Weirdbook 31

by Doug Draa

  Poppa put his gun aside and tore through the wall of sticks. He stood in the opening and pulled out his hunting knife. “Let’s finish ’em off, son.”

  I stood outside looking in as Poppa poked his knife into each one that was still moving. I didn’t have the nerve to tell Poppa that I’d forgotten my knife too. But he figured it out soon enough. This time though he wasn’t mad.

  He handed me his knife and said, “Go on, son.” He’d left a few still alive. The knife stuck to my fingers.

  I stepped inside the house of sticks and made Poppa proud.

  WOLF OF HUNGER, WOLF OF SHAME, by J. T. Glover

  Fir trees bowed under the freight of ice covering their needles, and all through the forest could be heard the whoosh and crackle of Old Winter’s breath. Many animals lay snug in their burrows, drowsing until the day of warm rains, but the wakeful creatures gnawed old bones and drank from streams that ran cold enough to shatter teeth. Among the wakeful was a lone wolf with fur the color of a storm cloud. One day, faint with hunger, he chanced to see a clock-wolf wandering just beyond the forest’s edge.

  Now, the clock-wolf was marvelous to behold. The sun shone on his coppery pelt, and twin fires burned behind his eyes. The wolf forgot his own hunger, he admired the clock-wolf so much. The ticking sound that came steadily from it was strange, and he did wonder how the clock-wolf managed to stalk any prey while making such a racket, but this seemed like a small flaw in the face of such elegance.

  “Greetings,” the wolf said.

  The clock-wolf halted his steps and turned to look at the wolf.

  “Salutations, cousin. I came to explore the wood-forest, but I see this place can be the death of you, if you let it. Come with me across the plain to Vex Trassilia, where we are warm and never hunger.”

  “That sounds very fine,” the wolf said, “if I can only find a place for myself there.”

  “Our city is favored by the heavens,” said the clock-wolf. “Surely you will have no trouble fitting in.”

  So they left the forest and crossed the frozen plain. Vex Trassilia glittered as they approached, and the wolf thought it looked magnificent indeed, with its walls of gold, gates of silver, and towers that shone blue as the summer sky. A great ticking and clicking sounded from within, and he wondered how the inhabitants ever slept.

  The hair on the wolf’s neck rose as they passed the gates and instantly were surrounded by a patchwork sea of metal. Not only were there clock-men and clock-wolves, but all manner of clock-folk, some like the creatures of Nature and some not.

  “Hail, Luper Kyphrian,” said a passing clock-dog, who dipped her head to the clock-wolf.

  “Greetings, Canis Avel,” the clock-wolf said, barely blinking in the clock-dog’s direction.

  “What were those words you spoke?” asked the wolf. “Unless my eyes fail me, she is a clock-bitch and you are a clock-wolf.”

  The clock-wolf laughed.

  “In Vex Trassilia we use words to tell each other apart. These are called ‘names,’ and mine is Luper Kyphrian.”

  The clock-wolf raised his head high, and the wolf could see his pride like a shadow at noon.

  “What will your name be, cousin?” the clock-wolf asked.

  The wolf thought about the stippled shades of his fine wolf-coat, and about how his song echoed through the pines and the hemlocks. So thinking, he realized that he already had a name, but that it was not a word. For the first time, he wondered at Vex Trassilia, that its inhabitants needed something other than themselves to know who they were.

  “But then, this is a city,” the wolf said to himself. “It must be confusing, with so many sights and smells.”

  “Let me think about that,” he said aloud. “Maybe I’ll become something new here, with a name to match.”

  The clock-wolf nodded indulgently, and they walked on. There were many marvels to be seen, from the dancing Kuolinchan Mirine to the giant obsidian statue of the First Winder, who seemed to touch the sky but made no sound. After a while, the wolf’s stomach began to growl.

  “Luper Kyphrian,” he said, “we’ve walked for hours, and yet I haven’t noticed anyone eating. Where do you go here for food?”

  “What do you mean?” the clock-wolf asked, looking at him blankly.

  “Well…what do you eat?”

  “Oh, I see! Here in Vex Trassilia, we mostly consume oil. Some of us one kind, some another, but mostly oil.”

  For the second time, the wolf wondered at the city, thinking their food exceedingly strange, but he let it pass. Hungry though he was, surely it was only a matter of time until an unwary mouse or rabbit appeared. He commanded his stomach to be still.

  And so they walked on, the city glittering all around. They visited a district filled with ancient brass clock-vixens who could no longer easily be understood. They passed through the Dessakene bazaar, where hooded vendors sold rubies and tiny clock-fey, and even a few steam-kin were to be seen browsing the stalls. The glamour of the city had almost completely enchanted the wolf, but then he noticed that the clock-wolf was walking more slowly, his eyes dimmed.

  “Cousin, are you all right?” the wolf asked.

  “Of course,” the clock-wolf said. “Why do you ask?”

  “You look tired.”

