Fantasy Scroll Magazine Issue #1

by Ken Liu

  Smew watched them as they gathered. Clumbered all around the precious bliss of sharing, both unwelcome and unwelcoming—though neither by the choosing of his mind. He'd tried to join them once. His stub-tipped fingers stiff and aching where he clung against his brothers. Slipping loose before he had begun to know. 'Wrong-bodied' they'd called him when they burst apart. Closed off by throw-back genes from some now long-forgotten ferity. Now, Smew was forced to wait. To hope that this time they would find a way to put in words the glories of their sampling.

  Allow me just a minute more. Heg pushed in closer even as he forced her back. Strange bitters hung around his body.

  Time has come.

  I wish…

  No. It is time.

  They pushed him out, not with their wrists but by their acrid tastings. Out into the browsewood valley, carrying their shamefast with him.

  Not of ours! Unsamelike. Yes, he'd known that always. Carried it all gathered up inside him in the hollow where they did not—could not—reach. Unbravely, in the morning light, he left them. Ahungered as he left for lost belonging which had always been a lie.

  Mud sucked his fingers.

  Stand still, Smew, it begged, and let me swallow you, as if he could belong their underneath the soil. He walked on until, crouched below a dark, empurpled sky, he found himself asleep and dreamed his lonely dreams.

  Regret. It slicked his skin until Heg found she could not grip him. She scrabbled at him. Dug down deep against his skin.

  Remorse. Revulsion at her smoothness. At his own long-fingered limbs. The ache of losing one of his. No longer, she could sense, would she find joining in her brother. With his sonlessness has come his time of silence—and her time of loss. She left him there to seek another skin to savor deep.

  He woke to his belonging. Here, unroofed except by skies, he was no longer heavy. Long since had he been mis-termed. Tomorrow, he would search himself. The next day, all around him. Are there others like me out there, Smew the Realizer asked. The unknowing—and the coming of the know—delicious now in equal measure. His ache dispersed into the soil, the flavor of his leaving with it.

  Today, the Skray is beautiful, he told himself—and they will never know it. Here and now, the knowing of the Skray is mine alone to taste.

  Undrawn, except by future longings, Smew drank in the skies.

  © 2014 by Rebecca Brown

  * * *

  Rebecca Brown is a writer, artist, model, and businesswoman based in South Wales, UK. She spends most of her spare time knitting, lifting weights, and collecting rubber ducks.

  Your Lair or Mine?

  Cathy Bryant

  Gender: Female

  Relationship status: Single

  Area: Welsh mountain, but willing to travel

  Age: 1643, but still have own fangs and most scales

  Height: 26'

  Body Type: curvaceous; wings—large, leathery but still muscular

  Hair Color: what hair?

  Eyes: Two, hypnotic, green or orange depending on mood

  Dietary Restrictions: Carnivore

  Smoker?: Yes, and some steam, and some pretty impressive flaming

  Occupation: not currently employed but not on state benefits

  Income Bracket: large pile of gold, but not large enough (about three villages worth)

  Religion: Dewi. Open to other similar religions

  Likes: gold, mountains, livestock, villagers

  Dislikes: Knights/heroes (so-called) with pointy things

  Have Children?: some spawn got fertilized and there were some eggs at some point, I think, but I really can't remember. 'Not living at home' I guess

  Want Children?: Yes, please. Delicious! Would make a good romantic gift, done up in a nice box, with some herbs

  Astrological Sign: Serpent rune

  Three Personality Traits: possessive, thoughtful, other

  Ideal First Date: eating out, treasure hunting

  Sports: Extreme hunting, flying, sky-diving

  More about me: Well hello! I'm Maurgha. I've been single for a while, though I'm sure my friends, if I had any, wouldn't be able to understand why. I live on the side of a beautiful mountain in Wales and grow my own organic villagers. There are so few dragons around here, honestly, it's dead, and there's loads of life in me yet, so I thought I'd give this a try. Nothing ventured, eh?

