Published by Karl Rademacher on February 10, 2014. This item is listed in Issue 21, Issue 21 Stories, Stories

Hester Prynne’s Daughter

by Wilma Bernard

Neal was laughing, his head thrown back, his mouth open wide. The limousine vibrated with it, loud and full. Pearl had known he’d laugh — she should have known, anyway. Everybody laughed. They thought she was being funny. She laughed with him, until she punched him. Then she was laughing alone.

He made the limousine driver pull over, made Pearl get out. He said she’d probably broken his nose, said he needed that nose. So she was laughing in the dark and the rain, as her date rode off. She laughed him all the way out of sight.

When he was gone she spat up at the clouds. Her one constant since discovering time travel, that sky seemed intent on greeting her with unpleasant eras at every turn. In the past, people thought she was a demon or a god. In the future, they thought she was crazy, or just being funny. She was still looking for a time when she could fit in, but whenever people started to accept her she had the perverse urge to tell them that she was Pearl, Hester Prynne’s daughter, from the seventeenth century. They laughed. She inflicted pain. That ended the relationship.

This was her fifth decade in a week, so she was not in the best of moods as she made her way down a dark alley, toward her time-carriage. It seemed to be some freak of fate that wherever she ended up, the carriage was always down some kind of alley or lane, second door to the left. It might have been related to the freak of fate that gave a seventeenth-century maiden the only recorded working time vehicle, but Pearl didn’t have any way of determining their relationship.

A man stood in front of the second door on the left. A heavy raincoat shaded his features.

“Hello, Pearl,” he said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“Get thee gone,” said Pearl. “Look for someone else.”

“But I’ve been looking for you for so long.”

“And now that thou hast found me, thou mayst go!” She tried to keep calm, but it had been a fifty-year-long week, and she was tired. “My path lies through yonder door.”

“I know. Aren’t you a little curious who I am?”

“Vacate my path!” Pearl screeched. “I care for neither thou nor thine origins. Vacate my path or I shall drive thy head into yon wall!”

The man stepped aside. He followed her through the door, and flicked on the lights. They were in a warehouse, with glass fish on the walls and the time-carriage in the center, horribly mutilated. The roof was dented in, the glass windshield shattered. The wheels lay around the wreck, one of them twisted almost beyond recognition. The time-horses were gone. Pearl spun in fury toward the man who had accosted her. He was ancient, stooped and wrinkled. He had thrown back his hood, and his face was subtly twisted, as if it were viewed in a rippling pool. He was hideous, repulsive…and almost familiar.

“What hast thou done to my carriage?”

“What you did to me.” Was he deranged, that he thought he knew her?

“Perhaps thou hast mistaken me for some other.”

“No. There is no mistake.” Or maybe he was someone she’d met a few decades ago? When had she stuck around long enough to inflict that kind of damage?

“Who art thou?”

He laughed bitterly. “You first.”

“Pearl Dimmesdale.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No. You’re the scarlet letter.”

It was Pearl’s turn to laugh. “Thou hast read the tale, then.”

“Read it? I didn’t need to. Don’t you remember me? I was younger then, but I was already old to you. You thought I was the Black Man. Remember?”

She shook her head, no, and hoped it was true, hoped he couldn’t be what she was beginning to recall, in images of childhood simplicity. Mistress Hibbins, and her witching tales. The Black Man, talking to her mother. The Black Man, lit up by the lightning, and she on a platform holding her mother’s and father’s hands – in the night, before her father would hold her hand in daylight. The Black Man who had always been with her father, when he was not her father but only the minister.

But he wasn’t the Black Man, really, only something like him.

He was watching her. “You remember.”

“Chillingworth.” It was only a whisper, but it seemed to echo off those glass fish on the walls. They seemed all to be whispering it back at her, confirming it, making it all too real. “No,” she said, louder. “It is not possible. Mr. Chillingworth is long dead.”

“Am I? Did you see my body cold?”

She backed away, shaking her head against his claim.

“Did you think you were the only one left from our sordid little story? You, the one who destroyed us all? Not quite. You ruined my life, but you couldn’t end it. I kept your father alive for years, when he should have died because of you. They knew I was skilled, but they never knew just how skilled. I’ve lived these hundreds of years waiting for you, Pearl. Pearl? Ha! Dagger would be more apt. All we whom you touched were cut. And did you care? Never. You left three lives trampled in your wake, while you went blithely off to wreak havoc on all the ages.”

“I? I have done nothing. It is thou who art to blame. Thou art the fiend who tormented, not I!”

“I tormented Dimmesdale in part, it is true, but who tormented your mother? And who, think you, tormented me? I was a good man, before you got to me. A kind man, even a loving one. It was only under because of you that I became what I am.”

“What art thou, what have I turned thee to?”

“I’m hollow. My better parts have rotted away under your influence. I am more than three hundred years old, and what do I live for? Can I truly call it living? I’ve done nothing significant for a hundred years but wait and search for you, ‘Pearl.’ I’ve finally found you. I think I have my revenge.”

He pulled a dagger from his belt, and Pearl gasped. “Thou art mad.”

Chillingworth laughed mirthlessly. “You need not fear for your life, demon-child. I didn’t kill your father, and I don’t mean to kill you. Death is too easy.” He skidded the dagger across the floor to her.

She picked it up, watching the blade flash in the light. There was a single pearl set in its hilt.

“No,” Chillingworth continued. “Death is far too easy. You’re going to live, the way we have lived. Your machine is broken, the horses are fled into distant eras. It’s like my marriage, Dimmesdale’s piety, your mother’s beauty. All gone or shattered. We had to live with it, in a world that wouldn’t understand. See how you fare, in the same circumstances.”

