Glimpses: an Anthology of 16 Short Fantasy Stories: An exclusive collection of fantasy fiction

by Kevin Partner

  She didn’t see me, but I couldn’t look away. Not that she was attractive, exactly. There was something about her that reminded me of old moss and rotting tree trunks and mushrooms, vaguely pleasant in small doses. But underneath all that, she jabbed like a thorn on a rosebush.

  I was mesmerized, so I didn’t notice at first when she had stopped singing. She stared right at me, but after the initial freak-out it became obvious that she looked beyond me, even through me. I wasn’t her prey. She sniffed and turned around to continue her song, so ancient I could almost weep with the stones. I made me feel cold into my very bones. I got out of there as quickly as I could.

  “Mutant! Hey, mutant, get over here!” It was Big Taras the Cossack. I swore under my breath—a juicy, pre-Revolutionary White Army expletive (I was very proud of that particular one).

  Big Taras always called me a mutant. That was his name for anyone who didn’t speak Russian every hour of the day. If you happened to let slip an English word within his considerable earshot, you were branded for life. The monastery was full of mutants.

  “Taras, I don’t have time right now.”

  “I said come here! You think I don’t know it was an Erestuna?” He growled at me. Like an angry dog. I didn’t think it worth crossing him, so I followed his considerable girth into the “Cossack House” where he and his two disciples (Medium and Little Taras) had a collection of hairy Georgian hats, daggers, rifles from the war of 1812, and portraits of the last Russian Royal Family.

  Big Taras had a brownish-red face that looked rubbery, like a football overinflated and ready to pop at the slightest provocation. Hair like a patch of lettuce after an elephant walked through it, mostly white, but with a bit of black left over at the roots. The only part of him that didn’t fit was an immaculate Mephistophelean beard, perfectly shaped and groomed. He constantly reeked of cigarettes, bad vodka, and urine.

  “Theodore was one of us!” Big Taras growled. What “being a Cossack” actually meant so far away from Russia I didn’t try to comprehend. I imagined it consisted of riding horses around the periphery of the monastery looking for marauding Poles and closet homosexuals. “We have to take matters into our own hands. You know the best way to kill an Erestuna, don’t you?”

  His two disciples shook their heads, their eyes filled to the brim with fear and curiosity.

  “She has an insatiable hunger for shish kabob. So we make a bunch, tonight, and we set a trap for her.”

  “What sort of a trap?” asked Medium Taras, voice hushed with reverent awe.

  “You’ll see. I can’t tell you or she might squeeeeze it out of you. You two are still young pups. So you’re staying here until the deed is done. I’ll take care of it all, but you will be here to see it!”

  “Taras, why do you need me again?” I ventured to ask.

  “Mutant! Idiot! No Erestuna can be killed without at least one seminarian present.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Are you kidding? Don’t you know anything? If there are no seminarians, she won’t even show up. Everyone knows Erestunas only ever come for seminarians.”

  Iron-clad logic, as usual. But I was curious. Not that my rational brain expected the Erestuna to show up buck-naked to eat a bunch of grilled lamb, but who knows? Practically anything was possible in Jericho.

  Theodore’s funeral was attended by all the seminarians and even some of the local farmers and their families. I guess they thought it was a good thing for the children to “see what happens when you sin!” The kids, not actually having seen his body but only hearing about it, all had a ghoulish good time during the service, whispering to each other and giggling until the heavily-headscarved moms slapped them on the sides of their heads. Then the whimpering began, to the general discontent of all the monks.

  Father Arseny, the hunchbacked abbot who rarely spoke to anyone in private, called me to his side after we buried Theodore.

  “Markusha, you can take me home today. My back hurts more than usual.”

  It was an honor that every seminarian craved, to be able to have the old, twinkly-eyed abbot hold your arm on the slow walk back to his house on the top of the hill. It was my first time, and I did my best not to look at every passing brother with what was probably unbearable smugness. I’m pretty sure I failed.

