Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 12

by Gavin J. Grant

  I'll save you beastie—she speaks, but alone, and carries the words against her as she and the upstander resume clipping its coat.

  When two storms dally, folk dispute which is bairn, which is fierce—but this time, there's sure that the second storm will be the cracker. Never's the air matted so thick, as massy as rock now. The storm shadow's as long as the Cags and some consider that Cags and storm are teeth on a grand jaw, and that the poor villagers are sure to be pulped now.

  So folk sit on their doorstones, staring at the grey above and the black to come. There's no talk, only families huddling outside for the last time, til one by one they wave to their neighbours and go into their cottages. Catchie hears the sound of bricking all down the pathway.

  She whispers for the fishie, but as the breezes snap at her knees, Catchie calls out now, “'Mam, let's be sheltering."

  Spitmam doesn't reply in her staring down the sky. The storm's been her study for hours, ears and eyes pressed to the wind. Catchie wonders if she's become full rock now, forever still, when sudden Spitmam leans ahead, opens her mouth just wide and no further, then opens a little more and no further, then further and stop, then all the way, belting as well, “She's there! Girl, she's hither!"

  "Where's hither, ‘mam?"

  "There, there!” Spitmam grabs at the sky, but Catchie regards only bubbling cloud and birds swarming front, as if they're yoking the storm forward. “There! Abreast the storm, oh, she's the dare, coming for me so brazen! Come away, sister!” Spitmam shouts up, “Come and find what's here for you!

  "'Mam, the shelter! It's too bad."

  "Never!” Spitmam growls with a bit of storm in her eyes. “There's she coming and I'm to meet her."

  "Who, ‘mam? Who's there?"

  "My sister. You not see?"

  Before Catchie says not, Spitmam has her arm and pulls her into the cottage. Brief, Catchie thinks Spitmam's turned for shelter at last, but she leaves the door wide for the little gusts to spin across the floor and rip away all Catchie's battening in the cubbies. Spitmam reaches furthest into a cubby Catchie's been forbidden, and from far, she brings out first a water jar, second a fire vessel.

  "Touch the fire vessel, girl.” Catchie does, fearful til her thumb rests on the raindrop-cast ceramic. The surface is warm, shakes like broken sleep, and the vessel rolls over with the anger of what's in.

  "Now touch the jar."

  Catchie considers the jar. Heavy glass, tidy with black straw, capped and sealed with tar. Inside, water sloshes restlessly. When Catchie touches the glass, the water rears at her finger, leaving a small beastie banging the side. There's such hatred in its eyes that Catchie backs away.

  "'Mam, the water, there's—"

  "So."

  "There's you!"

  "Sister."

  "So the vessel?"

  "So. My fire sister."

  Catchie brings her legs together in fortress and considers this fishie Spitmam as she curses them soundlessly. “'Mam, how's this?"

  "Oh, there's a long story, not to be said now. Long before the village, I fished the shores for my water sister, making traps and waiting patient. Another time, I took evenings with the collie, coaxing my other out of the fire world with tinder."

  "So there's world in the collie?” Catchie speaks.

  "There's all the cast of wind, water and rock there, but the collie's their dyke. My sister's their only escape, and the fire vessel, her cage."

  "Your other sister, ‘mam,” Catchie says, catching at last, “There's her in the storm."

  "The last."

  "Coming for you?"

  "All come for what I have."

  "'Mam?"

  "Come after the names,” and saying, Spitmam opens her mouth, just so, and then much further, further than Catchie's ever regarded, and drags Catchie close so she can stare down the throat. Deep in, behind the tongue, fizzing with glow, there's a white gem, set in the mouth like the throne of all Spitmam's speech.

  Spitmam shuts again. “You regard?"

  "There's precious, ‘mam."

  "There's the most precious. There's all the names that ever been."

  "Where did they come?"

  "They come from before. When the world split, and the land was cut for islands by water and storm, and whole folk were split into water and rock and fire and wind folk, names were about to slip the cracks and out of the world—and where would I have been? This world without names—no where for me to be. So I hid the names in my mouth and came to the island. Slow, I learnt the names—there's such use in them to fashion things. The village comes from the names, girl. Every one of you folk, grown from my spit and word of mouth."

