Spring Fevers

by Matt Sinclair

  On the way in, I stopped to get the mail. I was so plastered last night I forgot all about it. I opened the mailbox to find a single white envelope inside.

  My eyes widened at the familiar round handwriting. "Oh man … you can't be serious … you really have a crazy sense of humor, you know that?" I yelled, snatching the letter and shaking it at the winter sky.

  In response, a snowflake drifted lazily onto my nose.

  For a long moment I stood there, my fist thrust toward the heavens as a gentle snowfall swirled around me. Then I lowered my head and went in.

  Sitting down at the kitchen table, I smoothed out the letter and opened it. I read it once. And then a second time. When I was done, I turned the plain white sheets over in my hands. No phone number. But there was a return address on the envelope. After hesitating for a minute, I took out a notepad and pen and began to write:

  Dear Ashley,

  You're an idiot. But I forgive you.

  Only by Moonlight by A.M. Supinger

  Purple streaks emblazoned the black sky, but few stars dotted the colorful backdrop. Darkness held the forest in its grip, the moon barely peeking above the horizon.

  Danika perched on the steps of the Stone House, its crumbling bricks long ago abandoned, and waited. The sounds of the forest were uninterrupted and as soothing as a nursery rhyme, but her shoulders bunched more with every passing minute.

  As midnight came and went, and the moon's short trip over the tree line ended, she sighed. Nothing had happened. She hoisted herself up and stretched briefly, but when she set her foot upon the forest floor, silence descended. It was a thick silence, with the eyes and ears of every creature—and even the trees—honed in.

  Danika froze, fear puckering her skin. The eerie quiet continued, seeping into the ever-silent stones. With careful precision, she dragged her foot slowly back onto the stone steps. A cricket chirped, followed by an owl's hoot. Gradually, noise circled her again, but she didn't relax.

  She placed a careful hand on her abdomen and a single tear traced her cheek. Her eyes scanned the dense bushes and dark silhouettes of the trees, but nothing seemed out of place. She stood unmoving, knowing with a certainty borne of living in this queer forest that something was about to happen.

  A faint light rose from a stone near her, a glowing ethereal haze. Danika stared, her heart hammering. The light grew, pulsed, and solidified. A woman's voice spoke as the brightness curved into a feminine form.

  "You've lingered a long time, child. I assume it's me you've waited for?"

  Danika ducked her head and cleared her throat, knowing this was her only chance. "Yes, Lady. I traveled here like all the tales say to, only by moonlight, and brought no man. I come for myself."

  "That is good, child, but what brings you?" The voice sounded motherly, both compassionate and patient.

  "Your gifts, Lady."

  "Ah." The light brightened for a second. "And which gift do you seek?"

  Danika fell to her knees, prepared to beg. "I-I was told you could purge a woman's womb, Lady."

  "I can. But why do you ask for such a gift? Speak only truth."

  "I wasn't given a choice, ma'am, in the making of this babe. I know it's not the child's fault … but I'm not married." Danika swallowed hard, her throat aching from the words she spoke. "I don't want his seed in me. I don't want to remember!" Sobs ripped free of her, and she gasped, leaning over to press her salty cheek to the grey stones.

  "Sorrow such as yours is terrible, child. Fear not, I will prevent the memory from gaining physical form. Go inside, daughter. Stay there until the sun fills the Stone House with light, then travel home."

  Danika whimpered and crawled into the shadowed entry of the crumbling house. She looked back, but the glowing presence was gone. The forest teemed with sound and the Stone House lost the eerie feeling Danika had sensed before.

  She shivered as she curled up in the one room still covered with slabs of grey rock. Drafts of cool air flowed around her, but heat soon chased thought from her. Hot pain lanced her stomach and she clutched herself, panting. Her eyes squeezed shut but sweat leaked between her lashes to mingle with tears. A filmy layer of perspiration covered her, slicking her as she tried to soothe the cramps rippling within her belly.

  When only an ache remained, and her energy long since fled, Danika floated. She couldn't feel her toes or fingers, and she knew her babe was gone. She was purged. It was odd, this feeling of lightness, and she opened her eyes, curious whether she truly still lay on cold stone.