  “Markusha, you have a lot on your mind. It’s ok; you can talk to me. I’m a good listener.”

  “Father Arseny, I don’t want to bother you with trivialities. You’ve got a lot more to worry about than my personal stuff.”

  He twinkled at me. There’s really no other way of explaining the particular expression his eyes had. I used to think it was some sort of expression of holiness. Now I think it was just a very keen sense of humor that he tried to hide.

  “Go ahead, try me.” Soft, but compelling, so I tried him.

  “Can one person’s private sin result in another person’s harm? I mean, physical harm.”

  “Oh, absolutely!” He even chuckled a little, as if remembering some peccadillo of youth. What could he have possibly done? Stolen a pickle once?

  “Father Arseny, here’s my question. Sometimes, for myself, I think it the best thing to just wall myself off and become a monk. You know, complete purity, complete freedom from those kids of desires. Especially if my sin can harm others.”

  “Markusha, you’re not approaching this the right way. Complete purity? Do you know how many people actually reach that? One in a hefty hundred-thousand. Even among the monks, you’ll have one or two real ascetics, but the rest are front line fighters. Every day, they stride out onto the battlefield bloody from their own wounds. They don’t have complete purity. You wouldn’t believe the filth that comes up in monks’ minds and hearts sometimes. But that’s not the point. The point is what they do with that filth. Do they go with it? Do they agree with it and enjoy it? Do they—God forbid!—act on it? Or do they fight it off? Do they sweat till the last drop of blood, until the thoughts and desires leave them exhausted, face down in the mud? That’s the key. Trying to attain perfection is actually dangerous. It invites some very particular evils.”

  Something about his tone made me look at him. He had a very knowing smile.

  “But if our sins affect others…” I didn’t know what it was I was asking.

  “Markusha, I know it was an Erestuna. I don’t know if there’s anything you can do about it. But I suspect you could. Just be careful.”

  “What do you mean? What am I supposed to do?”

  But he was done talking. We had arrived at his house anyway, and he was genuinely tired. I helped him up the stairs and took his blessing, feeling the worse, not the better, for the talk.

  “Mutant!” Big Taras caught me on the threshold of the dormitory. Why, God, why? “Where are you going? Have you forgotten about our all-night vigil?”

  I tried to escape to the dormitory, but the door seemed to be in league with the Cossacks. It refused to budge.

  “Get over here! Do you want to lose more seminarians? The shish kabob is almost ready!”

  By the time we got back to the Cossack house, it was already dark. But I could have found that house even in a moonless night. The smell of shish kabob was so ripe the pieces of meat melted in your mouth before you ate them. Big Taras made a truly amazing lamb.

  “Don’t even think about eating it,” he growled at me.

  “Of course not!” I said, meaning the opposite.

  The house was a complete mess. Every surface was covered in trash, much of it rank, some of it dangerous. Here and there through the sharpened forks and the barbwire I actually thought I saw a grenade or two. Jericho life, I reminded myself.

  The only surface left clear was the sitting ledge of the traditional Russian stove. For those who haven’t seen one, it’s a giant box into which you pile a huge amount of firewood. A good stove will heat your house for days with only minimal wood, but the real magic of the thing is the sitting ledge—a man-long platform on top of the box where you
can lie down. It was just the right kind of warm. Perfect for the traditional post-liturgical nap (or the PLN, as it’s more commonly known).

  “Taras, why is everything but the stove covered? Where are we supposed to hide?” asked Medium Taras. Taras smacked him across one ear for his impertinence.

  “Listen and learn. That’s the maxim. Not ask silly questions and learn. Come outside and I’ll explain everything.”

  We could hardly have been well concealed behind the Charlie Brown trees in front of the Cossack House, but that didn’t seem to bother Big Taras. He obviously had little respect for the Erestuna’s brains. I had no idea just how little.