“It was no fault of mine!” She was shaking, screaming at him. “Thou must know it was no fault of mine!”

“But I don’t. I don’t believe you. I’ve lived too long, in the truth of this bitter world. It’s finished now, for me. No one will believe your story, no one understand your speech. Think about that, and I’ve done it to you. It’s only what you did to me, but does that change anything? You’ve got the tool. Kill me. Finish the job you started so long ago.”

She didn’t want to – she told herself that later: she really hadn’t wanted to at all. But standing there, taunting her, he was the Black Man again. It wasn’t her; it was him, everything he stood for, everything he said. He was the society she’d left behind, that condemned her for the circumstances of her birth. She tried to tell herself, later, that she’d been frightened. Sure, he seemed like a weak old man, but look what he’d done to her carriage. Maybe he would have hurt her if she hadn’t done something. Maybe not, maybe that was only what she told herself so she could sleep at night. But she still couldn’t sleep. Anyway, he would have stood there, talking at her, reminding and damning her with every vile sentence. And she couldn’t get away, and the fish were looking at them, and the fish wanted blood. They were all blown glass, hollow, and they had to have something to fill them up. If it wasn’t him it would have been her. She would have stayed, and died there, and rotted away, and they would have gorged themselves on her flesh, and … and that was all nonsense. She didn’t do it for the fish, and she didn’t do it out of fear, and really she never could figure out why she did it, but that she was Pearl Dimmesdale and she always did the wrong thing at the wrong time.

So, because she was Pearl Dimmesdale and always did the wrong thing, she lunged at him, dagger in hand. She grappled him to the floor, and stabbed and stabbed until those bony demon-hands stopped clawing at her. Then she stood up, and the room was deadly still, and the fish were drinking it all in. They disgusted her. She had to get away. So she shoved the bloody dagger into her belt and opened the door and went out. She closed the door behind her. She washed her hands in the rain. She washed the dagger off, too.

And she went away, and spent the night in a subway station, trying to rationalize and to sleep. But she couldn’t, and she wandered around the way he’d wanted her to, lonely and bitter. And she learned to talk the way they did in that part of the future. But people still laughed at her, when she told them who she was, and she still hurt them, and sometimes she killed them. And it was satisfying, really, to watch her enemies bleed. Because the blood is where the life is, and she was what Chillingworth had made her, after she’d made him what he became. She was Dagger, and cutting was the only way she touched people.

AUTHOR BIO: Wilma Bernard has had stories published by Youth Imagination, Every Day Fiction, and the Metro Moms Network. Links to her work can be found at wilmabernard.blogspot.com.

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Published by Karl Rademacher on February 10, 2014. This item is listed in Issue 21, Issue 21 Stories, Stories

The Infinite Fractal of Skylar Freeborn

By Christian Riley

High atop a red-rock mesa, standing between three pine trees that overlooked a vast basin of sage and ocotillo cacti, sat an abandoned, concrete building. It had no windows, but five hunters observed remnants of an antenna and satellite dish on its rooftop as they pulled open the building’s steel door. An icy wind of snow and darkness blew at their backs while these men quickly shuffled in.

“Good fortune this is,” said the man called Dorn. He entered the building, a single room having no interior walls or furniture.

“How is it that we’ve never come across this place?” asked Shane.

“Well, maybe ’cause we’ve never been along this trail before,” replied Dorn.

The men dropped bundles of gear and backpacks, each wrapped in various fabrics: laced leather, fur, colored wool. Some of the bundles they placed into corners of the room, where they noticed stacks of dried cedar. In the center of the room was a stone fire ring.

Dorn stared at the ceiling above, spotting the evening sky peer back at him through a small hole. “Good fortune indeed,” he said. “Hurry. Get a fire roaring.”

Within minutes, each man had a place near the blazing wood. Some of them had already rolled out their bedding, too tired to drink the tea Dorn had concocted.

“This’ll be nice,” said Dorn, handing a steaming cup to his nephew, Milo. “We’ll get good rest here.” He looked around the room and smiled appreciatively. He was the oldest man of the group, having long silver hair braided into rows. His face, a map of leathered wrinkles, sun-baked and hard, seemed betrayed by his compassionate eyes. “A hunter can always use a good rest.”

“I’ll drink to that,” replied Shane, lifting his cup to the old man. Shane looked at Milo then, who had placed his tea onto the ground. A young man of eighteen, Milo appeared distracted, rummaging through a large sack. “What’cha looking for, boy?”

“Yes,” Milo whispered to himself, retrieving a small, leather-bound book. He grasped his tea, looked up, smiled, and then took a drink before placing his cup onto the ground once again.

“Oh, help us,” muttered Shane, rolling his eyes. “Here he goes again.”

Milo opened the book and read softly, rapidly, to himself.

“You’re wasting your time, boy,” said Shane, pushing a stick into the fire. “Better to think about a pretty woman, than old-fool logic such as that.” Dorn’s chuckling joined his, as both men leaned back onto their packs.

Finished reading, Milo closed the book and looked up. “Have you even read it, Shane?” he asked.

“Relax, son,” replied Shane. “No need getting into a huff.” He glimpsed down at the thin book. “But no, I haven’t read it. And I don’t mean to, either. I’m not interested in a boy called Skylar Freebird—or whatever the hell his name was.”

“Freeborn. Skylar Freeborn. And he isn’t a boy.”

“Whatever.”

