by Peter
She can speak.
“I – am – not – your toy,” she whispers. Every word is a leaden weight, a stone dragged from some faraway place. “The child – is – not – your – toy.”
She reaches for the mask – which is almost at her lips. She feels the power coiled within the silk, the insistent beat that is also the rhythm of the waves, and the song that has kept Ys from crumbling under the sea – and it’s within her, pulsing in her belly, singing in her veins and arteries.
The mask flows towards her outstretched fingers, clings to them. It’s cold and wet, like rain on parched earth. She shakes her hand, and the mask falls onto the ground, and lies there, inert and harmless: an empty husk.
Like Ys. Like Ahez.
“You dare—” the goddess hisses. Her radiance is wavering, no longer as strong as it was on Douarnenez. She extends a hand: it’s empty for a split second, and then the wavering image of a white spear fills it. The goddess lunges towards Françoise. Out of sheer instinct, Françoise throws herself aside. Metal grates on the stones to her left – not ten centimetres from where she is.
Françoise pushes herself upwards, ignoring the nausea that wells up as she abruptly changes positions. The goddess is coming at her again with her spear.
Françoise is out of breath, and the world won’t stop spinning around her – she can’t avoid the spear forever. The song is deep within her bones, but that doesn’t help – it just adds to her out-of-synch feeling.
The spear brushes past her, draws a fiery line of pain on her hand. She has to—
Behind the goddess, Gaëtan still stands frozen. No, not quite, she realises as she sidesteps once more, stumbling – the nausea rising, rising, screaming at her to lie down and yield. Gaëtan is blinking – staring at her, the eyes straining to make sense of what they see.
He raises a hand, slowly – too slowly, damn it, she thinks as she throws herself on the floor and rolls over to avoid the spear.
It buries itself into her shoulder – transfixes her. She’s always thought she would scream if something like that happened, but she doesn’t. She bites her lips so fiercely that blood fills her mouth. Within her, the pattern she drew on the sand is whirling, endlessly.
The pattern. The dagger. She fumbles for it, tries to extract it from her trousers’ pocket, but she can’t, she’s pinned to the ground. She should have thought of it earlier—
“Your death will not be clean,” the goddess says, as she withdraws the spear for another thrust.
Françoise screams, then. Not her pain; but a name. “Gaëtan!”
His panicked heartbeat is part of the song within her – the nausea, the power shimmering beyond her reach. He’s moving as if through tar, trying to reach her – but he won’t, not in time. There’s not enough time.
But her scream makes the goddess pause, and look up for a split second, as if she’d forgotten something and only just remembered. For a moment only she’s looking away from Françoise, the spear’s point hovering within Françoise’s reach.
Françoise, giving up on releasing the dagger, grasps the haft of the spear instead. She pulls down, as hard as she can.
She’s expected some resistance, but the goddess has no weight – barely enough substance to wield the spear, it seems. Françoise’s savage pull topples her onto the floor, felling her like harvested wheat.
But she’s already struggling to rise – white arms going for Françoise’s throat. At such close quarters, the spear is useless. Françoise makes a sweeping throw with one hand, and hears it clatter on the stones. She fumbles, again, for the dagger – half-out of her pocket this time. But there’s no time. No time...
Abruptly, the white arms grow slack. Something enters her field of view – the point of the spear, hovering above her, and then burying itself in the goddess’s shoulder.
“I don’t think so,” Gaëtan says. His face is pale, his hair dishevelled, but his grip on the spear’s haft doesn’t waver.
Françoise rolls away from the goddess, heaving – there’s bile in her throat, but she can’t even vomit. She finally has her dagger out, but it doesn’t seem like she will need it.
Doesn’t seem...
The goddess hisses like a stricken cat. She twists away, and the spear slides out of her wound as easily as from water. Then, before Gaetan can react, she jumps upwards – both arms extended towards his face.
The spear clatters on the ground. Françoise stifles the scream that rises in her, and runs, her ribs burning. She’s going to be too late – she can’t possibly—
She’s almost there, but the goddess’s arms are already closing around Gaëtan’s throat. There’s no choice. There never was any choice.
Françoise throws the dagger.
