by David Boop
Thunder roared all around them and a bolt of lightning zipped past them on the starboard side.
“Still want me to answer?”
Something hit the deck above them. At first she thought that one of the ropes had come loose and hit the deck, but then the sound started moving across the deck. She exchanged concerned looks with Josiah.
“I’ll go.”
Anli didn’t wait for him to approve or pause long enough to give him a goodbye kiss. She simply turned and walked away. There were too many dangers mounting to dedicate any time to that.
“Anli,” Josiah called out.
She looked back. Josiah had taken her father’s jian off the wall and tossed it to her. She caught it one handed.
“Just in case,” he said.
Anli tied the scabbard to her belt with a slip knot and left. This time she made sure to secure the door to the bridge behind her. Just in case.
Mystique’s swaying had stopped enough that she could climb the stairs without any trouble. She crept up the stairs and paused when she could see the deck so she could find the source of the noise. A brown-skinned man stood on the deck. He had straight black hair that fell to his waist and wore only buffalo-skin pants and moccasins. There was a tattoo of lightning bolts on his chest and his eyes had the same silver glow as the monstrous bird.
This was impossible! How could a man just land on their deck? In the middle of a storm, no less! Was he some sort of Native immortal? One of their gods? More importantly, how could she get rid of him so they could fly out of this mess?
Anli squared her shoulders and climbed the final steps to the deck. The Native man turned to her. His mercurial gaze sent a shiver down her spine.
“How did you get here?” Anli shouted so he could hear her over the storm.
The Native man cocked his head, much like a bird. Anli didn’t know if that meant he didn’t understand the question or if he was giving a peculiar refusal to answer.
Anli drew her father’s sword. The thin, flexible steel blade reflected the light from the man’s eyes. Anli pointed the sword’s tip at the Native man. “Go back to where you came from.”
He opened his mouth and uttered the most unnatural, earsplitting sound. It was a cross between a shriek and the cry of a hawk.
Well, at least he understands that language.
Anli closed the distance between them, ready to strike, when another crash from the hold made the violent swaying start all over again. Anli widened her stance so she could remain steady. The Native man didn’t bother. Black wings sprouted from his back and he merely floated above the deck.
A shapeshifter? Anli cursed under her breath. That was just her luck. The giant storm bird was a shapeshifter this whole time.
The shapeshifter glared at her again and floated over to the hatch. A rope that must have come loose in the storm swung about wildly in the strong wind. It was one of the ropes that supported the balloons from underneath in order to keep them from falling onto the deck if they became deflated. It was still attached at the center so it swung almost the entire width of the ship.
The loose rope nearly hit the shapeshifter in the head before swinging her way. Anli grabbed the rope the second it came within reach and wrapped it around her left arm. She got a running start and leaped off the deck, timing her leap with the swaying of the ship to get the most momentum.
Anli swung on the rope straight for the shapeshifter. He must have heard her steps because he turned moments before she was within striking distance and easily dodged her slash.
Anli used her feet to stop her swing and pivoted around, still clutching the rope. She stood between him and the hatch, sword at the ready. The unarmed shapeshifter didn’t look the least bit concerned that she was armed and that made her nervous. The rope bit into her forearm but she paid it no mind. Instead she focused all her attention on the shapeshifter, waiting for him to make his next move. The adrenaline coursing through her veins urged her to go on the attack, but she didn’t want to be rash. The shapeshifter knew something that she didn’t.
The shapeshifter shrieked at her again. His fingernails lengthened into six-inch curved talons in the span of a few seconds. But Anli didn’t have time to gawk. He lashed out with his talons, bringing them downward in an attempt to slash her across her chest. Anli swung to the left on the rope so she could deflect his talons with a single movement. If she had both hands free she could have easily blocked him without moving, but she couldn’t possibly do it single-handed. She didn’t have the strength.
