by Rich Horton
Easy for him to say, who wanted and paid nothing. Who had not found, sluicing off soapsuds in the shower, the birthmark that had tattooed itself around one ankle, dapples as random as watered silk and delicately charcoal-grey; who had not woken from a nap to find that the piercings in his ears had healed over while he slept, and punched them anew with a needle heated over the stove’s gas flame; whose children would think a skyful of scattered suns natural, and never startle at seeing them wink like heat-haze among early-morning skyscrapers. Sam raised one hand to pinch the bridge of her nose hard, halted the gesture to look at the candlelight flicking warm sparks from the band of plain gold on her fourth finger.
“You promised to spoil my wedding,” she said slowly, remembering. “If I married anyone besides you. Years ago you said that, and I was still actually worried, waiting for you to show up. Lucas had to promise he’d personally beat up anyone who stood up in the middle of the ceremony, even if it was his grandmother—you’d like him, I think. So I thought you knew. You swore…”
“I know, I know: oak, ash, thorn, and bone. I know.” Rueful and shyly defiant, a glance across the no longer incalculable space between them, “I boasted.”
“I believed you!”
“Well.” The familiar smile like a lick of flame across his dark face, slowly gathering color and confidence back to itself like the sun kindling in a burning-glass, refractions in a prism. “That will teach you.”
Once she might have kissed him, to take that smile from his face. Now she leaned her head back against the draped wall, immovable as belief, as friable, and laughed. “So,” she said softly, when even her smile had faded, “you can’t stop it.”
“No. I am sorry.” Cross-legged with his back to the rusted clepsydra that had run dry years ago, its tall brass mechanism set with the enameled faces of planets and stars, houses of the heavens and wandering orbits, no zodiac of Sam’s sky, Chion laid his walking stick across his lap and looked her over. Head to foot, the usual differences and the odd; tabulating, and perhaps not caring. Sam returned his scrutiny: her stranger. Not hers. She had never asked what Lucas saw, when he looked at a river, or a sunrise, or her. Perhaps she should look more closely. Perhaps she should ask; and hope that, whatever beautiful monster might look back from her mirror in time, Lucas’ eyes were better than her own.
Chion’s face was quiet, considering. Over her shoulder, as she rose to her feet and began to look again through molecules and void with her eyes as bright as limes, secondhand sight, Sam said, “Just hope that the kid inherits from me. Because this will be sad all round if she never gets to meet her godfather.”
Both, and he had laughed in the same wry surprise. Standing again among frost and bare-branched shadows, Sam thought for a moment that she could still hear him. But she looked back and saw only sunlight, moving like a maze on the unremarkable brick.
JANE, by Marc Laidlaw
The first we knew of the travelers was the tinkling of our falcon’s silver bell. She landed on our Father’s glove, and he leant his whiskered cheek against her beak. When he raised his head there was a look in his eyes I had not seen before.
He sighed and put his hand on my head and said, —Jane, go tell your mother we have visitors.
I walked across the wet grass to the house, and I heard him whispering to the bird as he clipped the leash to the silver varvels in her leather jesses. He climbed the porch and set her on her perch, and sat beside her in his rocking chair, oiling his glove and watching the bamboo thicket through the afternoon, while I stayed inside and played with little Anna to keep her out of mother’s way.
The sun was at five fists when the travelers appeared. They stood at the edge of the clearing, staring at the house as if they feared it, until our Father rose and crossed the grass to greet them.
Two men and a woman. Although I studied them so closely that our Father had to shoo me away, I never thought to ask their names nor anything else about them. I only listened to the questions our Father asked, and to the answers they gave, and in so doing I learned as many new things about our Father as I learned about the visitors. I learned he had once lived in the city, which surprised me greatly since he had never told us he knew its evils from experience. I learned he had once been a traveler himself, with intimate knowledge of the roads he forbade us approach. I learned he spoke languages I’d never heard him speak until that night, when the three travelers stayed and shared our supper.
I remember steaming crocks of stew; mother’s dense loaves of dark bread with cracked corn toasted into it; falcon-caught squab and squirrel, and wild pig my brothers had brought back from that day’s hunt. I remember the glow of the lantern light in the travelers’ eyes and the loudness of their voices as they drank our Father’s wine and then his brandy late into the night.
Somehow Anna and I were forgotten, we girls allowed to stay up and listen, as if this were a special lesson. We knew it was rare. Even our brothers, old as they were, had never seen visitors before. Sometimes while hunting they heard the sound of travelers on the far-off road, but our Father always hushed them and made them retreat in utter silence so as to betray nothing of our presence. It was for the same reason they hunted with crossbows and never a gun. And although our Father had once been a fine shot, he now relied completely on his falcon.
The travelers admired his falcon greatly and asked many questions as she perched near the table with the family. They remarked on the intricate designs on her polished silver bell and varvels, and I warmed with pride, for it was my task to keep the little cuff rings untarnished, although the designs etched in them meant little to me, being letters in a language I could not read. The lady traveler said the falcon was the bird of royals, to which my father replied, —Birds do not distinguish one type of man from another but will accept any master who treats them with dignity.
