One cannot live between an enchanted forest and mystical mountains without knowing what it means when a humble village girl finds a magical weapon—a heroic destiny. Teenage Magda hefts the blade, scowling at her reflection in its surface, and heaves it back into the lake. It whistles as it slices through the air, revolving end over end before it plunges beneath the surface. She walks back toward the squat, thatch-roofed cottages clustered together in the middle of the fields like a mushroom ring, dead set on marrying her childhood sweetheart, raising horses, and producing fat babies.
I can’t breathe.
I kick to the surface, alert for the flash of orange and gold to warn me that I’m more likely to fill my face with fire than my lungs with air. No choice about it either way. I can’t stay down here.
I gasp in deep breaths as I tread water in the middle of my wedding day. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see myself, bonny blue forget-me-nots woven into my hair. His favorite flower.
A serpentine head churns through the water in my direction. I knew better than to think I’d escape her in the lake. Nagas are excellent swimmers. She glides along like a crocodile with her golden eyes slitted, her snub nose protruding above water.
My sword hangs heavy in the sheath on my back, but I have no faith in my ability to hack and slash and swim at the same time. Instead, I meet her with my fists as she hurtles toward me like a thrown spear. I land a solid blow to her nose. Her momentum propels me backwards through the water to slam into a rocky outcropping. For a moment, I see two long, sinuous serpents, rising from the water to spread iridescent gold and brown hoods. Then I blink and there is only one. One is enough.
Fangs flash, wicked white arcs seeking to bury themselves in my bones. I dive down, getting lost among the tickling grasses.
I’ve swum farther back into the past. Child Magda sits on a bench, sipping cider from a cracked mug. A girl glides past her through the streets, about the same age, but bearing herself as regally as any queen. Her black hair is long enough to sit on, and her dark brown eyes are flecked with hints of gold. Though she looks respectable enough in her scarlet robe and gold satin sash, the people in the streets shrink from her. As always, she speaks to no one, passing among them like a ghost as she visits the shops, buying strong teas and soft cloth in shades of red and blue and green. Then she departs, walking back down the winding road that leads into the Mystic Mountains.
Or at least she tries to. Child Magda, already a head taller than most of the village boys, gets up to follow her.
“Don’t, Magda,” someone hisses. “Nothing normal comes out of those mountains. You don’t know what she is.”
She shrugs. “No way to find out unless I ask.” In a flurry of long legs, she jogs through the crowd to catch up with the slight figure in scarlet and gold. When Child Magda stops her, those strange eyes are filled with surprise. Beneath that, gleaming among those star-like flecks of gold, is gratitude.
The naga has no patience for my reminiscences. She barrels through the image of the two girls, her mouth open wide. I kick my legs out, catching the top of her mouth with my left foot and the bottom of her mouth with my right. As I ride through the waves in this precarious position, she shoves me through the surface, flipping me off her nose the way a dog might toss a treat in the air. I tuck into a ball, plant my feet against the ceiling as it comes within reach, and propel myself downward at an angle, away from those gaping jaws.
The rocky floor rises to meet me. This may have been a mistake.
The cavern is not tall, and the fall is not far. Still, the pain that jangles through my limbs reminds me that no fall is a good fall.
I roll onto my side, groaning, and see the naga coursing through the water. As she draws near, she sways in the air above me, and her beauty is hypnotic. I am distracted by the images in the water behind her. Two girls dangle their bare feet into a lake. One girl is slim and brown, with black hair down to her butt. The other is tall and raw-boned, her red-gold hair a frizzy bird’s nest above her sharply angled face.
I left my memories in the lake. I don’t recall that being a part of the legend.
Glittering fangs descend, scraping the ground as they close around me. The world darkens as I’m scooped into the naga’s jaws. It does not smell good inside the giant snake’s mouth. Sadly, it’s still not the worst place I’ve ever been.