  No knights in shining armor please. I'm on to you. I came on here in good faith, and yet sometimes you can almost hear the lances being sharpened. Asking which mountain I live on before the first date? Yeah right. Honestly you have to be so careful on the Internet. Genuine dragons only please. No timewasters.

  I'm no longer young, it's true. And the world seems to have changed so much—some of the dragonlings hoard credit cards and designer plastic jewelry—I just don't understand it. One of the southwestern dragons even claims that it's wrong to eat people, and has become a sheeparian!

  I did try dating a Chinese water dragon last year. Oh, he was really nice but, you know, a bit too nice—thoroughly wet. We were just incompatible really—he didn't light my fire and I didn't float his boat, so it fizzled out.

  As you can see, I'm more traditional really, and I can't be the only one. Are you out there somewhere? I'm the greatest treasure of my hoard, a female of many talons…

  © 2014 by Cathy Bryant

  * * *

  Cathy Bryant worked as a life model, civil servant and childminder (among other jobs) before writing full-time. She has won nine literary awards, including the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Prize in 2012, and blogged for the Huffington Post. Cathy's work has been published all over the world in such publications as The Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine and Midnight Times. She co-edited the anthologies Best of Manchester Poets Vol. 1, 2 and 3 and her first book, 'Contains Strong Language and Scenes of a Sexual Nature' was published recently. Cathy lives in Manchester, UK.

  Shades of the Past

  Kurt Kirchmeier

  The pond was stagnant, sickly. Globs of yellow foam floated on the surface, while cattails lay flat on the ground along the water's edge, as though expired from the effort of trying to crawl free of the horrible scum.

  "Betcha five bucks you won't stick your foot in," said Brandon Styles to his new friend Jarvis.

  The two of them had happened upon the sallow watering hole while taking a late afternoon hike through the woods behind Brandon's new house—the latest in a long string of rent-to-owns. Brandon never took the "own" part too seriously though; unlike the unfortunate cattails before him, his mother had trouble putting down roots.

  Jarvis looked disgusted. "Five bucks? You crazy? Maybe for fifty…"

  "What's the matter? Chicken?"

  Jarvis rolled his eyes. "As if you'd do it for five bucks."

  Jarvis was tall and lanky and played bantam hockey as a "stay at home" defenseman, which apparently meant that he stayed close to his goalie rather than pitching in with the forwards offensively. Brandon couldn't play hockey himself; he was too small and frail.

  He could, however, talk himself into doing things that most other boys would only scoff at.

  "For five bucks? I totally would. It's just water." If there was one thing that moving around a lot had taught Brandon, it was that following through on dares was a quick and easy way to earn respect from new friends.

  Wasting no time at all, Jarvis produced his wallet and fished out a five-spot. "All right, let's see it."

  Brandon knelt to untie his shoe, the horrible stench of the water becoming that much more pronounced. The scummy surface was strangely lacking in insects. He peeled off his sock and inched his way forward.

  "Warm," he said a moment later, submerged up to the ankle.

  "That's frickin' gross, man," Jarvis said, looking away. "There's something wrong with you."

  Brandon laughed, even though he didn't really feel like laughing at all. A substance that looked an awful lot like grease had begun to pool around his foot.

  "Seriously,
dude," Jarvis went on. "Five bucks won't buy you a new foot." He shook his head. "Here, take it."

  Brandon removed himself from the toxic liquid and dried his foot with a sock he no longer had any intention of keeping. He balled it up, tossed it into the woods, and slipped his shoe on over his bare foot, doing his best to ignore the fact that his toes had begun to tingle. He glanced back at the pond and saw a faint metallic sheen that he hadn't previously observed. For some reason, it made him think of Chernobyl. He said as much, to which Jarvis replied, "Cher…what?"

  Brandon shook his head. "Never mind. C'mon, let's get outta here."

  The two of them parted ways just before supper, with Brandon returning home to cook himself a meal of grilled cheese and microwaved basmati rice. His mother's waitressing shift ended at ten-thirty, so he wouldn't see her till closer to eleven. They always watched the eleven o'clock news together.

