The moment the dwarves retired to their beds, she let out a slow, lingering breath. A part of her felt dead and wanted to get up immediately, but she knew that in a few hours they would wake to the cries of their demon charges and be forced to sing to drown out temptation. So she slept, knowing their guttural howls would wake her when it was time to act.
She waited what she assumed was an hour after their singing ended. With little effort, she made a silent walk toward the bedroom door. She was lithe and had always been able to move about with no noise. The door was the first test. She believed in September, but there was no guarantee the dwarf would follow through. The knob was warm to the touch. It clicked as it turned, but it did turn. Though the door was heavy, it seemed almost to pull itself open, as if it had awaited this day for centuries.
All seven dwarves slept.
Unus had a heavy, gustful snore, the kind that could fill the sails of a mighty war vessel. He made it all too easy. The noise from his rancorous snoring masked Snow's careless steps on the groaning wood. As September promised, each dwarf hung their key on their bedpost at night. Since the door was locked each evening and their guardians were inches away, there was little concern for the safety of the chests.
Unus's snore caught in his throat and he rolled onto his side. Snow leaned over him, whispering in his ear so softly it could not possibly penetrate the rattling of his snoring.
"You messed with the wrong girl."
Snow lifted Unus's key from the bedpost. It was heavy iron, bigger than her tiny hand. She rubbed her thumb along its rough edges. There was great power in the key. Not that it was magical in any way. Just that it was the true warden for the prison that held Unus's demon. Of course, she was certain it had been used once before, long ago, by Unus to free his charge. Still, holding it made her feel like a queen.
Something was wrong with Unus's chest. The previous day, Snow was quite certain it was empty, lifeless amidst the colorful and wondrous sensations of the other chests. It was like a missing star, leaving a black hole in the night sky. But tonight, it had an unexpected vibrancy. When Snow's hand touched the lock, she felt a cool chill. Her lips tasted peppermint. She smelled smoke.
She edged back, the tingling along her arm bubbling a moment longer.
"He wasn't lying, was he?” September stood behind her. He spoke in his normal voice, which was still low enough not to disturb his brothers’ sleep.
"Of course he was lying."
"Snow—"
"He's clever.” She could barely maintain a whisper.
"Maybe you shouldn't—"
"There's nothing in there."
She took hold of the lock, expecting the same sensations, only this time she felt nothing. There was a lingering smell of burning oil, but the coolness was gone. The key slipped easily into the lock, like a lover falling into the arms of another. Snow looked at the crest. Its wood pattern was like ivy growing over an iron plate. Something wasn't right.
The key turned without her realizing she'd made the motion. The click of the heavy lock opening cut through Unus's snoring.
"No,” Unus said, halfway out of a dream.
The lock fell free. The lid of the chest flew open.
Unus slammed the lid shut, but it was too late. A howl like a child released from his room after a lengthy punishment erupted through the room. The other dwarves were on their feet in moments. It was already done.
"Girl—” Unus moved toward her only to have September step in his way. He knocked the little one aside.
Snow looked up at him, her bright eyes shimmering as the demon illuminated the room with a green glow. “It was supposed to be empty.” Her eyes darted from one dwarf to the next. “It's a trick.” And even as she said it, she knew the futility of her words.
The seven dwarves stood strong. Stood together. Even September took his place at Unus's side.
She stood with the demon. An ethereal being, it wrapped itself around her like a green fog, slipped between her lips like a tongue darting in for a kiss, and filled her with its desires. The seven watched, waiting perhaps for an act of contrition. If only she knew such brotherhood. If only she had family like this. All she ever wanted was to belong somewhere, to have the strength of a bond such as this. And oh to have the honor of a charge such as this—to be trusted with man's seven greatest evils. Why couldn't she have been trusted with such a destiny? Why did they deserve these things and not her? When would she find love and honor? She wanted them now, so badly.
"Your tears won't spare you,” Unus said. His hand shook as he raised an open palm. Though small, he had might enough to end the girl with one swing.
