by Cat Rambo
The days and nights grew warmer yet. On a sky blue afternoon, gulls wheeling above like lookouts, they glimpsed the Coral Tower.
It was much larger than Lucy had imagined. In her head it had been the size of her home, three rooms, grown up and downward into a long thin stalk. In reality, it seemed as wide around as a small city and she understood now the awed undertone with which both Devon and the Captain had named it. It was round and windows spanned its circumference, each large enough for their ship to pass through. The lines of windows continued upward, upward, towards a top that was far above in the blueness. Its color was a rosy, warm shade, but bird droppings encrusted the lower levels, thick mottled gray and white layers.
“It’s at its best right after a storm,” Devon said. “Then everything is washed clean, and you can see all the details.” He stared forward at the tower, eyes wide.
The Captain came up behind them. “We’ll be pulling in tonight,” he said. “You’ll do your part, lad, or else your young friend here will die.”
Not for the first time, Lucy regretted her disguise’s complications.
The pirates dissented when it came time to brave the Coral Tower. Most stayed on board. They tied the ship to a railing near a set of steps a dozen horses wide, stretching upward into the tower. Two sailors shimmied down to anchor the rope ladder that most used, but Lucy and Devon were both lowered, arms tied to their sides.
“According to the sorcerer, it’ll take a while for the Tower to know you,” the Captain said to Lucy. “We’ll stay here tonight.”
They climbed the stairs, which were slippery, overgrown with wet yellow weed ribbed with shadowy purple. At the entrance they paused, gazing inward. There was no interior to the Tower, just a vast upward stretch. A narrow, unrailed staircase spiraled along the inside, leading upwards. They headed into the middle, where a black pit marked where a similar staircase led down into the earth.
The sailors built a fire of scavenged driftwood beside the pit. A small pot set amid the flames boiled with merry abandon, smelling of boiled double-fin and onions.
A sailor came from the ship, bringing a narrow wooden chest to the Captain. Opening it, he took out silken bands, each mounted with a slippery gray soapstone disk. He passed them out to everyone except Devon and Lucy, but tied one on her. Like the rest, he wore his fastened around his head, the stone disk resting flat against his forehead.
“I have been exploring and researching this Tower for over a decade,” he said. “While many chambers will not open except to the Pot King’s blood, since he was the last person to bind energies here, there are others that can be explored. Many hold sorcerous energies that play upon one’s spirit—these disks absorb the effulgences but can hold only so much. So to find these pools of invisible, noxious influences, we use captives, just as miners use canaries in coalmines to signal deadly gas. He nodded towards Devon. “Should you fall prey to the energies and seek to destroy yourself, we will know we are in the presence of such, and hurry on.”
“That is the usual sign?” Devon asked.
“A few have managed to hurl themselves into the pit that lies at the center and fall for we do not know how long.”
Lucy shivered.
“There is no need to expose her to all this,” Devon said.
“Who?”
He pointed at Lucy with his chin. “I’m the Pot-King’s son. She’s an innocent who got swept up in your plot unawares.”
The Captain frowned, looking between them. “We’ll take both and see who falls prey to the energies first,” he said, removing Lucy’s disk. “A sorcerer will have enough training to overcome the worst effects.”
They slept there that night, although Lucy did not feel that she slept at all. The inside of the tower roared with the waves’ murmur, magnifying it into a steady throbbing at the back of her head. She strained her ears, listening for noises from the depths of the hole. Devon was restless too. In the early hours she was roused by clamor. His restless thrashings had knocked a supply pack over the side. The Captain swore at him, but kept his voice down.
I can’t do this anymore, Lucy thought, filled with despair at the anger in his words. I can’t get up in the morning and go down into that pit. Tears leaked from her eyes, and a shudder passed through her as the waves cried out again.
There’s no choice, she realized. They won’t listen to my refusals. It’s not like escaping a school day by claiming stomachache. Mary Silverhands had no choice, she simply endured and did the best she could.
In the morning, they started down: Lucy, Devon, the Captain, and two sailors, the two who had originally caught them, Ned and Pete. Ned was the bluff-faced, stocky older man, and Pete the younger. They were all roped together as they proceeded down the stairway: a sailor, then Devon, then Lucy, then the other sailor, then the Captain. The walls were unadorned and slick with salty moisture.
