Juanita rapped on the door. “You drown in there?”
“Are you ready?” The whisper inside sounded gleeful.
An alarm bell sounded, blaring so loudly that I had to press my palms to my ears. The brakes slammed on, squealing louder than the alarm, throwing me sideways against the sink. I yanked Aidan’s wrench from the knapsack and smashed the window. A shard of glass caught the back of my hand. Murky brown liquid welled up and congealed.
I dropped the wrench and grabbed the window frame. The metal bent under my desperate hands. The screen fell away and tumbled to the ground outside. Sullen warehouses and weedy lots slid past. I thrust the backpack through the opening and followed with my head and one arm.
The metal-scraping-metal sound of the brakes drowned out the alarm. The ends of railroad ties flickered past my face, faster than I liked. With a stomach-wrenching jerk, Aidan’s car lurched sideways, rocking the whole train and flicking me off like a flea from a tiger’s tail.
I tried to curl into a ball and roll, but my head hit a rock, and I blacked out. When I came to, I touched my scalp. It felt like just a few seconds had passed. Wet liquid dripped down the back of my head. I levered myself to my feet in slow stages.
I limped towards the knapsack, turning and checking the train behind me. Aidan’s car rocked again, as if an enormous beast inside was throwing itself from left to right. The flat crack of gunfire erupted in chaotic bursts. As I reached the pack, a series of explosions lifted the train and slammed it back to the tracks with a tremendous whoomph.
White-hot air washed over me. The smell of dynamite filled my nostrils. Thick, black smoke boiled into the sky. I wiped grit off my face and shambled up the embankment towards a hole in the fence.
A second train blew its horn, screeching brakes throwing sparks as it slowed down. Soldiers boiled out of the cars, rifles ready, leaping to the ground before the train had stopped. I ducked through the hole and slithered on my stomach away from the tracks. I felt numb. Broken glass scraped my cheek, and my hand brushed a desiccated raccoon carcass. Soot spotted grey hanks of fur, and its sightless eye sockets seemed to stare straight up at the sun.
* * *
Ashton was a flat, ugly city. Miles of cattle pens lined crowded, dirty streets. Rocky bluffs thrust straight up from the desert floor like angry fists. The only trees in sight were sick, stunted skeletons. Factories poured smoke into the air. It smelled like poison to me. I wanted to smash the city to rubble.
I staggered along a street, limping. My left ankle throbbed. Spots flashed in and out of my vision. Sirens screamed down a busy street half a block north.
“Hide.” The voice sounded urgent. “Go to ground.”
I pushed the voice down, tried to close and lock it away in a mental box. A man with red hair and sunburned ears stood in front of a dry-goods store shading his eyes. “Did you see that?” He gestured at the column of smoke that roiled the sky behind me. “Was that a train wreck?”
“Yeah.” Tears made my eyes sting. “Someone musta put a penny on the tracks.”
He seemed to really see me for the first time. “Holy shit, girl. Are you okay?” He touched my shoulder. “Were you on that train?”
“Yeah. I mean, no.” Worries about the thin man, the soldiers, filled my brain. “I tripped.”
“Some pratfall.” He smiled. “Come on, I’ll get a washcloth. Clean you up a bit.”
I let him lead me into the store. Behind us, galloping horses pulled a police coach around the corner. “I’m all right. Just banged up a bit.” The quiet air inside made my skin tingle. The barrels of crackers smelled good. The voice inside receded to an unhappy murmur.
He nodded and kept talking. An endless, comforting stream of observations, small talk. I liked his voice, the touch of his hands. My scrapes stung, but he was gentle, kind. “Name’s Steve. You from around here?” He reminded me of Aidan.
“No, I mean yes.” My thoughts seemed scattered. I needed to get away. Go to ground. “You sell pulps?” I couldn’t think about Aidan. About his bones shifting, changing. A lump clogged my throat.
“You bet. Kid Canyon. The Termite Queen.” He laughed, but not in a mean way. “Silly stuff, but fun to read, huh?” He touched my shoulder. “You’re welcome to stay here for a while. I’d make you a cup of coffee.” He wrapped a strip of linen around my ankle.