She sees everything that happens next take place in slow motion: the dagger, covering the last few hand-spans that separate Françoise from the goddess’s back – the hilt, slowly starting to flip upwards – the blade, burying itself at an angle into the bare white skin – blood, blossoming from the wound like an obscene fountain.
The goddess falls, drawing Gaëtan down with her. Françoise, unable to contain herself anymore, screams, and her voice echoes under the vast ceiling of the throne room.
Nothing moves. Then the goddess’s body rolls aside, and Gaëtan stands up, shaking. Red welts cover his throat, and he is breathing heavily – but he looks fine. He’s alive.
“Françoise?”
She’s unable to voice her relief. Beside him, the goddess’s body is wrinkled and already crumbling into dust – leaving only the dagger, glinting with drowned light.
Within her, the symphony is rising to a pitch – the baby’s heart, her own, mingling in their frantic beat. She hears a voice whispering, the Princess is dead. Ys is dead. Who shall rule on Ahez’s throne?
Once more she’s lifted into that timeless place of the beach, with her pattern shining in moonlight: every street of Ys drawn in painstaking detail.
At the centre of the city, in the palace, is its heart, but it’s not beating as it should. Its valves and veins are too narrow, and not pumping enough blood – it cannot stave off the rot nor keep the sea from eating at the skeletons, but neither will it let the city die.
And it’s her baby’s heart, too – the two inextricably tied, the drowned city, and the baby who should have been its heir.
She has a choice, she sees: she can try to repair the heart, to widen the arteries to let the blood in – perhaps Gaëtan could help, he’s a doctor, after all. She can draw new pathways for the blood, with the same precision as a blueprint – and hope they will be enough.
She wants the baby to live – she wants her five months of pregnancy, her loss of Stéphane, not to have been for nothing, not to have been a cruel jest by someone who’s forgotten what it was to be human.
But there are skeletons in the streets of Ys; crabs and shells scuttling on the paved stones; kelp covering the frescoed walls; and in the centre of the city, in the throne room, the dais is rotten – to the core.
She hears the heartbeat within her, the blood ebbing and flowing in her womb, and she knows, with absolute certainty, that it will not be enough. That she has to let go.
She doesn’t want to. It would be like yielding – did she go all that way for nothing?
But this isn’t about her – there’s nothing she can offer Ys, or the baby.
She closes her eyes, and sees the pattern splayed on the ground – and the heart at the centre.
And in her mind she takes up the dagger, and drives up to the hilt into the pattern.
There’s a scream, deep within her – tendrils of pain twisting within her womb. The pattern contorts and wavers – and it’s disappearing, burning away like a piece of paper given to the flames.
She’s back in her body – she’s fallen to her knees on the floor, both hands going to her belly as if she could contain the pain. But of course she can’t.
Around her, the walls of the palace are shaking.
“Françoise, we have to get out of there!” Gaëtan says.
She struggles to speak through a haze of pain. “I—”
Gaëtan’s hands drag her upwards, force her to stand. “Come on,” he says. “Come on.”
She stumbles on, leaning on his shoulder – through the kelp-encrusted corridors, through the deserted streets and the ruined buildings that are now collapsing. One step after another – one foot in front of the other, and she will not think of the pain in her belly, of the heartbeat within her that grows fainter and fainter with every step.
She will not think.
They’re out of Ys, standing on the beach at Douarnenez with the stars shining above. The drowned city shivers and shakes and crumbles, and the sea is rising – rising once more to reclaim it.
Then there’s nothing left of Ys, only the silvery surface of the ocean, and the waves lapping at their feet. Between Françoise’s legs, something wet and sticky is dripping–and she knows what it has to be.
Gaëtan is looking at the sea; Françoise, shaking, has not the strength to do more than lean on his shoulder. She stares ahead, at the blurry stars, willing herself not to cry, not to mourn.
“You OK?” Gaëtan asks.
She shrugs. “Not sure yet,” she says. “Come on. Let’s go home and grab some sleep.”
Later, there’ll be time for words: time to explain, time to heal and rebuild. But for now, there is nothing left but silence within her – only one heartbeat she can hear, and it’s her own.