Anli circled her wrist to bring the blade back around. She slashed him across the ribs. She could tell from the wound that her aim was true, but the wound didn’t bleed normally. A clear liquid that looked more like rain than blood seeped from the shifter’s chest instead.
The shifter shrieked and pulled his left hand back to slash at her again. Anli kicked the shifter in the stomach with both feet, using the rope for stability. The shifter staggered, clutching his stomach. Anli used the momentum from the rebound to flip upside down. She wrapped her legs around the rope and pulled herself up as she swung away from the shifter. It gave her a much needed moment to unwind her left arm from the rope. Her blouse wouldn’t have protected her forearm much longer, the fabric was already torn in two spots, and her muscles were starting to ache.
Unfortunately, this relief came at a cost. She lost sight of the shapeshifter.
Anli used her newly freed hand to pull herself upright so she could support her weight with her legs again. The movement caused her to spin. The apex of the swing coincided with the very moment Mystique swayed to port so for one heart-stopping moment she had a clear, unobstructed view of the ground far below. Perhaps this wasn’t the wisest choice? She used her new leverage to counter some of the spin. It was enough to get a good look at the deck.
Anli scanned the deck, searching for shapeshifter. He wasn’t there. Her slower rotation took the view of Mystique’s deck away before she could see any movement on the stairs.
Something moved in her periphery. Anli slid down the rope into a sitting position, tucking her legs beneath her so she wouldn’t slide any further. She raised her sword into a defensive position and not a moment too soon. The shapeshifter had taken to the air and flew straight for her. Perhaps it was the angle, but his talons looked longer. They struck the jian and curled around the blade. It stopped her spin, which was great. However, it also killed any momentum so she was just dead weight hanging in the air. It would be incredibly difficult to attack or defend against her fully mobile opponent.
The shapeshifter pulled the blade toward him. Before he could disarm her, Anli thrust the blade forward. The point pierced the air to his right but the blade’s edge was close enough to slice his side, two inches above the first cut. Anli pulled the blade back and applied a little pressure to deepen the cut.
The shapeshifter cried out and, as before, there was an answering ruckus from the hold. This time though, the shapeshifter looked down, as if he could see through the decks to the hold below, and answered back. Instantly the ruckus from the hold stopped.
Anli’s jaw dropped. It couldn’t be…
She decided to take a chance. She pointed to the deck. “You’re here for that, aren’t you?”
The shapeshifter looked at her. For a moment, she thought he was going to attack again. Instead he simply nodded.
Anli sheathed the jian and slid down to the deck. She walked to the stairs, pausing at the top step. She looked up at the shapeshifter who hovered in the air. “Are you coming or not?” The shapeshifter cocked his head in that birdlike way again.
“Ching-wah tsao duh liou mahng,” Anli cursed. He understood what I was saying this entire time! She was angrier with herself than with the shapeshifter. She hadn’t considered that both of her problems were connected.
Anli put her hands on her hips. “I want it off my ship as bad as you do.”
The shapeshifter gracefully floated down to the deck. When his feet touched wood,
his wings melted into his back. Anli shivered. The memory of that sight would keep her up tonight. She descended the stairs. The shapeshifter’s soft plodding behind her was her only clue that he followed. She couldn’t feel his presence or his body heat. It sent a chill down her spine.
When she reached the first deck landing she saw the Carters sneaking down the next flight to the cargo deck. “Where are you going?”
They looked up at her, and then at the shapeshifter. Mrs. Carter screamed. Mr. Carter kept most of his composure, but he did urge his wife down the stairs with a firm push. Anli and the shapeshifter pursued them. Anli braced her arms on the handrails on the last flight of stairs and slid down. Mrs. Carter opened the cargo bay door just wide enough for the two of them to slip in.
As Mr. Carter started to slam the door shut behind him, Anli freed the scabbard from her belt and thrust it into the gap. The door hit the scabbard with a sickening crunch. The wood split and flecks of lacquer flitted to the floor. Anli used the fractured scabbard to leverage the door open enough to shoulder her way in. The Carters backed away. Anli left the door open behind her for the shapeshifter.