“Thanks.” I knew if I stopped now, I’d never start again. I dug into the pack. Aidan had left me an incredible amount of money. Almost two-thousand Jacksons. “I gotta go.” My sleeve caught on a buckle.
Steve’s gaze cut to the metal band around my wrist. “Listen, stay right here.” He seemed flustered. “I’ll get you the latest issue of the Insect Avenger.” He disappeared into a back room.
I left five hundred bucks on the counter and limped out the door. The bell jangled as I left, and Steve yelled from the other room, but I was gone. Smoke boiled into the sky behind me. I coughed but kept moving.
In an alley, I wrapped the bandage around my wrist. My ankle was swollen twice normal size, and my foot felt soft and malleable. A fire wagon clanged by.
I kept my head down and limped along as fast as I could. My skin felt slick, greasy. Soldiers had streets blocked off, but I cut through yards. Scraped under fences. Just a kid. Nothing to look at here. Go to ground.
At a crossroads, the wind changed. Rank smoke from a slaughterhouse blew through the street. It smelled noxious, foul. I threw up, gagging, stomach clenching. Vomit covered my shirt. My voice roared inside my head. I saw flames, bodies smashed to pulp, nothing but rubble stretching to the horizon.
I almost changed right there. I could feel it. The Bug all folded inside me, waiting between the spaces of my muscles and bones. Across the street, a mother held a toddler in her arms. Her face looked harried, beaten down, but she smiled at her child.
I limped-walked towards the nearest bluff. A mountain of cliffs and scree. Dun-colored with straggly bushes and houses at its base, nothing but rocks and cactus up high. My voice kept at me, telling me to get down, get low, but I ignored it.
The street dead-ended into a cliff face, but a narrow trail led upwards. Heat shimmered over every boulder. I scrabbled my way forward, crawling as much as walking.
I pulled myself up a ledge and sat, dangling my legs over a sheer, fifty-foot drop. I gulped water and ate roasted cashews and handfuls of dirt, finishing off by tearing and eating the pages of Buffalo Hunter * * *43 from Aiden’s pack. The sun beat down like a hammer. I gazed at the city spread below me. I felt nauseous, out of kilter. Borrified.
I bit down on a lump in my mouth as hard as a rock, rolling it around with my tongue before spitting it into my hand. A molar. I probed the empty space and tasted salty blood. I felt poised over a vast, unknowable presence.
A police coach pulled by a team of frantic horses, sweat frothing on the necks, stopped at the base of the cliff. Soldiers hopped off the running boards and took positions behind rocks. The sun flashed from rifle barrels.
The thin man stepped off the car and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Maia.” His voice sounded tiny, far away. “We want to help you.”
The whispering rose up in me like a roar. “Nononononono.”
“Maia, please answer.”
“Yeah.” I shrugged.
“We made a mistake,” the thin man said. “We had no idea Aidan was so close. A tragedy.”
“What do you want?” For the first time, I let myself think of the other children on the train.
The whisper penetrated my ears like the whine of a drill. “Don’t listen. They deserved to die. Hide. Get away. Now.”
“We can bring you in,” the thin man continued. “Take you to the camp with the others. We know far more now than we did before.”
“How much of me will be left once I change? Anything?” I spoke both to the thin man and to the whisper.
“You’ll be more. Bigger. Better.” The whisper seemed confident, in control. A roar of sound.
�
��Pieces,” the thin man said. “I won’t lie to you. Not everything. But you don’t have to go outlaw.”
The whisper chortled. Black emptiness roiled inside of me. I wanted to crush the puny animals all around, shatter their brittle buildings. Die in a frenzy of red-hot destruction.
The thin man continued. “Our colleagues in Nagorbi have set up a similar facility. They have a community of, ah, creatures. They’re learning a great deal.”
I thought of Steve, the girls in frills and bows on the train, a city full of toddlers. “I don’t have to go rogue?”
“No. We think smoke particles contribute to the creatures’ fight or flight impulses. And perhaps the lack of community. Maybe humidity. We have an army camp near Yumisa with everything you’ll need.”