  But she forgot the feeling of floating and gasped; a tiny mote of color bounced around the room. It was yellow, then pink, then blue. With an exhausted, shivering hand, she reached toward it. The now-purple speck landed on her fingertip and rolled down to her palm, where it pulsed. Danika held her breath as the little dot solidified, much like the Stone House Lady had, and a baby hovered in her hand. It disappeared between one blink and another, and fresh tears splashed down Danika's cheeks.

  She left the Stone House as the sun rose, blood staining her skirt and sorrow staining her eyes.

  Remy and Charlie by Yvonne Osborne

  Remy put the urn in a cardboard box and carried it out of the unmarked building and into the hot glare of August. It weighed three pounds and ten ounces, bones and all. He walked across the parking lot to the car, amazed at the economy of the procedure. Heat shimmered across the asphalt and radiated off the car. Charlie was going from one oven to another.

  He wondered where he should put him. In the back seat? Didn't seem right. In the trunk? He popped it with the remote control. It was full of empty grain bags and plastic coolant jugs and oil cans. Downright disrespectful. He slammed it shut and opened the passenger side door and propped the urn against the buckle of the seat belt, seized by the ridiculous notion to strap him in.

  He backed out of the lot and eased into the river road traffic, wondering how he'd let himself get corralled into this detail. Annie wanted her dead husband's ashes spread across the lake, even though Charlie never had any use for the lake, couldn't swim and wasn't interested in fishing. Remy knew what she was thinking. It seemed romantic; if one were dumped in the Great Lakes, they could end up anywhere. The possibilities were comfortingly endless. And with such a burial, Charlie could become a better man, a legend beyond the reach of his bad habits. He might even morph out of his watery grave into a benevolent spirit guiding freighters past the rocky shoals like a lighthouse beacon. The speculation for his children would carry them through adulthood.

  Annie was a devotee of things-that-can-go-wrong, and she was afraid the wind would shift and Charlie would blow back in her face, and she'd never get the taste of him out of her mouth. Remy couldn't comment on that. But he could see her lunging out of the way in her platform shoes and falling off the pier, blood from the inevitable head wound mixing with lake water in a primordial stew, like the sergeant who took one for Remy and plunged off the dike into a rice paddy on the other side of the world, and all Remy could do was stare at the bloody swirl that lapped the man's face, like an oil slick from an outboard motor.

  He had the memory of an elephant, and he didn't need another one like that. Maybe this would be the penitential act that would finally lay it to rest.

  If he had his say, they'd plunk Charlie down on the shelf behind the bar at McKinney's Pub across from the sugar beet factory and be done with it. Why not put a guy in his favorite place? Wasn't that what you were supposed to do with ashes? And Charlie Massingale was a better man in there, a witty, generous, buy-a-round-kind-of-guy in there.

  At least she didn't want to leave him on the mantle like a Buddhist shrine, forever reminding Remy of all the times he could've helped Charlie but didn't, all the opportunities for intervention that multiplied in his head exponentially with each expression of sympathy. He was a sorry son-of-a-bitch, but he didn't deserve to die alone choking on his own vomit.

  He had never liked Charlie. Up until the minute he walked Annie d
own the aisle he was hopeful someone else would sweep her off her feet, but Charlie had prevailed, and Remy had kept his mouth shut and played his part. Who was he to comment on someone else's marital mistakes? His wife left him for a horse, for chrissake.

  The entire institution of matrimony was overrated, far as he was concerned. He liked leaving his dishes in the sink and walking across the floor with his boots on. Almost liked eating tomatoes out of a can in front of the TV and sardines with a toothpick while standing over the sink, watching the lighthouse beacon wink off and on across the water.

  The fire whistle went off as he drove by the station and he wondered if Mary was on duty, pulling on her overalls and tying up her hair in a ponytail. The thought of Mary playing with her hair made him want to play his music loud. She was an honest-to-goodness firefighter, and he was a washed-out rock star. They weren't serious, but they had fun fooling around.

