End of the Road

by Jonathan Oliver

  He heard a rush of footsteps behind him and the clatter of pebbles as the one following him came to a stop.

  “I’m sorry,” that one said breathlessly. “I didn’t see you stop.”

  Arbo had seen the male sitting at the side of the road, but he had felt no need to acknowledge that seeing. What use was there in trying to wind his tongue around unfamiliar syllables when he would only be passing through?

  A presence pulsed in the air, like a lodestone, reminding him of his mission. The path across the valley was not so long that he would need to stop and speak with any of its dwellers. He would simply follow the road that wound down through the rice fields. In his true form, he could have sailed across the deep gorges, but he was restrained by this body and by the memory of the hunt.

  “I have never seen you before,” the male said now. “You must be Injuti’s child. My name is Kagawan. I am a hunter and a warrior.”

  Arbo stared at him, and after a while the male looked away. Red crept up the male’s neck.

  “Ah,” Kagawan said. “You are proud. Even if you are beautiful to look at, you are hard and cold and without a heart.”

  Kagawan’s words were harsh and angry, but beneath the words there was pain. Remembering his own agony in the time of the hunt, Arbo reached out his hand.

  Instantly, Kagawan looked up. The red receded and understanding dawned in those eyes.

  “Ah,” Kagawan said. “I have been rude and wicked. Forgive me. It’s not your fault that you can’t speak.”

  KAGAWAN.

  Arbo tested the name inside his head. He thought of the sound it made and of the being it was attached to even as he resumed his journey.

  Kagawan strode beside him. Lean muscle bunched and stretched with each stride. If he had been a guardian, Kagawan would have been a formidable opponent. But like this, they were equal. Arbo could not and would not challenge him to battle.

  Arbo wondered that this Kagawan insisted on walking beside him, when he had not extended an invitation. But perhaps it was the way of the valley people and so he decided to allow it.

  As they passed through the village center, they were stopped by groups of young males and young females. The young males wished to know who Kagawan’s companion was, but when they heard whose daughter she was and that she could not speak, their interest dwindled.

  The females stared at them, and some of them came up and spoke boldly to Kagawan.

  “Who is that?” they asked. “And why do you walk by her side?”

  “A friend,” Kagawan said. “I met her on the path coming down from Hungduan.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Somewhere.”

  “Somewhere? Why won’t you tell us, Kagawan?”

  The females cajoled with their smiles and their voices, but they could not conceal their jealousy or their desire.

  “I am her escort,” Kagawan said.

  Arbo turned his head and met Kagawan’s gaze.

  “Going to the river, then?” one of the older females asked. “To the waterfall, maybe?”

  Kagawan made a sound that seemed like assent.

  The females smiled now and emitted an odor that made Arbo sneeze.

  “Oh,” said one of them. “But if she catches a cold, she won’t be any use at all, will she? Wouldn’t it be far better to take one of us then?”

  “I won’t take one of you,” Kagawan said. “I have given my word and I won’t break it.”

  WHILE KAGAWAN EXCHANGED words with those they met, Arbo absorbed the changes in the valley. Metal carriers moved by making put-put sounds and expelling a noxious white smoke. Once dusty paths were now covered with a rough black top that smelled like burnt rubber.

  Foliage still grew wild beside the road, but stone walls had been erected all along the edge. Memory rose in him of a time when there was nothing more than a path trampled down by bare feet. A recollection of drums thrumming and voices shouting and the screaming of his kin as they were hunted down and slain–

  A hand on his arm drew him back to the present.

  “I’m sorry for the delay,” Kagawan said. “We can go on now.”

  He stared at Kagawan and saw uncertainty dawn in the young male’s eyes.

  “Please don’t be angry,” Kagawan said. “I won’t talk to the girls anymore. Not if it upsets you.”

  Arbo shook his head. It was not the conversation that had unsettled him. It was the rush of memory and the sudden knowledge that if he was found out, Kagawan would not hesitate to kill him as those other hunters had killed his kind.