“Why should I trust you?”
“Because the only other choice is another disaster.”
The soldiers surrounded the bluff. More appeared every minute. My whisper screamed, “Kill them all! Kill.” An image thrust itself into my mind: A giant carapace rising up and sliding, leaping down the mountain, crushing houses and soldiers as it went.
I wanted to let go, to let the rage inside transform into cleansing destruction. The whisper filled my head, but I pushed it down and pressed my face in my hands. I thought of Aidan and wished for—whatever. A normal life. Ha. I cleared my throat. “I’ll come in.”
I limped back down the path. Wide-eyed soldiers, boys, really, kept their guns trained on me. The thin man opened the back of the police car.
I closed my eyes and breathed the scalding air deep into my lungs. “I’m ready.”
Copyright © 2011 Garth Upshaw
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Garth Upshaw lives in Portland, Oregon with his super-genius wife and three precocious children. When he’s not breeding tarantulas, he rides his bike through the sleeting downpours. His stories have appeared three times previously in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, including “Breathing Sunshine” in BCS #64, and his other stories have appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, Realms of Fantasy, and other magazines.
Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies
THE MAGICK
by Kristina C. Mottla
“Once a Magick visibly manifests its skills, said Magick must be immediately transported, as community property, to the nearest Hith Auction House in order to establish control over its nascent iniquity pre-sale.”
Hith Regulations and Procedures, Section IV, 68-5
* * *
The chasm swallowed baby Sillow. The hole too big, her limbs too small; laid gently, like a wounded bird into a bear’s cave. Her mother’s and father’s hands emerged in tremors from under her backside, having just lowered their youngest life into the ground. The great Hith sun beamed, hid, beamed, challenging the summer’s end. The family circled the deep fissure, the little body, feet and fingers pudgy brown, creased with mud, dead.
Paska, at nine the youngest sister, dropped flowers to Sillow’s chest. Anj, eleven, covered them with dirt. Janzel, thirteen, pale as white clover, said nothing through her rattled breath. Willa and Torlie, fifteen, hummed an old Hith lullaby their mother still sang at night.
Elna, seventeen, hung her head, viewing her sister inside the earth as a cosmos of sadness; as the sky and sea dissolving into a void beneath the long hard mouth of Hith. She imagined herself wrapped around the tiny pillow of Sillow’s body, Sillow who used to curl her little fingers so sweetly around Elna’s willing thumb.
Weeping followed, and in the midst of it, Elna refused to acknowledge the sudden tingling, that thin creek trickling down her legs, which provoked her feet beneath her long tented skirt to feel aglow.
* * *
Elna had been five years old when her father took her to the Hith Auction House in the town of Pond Mok, a three-mile walk from the countryside where they lived. They hid behind the trees, peering. Elna mostly focused on the people, swarming like mosquitoes over water, slinging numbers at the podium like stones. The Magick stood on stage crying quietly through it all, her eyes puffed red grapes, her body a glowing candle.
Elna pressed her face against her father’s shirt, wishing the sight away.
After the gavel sounded, her father crouched close, smell of earth in his hair: “We don’t need a Magick to survive, Elna. Not that way. Not us.”
But things changed twelve years later. Sillow died. Janzel neared the same fate. And Elna knew that the bony sag of her parents’ bearing meant needs would never be the same.
* * *
The day of the Magick’s arrival, the household stirred as usual at the split of dawn. Thick yellow strands of sun wound their way through shrunken decay, cracks, mouse holes, spilling to the kitchen floor in an exhausted knot of light and shadow.
After breakfast, Elna’s younger sisters took to tidying and sewing. Janzel, whose chest rasped with Sillow’s fatal wind, stayed huddled under covers, shivering. Elna, being the oldest, tackled the chore of cleaning out the shed, the place where the Magick would lay its head at night and dream. Rats had constructed nests in the cozy angles of gardening tools, and Elna found it difficult to shove them, and her anxiety, out with a broom.
