Inside the house, her little sister woke in the night. “Yan?” she cried. “Yan, I’m hungry!”
In that instant the unicorn grew afraid. There was no more coherent thought in its head, only nameless animal fear that now took over.
The proud beast whirled and bounded, leaping through the stream.
“Huang Fa!” Yan called, rushing to the edge of the porch.
A low fog covered the ground, and the unicorn bounded through it, as if leaping upon clouds, until it disappeared into the plum orchard, lost under a silver moon.
Vylar Kaftan writes speculative fiction of all genres, including science fiction, fantasy, horror, and slipstream. Her work has appeared in Lightspeed Magazine, GigaNotoSaurus, Realms of Fantasy, Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, Cosmos, Escape Pod, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Sybil’s Garage, and in the World Fantasy Award-winning anthology Paper Cities. She lives with her husband Shannon in northern California. Learn more at vylarkaftan.net.
The practice of suspension is horrifying to some and beautiful to others. “Suspending” the human body by having hooks placed through the skin is unquestionably one of the more extreme forms of body modification in practice today. People do this for purposes of spirituality or art, and for private reasons all their own.
For the Native American Mandan nation, at the core of the practice was personal sacrifice. The deliberate agony of suspension was just the beginning of what a young man was expected to offer up to the spirits of his tribe.
In both the modern and traditional contexts, the suspendee is never forced. The spirit must be willing.
In our next story, Kaftan brings us a short tale of suspension and sacrifice, as a young woman endures the unimaginable, making us ask ourselves: What would we be willing to endure if the stakes were high enough?
The Orange-Tree Sacrifice
Vylar Kaftan
The naked peasant girl swung from rusted hooks in the throne room’s center. Her hands and feet were bound with leather straps, which laced the hooks together like a bodice. Blood trickled from her scarred back. She was just alive enough for the pain to crush her thoughts.
Lords from the eleven kingdoms sat in the eleven iron thrones. They chewed turkey legs and spat gristle on the floor. Bones piled beneath the girl, stained with meat and blood and chunks of flesh. They were foreign sorcerers, these bare-chested lords with gold-ringed noses and iron-studded cheekbones. Sharpened stakes pierced their chests—one for each stolen century. Someone stirred the brazier, thickening the acrid smoke. The room was hot as a bonfire.
“Is she dead yet?” asked the lord of the wasted grassland.
“Not yet. She must submit to the magic,” replied the lord of the bloodied sea.
“But she chose this path, no?”
They fell silent. The girl sagged, skin glistening with sweat and turkey fat. She had chosen this, truly, but no one could ask her. She drifted silently through haze and pain. Each hook burned like wildfire. Smoke seeped into her wounds, blackening her blood with magic. Her drippings thickened to tar, oozed off her body, and clotted on the turkey bones.
“Soon her heart will harden,” said the lord of the rotted jungle. “They never last more than a song once they blacken.”
“I wish she’d get on with it,” said the lord of the caustic crater, smoothing his gray-streaked beard. “My back is killing me.”
He reached up and pushed her. Hooks tore her flesh. She moaned, spilling black blood to the ground. Wings of pain sprung from her back as dark magic filled her veins. She couldn’t take it. Couldn’t survive. But she’d sworn her vow, unknown to these demon-men. The fruit still tingled her lips, the sweet tangy citrus of the Goddess these men thought dead. The orange-tree guardian knew where she was.
The lord pushed her again like a loose chandelier. Lightning-pain shot from torso to fingertips, and she nearly passed out. Stay conscious. She had to stay conscious. Until the magic reached her center—the place where she pulsed with life.
“We should do this more often,” said the lord of the salted fields. “I don’t like the aches I get at this age. Don’t we have other peasants? They breed like swine.”
“They need to come willingly,” said the lord of the poisoned island. “If they don’t, it won’t work.”
“Tighten the laces,” ordered the lord of the glittering cesspool. “Make her scream.”
