Beneath Ceaseless Skies #152

by Fran Wilde

  I comforted Lise as best I could, and we shared a drink from a bottle of good red wine that I’d put up for emergencies. She was too shaken for me to leave her, and I worried the sheriff would take the topaz from me. Instead, we bolted the door.

  Lise began to whisper, her eyes locked on the topaz. “You do not think we should get rid of it?”

  Her concern touched me. But as I thought of the topaz, as I felt again its smooth facets against my fingertips. I saw once more what the gem could become. “Why give Chambers the satisfaction?”

  “You still think this is one of Chambers’s jokes?” Lise turned to me.

  “How could it be otherwise?”

  “Why would he risk slowing your progress on the bracelet for a prank?”

  Indeed, why would he? I hadn’t thought of that. What a smart girl. About the bracelet too. I needed to finish that. “Let us see what I can make of it. Chambers will pay handsomely for pretty gems.” I poured her more wine.

  “Chambers would pay even more for a cursed gem. It would be popular with his guests.”

  Lise had a better head for business than I’d realized.

  My client’s cabinet of curiosities was renowned and reviled within the city. I nodded. “The topazes I cut and set will be more startling than any misshapen bones in a glass case, more beautiful than Chambers’s nightshade butterflies. And three ‘cursed’ stones are better than one.” I envisioned the gold Chambers would pay for the earrings, for the pendant. I stroked Lise’s hair and sipped my wine. “We could make our fortune on this gem.”

  Comforted, she leaned on my shoulder and I kissed her hair, then her cheek. She put her arms around my neck and hung there. I picked her up and carried her to a cot at the back of my studio that I used when I worked late.

  I had apprenticed hard for many years to learn my trade and still more building my reputation. I’d never had much money to spare on women. Lise knew as much as I did when it came to what happened that night. But we were well pleased with ourselves. The moonlight shone yellow on our bare skin, tumbled in the sheets of the cot.

  I thought I heard singing. Lise swore it was my voice. For the moment, I was too happy to care. The outside world was outside, and we were one within.

  Thus restored, I woke to moonlight, with new ideas for the topaz, and new ways to cut it. A way to set it that made my heart pound.

  I laid out my files and my gold bezels, preparing. Sharpened my diamond saw once more.

  I could swear on the russet hair of my dearest love that the gem sang to me that night as I lowered the saw to its facets.

  * * *

  It was Chambers who pounded the door down the next afternoon. My eyes opened to a ragged man bent over me, his hands clutching at my chest. At Chambers’s roar, the man dove through the window, his hands empty. I heard a crash far below, then the baker’s shout and the sheriff’s whistle.

  And so it was Chambers who discovered me naked in my own studio. I lay dazed below my workbench, in a congealing pool of blood.

  Lise, my darling Lise, lay curled in a ball on the cot’s sun-yellow sheets, her eyes frozen a pale amber. She breathed, but it was a raspy sound. I could see no mark on her. I followed her gaze back to my own body. She stared at my chest, at the gem set there, deep into my flesh, beating like a heart.

  “Marcus,” she whispered. “The topaz.”

  And I felt it, in me, singing. My veins pulsed with its rhythm. I knew I could never cut it away.

  * * *

  Chambers has found a buyer for the shop and the studio, for I will never make trinkets again. Lise tends me when Chambers doesn’t have an audience arranged. There are many who wish to see the jeweled man.

  As for me, I am happy with my saws and pliers, with my gold wire. I have inlaid gems across my arms and torso, using any local jewels that Chambers can find. I favor yellow stones like chrysoberyl, spinel, and tourmaline, though these do not sing to me.

  On days when my skin scars and hardens around the newest bezel, Lise brings gauze and salves from town.

  “Is it not beautiful?” I ask her. I watch my body sparkle in the sunlight of our room.

  “It is beautiful,” she answers. Her fingers trace the gems. Her eyes meet mine, filled with tears that do not spill. While she can no longer hear the topaz, she can see its measured pulse.

