by Grace Draven
She didn’t answer, watching Andras as he peered into the rolling water beating against his mount’s belly, club raised in preparation to bludgeon his foe a second time. “Is it dead?” she called to him.
“I don’t know. I can’t see it.”
The bay hauled back with a panicked whinny when a skeletal arm broke the surface and snatched Andras off its back.
Zigana screamed and so did Gitta as the obluda raked a clawed hand across Andras’s torso, taking strips of clothing and skin with it. Andras bellowed in pain and smashed the club into the side of the creature’s bulbous skull. The obluda wailed and threw Andras from it. It clutched the side of its head, thick yellow blood pouring from the wound. It lunged for Andras who bobbed in the water, pale with pain and weakened from blood loss.
“Here, you nasty piece of fish shite!” Zigana called out. “There’s a lot more here to eat than that puny man!”
Dead black eyes swiveled in their sockets as they turned to her, Andras forgotten. The obluda hissed, flaccid lips peeled back to expose jaws that unhinged and teeth long and sharp as spearheads. It clawed the water toward her, webbed fingers tipped in blood-stained spikes slicing the waves.
“Ziga!” Andras’s voice. Zigana almost sobbed her relief. He still lived. He called her name, and the sound seemed to come from far away as she rose first to her knees and then to her feet on Gitta’s broad back. Her balance wobbled, and she clicked a command she hoped the mare could hear. Steady, my girl. Be still; be steady.
The mare didn’t budge, even when the obluda climbed atop the waves again, not so steady itself this time, one bony shoulder shattered so that its skeletal arm dragged through the waves. It lurched toward them.
All of Ziga’s senses narrowed on the monster as it closed in. She no longer heard Andras’s voice though she knew he still called to her. She hefted the harpoon, time slowing to a crawl as the obluda ate the distance.
Odon had taught her to spear-fish at a young age. She’d always been fascinated by the harpoon that hung above their hearth, a souvenir from his days as a deep ocean sailor, when he was a young man and before he married Frishi.
His long-ago instructions cascaded through her memory, every word as clear and sharp as a glass splinter. The obluda shrieked, lunging at her, and Zigana hurled the harpoon with all her strength.
The spear pierced the thing’s emaciated chest, punching it backwards with the force of impact. The shrieking cut off abruptly as the obluda clawed at the shaft and thrashed in the water. Zigana pitched into the surf on the other side of Gitta as the mare, no longer forced to hold still, threw her and Odon off with a fast pivot.
Water closed over Zigana’s head, and her bottom hit the seabed, swirling up sand to blind her completely. An arm wrapped around her middle and heaved her out of the water.
“Swim back,” Odon bellowed in her ear. “Swim back.”
An equine scream, unlike anything she’d ever heard before, lanced Zigana’s eardrum. Gitta reared above her, a towering, one-ton mountain of enraged horse. Waterfalls cascaded off her hooves as they pawed the air before crashing down on the struggling obluda. The harpoon’s shaft snapped like a piece of kindling. Gitta rose again, whinnying her challenge as she brought those huge feet down in the waves over and over. Another whinny matched hers—Andras’s bay calling encouragement as the trawler mare smashed the obluda until there was nothing left but teeth and bone fragments floating on a slick of yellow blood.
“Where is Andras?” Zigana cried, clutching her father as the waves tumbled around and over them. “Where is Lord Frantisek?”
“Here,” a voice answered. Andras leaned against his bay’s shoulder, blood streaming down his chest to be washed away by the sea, only to stream again. “I can’t mount Bui, but we have to get out of the water. Whatever hunters the obluda chased off before will return. Not only because it’s safe again but because they’re smelling a lot of blood.
He was right, and a new panic set in as she sensed a different hunger surging around them, one familiar but no less dangerous than the obluda. She and Odon helped Andras mount his horse before retrieving Gitta.
