushed into their midst. Almost, something began to melt in my heart.

And they gave me food. Oh, to eat after days of hunger! The simple corn porridge and beans tasted better than any of the festival foods at my father’s house. I ate till my stomach ached. My mouth felt strange; I realised I was smiling.

◊ ◊ ◊

To not share a language, I soon understood, meant isolation. Loneliness despite the constant presence of people. My mind was still clouded, as though I were dazed from the vision of the ghost light, but it eased with every day that passed. I listened to the servants as I worked at whatever simple task I was given in the kitchen or the grounds: stirring pots, grinding corn into meal, carrying deadweight sacks of produce. I listened to the women as we wove baskets together. When my unaccustomed fingers fumbled, they scolded me, and I listened although I didn’t understand.

I didn’t keep track of time passing. What mattered was that the chase was over. I had arrived here at the kingdom of Eri, as its inhabitants called it. It did not matter that my days were dull and repetitive. I worked and listened; I slept. It was enough. I yearned to feel my body straining in the seven movements of the discipline, but safety was a fair trade for movement.

Eventually, I started speaking. Haltingly, I tested out words that I had heard often enough in a certain context that I could make a guess at their meaning. Smiles and cries of “io!” encouraged me. Soon words became sentences. Their strange language was difficult to me, but I had begun to crack the mystery’s shell.

They called me Dayi, Moss-tunic, after the clothes I’d been given, common attire for the poorest people in the kingdom. I was relieved they had not asked for my birth-name, for I could not yet think of Tuar without hearing it in my father’s voice.

◊ ◊ ◊

The season changed; the winter drought came with its rough winds. We huddled close to the fire pits and told stories. The others told stories, that is; I listened, and tried to understand.

There came the day I realised I had been there many moons. And that I could understand almost everything the cook was saying. The story she was embarking on, I gathered, was commonly told in the kingdom.

The cook began, in the low tones she reserved for storytelling. A long time ago, she said, during the heavy summer rains, a strange woman came to this palace. The newcomer was a commoner, they all thought, although she must have lived in a great household as servant, for she was fair of speech.

On the night of the great year’s-end festival, a strange and beautiful woman arrived draped in a robe of thinnest linen, like a waterfall. She was dark and lovely as a summer’s night, and turned everyone’s heads. No one’s head was turned more than the king’s son’s. He sat with her all night, and gave her the golden ring from his hand. When she disappeared with the first rays of the sun, gathering shadows to her, people saw tears in the young man’s eyes.

He pined; to his father’s despair, he vowed that the only woman he would marry was the stranger he’d given his ring to.

The ring turned up in his soup a week later. Our cook took great pleasure in recounting how the cook in the tale first told the king’s son that she had made the soup: she had not wished people to know that she’d been dallying with one of the king’s guards while she left the newcomer to prepare the meal.

But the truth came out, as it will. The newcomer was brought before the king and his son. They wiped the grime from her face and saw shimmering brown; they took the scarf from her head and released a flood of long braids. They searched her room and found a shimmering waterfall of a robe.

She had not done a good job of hiding things. She hadn’t wanted to. And so the newcomer and the king’s son were married.

“‘He can’t marry a commoner!’ people cried,” said the cook. “But it turned out that she was actually the daughter of a noble lord. Why she left her life of comfort to work here, no one knows… But these old stories are full of stranger things by far.”

My skin crawled. I could think of many reasons why someone of noble birth should wish to escape.

◊ ◊ ◊

When the winter drought passed and new warmth rose to engulf us, I retreated from the confines of the kitchen. I had found the gardens within the compound, and I spent what time I had to spare wandering in them, seeking to quiet the memories that still troubled me. My father’s halls had no such thing as a tended garden; we just had fields near the palace. No garden such as this, certainly, this garden with its glory of colours, edible plants and flowers tumbling over each other to fight for life. There, I almost felt that one day I could come to full life again, such as I had not felt since I grew into my mother’s likeness and realised the reason for my father’s maddened gaze.

I breathed deeper in the garden. In the long months that separated me from my origins, I came to realise that although I was free from my father, I was not, in truth, free. I was a foreigner, still treated as a stranger despite my increasing command of the Eri language. I was kept within the walls. They were spacious confines, yes, in this sprawling compound – but it was a cage nonetheless. Sometimes I felt a helpless rage simmering within me.

Yet my mind was free to wander, and my body my own to command.

I liked to go into the gardens at nightfall, when my duties for the day were done. I slipped in through the gate in my bare feet. After the stone floors, the grass felt soft and silky on my soles. I smiled. Like most days, mine had meant sweltering kitchen heat and too many people. The garden was not the forest that breathed around us, its wildness kept out by the high walls. The forest – my protector, my safekeeper. Still, the garden had green, growing things.

A prickling of my fingertips told me I was not alone as I had hoped. Further in the garden, I saw the Magicworker taking the air.

He turned and noticed me. I went cold all over. His eyes were on me, soft as river water.

I had only seen him once before, in the king’s hall on the day I arrived at this prison of service. I had noticed his rich yellow robes, the gold glimmering at his throat. I hadn’t known who he was, but my months of servitude had taught me that he was the king’s Magicworker, a man of arcane knowledge.

He was younger than I had thought at first. No grey was in his dark cloud of hair, no heaviness in his step.

He looked nothing like my father, yet still I felt nervous, alone in the company of a man.

He was standing in front of the fountain in the centre of the gardens, next to a bush of bright flowers. The movement of the water was a soft lilt in the evening air. He said something, clearly directed at me. I felt I was back in that first moment when the guard had caught me in the forest and the kitchen girls had called me the incomprehensible Dayi. I did not understand. There was a familiar structure to his words, but the sounds were strange. I felt I should understand what he was saying, but as he kept talking, the meaning escaped me.

The Magicworker frowned as he realised I did not understand him. He frowned, and then he said: “I am sorry.” The words were inflected differently to what I heard in the kitchens each day; but I wasn’t drowning in a sea of strangeness any more.

In my bafflement, I burst out: “Why did you speak that strange language to me?” It bewildered me, that there should be so many languages. In my past life, I had known only one; and now it turned out that there were many.

“At first I did not realise you don’t understand the noble speech. You are the one they call Dayi, is that right?”

I cast him a suspicious glance. Why should he know the name the other servants called me? But my status did not allow for insubordination. “I am.”

“I heard you knew not a word of our language when you came here.”

“That’s true. But I learned.” And still it burned, that he had spoken to me and I could not understand.

“You have learned the commoners’ language very well,” he said with a smile.

“The commoners’ language?” I stumbled over the words. “Why are there different languages for nobles and commoners?” In my own language, I knew there were words that I used that the servants did not, and in turn they had turns of phrase that I did not know the meaning of. But we could understand each other nonetheless.

The Magicworker shrugged, a strangely common gesture for such a well-clothed man. He glanced at me. “I don’t know the reason, but so it is. I have gathered from old writings that the two languages were once one and the same, but the nobles have lived so separate from the common people that the similarities are obscured. Both can understand the other’s language, but it is forbidden for nobles to speak the commoners’ language and the other way round.”

I strained to understand his strange words. Then something occurred to me. “But my lord, you’re of noble birth. How is it that you speak this language?”

An embarrassed look stole onto his face. “Ah,” he said. “You have stumbled onto my secret.” His inflections seemed more familiar now. “You will not tell anyone,” he continued.

“Of course not, my lord.” I had no idea what it was that I was not allowed to tell.

“The fact is, I am not of noble birth. Yes, I am noble now, with all the trappings thereof at least: but I was born a commoner in a village not far from here.” He fingered the gold chain at his neck. “My lord the king has great plans, and he needs magicworkers for them. My natural skills were such that the previous Magicworker brought me to court when I was a child. That is why I can speak like both the commoners and the nobles.”

I was shocked that he would reveal such personal matters to a servant girl he had only just met. But thinking of my own relationship to my servants in my father’s court, I understood that he was telling me these things because we were not equal. He had nothing to lose by telling me of his origins, which were more than likely no secret despite his order to tell no one.

I could never reveal my origins. Although I had come far, if the king of Eri found out who I was, he would ransom me back to my father. I shuddered.

“Are you cold?” the Magicworker asked.

“No,” I said; and indeed, it was a balmy evening.

“Do you walk here often?”

The question fell like swamp water on my neck, leaving me trembling and uneasy. I didn’t know what to reply, what to do. I was afraid he would touch me. For a moment, I had felt comfortable. Now I was trapped again in the cage of my fear. I worried at the twisted ends of my hair.

“No matter,” he said. “I don’t come here often. Mostly only when the sarag are in bloom.” He pointed at the flowers he had been gazing at. I memorised their name. “But I’ll be glad to see you again if you chance to walk here.”

He left with a swishing of robes and the lingering waft of a scent I couldn’t identify.

He had left me alone. He had talked with me, whom he thought a servant girl. He hadn’t touched me.

The stars winked at me, so high up that they transcended every wall and cage.

◊ ◊ ◊

I didn’t hope to find the Magicworker at the gardens when I next walked there in the gathering dusk. But when day after day passed and I didn’t see him again, I found an odd knot of sadness in my stomach. He needn’t have even bothered to acknowledge my presence in the garden, but he had talked with me. He hadn’t been like the noblemen I’d known in my father’s court, who would treat the servant girls as playthings for their rough amusements. The Magicworker had talked to me as one person to another. Even the servants at the Eri court didn’t do that: they still talked to me as though I were a stranger.

Two weeks later I was busy at work measuring out spices for the king’s midday meal, under the cook’s strict supervision. She was particular about spices.

With a clattering and pattering, the kitchen door banged open. Startled, I spilled powdered cinnamon onto the table and winced at the mess. The cook let out a volley of curses too quick for me to understand. I glanced up, irritated, to see who had rushed in. It was one of the court’s messenger boys, peering into the room with his beady eyes.

“What,” said the cook with a razor edge to her voice, “are you doing in my kitchen, scrapling?”

To my consternation, the scrawny lad pointed at me. “I’ve been sent for her.” Speaking loud and slow, he addressed me: “Dayi, you’re to follow me to the Magicworker’s quarters.”

The cook huffed. “How dare you invent such nonsense! What should the Magicworker want with a foreign kitchen servant?”

The messenger boy professed his innocence and vowed he came from the Magicworker himself. “He asked for the girl in the moss-tunic, Mistress Cook! Honest he did!”

The cook sighed and gave me a long-suffering look. “Go, then,” she said to me. “Make sure you do whatever the Magicworker wants.” Her eyes narrowed on whatever, and I shivered. I did not want to be a vessel into which anything whatever could be poured.

