What’s the good of four heads? Because apparently, I can’t switch between them. It’s not like a bank of security cameras. And I need to see if the gorgonite’s got Pen in its other hand. Maybe there’s a dominant head, the first one, the forward-facing one. Maybe if I focus really hard, I can—
The gorgonite’s picking up speed and the burning crop smell is getting stronger again. I experiment, opening one eye in what I hope is the front head. No good, I’m just opening one eye in all the heads and again, the sensation overwhelms my brain. But I have caught the idea of a blackened field and a crowd in the distance.
“Enheph!” the gorgonite booms. “I believe I have found what we were seeking.”
It comes to a stop but keeps a tight hold of me. A thud sounds close by. I risk a peek and just about register the crumpled form of Pen lying in the charred stalks.
The ground shakes with the approach of heavy footsteps, and a clank of armour rings through the air. Then silence until something very loud bursts into laughter.
“What a sight!” it splutters. “What a sight!” Tremors run through me as the thing slaps the gorgonite on the back. “You have done well, Keith.”
For a stunned split second I feel like joining in with the laughter. Keith?! I suppose everyone had a name before all this. Still, there’s possibly no other name that says, I’m a huge fuck-off gorgonite capable of petrification less than Keith.
Then the voice seems to shout up at the sky, “Loki, my old friend, see what your mischief has caused. Thousands of years in the making too. Where are you? I want you to witness me crush this abomination, your last one. I want to see you die. Are you too much of a coward to show yourself?”
My limbs are starting to feel flu-heavy: must be dangling from the fist of a gorgonite.
I try to shake myself out, get the blood going, and the ease of movement surprises me. But when I press my hands together, straining to lose the pins and needles, there’s a loud clack.
No.
I try again and sure enough, what I hear isn’t the soft clap of hands but the hard crack of bone on bone. There are fingers, but they’re huge and when I flex them they feel like I imagine a crustacean’s armour must feel on its body. Hooves. I have hoof-hands. Oddly, it’s this of everything that’s happened so far that tears it for me. I think about Kelly and trying to hold her with hoof-hands and hurting her without meaning to, and my eyes swell with heat behind their lids. Then my brain somehow thinks it’s also a good idea to make me wonder how the hell I’ll wipe my bum and how Mum would kill me if I left the bathroom in a state and I burst into manic laughter that kills the conversation between Enheph and the rest of the group.
As I bring myself back under control, there’s a horrible silence then a thud of feet that are probably ten times the size my new “hands” will ever be. Enheph—because I’m certain that’s who it is—gives off so much heat, I start to pour with sweat as he leans in close to inspect me. My skin’s toasting, blisters bubbling up. I hear a spitting sound, then a sizzle from my left arm and a breeze where his saliva’s burned through my jacket.
“Laugh at me again, abomination,” Enheph’s voice rumbles, “I’ll do that to each of your four ugly faces. Are we clear? Open your eyes and look into those of your master. I’m going to break you, then I’m going to put bits in your mouths, halters on your heads, and a saddle on your back, so you should accustom yourself to obeying me.”
Bastard. I open my eyes more because I’m curious than anything else. What I can make out of Enheph’s face resembles a jumble of glowing lumps of steel. At the outmost tips, where the air’s cooling it, the metal shines silver. Heat drives my eyelids back down and Enheph chuckles.
“I control you, I control Loki. Maybe I’ll ride him too.” This brings a chorus of laughter from the rest of the crowd. “The gods should not have spread themselves so…thin over the years. They will be held accountable now the tide has turned.”
“How do you know?” I ask. “That I’m his last descendant. How can you?”
“Oh.” The chuckle deepens. “We are very organised. We have records.”
“Who are your ancestors then?”
“All Gorgons, Titans. Things formed by the darkness for the darkness. The oldest of the old. And a wide variety. We answer to no one but ourselves. Humanity is a god-fashioned annoyance. I left mine behind as soon as the Shift occurred.”
“What did you do? Before?”
“I spent much of my time at Her Majesty’s Pleasure. Violent tendencies. I had a disturbed upbringing.”