"I have failed.” It was Tria who cried now. He'd fallen to his knees and was slowly crawling toward the chest. “I am ruined."
"Tria, stop behaving like a girl,” Qinn said. “Clearly she is to blame for releasing Unus's charge."
Tria shot his head back to look at Qinn. His words were almost unintelligible, jumbled beneath his sobbing. He repeated his words, a little more clearly. “It is not Vanagloria that fills this room with its laughter."
"Of course it—” But Tria stopped Unus before he could finish.
"That is Invidia. My charge. She has escaped under my watch."
Snow tried to speak, to solve the mystery with a proper question or well-placed comment, but she couldn't center her mind on the argument. All of the attention had shifted to Tria. He had earned their concern, had become more victim than she. They pitied him and ignored her.
"Why isn't anyone looking at me?” she asked, but her question crashed against another wail from Tria.
"It is not your fault, Tria.” Unus swung a finger toward Snow. “It's hers."
She smiled and was overwhelmed with gratification. They were hers again. Tria was already old news. It was her, her, her.
"I warned against this. I told you she was another kind of demon escaped from her own prison.” He pounded his chest. “I tried to prevent this, but some of you lacked faith in my decisions. And now you see what your doubt has wrought."
Snow frowned like a child—an exaggerated scrunching of her face. Everyone blamed her for everything. Why couldn't they treat her like they did Qinn? No one accused him of releasing foul demons into the world. Why couldn't she have the respect they gave him? She wanted that respect. She should have that respect. She could take that respect.
"It was you.” September stepped forward. He was a good foot shorter than Unus, and had to look up to meet his eyes. “You poisoned her."
"Clearly I should have been less subtle with my methods."
Duollo nearly knocked Qinn over as he shot up. “Unus!"
"Does it anger you to be so wrong about her?” Unus asked September.
The youngest dwarf swung his head toward the locked chest in front of Tria's bed. “This is your chest, Unus.” And indeed it was. Snow recognized the pattern. She couldn't quite place what was wrong about the chest at the foot of Unus's bed, but now she knew. He'd switched them sometime that night.
"I knew that first,” she said, but was ignored again.
A firm hand grabbed September's arm. “Be careful of your accusations, little one."
September pulled himself free of his brother and grabbed the key from Tria's bedpost. Before he could inspect it a hand closed over his. Unus squeezed.
"So the chests changed place, what difference does it make? She opened Tria's and released a monster that will soon enough find its way to her world. Look at how it's already corrupted her."
"Me?” Her hands pressed against her chest and her mouth strained to smile wider.
"If I had not made this change, she would have released Vanagloria."
"Would she?” September relinquished the key to his brother.
No one spoke. Not even Snow, who stared up at Unus's key, wondering what she could do to claim it.
"You don't get to win,” September said to Unus. His bare foot came crashing down against the lock. It shuddered but did not o
pen. Blood speckled the floor.
"That lock cannot be broken."
September kicked again.
"You're bleeding, brother."
Again.
"Stop this."
Again.
"It will never open."
His foot split and bleeding, September kicked again. This time the lock gave. Two pieces hit the floor.
"You've gone too far,” Unus said, a second before bringing his fist into September's temple. The dwarf folded like a chair snapped by the wind. He hit the ground and didn't move.
"Enough.” Equattuo came up behind Unus and slipped his arms around him. His face was red, a sudden fire. He pulled hard and lifted Unus. “Open the goddamned thing."
Snow nodded. It was hers. Whatever Unus had, she wanted.
But there was no treasure inside the chest. There was nothing but the exhalation of old air, like a last gasp of a secret slipping through passive lips.
Equattuo screamed and threw Unus into the wall.
The green glow dissipated and the room darkened.
Slowly the desire for the empty chest left Snow. She no longer wanted what others had, but she was now keenly aware that she had nothing of her own.
She felt her face. It was hot. Wet.