  The night was dark and… well, yes, stormy! The rain hadn’t started yet, but it was so unbearably humid that I prayed for the rain to come. At least then I would be wet and cool, not wet and hot. Add to that the overpowering smells of garlic and “Russian man”—oh, I’m getting sick just thinking of it.

  When Big Taras explained the “plan” to us, I had to do my best not to laugh. The buffoon had actually dismantled the sitting ledge of the Russian stove and covered the man-sized hole with a woven mat. He imagined it in the following logical steps:

  Erestuna smells shish kabob.

  Erestuna is unable to ignore shish kabob (I don’t blame her, personally).

  Erestuna enters the Cossack House and sees the plate of shish kabob on top of the stove.

  Erestuna, unable to reach up and grab said plate of shish kabob, has to hoist herself up to the sitting ledge.

  Erestuna falls into the trap and burns to death.

  Can a demon burn to death, even in the form of a flammable human? Not the most pleasant of images, so I tried to force myself to think of something else. Solomon. Poor guy. He had really backed himself into a corner. After failing to keep his vow, there was no telling what he wouldn’t do. What if he offered himself to the Erestuna as a sacrifice, to stop any future killing?

  The abbot had suggested that I could do something about the Erestuna. What? All I could do was feel sorry for Solomon. I wish it wasn’t he who had to deal with this Erestuna. It would be better for him if it had all happened to me. I would have been able to deal with it, at least.

  Boom! It hit me like an oncoming train. I wanted that Erestuna. I was disgusted by the thoughts, but I lusted after her. I felt vaguely like a hyena, forcibly starved for weeks, faced with a young doe. And there she was (the Erestuna, not the doe). She was coming straight toward us.

  Don’t look at her, don’t look at her! Easier said than done. It was just as Solomon had said. The second I looked into her eyes, I felt a dry sucking motion in the pit of my stomach, like I was being hooked up to a vacuum cleaner from the inside. I saw her teeth—sharp, dagger-like behind her smile, which had turned hungry. It was too late. I could hear my brain trying to convince me that she was going to kill me, that no momentary pleasure was worth getting sucked dry and eaten for dessert, but the channel was getting fuzzy, like I was getting further and further out of range.

  The inside of my head felt like it was expanding outside the skull, my legs got wobbly, and my heart beat isorhythmically. Each beat pulsed not blood, but desire, total undiluted lust, all the way to my fingertips. For about half a second—a second that lasted much longer than a normal second—it was glorious. I sensed every single fiber of my muscles in the same way as I do after a good workout. To turn the earth inside out would not have been impossible at that moment.

  In retrospect, I should have been more ashamed, I suppose. Oh well. I can’t claim any trophy for this one. I didn’t save myself.

  The shish kabob saved me.

  Like a guitar string snapping in half, I was released. The Erestuna jerked to a stop, her voracious eyes out of focus. The wave of lamb-smell had obviously inundated her, and she turned, almost trance-like, toward the house and ran in, greenish hair streaking behind her.

  “We’ve got her!” Big Taras whispered like a hissing steam locomotive.

  A crash and a scream and a blast of fire later, the Cossack House was a writhing inferno. Big Taras and the lesser Tarases ran around the building, hands raised high, lamenting and weeping aloud, just as if they were some heathen druids at a fertility ritual. I stayed where I was, panting still, sweating still, but all the lust of the previous moment had gone. I guess you can kill a demon in human form.

  Just as I was about to relax, the screaming inside the house redoubled. The Erestuna, apparently unharmed except for her hair, which burned with a greenish tinge around the edges of the flame, burst out of the house, screaming bloody murder. She ran into the woods, flames trailing behind her instead of her hair.

  The next morning, all the brothers, lay or otherwise, assembled at the black leftovers of the Cossack House. Big Taras, in a tearful speech that hardly left a single eye unwashed, waxed poetic about the great sacrifice of Tsarist Russia, repeated once again in the dark twenty-first century. The Cossack House had burned like an Old Testament whole burnt offering to appease an angry God who had sent the Erestuna as a scourge for the good of his wayward people.