“Haven’t we all. Boo fucking hoo.” I can’t believe I’ve just let those words out and, clearly, neither can Enheph. That’s the Loki genes at work. I blame them for the detentions when school still existed.
The gorgonite doesn’t drop so much as hurl me to the ground, and my limbs splay around me. One of my lips split as well. Bothering to work out which one really isn’t my top priority, I’m more concerned about the grit and charcoal now clogging my nostrils and the wet in my groin which I know without checking is fresh blood.
“Get up then, abomination!” Enheph roars.
Hauling myself to my four feet, I struggle to balance on what must be full hooves—last half-decent pair of Converse fucked then—and try not to let my neck (necks?) bow under the weight of my heads. When I risk opening my eyes, I can make out the group conferring a few metres away. They’re all huge. Keith’s breath further clouds the already thick air around me.
Where’s Pen? My eyes go into overdrive as it all gets too much again. I panic, quell an urge to scream, squeeze them tight shut.
There’s a cracking sensation inside, and I recall a walnut being shelled, Mum teasing me the nut looks like a brain and me feeling sick as I fumble it out and break it in two. Then I reopen my eyes and I know Pen’s lying behind me, at Keith’s feet.
I know this.
I can see it.
The same way I can see that some dude in the group in front is grinning broadly, slapping Enheph on the shoulders. The same way I know a crow has just taken flight from a hedgerow on the west side of the field and a fox is staring at the group from the eastern side. Behind him in the distance, dark grey smoke still pours from the Hall and gardens. And I can take it all at once. All of it.
Pen is the same colour as before, but her bump is twisting like the baby’s fighting its confines. I don’t know if any of Enheph’s bunch have noticed, but the fox seems interested. It’s not staring at the group, its eyes are fixed on Pen and me. All eight of my ears flick its way. It raises a paw and licks it, checks the claws.
“Lokiiii!” Enheph’s bellow cuts through. “Where are you, you son of a bastard pretender to the heavens?”
An urge builds, deep in my gut, to charge forward and knock him and the rest of them down like so many skittles. My shoulders bunch, new muscles hardening. My fists, if I can still call them fists, tighten with a sound like shifting gears. I have to do something. Sleipnir was the finest horse in all Norse history, fucksake. And I’m just stood waiting for someone to cut my head off or disembowel me or whatever these guys are planning.
The fox is trotting. Towards us. Some animals have no sense.
Keith notices, lets out a dead-waking roar, but his glare doesn’t turn the fox into a garden ornament and still it trots, oblivious.
“Enheph!” he calls. “Look!”
Enheph rises into the air and comes crashing down inches from me. I want to stamp his head from his neck and use it as a football to take out the others. Two of my hooves paw at the blackened ground and my teeth grind unbidden. I will not foam at the mouth though. There are limits.
The fox sits, with perfect posture, tail curled around its front paws, and I can make out a scar running from its right eye to its jaw.
On the northern side of the field, the crow has settled in the hedgerow. Its eyes are on me and on the fox, I’m certain. And I’m also certain I catch one flashing ice blue through the smoke.
Enheph’s
glowing eyes narrow. The fox lifts its muzzle, sniffs the air, snorts ash.
“What are you?” Enheph growls.
Unperturbed by the rumble the monster’s voice has sent through the ground, the fox draws back its top lip, snaps at a passing moth. A pair of dusty wings twitch past its lips and down its gullet and a tiny burp pops into the air. The way things are, that moth better not have been Hope.
Give me some credit, little one.
The words echo in my heads and I have a lightbulb moment.
Onkel?
The fox yawns, nods.
I try not to frown. Where the fuck have you been?
Why… The fox’s tail twitches. …the fuck did you leave the safe place I made for you? We could have avoided all this…unpleasantness. You’re officially the last, you know. You’re all that’s left of me now. He looks me up and down. Ignominy. It hardly seems fair.
Who are these people?
Agents of Atë. Chaos to their core. Your sister is all right though. And the child. We still have a fighting chance.