  Below, the hall of Chambers’s home echoes with the beat of metal doorknocker against wood. I shiver. On days like this, I am not fit to entertain an audience. Chambers has so far said it amuses him and his lady to have me as a guest, even when he must turn the curious away. They are kind hosts.

  But this day, a man has come to their door to sell, not to see. My room faces east for the best morning light and overlooks the front steps. I hear the conversation. I see the gleam of facets nestled in linen.

  “It sings,” the man says.

  Chambers often buys me gemstones, but he turns this man away. “We want nothing more of you.”

  I lean against the glass, my skin crisscrossed with gold in the light. I trace the barest hint of a song in the air and remember the last gems on a leather-bound book.

  As the ragged man leaves, heels dragging loud in the gravel, I mark which way he goes.

  Copyright © 2014 Fran Wilde

  Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

  Fran Wilde writes science fiction and fantasy. She can also tie a bunch of sailing knots, set gemstones, and program digital minions. Her first novels will be published by Tor in 2015. Her short fiction has appeared or will appear in venues including Asimov’s, Nature, and the Impossible Futures anthology. Her poetry has appeared in The Marlboro Review, Articulate, and Poetry Baltimore. She holds an MFA in poetry and an MA in information architecture and interaction design. She is a 2011 graduate of Viable Paradise and attended Taos Toolbox 2012. Visit her website at http://franwilde.wordpress.com/.

  Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

  WHAT NEEDS TO BURN

  by Sylvia Anna Hiven

  The first thing Ephraim Wood did when I met him was save my life. This was about a minute before he shot me.

  Fickle man, that.

  My horse had dumped me and Shadow a few hundred yards outside town and then slumped onto the ground and died. I would have cursed at the stupid animal, maybe kicked its carcass too, but I hadn’t had a drop of water for two days and I was pretty much dying. Plus, I figured he done good, since instead of serving us as breakfast to the poison-fanged mustangs who were on our tail, he’d dropped us where someone might find us.

  Ephraim Wood happened to be that someone, and he happened to have a full water skin.

  “Drink,” he said, pushing the skin against my cracked lips.

  The water was gritty, the red desert sand gnashing against my teeth, but I didn’t care. I would have swallowed it all if it hadn’t been for Shadow lying next to me, just as parched.

  “My man,” I croaked to Wood.

  Wood pulled the water skin away and looked at my companion. His gray eyebrows jutted together in distaste beneath his hat. “He’s a savage.”

  “That may be, but he’s my savage.”

  Wood considered for a moment. Then he kneeled and tilted Shadow’s dusty face upwards so he could put the water skin to his mouth. By the time Shadow came to, blinking his black eyes against the already relentless morning sun, I had managed to stand up on shaky legs.

  “Where you fellas traveling from?” asked Wood, snatching back the water skin from Shadow.

  “The desert,” I said.

  “And where you fellows going to?”

  “Someplace wetter.”

  Yeah, I admit, I was being smart. I probably should have shown some gratitude, with him saving our lives and all. But Shadow and I had been stalked by the sand-devil’s creatures for days. My horse had died. I didn’t like the pretentious tilt of this man’s hat, and I didn’t like the worn holster on his hip, neither. So I wasn’t feeling courteous much.

  “Well, that over ther
e is my town.” Wood gestured towards a cluster of buildings a few hundred yards away that I hadn’t seen through the oily shimmer of the desert air. “I’ve got two wells full of water, and stronger stuff at the saloon. Got women, too. You’re welcome to all of it.”

  That sounded mighty welcoming, I thought.

  That’s when our savior drew his revolver and shot me in the thigh.

  * * *

  By the time Wood found us and took us to his town, Shadow and I had been in the desert for at least a fortnight. The world had stopped being a nice place a long time ago, and sanity had started to drain out of me like water from a rusted bucket. Back in the desert, nothing looked right—the horizon appeared closer than it was, the sun looked like the flat face of the sand-devil laughing down at us from the sky. The landscape was all straight lines, and still, things looked crooked.

