Terribly Twisted Tales

by RABE, JEAN

  “Might be a specific human response to the genetically altered beans,” Jack said. “I need to get in touch with my coauthor. Dr. Stahl!” He had forgotten about her. “She’s still down there. I have to—”

  “Dr. Langmuir? We were afraid we’d lost you.” Two uniformed security guards and an EMT entered the barn. “You need to be checked out. Then the director wants a report.”

  “I need to contact Dr. Stahl,” he said, taking out his cell phone. The EMT took him by the arm and led him away.

  “You’ll be just fine.” The EMT glanced back at Mary Ellen and then guided Jack away, still muttering to himself.

  “Well,” Mary Ellen said, slapping one end of the rope against her palm. “It’s been some kind of day, hasn’t it, Sarah? Come on. Let me get you into your stall. It’s feeding time. It’ll take me a few minutes to get it all mixed up.”

  Sarah watched her human leave, then nuzzled straw in her stall and found the stick she had hidden. Mobile lips moved it around until she got it between her teeth, then she pushed more straw away with her nose to reveal a PDA. Sarah began pressing the keys. She had to let Jack know she was fine, was glad that he had survived and taken care of the problems in the lab she had worried about so and that she had an incredible new idea for haplotype and single-nucleotide polymorphism analysis by resequencing all 9459 polymerase chain reaction primer sets in each of six diverse soybean genotypes.

  The ideas flowed like a waterfall. If only she could text message faster.

  WHAT’S IN A NAME?

  Kathleen Watness

  Kathleen Watness was born in New York City. After getting a master’s degree, she spent most of a ten-year stint in the Navy stationed at government research labs in sunny California. Naturally, since her degree was in marine biology, she ended up settling up in the Midwest after her discharge. She lives there to this day and shares a house built about 1920 with a husband, three kids, and a small white ball of fluff that during the winter is known as Polar Kitty.

  There is power in names. Sound the syllables properly and you gain, for a time at least, dominion over the name’s owner.

  Or does the name own the person? I can’t remember, trapped in stone as I now am. There is much I have forgotten. But not how I came to be in this dank cell deep in the lost places of the earth. Or who betrayed me.

  My brother. I would spit on his name if I had lips. Perhaps his betrayal was inevitable. I am a fae of earth and water, antagonist to his air and fire. Perhaps that was all the reason he needed, to betray me. Whatever the reason, fraternal treachery has locked my essence into these moss-streaked granite walls.

  I need no light, either, but a torch flickers just outside my doorway, a feeble reminder of the bright sun I once enjoyed.

  The air shimmered, and my brother, handsome in the way of mortals, slender and supple as a birch, stepped out. He was elegant in a red silk tunic and black leather pants. His polished black boots bore silver buckles.

  “It is midsummer festival above,” he said, and then took a sip from the bright green mug in his left hand. “The beer is particularly good this year.”

  I said nothing. He cocked his head and studied the spiral patterns of the moss on the stone that held me. “I see you’ve been busy.”

  I shrugged, and the earth grumbled. He laughed and took a longer pull on his beer.

  “Hmm, not in the mood for talking, dear brother?”

  What is there to say that hasn’t already been said?

  He sighed and drained his mug. I felt the flicker of his magic, and the mug disappeared. I imagined my hands around his throat, choking the life from the flesh he currently wore. He glided closer to the wall. His face was smug with triumph.

  “Perhaps I’ll send a mouse or two to keep you company,” he said softly. “Yes, a pair of mice, I think. And straw for their bedding.” He laughed and faded back to the world above.

  Straw. It was straw that had landed me here. Straw and a mortal’s greed. Turning such a common substance into gold is one of the simplest of earth magics, a trifle compared to that which keeps the sun in its course or shapes the fabric of the earth into mountains. Mortals can be so shortsighted. But, then, so was I. Intent on the long-term goal, I failed to see the trap my own need led me into.