Enheph advances on Loki. He doesn’t move, apart from a flick of his ears. Behind me, Pen’s stomach twists again. What the hell is in there? Saqib was a full-mort.
No.
The fox’s eyes are huge, cartoon innocent.
What did you do? I hiss at Loki.
Your sister was such a ripe fruit. And when I took Saqib’s form that night. Well… She hardly needed persuading.
My head buzzes. You’re telling me…
Desperate times, desperate measures. I need more descendants. But I fear the new one will arrive too late. All the new ones will arrive too late. Bodies. Pah.
That finishes off any restraint I had. I somehow launch myself, not at Enheph, but at Onkel, whose ears spread flat against his head before he vanishes, and my hooves find only hard-baked earth. Bastard. I’ve learned a trick though: don’t think about it and I can move, and move well.
No one can get near me because I can see everything. And if they do get near me, I kick and buck with legs that are somehow longer, that must be making me at least ten feet tall. And I clamp and tear with four sets of teeth that pull limbs and heads from the bodies of Enheph’s crew. I am a thing of terrifying fucking beauty.
By the time I’m done with them, the smoke’s cleared and the sun’s bleeding into the horizon behind the rolling hills of the Yorkshire Dales. On the ground, Pen still lies, her skin slowly turning back to its usual colour, her breathing less shallow. She won’t know about her baby till she wakes up. She won’t know about me either.
My body hasn’t changed back like it usually does. I have a feeling it never will, but I quite like this. I like the sensation of raw power in my limbs and knowing that I can take on the worst of the worst and win. Doesn’t stop me from throwing up at the sight of what I’ve done though.
A crow descends as I’m wiping the last of the bile from all my lips, and begins to peck at the remains scattered around me. As I regain control of my breathing and I’m able to focus on something other than revenge, thoughts of Mum flood back and I burst into tears, stamp at the ground. Why the hell couldn’t Onkel have protected her?
“Because it’s not his way.” A man dressed in funereal black is standing where the crow was. He holds out a hand. “Odin. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
My laugh rings hollow across the wide open space. “And where were you a few hours ago?”
He seems to flinch. “Many places. I’m sorry for your losses; there was nothing I could do. I do however, need your help. That display was impressive to say the least and I am…not what I used to be. This war is pointless, and no one can win. But we can get through it together if we stay sharp, negotiate, co-operate. Atë will consume us all otherwise.”
Pen sits up, stares around, clutches her belly. Then she looks up and sees me and screams until she realises. “Vez?”
I nod. All four of my heads.
“Shit.” She heaves herself to her feet. “Mum?” Her face crumples as she sees the answer on mine.
Onkel glides back up behind Odin.
“Fucking coward!” I yell. “Can’t even appear in your true form.”
Odin sighs. “He’s trapped this way for now, at least until the child is born. Too weak to change back.”
“What now?” Pen asks, hugging herself. “I mean…” She points at the Hall. “Where? And what child?”
Skilfully avoiding her question, Odin continues, “I have a settlement near Durham. Well hidden. I can take you there and we can plan our next move.”
Pen looks up at me. “Vez? What d’you think?”
I take in the view, the beauty of the open countryside past the bodies and the burnt earth around us and a voice deep down inside me shouts loud. It shouts that this is the place for me. Grass as far as the eye can see, when it grows back. Space to move and yell and kick at the sky. And more importantly, it whispers impishly, it’ll really piss off those higher up.
See? Family. It’s in your bones; you can’t escape it.
“I think,” I tell Odin, “we’ll take our chances here for now. I don’t fancy being anyone’s trusty steed and I don’t think you can make me. But I can take care of my sister, if she wants me to.”
Pen nods, slowly.
Scowling, Odin turns to Loki, “See what you’ve wrought?” He faces us again. “I cannot promise any help if you stay here.”
“I think we’ll do just fine without, thanks. And if we don’t, well, that’s meant to be, isn’t it?”
Odin’s face is a picture of silent outrage, but he recovers himself, manages a laugh. “Good luck, child. I won’t return, but I can guarantee this idiot will.” And he and Loki head for the northern edge of the field.
