The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  At first he was a tall dark shadow to Verena’s stare. Then the blazes under the kettle leaped up and she saw him, a gaunt slender man with a sallow wrinkled face, a jutting jaw and hard mouth, and deep eyes that burned with a strangely youthful fire. He wore a coarse cloth garment that covered him from his square shoulders to his bony knees.

  “Where did you come from?” His voice was very low, without the harshness of the other voices.

  “I came from another planet,” said Verena.

  “Did you come to this place by choice?”

  “Muddi captured me,” she said. Her words were taken as a compliment by Muddi, now emerging from his cave. He straightened and drew a proud breath as his father glanced at him.

  “I captured her,” said Muddi.

  One of the brothers undertook to give credit where credit was due by explaining the circumstances: that they had decided Muddi should have a wife; that they had ordered him to go forth and not return until he had found one; that their mother had, in all probability, placed this woman in his path.

  The father cut short the oldest son’s monologue.

  “We are capturing too many,” the father said. “We cannot afford to feed two extra—”

  “H-s-sh!” The oldest brother slapped his hand over his father’s mouth. Then everyone stared questioningly at Verena. Had she caught the dreadful secret?

  “Where is he?” she demanded. “Where is Phil? What have you done with him?”

  “There!” The oldest brother made a gesture with his fist. “Now she knows.”

  That was the signal for another raucous quarrel. Everything that was said tended to confuse Verena as to what had happened to Phil.

  “Where is he? What have you done with him?” Her pleadings were lost in the storm of words. She turned her head. She couldn’t stand to see another brutal fight. The two burly sons were crowding the old man, threatening him with fists.

  But suddenly they all stopped in their tracks. A rattle of wood startled them. As if my magic, a large round basket was rolling out into the light. It was a rudely constructed contraption as large as a barrel, woven of tough roots, and Verena saw at once that it was meant for a prison.

  The object it contained was very much alive. Those leather boots, that flyer’s uniform, the handsome head, the raw-boned elbows all were familiar. But under such strange circumstances the sight was positively weird. It was Phil, rolling toward the fire.

  “Look out, Phil! Don’t—”

  Her words were drowned by a hysterical laugh from Phil. He rolled straight for the fire, he knocked the kettle over, he spun over the hot blazing coals.

  “Yeee-ouw!” he cried. “Yeee-ouw!”

  Verena’s blood froze. He was acting like a crazy man. Deliberately thrashing through fire. Ashes and coals sprayed, the kettle clanged over the stone floor and the white bones scattered.

  “Phil! What on earth—don’t!” she screamed. “Don’t!”

  The brothers were after the rolling basket with savage kicks. They kicked it against the stone wall. They crowded over it, fists ready, as if expecting Phil to tear himself out of it.

  Phil made no move to break out, however. He drew himself into a ball like a turtle. Not whimpering, like Muddi. Not by any means. He emitted another crazy hysterical laugh. To the rage-filled men around him it was a taunt, a dare. The echo seemed to vibrate the lofty walls, and must have disturbed some of the vultures a hundred feet above, for at that moment the crackle of falling wood sounded. Down, down, down, with a heavy bounce, into the coals.

  When the blazes leaped up, Verena could see Phil’s wild face, the dirt smears on his cheeks, his scraggly hair. The marks of the pit were upon him. It was terrifying. His eyes were blazing, but he would not look at her or answer her. He did not even realize that she was there!

  They all went after the basket now, kicking it across the open floor. All but the father. He stood back against the wall, his arms folded, his lips set tight.

  It was one of the wives who cried out, “Put him back on the fire! That’s where he wants to be!”

  They rolled him toward the blazes. Verena gripped the pistol. She could feel the engraving of her name on the handle as her hand tightened. The moment had come. The first flames crawled up around the basket prison. Phil’s wild laughter changed to a maniacal wail. She leveled the gun. At Phil. A quick death, to save him from torture.