“I think it is long past time for you to tell me the truth,” Anli said.
“Get him away from us first,” Mr. Carter demanded.
Anli shook her head. “Talk.” She drew the sword to make certain they understood.
Mr. Carter swallowed hard. “We work for Mr. Barnum,” he said. “He hired us to acquire oddities and creatures for his museum.”
“Museums usually don’t have live displays,” Anli said sternly.
“This one does,” Mrs. Carter said softly.
Anli gestured with the sword to their mysterious crate, which was the size of a mule. It lay on its side and the boards were cracked and split. Black feathers poked out of the gaps. All around it was a mess of smashed fruit, vegetables, and spilled bags of mail. Pretty much anything that was within striking distance of it was wrecked, including the floor and hull, which bore visible cracks.
“What is it, and why is it trying to destroy my ship?”
Mr. Carter’s head drooped. After a prolonged silence it was finally Mrs. Carter who spoke. “A thunderbird. It was so calm and docile when we found it. We didn’t think for a second that it was dangerous.”
The shapeshifter approached the crate. He knelt down, leaned in close, and chirped to it in a tender way. The thunderbird inside bounced around with enough vigor that it widened the cracks. It chirped back to the shapeshifter, which made him smile—an expression that looked odd on such a fierce being.
Anli felt like an idiot for the second time that day when the realization hit her.
That’s his child inside.
Anli walked over to the broken crate and used the scabbard as a lever again, this time to widen the gaps enough for the little one to climb out. The little one squawked when she shoved the scabbard in, but after she pried off the first segment the shapeshifter got the idea and helped pull the rest off.
The little one waddled out of the broken crate and instantly nuzzled up to its father. The shapeshifter looked as though the weight of a stone monolith had lifted from his shoulders. The fierce warrior that she met on deck was gone. That fearsome presence was replaced with the joyful presence of a relieved parent.
Anli unlocked the latch on the cargo bay door—which thankfully hadn’t been damaged by the little one—and opened it. The storm had calmed, but the skies were still gray and ominous.
“No!” the thieving Carters cried out in unison.
“We have to deliver it! We’ll get the sack if we don’t!” Mrs. Carter begged.
Anli rolled her eyes at them. The shapeshifter guided his young to the open door and the sky beyond. He gave the little one a gentle nudge. The little one spread its wings and leaped out. It soared on a gentle current and flew in wide circles near the door.
Mr. Carter stomped his foot. “We won’t pay you a cent if you let that creature walk away with our property!”
“If I were you,” Anli said, “I would be worried about much more important things.”
“Such as?” Mr. Carter asked.
Anli looked to the shapeshifter. While her attention was elsewhere he had once more donned the threatening mantle.
“Please forgive me for earlier,” Anli said to the shapeshifter. “I should have asked questions first. Would you like a bandage for that?” He shook his head. He then looked to the Carters and raised a questioning eyebrow to her. Anli nodded and walked to the far side of the cargo hold so she would be out of the way.
Mr. Carter looked very confused and as scared as a jackrabbit. “Mrs. McKinnon! What should we be more worried about?”
“Prairie justice.”
The shapeshifter changed, losing all pretenses at being human. In two blinks of an eye, he was a black-skinned monstrosity with glowing eyes, sharp talons for feet, and black wings instead of arms. He reached out with those talons and wrapped them around the Carters. Both of them screamed. The shapeshifter flapped his wings and flew out the bay door. By the time he cleared the ship, he had finished his transformation back into the great black bird she and Josiah saw emerge from the storm not so long ago.
Anli shut the bay door and locked it tight. It did little to muffle the sounds of screams and thunder from outside. She left the hold and rejoined Josiah on the bridge. He pulled her into his arms and held her tight.
“What in damnation happened?”
Anli wrapped her arms around him. “I’ll tell you over dinner. The Carters won’t be joining us. They decided to depart with the cargo.”