  But limping into Wood’s town was worse. It was all crooked there—buildings sagged as though they’d been built against their will, and the sand whined beneath the scrape of our boots like we were hurting it just by walking on it. When we came into the saloon, which was occupied by a couple drunkards and a too-old, too-wrinkled saloon girl, things got quiet. Wood had the chubby bartender pour us each a drink in greasy glasses. He kept the revolver on us.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Sullivan. Utah Sullivan.” I was bleeding onto the floor.

  “And the other one?”

  “Shadow.”

  Wood’s gaze slid over the tattoos on Shadow’s arms. “He’s a pureblooded barefoot? Does he have the magic in him?”

  “Magic?” I downed my drink to buy time and gather my thoughts, but when the whiskey burned down my throat, I couldn’t come up with anything but a feeble denial. “He’s just my man, is all.”

  Shadow had the magic, alright. He was the reason why we’d not gotten eaten by the things in the desert. The things that always loomed at the edge of our vision—all those creatures that had twisted hot and scorching and mad when the whole world went dry—none of them came close since Shadow had joined me. Shadow hadn’t given them a chance to. He’d said God sent him to save my soul. I found that rather amusing, seeing how we were already in a place crisper than hell and there wasn’t much of a difference to be made. But I hadn’t minded the company.

  “I shot you,” said Wood.

  “I reckon you did,” I said.

  “It’s not personal. I just need you to have a reason to stick around. I’ll make sure your wound is tended to, as long as you do me a favor. You and your barefoot, that is.”

  “What sort of favor?”

  “We can talk about that tomorrow. You fellows are tired. I’ll bring the doctor tomorrow, too.” He glanced at Shadow. “Unless your man can heal your leg, of course, and save me from having to bother.”

  “I done told you, he’s not that sort of barefoot,” I said.

  Wood’s gaze hardened. “Well, that might change by tomorrow. Things tend to look different when you’ve tried to sleep through a night with a bullet in your leg.”

  Wood got us a room above the saloon and then took his leave. The crammed little room only had one bunk, and Shadow immediately tossed his roll on the floor. He always did that—claiming his place beneath me. Then he started to dig in his pack. He had lots of weird things in there. Blackened bones, pig bristles, things like that. Didn’t exactly look like God’s instruments to me.

  “You been shot bad,” he said. “I’ll heal you.”

  “No, Shadow. That’s what he wants. It’s a test.”

  “Test for what?”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t reckon we should play into his hand.” I examined the aching welcome-gift in my leg. The bullet hadn’t hit any important place, really, but it still hurt like hell. “If I stop the bleeding for now I can last until morning, and when the doctor has gotten the bullet out, we’ll see if we can’t get out of this.”

  Shadow found some strips of cotton fabric in his pack and handed them to me. “Back to the desert?” he asked.

  He sounded neutral, Shadow, when he said that. He rubbed the scar on his left arm. He hadn’t told me where he got it, but I knew from the crookedness of the wound it was from a unicorn’s horn. The scar was pale, like a sliver of the moon on his dark skin. That’s how long he’d been in the desert until I came along—long enough to collect scars and have them fade over. So yeah, he wasn’t neutral about going back to the desert. Not one bit.

  As I wrapped my leg, I sighed and glanced out the dusty window. “Feels like a toss-up to me, Shadow. At least out there, we know what’s waiting. This fellow here—he feels just as evil as the dry beasts. Only we can’t see his claws.”

  * * *

  When I woke, I found the bullet between my wound and the makeshift bandage. The flesh was already closing where my body had spit it out. I pulled off the bandage and cursed a colorful tirade at Shadow, although I knew it wasn’t his fault. People with the magic can’t help it sometimes. Things just happen around them, though they might not want it to.

  “Well, there goes your cover as an ordinary fellow,” I warned Shadow. “That man tested you, and I’m afraid you just passed.”

  Shadow sure looked miserable. You’d think from his troubled expression that he’d stabbed me in my sleep rather than healed me.

  Wood stood at the foot of the stairs as we walked down into the saloon. He asked how we had slept, if we’d eaten anything, and then invited us to stroll down the main street with him. All the while he kept his revolver aimed at my kneecap. Wasn’t that mighty civilized.

