Fantasy Scroll Magazine Issue #4

by Cat Rambo

  "No! Mother knows the plants better than anyone. She wouldn't do that. She respected your choices."

  "Did she?" Raine edged closer to him, the flame in his eyes turned into a blaze.

  "Why would she do that?"

  "You know why. She was threatened by her and the villagers, scared I was going to leave you both for them."

  "Weren't you?"

  "You mean, aren't I?"

  Something wasn't right. It stirred deep in Paylee's gut, even before he heard the ancient ones speak again, "He hides truth."

  Mother hadn't killed the village girl. A tremor quaked inside Paylee and bled everything in his world red. Breath knotted in the back of his throat and pulled tight against his cords. "You killed her," he rasped. "I know you did! You killed her!"

  A snide grin spread into Raine's eyes. "Little Paylee, so wise, so mature. You think I'm going to live in these woods forever? Taking care of you and mother while my life slips away? Mother made the wrong choices, and we paid for them!"

  "She was set up."

  Raine clucked his tongue. "It doesn't matter anymore. My destiny is behind those walls, and the only way to get inside them is to bring the villagers what they want."

  "Please, Raine. Don't do this."

  Raine fell silent and stepped towards him. Paylee dipped his hand into his pocket and curled his fingers tight around the stone. Fear squeezed around his wriggling heart.

  "The woods have spoken to me," Paylee said. "They've shown me my destiny too."

  Raine lingered in his advance on him. "So, you've made your choice, little brother?"

  The rock in Paylee's hand was as smooth as the best of them, and tonight it wouldn't skip across the river. Paylee pulled back and chucked the stone at Raine's temple. Bull's-eye. He crumbled and smacked the back of his head against a boulder.

  "Raine? Raine!" Paylee ran over to him and shook his shoulders. His limp neck jostled his head side to side. Paylee couldn't undo what he'd done. Another hoarse sob escaped him—change choking him tight around the throat.

  A rose dawn spread its light over the stone garden and bathed the sacred circle of whispering trees with the same pink as the belly of the fish that squirmed in Paylee's hand. With ease, he drew the tip of the blade beneath its gills and slit down the middle. He laid it skin-side down on a hot rock by the fire and seasoned the flesh with dried verbena.

  On the horizon, Paylee knew another storm would gather, one shaped of dark horses and pointed spears. The villagers would find what they were looking for. So hoped Paylee. He owned his destiny now, and it took him down river, to a place far away.

  © 2014 by Erin Cole

  * * *

  Erin Cole writes dark, speculative fiction, many thanks to that handy science degree. She is the author of Grave Echoes, Of the Night, After Dusk, The Shadow People, and has a novella forthcoming with Damnation Books. When she’s not writing, she enjoys cooking ‘real’ food, takes in rescue animals, and is a close friend to insomnia. Visit her at www.erincolewrites.com.

  Incriminating Evidence

  Charity Tahmaseb

  "You won't tell anyone this."

  I don't remind Magnus that I can't. Besides, his is a knee-jerk sort of question, the one he always asks at the start of a session.

  "You're the only one I can talk to," he says.

  I nod, doodling on a piece of paper, its edges so charred that the smoky scent reaches me. It contains a list of names that, depending on whose fingers clutch the paper, could be almost anything—a death warrant, a hit list.

  But since a Sage last held it, I've taken to desecrating it with doodles—mostly hearts and flowers, and mostly adorning Magnus's name. No, I shouldn't have a crush, but then I shouldn't be dispensing advice without a license either.

  "I need to fire my second," he says.

  I crook an eyebrow at this. True, I am a rebel confidant, for lack of a better term, but I normally deal with Oedipus or Electra complexes, abandonment issues, and learned helplessness. (You'd be surprised how many revolutionaries aren't quite sure what to do after the coup.) But firing one's second in command? Purely an operational decision.

  "He's a good friend," Magnus says.

  Ah, the crux of the problem. I give a single nod, one that means: Go ahead.