I grab her forked tongue, wrapping my legs around it as the naga tries to swallow. With my knees bent, my dagger is within reach. Struggling to hold my breath as I involuntarily bathe in stinging saliva, I slip my right hand down into my boot to free the blade, then plunge it into the rubbery slickness of the naga’s tongue. She opens her mouth to roar. I take this opportunity to dive past her sharp teeth and back into the water.
Child Magda waits for me, and for her friend, in the shadows of the enchanted forest. Dainty slippered feet patter up and her friend sinks down to sit in the grass beside her.
“You’re not afraid of this place?” Nalini asks.
Child Magda shrugs. “Why should I be? If you pay attention to the stories, then you know how to handle yourself.”
Nalini smiles cautiously, always cautiously, as if the expression makes her nervous. “You’re very brave. I guess that explains why you weren’t afraid of me.”
“I wasn’t afraid of you because you didn’t give me a reason to be.” Child Magda shoots her a sidelong glance. “You’re not gonna, are you?”
“No. I thought I’d give you this, instead.” Nalini passes her a red, blue, and green star, cleverly sewn together from bits of fabric.
“Wow.” Child Magda turns it over in her hand. “This is beautiful. Where did you get it?”
“I made it. I can show you how, if you like.”
“Oh, there’s no point in that. I’m clumsy with my hands. May as well have hooves at the ends of my wrists.”
Nalini smiles. “Well, maybe you just haven’t found what they’re good for yet.”
I drop my dagger as I hit the lake’s rocky bottom. Again, pain jolts through my body, ripping up and down my limbs like claws. Something broke that time. Hopefully not something important. I kick awkwardly through the grasses, past girls playing dice games by the river and petting horses in the stable yard by the inn. I dart beyond Nalini coming down the mountain, her eyes brightening as her only friend barrels up to hug her. Then the naga’s thrashing tail catches me and whips me across the lake.
I enter a dark part of the water. It’s deep here, seemingly bottomless. A young woman returns after taking her horses to market in the city. The village is nothing but rubble and ash. After a search, she finds a man buried in the wreckage. Eyes as blue as forget-me-nots stare without seeing her. Without seeing anything ever again.
A few strokes carry me through the next few days, to the shores of the drought-stricken lake. In a place where fish once swam and weeds once swayed, a silver sword protrudes from the cracked earth. A young woman pulls it free, then turns her back on the ruins of her village, never to return again.
Until recently. Until the day that someone sent me word of a rampaging naga who had killed enough men to make the waters in her cavern run red. So here I am, beaten, bleeding, and half-drowned once again as I try to do what no one else could.
I’m tired. Not from this fight, but from the dozens that came before it. With each one, the fatigue makes me a little slower, bringing me closer to the fight that will be my last.
This is how I die. Heroes do not get to retire, fading out like the sun sinking gently into the horizon. They flare, bright as dragon fire, and are extinguished. But not today. Not if I can help it.
The currents stir behind me, and once again the beast is coming, jaws parted, teeth bared. I dive down, though my lungs are squeezing painfully in my chest, and tangle my fingers in the grasses to yank myself against the lake’s bottom. Her passage ripples my clothing over my back. Triumph flickers momentarily in my breast.
Then her tail wraps
around my torso, pulling me after.
My arms are pinned to my sides. I kick and thrash, trying to squirm free of those thick coils, but she squeezes so tightly that my joints pop, my muscles twang like broken bowstrings, and above all, gods, I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.
She lifts me and the top half of her body above the water. Above the water, below the water, it makes no difference. My ribs grind into my internal organs, my lungs crushed into uselessness. It suits her, I suppose, to watch me drown on dry land, my mouth gaping like a beached fish.
There are still worse ways to die. When she bares her fangs again, I am reminded that one of them would be to disintegrate in the naga’s stomach after being swallowed alive.
The whole world seems tinged by fire. Her head rears back. I close my eyes in anticipation of the strike.
