Something snaps inside me. Maybe it is programmed to. Maybe in the darkness Markov whispered his instructions and then made me forget until the moment was right. A kind of desperate fearlessness seizes me. Better to end it now, swiftly and bloodily, than draw this out into a dance of death. So I rush at the creature, crashing my bulk into his chest before he realises what I’m doing. I catch him off-guard and he staggers back, but only a step or two. There is a sharp clack as hardened plates on our torsos crash together and splinters fly loose. I don’t bounce off exactly but my efforts have minimal effect. I feel no pain. My anger (or is it desperation?) burns too strongly for that.
I launch myself at him again, flailing my arms like clubs. But this time he’s ready for me and swats me away like a troublesome fly. I’m scrabbling to my feet, struggling to get my ponderous bulk upright when he lands a kick that sends me tumbling down the hillside. The ground here is waterlogged; soft and hard to get purchase on. He is on me again before I can stand. I manage to slip a leg around his, hoping to bring him down but I might as well try to trip up a tree. He stands over me, and I see his face has a muzzle like a dog’s. The lips pull back over sharp little canines and he snarls at me. I don’t see it coming until the last second: a hammer blow, straight-arm punch to the chest. I’m well armoured, half inch-thick carapace where my breast-bone once was. Even so, I hear the crack of the impact and feel pain blossom across my chest. Suddenly I’m short of breath.
My opponent wears a feral grin. I scrabble away from his upraised foot preparing to crush down, and the soft ground favours me. He’s sunk into the mud two or three inches and unbalances himself as he struggles to get free. I crawl away as he roars his frustration.
I search for some kind of weapon, anything that might give me an advantage over this colossus stalking me, but there are none. It occurs to me that Markov may have been right after all. I should have been a knife to my opponent’s rock; dancing away from his stumbling bulk, tiring him until my chance comes to lunge and sink those incisors into his flesh. Too late for regrets. And I would just as soon see Markov crushed in my jaws.
Breathing is becoming harder. I haul myself up the slope a little way, wanting the advantage of higher ground, anything to give me respite. But dark spots seem to dance and swell in front of me as my head lolls. I shake myself to banish them and when I do, I see him standing over me. The rock he holds above his head must weigh as much as me. Even he is straining from the effort of holding it aloft.
He says something, his words made indistinct by that dog-like muzzle. He repeats it. A single word; a question. At last I understand. “Yield?” he asks.
But to yield means the loss of the hunting grounds and dishonour. Better to die, Markov told me back in the darkness, just as his last three champions have done. I feel the bile rise within me and summon enough strength to spit into my opponent’s face above me. There. That is my answer. I will not yield.
He screams. The boulder slips from his grasp smashing into the soft ground inches from my head and he swipes at his face with stubby, paw-like hands. I see little wisps of something curling away from his skin, which sizzles like bacon fat frying on the griddle. Where my spittle has touched him, there is an oozing, bloody rawness. He screams again, blinded.
I did this. I created this. Lying there in the darkness all those weeks, my thoughts turned me into something I scarcely understand. It’s a shock, of course – but much more so for him, I think grimly.
A horn sounds; too distant to concern me. I try to crawl further up the slope but can move no more than a yard or two with the vice-like pain that is crushing my chest.
And then Markov is next to me, prodding and inspecting me for damage as though I am no more than his pet. He should not be here. Once the fight begins, no one is allowed in the amphitheatre.
He leans down. “Abatement. Both Elders have agreed.” I struggle to recall the unfamiliar word. “Another chance,” he says, and there is a coldness in his voice.
Then I remember. My opponent and I will fight again on a different day. Between then and now we must change and remake ourselves into new champions.
I look up at Markov. I want to tell him I would prefer death to another round of quickening and hardening, but I cannot seem to summon the words.
***
Pain. Darkness.
More pain; endless pain.
My thoughts are jagged. He commands me to think of sharp-edged daggers glittering in the sunlight; the tip of a bronze arrow, honed to a needle-like point. And teeth – ranks of wicked, serrated bone; incisors to pierce and rend, molars to crush and grind.
