by Douglas Draa
“I’m taking her back,” I told him.
“You can’t. Not now. She’s not in danger.”
“You better explain. So help me Christ, I’ll split your fucking skull open!” At that moment I meant it, too.
“I know what it is to lose a wife,” he said. “I lost my own. She died years ago in an accident, but I could have prevented it. I could have chosen a different fate for her. She could have lived.”
“What are you talking about?”
“They gave me a choice, that night. Samhain. They wanted a life. Mine, or one in place of it. It had to be a life I cherished as much as my own.” The crashing of the undergrowth and wild sounds of the hounds almost drowned out his voice.
He was crying, tears gleaming in the glow from the firebrand he’d set in the ground. Somewhere out in the darkness, the drumming of hooves grew very close.
“Who? Who wanted a life?” I said, shouting above the din. I glanced at Kathy, but she hadn’t moved. She had never looked so small or frail.
“The Wild Hunt. You hear it? Soon it will be here.”
He was mad. The things he’d lost in life had fucked his head up. “Get out of the way, or I’ll move you, O’Riordan. I mean it.”
“I could have given them my wife, or Cuchulainn. They both meant everything to me.”
For a moment I wondered what the fuck he was babbling about. Then I remembered his dog, the wolfhound.
“I could not bear to lose Cuchulainn. Perhaps I didn’t believe it would happen, that it was a nightmare. I told them to take my wife.”
“Your wife died in a car crash,” I said coldly, recalling the words of the shopkeeper, Dennis.
O’Riordan nodded. “Yes, it’s how they took her. I could have offered myself, or Cuchulainn. I betrayed her, choosing the hound over her.”
We were almost surrounded now by the cracking of thin branches, the snorting of horses, the deep-throated growl of hounds. A large body of mounted men was close by. There was a glow among the trees, lanterns or torches, I assumed. Once this party confronted us, as it seemed they were determined to, they’d enable me to get to Kathy and prevent any more interference from this idiot O’Riordan.
“Well, listen, mate, you’re not sacrificing Kathy to anyone, so you better get that clear. You touch her and I’ll split your head open.”
“You don’t have to do that,” he said. Thankfully he seemed weakened by my blows and made no attempt to rise. It was only now that his age had caught up with him, diminishing his stature.
I stood over Kathy and O’Riordan made no move to stop me. We both waited for the riders to emerge into the clearing. When the first of them nudged their horses into the torch-glow, I felt a sudden gust of frigid air wash over me. If this was an element of the night’s festivities, it was extraordinarily convincing. These weren’t just riders and horses, dressed up in their annual finery to celebrate the occasion.
If I tried to focus on an individual horse, or rider, I couldn’t. They weren’t spectral, but somehow their forms eluded the eye. The horses’ breath boiled in clouds, like steam released from an engine. The riders wore pelts and woollen cloaks, their arms and legs adorned with silver bracelets and bands of gold, and all were helmeted, some with stag antlers curling over them. Some had drawn their swords—huge, elongated weapons—others hefted axes or spears. Although I couldn’t see their faces, I knew instinctively that there were women among them. The hounds that I’d heard, baying in the distance and growling here in the woods, paced about them, huge beasts, teeth barred hungrily as though a word would set them on me.
The riders shouted to each other in a language I didn’t recognise.
“The Wild Hunt,” said O’Riordan, his voice barely above a whisper. “It has come for another life.”
I would have shouted out to the ferocious looking leaders, but then I saw what swung from their belts, the horrendous, grisly trophies of their night’s work.
Human heads, freshly dripping with blood that ran down the flanks of the horses like sweat. They weren’t fake. I knew that intuitively for a fact. I would have screamed, but terror locked me up.
As I stood there, so impotently, O’Riordan pushed gently past me and put himself between Kathy and the riders. He turned to me and told me not to move. I saw with further horror that he had opened his shirt. Something gleamed on his bared chest, as if he had carved something there, a symbol that leaked his blood. He held out his arms, ironically making a cross of his body. Whatever gods were at work here, pre-dated the Christians by centuries.