It never comes. To the contrary, her coils loosen. My lungs inflate just enough to make me see stars as I open my eyes. She is staring at me. After a while, I feel stupidly self-conscious. Dropping my gaze after hers, I spy the discolored red, blue, and green star peeking out from the neck of my tunic. When I raise my head, I notice flecks of brown in the gold of her eyes. We recognize each other in nearly the same moment.
“Well,” I say, “I guess you gave me a reason to be afraid of you after all.”
“And now you know what your hands are good for.” Her voice has a sibilant quality, but I recognize it, all the same. I’ve heard that voice sing and shout and laugh. It used to belong to my friend.
“So how long have you been a monster?”
“As long as you’ve been a hero, I’d imagine. Such creatures cannot be made, only born.”
“You never said.”
“You never asked.”
The pale golden coils are loose enough now that I can wriggle my hands free. When I bring them out, I have a pipe carved into the shape of a pelican cupped in my palm. The leaves in the bowl are wet. I tip it toward Nalini. “You mind?”
She wafts a gentle stream of flame across the bowl. I set the stem to my lips, puffing thoughtfully. “Heard there was a naga rampaging through these parts, killing folks. It’s the reason I came.”
“I’m the guardian of this lake. I only kill those that offer me harm or try to take the water with them when they leave.”
“That’s what all the dragons say.”
“Well, then maybe you should listen to them. Men can only tolerate the presence of a beast nearby for so long before they feel compelled to slay it, whether it means them ill or no. Besides, why would you believe strangers who happen to have human faces over a friend who doesn’t?”
Smoke simmers out between my lips. “I suppose you’re right.”
“Of course I am. Haven’t I always been?” At my look, she smiles. Seeing a snake smile ranks high on my list of the weirdest things I’ve seen. “You’ve been gone a long time.”
“Yeah. Sorry about that. I didn’t think about you when I left. Couldn’t think about much of anything at all.”
“I know. I understood. Still, I missed you.”
“I missed you, too.” I frown down at the burning embers in my pipe. “What happens now?”
“Mm, well, I believe one of us kills the other. Perhaps I drown you in my coils, or you cut me open and take my head.”
My free hand rests on a scar, a long half-healed furrow where her scales are chipped and mottled. Up close, I can see similar scars running all over her body. “Who says?”
“Hmm?”
I make an impatient noise. “Well, let’s start with who says you have to guard this damn lake?”
If she had eyebrows, she’d have raised them. “I was born with the markings of a guardian, so it was my destiny, I suppose. My parents would not have sent me away so young for anything less.”
The idea that my friend spent most of her childhood alone in a dark cavern had never occurred to me. I find the notion no more pleasant than my earlier vision of being digested by a snake.
“Fuck destiny.” My fingers fumble over my shoulder until they find my sword hilt. Yanking it free, I send the silver blade spinning out over the lake. It hits the water with a splash that sounds like laughter. “Do you want to get out of here? Maybe find an inn, have an ale?”
“You really think it will be that easy to walk away? To thwart destiny?”
“Oh, no. I assume it’ll be a pain in the ass. But do I strike you as someone who shrinks away from a fight?”
Again, she smiles. The smile is still cautious, and still indescribably creepy stretched across the face of a snake. “Not in all the years that I’ve known you.” Still, she hesitates.
“What?”
“Well . . . It’s a long way to the nearest inn.”
“And?”
“And a sword might come in handy.”
“You’re a giant fucking snake.”
“Still . . .”
Muttering under my breath, I set down the pipe and pull myself out of her coils. Standing, I raise my arms over my head and dive into the water.
When I resurface, huffing and puffing and dragging the sword behind me, she’s waiting on the shore, holding my pipe cupped in her small hands like a captive bird. Her gown is emerald silk edged in gold. Her mouth is a bit pinched, her eyes lined, but her hair is still long enough to sit on. Only the glints of gold in her brown eyes give her away.