I’ll be OK, she thinks, blinking furiously, as they walk back to Gaëtan’s car. Overhead, the stars are fading – a prelude to sunrise. I’ll be OK.
But her womb is empty; and in her mind is the song of her unborn son, an endless lament for all that was lost.
About the Contributors
James Brogden was born in Manchester, grew up in Australia, and now lives with his wife and two daughters in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, where he teaches English. His short stories have appeared in the Big Issue, the British Fantasy Society’s Dark Horizons, Gears Levers Volume One, and his first novel, The Narrows has just been published by Snowbooks. When he’s not writing, or trying to teach children how to, he gets out into the mountains exploring the remains of Britain’s prehistoric past and hunting for standing stones. Fortunately they don’t run very fast.
http://jamesbrogden.blogspot.co.uk/
Aliette de Bodard lives and writes in Paris, France, in a flat with more computers than warm bodies, and two Lovecraftian plants in the process of taking over the living room, one tentacle at a time. In her spare time, she writes speculative fiction: her Aztec noir fantasy Obsidian and Blood is published by Angry Robot, and she has been a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula Awards, and has won the British Science Fiction Association Award.
http://aliettedebodard.com
Pauline E Dungate, until recently, was a teacher at the local Museum and Art Gallery. Her stories have appeared in anthologies such as Skin of the Soul, Narrow Houses, Swords Against the Millennium, Beneath the Ground, Merlin, Victorious Villains and Under the Rose. She has won prizes for poetry and has been a judge for the Arthur C Clarke Award. She reviews for SFCrowsnest and runs workshops covering all areas of creative writing. She lives in Birmingham with husband and fellow writer Chris Morgan.
Lynn M Cochrane lives in the outskirts of Birmingham. She has been writing most of her life and has produced three collections of poems. She has had a few short stories published in convention publications, including Raw Edge, the West Midlands Arts publication. She is a member of Cannon Hill Writers’ Group, leading writing workshops from time to time, and is currently editor of their showcase anthology Salvo.
Adrian Cole, a native of Devon, is the author of twenty-five novels, beginning with The Dream Lords in the 1970s, through The Omaran Saga and the Star Requiem to the Voidal Saga in 2011. He is also the author of numerous fantasy and horror short stories, and has been published in Year’s Best Fantasy and Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Forthcoming from Edge Books is the novel The Shadow Academy, and he has a short story in The Worlds of Cthulhu anthology due soon from Fedogan and Bremer. Adrian also has a story in The Alchemy Press Book of Pulp Heroes.
Peter Crowther is the recipient of numerous awards for writing, editing, and as publisher of the hugely successful PS Publishing (which includes Stanza Press, the Drugstore Indian mass market paperbacks, PS Visual Entertainment and PS Art Books). As well as being widely translated, his short stories have been adapted for TV on both sides of the Atlantic, and collected in The Longest Single Note, Lonesome Roads, Songs of Leaving, Cold Comforts, The Spaces Between the Lines, The Land at the End of the Working Day and the upcoming Jewels in the Dust. He is the co-author (with James Lovegrove) of Escardy Gap and The Hand That Feeds, and has also written the Forever Twilight SF/horror cycle. He lives and works with his wife and business partner Nicky Crowther on England’s Yorkshire coast. Pete’s story “Heroes and Villains” appears in The Alchemy Press Book of Pulp Heroes.
www.pspublishing.co.uk
Bryn Fortey appeared in various anthologies during the 1970s, including: New Writings in Horror & the Supernatural and New Writings in SF. He was also published in various Fontana anthologies edited by Mary Danby. Bryn’s beat-styled poetry magazine Outlaw was Best UK Small Press Magazine of 2004 in the Purple Patch Awards. In the same year he won the Undercurrent Aber Valley Short Story Competition with “The Dying Game”. In 2009 his “A Taxi Driver on Mars” was first in the Data Dump Awards for SF poetry in the UK. Bryn hales from South Wales.
