by Faith Hunter
Sarah shouldered her way through the crowd and caught him in a hug. He ran his hand through her hair, thinking it was the softest, sweetest thing in the world. She kissed him and the world faded away into a pleasant silence.
~*~
Wyatt slept the rest of the day and all through the next. When he finally woke up, he didn’t hurt anywhere. Every time he moved, he expected blinding pain, but it never came.
Doc Harper looked him over and pronounced him fit as a fiddle, but Sarah wouldn’t let her husband wander any further than the porch for another day. During that time, he’d asked Moli about nanobots. Moli said something about tiny machines inside of him that fixed him up from the inside. At Wyatt’s horrified look, Moli laughed and told him that, now that he was well, they’d probably work out of his system in a day or so.
That night, Moli moved the ship.
Wyatt watched, wincing as the surrounding buildings took more damage, yet completely awestruck as the ship drifted to the edge of town and landed gently as a thistle seed.
For the next week, Sarah didn’t let Wyatt out of her sight. He officially deputized Jesse and organized repair crews. The entire town came together and, slowly, Haven began to heal.
Moli did the work of four people. He worked alongside the townsfolk during the day and drank with them at the Creaky Wheel at night. As the days flowed into weeks, the folk of Haven gradually adopted him. One month after he came to Haven, Moli announced that he was leaving.
The entire town was caught off guard except for Wyatt. The night before, he’d woken up to find Moli standing outside, staring up at the night sky, and knew the time was coming.
The next morning, all of the folk of Haven stood around the base of the ship. Moli and Wyatt shook hands, and embraced.
“You take care of yourself,” Wyatt said.
“You as well.” He turned to Sarah. “Both of you.”
Sarah ran up and hugged him tightly, eyes wet. “You come back any time you want and you’ll be welcome, hear?”
Moli smiled sadly. “I would love that.” He blinked quickly. “For your sake, I will make sure that this planet remains unnoticed for as long as possible.” He looked at Wyatt, then past him at the gathered townsfolk. “I will always keep you in my memories, friends. Thank you. For everything.”
Sarah hugged him one last time, then stood next to Wyatt. Moli turned and stepped on the ramp and was about to enter the ship when Wyatt whistled.
He turned and Wyatt tossed something small and round to him. It flashed in the morning sun. He flipped it over to examine the face. “Deputy Sheriff, Haven” was spelled out around the edge of the tin star.
“Now it’s official,” Wyatt said.
Moli nodded once, then turned and went into the ship, raising the ramp behind him.
Wyatt and Sarah backed away. Softly at first, then with rising intensity, the ship’s engines woke. Dust blew, forcing Wyatt to shield his eyes as the engines lit up, lifting the ship into the air.
It spun once, and rose into the sky, looking like a shooting star rising up into the heavens.
Eighteen Sixty
Faith Hunter
A spin-off short-short story from the world of Jane Yellowrock
Author’s Note: This short story takes place in 1860.
~*~
The yunega with the hairy face was feeding dry Palo Verde sticks to the fire. The snap and spit of fresh wood was lost to the distance, but the smoke rose and carried on the scant breeze, smelling hot and tangy to Ayatas’ cat-nose. The cowboys he had been following had stopped early for the night, making camp at a watering hole to rest the horses and let the cattle drink and graze. The watering hole and the small crick that carried the spring water into the desert were muddy now with the deep prints of cattle and filthy with cow and horse droppings, and man piss. Ama—the water—was no longer drinkable.
Yunega always ruined ama. It was part of what they were, like a wolf howled and bison grazed, white man ruined water. Always. Lisi, his grandmother, told him, “Never live downstream of a yunega. You will drink their shit.” And the old woman had laughed. He wondered if Lisi still laughed today. He hadn’t seen her since the dreams sent him into the sunset, to find the wildfire wind he saw in his visions.