Markov’s voice is with me in the darkness, dropping thoughts into my head like pennies down a well. A part of me wants to lash out or crush him beneath my bulk, but the quickening has me paralysed. My body is undone: unhooked and disconnected, waiting to reform at my suggestion.
Markov’s suggestion.
Again, he wants me to be a knife. This time, little chiquada, do not fail me. The knife will triumph. Only the knife! The Others have no guile. Last time they sent a rock, the most brutish thing their limited imaginations could encompass. And it did not work! So this time they will choose the opposite. They will send a paper dancer; fleet of foot and swift as a dragonfly. He will dance around you and you will need your wits not to be overcome by his nimbleness, but paper is always vulnerable.
We all have our vulnerabilities, I think.
Be a knife. Knife cuts through paper as surely as night follows day.
What if Markov is wrong – as he has been before? What if the Others send a rock once more? Ten days is little enough time for a quickening and hardening. It must be hard to shed such bulk and become something utterly different. Wouldn’t it make more sense to repair and rebuild his current form? To become, in fact, more rock-like?
Rock blunts knife.
Teeth, chiquada, he mutters. Strong, powerful jaws to crush, terrible incisors to tear his flesh. We are counting on you.
***
I hear the hiss of dismay and disapproval ripple through the watchers. Markov has told them what to expect and they know I have disappointed. A few turn away in disgust, not wanting to witness the battle.
My body feels light and elastic. I stand taller than I remember. My arms and legs are ridiculously long – so much so I drop to all fours and immediately feel more at ease with myself. My limbs are stick-like, my body stretched and elongated. I tense and flex muscles experimentally and find I can spring dozens of feet across the ground without hardly trying, like a grasshopper would. Even I am startled by my abilities.
Markov watches me, face expressionless. He doesn’t speak to me.
What am I? Paper, I suppose; a dancer. But a strange kind. I don’t recall any previous changeling taking this form.
Just before I step over the lip, I sweep my gaze over the crowd of watchers on the far side, looking for her. The Others are silhouetted against the low sun but even so, I think I recognise her outline – a little more stooped than has been described to me, half-turned as though torn between staying and leaving. She could not recognise me even were I not changed. Why would she care? What am I to her other than the memory of a child given away.
And yet somehow I feel she does.
I am barely three steps down the slope when he comes for me. The swish of air is my only warning of danger. He runs on all fours, sleek and muscular, and moves like lightning across the ground. A cheetah-form; quick and deadly.
I crouch and spring and those instincts save me. For an instant I can feel his hot breath on the back of my neck and then I’m gone. Already he is preparing to pounce again. I jump away, again and again. He follows, like a cat chasing a butterfly.
Despite our different forms, we are evenly matched. I imagine Markov’s grim expression. He guessed they would send paper – a dancer – and he was right. A knife would have cut through paper. But I am a dancer too, in my own way. The match is an even one.
We run and chase and
run, leaping across the rocky outcrops, circling around the gorse, splashing through the brook and wet grassland, but always staying within the confines of the arena. The sun rises and steams the glistening sweat from our bodies. Hours pass in this fashion. This is a battle of attrition. One of us will tire before the other and expose a weakness. That’s how this will end.
I shelter behind a jutting outcrop of rock. I have decided to name my opponent Beast because it seems important for things to have a name, especially a thing that intends to kill you. Beast crouches just beyond my hiding place. If he darts forward, I am ready to leap away and the chase will begin again. I realise we have been frozen like this for ages, neither of us wanting to make the first move. The watchers on the skyline seem to have dwindled.
“Have you grown tired yet, grasshopper?” Beast calls. His voice is gravelly in this form but I can make out his words without much difficulty. “Do you think you can run forever?”
“I intend to try.”
He snarls and lunges but the attack is borne of frustration and poorly executed. I leap away easily.
