The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com

by Various

  You tossed your head like a disquieted horse. “You’re acting mad.”

  I laughed. “So I’m right, am I? You’re already beginning to make me into an idea. A difficult decision rendered by a great man. Well, stop now. This is only difficult because you make it so. All you have to do is break your vow and spare my life.”

  “Menelaus and Odysseus would take the armies and bring them to march against Mycenae. Don’t you see? I have no choice.”

  “Don’t you see? It should never have been your choice at all. My life isn’t yours to barter. The choice should have been mine.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “I understand that you want me to pity you for my death.”

  Wind whistled through my brain. The edges of the tent rustled. Sand stirred. Strands of mother’s hair blew out from her braids.

  “You know, I never believed what Helen told me. Did he look like Orestes, father? Did my elder half-brother look like Orestes when you dashed him to the rocks?”

  You glowered at my defiance. “This is how you beg me to save your life?”

  “Is it sufficient?” I asked, but I already knew the answer. I inhaled deeply. “Don’t kill me.”

  I had forgotten how to beg.

  * * *

  With almost nothing of myself remaining, I found myself reconsidering my conversation with Helen. Without my ego to distract me, I concentrated on different details, imagined different motivations behind her words. Did I think Helen was arrogant because that was what everyone said about her? Was she boastful or simply honest?

  As Helen sat beneath the olive tree, watching me admire her face, she sighed. I’d always believed it was a sigh of pride. Perhaps it was weariness instead. Perhaps she was exhausted from always having to negotiate jealousy and desire when she wanted to do something as simple as holding her niece’s hand.

  “You’ll be beautiful one day, too.” Was she trying to reassure me?

  “Not as beautiful as you,” I demurred.

  “No one is as beautiful as I.”

  Her voice was flat. How must it have felt, always being reduced to that single superlative?

  After she told me the terrible things about my father, I fled into the crowd to search for my mother. I found her holding a stern conversation with one of Helen’s women. She wouldn’t budge when I tried to drag her away. She dabbed my tears and told me to find Iamas so he could calm me down.

  It wasn’t until I crumpled at her feet, distraught and wailing, that she realized I was suffering from more than a scrape.

  She slipped her arms around me and helped me to stand, her embrace warm and comforting. She brought me to her rooms and asked what was wrong.

  I repeated Helen’s words. “It isn’t true!” I cried. “She’s mean and vain. Why would she lie about something like that? Tell me she’s lying.”

  “Of course she is,” said mother, patting me vaguely on the head. “No one would be monstrous enough to do that.”

  She pulled the blanket to my chin and sat beside me and stroked my hair (oh, mother, did you never learn another way to comfort a child?). I fell asleep, head tilted toward her touch.

  Later, I woke to the sound of voices in the corridor. They drifted in, too quiet to hear. I tiptoed to the door and listened.

  “I’m sorry,” said Helen, her voice raw as if she’d been crying. “I didn’t mean to scare her.”

  “Well, you did. She’s inconsolable. She thinks her father kills babies.”

  “But Clytemnestra—”

  “Stories like that have no place in this house. I don’t understand what was going on in your head!”

  “He’s a killer. How can you stand to see him with that sweet little girl? I think of my nephew every time I look at her. He’s a monster. He’d kill her in a moment if it suited him. How can you let him near her?”

  “He won’t hurt her. He’s her father.”

  “Clytemnestra, she had to know.”

  “It wasn’t your decision.”

  “It had to be someone’s! You can’t protect her from a little sadness now, and let him lead her into danger later. Someone had to keep your daughter safe.”

  Mother’s voice dipped so low that it was barely more than a whisper. “Or maybe you couldn’t stand to see that I can actually make my daughter happy.”

  Helen made a small, pained noise. I heard the rustling of her garment, her footsteps echoing down the painted clay corridor. I fled back to mother’s blanket and tried to sleep, but I kept imagining your hands as you threw a baby down to his death on the stones. I imagined your fingers covered in blood, your palms blue from the cold in your heart. It couldn’t be true.

  * * *

  You called two men to escort me to Calchas. One wore his nightclothes, the other a breastplate and nothing else. Patchy adolescent beards covered their chins.

  Mother wept.

  You stood beside me. “I have to do this.”

  “Do you?” I asked.

  The soldiers approached. In a low voice, you asked them to be gentle.

  My emotions lifted from me, one by one, like steam evaporating from a campfire.

  Fear disappeared.

  “Don’t worry, mother,” I said. “I will go with them willingly. It is only death.”

  Sadness departed.

  “Don’t grieve for me. Don’t cut your hair. Don’t let the women of the house cut their hair either. Try not to mourn for me at all. Crush dandelions. Run by the river. Wind ribbons around your fingers.”

  Empathy bled away.

  “Father, I want you to think of all the suffering I’ve felt, and magnify it a thousand times. When you reach the shores of Troy, unleash it all on their women. Let my blood be the harbinger of their pain. Spear them. Savage them. Let their mother’s throats be raw with screaming. Let their elder brothers be dashed like infants on the rocks.”

  Love vanished. I turned on my mother.