His stomach cramped with hunger, and he pressed down on it with his mind. His people were accustomed to hunger. They did not allow it rule them, no matter how strong it became. He pressed his paws into the stone ledge and his claws came out, white and pointed and sharper than the claws of the panther that his father had most often shifted into. Jaguar claws were better for what he had planned this night. Jaguar speed and strength, jaguar jaws and killing teeth. Jaguar scent that the horses and cattle would recognize and fear. Jaguar that was stronger in every way than the puma of his father’s clan. That panther that had failed his father at the last and allowed him to die.
Down below, the small fire had caught, the flames a tight blaze in a ring of rocks. The white men were making biscuits in a tin pan, and heating beans that smelled sour. White men ate bad food and were often sick. It was beyond his understanding how a people who were so stupid had lived so long and conquered his own people, the Tsalagi, the Cherokee. Lisi said it was because his own people had been unwise and let them share the land. If his ancestors had simply killed them all, their lives would have been much better today, and they would still have their tribal lands in the green mountains.
The black cowboys, gvnagei, took care of the horses and piled the saddles around the fire. They put the horses’ legs into twisted rope hobbles, so that they could graze without getting away. This would make his job much easier. He chuffed with pleasure, the sound too soft to carry. His scent was downwind of them, and the grazing prey did not know they were stalked.
The day darkened and the cattle lowed, the sound plaintive and lonely. The sunset was a red smear on the western sky. The scarlet light was hard to see in his cat-form—it was much easier to see greens and blues and the silver of gray—but he knew it was there. The western sky was always bloody here in the barren hills of the place yunega called Arizona.
He had been following the cowboys and their cattle for seven days now, and they were far enough into the desert to be at a good place for his ambush. They set a watch, a gvnagei on a hillock, but he was young and never looked into the hills around him. This was stupid, as Apache were known to raid here. Apache and Ayatas.
The men below him laughed and talked, the strange sounds carried on the nearly still air. Black men and white men, in two small groups, working the cattle but not working them together. Divided by tribe and skin color and yunega false superiority. Lisi had said the white man would eventually stumble and fall on his pride, but Ayatas had not seen signs of that, at all. He had believed her when he was a child, but lisi had gotten foolish in her old age.
Back then, when he was a boy, living with her, he had been called Nvdayeli Tlivdatsi, or, as the white man would say, Nantahala Panther, but the Nantahala River was a thing of memory, lost to his people since the yunega sent them from their tribal lands in to the territories. Panther had been his clan name and his father’s beast. But the panthers had been hunted by the yunega until they were no more, in the mountains of their first home, and Tsalagi had been driven away, in broken treaty, by lie-speakers of the yunega government. His childhood names were words of sadness and grief, and he had changed them after his spirit walk. He now called himself Ayatas Nvgitsvle or Fire Wind, for the raging fires he saw in his dreams. He had left lisi’s house and searched for the winds for years, but still had not found them.
Instead, he had been chased and shot at by yunega and by many of the tribes he had come across. The Apaches were the worst, and the best. They were fierce and they might stop the white men. If they killed him and yet destroyed the white man, he could die happy.
But on his search, he had found a dead jaguar, shot by a yunega, beheaded and skinned, for sale to fur traders. The carcass had been three days old and stinking. But Ayatas had def
leshed the feet bones and boiled them clean, and added the toe bones to his bone necklace. Now he could become jaguar any time he wanted, anytime he could bear the pain and hunger of shifting and walking in the skin of the beast.
Along the tops of the hills, the wind picked up, the tingle of magic brushing along his spotted pelt. He chuffed, his whiskers moving as he scented the magic in the air, his ear tabs flitting. The woman was right on time. That was another thing he had found, the white woman with hair the color of the sunset. She called herself Everhart, which he had translated into Forever Heart, or Igohidv Adonvdo. Or perhaps she had meant Forever Deer, which would be Igohidv Awi, but sounded stupid. Deer were prey. The woman was not. The woman had magic, though different from his, and different from the magic of the shaman of his clan. She called herself a witch. She did things that she called workings. And she was his. His lisi would have wanted him to find a girl of the Tsalagi, but he had Igohidv, his Forever woman. This was much better.