I trotted briskly behind the messenger boy through a maze of courtyards and corridors.

“Here’s Dayi, my lord,” the messenger said when we entered the Magicworker’s lodgings. I gazed around the high-ceilinged room. The tables were full of scrolls, reed pens and ink-bottles scattered among them. Several wax tablets were strewn around, marked with strange symbols that I presumed must be writing in the local language. The walls were lined with shelves laden with all manner of strange objects, ranging from small river stones to cunningly crafted golden goblets.

The Magicworker lifted his gaze from the wax tablet he had been furiously scribbling on with a stylus. “Good. You can go now.”

When the door had closed behind the boy, he turned to me. I quailed before him now, him in his own habitat, and me a lost girl in a foreign land. Me with my dark memories that were shooting up my skin with every look a man gave me.

I steeled myself. I glanced at him, not fully in the eye, aiming for a servant’s humility.

“You are probably wondering why I summoned you.” His noble inflections were still confusing, but his words came slow and steady, seemingly for my benefit. I was baffled by his sympathy.

He cleared his throat. “I am going on an expedition into the forest’s depths, Dayi, and I need you to come with me.”

I stared at him, humility lost. “Me, lord?”

“I have talked with the guard who brought you to the king’s hall. He said he found you in the forest, half-starved and speaking a strange tongue.”

My thoughts reeled back to that day many moons past. How lost I had been. How the ghost light had brought me to this place and vanished before I could reach into its glow.

“You come from a long way away, don’t you.”

My jaw tightened. I didn’t want to answer any questions. No one had made me fabricate a story of my past, and I didn’t wish to tell falsehoods now. But I was not going to tell the truth, either. I would never tell the truth.

The Magicworker’s eyes crinkled in a smile. “Where precisely you come from is not my concern, although I must admit it’s a fascinating mystery. What I am interested in is your knowledge of the forest. You have wandered far in it. You have tasted some of its mystery. And” – he came closer, and I flinched – “you know some of its magic.”

How could he know that I did know a sprinkling about forest magic because of my encounter with the ghost light?

“It’s written in your eyes, Dayi,” he said before I could ask, “for those who have the power to look.”

“I don’t want anyone looking in my eyes,” I said, speech clumsy. I concentrated on the floor beneath my bare feet. A beetle was making its way across one of the stone flags.

With a rustling of robes, the Magicworker went back to his table. In a voice so quiet I could barely hear him, he said: “I mean you no harm.”

I wasn’t sure I could believe him. My father, after all, had said he wished me nothing but good.

“I wish for you to come with me on this expedition,” said the Magicworker. “The king has agreed to grant this wish on the condition that I return you to the court once we are done. He fears you will go back to where you came from and reveal that a rich people live here, and next we will see armies searching for our gold.”

A choked laugh escaped me. “I will never go back.” Then I tightened up again. I feared my bitter tone had revealed something about my past.

“Well then,” said the Magicworker. He was not going to address the issue. “Bring what clothes you own and fix yourself a sleeping-roll. We leave tomorrow.”

◊ ◊ ◊

We set out without ceremony, for the Magicworker said the king’s court had no need to know of his comings and goings. We had gathered in the eastern courtyard, near the small gate at its edge. Dawn’s questing light was reaching over the treetops.

I was still astonished that he had chosen me to join him on this secret expedition: I was a stranger, a lowly kitchen servant. His other companion made far more sense.

“This is Niani, my assistant and bodyguard,” the Magicworker told me in the commoners’ tongue. He turned to Niani and said in an apologetic tone, “She doesn’t understand the nobles’ language, so I must speak in the commoners’ manner although it’s not precisely proper.”

Niani nodded, betraying no signs of censure. She was clearly proficient in both tongues. A tall woman with the bad posture that probably came from constantly bending down to talk to shorter people, she did not seem easily shocked. I hadn’t had reason to speak to her before, for she was of a higher class of servant. My heart beat a nervous pattern in my chest as I considered the fact that I would be travelling together with these new people for almost a moon-cycle. Niani wore a simple travelling tunic and was bowed down to an even more crooked position under the weight of the pack she carried.

“We don’t have a pack animal.” I regretted the words at once, but the Magicworker did not rebuke me for speaking before being spoken to.

“We will be going into parts of the forest where I suspect a mule would only be in the way. Together we’ll carry what we need.” He shouldered his own pack with an effort. I was only a little surprised he would deign to carry a burden himself.

Niani’s dark eyes measured me. I could sense she was dubious of my inclusion among the expedition. But her eyes were not unkind.

“This is Dayi,” the Magicworker introduced me in turn.

“Yes,” said Niani, “she is, is she not?” She eyed my moss-tunic, which had lightened several shades in the sun and was quite worn from use. I had no other clothing apart from my loose pantaloons and a short cloak given to me by the cook. My feet were bare. I didn’t know what had happened to the sandals I had walked into the compound with.

“The sun is rising,” said the Magicworker. “It’s time for us to leave.”

I shouldered my pack with a surprised grunt. It was heavier than I had thought. I gritted my teeth. I was still not used to such burdens, although my work in the kitchens had made me hardier than I had been in my past life.

We went through the gate, where a single guard nodded sleepily at us. Then we were past the grey stone wall that marked the outermost bounds of the court compound – of my cage. A shiver went through me. Even though it was only for a while, I breathed the forest air again. My safeguard, my green hiding-place of roots and hidden streams.

My feet greeted the springy moss bordering the path like an old friend. The burden on my back pressed against my shoulders, but my step was light. The forest, its green smell. How it groaned and muttered around us.

I was not the accursed king’s daughter here, nor was I another king’s slave. I was just Dayi, in my tunic of moss weave. I was Dayi, following the Magicworker in his yellow robe, following Niani in her earth colours.

In truth, I had almost forgotten the name my mother had given me.

◊ ◊ ◊

On the second day of our journey away from the Eri king’s court, we had already passed into strange lands. We travelled north and west; the Magicworker said that the king’s hunters never went north, for the best game was to the south and east. But with a faraway look and a glance at the small wax tablet in his belt pouch, he said that his calculations pointed northwest.

I didn’t know why we were travelling, but I kept my heart calm. These lands were as unfamiliar to me as the Eri king’s court. My father’s lands were many days’ travel in the opposite direction, or so I supposed.

The trees we travelled among dwarfed the trees I had played among as a child. As we walked in single file, they cast us into cool shadow. Patches of sweltering sunlight reached the ground with its ferns and moss, but the trees reared up, green giants. We could hear the creatures of the forest moving around us, but they were wary and hid themselves. Birds were the only creatures we saw with any regularity.

I felt that I came to myself again, as we walked, as the forest grew around me. I had been in servitude for so many moons that I had lost the thread of my life. The thread that my father had frayed. But now, in the wild, the thread was starting to weave itself together again. I didn’t know where we were, but it was a place without walls.

After this expedition, I would be brought back to the kitchens. The Eri king did not want me to escape.

I was fleet-footed. If I ran into the forest, I might find another settlement. More likely, I would run until I starved. The forest was vast; some said it spanned the whole world. In its depths, an untrained refugee could come to great grief.

Such thoughts were with me as we continued our journey. The Magicworker and Niani were both silent. After the chatter in the court’s kitchens, the quiet was like the touch of water on sweaty skin.

We followed no discernible path, and but for the Magicworker, we would have been lost. I never saw him use magic, exactly, but his whole demeanour reminded me of a hunting hound. When we camped at nightfall, he would stand still, eyes closed, breathing deep and steady. Niani muttered something about magic, catching my eye with a wink, and I tried to catch him doing astonishing things. But he just stood and breathed, echoing the trees in their leaf-rustling.

◊ ◊ ◊

I had not asked for our destination, nor had the Magicworker said anything about it. I assumed he knew where we were going. To wander aimless in the forest was madness. I did keep wondering about the reason for this expedition, though. Above all my thoughts circled around why he had wanted me with him, when I had been utterly useless so far.

There came a day when the Magicworker paused mid-step. “I’ve lost it.”

“What is it?” asked Niani.

“I’ve lost the path,” he said. His cloud of hair seemed to loom even darker around his head. “We have to stay here while Niani and I find a solution.”

The path he spoke of must be a path woven of magic; as far as I was concerned, we had lost any clear path soon after we left the Eri compound. But I didn’t know anything of the magic that was so familiar to the Magicworker and his assistant.

They talked among themselves in the nobles’ tongue and sketched strange patterns in the air. The crease between the Magicworker’s eyebrows was a deep furrow. I wanted to smooth the worry away from his face.

Startled by my thoughts, I concentrated on digging a small fire-pit. Earth, my grubby hands; calm, repetitive movements. Once the fire was lit, I made rolls from our supplies of corn flour and boiled water for tea. We settled down to eat. I felt closed inside myself, a door snapped shut that had just begun to creak open. Niani had been the Magicworker’s assistant and bodyguard for years. They shared a bond that I could not partake of, they spoke together in a language I did not understand.

The food stuck in my throat. I realised I liked these people, wanted them to like me. And that was a danger I wasn’t sure I was ready for. Perhaps it was easier to be the outsider.

Niani passed around the dried meat. I accepted some without a word, trying to avoid her eyes. But she caught me in her gaze. “Dayi, what troubles you?”

It had been so long since anyone had asked me such a question. My troubles came unbidden to the surface as they had not for many moons, choking me so I could barely breathe.

The Magicworker and Niani waited for a long, deep moment. Their patience almost undid me. Why did they not order me around like the others at the Eri compound had done? To them, I was just a servant, just a foreigner. They had no reason to treat me with such kindness.

I found my breath again, found my voice. “It’s nothing,” I said. Then I dared look my travelling companions in the eye. “Well, that’s not true. But I don’t wish to speak of it.” I didn’t want to tell them that I felt jealous of the connection they had with each other.

Instead of pressing me for more, they nodded. Then the Magicworker said: “Have you ever wondered what it would be like to travel from one side of the forest to the other in the space of mere moments?”

“I haven’t.” What a fanciful notion! But I was glad he had changed the subject.

“I have,” he said with a grin lighting up his face, “for many years. I’ve wondered, and worked. Did you know the forest has patches where magic runs stronger in the veins of the world, strong enough to harness and weave together?”

“I know nothing of magic.” But a small smile crept into the corner of my mouth. His scholar’s excitement was catching, although I was ignorant of the knowledge he possessed.

“I’ve worked on a great gate in a strong patch of magic many miles south of the king’s court.” The Magicworker sipped the strong tea I had made. “Now we go forth to seek another strong current of magic, where the forest has gathered its power, to build another gate. I have the feeling you’ll be useful.” Yet how I might accomplish such a thing, he did not say.