  Catchie considers. Aggie, Caff, Kery—all made by the ‘mam.

  "Names, ‘mam? Where's their force?"

  "And what have I always instructed? What's always said about names?"

  "They cast."

  "There's so. They cast, they strap. The proper and fit name will retrieve any from the world's slush. Now consider with the three sisters and me."

  Catchie speaks slowly, conceiving the force of names for the first time. “If names cast, they can make whole. If they make whole, they can bring all sisters together. Can make anything whole."

  "Said well, girl. I want to be whole. I'm ill with this quarter world and folk nagging me for names for every bastard thing they step on. Now serve your purpose and gather the fire vessel and I'll hold the water jar and we'll catch the wilful sister."

  So ordered, Catchie's released from Spitmam's grip and takes the vessel from the floor by the strap. Spitmam nabs the collie, fixes it for a low light, and brings the water jar, dogging Catchie out the door and into the storm's work.

  Dust's spiking the air. The storm regards them from above.

  "Hold the collie and wait by.” Spitmam purrs, “Ah, there's she."

  Now Catchie can distinguish, a grand face puffing out of the clouds, the cast of Spitmam. Like a woman surfacing from the stars with the streamers of another world caught in her hair.

  "Oh, ‘mam,” Catchie moans. “There's too rash. How will you snag her?"

  Spitmam smiles. “Sister wants the names. Nothing more needed than just open my mouth and tempt her in. For I'll gobble you, storm!"

  With a last cry of Sister! Spitmam spreads her mouth to the sky, letting birds and wind and her sister consider the pure radiance of the names, and the wind Spitmam curls herself into a ready bolt.

  There's a quick moment and it dares Catchie. “'Mam?"

  Spitmam turns to Catchie, gaping.

  "'Mam?"

  She tilts towards the girl, anxious to face again her sister, but when Spitmam bends down, and down again, Catchie's hand pips out and rams her mouth. Spitmam snarls, but Catchie wrenches down the jaw to clear, the moment's all she needs, and her fingers snatch the gem.

  Spitmam coughs out Catchie's hand and a curse—"Break you, girl, fuck you to powder!"—but Catchie's away, fingers lashed to the gem in one and the other hand to the collie. She's between the canted cottages, frogging Cullin's dyke and over the hellafield, leaping stone to stone, while behind, a wild Spitmam chases with jar and vessel rolled under her arms and following all, a wilder sister spouting crows and coiling gale like a whip.

  Breathless, finally by the edge of the fishie, Catchie shouts. “Upstander! Come save the beastie!"

  "Catchie?” Hammle peeps out from a tented cocoon in the trench. “Your senses bashed by the storm?"

  Catchie holds out her prize hand. “Got the names, upstander! For casting the fishie!"

  Hammle unsnarls from the tent tethers and climbs through. “Names? Only Spitmam has."

  "Stolen away!” Spitmam behind them, raged. “Now return or I'll make your bones for shit."

  "So, Spitmam,” Hammle says quiet.

  "Hammle, this is clear of you."

  "Sisters too, I regard."

  Catchie sidles to the upstander's side, away from her granny's threats. “Upstander, you know the sisters?"
<
br />   "Know them well,” Hammle tells Catchie, considering Spitmam queerly. “For me and Spitmam are from ago. You not hear? I was Spitmam's first. I was her first Catchie."

  "But you fled me for the beasties and your pend, Hammle. After my making and my tending and my learning."

  "Beasties need keeping, Spitmam."

  "There's not important. Only names fill."

  "Witch!” Hammle growls. “Names are what split the world. Folk cutting the world up for names, and cutting up the cuts for more names, and cutting and cutting til there's no mix, no mystery, only the elements and the hunger for names."

  "No world without names speaking first for them—you know and you see everyday with your nameless beasties falling to rubbish."

  "Names summon the world only to cut it up again."

  "And what else holds the world?"

  "The mystery of it, Spitmam."

  "And never name the world? Huddle in your hole then, and leave out my girl."

  With arms still around the jar and vessel, and the jar banging with the water sister's fury and the fire vessel quaking with expectation, Spitmam reaches for Catchie. Catchie steps back, but the step's ditch and she falls onto a net of tethers, and is about to scream when the wind sister's across them.