  But at that moment something hurled the basket aside. Something that Verena could not understand. Something with a strength that was more than a match for the muscular brothers and their bulky wives. It was an arm of flame.

  It struck with the blow of a machine. The brothers and their wives fell back. Phil rolled away. The fire was beaten off the sides of his prison, and for the moment he was safe.

  Verena saw, then, the apparition that formed above the fire. It changed from a blazing arm to a ball of flame—much like the fire balls she had seen moving across the sand flats of this strange planet. It was changing in form, turning into a head and a body, with thin, skeleton-like arms and long ugly twists of flaming hair. A toothless old hag.

  It was Muddi who uttered the words of recognition.

  “It’s mother!” he cried.

  CHAPTER IV

  The apparition sang out in words that were like the crunching of tin. A metallic whine, fraught with torture.

  “You stinking sinners! Why didn’t you call me back? Trying to have the marriage without me, weren’t you? Weren’t you? You stinking sinners!”

  The brothers shuffled awkwardly, knotting their fists or mumbling something under their breath. But no one dared to defy her.

  She was dead, Verena thought. At least that was what Muddi had said. She was dead, and therefore a thing of fire, who could travel wherever she wished.

  Her long arm of flame lashed out at the father. He jerked back and bumped his head against the stone. How he despised her. She could see it in his every action. Until now he had conducted himself with a curious dignity. His very contrast to his bestial family had won a certain grudging admiration from Verena. But now he edged toward his cave, trying to ignore her mockery.

  “You miserable wretch,” the fire-woman cried. “It was you who murdered me. I know it was. I’ll trap you some day and boil the marrow of your bones.”

  “Bones,” one of the brothers muttered.

  His word was a hint in another direction, Verena soon realized. The mother mocked him for begging, but presently, to Verena’s further amazement, her flaming arms reached up into the air and drew out of it some meat-covered bones. Bones that might have been the legs of vultures.

  With miraculous efficiency her flaming body twisted toward the upset kettle, which she restored to its original position over the fire. And all the while she croaked and screeched and scolded, her flaming jaws never idle. Verena wished she might hold still for a moment, for it was a puzzle as to whether she was skeleton or flesh, whether she was clothed or naked. Her amorphous form was more like a fluid or a gas than a solid.

  And yet her power to manipulate things was nothing short of terrifying. Verena wished that Phil would roll back out of range of her grasping fingers. There was a limit to that range. She tried repeatedly to reach into the caves for wood from the treasured woodpiles. She caught a few scattered bits of kindling and fed them to the fire beneath the kettle. She swished around the kettle while one of the wives added a bucket of water. Then she hovered over, as if her feet were in the kettle.

  Before the legs of meat had time to boil, the hungry pit-folk reached through the flames and grabbed for them and were soon grinding their teeth and slurping at the bones. Verena decided that she wasn’t hungry, after all. Half cooked portions were thrown back into the kettle. Soup splashed over the black iron rim, extinguishing blazes momentarily, causing streaks of black to flare up through the weird creature of fire.

  “Don’t put me out, curse you!” she shrieked through her great jagged teeth. “I want to see this wedding.”


  “You’re here,” Muddi whined. “Quit shouting. You’ll stay to see it.”

  The oldest brother and his wife objected. They had their food. That was all they wanted. They weren’t going to expend any more of their precious wood to retain the mother.

  “Who invited you, anyway?” the brother growled.

  “I arranged this marriage,” the old woman of fire cried. “I brought this girl here myself.”

  Verena spoke up defiantly, “I came of my own free will. No one brought me here. I was looking for a friend, and as long as I had this pistol I took a chance on walking into danger—on a hunch. She couldn’t have brought me.”

  “What are you saying?” the flame phantom screamed, thrusting a fiery arm at her. Verena, moving back a trifle, answered defiantly. She spoke slowly, against the splutter of flames.

  “I came searching for my friend who was lost.” She pointed to Phil, glaring at her madly through the side of the basket. “He had only enough fuel to fly this far.”