◊ ◊ ◊

A ghost light hovered by a tree-stump. Returning from passing water a short distance from our camp, I was caught by its glow, piercing in the pre-dawn air. I came to a halt, staring.

“What is it?” Niani asked. She had woken to my footsteps.

I spared a glance away from the ghost light to look at her. She was peering around, utterly oblivious to the gentle light wavering near me. Blessed Hangi! In my past life, I had thought the ghost lights a folk tale; upon first seeing one, I had judged them rare wonders, yet a tangible feature of our mortal world.

Now I wasn’t so sure. Why could I see the creature, when Niani could not?

The ghost light bobbed and wavered. It was as breathtaking as the one that had led me to the Eri court. This time I was not hunger-crazed or running for my life. Still, I felt a pull, slower but inexorable. I wanted to follow the ghost light, as if it could lead me to happiness.

I sensed Niani’s eyes on me, although I was fixated on the ghost light’s erratic movements. I didn’t dare say anything. I didn’t want the light to vanish with the dawn; but I didn’t dare tell her what I saw. She would call me crazy, and I didn’t want that. I wanted her to think well of me.

I kept staring at the ghost light as if watching would make it stay.

“M’lord,” said Niani, “something’s wrong with Dayi.”

I heard her voice as through a mist. No, there was nothing wrong with me, but of course she could not see the ghost light. Surely the Magicworker would, with all his knowledge and power?

The Magicworker was awake and up in a moment. I felt his presence behind me. A part of me screamed threat; but most of me was so concentrated on the ghost light that I could not turn.

“Dayi,” he said softly, his voice a cool stream on a hot day. “What do you see?”

“You can’t see it?” I burst out.

“Oh,” said Niani, “she’s seeing visions already, evil forest-spirits!” Her voice was sharp with concern.

The Magicworker laughed. The ghost light wavered, as if startled by the sharp sound.

“Shhh!”

His laugh died and my stomach plummeted with horror. I had shushed a noble, as if I were still a noble myself. Be too free, and they will find out.

“What do you see?” he repeated quietly. He didn’t seem offended at all.

I gathered my courage. And I realised I had no word for ghost light in this new language. “I see a bright bob of light, my lord. A fire in the air. I don’t know the word for it.”

“Ah!” He sounded pleased. “A gnahali.”

“Is that what you call the bright creatures of the air, who lead travellers astray?”

“Yes. Gnahali, glow-bearer.”

I paused, stomach clenched with nerves. “It wants us to follow.”

He accepted this with not the slightest hesitation.

“We’ll be lost in the forest even worse,” said Niani, voice dark with warning. “Following a vision is foolishness.”

“Niani,” said the Magicworker, “the very purpose of this journey is to follow my vision. Although I cannot see it, I have no doubt Dayi sees a true gnahali. They are not evil, although they are indeed forest-spirits. It’s said they show themselves to few people. Only those who have experienced grievous violence can see them clear.”

His words rang in me like a prayer-bell. I stared at the ghost light till it filled my world. I didn’t want to see his face or Niani’s.

“If the gnahali wants us to follow, we will. This may be the solution I was seeking.” The Magicworker touched my shoulder lightly. A tremor ran through me. “Keep your eyes on it, Dayi. Niani and I will strike camp.”

So it was that I came once more to follow a ghost light through the rooted domains of the forest. But this time, I was not hungry. This time, I had company.

◊ ◊ ◊

I was not as lost in the light as I had been when I’d stumbled starving to the Eri king’s walls. Still, I found it hard to concentrate on what was around me. My feet strode on, my mouth was dry. All I noticed of the forest was a green haze around me. I hoped that the Magicworker and Niani were still following, for I could not look back for fear I’d lose the ghost light. Enchanted, I followed it as it spun and bobbed a few paces in front of me. I followed till I could feel jabs of pain in my feet even through the haze.

Cool water splashed a blessing on my feet. I had stumbled on a shallow stream. I crossed, almost slipping on the mossy stones, focused on following the ghost light. I came into a haze of green dappled with brightness, a brightness so intense that the glowing sphere blended neatly into it. I stumbled forwards and tried to clasp the ghost light – it must not escape, or we would be lost in the forest and all for nothing.

But it was gone, vanished just like the previous one had. Fickle creatures, oh, it had been madness to be so compelled by the light! I sank to my knees in a soft patch of moss. Heat fell on me from the sky like an unwanted gaze.

“Dayi!” said the Magicworker beside me, and there was something in his voice that made me look up. “This is it! I can feel the magic coursing strong in this place.” Joy wavered around him.

Niani was looking around with wonder in her eyes. She sank down next to me and grinned at me. I couldn’t help answering her smile.

We were in a clearing, moss-covered, fern-adorned, and free of the trees and creeping vines that crowded around it. The sun was shining on us at its mid-afternoon slant. It was a clearing like any other, so it seemed to me. The Magicworker had spoken of gates, of travel. I could not see how this place was more full of magic than any other. It was beautiful, though. My heart felt restful, and something of the ghost light’s peace had settled inside me. And true, perhaps there was something strange in the clearing. Although I couldn’t place it, there was a gentle hum in the air, like a drone of honey-bearing bees somewhere in the distance.

The Magicworker wandered up to two trees that stood on the other edge of the clearing. They were old, gnarled, taller than the rest, awake in a riot of leaves. At the midpoint between the boles, their branches were twined with each other as though in greeting. He stared at them, a smile tugging at his lips.

“The forest itself has started the great work. Just like at the southern gate! Truly, we were meant to build these gates. This is where the fruit of years of toil will ripen. This serendipitous…”

In his solemnity, his speech lapsed to resemble the nobles’, and I frowned as I tried to understand. Niani saw my confusion and muttered to me: “He’s happy that you chanced to come to the king’s halls. Without you, we might not have found this place.”

I was but a tool to him, to be used and then put aside. The thought brushed my consciousness. I tried to suppress it, but I was exhausted. So be it. I was a tool. He’d used me in a different way, but he too had used me for his own benefit.

Yet he smiled at me, and I could detect no guile in his face. He spoke the servants’ language again. “Fortune was with us when you came to the king’s hall. I could sense a trace of magic about you, and now it has proven itself.”

“I have no magic,” I muttered. I watched insects buzz around the small bright flowers that grew in the mossy clearing.

“And yet you can see magic,” said the Magicworker. “The gnahali showed itself to you.”

I thought of what he had said, about how gnahali, ghost lights, only showed themselves to those who had experienced grievous violence. I bit my lip. There was no such legend among my people.

We rested on the soft moss, listening to the hum of insects. The creases at the sides of the Magicworker’s mouth spoke of laughter. Niani had removed the wooden forks holding her hair in a knot, and her black curls sprung all around her shoulders.

My own hair was still in the tight twists of many moons past. I did not like to think about it. I touched it as little as I could. Tuar, you have your mother’s tight-coiled black hair, that’s how it had started. You have your mother’s deep brown eyes, your mother’s full lips.

I closed my eyes, took deep, slow breaths until my thoughts slowed. I could not show my past to these two fellow travellers. They’d despise me. They would take me back to my father; and I would turn into my mother’s ghost.

On some level I knew my thoughts were irrational. But such is the way of thoughts. Unbidden, they rise up and can engulf a whole mind. Just like a ghost light can fill a broken soul with wanderlust.

“It was a gnahali that led me to your king’s halls,” I said, in a half-whisper, unthinking. Then I stiffened, realising I had let something out that I hadn’t meant to. A stone sank in my heart.

The Magicworker and Niani shared a glance and looked at me, then. Their silence was careful, fragile. In it was an invitation.

“I had heard tell of such things, but I was sure they were a myth. But a woman running…running for her life in the forest is open to all manner of mind-delusion. The gnahali confused me, compelled me. I don’t know why it led me to your king’s walls. Perhaps they have no purpose except to lead people astray, as they say in the stories of my people. But both these times I’ve seen one, they’ve led me somewhere.” I paused and looked up at the two intertwined trees, carefully avoiding the two pairs of eyes watching me. “Although I will admit this is less of a somewhere than the previous was.”

Niani gave a startled laugh. The web of silence had broken. I dared a glance at her, and found strange comfort in her eyes. A smile crept on my face like a gift.

“It’s a fraught power, to see the spirits of the forest,” said the Magicworker. “Even I can’t summon them, for all that I can coax the invisible forces of the world to follow my vision.” He looked at me. “That’s the essence of what is called magic.”

We began to set up camp. Neither of them asked me why I had run for my life, why I was able to see ghost lights. The past was mine alone, my heavy burden which I did not need to disclose unwillingly. In their silence I felt comforted. The steady hum of the clearing seemed to clear my head, not confuse it. I was safe here.

It was strange that I should feel so alive with two people I had met less than a moon-cycle previously. And yet it was so. I felt no calling to return to the fire-pits of the king’s compound, to the busy kitchens and heat of the cooking-pots. I wished we could stay in the wild forest forever.

◊ ◊ ◊

We spent many days in the clearing with its hum. The Magicworker spent most of his time next to the two trees. He had all manner of implement and scroll, dragged along on our journey by strong Niani. Sometimes he would ask her to help, and she would stand next to him, humming an atonal melody. At other times she would help by crafting various implements out of wood, strange crooked objects that I could make no sense of. Magicworker and assistant alike were distracted by the tree-twins, which had begun to emit a hum of their own, or so I fancied when I walked close to them.

Magic seemed a confusing and complicated discipline. Niani, who had been the Magicworker’s assistant for several years, and bodyguard for even more, was versed in the basic principles of the science, but it was a deep, unfamiliar well for me, especially when explained in a language I still did not speak with ease.

I was not stupid, though. I knew why we were there in the clearing of moss and ferns, why we had spent day upon day there. The Magicworker was working with the strong magical forces of this part of the forest. He was channelling them into the entwined trees.

“This gate,” he said, with a shy smile that hid his pride, “will lead to the southern gate, if all goes well.” His goal was to coax the already existing magical links in the fabric of the world, so that people might one day walk through its seams and travel with ease.

I felt useless, but reminded myself that we wouldn’t have found the clearing if it wasn’t for my spirit-vision and the ghost light. And since there was space, and no one to chastise me, I took to practising the movements my bodyguard Jama had taught me: the beautiful, flowing movements of the fighting technique used among my people. In my mindless panic to flee my father’s hall, in the confines of the Eri king’s compound, I had almost forgotten this skill. But now, under the sun’s blaze, on the soft moss, I went through the seven sets of movement and felt my body rejoicing as I did.