I realised what he was doing. He was sacrificing himself, giving himself to these frightful warriors of the night. He walked towards them. One of them edged his horse forward and swung it around. O’Riordan moved with sudden liveliness and swung up behind the frightful rider, his legs gripping the flanks of the steed. Several of the hounds bayed, as though eager to sink their teeth into human flesh and filling the air of the clearing with the sound. Moments later the whole company wheeled, shouting and waving their weapons at the skies, before plunging back into the forest.
The last of them was a woman rider. I felt her eyes on me before she turned away. Her gaze burned away my anger. Beside her was a huge wolfhound. Then they, too were gone.
I sagged down beside Kathy, drained, my whole frame shaking.
She stirred and sat up. I gave her my arm and she got to her feet, more steadily than I did.
“Darling, why have you brought me here?” she said, laughing softly. “I’m sure it’s very romantic, but I can hardly see a thing.”
The firebrand had almost burned out, but in its glow I could see her face. There was an unfamiliar energy there.
“It’s quite…safe,” I murmured. I heard a final flurry of hoof beats somewhere out in the night.
“Really? Come on. Let’s get back to the festival. I think I will have something to eat. I don’t know why, but I’m starving.”
I was about to lift her in my arms, but she demurred.
“What on earth are you doing?” she giggled. “I’m perfectly capable of walking back. I think someone’s had too much mead, or whatever you were drinking earlier.”
▲
MY LONGING TO SEE TAMAR, by Jessica Amanda Salmonson
I am only rarely certain where my dreams end and realities begin. I had such a weird dream while napping on the davenport. Wouldn’t’ve remembered it if the dogs hadn’t decided I had to wake up and take them outside. I was walking naked through a dark labyrinth carrying all my clothes in my arms. I could hear traffic outside, distantly. I had to find a spot to sit down and put my clothes on. I remembered my old fuck-buddy Tamar ran a bathhouse called My Lady of Fatima somewhere in this place.
Through an archway into light, and there I was, walking barefoot, still holding onto my clothes. I strolled between two rows of little squat toilets with high mounted tanks on the walls. About me was a steam cloud populated by young and old women who appeared and disappeared in and out of the whiteness, either naked or partially wrapped in towels, semblances of ghosts, or faded memories of friends once well known.
I skirted the showers and came to a staired pit, hot rocks hissing at the bottom. These were women svelte or lumpy, wet in the heat, beautiful, strange, lounging and laughing along the moist marble stairs. The sound of them was distant, though I stood near. I found a bench against a wall to be alone, and sat thereon to put on my clothes.
I remembered Tamar lived upstairs, which had a difficult entryway from way back of this vaulted, multi-tunneled place. I walked far back until I reached a little bathhouse deli run by a head-shaven dyke named Shorty because she was a short order cook, but was also a short round girl with red stubble on her pate. She remembered me from years ago and waved hi as I was approaching. She had clumsy tattoos and I thought, “If you die before your parents, they’ll burn those off and bury you in a wig.” A sai
d, “Tamar here?” and she pointed to the steps further back.
The upward stairway was absurdly narrow, hardly wide enough to place a foot; it was a balancing act to use it. It went halfway up and ended midair, where it attached to a big round pipe wrapped in the curly wool hide of a skinned sheep. I spraddled the pipe, scooted across to where I had to stand without losing my balance, and climbed onto a very rickety deck. From there I leapt upward and clung to a window sill. Whew. Made it.
I was wondering how Tamar moved all her stuff in the huge rafters apartment carrying everything along that difficult entrance. She’d lived there for years so I guess she cluttered the place up a little at a time. There were gauzy translucent silken drapes hanging from an uneven ceiling, forming rooms in different cloudy pastels, like tinted mist. The floor was soft with Arabian carpets, the mystic whorls threatening to devour, or leap out of the rugs as fire. Through the hung layers of silk I saw Tamar like a shadow of shifting colors, slinking deeper into her cavern loft. She was gone before I could call out.