Milo adjusted his own pack into the form of a seat, leaned back himself, then stared into the fire. He was a handsome young man -– tall, brown hair cropped short, smooth face — the spitting image of his late father. Dorn peeled his eyes away from Milo, as the young man looked up again.

“Some say he’s still alive after all these years,” said Milo.

“You see,” replied Shane. “Fool logic, right there. That book was written three-hundred years ago, kid.”

“And you’ve yet to read it.”

“And I’m not planning on it.”

“But doesn’t it even interest you? The way of fractal design. Nature. Us, and the entire universe, tied together.” Milo lifted his hands up in reference to their surroundings. “People knew the guy, Shane. He was here.”

“And I don’t care. So what? A boy called ‘Skylar’ knew a thing or two about science, wrote a book. Big deal. What’s that have to do with me?” Shane threw another piece of wood into the fire. “More importantly, what’s that have to do with staying alive?”

“It’s a matter of faith,” said Milo. “And faith has everything to do with staying alive.”

Shane paused, looked across the fire at Dorn. “Much like his father, ain’t he?” he laughed.

“That he is,” replied Dorn.

From a sack, Shane retrieved hunks of dried venison. His hands were like knotted oak, strong and hard, being miniature replicas of his stout body and thick head. He passed a piece of venison to Milo, then threw one to Dorn. “Fine then,” he said, leaning back once again. “Go ahead and indulge us, Milo. Indulge us with this faith of yours.”

Milo smiled and opened the book. He turned to the first page, which contained an illustration of a spiral galaxy, a flower, and the human body. Also on the page were various numbers, and the name, ‘Skylar Freeborn.’

“As a boy,” Milo began, “Skylar knew the secrets of Fractal Interpretation. He left his village when he was very young. He said he was going out to explore, and that was that. He showed them his hands though, before he left. Each had ended at the wrist with rivers of white fog pouring out of them. He had no hands. Some say the boy was smiling at the time he showed his people this. That he even laughed, declaring, ‘As is above, as is below,’ before he walked away.”

“Sounds like a bunch of hocus-pocus if you ask me,” laughed Shane.

“It’s not,” replied Milo. “To understand the secrets of fractals is to understand how to manipulate them. It says so, here in The Tome.” Milo went on to remind them, that before Skylar had left, he told his father where he kept his journal. The journal described much of Skylar’s intuitive, untrained insight into fractal design. And that once his people had witnessed Skylar’s hands transform into white mist, the journal had become sacred. It became the model for what is now called, “The Tome of Equations,” of which a small following of people refer to as a means of religious faith.

“Everything fits together, like pieces of a puzzle,” continued Milo. “Our entire universe, with everything in it, is one giant fractal. We,” he made circles with his hands, “are larger versions of a cell, yet miniscule versions of a galaxy. In The Tome, it says that we are all actually ‘cells’ of our planet, which in turn is a cell of the galaxy, which again, is a single cell of the universe. And so on, and so forth.”

“Neat,” replied Shane.

“It all sounds interesting enough, Milo,” said Dorn, “we ain’t disputing that. It’s just that, well—we’ve heard all this before. And frankly, just because some boy made smoke with his hands, then walked off into the woods never to be seen from again, doesn’t mean–”

“But he has been seen!” interrupted Milo. “Hundreds, maybe thousands of people have seen Skylar Freeborn. Even to this day.” One of the sleeping hunters stirred, and for a brief moment, the three men fell silent.

“But no one can prove it,” continued Dorn, in a soft voice.

“Which is where faith comes in,” replied Milo. “I believe Skylar is a real person. I believe that through his understanding of fractal design, interpretation, how we’re all connected, that he has discovered a way to bend his body at will. Some say he can transform his body into anything. A mountain. A tree. An empty bottle, for that matter.”

“Forget it, boy,” said Dorn. “What you’re talking about is impossible. Makes no sense.”

“Oh, but it does. It makes sense to me, at least. There’s even proof.” Quickly, Milo turned a few pages in his book. “Right here—about ancient photographs. The Tome refers to computer enhanced images of the universe, and of the neural networks in our minds.” The boy’s face screwed up into a large grin. “Side by side, they look identical!”

“But what does that prove?” replied Dorn. “So the inside of our brain looks like a bunch of stars.”

“Neat,” said Shane, his eyelids growing heavy.

“What it proves, is that everything is one in the same: Miniature replicas of each other, created by each other, each following its own spiral path—like a trail down a mountain. Don’t you get it?”

“Watch your tone, boy,” replied Shane, sitting up. He placed his hands toward the fire, then rubbed his face with them. “Like your uncle said, we’ve heard it all before. We don’t need your preaching.”

A log cracked in the fire, shooting sparks onto the ground. “Some say that he lives a fleeting existence,” continued Milo. “That he travels what’s left of our world, visiting villages, helping people, making miracles. And that often times he takes the form of an animal, serving as a sign to others who have prayed to him.”

“Like I said, a waste of time,” replied Shane. The man stood, pulled his bedroll from his pack and laid it out. “Seems to me there were many others who also prayed, five hundred years ago. And look what that got them.”

“Have you ever considered that what they got was the answer to their prayers?” replied Milo.

“Boy!” snapped Shane, throwing down his bear-hide blanket. “Don’t tempt me to beat some sense into you.”

“Keep it down, guys,” replied Dorn. “Milo…” His voice trailed off, impatience lingering in his eyes.

“An answer to their prayers?” scoffed Shane, crawling under his bear hide. “Ten mile wide asteroid crashing into the Atlantic Ocean. Devastation. Famine. Plague. In two weeks, seven billion people dead.” He looked across the fire at Milo, his eyes cold as steel. “I’ll tell you something else they said, boy; they said that the stench of death was so thick, there wasn’t a place on Earth a person could hide from it.”