As the magics grew, the wind picked up and whirled, making the leaves of the tree whisper, making the white man’s fire dance. On the hillside, the gvnagei lookout stood up and stared out over the open space. His eyes tracked the wind, moving back and forth, as if he too felt the magic. But Ayatas knew that humans could not feel the magic of his Forever woman, and that no men of her tribe had magic. The gvnagei shielded his eyes from the last of the dying sunlight and focused in on the ledge where Ayatas lay. But perhaps he was wrong. This man might have different, dangerous magic.
The wind shifted and the smoke whirled and swept into the cowboy’s eyes. Sparks flew and swirled among the leaves in the tree. It was drought season and any small sparks were a danger. He saw the tree catch fire; even from so far away, he could hear the whoosh as it caught and blazed. The men screamed and began to pick up camp, moving away. Ayatas chuffed with laughter. The smoke swirled again and careened among the horses, carrying sparks that bit and stung. They were too small to do real harm, but the pinprick fires hurt like a cowboy’s spiked rowels and the horses threw up their heads and snorted, lashing their tails. One whinnied, its eyes rolling white. The others picked up its fear. One began to buck and lost its footing in the twisted ropes. It fell and screamed.
The wind whirled faster, up along the ledge where Ayatas lay, picking up his scent before whirling down into the gulch. The smell of jaguar and fire reached the cattle and the mindless beasts stomped and lowered their head, rolled their eyes, seeking out the dangers.
The gvnagei lookout pulled his gun, a six-shooter, and stared right at Ayatas’ ledge. But the man was too far away for a reasonable shot. He would have done better to have a rifle like the one that Ayatas had taken from the dead body of an Apache who had challenged him to combat.
Ayatas pushed up to a sitting position, certain that he was now hidden in the shadows of the falling sunset. Below him, in the growing darkness, the white men were fighting to keep the horses calm. The cattle stomped. A mother was nudged away from her calf and she bellowed a warning. She raced up a short rise and lowered her head. With one horn, she gored a steer in the back. Two other steers jumped and hopped on four feet, bouncing in fear at the confrontation. Dust rose and added to the shadows. He growled, the sound coming from deep in his chest.
The cattle started bucking, the delicious scent of their fear growing fast.
They split, one group galloping into the sunset. The other beginning a constricted, spiraling race that grew tighter and tighter as the panicking cattle followed the circling female, frantically searching for her calf. Ayatas raised his head and called, the vibration sending the cattle into a frenzy, stomping hooves and goring horns. The smell of blood and panic rose on the woman’s magic wind. Ayatas licked his jaws in hunger.
He called again and raced down the cliff, his spots hiding his movement. A gunshot sounded. Men screamed. Horses screamed. On the wind, Ayatas heard his woman’s laughter.
He leaped down twenty feet, as yunega would calculate it, and landed with his front paws together, pushing off with his back paws as they touched down. He leaped on a young steer, his weight driving it to its knees. He caught its windpipe between his fangs and clamped down. Instantly the steer’s back legs buckled and it fell. Ayatas dragged him into the small cave he had prepared before the white men arrived. Concealed behind brush, it had remained hidden. The steer struggled feebly and tried to get up. Ayatas held tight, and the steer flopped over. He held the killing bite for longer, to make certain that his dinner was dead. Then he ripped out its throat and gulped down its blood, his hunger, carefully held in check, instantly freed. He gorged on the soft tissue and blood, eating until the pain he had been fighting dissipated. He needed to eat more, much more, but his woman’s magic called to him and he raced out of the small depression in the rock.
In the gathering dark and confusion, he saw horses break their hobbles and race into the night. A larger group raced after the cattle. The white men would follow the larger group first. Ayatas followed the two horses and though his cat-brain did not understand how to do it, the man part of him herded the horses toward his woman.
When the moon was full overhead, throwing black and white shadows, he chased the horses into the small arroyo where they had camped. His woman caught them with her song. She gentled them, as she had him. And she led them all to water.
Later, he followed his own trail back to the small cavern and pulled his kill out of the bushes and deeper into the desert. He ate. In the morning, he would carry the carcass back to the woman and shift back to human. Together, they would butcher the rest of the meat and then they would ride on, looking for the wildfire winds of his dreams.
