by Jeff Wheeler
Unable to support herself any longer, she slumped forward onto the sand. She couldn’t feel the gritty texture against her face, but the cold water of the tide lapped at her ankles. And her final thought as she faded away from the world was that the sea was going to get her after all.
* * *
Itziar jolted back to awareness. She felt a familiar hair-raising crackle of power and smiled. “I think I’d like to learn to sew after all,” she said, her voice coming out dry and hoarse.
“Welcome back,” responded a nearby gravelly voice, which she recognized as belonging with the magic before she opened her eyes. Corentin set down the shirt he was mending. They were back in his house, and Itziar was in the same bed she had woken up in the first time, although Corentin’s chair had found its way a bit closer to the bedside.
“How—?” She struggled to sit up, but her body felt like it had been turned inside out and wasn’t quite working properly.
“It’s okay,” he assured her, holding out his hand to keep her in place.
She stopped struggling and stayed where she had been. “Are we both dead then?”
“Oh, no,” he said, dropping the shirt with a look of alarm to squeeze her hand reassuringly. “You, you saved me, I think, in the only way you could that they wouldn’t come looking for me ever again.”
“Good,” she told him decisively before asking, “Then why are you still here? And how am I still here?”
“I’m still here because this is my home,” he explained. “And this is the place I am least likely to have a chance encounter with the people of the sea.” His mouth quirked up in a half smile as he told her, “I’m pretty sure you’re still here because you’re too stubborn to die.” He gave her a shy smile, adding, “And I took your advice.”
She tried to remember what advice she had given him, and came up empty.
“I didn’t sacrifice what I wanted for what someone else wanted”—he met her eyes—“and I wanted you to live.” He ducked his head as though unsure if he’d overstepped. Holding up the shirt he had been working on, he seemed to change the subject by explaining, “Sewing is a useful skill. I learned it mending sails. I think I used the power you gave me to sew a sort of patch between us, keeping us both alive—barely—until Nalu arrived to pour more power into my spell.”
“Ah, thanks,” she told him, returning his smile. “And did Nalu rejoin his people?”
The door flew open, making it unnecessary to answer. Nalu and Kirsi swept in, all smiles and laughter and the smell of bread. They saw that Itziar was awake and redirected their enthusiasm to inquire about her health and recovery.
“Hey, Kirsi.” Itziar got her attention in a moment of calm while everyone was eating. “You were right—there’s not a quick fix. You just have to do the best you can in any given situation and keep moving forward.”
Kirsi gave her a puzzled little laugh and protested, “Itziar, that isn’t what I said at all.”
“I know,” Itziar assured her before smiling and reaching over to grasp Corentin’s hand, “but I think that’s how we ended up interpreting it.”
Beth Powers
Beth Powers writes science fiction and fantasy stories. Powers lives in Indiana with her cats, where she studies old pirate tales in an effort to add a PhD to her collection of degrees, crochets an odd assortment of items, and practices Tang Soo Do. Her work has appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Plasma Frequency, and other magazines.
Visit her on the web at bethpowers.com to learn more about her forthcoming stories.
From the Clay of His Heart
By John D. Brown | 11,300 words
(Originally published in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show vol. 8)
The golem was a thief. Nothing in the village, nothing in the whole vale for that matter, was safe. It was forever stealing and bringing its thefts to Braslava’s door, laying them on her step like a cat lays down dead birds and mice.
One day it was the butcher’s blue-and-white Turkish stockings, the next it was cranky Petar’s new pitchfork.
And then the golem would stand there, looking down upon her, and all she could say was, “You think you’re doing me favors? Take your inscrutable face and go sit.” And the golem would go and sit in the shade of her spruce, the sap sometimes falling to speckle the red clay of its bald head and shoulders.
Braslava did not know: Was this God’s curse? Was it his blessing?
The golem was anatomically correct in every way, except for the missing belly button. But if God was going to go to all that trouble, why not just send a man instead?
Sometimes the thefts were not such a bad thing. For instance, the golem once brought her a shoe that months ago, Zvonka, the carpenter’s wife, had lost. It is a terrible thing to lose a favorite shoe, but the golem found it.
The golem once brought Braslava a quiver of quality hunting arrows. Each had a black shaft with three yellow grooves running from the fine steel head. The grooves, the blood lines to speed the bleeding of the animal, had been painted to look like tiny, spotted snakes. Nobody in the vale had even heard of anyone—Croat or Hungarian—who used such markings, so Braslava was able to claim and sell them for a good price.
These were the good things. But most of the time the golem brought things that it should not.
And it did not matter how strongly the inhabitants of the vale locked their possessions up. It did not matter if they hid their treasures with great cunning. The golem would find them, and it would take them. It was an excellent thief. Quiet as stone. Quiet as the red mud and clay from which it was formed. The only way a victim might know he’d been burgled was by looking for the telltale crumbs of red dust that it sometimes left behind.
This is how holy things steal.
Of course, in the first weeks, some had questioned the golem’s holiness. They’d come one afternoon with a thick-toothed tree saw and a mighty axe. They’d commanded the golem to put its neck on the chopping block. It had done so willingly.