  The tingling sensation in his toes remained throughout the evening but since there wasn't any pain or discoloration to go with it, he tried not to worry. They didn't have cable or internet, so there wasn't a whole lot to do around the house other than sit at the kitchen table and work on jigsaw puzzles or drawings. As usual, Brandon opted for pencils.

  He used to draw mostly cars and caricatures and science-fictional battlefields with aliens and ray guns galore, but lately—since the move—he'd become somewhat obsessed with sketching fantastic forest creatures like elves and centaurs. Why this was, he couldn't say, although he suspected it had something to do with the proximity of the woods to his house and a general need for escapism.

  The being that took shape on the page today, however, was neither an elf nor centaur, but rather something with sickly yellow eyes and overgrown hands and hairy skin that bore a faintly metallic sheen.

  By the time the sketch was finished, Brandon could hardly remember having drawn it at all. It was as though he'd been in a trance, his pencil moving of its own accord, like those automatic writers who claimed to channel spirits. Brandon glanced at the window and found the moon staring in at him from a tar-black sky. Night had fallen without him noticing. It was almost eleven o'clock. The realization gave him chills, and it wasn't until he had torn the page from the notebook and burned it up in an ashtray that he finally began to feel better.

  His mother arrived home a few minutes later and immediately reminded him to please not burn things in the house. She also asked if he'd eaten anything other than chips for dinner. When Brandon said yes, she seemed somewhat placated. She grabbed a yogurt from the fridge and joined Brandon on the couch. The news was about to start.

  "How'd it go tonight?" Brandon asked. "Make lots on tips?" Considering the cut of her blouse, it was hard to imagine that she hadn't.

  "Some," she said.

  "But you still like it, right? You're gonna stay there?"

  A pause. "I don't know, Bran. I just don't know."

  Brandon felt a familiar twist inside his stomach. It always started with an, I don't know, Bran.

  "What happened?" he asked. "Somebody harass you?" He wasn't oblivious to the fact that his mom was a looker; nor was he completely incognizant of how waitresses were treated in small town bars.

  "Different town," she said. "Same old shit."

  "So why'd we come here? Why didn't we go to the city? You could've got a job in a decent restaurant instead of just another hole-in-the-wall."

  "Heck, Brandon. I hardly know the difference between a salad fork and a dessert fork. Fancy ain't exactly my speed."

  "So you could do something else then."

  "Like what? Work retail for minimum wage? We need the tips, Bran."

  Brandon shook his head in frustration.

  "Don't worry about it," she went on. "I'll take care of it. I'll work it out."

  Uh-huh. Sure.

  The real problem was Brandon's father. It didn't matter that he was six towns behind them or that the terms of the restraining order hadn't been broken in more than eleven months; Brandon's mother still saw him in every leering face and felt him in every groping hand. Sometimes all it took was a predatory grin and the next thing Brandon knew, he'd be packing boxes. It didn't need to be his father for them to run; it only needed to be someone like him. Brandon wished that he were better able to protect his mom from the kind of men that invariably gravitated towards her.

  They sat in silence for a moment as the news anchor droned on about rising grain prices. "So who was it?" Brandon finally asked. "A customer?" The thought of roaming hands and vulgar remarks was enough to make him clench his teeth and wish death upon the nameless stranger.

  She shook her head and lit a cigarette. "One of the kitchen guys. Jerk with two gold teeth; talks like he's showing off trophies. Like I said, though, don't worry about it. I'll take care of it."

  "All right," said Brandon. He sighed, and let the matter drop.

  Brandon went to bed at about one o'clock and woke up just shortly after three. Both his foot and his ankle were throbbing. He got out of bed and hobbled over to his light switch.

  He was thinking he must have developed a rash or something, maybe a delayed allergic response to the filthy pond water, but the truth, when he saw it, was infinitely more unsettling. Where his toenails had been were claws, each a good two inches long and as brown as tree bark. His skin, up to his ankle, had turned a strange shade of silvery-yellow and was rough to the touch, like leather. But worst of all was the smell coming off the discolored skin, a fetid combination of pond scum and decaying flesh.