  “Oh, that’s just your imagination—clock-folk do not tire. I have remembered an appointment, however, so I must ask you to wait here for me. I shall return shortly.”

  The wolf watched him go, puzzled.

  “Luper Kyphrian was tired,” he said to himself, “or I am no wolf. I’m going to follow him and make sure the brain-fever hasn’t taken hold.”

  So the wolf followed the clock-wolf down the street, around a corner, and through a narrow alley that stank of grease and sour earth. The few clock-folk he passed either ignored him completely or gave him odd, furtive looks. At the end of the alley lay an open square before a low, stone-pillared building. The wolf entered the square just in time to see the clock-wolf pass through the doorway, so he trotted around the building until he found a pile of crates that rose to a vent near the roof. He scampered nimbly up it and peered inside.

  Within the building lay row on row of clock-folk, resting on black stone slabs. Luper Kyphrian lay close by, and the wolf’s breath almost stopped when he saw the clock-men prying apart the metal plates beneath the clock-wolf’s coat, exposing gears and reels and rods. To one side stood a clock-man who wore a scarlet robe and held a key that shone like the full moon. He slipped the key into Luper Kyphrian’s metal guts and began to turn it. With each twist, the clock-wolf shuddered and whined, his spine arched into a quivering bow.

  The wolf climbed down from the crates, his mind whirling. Unease had turned to foreboding in his heart. He left that place and returned to the street, where he stopped a passing clock-cat with eyes of sapphire and whiskers of glass.

  “Pardon me,” he said, “but I am new to Vex Trassilia. What is the building that lies at the end of the alley behind me? It is of dark stone, bears no sign, and great pillars stand before it.”

  The clock-cat stared at him and tilted his head to one side.

  “You truly do not know? Curious. What you describe is a House of Shame.”

  “I see.”

  “When the Great Winders left us, we required places where we could go to have our mainsprings tightened at need, lest we fall and walk no more.”

  “My friend wouldn’t tell me why he was going there.”

  “Our ancestors felt it necessary to hide their springs and gears from sight. No one today knows why, but we continue to do so in remembrance of them, and it is considered impolite to speak openly of rewinding.”

  “Is that so?” the wolf said. “Then good-bye to you, Master Cat. Give my regards to Luper Kyphrian if you see him.”

  The wolf followed his own scent trail back to the silver gates. Once out
side, he took to the frost-brittled grass by the road, heading toward the distant shadow of the forest. When the wolf eventually found himself back among the giant, ice-hung trees, the smells of sap and frozen earth thick in the air, he knew that he had come home.

  As dusk approached, the wolf spied a mostly picked-over deer carcass in a clearing. The snow whispered from the sky as he lay in wait, but at last there came a low rustling, and something small and furry slipped out from under a holly tree to get its dinner. The wolf slunk toward the clearing.

  “Better a starveling than a helpless clockwork,” he murmured, “and besides, perhaps I shall not go hungry tonight after all.”

  BRIDE OF DEATH, by Dave Reeder

  ‘and o to be a bride of death’

  my life was yet empty of all passions

  moving like a veil across the days

  slipping and crying past the passages

  and alleys of a fading summer

  gliding slow as smoke towards the dryness

  the stick-like aridness

  of an aging room

  where no light tread

  of a midnight visitor sounds

  and the womb closes again

  yet here i sit

  beneath the coolness of a willow’s arms

  saved like corn from the husk-dry future

  by the gift of some half-forgotten aunt

  and life begins again

  dawning for me

  mistress of a house of silences

  across the coolness of the tiling floors

  beneath the graining of the wooden walls

  along the brightness of the flowered paths

  above the darkness of the cedared groves

  i move like silk

  and here all is silences

  and here the night

  and yet

  and yet i cannot sleep

  i cannot close my eyes

  but rather i am drawn cat-like and dazed

  to that old portrait on the stairs

  whose eyes catch mine

  each time i pass

  what i know of him is only this

  he died in some half-whispered way

  that i cannot learn

  and yet his face is kind

  etched marble-like it holds a love of life

  and those broad shoulders

  and long strong hands

  those long strong hands could reach

  and

  and i am drawn again

  to the dark magnets of his eyes

  caught beneath his gaze

  my fingers rise unbidden to my dream

  that slips away like mist

  as i step closer

  and

  and those eyes

  deep and dark and burning flame-red into my soul

  the lips so cold

  whispering of the chill night winds

  and the fingers

  smooth and cool like polished ivory

  upon my white-hot flesh

  and now

  the world flashes to a lace-fine dream

  and all i feel is this

  and all i feel

  his flesh dripping down upon mine

  his eyes like sunsets’ glory burning

  burning

  and we slide like amber down towards the floor

  my weight just a bird’s heart in his arms

  my life a fly lost in the web of his passion

  my lips beneath his

  my body his altar

  and o how sweet it is

  how sweet to be a bride of death

  tonight

  and through an eternity

  of such mist-enfolded moments

  MODERN PRIMITIVE, by Chad Hensley

  She sits on the rough edge of a shambling porch

  Beneath a house that appears abandoned

  Boards nailed across windows and doors.