To prove his point, he took his huge glove and slipped it on my brother Ash’s hand, and the falcon flew to Ash and landed on the glove.
And the woman said, —But the son of a royal is still a royal.
Then I noticed one of the men staring very hard at the glove, and the emblem stitched upon it, which always fascinated me though I knew not what it meant. It was a hook like a question mark with a barbed arrow for a tip and a slanted line cut through it, as if the question had been struck out.
I had seen the emblem all my life, but it had never meant a thing to me until I saw the travelers looking at it with such wonder. Our Father must have seen them looking as well, for he sent Ash to take the falcon to her mews and then began to question how they had happened upon us.
They had lost the road, they said, in a night of rain. They should have stopped and made camp but had hoped to find an inn.
—What night was this? our Father asked, for it had been dry several nights now; but the travelers could not say how long they had wandered. They asked if we knew the way back to the road, and Father nodded.
—My sons and I will see you there safely in the morning, he said.
This surprised me greatly, for our Father had commanded us to keep well clear of the road, my brothers most of all. I think he feared they would use it to escape, but in truth they were more scared of what lay at the ends of that road than of our Father.
At this time, Anna began to grow upset beneath her hood, which normally kept her so calm; and my mother bade me take her to bed. This made me angry, as I hated to miss any of the rare evening; but when the lady traveler made a comment about Anna being too old for such devices and said that the world no longer looked kindly on the practice, I rose and took Anna’s hand and led her away so that the woman would not see how much she had offended me, for my own hood had not been off for long at all.
Sometime later I found myself in my own bed, with Anna’s arms around me and voices coming from the next room where the firelight still flickered. I loosened Anna’s arms and went to see who spoke. The table had been cleared. I saw my parents standing over the sleeping forms of the travelers, w
rapped in their bedrolls by the low-banked fire.
Our Father must have heard me, for he turned and gave me a look of grave concern and tenderness such as I had rarely seen on his hard, hard face. Then my mother followed his gaze and saw me watching. She crossed the room and turned me gently back toward my bed, but not before I saw that in our Father’s hands, its head full of warm orange light, he held an ax.
—Back to bed, Jane, she told me.
The sight of the ax meant less than the look of tender love. Nor did I fully wake to the sharp sounds that came soon after, while my mother stroked my hair and told me that our Father loved us more than anything and had taken every step to see we lived in safety, and would do whatever he must to make sure no one ever threatened that, or us.
We were his sweet, sweet angels.
That night I dreamt I was an angel, flying in the clear night air, and around my neck I wore a tinkling silver bell, and around my ankles leather cuffs with silver rings that bore my name. And in the morning, the travelers were gone. We found mother washing the floor and cleaning up after having fed them early and sent them on their way. She scrubbed the house so thoroughly that soon there was no sign they had ever passed through, and for once she did not insist that Anna and I share the chores but bid us go amuse ourselves outside. We went as far as the bamboo thicket, I leading Anna by the hand as she could not be unhooded until our Father’s return, since the hooding was always and only at his discretion. I thought to look for the departed travelers’ tracks. Then Anna said she heard something, and I stopped and listened with her. From far off we heard sounds that continued through much of the morning, rising and falling but never going any farther, never coming any closer until some time past noon when we heard our Father and brothers crashing through the jungle from a direction I had never associated with the road. We had been listening to them all along.
—We took the long way round, my brother Olin said. The river was in flood and forced a detour.
—Yes, our Father said. But we saw them off all right in the end.
Olin and Father chuckled, but Ash looked angry and threw aside the machete he carried for cutting through undergrowth. He stormed off, with our Father glowering after him. We were all used to his moods.
Our Father scooped up Anna and unhooded her, to cover her rosy cheeks with kisses; and Olin took my hand; and we turned to see mother waiting on the porch, smiling as we crossed the grass. It was the kind of moment I had always known. It was as if the visitors had never come. But everything had changed without my knowing it.
For the next few weeks, our Father forbade Olin and Ash to hunt, although with winter coming on, this made no sense to me. Already there were fewer birds, the great migrations having passed; and the prey available to our Father’s falcon was scarce. Ash began to stomp about, and although he never spoke against our Father, his anger became a thing you could almost touch, though it would burn your fingers.
Our Father finally eased his restrictions when mother wept about the state of the larder. There were signs that winter would come early and harsh and outstay its welcome by many weeks. I was there at the edge of the clearing when he sent my brothers out with express instructions to hunt until the sun was at five fists and no lower. I was there when the sun sank to five and then four fists. It was almost night when Olin finally stumbled from the jungle in tears. He had argued with Ash, and they had fought; Ash had struck him in the temple with a broken branch and fled while he was down. Olin had followed as far as he dared. And our Father said, —How far was that? Through sobs Olin said he had seen Ash step onto the road and set off in the direction of the city.