  Brandon teetered in place at the impossible sight, then abruptly felt sick to the point of puking. He stumbled into the bathroom just in time, retching three times before the nausea and dizziness finally passed. He wiped his mouth and thought about waking his mother, thought about going to the hospital, but then remembered the drawing he'd done earlier and he knew, deep down, that this wasn't anything a doctor could fix with a simple prescription. And besides, they didn't have insurance.

  Unsure of what else to do, he ran some water in the tub and scrubbed the foot vigorously, applying every variety of soap and skin cleanser he could find. Afterwards, he returned to bed and stayed there until morning but he didn't sleep. When his mother came in to wake him for school he said he was sick. He must have looked it too, for she didn't even question him. She brought him a glass of orange juice and made him a bowl of soup and told him to lie back down and get some rest while she ran a few errands before work.

  Brandon nodded dutifully but got up to get dressed the instant she was out the door. The claws proved impossible to clip, so he was forced to go shoeless on one foot. He stretched a couple of thick wool socks over it and wrapped it in a tensor bandage just in case he happened across anyone on his way. He would just tell them he'd sprained it or something.

  He wasn't sure what he was expecting to gain by returning to the pond—most likely nothing—but since that was where his problem began he figured that was where to start looking for an answer. If anything, the water looked even more toxic than it had the day before. The grease-like film had spread and the yellow foam had begun to turn white along the edges. Looking at it now, Brandon could hardly believe that he'd willingly exposed his foot to it for a mere five dollars.

  "Shouldn't go near there," came a voice from the trees to Brandon's left. He turned and squinted, searching for its source. When eventually he located it, he rubbed his eyes in disbelief.

  "It's a dark hole—a cursed place," a woman said. She travelled on lavender wings no larger than those of a monarch butterfly, and though her voice was small, it somehow carried. Her hair was done up in icy blue spikes and her dress, like something from a punk rock Barbie collection, was frayed and torn in a way that made her look a little bit wild. Her eyes, however, appeared to belong to a curious child, an inquisitive soul.

  He stared at her stupidly, blinking. There was no making sense of what he was seeing, no way to reconcile it with his obviously narrow view of reality but, sensible or not, blinking wasn't making this cra
zy vision go away. Brandon wondered if what was affecting his foot might now be affecting his brain, allowing for hallucinations.

  "What happened to your foot?" the tiny woman asked as she drew near. Brandon glanced sideways at the pond. The winged creature covered her mouth and said, "How awful for you. Does it hurt?"

  Brandon shook his head. "No, but it looks pretty bad and my shoe won't fit anymore."

  "How awful," she said again. "You must go to the healing place."

  "Healing place?" Brandon asked.

  "C'mon," she replied, motioning for him to follow. "I'll show you."

  She led him along a serpentine path through the trees, beneath branches of vibrant green leaves that rustled a bit at their passing, as if other—perhaps even smaller—creatures whispered and shifted amidst the foliage. Brandon watched for tiny faces or flashes of wings, but if anyone was there, the camouflage was impenetrable.

  At last they came to a stream with the clearest water Brandon had ever seen. It burbled peacefully along while insects buzzed and frogs leapt after them with tongues in search of a meal. Just a few feet away, a small tame bird dipped into the stream and then quickly out again, tiny drops beading off waterproof feathers that showed every color of the rainbow. It chirped a greeting and flew away, bouncing gracefully through the air.

  For a moment Brandon forgot about his foot entirely. He could hardly believe that the forest around him was the same one he'd explored just a day before. It seemed so different now, so alive.

  "In there," said his winged guide, indicating that he should unwrap his foot and bathe it in the crystal water. Brandon did so and was relieved to see that color in his skin began to return to normal almost instantly. The sharp claws retracted and dulled, becoming regular nails once more.