  At the time, it had seemed a simple, straightforward bargain. For the right to stand beside the king and rule a land of several million souls, all I had asked for was one child. Was that so great a price? It seemed it was, since she schemed to cheat me of it, aided by my brother. I would curse his name if I could remember it. Though knowing it won’t free me, there is a name that will. It lies tumbled among the forgotten things I knew when I walked in flesh beneath the warm sun.

  I sank deeper into the stone, until the torchlight disappeared. Inward I ventured, roaming through memory, searching for a name.

  We lounged under an apple tree, sharing a jug of good beer, a loaf of dark bread, and a salty summer sausage. While my brother watched a pretty peasant woman bringing a small basket of food to her husband, who was inspecting the trees, I watched him. At the moment, he was light and easy, and I savored that. His moods could shift like flame and wind. He glanced at me and smiled, then snagged the jug and took a long pull. It was good beer, cool and slightly bitter with a rich, yeasty smell. The breeze whispered above us, and apple blossoms, fragrant and soft as a lover’s first kiss, drifted down.

  “The king is looking for a wife,” he said as he set the jug between us.

  I cut off a thin slice of sausage. “Doesn’t he already have one?”

  “This one is for his son.”

  I shrugged and popped the sausage into my mouth. My brother has always been more interested in the affairs of nobles than I. I preferred the peasants and the artisans whose hands turned earth and stone and clay into useful beauty.

  “You should take more interest in these things,” he chided me.

  I leaned back against the apple trunk, closed my eyes, and interlaced my fingers across my belly.

  “Why?”

  My brother sighed theatrically. “Because this king is different.”

  It was my turn to sigh. With a belly full of bread and good beer, all I wanted was to doze in the cool shade. But my brother would tease and jape until I finally relented and let him have his game. I kept my eyes closed.

  “How is he different?”

  “He doesn’t seem to care much about her breeding.” I thought I heard disdain in his voice. “As long as she’s slender and beautiful, skilled at household tasks and has a good set of hips, he’ll settle for a peasant.”

  I cracked an eye. “Not typical, I’ll grant you. But he’s not the first or only king to do that.”

  “There’s no moving you, is there?”

  I chuckled at his irritation. He bounded to his feet and paced, muttering in fae. The air in front of his lips sparked and shimmered. Sighing, I rose and put my hand on his shoulder.

  “Peace, brother. Now tell me what has so caught your interest in this matter?”

  He smiled. A pity I didn’t notice at the time how much it resembled a serpent’s grin.

  “I thought we might help him find this wife.”

  I cocked my head. “Indeed? It’s always risky meddling in mortal affairs.”

  He shrugged. “How else will you find a vessel?”

  I turned from him and searched out the silver hairs in my beard. “Plenty of time yet for that, a century at least,” I muttered and crossed my arms.

  “Perhaps, but you know how difficult it is to find a suitable candidate.” He moved closer. His hand was warm on my shoulder, and his voice was sweet in my ear. “Why not secure it now? The younger they are, the easier it is to turn them.”

  I shivered as I remembered the last time I had renewed my flesh. I had waited almost too long, putting off what I needed to do.

  “Brother?”

  My hands tightened on my arms. Then I unclenched my hands and turned to face him.

  “I as
sume you have a mortal in mind?”

  He smiled and shifted form to the sparkle of sunlight on water. Follow me.

  I sank into the earth like a drop of rain and slipped between the tangled roots of trees and ferns and sprouting wheat and followed close behind him. He skimmed over the surface of the trees, flashed in a ploughman’s eyes, and then danced down to a long, winding river. I merged with the water and, laughing, raced him down the curving length of it until I tumbled down the paddles of a waterwheel and ended up on the soft mossy bank next to a grain mill. He stepped out of a swirl of dandelion fluff while I slipped out of a granite boulder embedded in the roots of an ancient oak. A brief incantation spilled from his lips, and we faded from mortal sight. Creatures of air are very adept at deception magics.

  Thirty paces from the mill stood a small stone house with sturdy, dark green shutters. I drifted to the large garden that stretched out from the left side of the house. Young cabbages and lettuce flourished in the soft, rich soil. While I admired the peas and the radishes and beans, my brother flitted to the back. He returned a heartbeat later and tugged at my shoulder.