“I should have chosen better,” Beast says. “A fist to crush those fragile legs of yours.”
“Then I would have chosen differently, too,” I tell him.
I see those yellow slits of eyes narrow. “Are you listening to my thoughts when I am quickening, grasshopper? Is there trickery at work?”
I choose not to answer. Let him gnaw on that. But it is uncanny how well-matched our choices have been. I consider what might have happened if I had not ignored my mentor’s guidance. I would be dead twice over. Not for the first time I wonder about Markov and feel the flame of my anger burn a little brighter at the thought of all the ways I have been betrayed.
Beast leaps at me, but it’s a half-hearted attack, easily evaded.
“This has no end,” I say, no longer afraid to let the weariness show in my voice.
“It has an end. Your death, my victory.”
“Your victory? Or your tribe’s? Had you forgotten about them? The reason why we do this?”
“I… My brethren…feel so distant to me.”
“Because they are. They’ve changed you and cast you out just like they’ve cast me out. Why? Because it suits their purpose.”
“There is honour to be fought for. I can never forget that.”
“There are other ways to settle differences.”
He is exhausted. I am exhausted. I wonder what would happen if we both expired here and now. It doesn’t seem an unattractive prospect.
“I have an idea,” I say to him. “Will you listen to it?”
After a moment he pads closer and stretches out almost at my feet.
I take that as a sign of agreement.
As I begin to speak, we hear the horn blowing up on the ridge.
Abatement.
***
One more change and the gods will take me, I know it. I feel spent; nothing left but the shell of something that once lived.
Knowing the process, how my body softens and melts into itself, how my mind shapes and moulds it afresh – knowing this ought to help. But nothing helps. The pain is as raw and fresh as it was the first time. The difference is the fear gave me an edge then, some sliver of hope. Look at me now. My spirit has withered and there is strength enough for one last hardening, and perhaps not even that.
I am nearly done before I realise Markov has not come to me.
Am I surprised? A little. I have seen firsthand the pride and determination in him. He is not a quitter, yet now he has abandoned me.
Light floods into the nest chamber. They have come for me. It’s time.
I welcome it. No more time for regrets. I snarl and my muzzle snaps at them in irritation as they haul me out again, this time their handling spears ready to fend me off if I become too wild.
My shape and form are of my own choosing. But is that so very different to the previous times? My decision; my responsibility.
I stalk out into the daylight.
Whatever I am, I am.
***
The watchers have thinned even more. Amongst the Others, I recognise the woman who once suckled me as a babe – until she sent me away. Again, I wonder if somehow she knows me.
I slink into the arena, walking on all fours. A downy fur, black as night, covers my skin. Despite the pain and weakness of this last week of the quickening/hardening cycle, I feel strong and powerful. My frame has shrunk but body mass has become muscle and sinew and I can feel the power and sleekness behind my stride, like a jaguar or some other kind of wild cat.
Markov should be pleased. Finally he has got what he asked for. I run a thick tongue over the teeth in my lower jaw, probing their bite. I can feel how it will taste as those sharp incisors tear into flesh for the first time, bloody juices dripping from my lips. But rock blunts incisors, just as surely as my teeth will cut through a paper dancer. Nothing is certain. Every form is a gamble on the opponent’s choice.
He waits for me on the far slope.
I hear the gasps that come from both sets of watchers. He’s bigger than me and well-muscled. A male to my female. But in all respects, near identical even down to the jet-black coat, the sheathed claws hidden within massive paws. An even match, but for the advantage of his body mass.
He dips his head and I take it as recognition that our bargain has been honoured. There can be no more quickening, our bodies are drained. These are our final forms. And once again we are well-matched. By agreement this time, rather than chance.
I pad closer; wary, cautious, sparing one last glance for my birth mother who watches expressionless.
“I’ve seen you watching her,” he says. His voice is a bass rumble, vocal chords straining to shape the words. “What concern is my mother to you?”
I say nothing. Is this why we made the same choices the first two times? Even separated at birth, perhaps we share more than we realise.
