Fearsome Magics

by Jonathan Strahan

  “Who are you?” Edith whispers.

  The sound of lips parting and a dry tongue unfastening from the palate. The words are laden with clicks and smacks. “I am the caretaker. And you’re late for your migration.”

  “Where did the others go?”

  “Downstairs.”

  “Why?”

  “It was time.”

  “I don’t understand,” Edith says. “Are you the one who makes the boxes?”

  “No more questions,” the caretaker replies. “All you have to do is move on.”

  “But where are we supposed to go?”

  A brief pause. “You should know that. Haven’t you had dreams?”

  “I dream of an ocean sometimes.”

  The caretaker smacks its dry tongue. “That won’t do. No. You’re heading for houses. Remember that. Houses in a circle, with lanterns over the doors.”

  The caretaker pulls the blanket off the bed and drops it on the floor. “You’ll know where you’re going. It’ll feel right. Now go. You’ll be late. It’s the other door.”

  It moves away. The door to the stairwell opens with a groan. The caretaker’s silhouette against the faint light of the stairwell doesn’t look quite right.

  “First too early and now too late,” the caretaker mumbles. “Something’s not right.”

  Next to Edith, Gregor stirs and sighs. “What was that?”

  “We have to go,” Edith says.

  THE OTHER DOOR opens onto a tunnel through raw rock, walls glowing faintly with blue-white larvae. The echoes of Edith’s and Gregor’s footsteps are very faint. Edith’s heartbeat is slow and heavy. Their breath and the shuffle of their feet on the rough ground count out a rhythm that sucks her in. She almost doesn’t notice when the tunnel widens into a cave, not until whatever is crouching by the little pool moves slightly and Gregor lets out a little squeak. Backlit by the luminous water, the pale figure looks almost like a neighbor. It suddenly turns around and looks up at them. Small eyes glitter in the waterlight. It lets out a small whimper. Edith leans on the wall, because her heart is rushing and her knees are buckling. They stare at each other. The other bounds away into the dark with a rasp of naked feet on stone.

  Gregor sits down with a thud. Edith rests against the wall until she can feel her legs again. Then she pushes herself to her feet and walks over to the little pool. The water is full of little glowing specks that tastes strongly of minerals. Edith splashes the water a little, to break the silence.

  “It seemed to be afraid of us.”

  “It was alone,” Edith replies. “Maybe next time it won’t be.”

  STALACTITES EXTEND FROM the tunnel’s ceiling, leaving just enough room to crawl through. After a while, they can’t see the tunnel walls anymore, just irregular pillars stretching in every direction. Winged insects with glowing abdomens crawl over the pillars. They’re easy to catch. Bitter and sour juice bursts over her tongue when Edith bites down on them.

  Gregor slips on a loose stone and twists his ankle so badly that his foot hangs limp at the end of his leg with a fist-sized lump on the ankle bone. Edith wraps it with her stockings as well as she can, and helps him climb onto her back. They continue in silence, Gregor occasionally wheezing in pain.

  “There was a storm, a firestorm,”he says after a while.

  “I woke up because my house was rocking back and forth. I opened a hatch and looked outside and there it was, a glow between the trees, and all the air was rushing toward it. People were climbing out of their homes, screaming. Someone banged on the walls and made them ring. We threw out ropes and climbed down to the ground. Some people panicked and just jumped. I’ll never forget that noise.

  “We picked up the children and the frail and ran, but we couldn’t run fast enough. The fire was catching up with us, eating everything in its way. We heard the pops and bangs as houses exploded or fell to the ground. A woman shouted, Save us! Save us! Soon we were all chanting, Save us! Save us!

  And there it was: a tree, the biggest tree I had ever seen. The same woman who had led us here banged on the bark and screamed, Let us in! Hide us from the fire! We all echoed her: Hide us! Hide us!

  “A door swung open in the tree. We crowded inside. Inside was a stairwell. And the reason the stairs are blocked is that either the danger hasn’t passed, or… because we asked the tree to hide us, but we forgot the rest. We forgot to tell the tree that it should let us out again once it was safe. It’s just doing what we asked.”