  My wound was healing up by the minute, but it was still a nuisance to walk on that leg. I struggled to hobble along with Wood. Through the pain I noticed the town buildings shrinking away from us as we passed by, as though they were scared of the man in our company. There was no wind, neither. Like it didn’t dare to blow.

  “Well, Utah Sullivan, I gotta confess something,” Wood said. “I lied to you yesterday.”

  “About the doctor, I guess?” I said.

  “We got a doctor. And woulda let him tend to you, too, only it looks like it’s not needed.” He glanced at my leg. “No, I lied about something else. Or twisted the truth, rather.”

  We’d arrived at the central square of the town. In the middle sat a well, and a few folks were gathered around it. They scattered as we approached, like ants escaping a boot heel.

  Wood walked up to the well and started to crank the lever. “See, we do have two wells,” he said, grabbing the pail. “Only they’re empty.”

  He poured the contents out on the street. All that came out was a trickle of sand.

  “Well,” I said. “This is the desert. Not much water around since the dry devil came.”

  “The dry devil.” Wood tossed the pail on the ground. “Believe in that, do you?”

  “I’ve seen his servants. He gets into everything. Including the earth. Everything bows to him eventually.”

  “Not everything.”

  Wood looked past me, over my shoulder. I turned around. Shadow stood there, scowling, meeting Wood’s gaze.

  “Your barefoot isn’t bowing,” Wood continued. “He’s different. Different than the salamanders that turned to dragons, and the horses that grew fangs. Different than you and I, too.” Wood shifted his gaze to me. “He fixed your leg up in his sleep. By accident. Can you imagine what he’d do if he tried?”

  “You know it don’t work like that,” I said, tired of the charade. “Barefoot magic don’t make things happen. It just opens possibilities.”

  “Well, I need him to open me a possibility.” Wood spat, ejecting dirty tobacco onto the dusty ground. “I need him to find me a Fishgirl.”

  “Say what?”

  “A Fishgirl. It’s a creature of magic. Like the dry beasts that brings the desert. Only she doesn’t bring sand. She brings water.”

  I took my hat off and scratched my greasy scalp. I was confused. And it wasn’t just from blood loss. “I never heard
of such a thing.”

  “I’m sure you hadn’t heard of horses with a taste for meat, neither, until you got into the desert.” Wood pointed at Shadow with his thumb. “I had me a fellow like yours once. He died last year. He’d always sleepwalk into the desert, and return with scratches and wounds, not remembering how he got them. But once he remembered something. A canyon with clear blue water, and a girl swimming in it with a tail like a fish. He said water just flowed from her. And he brought back this.”

  Wood opened his clenched fist. In it lay something sparkly.

  “I haven’t seen many fish in my days,” I said, leaning closer. “But that’s a fish-scale, I reckon.”

  Wood snatched his fist closed. “My barefoot died before he could find that canyon again. So your man will have to find the Fishgirl. I need her to water my town back to life and keep my people alive.”

  My leg ached, and I was tired, but I still mustered enough strength to cross my arms and glare at Wood. “You do know it’s a mighty big desert out there. Lots of crags and canyons. I can’t guarantee—”

  “Oh, don’t you worry. He’ll find her.” Wood met my glare with a calm look. “Or I’ll shoot you in the other leg.”

  * * *

  Wood found a horse for Shadow. It was a scrawny thing, barely in better shape than our own horse that still lay drawing flies in the desert.

  “She might last you a day or two,” Wood said as we walked to the edge of town, Shadow reluctantly following us. “Better than going on foot the whole way.”

  “Thought you didn’t know where this canyon is,” I said.

  “I don’t. But my man was in the desert for nine days. I don’t imagine it’s around the corner.” Wood stopped. He looked Shadow in the eyes. “The dry is getting closer. Sweeping in from the edges, crawling up from the earth. It’s been waiting and it’s growing impatient. This town doesn’t have nine days. And that means, your fella here doesn’t have nine days neither. I’ll hang him from the saloon rafters if you don’t get back with that Fishgirl in a week.”