  Greeted, sister—booms the voice of the cloud face above them—So kind to arrange this union—and one twister like a long finger grazes over them. Spitmam hollers, brushed over, dropping the jar to the hella. The glass clicks, not cracks, but the water sister pesters it with teeth. And the jar explodes.

  Sister!—the water sister cries in a drowned voice, rising from the jar's pool in a claw that rakes Spitmam's face. So much rock, so much wind—why not so much water? and saying, she has a special shriek that summons the underground streams, the bog, the sea. There's a still moment, tense like a drop before dropping, before the ground rumbles and geysers shred the hellafield. Hellas flip up, water shoots up in dozens of jets.

  Sweet sister—the wind sister caws in the chorus of birds—So much water sure, but my storm sucks your seas dry. So twisters noose the water jets, grapple like snakes, and in a coil that unwinds across the land, the grandest ever whirl of water and wind and loose rock takes shape.

  When the elements are so bare, Catchie knows there's the end of things, but she's firmed to her purpose. The wind sprays her with mud, so she's slow out of the tethers. Once free, Catchie lets the collie sag in her hand, flame sighing against its iron gate. What else? she thinks, but it's easy, and before the thought's words, she throws the collie, harder than the wind against the side of the beastie, and cries out.

  "You fishie!"

  A moment, there's only a dingy flame, a hot smudge. Then a smoulder of grass on the back of the beastie, a worm of smoke. Quick, the fire rises. The rushes glow bright, sparking out seeds, flaring branches like saplings, throwing out brands like vines, and the hillside of the fishie sheets with a flame jungle. Sizzle and flick, the tethers snap and the fishie twists its back, and howls.

  "Away!” the upstander cries, lifting Catchie with him, but there's only there, between the burning beastie and the sisters’ whirlpool. Out of the calamity, Catchie regards the cast of the fishie, but there's two casts: the stone fishie and another flowing into it, a fishie of fire, stripping all the dross from its sister's body.

  "There's two fishies!” she yells, shucking the upstander's hand from her shoulder, but there's only one fishie, as it flaps in the hole, a burning rock. A roar above her makes Catchie turn, and there in the mad brew of storm, there's another fishie, cast by wind and beating its grand tail.

  "There's third fishie!” she cries, when the beastie leaps from the cloud, unknotting from the stormy Spitmam's hair, and dives towards them. The wind fishie falls for its sisters, a loud whoosh that drives Hammle, Spitmam and Catchie backwards with smoky draughts.

  Where's last fishie? Catchie thinks alone, but she's there, a pucker in the bog lapping her feet that throws back like a new spring and kicks itself free from the ground with a switch of tail, an arc of flowing cast that gushes across her sisters.

  And with the last join, there's a break in time, and rock and water and wind and fire stop in struggle. Light curdles. Faster than the thought, a spasm passes into the elements, through Catchie, out of the elements, and across the world.

  "'Mam! Upstander!” Catchie shouts, for the ground's gone, and her arms don't move in air, and the sound of her shouting's staggered into gibber. World waits. In this new gloom, the fishie, whole and proper, beats its tail and swims in a circle. World waits. There's something left. The gem reminds by biting into Catchie's hand.

  The gem. Just so.

  Like the collie before, Catchie throws the names towards the fishie, and the gem consumes itself in its trail, pouring out the names til a last name reaches the fishie and she swallows it. The name of whale, and the whale accepts, and replies with a thudding song.

  World waits.

  Where's else?—Catchie mouths to the whale—You have cast, you have name—and again, the whale sings to her.

  So Catchie opens her mouth, gives the whale a new name. It's not a name given to her by Spitmam and all the folk that came before, it's not a name whittled from the gem she's thrown, but one that's her and only. A new making, a happy bellow, part poor beastie, part grand beastie, part there's more.

  World rouses.

  The whale takes the new name, swims a little further out, and sings a different tune back to Catchie.

  World rises.