She knew that the magic didn’t need that. They just wanted to hurt her. She bit her tongue as they racked her. Flesh tore from her back. Black blood seeped toward her heart. The orange-tree Goddess had warned her of this—said she would die like the land these sorcerers now ruled. She remembered the Goddess’s breezy hands stroking her hair. Back in the orange-tree grove, the choice had seemed easier.
But now agony seared like juice in her wounds. It wasn’t pain happening to her, it was her happening to the pain, her tortured body wildly throwing her soul into the abyss. She sank below herself. She was screaming. Dying.
The lords gasped in delight. “It’s starting!” cried the lord of the stagnant river. “I feel it!”
The tar spread into her core, seeking her heart. But her heart was missing. In its place lay the Goddess’s orange, the flavor of life which would drive these demons from her land.
The orange burst. Its peel scattered like ashes. Eleven orange segments flew from her body and drove wedges through the sorcerers’ hearts. Screams echoed through the throne room—the sounds no longer hers.
O my Goddess. Now I can die.
The girl fell from the hooks, her body broken. An orange tree sprung from where she landed, bursting from seed to sapling. The tree grew until its roots rocked the throne room, tore the walls down, stretched to the heavens and drove through the earth. Oranges blossomed from every branch. The girl’s soul entered the tree, shy as a child, to meet her Goddess. The orange-tree guardian kissed the girl’s soul, breathed her a new body, and sent her forth.
On a farm near what had been the eleventh kingdom, a woman birthed a baby girl who smelled of oranges.
Desirina Boskovich has published fiction in Realms of Fantasy, Fantasy Magazine, and Clarkesworld, and in the anthology Last Drink Bird Head. She is a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop, and when not writing fiction, she works as a freelance copywriter and creative consultant. She lives in Brooklyn, where she claims to pet cats, drink coffee, and enjoy other stereotypical things. Learn more at desirina.com.
Fantasy literature is full of characters from the real world exploring wondrous dreamlike landscapes—the Pevensie children in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Alice in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, and Dorothy in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, to name just a few. Often the challenge the characters face in the fantasy world mirrors those they face in the real world, and the courage to confront an evil wizard is the same courage they need to face the school bully. A fantasy world allows characters to face their problems from a new angle, and therefore discover within themselves new resources they never knew they had.
A fantasy world serves much the same function for writers as well, allowing them to use the prism of the imagination to face issues that would otherwise be too painful to think about, or to comment on political or social issues with more subtlety and less stridency than might be possible with a head-on approach. Our next story is about this interplay between a fantasy world and the real one, and about the important role that fantasy serves for both readers and writers when dealing with difficult subjects.
Love Is the Spell That Casts Out Fear
Desirina Boskovich
Long ago, far away, in another time, and another place.
In this world, there lives a wizard.
She is old, but not that old.
She is young, but not that young.
The wizard lives alone in a tiny house at the forest’s edge. To the north are the tangled woods, home to unlikely zoological and botanical specimens the wizard has spent several lifetimes catalogi
ng; she plans to spend several more. To the south lies the city: Perta Perdida, the City of Lost Girls.
The girls of Perta Perdida call the wizard Hanna D’Forrest, when they think of her at all. She’s charged with their protection. Whether this responsibility is one for which she volunteered, or one forced upon her, they no longer remember. Neither does she. Time moves differently here, languid as a summer stream. A place of refuge, this city was built to elude change. If they could trap this world like a leaf in amber, they would. But in the absence of that kind of magic, they settle for slowed clocks. They cling to their world as tightly as they can.
Still, occasionally time gets tangled, and change slips through the loops in the knots. Dangers force their way in through the cracks.
A wizard’s job is to untangle time, to retie the ropes. And to fight the danger they’re facing now.