Odon used her mane and the rise of the waves to swing onto the mare’s back and pulled Zigana up behind him. Like their human riders, the horses seemed to sense the predators headed their way and wasted no time escaping the surf for the safety of the shore.
People spilled over the dunes to greet them. Odon leapt off Gitta’s back and braced to catch Frishi as she threw herself into his arms, laughing and crying at the same time. There was cheering and embracing and an inordinate number of women volunteering to take Lord Frantisek to their home and dress his wounds.
Zigana caught him before they dragged him off to the village. The blood from his wounds had slowed to a trickle, but his face was still pale and he swayed a little on his feet.
“You saved us. Were it not for you, my father and I would have died out there. And Gitta also.”
“You returned the favor. I’m alive because of you. There is no debt, Mistress Imre.”
She squeezed his hand, as sun-browned as hers and far more elegant. “You called me Ziga in the sea. You still can. We’re family after all.”
He raised her hand to his mouth and kissed her fingers. “Ziga,” he said, and he murmured her name as if he invoked it in prayer. “We’ll meet again soon.” He indicated Gitta with a thrust of his chin. “Take care of your child of earth. She is exceptional.”
The moon waxed bright above the dunes and the salt grass whispered incoherent secrets to any with the patience to listen.
Zigana sat astride Gitta and stared at the night tide as it tumbled back and forth along the shoreline. Frishi no longer questioned her as to why she rode to the beach each night now. Zigana wasn’t sure she could explain it herself. A need to hear the surf and only the surf; to see the waves roll and feel the steady breathing of her heroic, stalwart mare under her legs—these things reassured her in some way, allowed her to sleep at night.
The shadow of a dorsal fin cleaved the water, running parallel to the shore before disappearing. While there had been no more nightmares or sea spiders singing villagers to their death for a good six weeks, the Gray was still no place for a land creature at night, and she was content to listen to the surf from the safe distance of dry ground.
Shrimping season was over for the year, and soon she’d turn Gitta’s strength towards another labor as winter set in and the air froze a person’s a lungs every time they inhaled. She looked forward to a time away from the water. But not too long. Seawater coursed in her veins along with blood, just as it did with Gitta.
A flicker of light drew her gaze to the bluff and the castle perched atop its crown. Golden luminescence, either from a hearth or a lamp, filled a window. Somewhere behind those stone walls, a courageous man possessing a bewitching smile waited out his exile for his father’s sins. Zigana tried not to think of him too often and did her best to avoid him when she could. One did not moon over another’s husband, especially the husband of a sister. She forced herself to look away from the beckoning glow.
Gitta whuffled and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Zigana took the hint. “Ready for home, love?” The mare nickered her agreement, and Zigana clicked the command to turn their backs on the Gray.
Behind them, the surf tumbled and murmured, and far in the distance—where only the deep water ships might hear—something sang and wove dark dreams.
About Grace Draven
Looking for any excuse to delay in doing the laundry, Grace Draven turned to the much more entertaining task of telling stories about fantasy worlds, magic, antiheroes, and the women who love them.
She currently lives in Texas with her husband, kids, and a big doofus dog. Laundry has now been assigned to the kids.
Titles by Grace Draven
THE WRAITH KINGS
Radiance
Eidolon
The Ippos King (2017)
FROM THE MASTER OF CROWS W
ORLD
Master of Crows
The Brush of Black Wings
The Lightning God’s Wife
The Light Within
OTHER STORIES
Entreat Me
All the Stars Look Down
Beneath a Waning Moon
Connect with me:
website: gracedraven.com
Facebook: facebook.com/grace.draven
THE NOISE OF FUR
by Jeffe Kennedy
The first time, it came at night...
In the forest, a Thing prowls, picking off the members of young Raven’s tribe. If they flee their home, they face starvation. If only Raven can answer the question of what kind of fur makes that noise.