Niani and the Magicworker concentrated on their work and let me alone while I practised. But one day, after I had completed the seventh set in a perfect sweep of arms and placement of feet, the Magicworker came up to me. I was dishevelled and sweaty after my long practice.

“These movements,” he said, “they look like a dance.”

I smiled; it was easier again to smile. “They are a dance,” I said, “a killing dance. I could disarm a man within five movements if I were better trained.”

Curiosity sparked in his dark eyes, but still, he didn’t ask about my past. I felt a swell of gratitude.

Niani had been watching my movements with a professional eye. “Come,” she said, pulling her coiled hair into a twist. “Disarm me.”

My breath was cut short. My practice had made my body feel like my own again. My old nimbleness was returning. Still, to disarm Niani would mean to touch her bare skin, her strong arms. To touch another body.

“Well,” she said, “after such a boast you can’t just stand there.” She flashed me a teasing grin.

I almost froze. The look in my eyes must have startled her, for she relaxed her fighting stance and frowned. “I’m only joking, Dayi. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

Oh, it frustrated me, that a person I liked was asking me for a friendly fight, and yet my body was frozen, soles tingling with the need for flight. My father had taken so much from me! No. He wasn’t going to take all human touch from me. I felt I was jumping headlong into a chasm, but with a shout I broke my spell of fear and moved.

Niani was ready at once. I moved into the fight with the fluidity of the first set and made first contact – arm against arm. She fought so differently from my bodyguards that I was unsettled at first. But my body was ready before my mind was, and before I could be shocked by how she drew me towards her in a wrestling hug, I was feinting, spiralling, pivoting away.

It was not over in five movements. Niani fought well – as indeed she should, to be entrusted as bodyguard for the Magicworker – and I was out of practice. The sun beat down hot and bold, and the Magicworker stood aside and chuckled as he watched us sweat and kick.

In the end, we both tripped over a surprise root that I was sure had not been there earlier. Niani and I fell to the soft ground, breathless, legs entwined. I didn’t flinch from her touch.

“M’lord!” she said to the Magicworker. “You tricked that root into rising!”

How he managed to look devious and utterly innocent at the same time was beyond me. His chuckle gave him away, though. “Your expressions are worth it.”

Niani and I glanced at each other and then at him. Suddenly, all three of us were laughing. We laughed till my belly ached from it. I was caught with happiness, such a fragile happiness that I was afraid I’d break it with a single wrong breath. I could not remember the last time I had laughed so.

Oh, I had grown bold.

“I’m going for a wash,” I said. The sweat was running down my skin.

“I’ll come with you,” said Niani.

I had come far, yes, but I could not bear to have someone near me in nakedness. “I…can I go alone? You can go first if you like.”

Her eyes were soft. She was close, so close next to me. I felt the ghost of her touch on my hot skin like a whiplash.

“You go.” Her voice was gentle.

Without a word, I gathered my things and went to the sluggishly flowing stream nearby. Daring, I went further, up to the pool we had found. There was no one else in this part of the forest. Only the animals, and we had seen no dangerous beasts. I would be safe.

But the pool was a mirror.

I had confronted a fear today. I had touched Niani, and it had been the cleansing touch of the fight. Surely I could confront another fear, too.

The pool’s water was warm, as everything was in this season. I kept my eyes closed at first, concentrated on scrubbing myself clean of sweat and fear, layer by layer. I ran a hand from my jaw down my left arm, shivering at my own touch. And yet it felt good to touch, to gift myself with gentleness as I had not done for a long time.

Carefully, I took my hair down from its knot. It fell in tangled twists to my shoulders. I gritted my teeth and slowly, slowly began to untwist. I glanced at my reflection in the water. My hair was a wild mass. My eyes, wavering in the water, looked startled.

I saw my dead mother in myself. The mother who everyone said I looked like. The mother whom my father had loved too much.

I had hated her memory for so many years. I wasn’t sure I was willing to do that any more. It was not she who had caused me misery, except by dying; and that, of course, was not of her own will. It was my father I should hate. And I did. Hatred spun around me like a dark cloud. But perhaps I could let that hatred go, too. I would never see him again, after all.

All I could do was learn to live in this body.

Untangling my hair took forever, and I cried with frustration while I pulled gently at the knots. But eventually I had freed it enough that I could wash it. I dried myself off and pulled on my mossy tunic again. My hair I let hang on my shoulders, a heavy mass of coils. I would twist it later, but for now, it was my hair, mine, and it would be free. Like I was.

I was lost in my thoughts. Niani’s voice when I entered the clearing brought me back into the world.

“Dayi! Your hair!”

I raised a hand defensively to my coils. No one had ever commented on my hair other than to say that it was just like my mother’s.

Niani looked me in the eyes with a strange smile. “It’s beautiful.”

◊ ◊ ◊

Heavy footsteps rushed through my dreams, thundered through the deep places of the earth. The jingle of armour, the silver bells used by courtsmen. My father’s men! Their calls echoed through the forest as they crashed through the undergrowth.

I came awake sweating in the morning heat, breath unsteady, tears flowing down my cheeks. I was shocked at the tears; I had not cried since before I left my father’s house. I wiped them away quickly before Niani or the Magicworker noticed them. But I needn’t have worried. They were still asleep, although he slept lightly, as if nervous. And no wonder, for it was the day that we were to test the workings of his magic.

I gathered myself. I listened sharply, but there were no sounds apart from the birds and rustling of small forest animals. The clearing hummed steadily beneath it all. I lay down again and pressed my ear against the mossy ground. But it told me nothing. The moss and the bare earth beneath it carried no echo of soldiers.

Still, I was left with an uneasiness that I couldn’t shake even when Niani and the Magicworker awoke and we ate a meagre breakfast. Our supplies were running low. Even if it wasn’t time to test the experiment, soon we would have to set off to the Eri king’s halls. Back to the confines of his walls, to my slavery. For I realised I had not been paid for my work there. It had not occurred to me before, for I had seen myself as paying them back for the kindness they had done me in taking me in, a foreigner in their land.

Defiance rose within me. Surely this world could not be comprised only of this land, and of my father’s land? There had to be other places, other countries in the depths of the forest, perhaps even beyond it.

I would not go back to the life of servitude that I had embraced in order to be free of a life of fear.

◊ ◊ ◊

Everything was ready for the final test. Niani and I stood by the gateway formed by the intertwined trees. The Magicworker was convinced this gateway could be used to transport people to the other side, a place three weeks’ travel away from where we were. Still, it seemed incredible to me. I had witnessed the blooming of his magic when he muttered words and wove his spells. But that he could actually have steered the growth of such a gateway?

The sun blazed bright, yet the shadow of trees lingered deeper in the forest, threatening. My dream had clearly unsettled me more than I’d thought. Yet I felt that the hum in the clearing was also more jagged than it usually was. What was happening? Was it just the magic?

For the Magicworker was standing in front of Niani and myself, weaving the spell that he hoped would bring to life the gate formed of the two gnarled trees. With a gasp, I felt the power gathering like the noon sun beating down.

Before my eyes, the space between the entwined trees began to glow. A mute glow, a gentle glow at first, as the Magicworker muttered. His voice grew in strength; his dark forehead was dripping with sweat.

Something shifted.

Through the arch formed by the trees, I had gazed into the forest that lay beyond. Now, a different forest loomed between the two trunks. I could hardly breathe. A gentle glow still lay on the trees themselves – the gate. But now, we were looking through them into a different view: not a clearing, but a dense mass of ferns and flowering plants.

“It worked,” Niani said in an awed voice. Her hand came to clutch mine. I held on tight, forgetting to be afraid of her touch, unnerved by the strangeness of it all.

The Magicworker turned to us. A huge grin was on his face, and his hair was curling in tighter spirals due to the moisture he had gathered all over his body. But in spite of his triumph, he was careful, had the precautions of a knowledge-seeker.

“The gate won’t be open long,” he said. “I can’t hold it open for more than a few moments. Now is the time to test it.”

His voice echoed into a silence that snapped violently. I heard running, I heard shouts, I heard the hooves of a wild animal nearing the clearing.

“What’s wrong, Dayi?” asked Niani. Her hand was still clasped in mine.

“Do you hear it?” I wished I were dreaming in daylight. I wanted the pounding steps and snapping undergrowth to be a malicious illusion.

“People,” said Niani, and shattered my hopes. For now I could hear the jingling of armour, and I could hear shouts.

Shouts in a language I could understand. Shouts in the language my mother had sung me to sleep with.

The language my father had abused me with.

“We have to hide,” I said, stumbling over my words in the language I had but newly learnt. “Quickly!”

Niani glanced at the Magicworker. Something silent passed between them.

“All right,” said Niani. “It sounds like a dozen or so people. Those ferns over there, near the gate – we’ll lie there until we’ve seen what’s what.”

“Our things!” I was breathless, terrified. Our belongings were strewn around our camp, easy to find, prompting a search over the whole clearing.

The Magicworker frowned. “Gather what you can and hide,” he said. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

Frantically, I gathered up as much as I could carry, and hurried to the tall ferns that stood near the forest edge, by the great roots of the tree-gate. I huddled underneath them. Niani came to join me, several bundles in her hands.

I was shaking. I wanted the Magicworker to do it quickly, whatever he was doing. He hummed, he muttered, and slowly I saw the rest of our belongings fade into the grass. I could see them if I concentrated, but they would not be visible to anyone who didn’t look close.

“Come on!” said Niani in a low, urgent voice. “They’re almost here.”

At the last moment, the Magicworker flung himself into the ferns next to us. We were hidden from prying eyes – as long as those eyes did not think to look too close.

A small white-tailed deer sped into the clearing. Arrows flew from the woods, and moments later, the creature was shot dead. Its hunters came into the clearing.

They were my father’s men.

Terror clung to me like a second skin. I could not understand why they were this far from his court. I had never thought the chase would persist so long, or so far.

Yet a moment later sense caught up to me, and I understood that they could not be searching for me any more. My father must have given me up for dead. These men were but a hunting party for the king, straying far from his lands, so far that they might not have realised they were in another country.

Beside me, Niani had loosened the dagger at her belt; little good that would do her against so many. Silently I cursed our rotten luck: the hunters would surely stop in the clearing to skin their catch at least. I prayed they would not notice the tree-gate’s glow and the strange view through it.

Then my father strode into the clearing, and I came close to heaving up the contents of my breakfast. What was he doing with the hunting party, so far from his lands? Suddenly I felt naked. The ferns could do nothing to hide me. He would sense I was here, somehow. He would take me back home and touch me again.