I wanted to see her so badly it ached. But in such dreams, the most wanted destination is always further on.
I saw a big dumbwaiter, it’s wide short door open in the wall, and I thought, ah, that’s how she moved her stuff up here. I could’ve crowded myself inside that; it would’ve been easier. I heard a rustling sound, like a kitten’s whispering claws on velvet, and looked about hastily for Tamar. I only vaguely recalled she’d died so many years ago. And yet I knew I could see her again, here, now, if I could just find my way through the mazy hazy curtains and drifts of spice-redolent incense.
I began a mental catalog of Tamar’s unusual knickknackery and furnishings. There were the camel saddle chairs, huge lounging pillows made from medieval tapestries, a small bookshelf with slim books in leather bindings so old they were going to red dust. A skin-velum lampshade with arabesque designs in henna dye was stretched tight over a snail-shaped wire frame, a small-wattage bulb within, like the snail’s luminous heart. There stood a grey skeleton that looked to be carved out of hardwood; it might be real though it was only about four feet tall; and I suddenly recalled Tamar called her Princess Mai Cheng Fa, the Patroness of Bamboo Rats.
There were several large masks on the wall covered in raven feathers, with beaks and eyes made of garnet or emerald, aquamarine or amethysts, glowing like christmas tree LED lights and observing me by turns with pity and malevolence.
The skeleton of an enormous but only half-built canopy bed loomed out of the pastel shadows, partially hung with tattered lace and tassels, an equally tattered bedspread unmade and askew. There was so much more, but my mental catalog was interrupted by Tamar’s dogs, who belatedly began to announce that I was present. Slowly they turned into my dogs and I opened my eyes, surprised to realize I was home, upon my davenport.
Logy, my head still in clouds of incense, I stood and exclaimed “Porch!” and three happy dogs raced me to the back door. They ran and I walked down the outside staircase, everyone but me yapping. I walked to the wooden garden chair and sat down as Tsuki, Yukiko, Daigoro, and the ghost of little Okuni explored and pissed. I sat thinking, my god, I really do remember that place.
▲
SCARLET SUCCUBUS SHRINE, by Frederick J. Mayer
Seek, that which sleep seeks to hide;
beautifully sculpted skull grotto within blackness
’cept for pin prick of living scar tissue there
Cadavere head houses floor for scarlet succubus
who dances to be courted, consummated
in physical devotion of body & soul fair
All ways of the flesh and freshly keen mind
whose true heart shrine adumbrating an essence pumps cardiac mine
the real self offers…payment for cardinal light
Religiously faithful to burgundy wine giving orichalch delirium eye-les titins de nid aux serpents
lips’ dulcet siren lascivious labial laceration lead to delight
Legs, limbs skin and bone smooth efflorescent hide ridges
chapel fane of curvatious carnivorous desires in growth spread
dreams coal darkness finally overcome in Nature’s baroque ways
Eyes, sockets, flexible flanks contract west of virgin
rubian sunset brought in close of exquisite even shades
of holy holes, whole inside as without real & brain les frisson cosmique displays
The scarlet royal hue, oh, scarlet bower of life birth
death bled upon white velveteen bowels bed;
cascading blessed oblivion oblation L’Horloge fare.
▲ (Inspired by Clark Ashton Smith)
GUST OF WIND MADE BY SWINGING A BLADE, by Molly N. Moss
Again, Kinnori strained against the ropes binding him, his muscles already throbbing from exertion. Once again, the cords sliced his flesh and yielded not at all.
It was dark in the hold of the guard-ship Murakumo, and a gathering chill numbed his fingers. Rolling waves conspired with exhaustion to make Kinnori’s eyelids grow heavy. He shook himself and growled, “Escape or die, Shoji Kinnori.”
Visualizing himself forced to kneel, an assistant waiting to behead him if he refused the Ryuzoji daimyo’s command to commit seppuku, Kinnori breathed deeply and tried again. With all his might, he struggled to pull his hands free. As the cords gouged his wrists, a warm trickle of blood slid down his left hand.