  He must have made a distressed sound for Kagawan’s hand shot out and imprisoned his wrist.

  “Don’t,” Kagawan said. “One more step and you’ll fall off the mountain.”

  Behind him, a piece of wall had broken away and if Kagawan had not caught him he would have fallen into the gorge.

  He stared at his wrist and at the hand encircling it. Kagawan’s hand was browned by the sun and calloused by years of wielding knife and spear in the hunt. He could feel the strong pulse of something that felt like fear. He looked up. There in Kagawan’s eyes was a look that was kindred to that which was mirrored in the eyes of the females they had talked to.

  THEY WENT ON in silence after that. Arbo lengthened his stride, wanting to reach the end of this journey. He was unsettled by the scent of the male who matched him stride for stride. He did not know what to think of the hand that still encircled his wrist like a shackle.

  How frail was the hand of the being he’d chosen to transform into. He realized it when he strove to free himself from Kagawan’s grip.

  “Don’t,” Kagawan said. “This way, they will understand we are together.”

  They passed through the center of the town without stopping or being stopped, and Arbo’s heartbeat quickened as he picked up a scent in the air. It was very faint, but it was enough. His mate was still at a distance, but she was not unattainable.

  Down they went – past a gaggle of ostentatious shelters made out of stone and wood, down along the winding path where dwellings made out of corrugated iron and dried grass stood with their doorways open to the street.

  Impatience rose in him. In his true self, he could stretch his wings and float on the wind currents. In his true form, he would reach his female before nightfall. He looked up at the sky anxiously. His heat would end on the third day and with it all hope of producing offspring.

  THEY STOPPED WHEN they reached the river.

  One of the houses stood open and there were people walking in and out of it. Some were valley dwellers and some had skin paler than Arbo’s palm.

  He tried not to stare because to stare was to draw attention.

  “Aunty Jane,” Kagawan said.

  A female came towards them. She was slender and small-boned, her skin was wrinkled from the sun and she wore a bright red scarf around her head.

  “Aunty Jane,” Kagawan said. “Feed us.”

  “Hungry boy,” the female called Aunty Jane scolded. “And who is this? Is this your girl?”

  As when Arbo had refused to speak to him, red crept up along Kagawan’s neck.

  “I am her escort,” Kagawan said. “She can’t speak, Aunty. But I have decided to go with her and protect her.”

  “Hm,” Aunty Jane said.

  Arbo met her stare with one of his own. Even if he wanted to, he could not find the words to speak to her of his own quest. So instead, he bared his teeth and tilted the edges of his mouth upwards as the other females had done.

  “Come,” Aunty Jane said. “In the back, there is still plenty.”

  After they had eaten, Kagawan made their excuses. Arbo wondered if Aunty Jane could see the true image of him that lay beneath the transformation. Her gaze was curious though and not at all hostile and so he bowed his head and kissed her hands in the same way that Kagawan did.

  “A good girl,” Aunty Jane said. “Seek out her elders, you hear?”

  Kagawan laughed.

  THEY WAL
KED ON and now that they had rested and had been fed, Arbo felt fresh energy flow through him. They quickly left the valley behind and he raised his head every now and then to catch a whiff of the female’s scent.

  “Over there is Nasagsagi-an,” Kagawan said. “Is that where you wish to go?”

  Arbo followed the direction in which his companion pointed, to where a curtain of white was surrounded by the green of foliage and the black of rock. He could smell the female now. She was there, somewhere on the other side of that waterfall.

  THEIR CLIMB UPWARDS to Nasagsagi-an was not easy. In some places, the ground was still muddy from the rains and the path was slick and slippery.

  Kagawan did not let go of Arbo’s hand and even though he sometimes slipped, he never fell.

  On they climbed. Above them, the blue took on a darker hue. Wind ruffled the stalks of rice and whispered through the tiger grass and Arbo’s nostrils were filled with the sweet smell of Kagawan’s sweat. He wondered what Kagawan would taste like. But grown males of his kind never fed on the flesh of living beings.