  Gregor pauses.

  “We should be going in that direction.” He points into the murk.

  “How do you know?”

  “I just know.”

  Edith doesn’t feel any such thing, but does as he says.

  HER BACK IS hurting badly when she realizes that the stalactites are trees, and that grey light is filtering down from above. The floor is a carpet of brown needles.

  “Gregor,” she whispers.

  From where he clings to her back, Gregor lets out a small sob. “I know these trees.”

  He slides down from Edith’s back and hobbles over to a tree, resting his cheek on the bark. He turns to Edith, and tears are running down his face. “We’re home.”

  He points upward, and there they are, spheres hanging in branches. Rope ladders trail down from their hatches. The spheres look pristine, waiting for new occupants. Silence is complete.

  “We’re home!” Gregor shouts.

  Edith frowns. “You said this place burned.”

  “Obviously it’s here now,” Gregor says acidly.

  Gregor waves at the spheres. He hobbles over to the nearest rope ladder.

  “Hello? Hello?”

  Thesoft silence eats the sound of Gregor’s voice. He tries to tug at the ladder, but the rope somehow slips out of his fingers. He grabs futilely at it.

  The silence makes Edith’s ears ring. The spheres have no dust on them, no dirt. There’s no trace of the firestorm Gregor talked about.

  “I’m not sure we should be here,” Edith says.

  “I don’t understand why I can’t get the…”

  Gregor throws himself at the rope ladder. He somehow manages to miss it by an arm’s length. He lands on the ground with a huff.

  Edith scoops up a handful of soil and pine needles and sniffs it. Her hand might as well be empty. “Gregor. Shouldn’t the trees smell like trees?”

  “Of course they do,” Gregor replies absently, staring at the ladder. “Look, I’m staying. The others are here, we just have to wait for them to come out.”

  Edith shakes her head. “I don’t want to be here. It’s all wrong. And it’s not home.”

  The look Gregor gives her is full of pity. He’s never looked at her like that before. “I’m sorry.” His right hand is still grabbing for the rope ladder. He doesn’t seem to notice.

  “I’m sorry too, Gregor. I’m leaving.”

  “I’ll be here,” Gregor replies. “I’m climbing up and I’m going to find out what to do. A weaver, maybe. A singer. It depends on what the others are.”

  Edith turns around. She doesn’t look back. The forest seems to push at her back as she leaves.

  THERE’S NO WAY to tell whether she’s walking in the right direction. The stalactites spread out in an irregular grid. She should have a feeling of where to go, like Gregor did, but she doesn’t. Occasionally, she finds traces of others passing through: a scarf, some chewed insect carapaces, dried excrement. She follows them like a trail at first, only to end up where she started. Eventually she just pushes forward without thinking much.

  At last, the rushing in her ears is more than her own blood. It rises and falls, rises and falls, and in the distance shines the warm yellow circle of a cave mouth.

  IT’S AN OCEAN, far below, and Edith is standing on a ledge high up on a cliff wall. The sky is bright blue, fading into white; somewhere behind the cliff is a sun. A path snakes down toward the water. The ocean is green. Edith knows it must be warm, like blood. She steps out onto the ledg
e and follows the little path down. The path ends in a beach, dotted with thousands of tiny holes. She crouches down next to a cluster of them just in time to see a little crab run for shelter. Dark recesses sit in the cliffside. Edith looks into the nearest one; inside is a narrow bed, a little table and two chairs. No dust, no sign that anyone lives there. The only sound is that of waves. Just like Gregor’s rope ladder, it proves impossible to climb into the caves. Somehow her foot falls short of the threshold again and again. She’s not supposed to be in this place, or the place isn’t ready for her. She climbs back up the path.

  THE GLOW OF a lamp lures her out from between the stone pillars. It’s a lantern with glass walls, suspended from the cave ceiling. It lights up a wall of grass that grows higher than her head. It parts before her easily enough, giving off a sharp and herbal scent as she touches the blades. It eventually parts onto a circular clearing. The sky is dark; the only light comes from the lanterns suspended on curved poles over the doors of little houses standing in a tight circle around a high central lamppost. Someone is scuttling between the houses, their movement pattern human but somehow not quite. The caretaker is setting down little brown boxes in front of the door of each house.

