by Cat Rambo
“Da told us to go to the caves,” Aisha said to Tamrin. “But we found Niko, and he said that... that the soldiers killed him.”
“Maybe not. You don’t know, love.”
“Niko said they knew about the caves.”
“We haven’t been there for a while. We like it better up here. They don’t come up this far.”
“Jos told them about the byre,” Aisha said.
There was hiss of indrawn breath from Tamrin, and Ren’s head turned. “What?”
“They beat him up. He came to tell Da, and he said that somebody talked. He said he told them about the byre. They were down in the village when we left, so I thought they wouldn’t come back up. Not if it was raining...”
“You did fine,” Tamrin said. He sounded like he wasn’t telling the truth.
After a long time, I saw the glow of a fire in a clearing ahead of us. The worms in my tummy all joined together in one big lump. I wanted to run towards it, to sing out to Mama that I’d come. I didn’t. Ren had a hand on my shoulder, holding me tight.
He called out quietly as we came in to the clearing. “It’s us. We found children.”
A woman stood up as we came close. My heart gave a funny lurch. But she was the wrong shape. She didn’t move like Mama. Her eyes shone, flashing and glowing as she looked at us, and she hugged her arms. “Who?” It wasn’t my Mama’s voice.
“Niko. And Aisha and Leah.”
With a choking noise, Niko’s mother rushed forward to take him in her arms. “Oh, my sweet boy.” He clung to her neck. “Where’s Maren? Where’s your sister?”
“The soldiers took her,” he said, trying not to cry. I could hear the shaking in his voice.
“I’ll kill them,” she said fiercely. “All of them.”
“Quiet,” Ren said to her. “You won’t. That’s what they want.”
Niko’s mother hissed at him, her teeth bared.
I looked all around. I couldn’t see my mother. “Mama?” I called. “Where are you?”
Aisha took my hand. “Leah...”
“Mama?”
“She turned,” Ren said softly. “She had to go.”
I shook my head. “No. She still had to tell me. She said I’m her special girl. She said she would. She said she’d come back for me and show me . She promised.”
“She wanted to...”
“MAMA!” I screamed, too loud, too big, even though I knew I should be quiet. The soldiers could be anywhere looking for us. “MAMA!” I couldn’t stop myself; I wanted to tear myself open. I wanted my Mama more than anything in the world. I cried and cried, and Ren tried to hold me, but I pushed him away. I didn’t want Ren. I didn’t want Aisha. I wanted Mama. I wanted Da. But I wanted Mama more.
“Leah, please—please be quiet.” Ren grabbed me and this time I couldn’t get free. “She turned.” Aisha had her hands over her mouth. “She waited as long as she could. She had to go away. It wouldn’t have been safe for the rest of us if she stayed.”
It wasn’t fair. I repeated it in my head over and over. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t. “But she said I was special...”
Ren spoke to me gently. “I know you are, pet,” he said.
It didn’t make me feel any better, the way he looked at me. “Who’s going to tell me now?” I asked.
Aisha looked at Ren. He didn’t say anything, rubbing the back of his neck.
Niko sat in his mother’s lap. She had her arms around him, murmuring in his ear. Telling him the things he needed to know, that my Mama should have told me. Showing him her hands, the fingers clenched together, clawlike and crabbed. Letting him touch the webbing that was growing between them. Her skin was dusky, her eyes were almost the shape of apple seeds, already green and gold. They glowed. She sat with her back hunched, and I could see lumps under her clothes where the wings would come out. Niko would get to see his mother turn, and he would say goodbye to her properly, before her wings dried and she flew away into the mountains.
Ren interrupted her, asked if she would talk to me. She bared her teeth at him, her eyes shining, and wrapped her arms tighter around Niko. Aisha got up and carefully moved to the other side of me.
Ren said he thought he would turn the last, that he would stay with us. Niko’s mother went silent. We sat a long time, waiting. Ren put more wood on the fire and wrapped blankets around Aisha. He brewed tea in a little kettle. There weren’t enough mugs and we had to share, passing them back and forth.
I sat and wondered what Mama thought when she finally went away, got free of what she was and turned into something else. Ren said she wanted to. I didn’t know why she couldn’t tell me that. I wished she could have told me about it herself. About what made her special. And me. I wasn’t mad at her for breaking her promise. Ren said she couldn’t help it. But she never should have said she’d come back if she knew she couldn’t. It wasn’t fair.
The sky began to clear, and it got colder. The moons rose, one chasing the other, bathing the trees in silvery light. Niko’s mother kissed him again, running her hands through his hair. “We’ll be together again, when you’re grown,” she said. Then she stepped back into the dark, shedding her clothes and letting them fall to the ground. We all watched, even Aisha, as she began to take her shape.