“That’s enough of this talk, men,” said Dorn. “The elk were spotted in a valley south of here, near Bellow’s canyon. By late tomorrow we should be there.” He stood, then made his bed.

“Others say he appears as his true self,” continued Milo, after a brief pause. “Or how he looked the day he left his village: wrapped in the pelt of a polar bear, long golden hair pouring down his shoulders.”

“Silly fairy tales,” muttered Shane.

“That’s what my father said he looked like at least.”

“Damn it, boy!” Shane sat up with a start. “You keep quiet about your old man. He died an awful death. Don’t go shaming him with this foolish tale of yours.”

“Enough!” snapped Dorn. One of the sleeping hunters opened his eyes, cursed, then rolled over.

“Shane’s right, Milo,” continued Dorn. “I was there when your father got stuck by that boar. And I was there at his bed later that night, when he died in my arms. And I’ll tell you this; there certainly wasn’t any ‘Skylar Freeborn’ around to save him, that’s for sure.” Dorn spat into the fire then closed his eyes. “Now get to bed, already. Both of you.”

None of the hunters spoke another word to each other that night. Shane and Dorn drifted off to sleep while Milo sat there, reading from The Tome. And later, he placed more logs onto the fire, made his bed, and laid down himself, staring up at the hole in the ceiling. Even though the light from the flames made it difficult to see the night sky, Milo did spot a few stars twinkling way up there. “I believe in you, Skylar,” he whispered. “I believe.”

***

At daybreak, the hunters were a quarter of a mile down the trail when a light breeze kicked up. Fresh snow covered the ground, making travel difficult, and uncomfortable. Pulling up the rear, Milo stopped to adjust his pack. He took it off, set it on the ground, then heard a loud “snap” from above. He looked up the trail and spotted a man standing on a rock a hundred yards away. The man had golden hair, wore a thick white robe, and appeared to be smiling; or so Milo would tell later. A strong gust of wind screamed through the canyon, and then the man vanished, leaving a flurry of white powder adrift in the air.

Then much to Milo’s surprise, he noticed that high atop that red-rock mesa, standing between those three pine trees overlooking a vast basin of sage and ocotillo cacti was nothing at all. No concrete building with a steel door, remnants of an antenna or satellite dish. Nothing at all, but a thin blanket of snow.

AUTHOR BIO: Chris’ stories have appeared in over sixty magazines and anthologies. As a previous citizen of the Pacific Northwest, he vows one day to return, knowing that that which has yet to be named lurks somewhere behind the Redwood Curtain. He keeps a static blog of his writings at frombehindthebluedoor.wordpress.com, and can be reached at chakalives@gmail.com.

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Published by Karl Rademacher on February 10, 2014. This item is listed in Issue 21, Issue 21 Stories, Stories

The Young Weaver

By Laura Beasley

The Old Weaver wrapped the bright royal blue cloak around the prince as she did each night.  She began her story.

There was a time and it was not my time and it was not your time. It was a time when the wise and skilled knew how to transform from human to animal and back again. It was a time when a young girl was learning to weave. She was so young she was too short to sit at the loom. She was so young her arms could not reach the shuttles. She was so young she had to run a bit carrying the basket of cloth following her teacher to the Old City on market day. Every day from dawn to dusk, the young girl swept the scraps, fetching threads for her mistress.

After seven months, the mistress called her, “I think you are ready.”

“I am! I’m ready to weave!” The girl gazed into her teacher’s face, the gray eyes framed by gray hair held by a sparkling hair comb.

“You’re ready to sell the cloth in the market. You’ve carried the basket and watched me.  Be sure to fetch a good price and bring back every coin.”

The girl folded the cloth and put it into the basket without saying anything. Her disappointment hung in the silence.

“Let me fasten your cloak, the forest is cold and wet.” murmured the old woman as she reached for the tie around the girl’s neck.

“I can do it myself, ‘mam.”

In her anger, the girl didn’t watch the forest. At midday, she sat on an old stump to eat her bread and cheese. She closed her eyes to savor the taste. She noticed something when she opened her eyes. Had it been there before? A spider web suspended between two trees was woven in an intricate design. When she examined it more carefully she saw a depiction of a hand mirror. She saw her own face reflected in the web.

She reached up to yank her hair, “I’m almost grown, going to market with raggedy hair. It should be put up with a comb. I work for crumbs.”

She threw her crust to the ground. When she arrived at the market in the Old City, it had never seemed more wondrous: stalls hung with shining pots, tinkling bells and golden baskets; every woman finely dressed with hair pinned by a comb. The cloth sold for a good price: five silver and seven copper coins. Before tying the purse shut, she saw the stall selling hair combs.

That old woman never gives me anything. I deserve something for my work.

The girl asked the price of each comb. The most beautiful was identical to the one her old mistress wore except it was made of genuine silver with tiny rose pearls.  It would have cost every coin she had and she wasn’t willing to return empty-handed.  The least expensive was a copper comb set with three scraps of coral. The girl paid with three of the copper coins.  It wasn’t very pretty but she knew she deserved to have something for her trouble.

At the fountain in the center of the city, the girl washed her hands and face before arranging her hair with the new comb. The tiny red stones made her hazel eyes shimmer green.  Although not flattering, it had been the cheapest thing to buy. She tied up the rest of the coins and hurried through the forest. She stopped near the cottage.