Niani sensed me shuddering beside her. She could not understand the reason for my terror, of course. But she put a hand around my shoulder as we crouched beneath the ferns. Her touch could have made me skittish. Instead, it felt comforting. I leaned against her. I felt more grounded in my self despite seeing my father there, so close.

He looked the same: the imperious tilt of his mouth, his large, looming frame.

“We shall rest here,” he said to his men, and I gave a soft sigh of horror. They were not going to just skin the deer and ride past.

Niani and the Magicworker had shifted beside me, their faces blank as they listened to the language unfamiliar to them. I noticed the Magicworker give me a shrewd look as he saw my obvious shock at the announcement. But they dared not speak, for the king’s men were now making camp.

“A fire pit, my lord,” said one of the soldiers to my father, “still smoking. Someone else was here just a short while ago.”

“One of the savages of these lands, no doubt,” said my father. “These must be their hunting grounds. This bodes well for us. Perhaps there are bigger creatures to hunt, too.” He spared their catch a brief glance and surveyed the rest of the clearing. I was glad the Magicworker’s spell of concealment on the rest of our items was still working, although he was labouring hard to keep it that way, sweat pushing through his skin.

“Search this place. They may still be close by.”

At my father’s words, I could not suppress a gasp of fear. Niani and the Magicworker gave me furious glances and pulled me down, but I was frantic.

A couple of soldiers came close to the ferns. I could smell the leather and metal of their armour and the reek of days-long sweat. They would find us. The Magicworker could not keep up three spells at once.

When the first soldier gave a cry of “My lord! There are people here!” we were lost. Panicking, I stumbled to my feet, pulling the Magicworker and Niani along with me.

The world halted. The soldiers stood, baffled, staring as their princess and two foreigners emerged from the green ferns. The clearing’s magic hum seemed urgent, as if the very earth sensed my distress.

All I could focus on was my father. I watched him recognise me in a moment that felt like an agonising eternity. The fury grew on his face, coupled with honest surprise.

“You’re alive.” His voice was gentle. It was always gentle when he talked to me. He sounded as if he were happy that I was still alive – oh, and he probably was. If I was alive, he could take me back and keep me forever. He could finish what he had begun.

I couldn’t allow that. I had to grasp at the fraying strands of freedom that I held clutched in my hands.

“Seize her!” said my father.

My head was spinning. I was shaking with fear. But I would rather die than be caught like a rabbit in a trap.

“Follow me!” I yelled in the language of the Eri.

Dumbfounded by this situation whose gravity they couldn’t understand, my two companions nonetheless ran alongside me. My plan was a last desperate struggle for freedom, for I knew that even with magic and Niani’s skills, and my lingering defensive arts, we could not win a fight against my father and his men.

When he understood where we were running, the Magicworker yelled: “We can’t! It isn’t safe!”

He flinched at the look I gave him. “This isn’t safe,” I snapped. And indeed, he and Niani were both embroiled in it now, for my father’s men were coming at us fast. We fought our way from the ferns to the tree-gate. I kicked and punched more fiercely than I had ever done in all my training, for my life and freedom depended on it. Niani used her dagger with cold precision. The Magicworker just ran and dodged, for all his strength was concentrated on keeping the gate open.

I hesitated the smallest moment before the tree-gate. I looked into the other forest, its deeper shades. I glanced back, saw my father running towards us. Niani was grappling with one of his soldiers. I took one last look at the man I had hoped never to see again.

I grabbed Niani and the Magicworker by their arms, and ran through the opening between the trees.

◊ ◊ ◊

A dizzying blur clouded my eyesight, and my stomach lurched.

Then all was still, until the world exploded into movement again. We were no longer in the clearing. We had made it to the other side.

“Close the gate!” yelled Niani. I realised that while we had indeed passed through the gate to somewhere else, the soldiers had noticed that something was going on, and were coming after us. Niani was still fighting the one she’d been grappling with on the other side. One of my father’s personal bodyguards was coming at me. I struggled desperately, trying to go through the seven movements. But the dance was not smooth. I could hear shouts. I could see my father coming closer. Soon he would be through the gate.

The wavering glow disappeared. There was nothing but this new forest, a dark, dense area that I barely had time to notice because I was fighting for my life. I was being crushed by the weight of the soldier who had lunged at me. I hit him hard in the groin with my knee. Not one of the preferred tactics of the discipline, but survival has no room for elegance.

I heard a strangled cry, and then Niani was there, slashing with her knife. The man fighting me was thrown off, and with a sickening thud of metal in flesh, Niani stabbed him in the heart.

The forest was silent around us. It was as if we had entered a ghost realm. Bone-aching, I sat up and looked around me.

Niani was standing there next to me, breath heavy, the bloody knife in her hand. Two dead men lay beside her on the forest floor. My father’s soldiers, caught in this struggle.

The Magicworker was sprawled on the ground a little way from me, staring in wonder at the tree-gate that lay before him. These were strong trees, too, but younger than the ones we had found in the clearing.

“It worked,” he said. “It is possible for humans to travel through the gate.” Then he turned to look at me, sudden steel in his voice. “Why did you do that? Can you even imagine the risk…”

I looked away. “I’m sorry for putting your life and Niani’s into danger,” I said. “But there was no other way. They were attacking us.”

He pursed his lips after a while and nodded.

Niani was staring at the bodies. I got up and went to her, legs still shaking. “I’m sorry you had to do that,” I said. I could not look directly at the dead bodies, for the sight made me feel another lurch of sickness. I was so very sorry. And even sorrier that my father still lived.

“I’m a bodyguard,” Niani said. “It’s what I do.” She gave me a wan smile. “Not that it’s ever fun.”

There was silence. I could feel Niani’s unspoken questions and the Magicworker’s wordless wondering fill up the space between us. I was still undone by having seen my father, heard his voice. But I could gather the shreds of myself again. It was easier now, after my many moons of hard-working safety in the Eri king’s court, after our journey in the forest. I clenched my fists so tight it hurt. My jaw was stiff. I breathed in and out several times, opening my mouth to free the tension.

I had to tell them. They had earned it beyond measure, with their friendship, their willingness to follow my sudden order, their defence against my father’s men.

“Please,” I said. “Let’s sit down.”

The moss here was soft and welcoming. Niani and the Magicworker gathered beside me. The dead men in the thicket of ferns behind us were a gruesome reminder of how barely we had escaped. My eyes were firmly on the moss at my feet. It seemed wondrous to me that the world should contain things so vibrantly green, so fearlessly alive.

I began.

“That man in the clearing, their leader. He’s the king of the land I come from.” I paused. The words of their language felt strange in my mouth again, like stones rounded by river water. “He is my father.”

Strange it felt, and terrifying beyond belief, to be telling the true story of myself to my companions after such a long silence. I didn’t tell them everything; I couldn’t. Perhaps I never would, and the memories would remain locked up in my soul forever. But some things I could tell.

“He went mad in his chase of my mother’s spirit. He…he touched me, as a man touches his wife.”

I closed my eyes, so as not to witness the pity in their faces. But when I opened my eyes, I saw not pity, but horrified understanding. Niani had reached out for me, but her hand sank like a stone in the distance between us.

I raised my head, some pride remaining. “I couldn’t endure it. I escaped, and they chased me. I was lost in the forest when I saw a gnahali for the first time.” That ghost light had truly saved me. “It led me to your king’s walls. The rest you know.”

The silence that followed was heavier than I could bear. But what could they say, after hearing such a tale?

“The forest-spirits must be in your favour, Dayi,” said the Magicworker at last, in a quiet, careful voice. “For this is the first time a tree-gate has fully opened to me.”

“You did things differently this time, though, yes?” I asked. I was relieved to speak of something else.

“I refined my experiments,” he agreed. “But that clearing also bore the most powerful traces of natural magic that I’ve ever encountered. To think we might not have reached it but for you and the gnahali… I’m grateful to you, Dayi.”

The name, Moss-tunic, pricked at me somehow, like an ill-fitting sandal. “And I’m grateful to you, lord Magicworker, and to Niani. I can’t even say how much. You…” I spoke past the lump in my throat. “You saved me.”

“As if we could’ve done anything else!” said Niani. Her eyes on me were dark and worried. It shivered my heart, that neither of them had changed their behaviour now they knew I was the daughter of a king.

The Magicworker gave a cough. “I know you have known me only as the Magicworker,” he said. “It is the custom for Magicworkers to abandon their names when they practise the science of magic in earnest. But to you, Dayi, I will say now that my birth-name is Kagna.”

I bowed my head, mindful of the honour he’d given me. I noted that Niani had marked no surprise at his true name. So she had known it already.

The Magicworker – Kagna – got up and paced towards the trees that formed the gate on this side. He put a hand on the bark and muttered a few words. I felt a soft tremor of magic run through the earth in response.

“There. That was the last of it,” he said, passing a hand over his face. “The gates must be thanked, you see. We’re using the earth’s magic for this, and we must thank the trees that see it done.”

In my heart, I thanked the earth and all the forest-spirits for my second escape. “How far are we from the Eri compound now?”

“A week’s journey or so,” said Kagna. “It will be rough going, with only the few supplies we carried on our backs during our crossing.”

I took a deep breath. I saw the walls closing in on me when I thought of returning with them to the Eri king’s halls. I scrambled to my feet and took a few steps away, peering into the forest. The trees were ancient and towering in this part of the woods.

“I can’t come with you,” I said. “I know the king ordered you to bring me back for fear I’d reveal his secrets. Yet what secrets do I know here? I don’t know where we are. I’m lost. And I want it to stay that way. I’ll go on from here. No one will know I’ve visited the Eri lands. I’ll continue further into the forest. I’ll let the gnahali lead me. I’ll learn new languages when I come across them.”

I turned. Kagna did not look surprised. If anything, he looked pleased. “I thought as much. Yes, Dayi. You should have freedom.”

I’d been prepared to fight if I had to. I was disarmed by the kindness in his voice.

“You can’t go alone into the woods!” said Niani, forehead creased in a frown. “You have little experience of the forest’s dangers.”

“I can protect myself,” I said. My mind pushed moments at me when I had not been able to protect myself, not from my father. The seven movements had not helped me then. But I pushed that back. I was a different person now.

Niani hung her head and looked thoughtful.

“My dears,” said Kagna. He got to his feet and walked to me, drawing Niani close to his side. He raised an arm and met my eyes with a question. Hesitantly, I got up and leaned into his touch. We stood there, all three, encircled by him.

“You two should go into the forest wilds together.”

Niani and I looked up sharply, first at him and then at each other. “You’d let us go, both of us?” said Niani.

“Yes,” said Kagna. “I may be in the Eri king’s employ, but I’m my own master. And so should you two be.”