For Carrie Ann Ryan and Cane
I don’t remember why, except that we thought this title would be funny when we riffed on Twitter about it, and I made a note that this should be the dedication, if and when I ever wrote it.
All this time later, I found the title again and wrote this story.
Funny isn’t the right word.
THE NOISE OF FUR
The first time, it came at night. Softly lethal, sleek-edged and subtly violent. A noise unlike anything she’d encountered before. Amid her still slumbering siblings, she lifted her head in wary stealth, scanning the darkness.
A dream? A neighbor, also awake when they shouldn’t be?
No—because there it came again. A hot mutter, like the wind made animal. Holding silent, glad to be hidden from it, she listened to the noise. A brush of something. Not like scales or feathers, but with its own softer cadence.
Then, like a breath released, like a wing stroking through the air and abruptly stilled, it was gone.
And did not return, though she stayed awake, listening with all her being, eyes wide against the impenetrable night, holding vigil against the scudding fear. When dawn lightened the horizon and the small birds of the forest sent up their chorus of greeting, the strange noise seemed like a wrong vestige of the night, born of bad dreams and lurking shadows. Her parents and siblings all acted as usual, as did her tribe, going about the business of the day. Summer waned, full of both bounty and the threat of cold to come.
There was much to do and no reason for her to mention that ephemeral sound in the night.
Over the next while, she began to forget the exact tenor of the noise, as one does with a sound heard fleetingly and never encountered again. She had a good ear, however, and knew the songs of the various birds, which trill went with what kind of plumage or habit, along with the calls of the peepers in the swampy areas and the insects strumming in the meadow. All so familiar and clear.
Days went by. Perhaps, if she heard it again, she wouldn’t recognize it.
But she did, as one recognizes the lightning cracking open the sky.
She worked in the meadow that day, late afternoon sinking toward twilight. The warm hum of bees filled the air. The meadows held plenty of distractions—butterflies to admire and grasshoppers everywhere. They weren’t her favorite, but others in the tribe loved to eat them for the good protein, especially the elders and it never hurt to curry favor with them.
Though she had not seen many summers yet, she understood that the warm season couldn’t last forever, no matter how it might feel that it would. Eat well while you can and winter will not feel so cold, her mother liked to say. So she didn’t chase the butterflies as she might have when she was younger and more careless. Instead she gathered food as a good daughter should.
Then... that noise.
Sliding through the thick air and making her skin prickle more than a snow wind did, a painful tingle of awareness. She froze, looking for what kind of a Thing made a sound like that.
She couldn’t see the Thing, but the noise came from the forest on the other side of the meadow. Over there, the trees grew thick and old, with many branches, dead and living, entwined and fallen, that made it difficult to pass. She’d played there with her sibs and neighbor younglings the summer before, in their careless youth when they had time for such unproductive activities. Now that she had responsibilities to the tribe, she seldom ventured that far. Much easier to collect food and stuffing for beds from the meadow or the younger side of the forest, where a great fire had burned long before her birth and now the young trees grew fresh and slim, in clumps and scatterings.
This time, she wouldn’t cower behind her sleeping siblings. She’d grown old enough to do better. She’d find out what made that noise. She had to know.
She entered the old forest, moving from tree to tree, making little sound herself. There was an art to it. A skill that went beyond knowing where the leaves would crackle or how the bark of that branch had dried enough to crack. Her mother had taught her that being stealthy was about becoming, being so much a part of the woods—or the meadow, or the creek, or the great tumble of rocks that led to the hills—that she made no more sound than the quiet groans of creaking branches or the soughing of thunder wind in the canopy.
She belonged and the Thing did not. One reason it always made noise. And why she made sure not to.
She froze again at the grating crawl of movement, letting herself become one of the tree shadows. Silent and still always trumped silent and moving. Though it took both training and crushing will to make herself stay instead of fleeing as her baser instincts begged her to. She could escape easily, slipping through the trees like a dapple of sunlight, disappearing into the dark and warm spaces between. Her blood sang with the demand, heart hammering away with readiness, lungs straining to billow.