That night, after hours of sorting through belongings and packing them into old canvas knapsacks from the shed, we left the house. Anna and I did not ask where we were going, or when we might return, but Father put on his glove and fetched his falcon from her mews, and I knew we were going far and would be gone for a long time. Anna was hooded against the fearful shapes of the night, and it fell to me to take her hand; and I remembered when I had been much younger myself and how it felt to be led along through darkness, trusting completely in the hand that guided me; and the smell of the hood; and I almost wished for that same security now. But I was a girlchild no longer; I had left the years of hooding behind when our Father felt I was too old for it, so the sheltering blindness was Anna’s luxury and not mine. I tried to be a good guide, in spite of needing guidance myself. At first I thought we were heading to the road, in search of Ash, but Olin said no, the road was in the opposite direction. Sunrise proved him right. We were somewhere in the jungle I had never been, following a track the wild pigs and small deer must have made. Our Father knew it well enough to have guided us in the dark. My mother moved carefully, without complaining, though I knew her joints were swollen and always troubled her. When Anna began to complain, Olin picked her up and carried her, even though his pack was heavy. From that point on, I walked in front with our Father, holding his free right hand.
When I looked up at our Father, I saw the hardness there, and the worry; but in catching his eye, I also saw the love that drove him, and I felt such love in return that I never thought to question where we went, or why.
We rested as often as we dared. Our Father was mindful of Anna and me and solicitous of my mother’s pains. You never would have thought he’d had any infirmities himself; he strode along as powerfully as my brother. When we stopped to make camp at the end of the day, he built us a shelter against the night rain; then he sent up his falcon, and before long we heard her bell and she descended with a bright-plumed bird that we roasted over a small fire. Our Father joked that he should teach her to catch bats, and then we should be well fed. But he put out the fire as soon as we were done, and I heard him whispering to my mother that we dared not make another. The falcon took stand in a branch above our camp, where I could hear her wings rustling in the dark from time to time. Among all the noises of the jungle I found comfort in that sound.
The morning of the second day, we woke and marched, and that day was like a dreary dream. Anna could be carried, but I could not, and I wished that like our falcon I could fly aloft to take the weight off my blistered feet. Yet I tried not to complain, especially after looking upon my mother, who said not a word although you could see in her face that she thought of nothing but Ash.
The third day dawned in horror. We woke to screaming and woeful calls, which came from somewhere we could not imagine. Our Father needed not caution us to silence, for none of us would have made a sound against the awful cries. They seemed to fill the jungle, echoing from every shadow. And as the sun rose and filled the dark places with light, the sound grew stronger, moving now this way, now that, as if buffeted by the wind.
We crept through the woods, away, always away from our homestead, but the screaming trailed us. My mother wept silently, and Olin’s face was pale and our Father’s grim beyond belief. He must have known immediately what the rest of us did not, for it was hours before mother said, —It’s Ash! And he nodded only once.
We did not sleep that night. Nor did Ash by the sound of it, for the sourceless, ceaseless wailing roamed the dark, ragged and full of pain. On this night there was no rain, and the clouds kept back as if agreed the moon should shine on us remorselessly. We cowered in a clearing and tried to rest, and as I looked up at the moon I tried to make my peace with it and prayed it would keep watch over us somehow. I did not know what other power to pray to.
Then across the face of the moon, something drifted like a skeletal kite; but only the bars of the kite, with the sail itself all twisted and in tatters. And then I woke, thinking it was a dream, but did not wake, for it was not a dream. The kite drifted untethered, under its own power, and the thing that writhed upon it began to scream and beg for death and mercy. It cried out in my brother’s voice:
—Father! Mother! Anna! Olin!
—Jane! it called, for I was always his favorite. Jane!
We all lay still as it passed
above. Something fell from it and splattered on my face like a raindrop, a tear, or more likely blood. I only stirred to check that Anna’s hood was fastened so she would not be too frightened, and then not a one of us moved. I saw that our Father had put his hand over mother’s mouth so that she would not make a sound and betray us. And though at first she wept and moaned, in time she grew quiet.
For hours it hung there. I could study every bared sinew in the moonlight. I could see how his skin had been peeled away, the muscles severed from tendons and separated strand by strand from one another. But I could not see how he lived, let alone cried out with such ferocity.
Near morning, as the moon sank, the wind rose and the clouds regathered, and a high breeze caught hold of the kite and moved it on. Both sight and sound of Ash faded away. Our Father took such a deep, shuddering breath that I could almost believe he had not breathed in hours. Then he said only, —They will pay for this in kind. The sky above the city will be full of kites!
Our Father took his hand away from mother’s mouth, then looked down and kissed her eyelids closed, and I saw how she had managed to lie so still through that terrible night as her firstborn hung flayed and screaming above her. Our Father’s hand had been firm inside his heavy glove; and though she must have wailed and wept, we remained undiscovered; and when I saw the blood and how the thick leather of the palm had been torn by teeth, I recalled her words when I woke in the night and saw the ax. I found new comfort in them now.
We had come to rocky country, where the land rose in shelves of tumbled stone. It was deep in one of these crevices that we laid our mother, covered in the brittle yellow leaves of bamboo, with rocks chinked in around her like a loose-fit wall. Olin would not speak, but he worked alongside our Father while I held Anna and watched. Olin carried Anna the rest of the day, and she did nothing but weep inside her hood, but my eyes were dry.