  Night flowed around them and the air grew cool. The path leveled out. Someone had laid stones on the clay paths around the paddies, making it easier to walk. It was full dark now and Arbo stumbled as Kagawan came to a stop.

  “We’re here,” Kagawan said.

  Fireflies danced in the glade where Kagawan had come to a stop. Above the cool clean smell of water, Arbo scented her. It was the female he had been seeking. She was very close, and her heat called to him just as clearly as if she had whispered the mating call in his ear.

  Excitement shivered through him and Kagawan turned. Even in the dark, Arbo could see the hot light in Kagawan’s eyes.

  “You feel it too,” Kagawan said.

  And just like that he drew Arbo into his embrace.

  AS IF SENSING Arbo’s confusion, Kagawan’s lips were soft and teasing. His teeth nipped and his tongue licked until Arbo could not keep himself from opening up.

  Heat rushed through Arbo as Kagawan’s taste flowed onto his tongue. His female was nearby, she was waiting and yet Kagawan’s need awakened a response in him. A whisper of memory came to him, but even as he reached for it, it faded in the heat of Kagawan’s urgency.

  Kagawan’s arms pressed him closer and he could feel a throbbing at the base of his spine. Warmth pooled there, and a sense of waiting.

  “Let me,” Kagawan’s voice was hot in his ear.

  They sank to earth, and Kagawan’s fingers were plying and playing over his breasts and the length of his legs and the warm place between that was lush and moist.

  “Open,” Kagawan whispered.

  There was a quick jolt and he felt Kagawan inside him. A high keening wail escaped Arbo’s lips. Kagawan was a presence that throbbed and pulsed in his clasping heat. He was conscious of Kagawan’s breath, of the smell of betelnut on him, of the bittersweet taste of Kagawan’s tongue, of Kagawan’s mouth on his chest and of something electric passing from himself to where Kagawan’s presence was a living thing that pushed and tugged at his other senses.

  He inhaled the scent of blooming nightflowers, crushed grass, stirred up earth, Kagawan’s sweat and the sweat of this form he had taken on, and then above all that, so strong it drowned everything else, the hot fecund scent of his mate.

  AFTERWARDS, KAGAWAN GATHERED Arbo close and spoke promises of rites and sacrifice and pigs and chickens. His words slurred into one another and before long he fell asleep.

  Arbo pushed away from the sleeping male. He stood and stared down at the body that had been joined to his. He could feel the wetness of Kagawan’s release between his thighs and the scent of their joining still lingered in the air.

  But now, an urgency overtook him. His mate was near and it was the height of his heat and hers. With a last glance at Kagawan, he stretched himself to his full height.

  Ruwaaarrr...

  He called to her now and on the heels of his call came her reply.

  IT WAS CLOSE to midnight when Arbo found her. She had built her nest in the arms of a great banyan and it was only after he’d taken to the air that he sighted her.

  She sighed and opened her arms as he descended. Her talons extended in greeting and he sank into her embrace.

  He was overcome by the musk of her heat, and when she pierced his skin, he was too caught up in exaltation to feel any pain. Over and over, she pierced him and over and over he spent himself until her scent changed and he knew with certainty that she would bear his young.

  He was still in a frenzy when she split him open. He did not flinch when she tore his flesh to shreds.

  This was part of the cycle. His heart and his liver would nourish her and their young. His skin and his intestines would line the nest. His bones, his talons, his wings would become part of her shelter while she waited for the young ones to be born.

  In his final throes all he knew was ecstasy.

  EARLY IN THE morning, Kagawan arose. He looked around for the girl, but he could not find her. He called, but she did not come.

  Perhaps she had gone to relieve herself.

  He waited and then he searched all around the waterfall.

  When he found no trace of her, he decided to return to the valley. Perhaps she had not understood his intention to marry her. He had never felt such a complete and profound joining as what he had had with her.

  For many days, he searched. At first, he went to Injuti, but she looked at him as if he were the one gone mad. And when he asked in Hungduan, they knew nothing of a girl who could not speak. Everywhere he went, he asked, but no one knew anything of her.