Kinnori shut his eyes, fighting the urge to weep. Against his will he remembered the weeping of the women whose lives he’d failed to save that afternoon… How long ago? A few hours? A day?
Rather than weep, he snarled curses. He cursed the early winter freeze the ship must be coming home to, judging by the cold. He cursed the darkness that matched the souls of the murderous samurai who bound him and tossed him into the ship’s hold. As he started to curse Narihiro and the rest of his fellow samurai, he glimpsed a light flaring up near the stairway. His words died in his throat as he watched the flame approaching.
Narihiro must be coming to mock him, again, for throwing away his own life by trying to defend worthless women from a rival clan. Or could it be one of the sailors, coming to give him food and drink? He squirmed, trying to sit up, but that only made his bladder ache with the need to pass water. Kinnori moved his lips in a silent prayer to Kannon, goddess of mercy, begging that his visitor would be a compassionate sailor coming to his aid.
He watched the flare settle into the steady glow of an oil lamp. Kinnori knew every samurai and every sailor serving on the Murakumo, but the slim fingers holding the lamp were unfamiliar.
Propping himself up on one elbow, Kinnori whispered, “Who are you?”
The lamp illuminated only a short radius, enough to show Kinnori that the stranger wore a hooded robe. In the prevailing murk, he wasn’t certain whether the garment was silver or pale gray.
From fore to aft, the sekibune’s hold was filled with baskets of valuables taken in raids of coastal Chinese villages. Yet the hooded person moved with swift and confident steps, picking a safe path through the loot without either slowing pace or shining the lamp around.
“I am nobody,” the stranger murmured, kneeling by Kinnori’s side.
Kinnori’s heart stopped as the unknown person pulled a knife from inside his robe. Could the stranger be an assassin sent by Narihiro to slit Kinnori’s throat? When I prayed for mercy, O Kannon, a quick death isn’t what I had in mind.
The stranger placed the lamp near Kinnori’s bound wrists. With a single slash he cut the rope. Kinnori realized he was being rescued, and his heart finally remembered to beat.
He studied his liberator, who moved the lamp near Kinnori’s feet and cut the rope that tied his ankles together. His rescuer was short and trim, and the robe appeared to be a kind commonly worn by Buddhist monks. I suppose he’s probably a young runaway from a monastery.
“You are saving my life. That makes you someone, at least to me,” Kinnori murmured. He massaged blood and warmth back into his wrists and ankles, wincing at the agony as sensation returned.
“Call me Tachikaze, then.”
Tachikaze—the name meant gust of wind made by swinging a blade. Kinnori turned to study his liberator’s face, but Tachikaze’s features were lost in the darkness of his hooded robe. What a powerful name for a Buddhist novice! Has he studied karate with the monks? Maybe I’ve been set free by a gifted knife-fighter.
Before his rescuer put the knife away, however, Kinnori observed enough to admire it. Long and supple-bladed, on its black leather handle was embroidered a white tiger stalking through a shower of cherry blossoms. Some trick of the lamp’s light made the blade appear, for half a breath, to glow with a peculiar blue flame.
Kinnori tried to stand, but the removal of the ropes caused his hands and feet to feel as if hundreds of knife-tips pricked them. Observing his distress, Tachikaze slipped an arm under Kinnori’s shoulders and helped him onto his feet. The boy’s touch was cold as ice.
How long has Tachikaze been hiding in the hold, a witness to my struggles to get free?
Tachikaze returned to the stairway, weaving through the clutter with that odd grace of his. I suppose it isn’t important how long the boy listened to me fighting my bonds and did nothing. I prayed for help, and he gave it to me. Thank you, gentle goddess Kannon. Kinnori leaned on the hull to brace himself against the rolling of the ship, and his bladder reminded him of its needs.
As Kinnori relieved himself, Tachikaze returned. The youth carried the oil lamp in one hand and a bundle in the other. “I have something for you,” Tachikaze whispered, and he held out the parcel to Kinnori.
