by Gilman
Izzy had lived in this room for seven years, since she earned a space of her own. There was a window that looked out over the front porch, directly into the top floor of the mercantile, a narrow bed that squeaked when she turned at night, and a chestnut dresser and a washbasin that had come all the way from the East, its bowl painted with green vines and tiny yellow flowers, and a wood-framed mirror set against the wall. She stood in front of the mirror now, the last tracings of sunlight gone, the room lit by the oil lamp that cast more shadows than light.
Sundown had come and gone. She was free.
Izzy took a deep breath, watching the dim shape in the mirror do the same. The stranger⏤Matthew Jordan⏤had come and seen something in her. Handsome. Strong.
“A young girl with wits and looks could do well, beyond Flood.”
Mister Jordan had thought she was unhappy here, that she wanted something more.
Izzy untangled that thread from the knot in her head. She did want more: more than this room, more than serving drinks or servicing men.
Because you trained me well.
The boss had taken her in for four years, then indentured her for seven more, the work of her hands and back his at command. Clothed her, fed her, trained her…
“What do you see?”
He had trained her to think, to look. To see.
“Your hand, your call. All I can do is wait and see how they’re played.”
Bargaining with the devil is tricky, but he doesn’t cheat. The devil takes nothing you’re not willing to give.
If you’re willing to give it all, that’s not the trouble. Knowing what you want is the trick. You learned that, growing up in Flood.
You only ever get one shot.
When she opened her door again, the belowstairs was empty of customers, just the men stacking chairs, the working girls nowhere to be seen. Po cleaned the bar, polishing the brass, while Meggie racked the glassware, the clank and thud the same sound Izzy’s heard every night for as long as she could remember.
Her parents had taken money, handing her over to the devil they knew rather than the red-skinned one they didn’t. They’d abandoned her, maybe with tears and maybe not and it didn’t matter, because she was Izzy now.
No. Isabel. Fourteen, and free.
A door opened and shut behind her, the wood creaking the way it always did, and feet shuffled past her, down the stairs. When they were open, everyone wore hard-soled shoes that tap-taped merrily on the wood. After hours, though, weary feet were cased in slippers, combed-and-plaited hair came down over shoulders, and tired faces smiled only when they wanted to.
Matt Jacobs would ride out tomorrow morning. She could be there. He’d mentor her, teach her how to survive⏤and maybe she could teach him something too, she who’d grown up in Flood, knew the flow of the devil’s moods, his turns and his tells. She could become … whatever she wanted.
Or she could stay.
Not to be a saloon girl, not to be a working girl. She had considered both, all the day, and rejected them. Serviceable jobs, decent jobs … but she could not imagine herself in them. Could not see herself in those roles. She didn’t like the kitchen, she wasn’t much for the stables, not being a shopkeep girl.
Riding out gave her options. But the cities, with their people, their noise and bustle … she couldn’t imagine that, either. And the Spanish Coast was not her home.
This was her home. Flood. The saloon.
The knowledge rose up the way waters did from streams underground, sweating out of rock so quietly you didn’t notice until you slipped on the slicked-down stone.
Isabel paused for a moment on the stairs, watching.
Rosie passed behind the boss, her hand touching his shoulder as she went, the same way she might pet one of the cats. He took no notice, but she knew he knows where they all are, every moment of every day. They were his, for as long as their contracts hold, and the devil never loses anything he cares to hold.
And he knows the things you don’t even tell yourself.
He just waits until you figure it out.
The thing about the devil was, he knew there wasn’t the one right answer. You were given skills, but it was up to you to figure out where they were meant to be. You had to test ‘em all, see what fit. And when you did, he was waiting.
She could do any of the things she’d thought about. Only one of ‘em was what she wanted, though. This was what she wanted, what she had been bought and trained for. To run the saloon; not now, but someday. To stand behind the boss and anticipate his game. To have power⏤⏤That’s what’s she’s meant for, what draws her. Not to explore, not to risk, but to control, to run. To help people get what they want, and have them owe her, maybe even crave her, in return.
He had known. Of course he had known.
He’d teach her, show her, set her free.
All she had to do was pay his price.
The Devil’s Hope
There were seven crows waiting in the apple tree when Old Bear awoke. They watched him, beady eyes blinking, but did not utter a single caw as he stumbled out of the cabin, rubbing at his face and stretching sleep-tight muscles into wakefulness. Their silence was worse than their commentary; he felt the prickling of their regard between his shoulder blades.
He had slept poorly and woken too early, and was in no mood for whatever mischief they had in mind.
The creek still had ice on its surface, a thin crackling underneath which fat-sided silvers turned and turned, chasing tidbits as the waters drew them past. He broke the crackling, the weight of his shadow across the water making the silver fish turn again and scatter.
He cupped sharp-cold water in leathery palms, drawing it up to soften his sleep-parched throat. It was no replacement for another week or two of sleep, but there was no help for it. The winds had woken him, swirling about the rooftop and shoving cold fingers down the chimney, and if they were disturbed then he must be as well.