  It’s delivery day.

  Edith watches as the caretaker scurries into the high grass, and the sky brightens into a uniform blue, brighter at the edges. People come out of the houses and wave at each other across the lawn. They pick up the boxes, tearing them open with delight. Edith recognizes none of them. They’re dressed just like her but they’re tall and gangly, their skin slightly darker than her own, and with large, shining eyes. She backs away into the grass before any of them can see her.

  EDITH FINDS HER neighbors in a huddle among the stalactites, holding each other and whimpering. Everyone is there. They look at Edith in astonishment as she approaches. The janitor, who no longer has a janitor’s bearing, slowly gets up on her feet.

  “We tried to go home,” she says weakly. “Someone was already there. Are you here to help us?”

  Irma is leaning on the stalactite closest to Edith and hugging her legs. She doesn’t seem to recognize Edith at all.

  “Irma,” Edith says, but Irma doesn’t react to her own name.

  Edith looks at the others. “What happened to you all?”

  They merely gaze at her.

  “We need to go home,” the person who once was Irma whispers.

  “Then why aren’t you walking?”

  No reply, just uncomprehending stares.

  “Come,” Edith says. “We have to go.”

  They meekly get up and follow, shuffling blindly forward. The janitor, if it still is the janitor, takes her hand and holds it so tightly it hurts.

  And finally, a slight tug in Edith’s chest. A direction: this way.

  THE STALAGMITES BECOME thick and rough and stand on upturned blocks with carved faces, and this is a familiar place at last: a colonnade, and the metallic scent of granite and sun-warmed wood, and the sound of voices. Home.

  “This is it,” Edith says. “We’re here.”

  “But there are people here,” the janitor whispers, and points at a person walking further ahead.

  Edith recognizes the gait, that strange grace. They walked just like that when they came to invade and take over. Here they are, usurpers, living in a place that doesn’t belong to them. Someone is living in her house, sleeping in her bed, playing at her profession.

  She looks at the others. Their faces are blank. They have no memory of this. But they do have hunger. It shines out of their eyes.

  “It’s our turn,” Edith says. “This is our place. Let’s take it.”

  And she starts toward the usurper at a walk, and it turns around and sees her, and when it breaks into a run, her heart floods with a wild joy.

  THE BED IS very soft. The hut has just enough room for a bed and a table with chairs. There is also a shelf with some interesting objects. One in particular is very smooth and comfortable to the touch: a bowl edged with soft thorns.

  Outside, the sun has risen almost all the way to zenith. The others are already up, wandering among the houses, picking up objects and talking about them. Their faces are different, and so are their gaits; they have already started. By the platform’s edge, gazing out across the desert, stands a man.

  “Hello.”

  The man turns around. “Hello.” He smiles. “I’m not quite awake yet. You know how you wake up some mornings, and you have to tell yourself, ‘Here I am, Urru-Anneh is my name, and I dive in the sand for shells.’ It’s one of those.”

  “Exactly one of those. I woke up, and I had to remind myself, ‘I’m...”

  Urru-Anneh waits patiently.

  “Arbe-Unna,” she finishes.

  “And where are you going this fine morning, Arbe-Unna?”

  Arbe-Unna hesitates. “I’m on… an errand.”

  “Good luck with your errand then.” Urru-Anneh smiles and turns back to gaze at the desert.

  Arbe-Unna wanders off into the village, where the others are greeting each other and helping each other remember who they are and what they do. A silo stands at the edge of the platform. Inside, it’s very quiet. In the middle of the floor sits a crate on wheels. The crate is filled with little brown parcels. An enticing smell rises from them. Arbe-Unna catches a glimpse of something moving in the loft—a head, an arm?—but when it doesn’t happen again, decides it must have been nothing.

  Arbe-Unna grabs the edge of the crate and pushes it outside. The other villagers throw their hands up in joy when they see the crate and the parcels.

  “Good morning!” cries Arbe-Unna. “It’s me, Arbe-Unna, your janitor.”