She was turned and crouched on the ground when the soldiers came crashing into the camp. We hadn’t heard the sounds in the forest; we were all too busy watching Niko’s mother.
A soldier grabbed Niko and held a sword to his throat. “I’ll kill him!” he said, his voice sharp-edged and cold. Niko’s mother hissed, low and long. She scuttled towards us. Her tongue flickered out, testing the air, and her wings trembled. She was already longer than the draft horses that pulled the carts through the village, and the wildness was coming into her eyes.
“You... no...” She had only a bit of her voice left. She reared to her back legs, her wings beating the air.
“Let her go!” yelled Aisha, suddenly rushing forward. “Don’t! Just let her be!” One of the soldiers hit her hard across her face, and she staggered back into another’s arms. Ren was on the ground, two soldiers kneeling on his back. Tamrin and the smith’s brother were gone. Probably run into the woods to hide, afraid they’d be caught and taken away to turn inside a soldier’s dungeon where they couldn’t fly away and be free. I hid in the shadows, very small and still. Nobody saw me. If I stayed very quiet, I might get away, I thought. I could sneak away into the woods. But I couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but clench my fists, a noise like running water in my ears.
“Where’s your sister?” the soldier snarled at Aisha, leaning in close to her. “Tell me.” She spat at him. He hit her again and again. Ren yelled for him to leave her alone, and the soldiers sitting on him smashed his head into the ground. He stopped making any noise.
Niko’s mother howled, a roar that shook the trees. A soldier stood between her and the one that held Niko. He was wearing a very fine coat, nicer than the others, and he had a handsome face. I hated him. I hated him so much it hurt.
He spoke to Niko’s mother, smiling at her like she was a dumb animal. “If you come with us, we’ll let him go.” He held a steel band in his hands. It was studded with metal spikes, the long chains looped around one arm, horrible and clanking. A hood hung over his other arm. “Let us collar you. Come with us. We’ll leave him be. We won’t come back for him. You know how this works.”
She swung her head back and forth, growling with distress.
“Come back with us. You’re almost gone now. Do this last thing for your boy. Come, now. Come to me. You know it has to be this way.” He spoke gently, soothing. He took a slow step closer.
Niko sobbed loudly. He wasn’t brave enough to tell his mother to leave him, to leap into the sky and fly away. I could see it in his face. He wanted her to stay, even if it meant that she would be collared, for the soldiers.
He was so selfish. It was an angry thought, vicious and mean, but it was all I had in me.
&n
bsp; Niko’s mother lowered her head. Her golden eyes shone with tears, and her wings shook, her tail thrashing behind her. The soldier came closer again, holding that awful collar in his hands. Aisha yelled, “No! Don’t do it! Go!” The handsome soldier jerked his head at her, and the one holding her put his hand around her throat, choking off her words.
“Anything more, and I’ll kill you,” he snarled at her.
Niko’s mother took a slow step forward. It felt like everything was standing still, waiting for her to lower her head and take the collar. I wanted to shout out, to tell her to go, but I wasn’t as brave as my sister. Only a tiny whimper came out of my mouth.
I heard a creaking sound, like leather on a good saddle. There was a sudden buffet of wind that made the fire dance. Sparks flew in every direction. A dragon’s voice sounded, wild and screaming in the night, and a gout of flame came splashing down from the sky, towards the handsome soldier and his collar, sending him scrambling back. I looked up.
I saw her.
She was bigger than the biggest dragon I could have ever imagined, glowing blue in the moonlight. Her wings were like sails on a riverboat, and they beat at the night sky as she hovered above the clearing. She bellowed with defiance as the soldiers scattered. One of them tried to fire an arrow at her, but she sent a curtain of flame down across him. He fell in a twitching heap on the ground, the dry fir needles around him crackling.
The soldier holding Niko let him go, and his mother shrieked and lunged forward. “Mmmmy boy....” She snapped her jaws at the handsome soldier with his collar, biting him in two. The others ran off into the night and Niko’s mother jumped to the air and went after them, her eyes flashing and with a bloodthirsty growl. Aisha threw herself at Ren, sawing at the ropes with her kitchen knife, weeping.
I came out of my hiding spot into the clearing, looking up at that dragon. I should have been scared. They were dangerous. Ren had told me that. The wild in them had taken them away from everything they knew. They couldn’t remember anything from before. Mama had turned. She wouldn’t know me anymore—not as her special girl. She could kill me as quick as the soldier lying in stinking bloody pieces on the ground in front of me. I knew I should be afraid for my life.