  "But I fear his loyalties may lie elsewhere." Magnus stares at me, his gaze holds both pleading and defiance. Has his second, Orlando, confessed to me? Magnus wants me to confirm. He wants me to deny. He wants something I can't give him. I can no more tell Magnus this than voice his doubts to Orlando.

  "It worries me."

  Now I nod. It should and greatly.

  "Do you think I should consult the Sages?"

  I tilt my head to one side and give a little shoulder shrug—the maximum consideration they deserve.

  Magnus laughs, a big boom that fills the room and warms my heart. Still, I must swallow the bitter anxiety that floods my mouth. He is strong and this strength will be his salvation, I tell myself, not his downfall.

  "Yes," he says, still laughing. "I know you've never set much store in their advice."

  I have my own reasons for disregarding the Sages. That they dispense worthless advice is secondary.

  "Of course…" A slyness crosses his face, the look both playful and seductive. "They led me to you."

  Well, there's that.

  He taps his fingers against a pillow as if counting off options. My office is rudimentary, at best. A scavenged door for a desk, propped up on crumbling cinderblock. Crates double as chairs. A fire in the hearth makes it warm enough for year-round use. But the pillow? Velvet with silky fringe in a deep emerald green. It harkens back to long ago days. Most of my clients can't help but fondle it. When they do, their fears pour from them.

  "It's the betrayal," Magnus says, his fingers entwined in the fringe, which might double as strands of hair by the way he strokes it.

  I stare at his hands until the heat in my face forces me to glance away.

  "We expect it. Don't we? We always look for the betrayal."

  I turn back to him.

  "But it's never easy."

  I blink rapidly, in a way that I hope conveys understanding, not flirting.

  "You would caution me against haste," he says.

  I give an emphatic nod.

  "Rash judgments?"

  Yes, those too. I can't help but smile. Are all client relationships destined to be so intimate? Or is it only that one client, the one you end up needing more than he needs you?

  Magnus closes his eyes. His lashes are childlike and startling against the scarred terrain of his cheekbones. "Just saying it out loud." He exhales, the force of his breath ruffling the pillow's fringe. "You can't imagine what a relief that is."

  No. I can't.

  He opens one eye and peers at me. I've always envied those who can do that. I need both eyes to see the world and even then, I doubt I see it clearly—or at least not like I should. But it's this gesture that decides things—his absolute trust in me. My world is a complicated tapestry with so many threads. But tug Magnus from the weave? My whole existence would unravel.

  I glance down at the list of names. The Sages may dispense worthless advice, but their sources are impeccable. I start to tear my scribbling from the rest of the page, but there's no hope for it. I've entwined myself so thoroughly with Magnus—at least in doodles. I shove the charred and adorned sheet at him before I can change my mind. Perhaps devotion can soften betrayal.

  Even as his mouth turns grim, his eyes remain soft, dart toward the top of the page, then toward me.

  "I know you'll never tell," he says.

  I won't. I can't. Sometime on my fifth day, the Sages sliced the tongue from my mouth.

  He carries the paper to the hearth and lets it drop into the flames. Evidence of betrayal—of devotion—evaporates into smoke. I join him in the walk from my office. At the threshold, he presses a finger against my lips and kisses my forehead. I dare to yearn for more—that kis
s traveling my cheek, brushing my mouth, lingering there.

  But there's no hope for it. Already the warmth of his lips is a memory.

  "Ah," he says. "My perfect confidant."

  Yes, it's true. I am the perfect confidant.

  When he leaves without a backward glance, I know this:

  That's all I'll ever be.

  © 2014 by Charity Tahmaseb

  * * *

  Charity Tahmaseb has slung corn on the cob for Green Giant and jumped out of airplanes (but not at the same time). She spent twelve years as a Girl Scout and six in the Army; that she wore a green uniform for both may not be a coincidence. These days, she writes fiction (long and short) and works as a technical writer for a software company in St. Paul.