  “Let her go,” they said to him.

  “She bewitched you.”

  “She was a spirit.”

  “She was Nahipan.”

  He grew silent and withdrawn and whenever the valley dwellers saw him, he was always headed towards Nasagsagi-an.

  “I must find her,” became his constant litany.

  He didn’t notice when the change came upon him. He didn’t see the lengthening of his nails, the broadening of his hands, the way his fingers were turning into talons.

  I’M THE LADY OF GOOD TIMES, SHE SAID

  HELEN MARSHALL

  When I saw Helen Marshall reading from her story ‘Blessed’ at the World Fantasy Convention in 2012, it struck me that she read like a poet – the pacing and voice she employed highlighting the lyrical cadences of her tale. This encounter with Helen’s fiction lead me to purchase a copy of her debut collection, Hair Side, Flesh Side (ChiZine Publications, 2012) which in turn lead me to ask to her to contribute a story for this anthology. What follows is a weird road story filtered through the sensibilities of the poets of the Beat Generation – a hauntingly original piece, marking Helen out as one of genre’s fast-rising stars.

  IT’S BARELY PAST midnight on the crumpled asphalt ribbon of Route 66, west of Ash Fork, just past the bridge at the Crookton Road exit on Interstate 40.

  We’re in an old, beat-up Studebaker Champ, and disaster is playing like a love song on the radio.

  Carl rides shotgun.

  You wouldn’t like Carl much. Not many apart from Juney do, but Juney’s got a blind spot for hard luck cases and Carl’s the most hard luck case of all, not counting myself. I know Carl. I bailed him out the time he beat up that girl for short-changing him at the 7-11. The cops told me they had to haul him away, screaming, “For a two-buck tip, you better show me your cock-chafing titties, you little whore!”

  I never told Juney about that. We aren’t much the kind to keep secrets, but he’s her brother, and I spent enough nights on the couch in the early years to know when to let a thing go.

  The lady of the Ill Wind Blowing, indeed.

  So Carl’s riding shotgun and I’m in the driver’s seat, because I sure as Hell wouldn’t let him touch the fucking steering wheel. Even now.

  Carl’s angry. You can tell by the way he’s grinding his teeth – been doing that since he’s a kid, I imagine, so’s now they�
�re small and smooth like pebbles, rubbed down to raw little nubblins that hurt him to chew, but he does it anyway.

  The other way you can tell Carl’s angry is the Colt. He’s got it trained on me. He’s draped an old U of A football jersey (rah rah, Wild Cats, huh?) over the barrel. Only we two know there’s a gun under it.

  But I know. Yes, I do.

  It’s my Pappy’s Colt. Same one he used to renovate the back of his skull when I was seventeen. I don’t like guns. Must be the only fella in Mojave Country who don’t, but once you’ve seen what a Colt does, what it’s made for – which is turning a living, breathing human bean into ground chuck – well, the shine goes off fast.

  Juney and Carl were raised different. Carl’s been shooting beer cans out in the desert since he was five. I seen him at his place with an old air rifle he musta got as a kid. He could pump it just right to pop a fly outta the air, leave him stunned but whole. Kept ’em in canning jars until they suffocated, bumbling like a drunk up against the glass.

  Carl knew guns. He knew where I kept the Colt, and I only kept it for Juney. So she’d feel safe. That’s a laugh now.

  Carl’s shifting the gun. I can’t see under the shirt, but I can feel instinctively – hair on the back of my neck prickling with sweat – that he’s got his finger on the trigger. He’s stroking it. My skin crawls because he could be masturbating for all I can see, that wet gleam in his eyes and his tongue darting out like a lizard’s between his chafed lips.

  He’d be crazy to pull the trigger now. I’ve got my hands on the wheel and we’re clocking over sixty, it’d kill us both. But that look in his eyes? He don’t give a damn. That’s what scares me.

  So we drive.

  I can feel the barrel trained on me. I can see the twitch of his finger. Clutch and release. Clutch and release.