But something in me was alive with joy. I wasn’t afraid. Not one bit.
She hung in the air, her wings still beating strongly. I could feel the wildness in her. She should be high in the mountains already, away from people. But something had kept her close. She’d come back. And she had saved us.
“Mama?” I said.
Her head came down, and I thought she would come to me. I wanted it to be Mama. I wanted her to come, to settle gently in the snow and the fir needles, let me touch her once more, to let me hold myself against her beautiful, gleaming muzzle. To say goodbye. Maybe there was still something she could still show me, something special for me to know. I held my breath, the want in me so powerful I thought it would call her down all on its own.
She hung in the air. There was a gentle crooning noise from deep in her throat, a comforting, rumbling song. A lullaby. I knew it, and I called her again. “Mama?”
Aisha came to stand beside me. Mama swung her head and growled at her . The wild was in Mama, powerful and strong.
“Leah, we have to go.” Aisha’s voice shook as she pulled me back. “It’s not safe. Come on.”
“You’re wrong,” I said. “She knows me!”
“She has to go away now,” Aisha said, wrenching my arm as I struggled to pull away. “She can’t stay here. She doesn’t remember you.”
“She does!”
“She’s a wild thing,” Aisha said. One eye was swollen shut, her nose bleeding. “She’s not our Mama anymore, Leah. Let her go!”
“Don’t listen to her, Mama!” I said. “You can stay. Please? Please stay?” I was as selfish as Niko, as bad as he was. It made me ashamed, but I wanted her to stay. Mama?”
She tilted her head to one side, blinking. She was too wild to say anything to me. Aisha hugged me. “Let her go,” she said.
“No.”
“Leah, tell her to go. She can’t stay. You know that.”
“NO!” I howled it. “She doesn’t have to go away to be free. I can help her. I can come up here every day, and she can stay with me.” We can still stay together. Mama, please? Can’t you stay with me?”
But Mama was already turning in the air, bringing her tail underneath her and shifting her sinuous body. The moonlight made her blue hide twinkle, like she was covered in jewels. She looked down at us, her head curved under her wings. She lifted higher, circling twice. Then she turned west, towards the mountains.
My Mama was turned and gone away. I was so sad I thought it would split me into a thousand tiny pieces.
Ren stayed with us until it was time for him to go, too. He limped back to the fire, and he let me sit in his lap while he told me about when he found out he was different. “I wasn’t much older than you,” he said. I wondered what it would have been like to hold my Mama’s hands, to have those last moments with her. To have her tell me everything Ren was telling me. To have her say to me one last time, that she loved me.
I watched him change, his red wings glistening. He let me come to him, but Aisha stayed back. She wasn’t like me. It wasn’t safe. Ren told me my Mama loved me. “Don’t mmmmmiss her,” he said, while he still had his words. I leaned against him, my arms around his warm muzzle before he finally pushed me away. “She’s not gone. You’ll be with her again. You wwwill.”
When he left, crashing through the trees to get away from us, Aisha came close and held me and Niko tightly. We sat by the fire, our eyes smarting from the smoke and the sorrow that curled around us.
“You’ll go with them one day,” Aisha said Softly, to me. “You’ll see her again.”
“It’ll be years and years,” I said, sobbing. “She won’t remember me.”
“It’ll be different when you turn,” Aisha said. “She’ll know you then.” She held me close, the way Mama would have. “Don’t worry.” I cried until I was empty.
When we went back to the village in the morning, tired and alone, everybody stared. Niko’s father took him home. Aisha and I stood in front of our burned down house while the grown-ups talked to each other about who would take us.
“When I turn,” I told Aisha, “before I go to Mama, I’m going to kill all the soldiers I can find.”
“I’ll come with you,” she said. She held my hand tight. “I promise. I’ll come and watch until you turn.”
“I’ll stay with you after,” I said. “I won’t ever leave you alone.”
“Yes, you will,” she said. “You’ll go to Mama. That’s how it’s supposed to be.”
We stood and looked at the ashes for a very long time, and I felt the wild in me. Beating, throbbing. Waiting to get free.
.
Copyright © 2015 Heather Clitheroe
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Heather Clitheroe lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Her work has appeared in Kaleidotrope, Evolve: Vampire Stories of the New Undead, and previously in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Visit her online at www.lectio.ca.
Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies
COVER ART
“Twisted Mountain Valley,” by Christopher Balaskas
Christopher Balaskas is an instructor at Infinity Visual and Performing Arts and a freelance traditional / digital conceptual artist. He was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, and is currently based in Jamestown, New York. View more of his work at deviantArt and artstation.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
ISSN: 1946-1076
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