  “Why did you bring me here? You saw him kill your son, and still you let me hold his hand! Why didn’t you remember what he is?”

  I pushed my mother to the ground. Orestes tumbled from her arms. Bloody fingers on blue hands flashed past my vision in the instant before mother twisted herself to cushion his fall.

  I forgot resignation.

  “Why did you write that letter? Am I worth less to you than the hunk of wood they used to make your staff of office? Would it have been so bad to be the man who stayed home instead of fighting? Let Menelaus lead. Let him appease Artemis with Hermione’s blood. If a girl must die to dower Helen, why shouldn’t it be her own daughter?

  “Did you raise me only so that you could trade me in for the best offer you could get? A wealthy husband? Influential children? A wind to push you across the sea?

  “Mother, why didn’t you take me to the hills? Helen went! Helen ran away! Why didn’t we follow Helen?”

  You uttered a command. The soldiers took my elbow. I forgot how to speak.

  * * *

  Your soldiers escorted me through the camp to the temple. Achilles found me on the way. “You’re as beautiful as your aunt,” he said.

  The wind of my forgetfulness battered against him. Effortlessly, Achilles buffeted against its strength.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” he said. “It takes courage to walk calmly to your death. I wouldn’t mind marrying you. Talk to me. I only need a little persuasion. Tell me why I should save your life.”

  Voiceless, I marched onward.

  * * *

  I forgot you.

  They washed and perfumed me and decked me with the things that smell sweet. You came before me.

  “My sweet Iphigenia,” you said. “If there was anything I could do to stop it, I would, but I can’t. Don’t you see?”

  You brushed your fingers along my cheek. I watched them, no longer certain what they were.

  “Iphigenia, I have no right, but I’ve come to ask for your pardon. Can you forgive me for what I’ve done?”

  I st
ared at you with empty eyes, my brows furrowed, my body cleansed and prepared. Who are you? asked my flesh.

  * * *

  They led me into Artemis’s sacred space. Wild things clustered, lush and pungent, around the courtyard. The leaves tossed as I passed them, shuddering in my wind. Sunlight glinted off of the armor of a dozen men who were gathered to see the beginning of their war. Iamas was there, too, weeping as he watched.

  Calchas pushed his way toward me as if he were approaching through a gale, his garment billowing around him. I recognized the red ribbons on his headband, his indigo eyes, his taut and joyless smile.

  “You would have been beautiful one day, too,” she said.

  Not as beautiful as you.

  “No one is as beautiful as I.”

  His breath stank with rotting fish, unless that was other men, another time. He held a jeweled twig in his hand—but I knew it would be your hand that killed me. Calchas was only an instrument, like Helen, like the twig.

  He lifted the jeweled twig to catch the sun. I didn’t move. He drew it across my throat.

  * * *

  My body forgot to be a body. I disappeared.

  * * *

  Artemis held me like a child holds a dandelion. With a single breath, she blew the wind in my body out of my girl’s shape.

  I died.

  * * *

  Feel me now. I tumble through your camp, upturning tents as a child knocks over his toys. Beneath me, the sea rumbles. Enormous waves whip across the water, powerful enough to drown you all.

  “Too strong!” shouts Menelaus.

  Achilles claps him on the back. “It’ll be a son of a bitch, but it’ll get us there faster!”

  Mother lies by the remnants of the tent and refuses to move. Iamas tugs on her garment, trying to stir her. She cries and cries, and I taste her tears. They become salt on my wind.

  Orestes wails for mother’s attention. He puts his mouth to her breasts, but she cannot give him the comfort of suckling. I ruffle his hair and blow a chill embrace around him. His eyes grow big and frightened. I love him, but I can only hug him harder, for I am a wind.

  Achilles stands at the prow of one of the ships, boasting of what he’ll do to the citizens of Troy. Menelaus jabs his sword into my breeze and laughs. “I’ll ram Paris like he’s done to Helen,” he brags. Odysseus laughs.

  I see you now, my father, standing away from the others, your face turned toward Troy. I blow and scream and whisper.

  You smile at first, and turn to Calchas. “It’s my daughter!”

  The priest looks up from cleaning his bloody dagger. “What did you say?”

  I whip cold fury between your ears. Your face goes pale, and you clap your hands to the sides of your head, but my voice is the sound of the wind. It is undeniable.

  Do you still want forgiveness, father?

  “Set sail!” you shout. “It’s time to get out of this harbor!”

  I am vast and undeniable. I will crush you all with my strength and whirl your boats to the bottom of the sea. I’ll spin your corpses through the air and dash them against the cliffs.

  But no, I am helpless again, always and ever a hostage to someone else’s desires. With ease, Artemis imposes her will on my wild fury. I feel the tension of her hands drawing me back like a bowstring. With one strong, smooth motion, she aims me at your fleet. Fiercely, implacably, I blow you to Troy.

  Copyright © 2009 Rachel Swirsky

  Cover art copyright © 2009 by Sam Weber

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  He’s old this time. A hospital gown sags over his gaunt frame. IV wires stream from his arms, plugging him into a thousand machines. I could tear them out one by one.

  I ask, “Do you know who I am?”