Considering the creek, he knelt, knees in the mud, and shoved his head underneath the water, feeling the bright coldness sting his skin. He pulled back, gasping, water dripping from face and hair, and shuddered.
Across the creek, a wary doe watched him, her belly thick with life.
“Get on with you,” he told her, his voice scratchy with disuse. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
But even as she picked her way through the tall grass, he wondered if he’d lied.
One of the crows, more daring or more foolish than their siblings, spoke when he returned to the cabin.
“He is coming.”
Old Bear glanced up into the tree, trying to track which one had spoken. Six of the crows fluttered their wings nervously, but the seventh stared back. “He is coming. What will you do?”
Old Bear growled, running thick fingers through the hair that clung to his scalp and neck, sending a fine spray of water into the sparse grass at this feet. “What do you care?”
The crow shrugged, which was no answer. Old Bear growled again, rubbing a damp palm against the flat of his face, before stomping back into his cabin.
He had woken and now he was hungry. There were beans in the pantry and dried corn still on the cob, and the lingering coals from the fire he had banked before pulling the blanket over his ears and going to sleep. It would have to do.
The crow followed him in through the single window, the tanned leather drawn tight and latched no match for its clever beak, while its kin shifted and hopped on the branch outside.
It didn’t speak, now, but watched him, needy black eyes unblinking.
“I will do nothing,” Old Bear said finally. “Not until he comes.”
The crow tilted its head. “And then?”
Old Bear grumbled to himself, and said, “And then I will feed him crowbrother stew.”
Each morning for three days following, Old Bear stood outside his cabin and waited, patient with the knowledge that there was nothing to do but wait.
On the morning of the third day, h
e arrived, leading a rawboned mule up the path, both of them surefooted and sparse as goats. The silver shone on his lapel, proud and pure, and Old Bear snorted even as he came to the door and waited, arms crossed over his bare chest, thumbs tucked into the curve of his elbows.
The man stopped a polite distance away, his gaze taking in every detail of the cabin and trees. “Graciendo.”
“Marshal.”
The man let a flicker of a smile touch his face before becoming stern again. “You knew why I was coming.”
“Did I?” He felt honest curiosity at the idea that he had known anything, that this man might know what he knew, that he might have done anything ever to make a human come to his door, much less a human bearing the sigil of the Territory, branch and root within the endless circle. Perhaps he was still sleep-dulled, perhaps more had passed him by than he knew.
The marshal pursed his lips, eyes dark as Old Bear’s own watching him from under the brim of his hat. “Are we truly going to play the game?”
In the branches overhead the crows coughed their mockery, and Old Bear sighed. “Come inside, then.”
Marshals were a new thing for Old Bear, but there had always been people on his mountain, for as long as he could remember living there. For the most part he ignored them, and they returned the favor. Occasionally there would be a feckless cub seeking to prove his idiocy by venturing near to steal a clump of fur or a discarded shirt, and return to his fellows with proof. Depending on the season and his mood, Old Bear might allow him close, or chase him off with a roar.
“Old Bear is not tame,” the Nuhwa elders warned their cubs, to no avail⏤if anything, it made them worse. But such was the nature of cubs, and Old Bear did not take offense.
There were others who made the climb as well. Elders in ceremonial gear, bearing offerings of dried fish and bread, sweet-smelling woods and carvings in his vague likeness. They left their offerings a distance from his cabin, retreating and waiting before making their requests, respectful without fear.
He enjoyed speaking with them, slow, thoughtful conversations that often left him more to chew on that the smoked fish or dried-berry leathers. Through them, he learned what went on beyond the mountains, in the long spread of earth that ran down to the waters.
It had been not too many seasons past when Braids Feet had placed a wooden platter on a rock, and waited until he had eaten his fill before speaking for the first time of white men at the banks of the Grandmother, and the being that rose up to bar their way.
Old Bear had thought at first he had misheard, and then that Braids Feet had listened too long to the moonfish and lost his way in their waters. “Who did what?”
“Was I somehow unclear?” Braids Feet was nearly as ancient then as Old Bear, and felt no need for polite words between them. “I will speak again, more slowly. A spirit has raised itself to stand on the Grandmother Waters, claiming mastery of the lands from there to here.”
He had not misheard, and there was no madness in Braid’s Feet’s eyes that Old Bear could discern.
“A spirit.” Spirits might meddle in the lives of those around them, for sport or purpose, but they did not take responsibility. They did not claim anything, much less the earth itself. “Master of the lands⏤and those who live within them.”
Braids Feet inclined his head, metal-grey braid falling over one bare, bronzed shoulder.
“And you agreed to this?”
Braids Feet tilted his head back, grey-tufted eyebrows rising like an owl’s. “It did not ask, any more than any powers ask.”
Old Bear had to acknowledge the truth of that. Still, the arrogance, claiming the earth itself? He was not certain if what he felt was astonishment at the arrogance, or amusement. Perhaps both. But a claim of such needed power to hold it, either of winds or bone.
A touch of the bones beneath his feet returned nothing but a contented humming of sleepy winter turning slowly to growing spring; if this spirit had disturbed the earth with its claims, it was not yet apparent. Nor was there a sense of anything new within its bounds. And the winds remained silent, almost as though they too were waiting.