  He pulled into the parking lot at the marina and parked at the edge of the sand. He tucked the urn inside his windbreaker—wouldn't do to spill Charlie short of the water—and walked across the stretch of beach to the breakwater that protected the marina and all the fancy boats. Anglers fished off the top of it and swimmers dived into the foam that broke around it. A person could walk to the end and sit on a bench and see nothing conceived by man.

  Throw his ashes off the end of the breakwater, Daddy. He liked it there. He said that on a clear day he could see Canada.

  Yeah, Charlie had always liked the idea of north, always wanted to drive around the Hudson Bay, hear a wolf on Isle Royale, and drink scotch in Reykjavik, Iceland (which should've been called Greenland, and vice versa). When other kids headed to Florida on spring break, Annie and Charlie gassed up his Opal and drove north into the Maritimes—back when he and Annie's mother were still together—an escapade they didn't know about until years later. Maybe it was all that cold in Charlie's blood that set him to drinking scotch, because somewhere between Nova Scotia and Isle Royale the scotch took hold and wouldn't let go.

  Remy’s knees cracked as he walked past two old men sitting on bait pails, each with a line in the water. A group of kids were diving off rocks that were supposed to be off-limits to swimmers—boys in baggy swimming trunks with the muscle to pull themselves out of the water.

  They made him feel old, close to sitting on his own bait pail with a line in the water. The polar opposite of the way Mary made him feel.

  He reached the end of the breakwater, and the only thing left to see was water and sky and one lonely lake freighter steaming north. There was an offshore breeze. Maybe Charlie would end up in the Hudson Bay after all.

  He opened the urn and looked inside, not knowing what to expect. It was only half full. He gave it a shake and the contents shifted. A man's remains couldn't even fill an urn. A man's remains were less than what could be swept out of a fireplace after a party. He held it aloft over the water, as though he were proposing a toast, and emptied it into the wind.

  The Elysar Sea by Matt Sinclair

  I looked out on the Elysar Sea, not far from where my friend, Rashka-Powler, had stood for so many years. Across its purple-maroon surface, nothing moved save the dying ripples of occasional wind. Yet, the nearby cosignum watched, just as Rashka had when he'd held the post. I wanted to speak with the cosignum, whose job was to ensure the safety of all who visited the sacred sea, for it was the only known hydrochloric body of "water" in the universe.

  Perhaps I could tell him about Rashka, who'd been my friend since we met years ago on the transport ship to this remote world. Some cosigna were absolutely devoted to serving. I didn't know this newcomer. I thought about Rashka and decided not to be a disruption.

  A couple passed. They were young Earthlings—as are so many of the tourists these days. I watched as they walked by the cosignum, and I smiled to myself knowing what was likely to happen. Sure enough, they continued a few yards down the Boardwalk, and something fell behind the male. A receipt, perhaps, or one of any of the quickly forgotten items that pass through our lives. They kissed, and while they focused only on themselves, an otherwise imperceptible breeze lifted the object above the wall and into the acid where it sizzled, leaving nothing but a brief flame and puff of smoke. A team of cosigna, including the one near me, ran out and seized the couple. The damage to the sea was done and immediately imperceptible, but I knew the couple's troubles were only beginning. I turned back to the calm sea.

  Rashka had told me that polluters were common—at least, one or two a month seemed common, since the penalty was a month in solitary confinement followed by a strictly enforced lifelong ban from the planet. The penalty was stiffer if the act was deemed intentional.

  The Elysar Sea was discovered three hundred years ago by Earthlings on the now famous Descartes Expedition. It was the most noteworthy of the few remarkable discoveries in the universe made by Earthlings. In fairness to them, they had had a late start, not knowing about, much less how to communicate with, any of the myriad life forms until the 113th millennium—what they called their twenty-third century.