  He lost me at “whole burnt offering.” Solomon was nearby, his face haggard, probably from lack of sleep. The poor guy must have actually been doing prostrations by the hundreds. I wanted to hug him and tell him that it was all over, that he could take a break and forgive himself a little. As if he could hear my thoughts, he looked at me and winked.

  “I guess that’s the last we’ll see of her,” I said.

  “Yes.” He hugged me. “Mark, I’m doing it. I’m entering the monastery. I’m going to be a monk.” He seemed never happier.

  We never saw the Erestuna again.

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  The Wolf of Wool Street

  Kevin Partner

  The man in the black cloak, black trousers and black boots knocked on the door of Ignis Bel and stood back, tapping his thick, black book. The door swung open and Ignis stood, silent as a tomb, his breath causing clouds to go floating out into the wet, cold, morning air.

  “I come with good news, sir,” the man in the black clothes said, holding up his thick book with its gilt embossing.

  Ignis looked at the man’s wife, standing next to him, impassive as a wet tree and with just as much animation. Beside her were two children, one boy, one girl. Had he not been a keen studier of people and their ways, Bel would probably have thought that they wore the expressions of kids who couldn’t imagine anything better to do than tramp around the neighbourhood on a wet Sunday morning, getting people out of their beds. But Ignis noticed their eyes. Glassy and lifeless.

  “I said, I come with good news,” the man persisted. He had a face like a hawk on a starvation diet. He blinked.

  Ignis drew in a deep breath. “I also have good news,” he said.

  “Oh?”

  “That lane,” he said, pointing, “you just walked along it?”

  “Yes,” the man responded, puzzled. This wasn’t how the conversation usually went. He was used to being shouted at, having the door slammed in his face and, very occasionally, encountering a vulnerable soul he could feast upon, but this man made him nervous. No metaphysical flesh here.

  “You heard about the wolf that’s been hanging around hereabouts?”

  The man nodded. He had indeed. His wife had suggested that perhaps they should call off their proselytising, just this once. He had refused, saying the Gods would protect them, if it is their will. What if it isn’t their will? His wife had asked. Then we shall be eaten, was his answer.

  “I heard one up the lane last night,” Ignis said, “but I took care of it.” He jerked a thumb at a mass of bloody fur that hung over the low garden fence surrounding his cabin.

  The man looked, his wife looked and then the children looked, screwing up their faces in disgust. The man recovered first. “You are the instr
ument of the Gods,” he said. “Wife, did I not tell you that our saviours would protect us, if it was their will.”

  “You did, husband,” she mumbled.

  The man pointed at Bel. “And this man is the tool through which they manifest that will.”

  “Well,” Ignis said, his hand snaking round the door, “this tool is hungry and his breakfast awaits.”

  The man put his hand out in denial. “But you haven’t heard the good news!”

  Ignis sighed. “I suspect I have.”

  “The end of the world is coming, when it will be cleansed of those who do not follow the true faith,” cried the man, in a performance long rehearsed and repeated.

  “Still waiting for the good news,” Bel responded. He felt his anger rise, but choked it down. These people, though not strictly speaking representatives of the Brotherhood, had their fingers in several pies and, if rumours were accurate, also in many influential members of the priesthood. Much though he’d like to run them off his property with a pitch-fork, it didn’t pay to antagonise them too much. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself, especially not right now.

  The man’s smile barely reached his mouth, let alone his eyes. “The good news is that, if you truly embrace the faith, you will be saved from the purge - probably.”

  “Probably?”

  “The Gods move in mysterious ways,” said the man. Then, as his children and wife waited patiently, their eyes and minds somewhere else entirely, he began his long rehearsed speech. About the sacred twins, Verminus and Venal, tasked by the Creator with the founding and building of the great city of Varma and the empire that was later established by it. About how they had brought a message of hope to a world full of savages, and how that message was now a roadmap to salvation as the end of days approached.