“But how will you explain it to the king?” I asked. I did not want him to be punished for our sakes.

To my surprise, he laughed. “I’ll spin a story of how the experiment worked, but the dreadful magic currents severed the souls from my servants’ bodies while I was the only one to remain anchored in my self. Such things have been known to happen when magic goes wrong.”

My eyes were wide. “They have?” I had not known what I’d risked when I plunged us through the gate.

He nodded. “So it’s decided. You two will go together, if you wish it.”

I glanced at Niani, suddenly shy. “Will you join me in the wilderness, as long as we wish for each other’s company? Would you leave your life as bodyguard? Would you leave the study of magic?”

She smiled like a fern unfurling. “Yes.”

My heart was filled with a giddiness that frightened me. That these two would take risks for me – that Niani wanted to travel with me.

It was quick work to divide our belongings between us. Kagna would get by with the help of his magic, he said; and Niani was confident in the deep woods, for she had been born in a small village near the Eri compound, and was used to woodsfaring.

Burying the bodies of my father’s men was far slower work, and wretched. But at last they were under the moss. I wished them safe passage in the other worlds and that their next lives might be more peaceful.

At last it was time for the farewell.

“Can’t you come with us?” I asked. I didn’t want to let him go.

Kagna shook his head, eyes shining wet. “I can’t. My life’s work, my science is all at the Eri king’s court. I must go back. But I’ll miss you, Dayi.”

I laid my hand on his shoulder, trembling at the voluntary touch. He leant close to me, and I did not flinch. “I’ll miss you too.” My throat was tight.

As Niani and I stood side by side, ready to leave, I knew there was one final thing I had to tell them. Moss-tunic I was, but a true part of me was in what my mother had given me. Perhaps I could finally be free from the burden laid on me by my father. Perhaps I could own my name without shame.

“There’s something I want to tell you.” I could feel Kagna and Niani’s eyes on me, and did not feel discomfited by their gaze. I took a deep breath.

“My birth-name is Tuar.”

– END –

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Published by Associate Editor on June 1, 2015. This item is listed in Issue 26, Issue 26 Stories

Death is Only a Memory

by Kate Runnels

deathisonlyamemory1A bright flash of white, vivid in its intensity, shocked her and then sudden and complete blackness engulfed her.

Lia shuddered.

They were ghosts, whispers of what they once were. Fragments; fragments from her implants, her external memory. Nothing was clear. Everything jumbled together out of order, without any semblance of synchronicity.

Lia’s links, all of her connections that reached into cyberspace connecting her to any net, had gone blank. Lia was cut off. She was in a darkness so deep the fear faded in the vastness. Panic came and went, washing over her like sheets of rain, pounding down and then fading only to come back.

She knew only one thing. She had been wiped.

There were things she should know, but didn’t. She had relied too heavily on her cybernetic memory enhancements. But organic memory degraded and blurred with time. Lia tried to access file after file. Each one came up empty, blank.. Everything had been wiped from her memory.

She had been wiped!

The anger and outrage swept over her and for long moments she couldn’t think of anything else.

Lia couldn’t help but wonder how? She had always been careful, set barriers-attack and passive- firewalls, even virus mazes, to defeat or deflect hackers from accessing her mind and gaining the classified information within. She knew what became of those wiped of memory, not able to even dress themselves; they were reduced to an infant state. Then there were those who’d been hacked, or imprinted with false memories, not knowing who they really were and always questioning their actions.

Lia was an Agent, she protected others from this or brought to justice those who perpetrated such things.

The empty spaces in her mind informed her that she had been wiped. Maybe it hadn’t been a hack? With her brain and the cybernetic parts shielded, it would have had to be a short range, pinpoint blast with an EMP. If that was the case whoever perpetrated this act needed the knowledge of where her cybernetic implants were located. How had this happened?

That memory, too, couldn’t be accessed, wiped clean.

Lia initiated her search program, entering keywords.

2B y47-m04-d11: a memory file she knew from days ago. It blinked at her: File not found. Empty; Empty; Empty. But there had been something there.

She had been wiped!

Pounding at the void, uselessly, frustratingly, she struggled within her mind for the remembrances. It took a very long time to calm herself. She would have to try and piece everything together from her organic side. That would take time. Time she felt she didn’t have.

She tried to piece the fragments together. But they were true ghosts, with little left to them; a shape without substance.

She searched her other memory, searched for fragments to tie together. Her long-term memory remained, untouched. She thanked whomever for that, but everything up to two weeks ago – gone. She thought back, she had arrived at work, heading for a meeting with her boss. Was her boss now trying to hide something from her? Was the H.K.S.A? If her own employers were out to get her, she had done something terribly wrong. She had to know!

 

“Hong Kong Security Agency; what is the nature of your call?”

Another phone rang farther on down the row of desks answered in a similar fashion by a similar receptionist.

Agent Liana Sasaki wound her way through the maze of desks with the ease of long familiarity. Lia carried no discernable weapons; it helped in many cases to put victims as ease. She didn’t need weapons. Her left arm had been cyberized, and when it opened up she needed nothing else.

The room was small and packed to capacity and even overflowing into the agent’s offices in all dimensions, up, down and around. Greeting a few of the receptionists by name, she continued past, without stopping to chat, toward the back offices. They were busy and she had a meeting to attend in a few minutes.

The Agency hadn’t changed very much since she began working for them seven years ago. It had grown from what she remembered, having then only six receptionists who took calls and greeted people as they walked in from the street. Now the Agency had sixty in three shifts round the clock. And back then, she would have been one of the units sent out to handle one of the emergency calls. She still remembered her designation: 5-2-4. But she was no longer Unit 5-2-4, not since her partner Ming had died and if she didn’t hurry she would be late.

deathisonlyamemory3Lia stepped into her boss’s office. Matt Decoto. He wasn’t the president of the agency, he had never wanted much responsibility, but he had been around since the Agency’s conception. He sat now typing into his computer. He had a thick head of grey hair, a body that had at one time been fit, but a long time in the past. He used DNA specifics to keep his bulk reasonable, but mainly to increase memory and working speed. Typing was an old affectation.

He looked up as she came in.

“Sit down, Senior Agent Sasaki. I’ll be just a moment.”

Lia sat and waited until he turned to her. “Sasaki.”

“Yes, Chief of Investigations Decoto. Why the formality?”

“There is a case I want your personal attention on. Unit 10-23 handled the original call. A gang of cybernetic enhanced children, children who’ve rejected their tech attachments-”

“The autistic’s who’ve even rejected treatment?”

“Yes. They attacked and molested a young natural woman with no enhancements and carrying no discernable tech. The attack itself is unusual and where it occurred. But the victim has disappeared after the attack.”

“That is strange, but not unheard of. Do we have any identification on the Disappeared? And I assume we’re considering him/her to be kidnapped at this point in time?”

“Of course. The disappeared is Sunny Shirow’s, our silent partner’s, daughter.” He leaned forward, the chair groaning as he shifted his weight. “He and I want your expert skills on this case, and handled with the utmost discretion.”

“Of course, Matt, when have I ever been anything but discrete?” She smiled at him as he glared at her from under his bushy eyebrows.

“Just handle it, and handle it quickly, Lia, we don’t need or want the media coverage on this.”

“Yes, boss. No problem boss. Don’t worry about a thing, boss.” She still smiled as she stood and left his office to find Unit 10-23; Agent Sung and Agent Maxwell.

Heading to a different part of the building, she hoped to catch the Unit at their desks. She didn’t really like them and the feeling was mutual.

They looked up from their computer terminals, and the sheets of paper spread out around their desks. She asked without greeting them, “Have you filed a report yet on the disappearance?”

“Sending it now, Senior Agent Sasaki,” said Agent Sung, pressing a button on the touch screen. The report came in, and she took a moment with her cybernetic enhancements to bring it up in front of one eye to read it.

“Well, this is different,” Lia said. “What happened to shoot first and tell lies later?”

“Funny. Get out of our space, Sasaki, and let us do our work.” Sung went back to typing.

Agent Maxwell still looked at her. “Can’t see why Decoto wanted you on this case, you can’t even keep a partner.” There was no love or warmth one might feel for humanity between them.

 

Lia came out of her memory searching for more, but she couldn’t remember all of the details. She hated organic memory. She couldn’t access it anytime she wanted with full detail of sound and visual.

So what happened after?

Lia initiated another search using different parameters. File not found. Empty. Empty. Empty. After the third empty, words appeared: Delete. Delete. I. Eat. Meat.

She had been tampered with; those were her safe words for any type of tampering within her mind. At the same time, it informed her that those who had wiped her were still around even though she couldn’t access sound or sight, in some way the program could.

Lia knew now there was something beyond the void in which she existed. She would proceed, cautiously.

The next memory, and the one following, there would be clues as to what happened. She tried to remember what had happened after meeting with unit Ten-twenty three. She had headed to the specified address in their incident report.

 

The door opened and an old woman peered up at her through old-fashioned corrective lenses. Lia doubted she had ever seen something like that outside of history books or old movies. With cybernetic implants, and DNA specifics, many people opted to replace their defective eyes; the old woman had not.

The woman might not be a hard line naturalist and no Transhumanist, but it was no wonder she had called in the assault and kidnapping of a natural, by cyber autistics. Lia would ask a few question 10-23 hadn’t thought to cover during the original call.

A car honked behind her. She saw it flash past in the lenses of the glasses facing her. There was so much movement there, cars, people, bikers, dogs, but the eyes behind those lenses gazed at her steadily. The old woman blinked slowly through her think lenses. Bringing one age-lined knuckle-swollen hand, she rubbed at her eyes underneath the glasses. “I must be seeing things.” She looked again at Lia. “No. I’m not. But it can’t be real.”

deathisonlyamemory2“Ma’am, are you, Mrs. Chan?”

“Yes,” she answered. “Are you Liana Sasaki?”

“Yes,” she answered slowly. What was going on here? This old woman had taken her completely off her stride with one simple question. The sounds of the street intruded, people laughing, talking on their links to someone else, maybe a block away, maybe half a planet away. Lia missed what Mrs. Chan said next.

“What did you say?”

“I said,” the old woman repeated, “you haven’t aged a day in thirty years. It’s remarkable, even with the tech advances nowadays. I know it has been a long time, but surely you remember me?”

Lia shook her head, uncomprehending. She was supposed to question Mrs. Chan, not the other way around.

“I’m Alison Chan.”

“That can’t be possible. That must be your granddaughter or daughter.”

“I only have a son who is unmarried. I’m sorry, but that is me, I assure you. You really don’t remember? Anything? We served together with the UN peacekeepers in New Congo during the war. Charlie Company, 3rd Battalion.”