“Gods, you’re the idiot,” Pen groans at me. “There’s no medical equipment, hardly any food. It’s all right for you with your bloody hay and oats.” She shivers despite her flippancy.
“Women have given birth without medical equipment for thousands of years,” I say, restraining my own urge to shake with the cold left in me now the adrenaline’s gone. The clean-up’s going to be horrendous. All those people. Everything. “Stop being such a fucking wuss.”
She studies the ground. “We should see if we can find Mum. If they didn’t… We should try and find her. And then we should get ready. For the baby and…everything.”
I paw the churned earth with my hooves, one after another, leaving neat grooves. “Let’s get started.”
***
Approximately 70% of Tamsin Showbrook is composed of strong tea and coffee. If you want to see her cry, tell her the kettle’s broken. (Don’t worry though, she’ll pull herself together and heat water in a pan on the stove.) She isn’t lucky enough—yet, at least—to write for a living, but keeps producing flash fiction, short stories and novels because she loves doing so. A qualified English teacher, she currently works as a private tutor. She has two young children and lives in Manchester UK. If you’d like to get in touch, you can at: [email protected].
Neither Snow, nor Rain, nor Heat-Ray
M.L.D. Curelas
London, England, 1900
Five days after the Martian landing
No one had been alarmed when the first Martian vessels landed, pocking the ground like open sores. They’d only been mildly concerned when the cone-shaped ships vomited forth the spindly, tripod machines. It wasn’t until the trains stopped running that panic had set in. Then the tripods had come with their Black Smoke and heat-rays.
Emma swiped the oiled cloth over the bridle again, checking carefully for any cracks in the leather. She would maintain her equipment, as a conscientious and accomplished horse-woman, despite her lackluster feelings about her assignment. Emma had heard that scientists were working around the clock, designing weapons to combat the Martians and their damnable tripods. In the meantime, the fragmented government and military were organizing an evacuation out of Chelmsford. Most of London had fled the city, Emma’s family included
, but despite her family’s wealth and standing, Emma hadn’t been allowed to leave. She’d been—conscripted, she supposed.
A rustle of hay and a velvet nose pressed against her neck announced the arrival of the reason for her conscription. Emma’s death grip on the bridle relaxed, and she reached up to stroke the cheek of Beezus, her mare.
The Martians had disrupted communications. Nothing worked, not the telegraph machines nor the new telephones. Messengers were needed. Messengers on horseback, because human runners were too slow and easily killed by the Martians and their Black Smoke. But horses were scarce so when the general had sighted Beezus, a fine hunter, with a skilled rider—her—they’d been pressed into service on the spot, no matter that she was a girl, a civilian, and a daughter of good family.
And now she and Beezus would be part of the messenger team sent out to the docks—integral to the coordination of the Navy escort for the evacuee ships, or so she’d been told. Emma scowled. Her revolver would’ve been of better use helping her family travel to Chelmsford than giving messages to a boat.
The mare snorted against her neck and started mouthing her hair. Emma laughed. “Enough of that.” She pushed the horse, and Beezus obligingly pulled her head back into her stall.
Emma rubbed the mare’s nose. “Can’t fool you, can I? Yes, we’re going out.” When Beezus nodded her head, Emma wagged her finger. “Business. Not a pleasure ride.”
Beezus huffed.
After checking the mare’s water and hay, Emma resumed her equipment check. It was the mare’s nervous whinny that halted her. She caught sight of Beezus’ wide, rolling eyes and cast a furious glare at the stable door.
“Stay out there!” she yelled. Scowling, she set down the saddle and shut the top half of Beezus’ stall door. Maybe that would block the pungent scent of that Moreauvian fiend enough for Beezus to calm down.
Emma opened the stable door, grabbed the arm of the man standing there, and tugged him around the corner of the building toward a garden shed—it wasn’t safe for anyone to linger long outside, in case of Martian patrols.
The soldiers had watered down the grounds, washing away most of the deadly Black Smoke, but Emma could see traces of the black grit in the flower beds. She stayed clear of those areas, just in case.
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