  “Come, she’s in the back garden, doing laundry.”

  The laundry was fine woven linen set out to bleach in the sun. Ah, she was a pretty thing, all gold ringlets and rosy cheeks and eyes the dark blue of a midsummer evening. She was strong and graceful, and if I was not there for other reasons, I would have courted her myself.

  “Well, brother?”

  “She’s pretty enough for a king,” I admitted and admired the curve of her hips and the way her hair shimmered as she spread the wet linen on the soft, spring grass.

  He laughed. “Look deeper, dear brother.”

  I did. And my breath caught in my teeth. She was too old to turn, but within her she carried the certainty of my physical renewal, not just for a few centuries but for millennia.

  We fae walk the earth in borrowed flesh. It is the only way we can exist in the world of men and enjoy its pleasures. Their souls, subsumed within our own when we turn them, will never know death. Their bodies, because they contain our essence, last far longer than a mortal’s life. But, after a few centuries, like a well-worn suit of clothes, they begin to break down, and we must discard them and find others. Not an easy thing. For like a set of fine garments, what wears well on one is totally unsuited for another. Rarely, we find flesh so finely tuned to our needs, it will wear almost forever. That was the potential she carried in her womb, though only for me.

  Despite that gift, I wavered. Unlike most fae, I have always regretted the necessity of what we must do. Yet, what choice was there? None, if I wanted to escape a prison where no sun or moon shone, where only the endless dark stretched all around me, forever and ever.

  The riches she offered carried a price. There is always a price. It would do mortals well to remember that. For us, while we wear flesh, we are subject to mortal magic. And since men named the world and everything in it, including us, we are particularly vulnerable to their power over names. It is the only magic we lack.

  My brother lounged back on a cushion of air, chewing on a blade of straw as he watched the woman wringing out the linen she had just washed. He sighed and waved his hand at her.

  “She has everything the king is seeking, including a fine wit. Though he left that off the list of qualities he sent round with his messengers.” He spat out the straw and it drifted to the ground, just in front of my feet. “Mortals can be such fools,” he muttered.

  I nodded in agreement.

  “Has a messenger been here, yet?” I asked. My brother shook his head, then grinned like a fox.

  I laughed. “You diverted them.”

  “Of course. She’s not the only maiden who fits the king’s list. There are at least twenty others the messengers have found. And they’ve only been through half the kingdom.” His voice went soft. “She’s the only one who fits your needs, dear brother.”

  I grimaced. The wind shifted, and the blade of straw twisted in the grass. I plucked it up. Like me, it came from the earth. I started to release it, then stopped, a glimmer of a plan forming. I have mentioned before that my brother was far more interested in court life than I. That doesn’t mean I am ignorant of royal affairs or royal desires. I looked at my brother and smiled.

  “She is also the only one who fits the king’s needs as well.”

  He threw me a puzzled, slightly annoyed look. It wasn’t often that I chose to best him in wit.

  “Consider this,” I said and held the straw between my thumb and forefinger then drew it slowly between them. “What else does a king need or desire besides power and loyalty?” As I’ve said, turning straw into gold is a simple magic. The strand stretched between my fingers, glittering, pure as sunlight, and as thin as the smile in my brother’s eyes.

  I shook myself and rose to the surface of the stone. The torch guttered and threatened to go out. It never did. After a moment it flared, then burned bright and steady.

  My brother had embraced my plan with glee. He loved to pretend to be something he wasn’t. He’d even joined a traveling troupe of actors for a time.

  When my brother, dressed in the gold-trimmed wine dark uniform of a king’s messenger, had first ridden up on a fine gray mare, the future queen had dropped, trembling, in a deep curtsey. At the time I’d thought she was afraid. Now, I could see that the trembling had been anticipation.

  My brother read the king’s proclamation loud enough to be heard in the next town. Her parents rushed out, smiling and bobbing like apples in a festival barrel. In less then an hour, she and her mother were on their way to the capitol.