  He rolls his head back and forth, trying to see. His eyes are pale with cataracts, roosting in nests of wrinkles. He gestures me closer, skin thin to the point of translucence, veins tunneling below.

  Recognition strikes. “You’re that boy I hurt…. All grown up….”

  His voice is harsh, as if it hurts to talk. He speaks in short gasps.

  “Wanted you to know, I… always regretted… what I did…” Papery fingers reach for mine. I snatch my hand away. “Have to ask…. Can you forgive…. ?”

  Son of a fucking bitch.

  There’s more to the room now. Painfully bright light shines on tile. Everything smells clean but foul, like ammonia. The thousand IVs have condensed into one, a bubble of blood floating inside the cord where it goes into his arm.

  I aim my first blow at his mouth. His blood sprays my face. The thousand machines blare alarms. Footsteps rush across distant tile.

  I launch myself on top of him. His jaw snaps. Bone fragments shove through skin. His ribs crack under the force of my knees. He makes a primal, rattling sound as his body writhes, contracts, and finally slackens.

  His corpse collapses into a mass of bones and flesh. I try to pull myself out. Bones rattle, shift. I can’t gain purchase.

  “Dana!” I shout. A dozen bones snap under my weight. Thousands more seethe below.

  “I’m through with this! Dana! Get me out!”

  My eyes open onto Dana's sunny third-story office.

  I'm on an overstuffed, floral-printed loveseat below a wide window. Dana's in a facing armchair, legs folded beneath her. She's tiny and fragile-boned, dwarfed by the furniture.

  "No luck?" Dana asks.

  "What do you think?"

  "Better tell me about it then."

  I tug at the sensors attached to my scalp with adhesive tape. "Can I get this crap off first?"

  Her gaze flicks to the machine on the cart beside me. I can tell she wants to keep taking brain wave readings while I talk about my trance. Instead, she waves her stylus in assent and watches while I peel the sensors off my hairline.

  She repeats her question and I answer this time. She takes notes. She doesn't flinch when I get to the part about smashing his face.

  "Was it satisfying?" she asks.

  "What, killing him?" I shrug. "Yeah. While I was doing it."

  "But not lastingly," she concludes, making an emphatic mark. "We'll try again next time."

  I've never liked to fuck. I never thought that was a problem. What I do with my dick is my business—no one else's.

  Some people disagree. Like my former boss, Chelsea Elizabeth Reid. One night when we were both working late, packing billable hours, she got forceful about informing me that she'd done a lot for me. I owed her one. A kiss. One kiss at least. When I tried to phone security, she wrestled me for the receiver, and then things got bad.

  Yeah, I get angry. I hit people. Sometimes I get so angry when I hit people that I don’t remember it afterward. Dana says it’s because of what happened when I was a kid.

  Chelsea could have charged me with assault, but then I could have come out with sexual harassment, and she already had two strikes with the partners. So instead, she phoned from the hospital, once she’d recovered enough to speak.

  “Paid leave,” she proposed, cold and concise. “You stay away. I pay for your treatment. Then I find you an opening somewhere and we never see each other again.”

  Dana talks while adhering sensors to my scalp. “Try younger,” she says. “Imagine confronting him just after it happened.”

  “As a kid?”

  Dana’s fingers are cold on my forehead. “Imagine your adult self in the past. You’re in control of the trance—re
alism is irrelevant. The point is to find a scenario that works for you.”

  “I don’t know what he looked like.”

  “Imagine something.” Dana secures the last sensor. “Start with the body. How big do you think he was? Was he White or Asian? Bearded? Clean-shaven? Think. How old was he?”

  He’s thirty. White. Bad teeth set in a scowl, breath rank with nicotine. Stringy brown hair falls to his shoulders, roots oily and unwashed.

  It takes a second to recognize his orange jumpsuit. In real life, he never went to jail.

  I ask, “Do you know who I am?”

  He regards me with disdain, his pupils flat and lifeless. “You want to know if I feel guilty?”

  His mouth is cavernous, teeth black and yellow with decay. A broken incisor glistens jaggedly.

  “Come on.” He spreads his hands wide as if trying to get me to trust him. “You want to know, boy, don’t you? If it eats me up inside?”

  He sneers.

  “I don’t feel a fucking thing.”

  “Don’t worry,” Dana says. “We’ll find the right one.”

  Back home in my claustrophobic apartment, blinds pulled, I pick up a call from Dad. I told him I fell down a flight of stairs at work. He thinks I’m on leave during physical therapy.

  He talks fast.

  “Aaron! Glad I caught you. How’re you feeling? Enjoying your time off?

  “Wish I could get a break. Things are a mess around here. The moron we hired still hasn’t learned to use the cash register.

  “Your mother’s hassling me to take time off this summer. Who am I supposed to leave in charge? The moron? I don’t know. She wants to come visit when you’re well enough for guests. We know you’re not set up for company. Don’t worry about entertaining us. We’ll get a hotel room. We’re getting older, you know. It’d be nice to see you for more than just Christmas.”

  He stops to breathe.

  “What do you think? Will you be feeling okay by summer? You should be better by then, right?”