  “Haw! How did you know to come this way?” the old woman asked.

  “I had a map,” said Verena.

  “Where did you get it?”

  “My friend made it to help us locate him. I would know his handwriting anywhere.”

  She drew the map from her pocket and unfolded it. She turned to Phil, staring giddily out of his basket prison. “You did make it, didn’t you, Phil?” Phil obviously caught nothing of her question. He made a funny face, like a schoolboy misbehaving. Then he laughed like a simpleton and began to rock back and forth in his basket. The pitfolk were looking on with considerable satisfaction. Especially the two older brothers. They had evidently beaten their prisoner into this attitude of senselessness.

  The phantom mother was determined to make an issue of the map, however. She lashed out at Verena and caught the map in her fiery red hand. For a moment it hung there in the fingers of flame without being, consumed.

  “I repeat, where did you get it?” she screeched. And as Verena tried to recover it, “No, you don’t! I’ve got it now. And I’ll tell you where you got it. I brought it to you!”

  Verena was caught for an answer. The very mysterious fact was that the map had somehow found its way back through all the miles that Phil had travelled, to fall beside her, as if out of the camp fire.

  “I think some vulture must have flown it to me, like a homing pigeon,” she said stubbornly.

  “Calling me a vulture!” The old lady of flames gave a raucous cackle and folded the map into her burning arms where it disappeared. Her flames danced with wicked glee. “I made your friend come this way so you would follow. I made his plane crash when he tried to land. I let my son capture him and bring him here. That’s what brought you here. And now Muddi has you and he’s going to marry you. Put some wood on the fire, you louts! More

  fire! M-o-r-e f-i-r-e!!”

  But now they had their food, and not one of them was willing to add another stick of wood. She cursed them all. She struck at Muddi. She screamed dire threats at the gaunt old father. Scream as she would, the blazes died down until they could no longer sustain her. Her form above the kettle grew thin and transparent, and she vanished into blackness overhead.

  Verena saw the others looking up. They watched for two or three minutes, and at last one of them said, “There she goes.”

  High overhead a vivid ball of fire was visible for a lingering moment. It rolled around near the top of the pit, like an agitated meteor that had lost its course. Then it sailed out of the pit and away.

  CHAPTER V

  Phil was still looking up at the sky when the old man began to say the words that were to make Muddi and Verena man and wife.

  A low fire was burning under the kettle. The older brothers and their wives, standing around to witness the ceremony, dipped into the soup from time to time. It was bubbling with yellow oils. There were a few white vegetables among the bones. The dubious aroma filled Verena’s nostrils.

  The old man’s words were interrupted by the hollow echoes from high overhead. A roar, like a wind storm. Verena, staring at the fire, thought that a cloud of sand would come sifting down from the desert flat.

  “As the wife of my son Muddi,” the old man went on to say, “you become his property, and his slave, and his beast of burden. You will faithfully pick up all the falling wood—”

  His words went on and on. Verena tried to suppress the panic in her heart.

  She kept telling herself that she was not afraid. Not as long as she had a pistol. They knew nothing of firearms. But let one of them try to harm her. She’d shoot him.

  And if they tried to beat Phil again—poor guy, what could be done? Was there any hope that he could ever come to his senses? An escape for both of them was hopeless as long as he knew nothing. If there had been a path, she couldn’t have made him follow it. If there had been a ladder, he would have refused to climb. Her heart went sick, and suddenly she was sure that the end of life was very near for both of them.

  She gripped the pistol. Her thoughts flew far ahead of the father’s deep-throated words, as he recited the long ritual. She would kill herself before Muddi should touch her. But she could not leave Phil alive to be victimized. She must shoot him first.

  “And so, according to these agreements which I have stated,” the old man was saying, “you two are to be bound together—” He paused, looking at her so strangely that she wondered. Did he know her intentions? Or was he betraying a sympathy toward her?

  She glanced at Phil. Though the roar had died away, he was still looking up at the sky. It was beginning to turn gray up there. The new day was coming.