Josiah pulled back. “Did you hit your head up there? You’re not making any sense.”
“You’ll understand later. For now, let’s just say that humans shouldn’t steal thunder from the gods.”
Kachina
JAMES A. MOORE
“What do you see, Mr. Slate?” Despite the atrocities laid out before him, he said the words with unsettling calm. That was the way with Jonathan Crowley. The very worst things a man could witness seemed commonplace in his eyes.
Lucas Slate was not mundane himself; he was not what a soul expected to see when walking in civilized areas, or as they were right then, in areas of pure savagery. Even before his changes, he had been an albino, as pale as snow, with eyes almost the same color. These days, he was worse. His body was longer, taller and leaner. He looked like the corpse of a man nearly seven feet in height. He sported a decent set of clothes, solely because Crowley had been kind enough to purchase the suit he wore for him and to have it tailor-made.
He reflected on all of that as he considered how to answer his benefactor.
The bodies had been torn apart, or hacked into shreds. The sheer violence of the acts had been made worse by the brutal force employed. Not a single body was intact.
“Must be more than fifty dead, Mr. Crowley.” His voice resonated barely above a sepulchral whisper, but carried a gentrified southern drawl. “Looks like they are all Indians, with none spared.” His voice grew deeper as he suppressed his anger. “There are women and children and all of them slaughtered.”
Crowley, astride his horse, nodded. “What else?”
“What else is there?”
Crowley stared at him and sighed. “How were they killed? How many of them died here? What caused their deaths? Was sorcery involved?”
“There were weapons. In most cases, at least. I’d say a sword of some sort and a club. Some of the children were ripped limb from limb and the women…” He stopped there. He knew what had been done to the women and had no desire to say it. Crowley nodded his head.
“Well then.” Crowley cleared his throat. “One question remains, Mr. Slate. Was there magic?”
Slate looked across the field of dead people and let his vision unfocus. When he used what his father called Soft Eyes, to see everything at once and focus on nothing, the power that rested inside him these days showed him more than he’d ever believed possible. In this case, it
showed him red threads of power that touched every single corpse, like cobwebs spiraling between bodies.
“Oh, yes, Mr. Crowley. I’m afraid so.”
Crowley nodded his head. Not but four hours ago, while in pursuit of a man named Jacobi, they’d encountered a withered old man on the trail. He’d been badly beaten and savaged. He was dying then and gone before they left the area, but he had spoken to Crowley, had asked him for help in stopping the creature that had hurt him and his people alike.
Jonathan Crowley virtually always said yes when someone asked for his help. He claimed not to like it, but also stated that the rules of his existence meant that he had to answer calls for help against unnatural things.
What they were pursuing was unnatural, and so he was obliged to help.
The fact that the old man’s ghost now wandered along with them was merely an inconvenience in his eyes and would not have changed his mind about hunting the thing that had killed him.
There were a great number of corpses. The only dead moving among them was the old man. The rest had the good sense to move on to whatever afterlife waited for them.
“You should be gone.” Crowley did not speak the words with his mouth, but with his mind. The dead man answered him the same way.
“Why can you see me?”
“It’s what I do. I hunt monsters, and I see dead things.”
“I can see better now.” The old man blinked several times and then pointed toward Slate. “That man should be killed immediately. Before he becomes worse.”
Crowley spoke aloud now. He wanted Slate to know what was happening, and he wanted the man to respond. “Your eyes are better because they no longer have physical limitations. Your hearing is probably better, too. As to Mr. Slate, I’m looking into that matter. Haven’t made up my mind yet.” Crowley’s tone brooked no argument.
Lucas Slate stared at Crowley as he could not see the ghost. He knew Crowley wanted more. He knew Crowley expected more. Crowley could see for himself, but he was doing his best to train Slate to see with his new senses and so Slate obliged and suppressed his annoyance. The problem was since he’d begun his changes, his temper tended to be more active than it had been. He did not always like being told what to do.