“No.” She stepped back, off the front entryway, slipping on the last step and stumbled into a pedestrian. Catching herself, she gave a hasty apology and crossed the street as fast as she could to get away from those motion reflecting glasses and the unwavering eyes behind.

Lia gave one last bewildered look at Mrs. Chan, a friend from a long time ago. One she hadn’t seen if Lia believed the old woman, in thirty years. That couldn’t be correct. Since leaving school only ten years has passed, ten years, not thirty.

A car honked and Lia moved out of the way. She needed a place to think, a place to get information. She pushed the case into a secondary position in her mind, not entirely forgotten, but not at the top of priority. She could hack into the City Traffic database to find the surveillance footage and ID the assailants then put a virus in to track their movements. Later. First, she would find somewhere where she wouldn’t be distracted. All thoughts of the Carime Shirow, of her abduction, were gone.

She needed answers of a different sort now. She headed for a Cyber café, she could plug in there, think and get information.

 

The memory dulled and she came back into herself, still thinking. She had found information on herself by delving throughout the web. Some info had taken little time, but others took much longer and then she found it: her original birth certificate. It had to be a fake, a forgery, some hacker tampering with information for a joke.

It had listed her date of birth as 2084. That wasn’t possible. She was born 2119. 2119 not 2084, however, with the two facts so close together, the old woman and the birth certificate; it wasn’t coincidence.

What was going on? Who had wiped her? Why had she been wiped?

What had she done next?

She still hadn’t believed. She had gone back to the Agency, gone deep down below the main offices to the labs and had her cybernetics checked and updated. There she had snuck into the security mainframe for the Agency. If she’d had the time she could have found all the answers to her questions, but Decoto had paged her over her links.

Then, the memories fogged, she could only catch glimpses, as if she were trying to remember a dream, days later.

She relaxed and let the images come of themselves, and then she had one; later, but clear and along the path to answers.

 

“Do you remember when the police forces around the world failed?” Decoto asked her.

An odd question, but she would go with it. He had paged her so quickly after her access of the information on the net; he must have had it flagged. He had the answers. She waited, stalling. Knowing the truth would change her in some inconceivable way she couldn’t anticipate. Lia wasn’t sure she was ready for that.

She shook her head. “I was no older than a couple of months, back then.”

“No, you weren’t.” He smiled, the stubble on his face parting to show his white teeth. “But tell me what you remember, from history books and what not.” He sat behind his desk and leaned back in his chair, observing her, watching her.

“Fine. It happened almost immediately after the African Nations War,” she began. “the natural resources in Africa drew the global powers which funded, directly and indirectly, to militia’s, warlords and even the countries. As the war dragged on- it pulled the world into a recession. So after the cease fire, and with the treaties signed, the governments sent their military’s home. but that only worsened the recession. This is when the police forces around the world failed.

“Poverty, hunger, and disillusionment, were widespread with governments in many countries doing little to improve the situation. Street gangs, the poor, the disgruntled, those who’d served their countries and gotten little in compensation and many more struck in force. It led to riots occurred in all major cities of the world. Many of the police officers perpetrated crimes at this time, expecting, in the confusion, to be overlooked, and get off without punishment. But the crimes only fueled the anger of the populace and the police forces were overwhelmed and ineffective. Before the respective countries governments declared martial law, ex-military, ex-cops, and many others banded together to create the first all-encompassing security agency.” She scrutinized Decoto while she spoke.

His only motion was to blink at random intervals. His breathing was loud, but he was a large man and always breathed loud. His beefy hands never twitched, never moved, he only stared at her.

“The security agencies put down the riots and brought peace to the streets when the police could not. Around the world, the other cities followed suit, as what happened here in Hong Kong. The Agencies don’t work for the governments and are funded more like insurance companies. After a year in business, no one called the police for help any longer. The governments disbanded all but a token force and put the funding elsewhere. It helped stimulate the economy, creating jobs, and a safer living and work environment. Government money was now being used in necessary areas, instead of a police force that was shown to be corrupt and ineffective. ”

She paused, remembering his words. “What do you mean; I wasn’t a baby back then?”

A million other thoughts and possibilities flashed through her mind in that brief moment. Decoto rubbed at his stubble of a beard before answering her.

“You already suspect it; it is why you are here. You accessed information you weren’t supposed to find, buried as it was under useless data. But it only confirms for me how close we are to reaching full potential. Lia, you missed one large fact: you were one of the co-founders of this agency.”

“That’s impossible.”

Decoto gazed steadily at her.

“It’s not possible,” she said. “I have cybernetics but I am not a full body cyborg. I should show some signs of aging. I look twenty-seven. I am twenty-seven! I had to work my ass off to become a senior agent, the youngest ever! I am not that old.”

“But you are.”

“Shouldn’t I remember this past you speak of? I remember going to military Academy; I remember graduating; school, my parents, friends, my childhood. I do not remember co-founding the Hong Kong Agency. Why don’t I remember?” Why didn’t she remember? She wanted to know the truth. She readied one of her cybernetic parts in her arm with a thought, readying for a strike. She wanted answers and, so far, he hadn’t been very helpful. She could change all that.

“It’s all in there.” He pointed to her head.

“What – suppressed, blocked?”
“Yes.”

“By your orders? The executive board? Chairman Zhang?”

“No; by yours.”

“You lie. I want to know the truth. Tell me.”

“I think I have said too much. There will be many repercussions from this.”

“You will tell me.” Left arm, as fast as an eye blink, split apart, changing into one of her interrogation tools: one that subdued or drugged. Before she could use it, Decoto laughed at her and faded from sight.

She snarled again but to herself. Talking to a hologram, how had she missed something like that?

 

The organic memory fuzzed at the edges, but she could catch more, slightly more.

She remembered wanting to track him down to kill him, no, to make him suffer as he made her suffer, and then end it.

The needed answers continued eluding her. Decoto had done something to her. She was older than she looked and remembered, but how? And where was she now? How did she get here, wherever here was? Had what happened to her happen to Carime Shirow? Were their cases similar?

Back at the Cyber Café, she found the recorded images of the attack reported by ten twenty-three. She thought hard to remember. Why had the Autistic kids turned after they had passed by her and then attack? Carime had nothing cybernetic in her records, but were they fake too? She’d done enough rewriting of data to know records were never true. There was something she was missing. The records might have been hacked and tampered with, but there was one thing. The image on the screen showed a young girl, but the records stated her age as 26 and deceased in a transportation crash. She was dead; she was alive? What was happening? She’d found all this before being paged by Decoto. Was any of it relevant?

Who had attacked her: Decoto, the autistic cyber children, or an anonymous third party? Lia wanted to remember what had happened to her, what happened after leaving Decoto’s office?

She wanted to remember.

That’s it! She had wanted to remember. Decoto had answered a question. She had suppressed and blocked memories. Those could answer what she needed. But to do that they had to be retrieved. She’d contacted someone in the sub-basement. She could trust him. She’d had no one else; she had to trust him.

 

“I need your help, Holt.”

“For what?”

“Memory retrieval and possible reconstruction.”

“Now you’ve got my attention. Blocked, I bet. Any barriers, attack viruses, mazes, burn-outs? I’ll have to go carefully. Who’s the subject?”
“I am.”

He blinked, slow to open them back up, his almost complete black eyes vanishing for a long moment. “Why are you coming to me? You hate me.”
“Hate is such a strong word.” He raised his eyebrows. She took in a deep breath and said, “Fine. Hate. I am calling because you are the best. And I need the best.”

“I’m flattered.”

“That doesn’t make me like you any better.”

“Sorry. But I’m still flattered.”

“Right.”

She shook her head at the image on the screen. “When can we do this?”

“A half hour? A lot of the stuff I need is at the office. Can we meet at my lab?”

“I’m at the office. What do you need; I can get it for you.”

“You’re at the office?”
“Yes.”

“So am I.”

“I’ll be right down.” Lia cut the connection. She paused and looked around the office, thinking – would it still be the same office for her? Her chair, she’d had for two years, with the squeak when she leaned back: the indented carpet where she paced when she thought. Would they be the same? Would she remember a different office? Would the photos be different than she remembered? With different, unknown, unknowing people staring at her. Would she still be Lia?

Would she still be Lia? That was the million dollar question.

Her memory jumped.

She was in the lab with Holt going through the procedure. She tried, but could not bring anything into focus from before that. Hopefully, it was nothing important.

Lia lay on a cool table; the cold started to bleed through her clothes and deep into her; maybe not all of it came from the table. She did not know what to expect, but she would not back out now.

Her eyes flicked from the equipment and tech above her to different things around the small lab in nervousness; wires, computers, racks, displays, lifts and much more. She did not understand any of the stuff or how it worked. She didn’t care. Only caring with what it did. It would give Lia her memories back.

But would she still be her? Would it change her? Would she find that everything she believed in, every truth she held might be wrong? She had already found some truths to be wrong. The table shook as Lia shivered on it, wondering if all of her would be tossed to the side. But that fear wouldn’t stop her, she longed to know.

Lia glanced from the bright lights to Arzi Holt. His thin body walked back to her, while fiddling with something in his long fingered hands.

“Will it hurt?” she asked.

“It all depends on what memories are unlocked, if there are any to unlock.”

“There are. But that’s not what I meant.”

He looked down at her then, meeting her eyes. “No, the actual process will not hurt. Close your eyes and try to relax and we’ll begin the process.” He disappeared from sight behind the machines beside her. They began whirring as they started up before settling down into a constant hum. Closing her eyes, she took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. He was right; she didn’t want to watch any of his actions, always wondering what he did now – what would happen now? It would be much easier to let the memories come to her in blackness.

Lia jerked upright with a gasp!

Where was she? What had happened? What was that?

Glancing around, she found herself in a small office, lying on a couch pressed tight against one wall. A desk crammed the rest of the office; scattered objects littered every available space – papers, books, tech, toys and the tools of a cyborg specialist. Ordinary in its clutter, plain almost, nothing to frighten her here. Except—

She blinked. She hadn’t dreamed. It hadn’t been a nightmare. All of it was as real as this moment. If she rested now in Holt’s office, then the procedure worked-had worked. Not a dream; a memory.

She had died.

Lia remembered dying. She cupped her face in her hands. The feeling of the knife sliding into her flesh, felt as real now as it had then; the searing, tearing, burning pain; turning to see the gleeful look of the hyped and overloaded Cyborg; of herself slipping down the wall, gasping for breath and going into darkness. Lia took in a deep ragged breath and let it out just a shaky.