  I wasn’t there when they were presented by my brother to the king, and the mother—prompted by my brother’s spell—boasted of her daughter’s skills at spinning. Had the lass been horrified at the claim she could turn straw into gold? Had she tried to flee when the king demanded proof? My brother never mentioned her reactions when later he described the scene to me. And I, too pleased that the first part of my plan had succeeded, had never thought to ask.

  Now, in retrospect, I wondered why the king had never asked why, if a daughter could spin straw into gold, she and her family lived in a peasant’s house with pigs in the back rather than in a fine mansion with servants.

  A scratching noise roused me from memory, and a pair of gray mice scurried through the door. A pile of straw blossomed in the far corner. My brother’s mocking laughter echoed then faded.

  The mice huddled against the far wall. Water trickled down to form a tiny pool beside them before draining through a narrow crack in the floor. The poor things wouldn’t die of thirst, but unless mice had developed a taste for stone, they would starve. That is a hard death for any creature.

  I sank back into the stone. There was nothing I could do for them, and I still had a name to discover.

  She sat huddled on a stool in front of a fine spinning wheel, her face buried in her hands. She wept silently. My brother had already informed me of where the king’s guards had taken her. Disguised as an officer, he had led the way. He’d also told me of the consequences of failure. I hadn’t expected that.

  As I emerged from the stone, I scuffed my boot across the floor. She bolted up then hugged the wall behind her, one hand clutching her gold necklace. Fear warred with curiosity in her reddened eyes. I spread my hands and smiled.

  “Are . . . are you the angel the captain told me would come?” she asked.

  “No, but no devil, either,” I said, hiding my irritation at my brother’s theatrics.

  She glanced at the pile of straw that filled half the tiny room and sobbed.

  “What troubles you, mistress?” I asked, though I already knew.

  “I must spin this straw into gold or I will die at sunrise.”

  I stepped up and set the wheel gently turning. “What will you give me if I spin the straw?”

  Her dark blue eyes widened then she pulled off her necklace and offered it to me. I held it close to a lantern an
d admired the fine workmanship. I decided to spin the straw the same pale gold as her necklace.

  Her eyes darted to the wheel and the large baskets of empty spindles. She twisted the ring on her finger and looked back at me. I slipped the necklace into my pocket and sat on the stool. Without a word, she handed me an empty spindle and a handful of straw, hope and doubt mingled in her eyes.

  She gasped as the straw shifted to fine gold thread. Softly, I sang words of magic as I spun, to bind this first pledge between us into an anchor thread rooted in the earth so no other earth fae could steal what I would claim. Every filled spindle strengthened that thread, so that by sunrise it was as deep and firm as the roots of the mountains that bordered the king’s lands.

  She sat close beside me all night while I worked, handing me straw then piling the filled spindles into the baskets. Just before sunrise, the last fragment was pulled into thread. While the woman studied the spindles, I faded back into the stone. Curious as to the king’s reaction, I lingered until the old man limped into the room, leaning on his cane. Still posing as a guard, my brother was close behind him.

  The woman was pale, but composed, and she bowed deeply as the king studied the filled spindles gleaming in the baskets. Greed shadowed his smile as he turned to her.

  “Spin again this night or lose your head,” he said.

  Her face went white as moonlight, but she only bowed, her hands pressed to her fine throat. Unseen by the trembling woman or the greedy king, my brother winked at me before he left.

  She was taken to a larger room that night. The pile of straw that waited for her was twice the size of the first. When I appeared and repeated my offer, she gave me her ring, carved like a fox biting its tail. I spun the straw the deep yellow of her ring. Again, I sang, spinning the second strand of magic that would bind her first-born child to me.

  The next morning, I thought she would melt into the stone when the king demanded a third night of spinning, despite his promise that she would marry his son if she succeeded. After he left, she sank down against the wall, anger and fear exchanging places in her eyes. I lingered a moment, then flowed up the limestone walls to the topmost turret on the eastern side of the palace. In raven form, my brother joined me a few moments later and perched beside me.