Braslava scolded them. “A man, holy enough that God trusts him, creates this thing, and you’re so wise to kill it?”
“You don’t know who made it,” said Eben, who was always one for dredging up the facts.
It was true, of course, that she didn’t know exactly who’d made it. She’d found the golem down at the river in the late summer. She’d gone to gather an apron full of the spotted mint that flourished on the exposed sand and gravel bars there. Truly, anyone could have found it, but it was Braslava who had been standing in just the right spot as the orange light from the setting sun brightened the shorn bank, illuminating the undressed tree roots, the rocks, and the upper side of the golem.
At first she’d thought the river had dug into the stained bones of an ancient graveyard. But a person could not get close to the golem, a person could not liberate its shoulder and face from the dirt, and think it was mere bones. It had looked like someone caught far too long in the womb, struggling for birth.
Who fashioned it and buried it under a forgotten twelve feet of dirt, Braslava did not know. But did she need to know such things when God was involved?
She folded her arms and looked at the array of bearded men before her.
“You forget,” said Boric, “wizards in Pharaoh’s court had power to turn staves into snakes.”
“And even if it was made by a holy man,” added Eben, “what does that mean? Men always spoil God’s gifts. Just look at Adam.”
“You all think like rutabagas,” she said. “A golem is an angel of sorts. And you do not kill angels. It’s just not done, even if they do make off with your prized cooking pot.”
The men did not listen. Braslava stood back. If they wanted to call down fire from heaven, she was not going to stand so close the flames would engulf her.
They put the two-man saw to its neck and pulled. The teeth bit in, but when they’d sawed only part of the way through, the saw stuck fast.
Radovan, the massive woodcarver, attempted to fre
e the saw. He spat on his hands, heaved his mighty axe above his head, and brought the blade down. The axe sank into the golem’s neck, but if Radovan hadn’t immediately wrenched his blade out, the neck would have also claimed the axe.
The men stood there, looking down. The golem knelt at the chopping block with the saw stuck in its red neck.
Braslava herself was surprised, but then she saw the meaning. “All things created by God are good,” she said. “This one is to show nothing that is ours cannot be taken in a moment’s notice.”
And so it was. But this did not mean that sometimes, the Lord be blessed, the divine message was not annoying.
Now and again the golem disappeared. The first time this happened was after All Saints Day. Braslava expressed her gratitude for the Lord’s favor in both the sending and the taking. But it was apparently not enough, for the golem returned one week later carrying a long-haired goat.
The nanny desperately needed milking, but Braslava knew the brand in its hide. If she milked it, the goat’s mingy Magyar owner would probably claim she’d stolen a sip and demand payment. So she took the nanny from the golem, tied the animal up on her cart, hooked old Ephraim, her bull, to the yoke, and then proceeded down the trail to the river to deliver the goat, unmilked, to its owner.
She admired the sun and the red and orange leaves blazing in the trees and littering the path. She savored great quantities of air thick with the smell of leaf mold. At all this beauty she heaved many sighs. But when she approached Mislav’s farm, the sighing stopped.
She decided she would wave to Mislav as she passed by. Even now she always had to decide. Mislav wasn’t a rich priest, wasn’t one of those Romans, but an Orthodox, a Byzantine who believed in marriage and in the propriety of full beards. He was diligent and laughed too loud and was the only man who’d ever even thought of her as someone worthy of being a wife.
Mislav stood in front of his house, chopping wood. He saw her and put his axe down. He wiped the sweat from his brow and motioned at the goat with his chin. “So, God is not through with you then?”
“He’s never through with any of us, is he?”
“Perhaps help is on the way. I have heard that our Croatian ban knows of your little problem. He is sending men to collect the blessing.”
“What does he want with a golem?”
“Think,” said Mislav. “It will not be long before the Bosnian dukes fall. And then the Turks will be here at our very doors. What if the ban can direct its stealing? The Turks will wake up one morning and stand in shock: ‘Where are the mountains of arrows? Where are the multitudes of horses?’ And what if golem is sly enough to obtain a sultan or two? It could become a mighty weapon.”
Braslava shook her head. “This golem is not so reliable. I know this thing because I have tried to direct its stealing myself.”
Mislav cocked an eyebrow.
“Bah,” she said and dismissed him. “Even you would not be able to resist. Think about it—can you say you would not be sorely tempted to kife the Roman’s silly hat?”
“I would resist temptation,” he said.
“Not for long,” she said. “But the Lord would save you because it seems all requests and commands are answered with the same thing. I’m telling you, the ban will be disappointed. He will get nothing but tiny speckled eggs.” Eggs, even when all she’d asked for was one purple Turkman’s tulip.
“Perhaps the golem will listen to a Christian. Perhaps it will listen to a ban.”
Braslava rolled her eyes. “Even Christian bans need to learn that God is not our slave to be running to and fro.”
Nina, Mislav’s wife, opened the door. She held a baby boy, with dark curly hair like his father’s, in her arm. She smiled her genuine smile. “Brasa,” she said. “Come in for tea and tell us about this goat.”