As I approach, she nods to the sword. “It was never really about the sword, you know. It’s all in how you choose to use it.”
“If I had a gold coin for every time a man’s said that to me . . .”
Her laughter is bright and brief, like her fire. She puts an arm around my shoulders. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“Yeah, I’m tired of this place anyway.” I lean on her, and together, we limp out of the caverns.
Amanda Kespohl is a fantasy writer, attorney, folklore enthusiast, and beagle mom from Jacksonville Beach, Florida. Her short stories have been featured in anthologies such as Sirens (World Weaver Press 2016) and The Death of All Things (Zombies Need Brains, LLC 2017). Check out her website at https://amandakespohl.wordpress.com/ or find her on Twitter at @amandakespohl.
M.L.D. CURELAS
MADAM LIBRARIAN
Miriam smiled as she took the neon-colored board book from the toddler, ignoring the sticky patches on the cover. The child’s mother bleated a nervous apology.
“Nothing a little soap won’t fix,” Miriam assured her, and the mother’s face relaxed as she tugged her child towards the library’s main entrance.
Miriam chuckled as she followed them. Maybe she’d tell the next nervous parent that jam didn’t bother her at all—not like the acrid odor of the potty-training books. She wore rubber gloves handling those, until they’d been disinfected.
She waved to the child as she locked the entrance. There. Another day at the Erebville Library completed. Her smile faded as she turned away from the door. Time for the library board meeting. The first item on tonight’s agenda was a challenge to one of the Young Adult novels in the collection, Flowers’ Waltz by Delia Strike. The board director, Kenneth, wanted the book removed, and Miriam was anticipating a heated discussion.
Miriam sniffed. She hadn’t banned a book in all her years as librarian.
She paused at the kitchenette tucked into one corner of the staff workroom, and her mouth puckered with annoyance. None of the board members had bothered to put on the kettle when they’d brewed coffee. Mindful that she was now tardy, Miriam poured a cup of coffee and stirred several sugars into it. The bitter odor irritated her nostrils, despite the added sugar.
No one looked up at her as she entered the meeting room. Amy, her long-time friend and president of the Library Friends fundraising group, shuffled papers and stared at the table. Petra, the student member of the board, was focused on her phone, her face blank and stony. Miriam’s gaze swept the table, but everyone avoided her glare...except Kenneth, who smirked at her, hi
s small, piggy eyes gleaming.
“So glad you could finally join us, Miriam,” he said. “We were just about to vote on our first agenda item.”
“Vote?” she repeated. The library board rarely surprised her, but now she was stunned. Her eyes flicked to the clock. “I’m only three minutes late, and you’re voting on Flowers’ Waltz already?”
Kenneth shrugged. “It’s not a difficult debate, Miriam. We can’t have filth like this”—he pointed to the glitter bedecked book on the table— “in our library.”
“My library,” she said sharply.
“Our library,” he said again. “The board’s library. You’re just an employee.”
Miriam took a hasty gulp of coffee. The scalding drink seared its way down her gullet, burning away any rash words she might have spat at Kenneth. After all, silence nourished wisdom, according to Francis Bacon.
At least the horrid drink was good for something, she thought as she stalked to her seat by Amy. Her friend, as usual, smelled faintly of dried grass, which always reminded Miriam of her youth, and the sheep in the nearby meadow.
“Very well,” Miriam said, calmly, “as your employee, I’d like to point out that Flowers’ Waltz depicts loving, healthy relationships between teenagers, providing reassura—”
“We’ve already discussed the book,” Kenneth interrupted. “It’s time to vote. All in favor of removing Flowers’ Waltz from our shelves?”
Miriam kept her hands flat on the table. Amy did likewise.
“Petra?” prompted Kenneth impatiently.
The teenager set down her phone. “Miss Thorn, isn’t there anything you can do?” she asked, looking at Miriam directly. “They decided about the book before they even got here.”
Hear Me Roar Page 10