“No concern at all, my brother. Didn’t we agree it’s they who have turned us into outcasts? Changed us for their own purposes. We owe neither tribe our allegiance now.”
“This is betrayal then?”
I call to mind the Tribe: those few I once called friends, the foster family who shared their food with me but never their love – and Markov of course. Last of all, Quaid, my betrothed. “No more than they deserve,” I reply.
He considers this, the soft yellow slits of his eyes staring at me, unreadable. A part of me still wonders if this might be some kind of trick. Has it become a game of mental agility rather than physical prowess? “True enough,” he says at last.
I stretch out a paw experimentally, and feel long claws dig into the soft ground. “You know that they will try to kill us. For daring to defy them.”
He snarls, baring his teeth. They are wicked things; deadly and powerful. I realise how fearsome we must now seem, their human bodies frail in comparison. “I think not,” he says.
Moving swiftly, we ascend to the ridge at the top of the hillside. The humans scatter from our path, keeping a respectful distance. Only Markov holds his ground. For an instant I’m seized with the urge – the need – to strike him down. I imagine the blood flowing as my teeth tear into the soft flesh of his throat. He wanted me to be a knife and now I’ve become one. Let him reap his reward. I think he sees it in my eyes, but he doesn’t give ground, proud to the last. Or perhaps he’s ready to embrace death.
Instead, my brother and I step over the outer boundary, out of the arena together. “They’ll find other ways to settle their differences and agree who gets the best hunting lands,” I tell him.
“With raiding parties. Fighting. Slaughter. The old ways,” he says. “Wasn’t all this designed to prevent that? One sacrifice for the greater good.”
“We’re leaving them free to make their choices. Why should we care? They were the ones who re-made us – and made our concerns something different.” I turn and look out at the wide plain spread out before us, and beyond to the lush v
alleys where foothills begin to reach up for the sky, rich with meat for hunting. That is what all this has been about. Now it can be ours. I feel my mouth salivating.
“What is there for us out there?” he asks, but I can see in his eyes he is beginning to understand.
I glance back at the ring of watchers below us, two groups scattered along the ridge. They shuffle uneasily when we turn to stare.
“Not them,” I reply.
***
David Cleden’s day job is writing business proposals. On the weekend he writes fiction. He can’t stress enough how important it is not to muddle them up. He’s placed a few stories in small press magazines but this is his first professional publication.
MY GENERATIONS SHALL PRAISE
SAMANTHA HENDERSON
illustrated by Richard Wagner
The woman on the other side of the glass must be very rich and very sick. I study her face, looking for any kind of resemblance. If I’m a Jarndyce candidate, we must be related. It’s the only way she could ride my brain.
She’s a predator. I recognize my own kind.
Mrs Helena McGraw is studying me too. The side of her mouth quirks up, twisting her face out of true. “Great-grandmother Toohey,” she says, a little too smug.
Never knew my great-grandmother, but I do a quick calculation. That makes us second cousins. Helena’s lucky, me ripe for picking on death row. Only this low-hanging peach has some say in what’s going to happen to her. Not much: a choice of deaths. But how I choose means everything to her.
I can see we’re alike in some ways. The shape of the brow ridge, how far the eyes are separated by the root of the nose, the slight protrusion of the chin. We’d look more alike if her face wasn’t marked by her disease, tiny lines birthed by pain and exhaustion. Makes her look older than she probably is. And my life sits on my face: coarse skin, smudges under my eyes like permanent bruises, cheeks hollowed where I’m still missing teeth. During the years the state’s waited to kill me, they’ve taken excellent care. Dental, exercise, better nutrition than a welfare brat living on peanut butter. Access to books, online classes. But you can never truly erase the witness of a life hard-lived. It’s like cigarette smoke in an old house – you have to grind off the wallpaper, scrape the plaster to get the smell out. One of the reasons I’ve always hated smokers.
Interzone #267 - November-December 2016 Page 10