"I told you, September,” she said, out of breath. She scanned the faces of the six other dwarves, who were all looking past her. She followed their gaze to the little one motionless on the floor. Snow scrambled to September. She wrapped herself around him and rocked him against her breast. “Breathe. Breathe. Breathe."
They remained intertwined like one being until morning came.
* * * *
Snow waited outside the mine while the dwarves buried September.
They said it might take several hours, simply due to the sheer depths of the hole and the logistics involved in getting September to his final resting place. There was no ceremony. As Qinn explained, they didn't know they could die. They had no process for grief. Whatever they were feeling—if it was anything at all—they didn't express it around Snow. They went about their business while she mourned.
A songbird landed on a nearby tree and chirped at the rising sun. A jackrabbit skittered past, then stopped to look at her. In her few days around the forest, the animals were scarce. And if one saw her or any of the dwarves, it fled immediately.
"They're leaving,” she told the jackrabbit. “Soon it'll be just you and me."
Its nose twitched.
"Don't worry, they're taking those demons with them."
The jackrabbit took a cautious step forward, its nose twitching once again.
"I'm not sure what they'll do with themselves. They say they know someplace to take the chests.” She plucked a berry off a tree growing alongside the hill. “Somewhere they can open the rest."
The rabbit took another step forward. It was like her, alone and out of place in the dark forest.
"You'd think seven demons would be worse than two."
The jackrabbit sniffed at the berry, which she held out to it.
"Apparently it'll help balance things out. Don't want one demon having more influence than another."
It looked up at her again, leaving the berry untouched. After a moment of studying Snow, the jackrabbit turned and bounded back into the forest.
"Don't worry,” she said after it. “We have plenty of time to get acquainted. All the time in the world."
[Back to Table of Contents]
Short Story: SILENCE by Dale Bailey
It's probably not a coincidence that Dale Bailey's recent emails have been filled with good advice on child rearing, while his short fiction output has diminished. He did recently publish a story in collaboration with Nathan Ballingrud in Lovecraft Unbound, but his last appearance in F&SF was in our Oct/Nov. 2005 issue. We're pleased to see him back here with this story of life during high school.
So I'm fourteen years old and Junior Starnes is on the warpath again. That was high school for me. Duck and cover. Run for your life. An endless cycle of tension and release. Most days that era in my life seems incredibly remote and I can summon a germ of compassion for Junior—he must have been held back a year or two by then and I don't imagine his home life was any picnic. But at other times, even now, it presses all too close, and the fourteen-year-old me—I think part of me will be fourteen years old for the rest of my life—rises up to insist that Junior Starnes was a monster. Most people can be, I guess, even if you never really know when they're going to show their teeth. You just know you don't want to be around when it happens—if you can help it. Sometimes, of course, you can't.
That's what I want to write about here, now that I am a grown man setting down these thoughts in a dime store notebook with a picture of an owl on the cover: the fall of my freshman year at Thomas Jefferson High School, Junior Starnes and his buddy Richard Zell, and those moments when the monster underneath the human mask shows its face. Most of all, I suppose, I want to tell you about the thing in the woods.
I had Honors English second period that year, Ms. Blevins. Junior had Social Studies two doors down, even though it was really just a glorified study hall with a tattered Mercator projection on one wall, and a crew of burnouts and stoners killing time in the seats till they turned sixteen and could collect their walking papers. The teacher, Mr. Dayton, had given up a decade ago, when most of the kids in his class weren't that far out of diapers. He was marking time too, punching the clock until his retirement kicked in, and every kid at Thomas Jefferson High knew that he'd guarantee you a C if you kept your mouth shut, and higher if he liked you. So his class filled up with lifers, and all the grown-ups oohed and ahhed, saying he had a knack for working with “at-risk” students. I figured it was only a matter of time before he won Teacher of the Year. Which was fine except that his room's proximity to my Honors English class turned the transition between my second and third periods into the adolescent equivalent of trench warfare: the bell rang and, bam, over the top you went, straight into the teeth of the German machine-gun fire.