  Posthumous

  James B. Willard

  "You're a good girl, Ruthie," Ma says, placing hands on my arms. She's looking at them—really looking at them—for the first time in longer than I can remember. "You've always been a good girl."

  The cadenced beeping of her heart monitor rises up from the background noise of the ward, intrusive, and it seems to me that the lights are getting brighter in the room, so bright it's making my eyes water. It feels like I'm the fragile one, like she's gonna crush me into pieces while examining my scars.

  She asks about them, of course.

  "When'd you get these?" she whispers. She sounds concerned, but weak, and I know she's not gonna make it through the next few days.

  "I don't remember, Mama. It was a long time ago," I answer, lying, but the memories are welling up in my mind after all the years. I've never been all that good at keeping them buried.

  "You came back to see me, Ruthie," she says. "You've always been the best girl."

  I don't go by Ruthie any more, but I don't correct her. There's old anger inside of me, even though I know there shouldn't be. It's not her fault that she's getting names and places mixed up, but I'm still feeling mad because it's not like she was ever around, not since Dad left us behind. How would she know if I was good or not, anyway? So there it is—it's been stewing deep down inside of me for almost two decades—along with all those memories of the bad winter.

  Here she is, dying before my eyes, and it's taking all I've got not to walk out the door, leaving her to wither away, alone. There's too much guilt, too many years between us.

  I pull my arm away from her, like I'm saying what's mine is mine and it's none of her business.

  "I want you to know that I feel bad about making us leave Arbor Park, Ruthie," she says, looking at my face now.

  God, she's so old, so small and worn down by life, and I can see myself in her shadow. I feel afraid of the day when I'm in her place, knowing there's not gonna be anybody at my bedside while I lie wasting away, forgotten. I know she's in bad shape too, 'cos we never talk about Arbor Park. I wonder how long she's been holding on to that.

  I want to tell Ma that I feel bad about how things ended in Arbor Park, just like she does. I want to tell her why I feel that way, that I'm angry but she's not the one to blame. I want to tell her why I stopped talking to her, but I don't think she'll understand me. I don't think she'll even hear me. I close my eyes and concentrate on the droning buzz of the hospital. I take a deep breath of the recycled, antiseptic air and I reflect on the times leading up to when we left.

  There was a day before the bad winter, right around Thanksgiving. That's when everything started to shift, the beginning of one of those life-changing phases that happen to everyone, obvious in retrospect, but at the time, a struggle. I was fifteen and excited about the holidays and school break. I'd been babysitting for the neighbors, late at night, but it was a Friday so not that big of a deal. When I came home, I found Ma sitting at the kitchen table with a bottle of Dad's bourbon, a half-smoked cigarette dangling from her fingers, and this blank look in her eyes. My first thought was that Dad had been in an accident or something.

  "Mama, what's the matter?" I asked, cautiously, letting my backpack drop to the floor.

  It took her a minute to answer, like she didn't even know I'd come in the room. She didn't look at me; she just told me that Dad wasn't coming home again. Like part of her was gone, checked out even, and I wasn't all that sure of how to deal with that, especially since she'd said it like it wasn't even that big of a deal. So I went to my room, the one Dad added to the basement.

  I closed the door, and I cried for days.

  Ma never once came to check on me that first week, and by the end of it I'd cut myself a few times—just to make sure I was still alive, you know, nothing serious, nothing all that deep. I just wanted to feel something concrete, make myself feel something that I had control over, and I happened to have a sharp enough pair of scissors to serve that purpose. The scissors were a gift from Helen, the first time that I'd been to her house.

  I should have stayed home that day; I should have stayed in that dark add-on room in the basement that was so much like a prison.

  "I want to show you something," Helen said, opening a door to stairs that led up to an attic. "You can't tell anyone about this place," she'd warned me.

  "Of course I won't, Helen," I assured her. "Your secret's safe with me."

  "Promise me. Swear on your mother's life," she demanded, blocking the doorway.