Such an admirable woman. It could have been Braslava there at the door. She felt an emptiness lurch inside her. She waved her hand in dismissal. “What is there to tell? I open the door to turn my pigs out into the oaks, and there’s the golem, silent as stone, with the goat.”
“Where does it sleep?”
Braslava did not want to answer that question. Of late it had been laying itself down on the floor next to her bed. She did not know what to make of that. She thought that perhaps the golem was like a cat, but when she’d looked down into its clay eyes that never blinked, never closed for rest, she knew it was not a cat. The proximity of that clay body at night was a bit unnerving.
“Since when does dirt sleep?” Braslava asked.
“She’s got a point,” said Mislav.
“Faw,” said Nina. “Come in and have tea.”
Braslava motioned at the nanny. “Look at these teats. If I were to milk them, you know I’d never hear the end of it. I’ve got to be going.”
“What about the bear?” asked Nina.
An old sow bear had been seen prowling the river bottoms, breaking up the fishing weirs. Everyone told Braslava that this is precisely why she needed a dog. But dogs only made her eyes burn and her nose weep. She patted Ephraim on his flank. “One old bull will have to be enough,” she said.
Nina accepted this and blew her a kiss. Mislav gave her that look, the one he’d been giving her ever since she’d told him in tears that, yes, she wanted with all her heart to be his wife, yes, she wanted with all her heart to be Christian, but God had made her Jewish. And how could she honor the dead and at the same time abandon them?
Braslava kissed her hand and waved good-bye. With each step she told herself to forget Mislav and Nina. She told herself to forget that beautiful baby. There were immediate problems to consider. And, indeed, thoughts of the bear took her mind from Mislav. She crossed over the river bottoms, the Lord be blessed, without incident and made her way to the village.
The village men and children were busy in the apple orchards. The wives stood in the yards, maintaining the fires to boil and pickle the fruit. Most of the women ignored her. But there were some who waved, albeit with a grave smile.
When she stopped at the well to draw a drink, Anja, the widowed basket weaver, came marching up. She took Braslava by the hand. “Sweetling, you leave that goat and you come with me.”
“The Magyar—”
“Forget him,” said Anja. “This cannot wait.”
Anja, always organizing someone’s life. Of course, she was also often the first to arrive and the last to leave when there was work, and such a person had to be listened to.
Anja told her to tie her bull at the post by the barn. Braslava did.
In the garden next to the barn there was a small boy collecting ripened gourds. He looked up and stared at Braslava.
Anja stood in the doorway to her stone hut. “Come,” she commanded. “Quick, quick.”
Braslava entered the house. From the ceiling beams hung dozens of drying bundles of lavender and rose. The smell enveloped her like a blanket. Some of the petals had fallen to the floor.
Anja pointed at an oak chair positioned next to a small table. “Sit,” she said.
Braslava sat. Anja dragged a chair woven from willow withies from the hearth and set it close. She sat, smoothed her dress. “I was just about to hike up to your house.”
“And at your advanced age,” said Braslava.
Anja did not respond to the joke. She put a hand on Braslava’s knee. She took a deep breath through her nose. Obviously this was important.
“This thing you found at the river,” said Anja, “it should not be naked.”
This was the great urgency?
“We have been talking, and this is what we have decided.”
“Who decided?”
“People. Now, surely you can make it a pair of pants.”
“Who am I to tell God how he should dress his servants?” she asked. She was not so rich as to have extra cloth lying about.
“Even God made a coat of skins for those in his keeping,” said Anja. “We gathered a few old beet sacks.” She stood, walked to the d
ining table, picked up a tidy pile of sacks lying folded there, and returned. “Take them.”
It was ridiculous, but Braslava took them.
“Good,” Anja said. “It must happen today. That’s the first thing.” She sat back down. “Now, the second.” She leaned in close.
Braslava waited. Through the window, she could hear the boy working in the garden.
“This thing, it is important to know where it sleeps.”
An urge to tell Anja it was none of her business flashed hot inside her, but Braslava resisted it. It would do no good because Anja would lay siege. She was an indomitable general when it came to such things.
“Tell me you haven’t let it inside,” said Anja.
Braslava sighed. “It’s like a cat. Sometimes it curls up in a corner of the house, sometimes it goes to the barn and makes a nest. What do I care where it sleeps?”
“It is what we suspected.” Anja sat back. “You must move, or we must find you a chaperone.”
“Two months this golem has been running around, and now suddenly somebody is worried about how it’s dressed?”
“Sweetling,” said Anja. She took both of Braslava’s hands in hers. She looked her in the eyes. “Sometimes it takes two months for people to finally think. Sometimes it takes that long to remember the Nephilim.”
There was a story written in the first book of Moses about the times before Noah, about the Grigori, the two hundred angels who were set to watch over humanity, but fell in love with the daughters of men instead. They abandoned their duties and bore children to the women they took as wives. The children of those unions, the Nephilim, had grown up to be monstrous and hungry. So hungry they began to prey on the very people that raised them.
This was madness. “It’s a golem,” said Braslava.
“And what is this golem, eh? You said so yourself.”
“It’s not that kind of angel.”
“How do you know?”
How did she know? That was a question.
“For one,” said Braslava, “it did not fall. It was stuck in the dirt.”