About the Authors
Frances Rowat lives with her husband, their dog, and a not-quite-startling number of cats. She spends most of her time at a keyboard, and is fond of earrings, jigsaws, and post-apocalyptic fiction. Her short stories have been published in The Sockdolager and Betwixt Magazine, and one has been accepted to appear in On Spec.
She would like to thank her writing group for Sundays, her extremely patient family for support, and coffee for simply being.
Wendy N. Wagner is the author of Skinwalkers, a Pathfinder Tales novel inspired by Viking lore. She’s published more than thirty short stories in anthologies like Cthulhu Fhtagn!, Armored, and The Way of the Wizard, and magazines like Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Farrago’s Wainscot. She serves as the Managing/Associate Editor of Lightspeed and Nightmare magazines. She is also the non-fiction editor of Women Destroy Science Fiction!, which was named one of NPR’s Best Books of 2014, and the guest editor of Queers Destroy Horror! She lives in Oregon with her very understanding family. Keep up with her at winniewoohoo.com.
Gail Z. Martin is the author of the upcoming novel Vendetta: A Deadly Curiosities Novel in her urban fantasy series set in Charleston, SC (Dec. 2015, Solaris Books) as well as the epic fantasy novel Shadow and Flame (March, 2016 Orbit Books) which is the fourth and final book in the Ascendant Kingdoms Saga. The Shadowed Path, an anthology of Jonmarc Vahanian short stories set in the world of The Summoner, debuts from Solaris Books in June, 2016.
Other books including Iron & Blood: The Jake Desmet Adventures a new Steampunk series (Solaris Books) co-authored with Larry N. Martin as well as Ice Forged, Reign of Ash and War of Shadows in The Ascendant Kingdoms Saga, The Chronicles of The Necromancer series (The Summoner, The Blood King, Dark Haven, Dark Lady’s Chosen) from Solaris Books and The Fallen Kings Cycle (The Sworn, The Dread) from Orbit Books and the urban fantasy novel Deadly Curiosities from Solaris Books.
Gail writes four series of ebook short stories: The Jonmarc Vahanian Adventures, The Deadly Curiosities Adventures, The King’s Convicts series, and together with Larry N. Martin, The Storm and Fury Adventures. Her work has appeared in over 20 US/UK anthologies. Newest anthologies include: The Big Bad 2, Athena’s Daughters, Realms of Imagination, Heroes, With Great Power, and (co-authored with Larry N. Martin) Space, Contact Light, The Weird Wild West, The Side of Good/T
he Side of Evil, Alien Artifacts, Clockwork Universe: Steampunk vs. Aliens.
Larry N. Martin is the co-author of the new Steampunk series Iron & Blood: The Jake Desmet Adventures and a series of short stories: The Storm & Fury Adventures set in the Jake Desmet universe. These short stories also appear in the anthologies Clockwork Universe: Steampunk vs. Aliens, The Weird Wild West, The Side of Good/The Side of Evil and Alien Artifacts, with more to come. Larry and Gail also have science fiction short stories in the Space and Contact Light anthologies and a new novella, Grave Voices.
Born in northern Indiana just months after the original Star Wars, Bryan C.P. Steele grew up with a powerful imagination—something that has since fueled nearly two million published words, countless plotlines, game designs and more. He grew up with his nose in comics and roleplaying books, often turning the pages with an action figure or little lead miniature. Never reined by the banality of the world around us, Bryan defined himself through creativity.
Working on award-winning projects with a number of different publishers over the years, he has had input on several fan favorite games such as the Iron Kingdoms, Traveller, Shadowrun and RuneQuest. Bryan has also been fortunate enough to work with such fantastic settings as Conan, Babylon 5, Starship Troopers and Judge Dredd over the years. His work was even featured as a bonus in Lauren Beukes’ amazing Zoo City (English-speaking release).
Bryan is the proud father to his young son Conor and soon-to-be stepdaughter Nori, who will soon be playing some of daddy’s games and reading daddy’s stories. With his beautiful partner in crime, Natalie, at his side, Bryan wants to make the world a more enjoyable place one page turned at a time.