Which is pretty much how the thing I want to tell you about begins. I remember we were reading Beowulf at the time, and one minute me and Steve Collier, my best friend since third grade, were pushing through a mob of sweaty kids and debating who'd win a cage match between Grendel and Swamp Thing. The next minute Steve has vanished—he had an almost supernatural talent for that—and my own personal Grendel—Junior—has me pinned to the wall beside the water fountain. Twisting his hand in my shirt, Junior thrusts his face close to mine—so close I can smell the meaty reek of hapless Danes upon his breath. “Where you headin', Philip?” he says, giving my name this mocking twist, wit not being a tool Junior has in his toolbox.
Me, my toolbox is empty. Where I'm heading is Algebra II—Ms. Eisenstein—a class Junior won't see the inside of if he lives to be five hundred years old. But that's not what Junior wants to hear. The truth is I don't know what he does want to hear—to this day, I don't know what he wanted to hear, and I suspect he didn't know either—so I just stammer out the obvious, saying, “Umm—third period, Ju—Junior"—I had to hesitate here to choke back a nasty taste—"why?"
Next thing I know my books are all over the floor and Junior's grinding my algebra homework into shreds of pencil-smudged tissue under the heel of one ratty boot.
By this time a crowd has gathered. I read this story once about a man who notices the way crowds materialize any time there's an accident, how hungry they look, and finally he has an accident himself and they show up to get him. That's the story of my life: Steve's superpowers on one hand (Hey presto! I'm invisible!) and on the other one these famished-looking teenage throngs that spring up out of nowhere every time Junior decides to play a quick round of Whack-A-Phil.
Then suddenly Junior's saying, “Jeez, Philip, I didn't even see you there, man, I'm sooo sorry,” drawing out the words the way you do when you mean to let everybody know just how much bullshit you're really slinging. He untwists my shirt and bends ov
er to help me pick up my books with this totally fake shit-eating grin on his face. The crowd's evaporated, too. The hall's suddenly right next door to empty, like Beam me up, Scotty! empty, with just a handful of kids in clusters talking about Friday night's big game against Broughton or trading homework or checking their makeup in those little mirrors all the girls have stuck inside their locker doors.
That's when I see Coach Kessinger—a big guy with close-cropped hair, a nose that he broke playing one season for the Falcons, and the kind of gym-rat muscles that make it look like your biceps have emigrated to the backs of your arms in search of a better life—strolling down the hall. He stops to chat up Cindy Taylor, which is gross when you think about it and even when you don't. Then he swings toward us and claps Junior on the shoulder.
"Why don't you man up and come out for football, Junior? Scared?"
Junior kind of laughs, but Kessinger's already moving on, dipping his chin in my direction—"How ya doin', Paul?"—as he disappears around the corner.
"Loser,” Junior mutters. I'm not sure whether he's talking about Kessinger or me, but he doesn't bother to elaborate. He just spreads his arms, grinning—this one is from the heart, which I figure to be a chunk of icy stone in the middle of his chest—and lets the books tumble once again to the floor. He leans toward me, closer this time; at this distance his breath smells like maybe those hapless Danes had the runs. “After school, Philip,” he says, punctuating each word by jabbing two fingers into my chest. “Three-thirty, out behind the Stop N Go. Don't make me come looking for you.” He turns away then, and I see his pal, Richard Zell, leaning against a locker down the hall, watching the whole thing go down. Richard was the brains of the operation—which you might call a stretch if you didn't know Junior, who was, of course, the muscle. One time in the cafeteria, I nerved myself up to ask Richard why Junior hated me and if he—Richard, that is—wouldn't step in on my behalf.
Richard just pushed his tray away and looked at me like I was a particularly loathsome loogey he'd just hawked up on the sidewalk. “Question is, Philip,” he said, “why wouldn't he hate you? Now take my tray up for me, why don't you?"
FSF, May-June 2010 Page 19