My mistress will beat me if she finds out I stole from her. Why did I buy this stupid thing, I’ll never be able to wear it in front of her.  She threw the trinket on the ground.

The old woman looked disappointed after counting the coins, “I’d hoped for three more copper coins. I wanted to have enough to buy back the genuine silver comb my Old Mistress gave me. I wanted to give you this comb when I got my own back. You’re old enough to wear your hair tied back. I’ll give it to you now and braid my hair more tightly.  A few loose wisps can be expected on an old woman like me. Here, let me put this in your hair.”

The young girl worked harder in the months to come and never revealed her betrayal. She was cooperative when asked to sell another basket of cloth.

“Yes ‘mam, I’ll bring more coins this time.” The girl told her mistress.

When she stopped at midday to eat she noticed the spider had made a new web.   The animal had used the coral comb in its design!

“Why do you have that comb? What have you woven now?  It almost looks like me!”

The girl noticed a crowd of snarling faces in the web. Her own face with scraggly hair and the copper comb was in the center of the design. The girl pulled the comb from her mistress out of her hair to use it to shred the spider’s web. The strands would not break and both combs became stuck in the web. As the girl struggled to free herself, she was covered in sticky adhesive.

“I wanted to sell my comb and buy back my mistress’ comb, you beast!”

She couldn’t see the spider but she knew the old spinner had to be close.  The girl picked up the basket and ran to the river. She couldn’t wash the stickiness from her hands. In trying to dry herself she soiled the cloth she was supposed to sell in the market. She threw cloth and basket on the ground and ran to the city. What would she do now?

The girl listened to gossiping and sniping in the busy market place, she watched the cheating and stealing. The snarling dogs snatched scraps from each other.  When the comb-seller was distracted in an argument, the girl took the silver comb set with tiny pink pearls.  She ran home through the forest.

The old woman did not smile when she was given the comb and put it on the shelf. After serving the girl stew, the old woman went to bed. It was several weeks before another bolt of cloth was ready to be sold.

“Are you certain you can sell this at market child?” said the teacher.

“Of course, ‘mam, you can trust me. I got a fine price the last time, enough to buy back your silver comb. I don’t know why you won’t wear it.”

“Take the cloth if you want. I trust you.”

The girl convinced herself her teacher didn’t know the truth. She’ll never know that I stole that comb.

Walking the path, it seemed as if everyone in the forest knew. The trees glared, the birds criticized and even the rocks seemed disappointed in her. I wonder if I can skip lunch and walk straight to market if I’m fast enough.

The girl felt the familiar gnawing in her belly at midday. She stopped to sit on the same stump. If only the spider had not woven anything this time! The web was a rainbow that blocked the path to the city.  She could not pass and she knew she could not break the web. The design included strips from the cloth the girl had abandoned. Her eyes drank in every vivid detail until she saw tiny pearls in the corner.

“How could the spider have gotten the pearls from her comb? My teacher must be the spider! She’s the one spinning these webs all along. I have to tell her the truth!”

The girl ran home.

Before the girl could confess, the old woman silenced her with a gesture, “You have nothing to tell me, child. I am the oldest of the old and the wisest of the wise. You are one of many. When you saw vanity, you chose to be vain and stole to feed that vanity.  When you saw anger, you chose to be angry and stole to feed that anger. Now that you see goodness, you choose to be good. When you are older you may weave your own story.”

The old woman transformed into the spider and began to weave a web in the corner of the room.

You have heard the story of the Young Weaver and it was not my time and it was not your time.

Drifting into sleep, the prince couldn’t tell her what he was thinking, but it was your time, Old Weaver, and it will be my time.

AUTHOR BIO: Laura Beasley, the Mother who Tells Stories, has published seventeen short stories in fifteen different magazines. She has been married to her husband for thirty-five years and they are expecting their first grandchild this summer.

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Published by Karl Rademacher on June 1, 2013. This item is listed in Issue 18, Main Features, Short Stories

An Honorable Aunt

Children grow up with stories of wizards and swordsman. Even my children did — although the glamour of those stories rather died when they saw the real creatures in action. War-wizardry turned cottages and fields to dust, and swords twisted in the guts of fathers and mothers far more often than they cleaved the necks of sinister villains.

The pair who met us at the river crossing — one each, a brawny bronze-haired swordsman and his pale wisp of a wizard companion — seemed to expect a reputation of heroes from legend. When Gretya hid behind my skirts and Wimar began crying, the swordsman even looked a little hurt.

The wizard murmured something to him and he stepped back. A silver circlet gleamed in the wizard’s white-blond hair, suggesting he kept to the Covenant. That by itself wasn’t enough to let my heart beat any easier.

The last party to cross had run the ferry along its ropes to the opposite bank and then, thoughtlessly, left it there. The swordsman was tugging at the pulley to guide the raft back. He nodded to the wizard, who called,

“There’s plenty of room for all of us to board, ma’am. Or if you prefer, you and the children can cross first. We don’t mind waiting, and we have no wish to trouble you.”

He was trying to soothe me, but as my fear died down my irritation rose perversely. “You don’t wish to, eh? Then I must beg your pardon for preferring company that doesn’t upset my…charges.”

“Charges?” He examined us more closely. “Are you a sort of —”

“Trimeya Kaduran. Late of Endover, until it burned. I watch after these children — eight of them, I see you counting — because after the summer war swept through Amath there isn’t anyone else who can.”

“You’re from Amath?” the swordsman asked. His tone was unexpectedly soft.

“We’ve come that way, too,” the wizard said. “I’m Anweth n’Mansaken. My friend is Rathin Ormyer.”