  The others cheer, and form an orderly line as the janitor hands them each a parcel. Arbe-Unna chats with each of them, finding out their names and professions. They are more than happy to talk about themselves, sometimes helping each other to remember details. At the end of the ceremony, they’re all good neighbors, although they don’t all agree on how old the village is or who’s related to whom. But that’s how people are.

  It does feel as if someone’s missing, but that might also be because of the dream she had last night. A cave, a forest, a friend who stayed behind. Something had gone wrong. It was a relief to wake up and find everything alright with the world, everyone in their right place.

  ON SKYBOLT MOUNTAIN

  JUSTINA ROBSON

  “THAT IS QUITE enough,” Lettice said firmly as she took hold of Missy Bancroft by the long brown curls at the nape of her neck and reached over to detach her hand from Esther Mann’s blonde plait.

  The hand was sticky with jam and repellently moist with heat from the fighting and the late summer day. It came free only because twelve year old Missy hated the notion of the Widow Lettice Beaverley touching her even more than Lettice hated doing so. Rumour in Far Ashes said Lettice Beaverley was a witch, which was incorrect, but useful at certain moments.

  Missy shrieked at a pitch that would deafen cats and Lettice released her. The child zipped to a safe distance at the centre of the tent leaving Lettice beside the display of jams with the other milling adults. Lettice glanced down at the ruins of Lyda Prufrit’s black cherry compote which had come via wagon and the copper jam pan of Mistress Tyvalt, confectioner and confiturisse to Lord and Lady Bonfort at Wast Castle. There was no trace of an imp in it now. She regretted her choice of sabotage, though not the act itself, as Missy began to shout loudly,

  “The Widow Beaverley has cursed the Prufrit jam! There was a familiar doing something to it. I saw it! I had it in my hand.”

  “It was you in the jam, Pigface!” Esther screamed in retort, hand on her head. Lettice saw sly triumph in her eyes beneath the tears. Esther followed Missy, determined to win the fight regardless of any truth, particularly since it was now a proper spectacle. “And your mother says every year that Miz Prufrit cheats!”

  At that moment every eye in the tent was on the two yelling girls or looking out for an adult to t
ake charge. Lettice glanced down and saw that the jam-marks of the imp’s feet were distinctly visible in two three-clawed footprints on the white linen where Missy’s hand had grappled with it. Missy went for the plaits again and in that moment Lettice took the corner of her apron and made a blithering attempt to clean up. Adults were unable to see The Least Things. If they did they had a way of rationalising any evidence that they existed, which usually worked very well on its own, but she didn’t want to give any substance of any kind to Missy’s claim. Better to be thought an idiot for trying to clean up jam on linen with a dry cloth.

  The event closed with Miz Prufrit taking her jam and her ribbon home, smug and much-consoled through the late afternoon sunshine. Missy and Esther were reconciled as if nothing had ever happened, their hands full of biscuits. They cast dark looks in Lettice’s direction as she put her marmalade away and she knew that she’d made a terrible mistake. Ten years she’d lived here and controlled her sense of fairness and, for the most part, her tongue. She’d done everything to present her best face, knowing stories followed her around like stray dogs, even going so far as to borrow a pan and concoct overly sugary marmalade that was sure to go unplaced at the summer fair so that its appearance would render her the more invisible. Now however, incensed for a moment by the smugness of Lyda’s presentation, she had let her sense of justice get the better of her.

  She spent a little more time circulating among the stalls and then walked home along the roads to where her rented house sat in the lee of the Ivystead farm. All the way she regretted her actions even as she felt righteous of them. She could not abide a cheat or petty cruelty. It was not the first time she had done something that would take root and be the eventual cause of her having to leave somewhere. She was particularly angry because she liked Far Ashes. It was close to the border of Nazuria—the land of the ice warriors, where the people were paler and their customs strange and bizarre, their gods terrifying and their magical practices heretic and cruel. Nazuria was a high land of sorcerers and mountains. It was beyond the edge of the world for the civilised of the Cascar Empire who had surrendered their ancient ways to the Holy Writ after the conquest of the Empress Aturin a century ago.