The wizard came from the forest. She was abandoned there as a child, lost by parents too poor either in funds or spirit to give her the care she deserved. She had been too naive to carry bread or pebbles. Hungry, cold, and stark naked, she wandered until she found the witch’s hut. The witch was an outcast from the city, but an outcast by choice. There are no women the city turns away, only women who find they can no longer stay.
Cunning yet kind, the witch took a good look at this lost girl, and then took her in. She made the girl tea, brewed from dandelion leaves and dried birch and the dehydrated leaves of stinging nettles. She gave her a dress, the gray cloth scratchy to the skin, woven from the rough wool of her pet goat. She fed the girl hot stew, seasoned with herbs that grew in the shadows and had many names.
Like all children, the girl had been taught to fear witches. She had also been taught to trust and obey her parents. Having learned the folly of the second lesson, she had no trouble discarding the first.
She slept on the hearth. Tended the garden. Harvested herbs and learned their names. Petted and sheared the goat, then carded and spun and wove its wool. Hunted the rabbits and wild boars and fall stags, and cured their meat for winter.
In turn, the witch taught the girl all the spells and petty magic she knew. She did not mind when the girl danced bare in the moonlight, or streaked naked through the woods, or swam nude in the river, flashing like a fish.
In time, the girl’s power surpassed that of the witch. The witch was growing old, and to tell the truth, she had always been somewhat plain. But the girl was beautiful, and she grew more beautiful every day. Being a woman, her beauty and her power were inextricably linked. She could have chosen to ignore the connection, of course; she could have sought deeper learning in dusty books and ancient spells. She might even have turned her wand on herself, assuming whatever shape she liked; possibly one less risky.
Yet the dusty books had been transcribed by old men, and the ancient spells were first uttered by old men. Even the wand had been pioneered by a young man, who’d needed a tangible object with which to focus and thus wield his power.
The girl needed none of this. The raw energy of her feminine strength was power enough.
The witch understood this. She was not resentful. She did not envy the girl her beauty, nor did she envy her power. She knew these gifts were volatile and untameable. Possibly even extremely dangerous.
She also knew that, despite everything, there’s still something to be said for dusty books and ancient spells. So when her garden-variety mutterings and petty incantations no longer held the girl’s awe, she called on an old friend who lived in a tower in another land. The books were sent. The girl studied these, too.
Time moved slowly in the forest, especially in winter.
The girl learned to assume the shapes of various animals. When she leapt like a deer or swam like a fish, she was a deer, she was a fish. She brooded like an owl. She flew high as a crow. She frolicked like a squirrel. She hid and waited with the patience of a snake.
Inspired by tales of the past, she came to imagine the future.
She longed to see the world.
So she did. She traveled far and wide, and grew in beauty and power, and had many adventures, all beyond the scope of this tale, until she was no longer just a girl, but a wizard. Though, of course, even as a wizard, she was still just a girl.
She came to Perta Perdida, and met its princess. She was invited to serve in its court. Yet she knew in her heart that she was still a wild creature, and though she would always be tied to this jeweled city, she could not live there. So she made her home at the edge of Perta Perdida, in the wild liminals where deeper magic remained possible, fueled by the tension between city and forest, structure and chaos.
And the years passed, like silver drops falling from a leaking tap.
In the world we call the real world, Hannah is seventeen years old. She’s not a wizard; she is a musician. She knows that music holds magic, that songs can be like spells.
In the safety of her bedroom, she plays the electric keyboard and practices the drums. She begged her mother for those drums for months and months. Her mother still disapproves. The drums are pushing a dangerous line. Percussion can lead to rock music, and rock music is the devil’s soundtrack.
At church youth group meetings and school worship sessions, Hannah plays and sings the familiar songs that everyone knows. They are simple, but powerful. In the language of spells they are the tools of beginners, easy to master and simple to recite, yet still surprising in their strength. Hannah plays and sings them with all her soul; she loses herself in that music.