“And you fought in the war, did you?” I forced the words past a tightening in my throat, part lingering fear, part anger.

“Not for long,” Rathin said. It seemed he had to force the words past a tightness of his own.

With a final pull, the ferry bumped against the sticky clay of the shoreline. I was set to march towards it when Anweth gasped aloud. Unthinkingly, I turned to him with an outstretched arm; he sounded so much like Hammet in one of his nightmares that I wanted to offer comfort.

Rathin reached him first, a supportive hand on Anweth’s shoulder — while the fingers of the other intertwined with his. Absently I noticed the gesture, and though it wasn’t hard to puzzle out what might cause such a thing to be second nature to these men, it wasn’t as if I could think much less of them.

“Premonition?” Rathin murmured.

“Yes.” Anweth blinked eyes that threatened for a moment to roll back in his head. “They’re back.”

Rathin turned to me. “If you’re going to go, get going. You’ve seen enough of this war, at least you can skip meeting the Crimson Standard.”

My gaze flew up the trail, as if I would see coming up it the ranks of mercenaries carrying banners dipped in the blood of previous victims. Nothing, of course. Yet… “He has premonitions?”

“Yes, I do,” Anweth said, each word falling with careful precision. He seemed to be nursing a headache.

Esma had grabbed my hand at the Crimson Standard’s name, and I tried to clasp hers back reassuringly, without feeling at all reassured.

Rathin released Anweth and made one final tug on the ferry line, looking at me pointedly. I started herding the children aboard. Anweth followed, shrugging off our offers of help, then Rathin and I took the absent ferryman’s place, grasping the rope above and pulling, driving the raft over the water. It was harder work and slower going than I expected or liked. Caris and Doran, the eldest children, helped us, and Anweth joined in once he seemed to have regained some strength. Looking back at the shore, I saw mounted soldiers approaching it. Yes, there were crimson standards, waving in the breeze like washing. But no amount of washing could ever make them clean.

“What if they try to wade across?” Hammet asked me.

“Pray that they don’t,” I said. Anweth turned to me. “What would you tell him?” I whispered in reply to his look. “Go on, say it.”

Anweth released the rope and knelt before Hammet. I hadn’t expected the move, and tensed, not wanting either of these men closer to my children.

I kept pulling the line, bringing us towards the other shore where we could part as quickly as possible.

“Don’t worry,” Anweth told Hammet. “Your Aunt Trimeya is going to take care of you, and Rathin and I will handle the Crimson Standard.”

Doran looked up. “‘Aunt’s’ a term of respect in the south,” he told me. “My father’s brother moved to the merchant cities down there, would come up visiting. He’d picked up the habit, and our mother’s mother was suddenly Auntie Getra. They always…” His voice faded away. They were all dead now, except perhaps his uncle down in Calda. Maybe Doran would find him one day, have some family left.

And in the meantime, I’d be his aunt. I’ve been called worse things, by far.

“Next time, your premonitions might cut it a little less close,” Rathin grunted to Anweth as we landed.

“I’ll be sure to specify that when I next give orders to the Astet in heaven,” Anweth said drily. Then he glanced at me, perhaps expecting me to take exception to the blasphemy.

I was beginning to suspect he’d named me ‘Aunt Trimeya’ half in mockery.

“There are plenty of things I might choose to object to about you,” I said, “without even bothering with what comes out of your mouth.”

I might have landed a blow on him. He stared at me wordlessly until Rathin tapped him on the arm. “We don’t have time to spare, Anweth, Let’s let the lady go.”

“Oh, thank you,” I said. “That’s much more generous than the terms I could expect from most mercenaries. But then…” I caught myself in time.

“Then…?” Rathin gestured, inviting me to continue. But without even waiting for another word from me, he strode to the post where the end of the ferry line was tied. A stroke from his sword severed it, and the raft vanished downstream.

The Crimson Standard still waited on the other side of the river. Perhaps they didn’t want to risk such a strong current.

“No doubt you have good reasons to hate mercenaries, ma’am,” Anweth said, “but Rathin and I are feeling the war as much as you are. We regret ever being part of it. Is a little courtesy too much to ask?”

I gestured to the wilderness around us, with the most feared mercenaries in Amath just across the river. “Does this look the proper place for courtesy?”

He glanced at the children, gathered behind me.

“I’m trying to protect them,” I said, “not teach them fine manners. Though—” I stepped closer to him, continuing in a lower voice, “you’d be one to preach propriety, wouldn’t you, when your lover’s hands have roamed all over you in front of—”

“Perhaps he should have let me fall,” Anweth suggested blandly. “Or would you have caught me?”

“I simply think it’s a little rich to hear lessons on courtesy from perverts.”

I regretted the words as soon as I’d said them. They were true enough, but I should know better than to express my every opinion, especially to two strangers who, despite what they were, had been nothing but helpful. It was hardly as if the children or I would take harm—after all we had seen—from the sight of a single touch, which might even to innocent minds look innocent.

“I see I’d be wasting my breath,” Anweth said, and he turned away from me. “Yes,” he called to Rathin, “Let’s let the lady go.”

“What did you say to him?” Caris murmured to me as I led the children away.

“An irrelevant truth,” I answered wearily. Caris was one of the eldest of my children, not only in age; for a long time she’d had no choice but to accept some weaknesses in those she relied on.

The rest of the day was a long walk. We weren’t followed; perhaps Rathin and Anweth had taken a different path, or stopped to rest, or perhaps the Crimson Standard had crossed the river after all. It wasn’t any of our business anymore.