  The Great Boardwalk of the Elysar, which encloses the sea's perimeter, was a great mystery in itself. Rashka, one of the specially chosen cosigna who each guard a tract of uninhabitable space, had often told me about how he spent his evenings contemplating the Boardwalk. He mulled over the reasons why it had not crumbled or eroded from the acidic sea—the brightest scientists in the sector were baffled. It became a game we often played when I visited him. Nearly every time, one of us would come up with a different outlandish idea. I was almost embarrassed to admit that his description of the sea as a giant toilet struck me as the funniest, but I was raised in the Juven sector, and finding such things amusing was fairly typical for us. He told me once how he imagined the former natives of the planet in their heaven looking down and laughing at the fools who guard their waste. Even then, the comment seemed out of character. While I had remained Juvenile in my diversions, he had retained the solemn stoicism of one who grew up on Vanesso.

  Unlike Rashka, I had moved to this planet to become wealthy. I had put profit ahead of family and most of my relationships. Surviving and succeeding here brought distinction to those who knew when to leave. But families were forbidden, and friendships, while not discouraged, were uncommon. Honestly, outside of Rashka, I never thought of anyone else here as my friend. He kept me thinking positively.

  When Rashka complained, it was about the pointlessness of his job. Nothing could live on the sea—or in it, presumably, though no technologies yet developed had been able to withstand its acidity. The cosigna evolved from efforts to keep the curious from hurting or even killing themselves in the Elysar. And while suicide was made legal in this sector decades ago, Rashka said that no cosignum had reported an attempt in nearly two hundred years.

  I have spoken with other cosigna—colleagues of Rashka—and most were like him in their sense of responsibility. They were a unique breed, no matter what planet they called home. But while they spoke of the honor of their duties, some have been known to race between stations, holding tournaments and placing bets among themselves.

  Still, I knew that Rashka truly loved and respected the colorful sea. The Elysar has been compared to Earth's thorny roses and Vanesso's radiant biterna flowers, which paralyze the entire body if touched. To me, however, neither analogy was quite right. Variations occurred to those plants. Roses were red or pink—or any number of colors one might conjure. When mature, biterna flowers lit up like fiery insects, floating safely through the air and shifting colors depending on where they landed. It is only when they bud that they were a danger. But the Elysar Sea had not changed.

  Rashka had told me that he persisted in his job because he was in line to become Head Cosignum—quite an honor—though he also spoke of taking his rocket science hobby more seriously and skipping from asteroid to planetoid to moon and beyond. But such idle talk was like a breeze over the Elysar. Honestly, how many more rocket scientists did the univer
se really need?

  Last week, however, Rashka had acted strangely. After I closed the hydroponic vegetable store I own (a booming success on this planet), I walked to his station, toting a couple pentagons of beer. As usual, he supplied a deck of cards and a table that met Boardwalk regulations, and we spent our time playing poker, the other great Earthling discovery.

  "You know, Ercol," he said, "there are some nights when I feel like I'm part of the sea."

  "I was a little acidic earlier, but I think it was something I ate."

  He laughed and discarded. "No, really, I feel like I'm swimming in it right now, and I'm not the only one in it either. I think the old natives live there now."

  "You've only had two beers," I said, lightly tapping the pentagonal shapes on the Boardwalk. If I'd spilled anything, he'd have to give me a citation and ban me from visiting for sixty days. "You coming down with something?"

  "I've got Elysar fever!" he said, as if it were a eureka moment. "And I hope you catch it. It feels wonderful!"

  "Sorry, pal, I stopped feeling wonderful as a religious penance. I promised the Builder that I would no longer please myself or feel wonderful in any way. You wouldn't want me to go back on a promise to her, would you?"

  He smiled. "No, but maybe you can feel a release instead."

  I chuckled. "Ah, the old toilet theory, again, huh?"

  He threw his cards onto the table. "Dammit, why do you always remember that?"

  My gaze had fallen to the unforgiving Boardwalk. I'd soiled his moment of meditation with a blasphemy.

  He picked his cards back up, called my bet, and spread them on the table to show a full house, kings over fours.

  "Beats my trip-threes."

  The cards remained on the table. He wasn't concentrating on the game anymore. He moved to the Boardwalk and looked out across the sea, so I asked what he had meant.

  "There are nights when I stand on top of the wall and look into the water. I see visions: growing up on Vanesso, receiving my diploma for the cosigna. But they're visions, not memories. Sometimes I see the future."