  A tiny delicate claw in a fancy black glove clutching a clove cigarette;

  Long, reed-thin legs covered in deep scratches and torn black fishnet stockings.

  Absinthe-colored eyes glower in the moonlight

  Beneath a giant Kool-Aid purple Mohawk;

  Crooked, chiseled fangs show between the lips

  Of a dirt-soiled smile, so slight.

  Bizarre, entwining tattoos

  Snake shoulders to the length of her slender, scarred wrists.

  Sharp-angled, archaic symbols etched in purple ink

  Squirm around both forearms in identical patterns.

  Towards each elbow, the designs become small bat-winged creatures

  Floating in an outer space filled with stark, burning stars.

  On each of her biceps, an octopus-headed statue squats in a vast, dune-covered desert.

  She blows a smoke ring into the air

  With a burst of cackling, hag-like laughter

  She points to the starless sky above—

  Monolithic, winged forms engulf the horizon

  As the universe fills her eyes,

  The void entangles her hair.

  ZUCCHINI SEASON, by Janet Harriett

  I handed the passenger off to the transport crew, brushed the tears off my suit, tucked my now-bloody pocket square into a sloppy puff fold, and turned my attention to the driver. Unlike the passenger, she had enough of her blood left inside her—and enough skin left to tell where “inside” was—to be making a fuss.

  “Am I dying?” the woman asked the EMT who was applying pressure to her brachial artery.

  The EMT didn’t answer her, just gave her the look EMTs always give when I’m around. None of them see me, but I am only around when they don’t want to answer that question. Eyeballing the car and the pavement, I guessed the driver had about another pint and a half left before she lost consciousness and I could do my job.

  “I can’t die,” she mumbled, her tongue slipping against gaps where teeth used to be. “It’s August, and I have laundry.”

  I laughed. “It’s August? That’s a new one.”

  Many have claimed to laugh in the face of death—more than actually did—but this woman was the first to have death laugh in her face. Mine is a largely humorless profession when one is not dealing with morticians, and I only laughed with them at a discreet distance.

  She gave me what would have been a quizzical look if her cheekbones and brows had all been in the right places on her face. The EMT was managing to slow the flow of blood onto the pavement, but internal injuries were spewing blood into her abdominal cavity.

  “Trekkies notwithstanding, suicides are the only people who, when push comes to shove, really think that today is a good day to die, and even most of them aren’t really in it for the dying.” I sat down on the bloody street next to her face. “After a couple millennia at this, you think you’ve heard every reason why someone can’t die, as if I have any say in the timing. That’s a decision above my pay grade, at least with mammals. I get it: death is a terrible inconvenience to everyone involved, and believe it or not, you aren’t the first to try to bargain for time to put in a load of delicates. But ‘it’s August’? Haven’t gotten that one before.”

  “My grandfather died in August.”

  “I remember.” I can’t forget. That is my job: to gather and hold everyone’s raw dying moments for eternity. Even the unseen do not die alone, and are never forgotten. I held her hand. Icy regret was seeping out of her.

  “You’re warm.” Her facial muscles gave up the effort to form a confused expression against misplaced bones. “If you are who I think…”

  “I am.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be cold?”

  I pulled the dying regret chill out of her and held it barely
inside my fingers. “Better?”

  Next to my ear, the EMT yelled something to another paramedic. We each had our jobs here, and if they could see me doing mine, they would know they were only going to succeed at buying me time to do my work.

  “Visitors brought food. Casseroles. Vegetables from their gardens. Everyone had a garden. Tomatoes. So much zucchini.”

  Her breath was coming in strained gasps, fighting a splinter of rib in a lung. I pulled the pain out through her palms and tucked it into myself.

  “I promised myself I’d never do that to my family, dying during zucchini season. My girls, they wouldn’t know…so much squash.”

  Not the least-poetic dying words I’ve been privy to. I pulled the last cold bit of pain out and carried her unconscious soul to the transport crew. The paramedic and the EMT loaded their lost cause into the back of the ambulance.

  Dying wishes have remarkably little variety to them, and most aren’t ones I can do anything about, anyway. The portfolio for death is limited. This woman had made me laugh, though, for the first time in very literal ages. That deserved at least a bit of an effort. I couldn’t do anything about her dying in August, but I could do something about zucchini season.

  I summoned the sequestered millennia of death throes and regrets, and blasted their killing frost to every garden I could reach.

  So much zucchini, but it was all dead.

  THE JEWELS THAT WERE THEIR EYES, by Llanwyre Laish

  For each human eye that our cadre returned to the Raven King, his chancellor placed a shining ring on our branch of His Majesty’s tree. The King called the eyes his bright gems and hung them round his nest. The strange, milky decorations caught the sunset light and gave off a moist, eerie glow. He needed a constant supply, you see, for they rotted with alarming alacrity, and the King spent each morning using his beak to pull down the eyes that ceased to shine to his liking.