But she held them still.
Still.
Silent.
If she fled, she’d never see it, and her curiosity burned.
The noise scraped as nothing should, like down, but nothing to do with feathers. Just beyond that grove before the big boulder. Sifting out in mutters of menace, like crystal rocks screeching on flint, the sound rounded from both sides, not nearer on one more than the other, extending in butterfly wings of equal expansion. Tense with expectation, she poised for a glimpse.
The Thing sounded louder, soft and hot.
A growl of noise. A flurry of movement, punctuated by a rising garbled shriek... then gone.
Breaking her freeze, she darted into motion. Toward, not away. Silent still out of habit, whipping through the trees faster than a blue snake. Heart, lungs, bones and muscle all cooperated in the new venture. Equally willing to advance as they’d been intent on escape.
Almost she stumbled into it. Not the Thing, but the spatter.
Blood everywhere, as if a bladder of it had been popped, sending a fine spray to glisten on the sparkle of quartz in the rocks, decorating the deep gloss of the leaves with droplets fat as the crimson berries of winter.
No sign of the Thing that made the noise. Or what had borne the blood. But there—there was something unusual.
Hopping carefully around the bigger splatters, she picked up the stuff. Fur, like the rabbits and squirrels of the meadow, but not in their browns and blacks. And their fur did not make noise like this Thing.
Orange like fire, tawny like the sun—and stained with blood—the fur both entranced and repelled her. She could do nothing else but keep it.
Time to ask one of the elders what it might mean. Not her father. Con Qa might be annoyed that she’d ventured away from her duties. No, she’d ask Burung Gagak. The elder female liked to talk while she sunned herself, and had more patience for what might be foolish questions.
Perhaps the Thing with noisy fur would be of no concern.
But Raven didn’t think so.
“Elder Burung Gagak,” she asked in her most respectful voice, “what is the Thing in the forest?”
Burung Gagak cast her a sideways glance, but kept sharpening her eating tool. “There are many things in the forest.”
She had asked the wrong question. This sometimes happened with elders. Con Qa said that the answer lay in the question, so the wise knew the question to ask it. Which w
as partly why she’d gone to Burung Gagak instead of her father. But she still hadn’t asked the right question and the Thing could be out there, circling back in its noise and fur and spattering of blood. In her nerves, Raven idly tapped the nearest rock in the scatter around Burung Gagak.
“Leave those be, I set that pattern for a reason.”
Burung Gagak forever arranged rocks into circles, lines and squares—none of them decorative and the rocks without sparkle. No one understood Burung Gagak’s reasons, though she insisted they be respected. Something in the glint of her black eye ensured it, along with the uncanny whiteness of her other blind eye. That and her being an elder. No one doubted her wisdom, only how she chose to employ it.
“I apologize, Elder Burung Gagak.” Raven tried to think how to ask the question another way, but the elder relented.
“The thing in the forest,” Burung Gagak mused, meticulously setting the rock back into place. “Tell me what you notice.”
“It makes a strange sound at night—do you know it?”
“I might.” Burung Gagak cocked her head, black eye glittering with gimlet perception. “Though no one else has spoken of it.”
“Why do you think that is?”
Burung Gagak shrugged, picked up her tool again and carefully scraped it against a flint. Not one from her patterns. “What is the central tenet of our people?” she asked.
“Curiosity in all things,” Raven replied dutifully. “Which is why I don’t understand why no one else is investigating the Thing in the forest. It’s a very strange Thing, but no one else goes to find out what it is.”
“Have you gone?” Burung Gagak straightened, setting her tool aside on its special ledge. Everyone knew not to mess with Burung Gagak’s tools. Sometimes the other young ones tried to sneak up to steal them for their own, but then Burung Gagak never shared her wisdom with them as she did with Raven.