  I didn't think anything of it, you know. We were kids. Kids say things like that all the time, don't they? So I promised her; I swore on my mother's life. We went up the stairs and passed through a second doorway into a room filled with scissors.

  "What's with all the scissors?" I asked, looking inquisitively over the hundreds of types of scissors hanging from the rafters by strings and wires. The walls were a solid mass of sharp metal shears, layered so thick I couldn't see the plaster or boards behind them. Several light bulbs hung from the ceiling in different parts of the room, casting ominous shadows that stretched across the worn hardwood floor.

  "These are for you," she said, handing me a black, medium sized pair of expensive-looking scissors. I studied them for a moment then placed them in my pocket.

  "Thanks," I said. "But really, where'd you get all of these scissors?"

  "This place is magic," she said, avoiding my question. She pointed to a circle drawn with chalk on the floor that I hadn't noticed. "If you close the door, stand in the circle, and wish to go anywhere in the world, this room can make it happen, as long as I'm with you."

  I laughed at her. I thought she was joking.

  "Your room's really cool, Helen, but don't expect me to believe that kind of kid stuff." She scowled, tilting her head down, her eyes dark.

  "Why wouldn't you believe me?" she whispered.

  "Because you're talking about magic. Fairy tales. It's just make-believe."

  A part of me wanted it to be real. I wanted to think that such a thing were possible. There were so many places I'd never seen, so many places that I knew I'd never travel to. Ever since I was little, Ma said I'd always be a small town girl, that I'd never get away from it. There were so many places I'd heard stories about that seemed better than Arbor Park.

  "Let me show you, then," Helen said, taking my hand in hers. Her touch was electric and exciting. I didn't want her to let go, so I followed behind her. She closed the door and led me into the circle.

  "You have to close your eyes," she informed me, reaching for a pair of scissors that were hanging nearby, so I did.

  Suddenly, I felt a sharp pain in the palm of my hand.

  "You cut me!" I snatched my hand away from her, watching the bright blood well up from the slice in my palm and drip to the floor.

  "Why?!" I exclaimed, stepping away from her, confused and angry.

  "It's not that deep. I'm sorry. I had to do it to make this work," she explained, reaching into her pocket for a handkerchief.

  Had she planned this?

  "Where was it that you wanted to go?" she asked, changing the subject. Perhaps hoping to distract me from the drops of blood as they fell to the floor. "New York? Paris? Tokyo? So
mewhere exotic?"

  "Home," I answered, snatching the handkerchief from her hands and wrapping it around mine. Any place but the attic.

  I opened the door to the stairs and part of me still hoped that Helen's magic had worked, that we'd somehow been whisked away to another land, to one of the great cities that I'd always read about in magazines, where movie stars and rich people spend their days. I wanted to feel the sunshine blasting in through the doorway, blinding and warm, to hear sounds I'd never heard before.

  But outside it was still Arbor Park.

  It was the same cold, overcast sky, dumping out the seemingly endless drizzle that soaked through everything I wore.

  "I'm sorry, Ruthie," she apologized, reaching out for me without leaving the circle. Her lithe fingers stretched towards me, and despite the pain she'd caused, I wanted to feel them on my skin.

  "It's okay, Helen. I'll talk to you later on. I need a couple of days," I said as I walked down the stairs. "I'll let myself out."

  I look down at my arms, seeing the scars Ma was asking about. Scars that came later, on the week we left town, right before spring but still cold enough that I could wear long-sleeved shirts and sweaters to cover my arms. The cut in my palm and the cuts that I'd given myself had never really left any marks.

  "What happened in Arbor Park's not your fault, Mama," I say to her. "It was a long time ago. I don't even think about it anymore." I lie to her again. I think about Arbor Park all the time. I think about the day that we left and how Helen cried when I told her that I could never see her again. That I never wanted to see her again. Sometimes, though, it feels like she's near, a shadow just out of sight in a dark room, watching me, or in a crowded place, standing still, studying my movements.