Dominic Harman is an illustrator and graphic designer who is best known for his science fiction, fantasy and horror book jackets and CD covers. He has won many awards for his paintings and designs in the UK and the USA. Dominic’s work can be found on the book covers for Harper Collins, Subterranean Press, Quercus, Dell Rey/Ballantine, Macmillian, Simon and Schuster, Penguin, Gollancz, Orion, Orbit and Little, Brown amongst many others.
http://bleedingdreams.com
Misha Herwin has been writing since she could first hold at pen. At twelve she wrote and staged her first play in a theatre made from a cardboard box. Since then her plays for teenagers have been performed in schools by the Stagefright Theatre Company and at the Canadian High Commission in Jamaica. She has published the Dragonfire Trilogy for kids and her stories can be found in a number of anthologies and magazines including Hens, Bitch Lit and Ghostly Reflections. “The Dragon Who Came to School” was broadcast by ABC Tales.
http://misha-herwin-writer.blogspot.com/
John Howard was born in London. He is the author of the collection The Silver Voices and the novella The Defeat of Grief. His short fiction has appeared in several anthologies, including Beneath the Ground, Never Again, and The Touch of the Sea. John has collaborated with Mark Valentine on a number of short stories, six of which featured Valentine’s long-running occult detective The Connoisseur. These tales have been reprinted in The Collected Connoisseur. Most recent to appear is Secret Europe, (written with Mark Valentine) to which John contributed ten of the twenty-five stories, set in a variety of real and fictional European locations.
Selina Lock is a mild-mannered librarian from Leicester. In her alternative life in comics she edits The Girly Comic, and has written strips for Ink+PAPER #1 and Sugar Glider Stories #2. She also helped organise the Caption comics convention between 2006-2011. Her short stories have appeared in Alt Zombie and The Terror Scribes Anthology. She is one half of Factor Fiction alongside her partner Jay Eales. Her daily life is spent in service to the god Loki, who currently inhabits the body of a small, black, scruffy terrier.
www.factorfictionpress.co.uk
William Meikle is a Scottish writer with fifteen novels published and over 250 short story credits in thirteen countries. His work has appeared in a number of anthologies; recent short stories were sold to Nature Futures, Penumbra and Daily Science Fiction. He now lives in a remote corner of Newfoundland, Canada, with icebergs, whale
s and bald eagles for company. In the winters he gets warm vicariously through the lives of others in cyberspace. William also has a story in The Alchemy Press Book of Pulp Heroes.
www.williammeikle.com
Anne Nicholls, author, journalist and counsellor, has had ten books published in SF and the self-help field, with sales from Sweden to Mexico, the USA to China, plus a ten-year Internet presence as agony aunt for Tiscali and the Department for Children, Schools and Families. Her highly acclaimed novels Mindsail and The Brooch of Azure Midnight appeared under the name of Anne Gay, and Dancing on the Volcano was entered for the Arthur C Clarke Award. For four years she was also the editor of LineOne's Science Fiction Zone, which had around 140,000 readers every month. She is currently working on a YA fantasy trilogy. Anne also features in The Alchemy Press Book of Pulp Heroes.
Adrian Tchaikovsky was born in Lincolnshire, studied and trained in Reading and now lives in Leeds. He is known for the Shadows of the Apt fantasy series starting with Empire in Black and Gold, and currently up to book eight, The Air War. His hobbies include stage-fighting, and tabletop, live and online role-playing.
www.shadowsoftheapt.com
Shannon Connor Winward’s writing has appeared in many venues including: Pedestal Magazine, Flash Fiction Online, Strange Horizons, Illumen, This Modern Writer [Pank Magazine], Hip Mama Zine and the anthologies Twisted Fairy Tales: Volume Two, Jack-o’-Spec: Tales of Halloween and Fantasy and Spectacular: Fantasy Favorites. Her poem “All Souls’ Day” is nominated for a 2012 Rhysling Award.
http://ladytairngire.livejournal.com
About the Editors
Jenny Barber is a regular contributor to the Girls’ Guide to Surviving the Apocalypse blog, runs the Shiny Shorts review site, edited Here & Now magazine, and has run conventions and edited several publications for the British Fantasy Society. She was one of the judges for the BFS Best Newcomer awards in 2010, 2011 and 2012 and is currently studying for a History BA with the Open University.