  The roar came again, then, like a sudden and terrible storm. Or a passing space ship? It echoed down, and was quickly gone.

  But was it a storm? No cloud of sand had sifted down. A violent crackle of wood sounded from Phil’s basket prison. He was breaking out. He snapped the web of roots like toothpicks. He leaped to his feet and began throwing things. Into the air. Straight up. Coals and sticks and stones and bones. He was utterly mad.

  “Stop it, Phil! Stop it!” Verena ran to him. Everything he threw came raining down to the floor of the court. But he kept right on throwing. Everything he could get his hands on.

  “I’ll get them yet!” he shouted, and his wild expression was awful to see. “They can’t run away from us!”

  “Not that, Phil! That’s mine! No. Don’t!”

  Verena’s cries were unheeded. He jerked the pistol out of her hand and threw it. She thrust him back against the wall, so it wouldn’t strike him as it fell back. But it didn’t fall. Somewhere along the jagged vertical wall there was enough ledge to catch it. She heard the clatter. Her pistol was gone.

  By this time the wedding party was closing around the two of them. This mad demonstration had enraged them. The older brothers were advancing slowly, one of them gripping a knife. Muddi was ranting.

  “Don’t touch! Don’t touch! The ceremony isn’t done!”

  But Verena had already been touched by Phil, and that, according to the old man, had exploded the whole ceremony.

  “Not necessarily,” said the husky brother with the scarred neck.

  The father was as firm as stone. He looked up at the morning sky. “We must wait until another sunset.”

  “Not if we kill the man that touched her,” said the brother.

  “We won’t do that,” said the father. Several pairs of murderous eyes lighted up. It was Muddi who said, “Sure, we’ll kill him. That’s my right. Then the wedding won’t have to wait.” They crowded Phil into a corner. Verena saw Muddi approach with a gleaming knife. But Phil, for all his mad laughter, was in no mood to stand long enough to be stabbed through the heart. He battled his way out of one corner into another. Again they crowded him. Now, it seemed, they had him ready for the kill. But where was Muddi?

  “Come on with your knife!” the oldest brother yelled. “Where did he go?”

  “Lost his nerve,” one of the wives taunted. “H
e went up—”

  Suddenly, from somewhere overhead, a stone was falling. Bigger than a bucket. Straight for Phil. Verena screamed. But Phil didn’t see—

  Swish—clunk!

  It would have been death for Phil in that moment. But the gaunt old father, his ears atuned to falling objects, caught the danger just in time to jerk Phil aside. The stone grazed the young flyer’s head and clunked to the floor near his feet.

  Instantly Phil was a changed man. He whirled and for an instant stared, taking in the whole situation. Heedless of the trickle of blood down from the side of his head.

  “Verena!” He seemed to be seeing her for the first time.

  “Phil!”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Never mind me, Phil. They’re going to kill you. Do you understand? That one upon the ledge—”

  Phil’s wits had returned. That glancing blow! He reached for a gun, discovered it was missing. The brothers were following him around the open court, now, moving toward him with knives ready, trying to maneuver him into a position where Muddi, on a shelf overhead, could get him with another stone.

  “This way!”

  He grabbed Verena’s hand. They dodged. They were forced toward the fire. They tried to leap over it. The old habits adapted to lighter gravity played them false. They stumbled. They scrambled away from the hot ashes. One whispered word from Phil, “Get a torch!”

  With blazing sticks they dodged into the nearest cave and touched off the pile of wood. The flames ran up.

  “This way! There’s a tunnel!”

  Phil’s memory was working. Verena took hope. She knew, too, that there must be some ascent to the nearest shelf other than a hand climb by way of grass ropes. For Muddi was already up there. He had scampered into a cave and emerged overhead.

  The flames alone would not have blocked the pursuit of the brothers, or stopped them from throwing knives. They paused to take care of a certain detail in their home life which they considered timely. The murder of their father.