Holt stepped into the office. She glanced away from her memories to see his face. It wasn’t the same face she remembered. Though his face hadn’t changed with the introduction of new/old memories. Everything she saw there screamed sadness to her. Why was he so sad?

“You’re awake? Did you feel any pain? No lasting effects of the hack/dive and suppression removal?” He paused. “Did it work?”

“It worked.” Lia managed, not trusting her voice for anything more complex.

“I know what happened.” He stepped closer, his voice matching his face, his whole posture. The arrogant hacker she’d arrested, was gone; where? Where was the youthful pride that she resented and hated? She wished for it now “While you slept, I went diving into the secure files section in the main frame. I found some very interesting things.” He handed her a handheld data comp with the info displayed on the five-inch screen.

“Hacking again? That’s what got you busted down here in the first place.”

“I know, but I think you’ll thank me for it. It seems, well, I’ll let you read.” He fell quiet and Lia glanced one last time at this changed Arzi Holt, before studying the info. And studied the screen- and then re-read it a third time. Finally, she let it droop into her lap. Slowly she met his eyes.

“I did die. I thought, hoped, it was only a dream when I woke up.” She cocked her head to one side. “I remember it. I know I died, and yet know it wasn’t me who died. Only it was. Can you begin to understand this? I can’t. It’s so confusing a jumble of thoughts and emotions of who am I? What am I? Everything is in here. All of it.” She licked her lips; swallowed, knowing she rambled but not able to stop. “All of it. I’m a copy? A copy. I can’t connect the two of me. Can I connect the two? Holt, some memories- my childhood- for example, are the same. But it’s like laser beams merging, converging for a time, before separating and going their own way but at a different trajectory then the ones they were on before meeting. I really don’t know how to explain it.”

But now she knew why she had blocked these memories in the first place. Her company needed to continue, but this whole process was experimental, as well as extremely dangerous. She’d signed the release only days before her death.

Who knows what might happen if someone hacked her mind and found she was not only a clone, but with original memories and illegal cybernetics; dangerous, and very scary. Decoto had gone too far. He had abused his knowledge and position; more than once. He went far beyond her original instructions to him. Plus, he had tried to kill her, had managed to kill her. She would deal with him.

Were these thoughts now, her own, or part of the original? Where did the original end and the Lia she was now actually begin? Was she only an extension of something that died twenty years ago? Who was she really? The person who’d created HKSA after the collapse of police forces, or the one who’d let a hacker off and even had him join the company in repayment to those he’d harmed? Did she have her own thoughts, reactions, could she think creatively, respond originally, or was that programmed in from the original?

Her mind refused to focus on these issues, but they had to be resolved. She wanted to pace, but there was only a path to the desk and from there to the door. How could Holt be so ordered and precise in his codes but live like this? The question let her relax for a second on something other than herself, herselves?

Holt spoke up then, “They keep some of the original cells in the central vault in sub-section twelve.”

“Yeah; I read that.” She studied his face for a moment, down turned, sad. But she knew him, having profiled him for years before tracking him down, he hid something from her. “There’s something else.” He didn’t answer. But there was something else, some discrepancy with her memory and the information she had been given. “Something’s not right. If I, well, the original, died twenty years ago, this body – I – should be older.”

“Right.”

“How many others have there been of me? Of the original?”

“I don’t know.”

“Somebody does; I’m sure somebody does. Somebody in this company, yes. This company for so long keeping peace and order, it’s gone above the law. It wasn’t like this before. But I know who to go to.” She stood up, she knew what she should do, but uncertain if the idea was hers, or the other. The life she had stolen or the life forced upon her. She needed time to think through all of this new info. She really didn’t know where to go, or what to do. Every action brought questions; was that her or the original? Every action brought doubts. She doubted habits, likes, dislikes, her very beliefs and ideals. Lia was now more confused than she had been; but she had answers. She had answers.

A depressing thought.

Lia wandered out of Holt’s office. She headed out of the building and walked aimlessly in the crowded, colorful Hong Kong streets. She usually loved to walk the streets; to hear the people: the haggling, the talk and the gossip. She loved to see the bright flashing advertisements, seeing new things or different things. Buildings loomed over her. Lights flashed in all different colors across her face and people passed all around her, sometimes bumping, sometimes swerving. Tonight she took no notice. The places didn’t matter; the people didn’t matter; only thoughts mattered.

But were they her thoughts? Did the original control everything she did, had done? Will do in the future? How did she even know, how could she tell the difference?

Lia liked to walk when she thought, but was that truly her? Or was it an action of the original? She searched through her new memories and found so many she couldn’t distinguish from her own and that of the original. Some merged, overlapped, but sometimes even that overlap differed. She may have sat instead of standing, or jumped over the rail instead of taking the stairs. But she couldn’t differentiate between them. Which were hers? Which the originals? Was anything hers?

Who was she?

Amdeathisonlyamemory5 I an individual with my own thoughts, actions, responses, or am I only a part of another, an extension of someone else?

Who am I really?

Lia kept walking.

 

So that was it.

She had confronted Decoto. She had gone back to the Agency building and headed down to sub-section twelve and the central vault. There she found many interesting things in the databases not connected to the main hub, and the culture tanks and re-growing new bodies. She found Carime Shirow, being grown anew. Had they found the other dead or given up hope? Somehow the Cyber Autistics had known she was a clone. The how was beyond Lia. And now, Carime was being re-grown for Daddy. She wondered if Decoto had something to do with this. She didn’t find out then for security personnel arrived.

She had underestimated Decoto. A security force charged into the culture room with the grey banks of monitoring machines; elements of the security force she had helped train! They had her trapped. But they had underestimated her too, she had not informed everyone about all of her special modifications. Unit ten–twenty three no longer existed. Lia had never liked them anyway. But in the end, she’d been overwhelmed. The capture happened quickly.

Something seemed to snap within her mind. Something invisible – that had held her immobile. Her eyes flicked open and she could hear voices as if they stood far away on a quiet day. She turned up her hearing receptors as she studied what she could see in front of her. She didn’t want to risk moving too much until she knew her situation.

She lay on a flat metal slab of a table, tilted nearly forty-five degrees to vertical. And the room was cold. She couldn’t feel it for some reason, but she could smell it; the way it affected machines, screens, metal and wires – leaving a distinctive scent. Wires trailed away from her body to connect out of sight with several monitoring machines and possibly more. Lia heard them humming contentedly to themselves. She didn’t know what they did or monitored. Some might even inform others she was awake and aware now. That couldn’t be helped.

Lia lay half turned on her left side, to help reach her cybernetic implants in back. She sensed something more than other machines behind her.

One of the voices sounded all too familiar.

Her eyes slid to look out of the corner of her right eye, to see beside her as best she could. The motion very slow so as not to draw attention. She saw the front of the lab, with a large glass paneling separating the room. The glass soundproofing making the voices beyond sound far away: to men still spoke.

One – in a doctors white lab coat –explained something to the other. The other – Decoto, her boss, stood looking imposing and important. Lia guessed he wasn’t her boss anymore, and thinking back, she had first hired him for his position. She was his boss. Ironic.

“The new clone isn’t taking the memories,” the doctor said. “By some process, the old clone has erected several blockers, firewalls, attack viruses and barriers around her memories. And, this is the amazing part, even around the organic tissue. And though we couldn’t access those memories because of the preventive measures, we managed to wipe them.”

“How can you be sure if you can’t access the area?”

“We know the exact location of the implants from the files, I helped install many of them and the EMP blast targeted those areas.”

“That might be taking it a bit too far, very unnecessary. The clone will be disposed of soon anyway.”

“Maybe, but the EMP pulse will wipe memory and if the clone is tampered with before dumping of the body, it is a good precautionary measure to clear all the short term memory.”

“Good.”

So they had wiped her! Not all of it. They had tried a dump and wipe, but couldn’t get at it. Lia would have to thank Holt for that. He had done more it seemed, than unblock her memories, improving upon her own security measures She didn’t like people messing around in her mind, but in this instant she could almost kiss Holt. Almost.

deathisonlyamemory6The doctor continued, “We need to discontinue with this process and start anew with the original cells. A step could possibly have been missed with the new clone.”

The glass showed a slight reflection of the room around her. She could make out her own body, with parts missing. She trailed cybernetic linkages as she might intestines or ripped flash. Her left arm, the cybernetics taken off below the elbow, looked hallow, almost forlorn. She could see behind her.

To her.

The new clone. They had yet to begin installing cybernetic parts. The body remained whole, clean, pure, pristine. It made Lia sad in a way. The two men continued talking, distracting her.

“And the bodies?”

“I doubt we can learn anything more out of them. Have them taken to the incinerator.”

How callous! She was Decoto’s superior. She had started this agency, not him! He would not dump her or harm her in any way or form. Lia, more than just a clone, more than just a cyborg, she had her own thoughts, her own feelings. She was not a thoughtless automaton, like the car AI or the coffee machine.

Pushing off with the stump of her left arm, she ripped wires out of it with the other. Lights began flashing in the other room. They stared at the read outs, then looked up to stare at her through the glass. Their expressions were more than she could have hoped. And she still had some special surprises they didn’t know about.

“You will do no such thing, Decoto!” She may only be a clone, only a cyborg; with the cells and memories of the original in her, but she was more than that. Changes were inescapable in life, but people remained who they were and so would she. With the memory wipe and the implanted memories of an original-lost-past not her own. She lived and Lia would be Lia and acquire new memories. She had the right to choose, as did the clone next to her.

She may not have chosen her birth, but who does? She might not be able to choose the time and place of her death, but who does?

But she will choose to fight to keep her life. No confusion clouded in her mind on that issue; the original and clone had no doubts. She faced Decoto, wires trailing out of her, one armed, naked and unarmed. But she had never needed nor relied on a weapon.

“How dare you Matt! Are you trying to create a super human, to go along with your transhumanist ideas?”

“We’re not trying to turn Homo sapiens into homo superior. We are only gaining our full potential as humans, striving to bring it close to us and into us as humans.

“You’re a genetic clone with gene sequencing to make you faster, stronger, smarter, all of it, Lia, no eye sight problems, no arthritis, no debilitating diseases, with, on top of all that, artificial enhancements. Top of the line, experimental, and the in best cybernetics.

“Can’t you see what you are bringing about by being alive? You vindicate what we’ve worked toward for years. The revised cloning act of 2118 can be repealed by you.”

Lia shook her head. “I am not a tool to be used, cast aside, made anew, and used up. I have my own desires, goals and thoughts that are not a part of your super human plan. You made me, but you made me human.” And what she wanted was vengeance.

She stalked forward.

 

– end –

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