#

We went without a fire that evening, sitting close with blankets on our shoulders for warmth. Caris knelt beside me, Esma and Wimar falling asleep in our laps. She spoke quietly so as not to disturb them.

“Those men today were helpful. Even if they were ex-mercenaries. It was a…surprise, but a pleasant one.”

Her expression was impossible to read in the dark. Perhaps it was only my guilty imagination making her soft words accusing?

“They were lovers,” I said.

“That’s a large assumption to make just because two men are very easy around each other—”

“The way they touched made me suspect. When I voiced my suspicions to the wizard, he didn’t deny them.”

“Still,” Caris said, “it seems a small enough thing. If you hadn’t already disliked them for their history—”

“Why does it matter?” I hissed. “Rogues or inverts, you can’t expect me to sing their praises just because we left their company unharmed. Is it too much for me to ask honesty and decency in a person before I respect them?”

Caris was quiet a long time, Esma resting peacefully in her arms. She rubbed the child’s back, and at last she said, “When you took me in, I had nowhere else to go. I’d fled my home after soldiers burst in on us one night. They…before my family’s eyes…I thought I’d die of shame at the time, but I lived. Deep down, beneath the pain and humiliation, I was proud of that. And then my father and mother gave me a knife. They expected me to cut my wrists, to die for my lost honor. So long as I lived with them my humiliation was a lasting disgrace on my family.

“So I left. They asked too much for the sake of decency.”

“Such decency,” I said, “sounds entirely indecent.”

“It seems so clear to us, doesn’t it? It’s more important to spare others harm than to live unblemished.” Caris sighed. “The logic of my own thoughts sometimes leads me to unexpected places. Uncomfortable ones. And certainly not very honorable.”

“But what makes honor, Caris? You have strength and courage. Even if I cannot see the entire world with the same eyes you do, I know you’re worthy of the respect of anyone you meet.”

“Yet how few show it,” she murmured. She was given to introspection and sometimes melancholy, and none of my words could draw her from it now. I pressed her hand, offering comfort.

Light and sound erupted around us. Several of the children cried out. I kept a rein on my tongue, but leapt high enough to almost shake Wimar from my arms.

The wizard, Anweth, stood before me in a blaze of silver light. His voice echoed around the clearing. “Trimeya Kaduran, you must go. The Crimson Standard is following your path. We’re trying to hold them back, as long as possible—” His voice fell into a groan, pain and fear thick in the sound. His image folded over and vanished.

Caris was on her feet, Esma clinging to her skirts. I passed Wimar to her and went around the clearing, gathering the children together and soothing them, collecting my own nerves somewhere along the way.

“I know you’re tired,” I said, “but we have to start walking again. Another few miles, and we can sleep for the rest of the night.”

“With the Crimson Standard after us?” Doran asked.

I spoke to him in a low voice. “They won’t come after us tonight. They take prisoners when they can, and kill them slowly. They have—” The names caught in my throat; I shook my head sadly. “But at least the wizard sent us warning. They’ve protected us to the end.”

Yet my stomach clenched at the thought that it was far from over.

Doran closed his eyes with a deep, strengthening breath. Caris appeared beside him, already calm. She pressed Esma and Wimar to me. Her expression was composed and deliberate.

“No, Caris,” I told her before she could say a word.

“You’re right, we have to save the children. It’s what Rathin and Anweth would sacrifice themselves for. But I—I can’t—my own strain of honor won’t let me leave them unaided.”

“You couldn’t! Caris, a young woman like you in the Crimson Standard’s midst would be—”

“I know the sort of thing they might do,” she said coldly. “They have several interesting innovations for the torture of men. Did you know that?”

“I forbid you to go, Caris.” Our eyes met by starlight. She was about to refuse me. I said, “I’ll do it.”

Doran gasped, as if he could take my words from the air.

“A graying-haired woman like me would be of less interest to them,” I said, half-trying to convince myself. “And I…Caris, you are strong and honorable. Doran is kind and wise. The world needs people like you, and the children, and… Anyway, I’m only a sour person with good intentions. Much more easily spared.”

I took the purse from my belt and gave it to Caris, and wrapped my blanket around Esma’s shoulders. “I’ll follow you…if I can. Wait for me, if you will, somewhere safe. Good luck, my loves.”

I kissed each of them goodbye and, as they disappeared down the starlit road, I turned my own steps back the way we had come.

#

The Crimson Standard had a fire, larger than a cottage hearth, with their bloodstained banners wafting in the heated air above it. On a frame nearby, two prisoners were bound. Rathin’s wrists looked raw from struggling. Anweth hung still beside him, eyes covered by a woven leather band wrapped cruelly tight. The weaving chilled me to look at—a wizard’s blind, keeping his powers in check.

Most spells relied on words, if not also elaborate gestures, intricate symbols and arcane ingredients. A gag was enough to keep most wizards in check. But Amathan captors try to leave their playthings free to scream.

I wiped damp hands on my skirt and walked into the firelight.

Bright-eyed faces above solid red tunics turned to me, split into grins and laughter. They were surprised. It was my only advantage, that and the fact that I was pureblooded, golden-skinned and raven-haired Amathan. We had in common a superiority over any lesser people.

Rathin started when he got a good look at me, but nobody noticed and he had no reason to reveal our prior connection.

That was my part of the plan, just forming as I stood there. “I see you’ve come across the mercenary scum staining these words,” I said to the Crimson Standard. The ease with which I hit that tone of contempt did not leave me proud.

“That, and an honored matron,” said one man, gray-haired and scarred, who must be the leader of the band—until the day came when he fell in battle to be replaced by an equally ruthless successor. He seemed less than convinced of my honor, but also content to let me speak.