Few had refused the services of a Magick, and as far as Elna knew, her family was the last of the outcasts. The Magick in Hith served solely as a tool for residents’ necessities: labor, productivity, construction, healing, and so on. Elna’s parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents had all subscribed to the worth of working their own farms, a belief that cut them off from the bottomless supply of Pond Mok’s food and fabric.
Elna’s veins prickled down her forearms, tiny needles in her blood making her palms hot. Despite all, Elna had loved life in the secluded countryside. Tilling the fields at sunrise. Doting over the hens as if they were downy chicks. Singing out hearty to the wide blue sky.
Now, it was life with a Magick. Would that be no different? Would she still romp among the wheat stalks, still swoon over those last berries left inside fall’s plucky chill? Or would her family abandon the land to the Magick’s hands, so utterly that not even the hens would recognize them?
A warm burn filled Elna’s stomach at the uncertainty, leaping upward, trapping heat in her chest. Slowly, her skin went alight, and as it did the world seemed to dissipate, thoughts lifting from her like softly-blown cloth. She bent and swayed, feeling suddenly glorious, alive, like water churning, like clouds rushing in. Gentle heat poured forth through her arms, into her palms, as if all she’d ever felt had gathered there. Until there, they were there, she saw them in her mind.
Sillow’s bones an inchworm tunnel path. Her tiny curls the nutrients of deep earth.
Elna flushed. Drained. And then it was over. A half day’s work, finished in minutes. The shed gleamed, spotless. The last of the rats scurried like schoolchildren, single-file, into the sunlit weeds beyond.
Elna sank to her knees in the shed, prepared to wait several hours, pretending. It never happened. It didn’t.
* * *
In the bedroom where Elna and her sisters watched from the window, a shallow pond of starlight rippled over the sheets, slipped across the curtains tied back, turned the stuffed dolls made from socks into sleepy cockeyed fish. The kitchen, small and usually unseemly, shone, wood glistening, all the nooks and crannies aglow.
Nobody spoke when they first entered. Their parents appeared unruffled from the auction, although a bit grim, perhaps, their mouths downturned.
The young Magick himself shifted on his weight as a spindly-legged bird might. His body glowed as Magicks do, a dim radiant flow of magic in his veins. His face was softer than Elna expected, calmer.
Suddenly, this bird spoke. “Might I sit down? My legs still hurt from the afternoon.” Elna had expected light to emit with his words. It didn’t.
Her mother nodded, swiftly procuring a chair. “Yes, yes, of course.”
They sat in the kitchen for some time. Elna learned his name was Parn, and that his family had detected h
e was a Magick on his nineteenth birthday, two weeks ago. Parn talked of his childhood, then, his siblings and parents, his life in town. Elna’s mother continued nodding through it all, nodding some more as she served links of sausage posing as dark bloody thumbs. Elna managed to eat one, maybe two, her appetite sunk. The Magick swallowed them down quickly, nodding back with his approval.
After dinner, Elna’s parents showed Parn outside to the shed as Elna and her sisters peered through the curtains. Even Janzel nestled in close, watching wide-eyed.
The shed had no windows, and their mother apologized, Elna could tell, the way she clasped her hands and hogged them close to her chest, so hard Elna thought the bones might snap.
Parn shook his head, placating. He stretched his arms forward, glow hugging his skin. Shades of yellow and orange flowed into his wrists, conjoining, pouring into his palms, burning, until bursts of sunrise streaked forth.
Inside the house, Elna felt the burn, as well. It was in her stomach rising with his, and suddenly she feared she too would illuminate. She clenched, willing it back down, worried. But her sisters took no notice; their eyes were on Parn, on their new Magick and his firelight skin.
Parn finished, lowering his now dimly lit arms. Two new shed windows reflected the moonkindled night. Her mother handed Parn a blanket and pillow, then crossed to the house, plump with tears.
Elna’s own internal burning simmered, extinguished, but not before Parn looked back in her direction, brows stiffening like broad strips of dark sky.
* * *
Winters in Hith were generally windy, the sky scooping itself up in a ball and rolling through the sunken valley, and this one was no exception. Wind unfurled from the northern countryside and pummeled into the southern, flinging through Pond Mok and up onto their farm, where it purred against the slats of their newly repaired house.
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