Though she doesn’t know it, the depth of that emotion is visible to everyone. Her love shines on her face. Her desire radiates from her voice. Her friends feel more, and when they raise their hands to the Lord, the movement comes from a sense of inspiration rather than duty. They can’t tell if it’s her spirituality they find beautiful, or her beauty they find spiritual. It doesn’t matter.
Whatever it was, it attracted Peter, the youth minister. He put her on stage when she was just fourteen. He helped her find her voice.
She composes her own songs too, faltering through false notes. Those songs are pleas and prayers set to music. Passion and frustration inflect each note she plays and drip from each word she sings. Carefully she guards against the intrusion of rock music, and suppresses the relentless attacks of the demons of despair and rage.
Hannah lives in a ranch-style house in a middle class suburb. She lives with her mother and father, and her sister, who is thirteen years old. Hannah’s mother is a homemaker. Hannah’s father is a certified public accountant. Hannah’s sister is named Frances, Franny for short. Though Hannah loves her sister very much, she’s the first to admit that Franny can be extremely annoying: stubborn, self-involved, somewhat babyish. Sometimes they scrap like cats and dogs, out of the earshot of their mother, who would tell them that quarreling isn’t Christlike. Blessed are the peacemakers, after all. Maybe that’s true, but did Christ ever contend with a clingy younger sibling sneaking into his bedroom to “borrow” his clothing, read his diary or unearth contraband?
(Hannah’s contraband: three rock music CDs, a black eyeliner pencil, and a story about a wizard.)
The wizard Hanna D’Forrest’s world is shattered one morning in late spring. This is the day the first girl appears at the edge of the forest: naked and hungry, drained of will. She’s forgotten her name.
The wizard cares for the girl as the witch cared for her. She nurses the girl back to strength and health, but she can’t help the girl find her memories.
Then another girl stumbles from the forest in the same pathetic condition.
The wizard cares for her, too. When the girls are strong enough, she brings them to the nearest farmhouse, where they will be safe until their sisters come looking for them.
She needs to be alone. She has work to do.
Once home, she goes to her mirror.
What is this mirror, this wizard’s tool?
The mirror sees the past. It sees the future. It sees cities and worlds far beyond. All of the
m are somehow contained in the wizard. The mirror sees her, too. She cannot stare into it without learning something she does not want to know. She cannot stare into it without revealing something she does not want to show.
It is not an easy tool to use.
She keeps it wrapped in fold after fold of cloth, nestled in a chest, locked in a closet. She sleeps with the key around her neck.
Now, she approaches the mirror with dread, knowing a threat is gathering strength and that she must use her mirror to understand this danger’s shape.
She gathers her courage. Though the mirror is always dangerous, it’s doubly dangerous to those who are afraid.
Your weapon is only your weapon if you’re strong enough to hold it.
She banishes her fear . . .
. . . and faces the mirror.
And the mirror shows her a dark creature, penetrating their boundaries, forcing itself into their world, whether by accident, choice, or fate. The dark creature cannot be seen; it exists only through the havoc it creates.
Using the same malicious agility by which it found its way into their world, it flows through windows and beneath the cracks of doors. It comes to girls as they sleep and gives them nightmares. It leads them like sleepwalkers into the forest, and then it leaves them stranded.
An incubus.
Troubled, the wizard Hanna D’Forrest travels to the palace to tell the princess what she’s seen.
How long has it been since she last walked the streets of Perta Perdida? Time means nothing in fairy tales; continually evolving, the city feels new to her each time.
The streets are paved in gold, lined by trees like turquoise cotton candy. Mechanical butterflies cruise overhead, carrying laughing riders. She’s ridden a butterfly before—stroked its iridescent wings, worked its mechanical gears. She’s seen the city from dizzying heights.
Today, she is content to walk, revisiting her city and her sisters.
She watches them as they walk in twos and threes, pausing at shop windows. The glass fronts display scones and tarts, buttons and boots, polished lamps and brass keys. Girls run barefoot through the fountain, dresses clinging to their knees.
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