  Catchie comes forward, and yelps another name, made up of her feeling to this naming and this new song of the whale's, and the whale takes this, and gives Catchie something new in its mystery to name, and Catchie laughs, for the mystery needs the name to be called out and the name must fall short of the mystery, and this is the game that makes the world all over. For Catchie and the whale call and catch across the world, naming the stars and the masses, the orphan worlds tended by Hammle and even the brittle empties where Spitmam and her sisters tear between the one name they've permit themselves, and then the whale and Catchie swim past all the same again, and then again, with new mysteries in new songs and new names for new mysteries, and there's the way of it, name and mystery, and the pulse of a grand tail.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Found Wedged in the Side of a Desk Drawer in Paris, France, 23 December 1989

  Nick Mamatas

  They always left something

  for the girl in the window

  A beetle pinned

  to a scrap of balsam.

  A coconut carved

  with sweeping-winged

  birds

  and palms.

  For your fits

  whispered the sailor

  (well-known that I was kept hidden

  locked away)

  and he retreated

  back down the hall

  away from my door.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Contributors

  Jennifer Rachel Baumer lives in Reno, Nevada, with her husband/best friend/sometime editor Rick and a rapidly expanding number of cats. She wrote “Spirits” at Clarion after news from home of a shooting at the local market. When not writing fiction Jennifer can be found procrastinating on writing nonfiction, from which she makes a tentative living.

  Richard Butner is a freelance journalist and short story writer. Hell, he might even write a novel soon. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. He loves you.

  Jack Cheng works on archaeological excavations in Turkey and Syria. He is writing a book on Assyrian music when not playing with his new son Austin.

  Lena DeTar is currently teaching English in Nara, Japan. She will be attending a Science Writing (journalism) MA program at Johns Hopkins next year. As for philosophy, she may be Buddhist. Or not. It deserves more meditation.

  L. Timmel Duchamp has published a prodigious quantity of fiction in addition to a modest number of essays. She is an editor at Fantastic Metropolis. Intrepid vo
yagers may discover and explore her work at www.ltimmel.home.mindspring.com

  Jan Lars Jensen grew up in Yarrow, B.C. and currently lives in Calgary, Alberta. His first novel, Shiva 3000, was published by Harcourt in North America and Macmillan in the U.K. Raincoast Books will publish a nonfiction work, tentatively titled Nervous System, in 2004. Interested parties may wish to consult his website: www.jensen.ca

  LCRW now calls Northampton, MA, home (previously Boston, then Brooklyn) and considers the following bookshops top vacation spots: Atomic Books, Baltimore, MD; Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop, Boston, MA; Borderlands Bookshop, San Francisco, CA; Broadside Books, Northampton, MA; Clovis Press, Brooklyn, NY; Downtown News & Books, Asheville, NC; Dreamhaven, Minneapolis, MN; Flyrabbit, Allston, MA; Pandemonium, Cambridge, MA; Powell's, Portland, OR; Prairie Lights, Iowa City, IA; Quimby's, Chicago, IL; John Rollins Books, Portage, MI; A Room of One's Own, Madison, WI; Schuler's, Okemos, MI; Soft Skull Shortwave, Brooklyn, NY; St. Mark's Bookshop, NY, NY; Mark V. Ziesing, Bookseller, CA; and the distributor Last Gasp.

  Nick Mamatas is the author of the Bram Stoker Award-losing short novel Northern Gothic (Soft Skull Press) and of short stories appearing in Razor, Strange Horizons, Wide Angle NY, and The Whirligig. This bio is already longer than his story, so just look at his website: www.kynn.com/wwnkd.

  Christoph Meyer lives in Danville, OH. He is an enthusiast. His zine, 28 Pages Lovingly Bound with Twine, is indeed that, and should be read.

  Nancy Jane Moore's fiction has appeared in various anthologies, some magazines, and the occasional webzine, but this is the first time her poetry has appeared anywhere besides her high school literary magazine.

  David Erik Nelson currently lives somewhere in America with his anonymous fiancee and X number of dogs. He has never been associated with the publication Poor Mojo's Almanac(k) (www.poormojo.org), and asks that you disregard that vile, scurrilous rag entirely.

  Richard Parks lives in Mississippi with his wife and three cats. His work has appeared in Asimov's, Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales, and numerous anthologies. His first short story collection, The Ogre's Wife: Fairy Tales for Grownups, was published in 2002 by Obscura Press.