That was not a good omen.
“And what is it they seek to do, with this mastery?”
“For now, nothing. Shouting across the waters at men on the other side in the language of the southern horsefolk, until they left without crossing, and giving headaches to the medicine-carriers who live nearby. Their words to the People were gentler, but no less stern: if any man of white face is to cross the river, give him leave to pass, so long as he offers no insult, and gives fair trade for land he uses.”
“And this being claims the right to enforce this?”
“It does.”
“They seem to be young, yet,” Old Bear said, a curl to his lip that had little to do with humor. “They may yet regret taking such bite, when it comes time to chew.”
Braids Feet went away, and other elders came, other cubs came to count coup on Old Bear to prove their foolish bravery, and the seasons passed as they always had, Old Bear giving no more thought to the story Braids Feet had told, for what happened far away along the edge of the Grandmother Waters had little to do with him and his.
Until those who crossed Grandmother made their way father west, bypassing the fertile plains and game-heavy forests to climb into the jagged fingers of rock and pine where Old Bear made his home.
The first sounds had reached him on a crisp autumn morning, the crack and whistle bringing nothing good. He’d slammed the cabin door shut behind him, branches crunching under his heavy tread, the rumbling growl coming from his chest carrying forward through the thick-trunked trees. By the time he emerged into the new-felled clearing, his claws had emerged, pushing through fingertips and boot-leather as easily as plants pushed through leaf and loam.
He’d known what he would see, but it made the sight no less infuriating.
Voices exploded when he left the shadows of the tree line, shouting at him, around him, rising in pitch even as they raised their weapons, axe and pick and a single long-nosed musket.
He raised his growl to a roar that cut through their noise and cut them down as easily as they’d hewn the trees around them, leaving a stunned silence.
The men in front of him⏤filthy, clad in clothing that needed burning far more than the wood they had gathered, hair stringy, skin grub-pale under beards that rivaled his own⏤gaped in astonishment. Then one of them twisted as though to reach for the ax leant against a pile of rocks.
Old Bear growled again, and the man froze.
Not the People, and not the usual Spaniards, or even hunter-men down from Rupertsland tracking game, or they would have known better, with better manners. Five men in his sight, but he smelled more, the stink of urine and burnt meat, iron and alcohol. His nose wrinkled; the cubs occasionally stank of that as well, and it made them clumsy and loud.
“You need to leave,” he told them in Spanish.
They glanced at each other, then one of them lifted his chin, face shifting from terror to stubborn determination. “What are you, to tell us what to do?” His Spanish was terrible, but comprehensible.
Old Bear snapped at the air, and gave the man credit for courage as well as foolishness when he did not flinch or run.
“We … were told to dig here,” the man said, his chin no less jutted for all that he still stank of fear.
“By who?” The others took a half-step back in reaction to his growl, and his ears flicked once and he rolled his eyes and lifted his paws, pulling the claws in as they watched. “I’m not going to eat you.”
They looked to be all sinew and bone, even beyond the stink. He’d rather eat brambles and dirt.
“We made Agreement,” one of the other men said, his voice shaking. “Agreement!”
Agreement. These humans kept bleating about Agreement, as though Agreement had anything to do with him.
His gaze moved past them, to the rough camp they’d thrown down overnight, grudgingly acknow
ledging that the shelter looked well-enough built, the fire pit rock-rimmed and cleared of debris, away from overhanging branches. He could not fault them there, though his beard twitched with the need to find something to vent his ire on.
“This place is not for you,” he said in a low grumble, aware that they had offered no insult save foolishness, were no threat to anyone save themselves. “Get thee gone.”
Unlike previous intruders, these did not flee at his command, but stood their ground, if nervously.
“We have the right to be here⏤” and then the speaker paused, one of the men behind him speaking rapidly in their language, a babble of meaningless sounds.
“Oh.” The first speaker swallowed, blinked, the scent of him changing from fear and stubbornness to … Old Bear sniffed the air. Embarrassment?
“We … are you the keeper of this dirt? We have … gifts, to give. That is right, yes?”
“No gifts. No camp. No you.” His grasp on words was slipping, his face elongating again in his irritation, and he smelled sharper, fresher urine, as one of those before him lost control of his functions.
“We were told⏤” the speaker began again, his hand rising as though to push Old Bear back, and his temper, stretched too far, broke.
There was an unpleasant crunch of something in his teeth, the taste of grit in his throat, and he hoped that he hadn’t bitten anything fatal. Rolling over, Old Bear felt the sun on his face, and the prickle of needle-leaf cushioning his back. He had not made it back to the cabin, taking refuge in a deep overhang. Licking around his teeth thoughtfully, he breathed in and out, feeling the faint hum of the earth below him, the bones of the world deep under the stone, pulsing in time to the rise and fall of his heart.
He remembered, vaguely now, the snap of teeth and the swipe of claw, as he’d broken the white men’s camp, scattering stick and stone, dropping to all fours to prowl the outskirts, peeing on the marks of their presence, scattering the stones of their fire pit, until it appeared they had come and gone long ago.