“A matron with no home,” I said sourly. “My village burned by marauding monsters like those two there. I’ve seen children terrorized and old men slain by their kind. These two in particular…”

“You have history.” The Standard’s leader raised his eyebrows, taken aback or perhaps amused by my venom.

“Yes,” I said. “Are you going to kill them?”

“In time,” he said easily.

“Let me help.”

The few chuckles greeting my request were warm, even approving.

“Would you like something to eat first?” one man asked.

Any reply I could make to that—I hunger only for revenge, perhaps—seemed a little overdone, so I only shook my head in stern silence. And held out my hand for a knife.

The leader took one from a block beside the fire. A butcher’s blade, thick and jagged, but with a fine sharp tip. He took my arm as if escorting a fine lady, and led me to the prisoners on the frame.

“We’ll give you one,” he said. “Do what you wish, make it as thorough as you like—or can.”

The slight against my torturing abilities I ignored. I reached again for the knife.

He let me take it, but stood studying me. “You must have noble blood,” he remarked. “The serf class seems to have lost their taste for these diversions. Has their rage burned out, I wonder? Or only their courage?”

“If it’s noble to hate, I am noble,” I said. “Will you give me the wizard?”

The leader stepped back, letting me approach Anweth. Beside him, Rathin watched me with a blank look, as if in shock or horror.

“Do you know,” I said, slowly, sourly, “what these two are to each other? The things they do to each other?”

The leader backed away farther, out of reach. As if afraid my disgust and hatred would boil over onto everyone around me. All the Crimson Standard were watching, hardly breathing. Some smiled, but some looked wary. As if their own tenets, when spoken from my mouth soaked in rage, made them uneasy.

“There’s nothing worth sparing here,” I said, stepping very close to Anweth. I raised the blade and willed my hand to be steady.

I slashed at the wizard’s blind, severing it over his brow. The blade nicked his skin, drawing a line of blood, but even as the pain stung him so did his power. With a gasp, he seized it and unleashed it in a string of liquid words. The ropes binding him and Rathin slithered off as if in revulsion.

I caught Rathin as he stumbled free. Anweth was already standing, flinging an arm out, shouting something. An acid white glow filled my vision, like silent lightning striking the ground beside me. Now Rathin was the one holding me, guiding me through the camp even as I blinked away shadows. He must have recognized the spell and shut his eyes before it struck. The Crimson Standard, unprepared, reeled blindly around us.

Rathin found his sword leaning beside the leader’s chair. He drew it and looked around.

“No time for that,” Anweth said beside us.

Rathin followed him into the forest with a curse. I threw him a look of understanding. I wouldn’t have minded if a few of the Crimson Standard had been cut down there and then.

At a final word from Anweth, the fire swelled, tongues grabbing for the banners hanging over them. They caught, and flames raced down the standard poles. They fell, burning, catching men beneath and between them. The conflagration spread to tents, supplies, uniforms.

“Was that war magic?” I panted to Anweth as we ran away.

“No,” he said. “Just a spell for lighting fires—magnified, I admit. But I’m not a war wizard anymore.” He slowed at one point, gasping in breath. “So you…ah…”

“It would have been dishonorable to have abandoned you after the help you offered us,” I said.

“I wasn’t certain at the time that you didn’t mean it.” He touched his forehead, wincing as his fingers found the cut. I offered him a handkerchief to stanch it.

“All things considered,” I said, “you’re not a bad sort. Neither of you are.”

He studied me, and said at last, “You aren’t, either, Aunt Trimeya.”

#

We caught up with the children by dawn, and as there was only one road through the forest, we took it together. In the end we parted at Surannah, a small village sending some wagons of extra produce up along the caravan route to Sarnost’an in the mountains. The carters welcomed the presence of a friendly wizard and swordsman. Rathin seemed no less pleased.

“It’s been too long since we’ve been caravan guards,” he said.

Doran would continue south, to his uncle’s family. For the time being I would go with him, and of course the children would come with me.

Caris found Rathin and Anweth as we were bidding farewell, and asked if she could travel with them.

“Not, of course, that I’d need your permission to travel with the caravan. I’ve talked to the carters and they already welcomed me.” She tossed her head and smiled. Utterly without shame. “But to have some companions, someone to look to for assistance or advice…”

“And how could we possibly assist you?” Anweth smiled.

“Your companionship, then. At least to Sarnost’an.”

“That you can have.” Rathin grinned and offered her his hand.

Before taking it, she turned to me.

“You don’t need my permission,” I said.

“No, but I’d like it, if you would give it.”

I kissed her forehead. “I can think of no one else I’d be happier to entrust you with.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“So what are your plans for Sarnost’an?” Anweth asked her as I walked away.

“I’m not sure yet. Perhaps I’ll open a shop, settle down.”

“Marry?” In a voice so low I had to strain to hear it—and I did, I admit, eager to catch these last hints of Caris’s future—Anweth continued teasingly, “Do you expect our advice on that? Help you find the best man? Because our opinions may—”

“Not necessarily.” She laughed. “I don’t need matchmakers, even if you’d be willing to play them. And even if I did… The first time I ever fell in love was three summers ago. Her name was Isema. I was too shy to admit it at first, but now that I know…”

Perhaps she meant for me to hear. But I think not. She laughed, utterly carefree, unselfconscious.

And yet, why should she be anything else? She was among friends who loved and admired her. She knew, and she must have trusted that we all did, that she had never done anything to be ashamed of, anything but what was decent and honorable.

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