The nightmarish, narrow part seemed to continue for hours but eventually they came to a place where tunnels led off in every direction, allowing them to make camp and sleep. The Captain told Devon that he might explore. The boy took a torch and headed into the darkness. His pace was quick and eager, untired where the rest ached with weariness.
A rope trailed after the Captain and back up towards the top. It led to a small windlass that had been set up beside the hole with sailors to watch over it.
“We may be a while down here,” he explained to Lucy. She sat a few feet away from the pit’s edge, watching the darkness while the sailors built a fire and set water boiling for tea. “And it will be easier to have them lower supplies than have someone go fetching and carrying along the staircase.”
“We might be down here for days?” Lucy asked, dismayed. The oppressive darkness dampened her spirits.
“In two more circles of the rim, we will have come as deep as I ever have. There is a closed doorway that I think will open to the Pot King’s blood. But who knows what lies beyond it, or how long it will take to wrestle the magic free?” He laughed. “Perhaps when all is said and done, we’ll come flying up out of the pit, hovering on great wings like falcons before we burst out across the Isles in glory and splendor.”
Lucy continued to watch the darkness.
“So you are not the Pot King’s son?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Just a girl,” she said.
“Ah,” he said. “Just a girl.”
The silence stretched out between them.
“Do you know why going into the earth’s heart is so perilous?” he asked.
"Why?”
Down there, we are closer to the bones of sorcery. Emotions go awry and thoughts can damage you. So it is best to be calm down here, to avoid emotional extremes.” His voice was strained. “Satisfying lust, for one.”
“Oh,” she said. And then, “Oh!”
He stooped to whisper, “But when we are back on the surface, just a girl, we will speak of this again.” He turned and went to oversee the sailors as they prepared the meal.
I am not invisible to him, she thought. Back home she was used to her sisters drawing men’s stares, used to their gaze passing over her absently. But Jusef Miryam’s green eyes saw her, every inch of her. She smiled to herself.
Half a day later, they stood before the portal. The rope had been fastened beside their camp at the pit’s edge and they had paused to eat and drink before entering the tunnels and coming to the small, boxy room, two doors set along its northern wall.
“See?” Captain Miryam said, looking pleased. “That door and that both were closed before. We’ll try the right hand side first.”
They wove through roseate stone tunnels, lighting their way with fish-oil lanterns that sent out a black, stink-laden smoke. By now, she thought, they were miles below the ocean’s surface. Sometimes there were signs of earlier visitors—writing scratched or painted or in one case seared into the stone, nothing that Lucy could read.
The tunnel ended in a door made of a different material, a pearly slab that reflected the lanterns’ su
llen glow. The Captain gestured to Devon, who jittered in place, impatient. “After you, lad.”
Drawn in their wake and trailed by the sailors, Lucy entered the room. It had a sea-shell’s inner glow and was far wider within than it had seemed from without. An immense ribbed ceiling stretched overhead, and white crystal veins laced like ivy across the pink surface.
“Captain Miryam,” Devon said. “If you allow me to step forward and seize the same power as my father, I will take you to safety. Otherwise I will watch as you, a novice untutored in these arts, are consumed by its energies and then step forward and take the same power as my father.”
His voice was altered, taking on an older, bitterer cadence but still high and excited. Lucy stared at him.
“Who are you?” she said.
“It’s his son still,” Captain Miryam said. He sounded amused. “So the rumors are true—he keeps you barred from adolescence and has for decades, to prevent you from challenging him.”
Devon’s face worked angrily. “Yes!” he spat. “Decades I’ve been a boy, decades I’ve been in this form, puny child not fit for adult company. But now I can have the power, and mature my body after all.”
Lucy paid them no attention. She stepped forward, seeking the glow’s source. Here in this oddly shaped chamber, the acoustics were erratic. She heard whispers in her ears, half-heard tugs at her attention.
The Captain turned to the sailors. “Hold him,” he said.
The sailors stepped forward to vanish in showers of bloody sparks. Devon’s thin lips crept up from his teeth to assume an eerie rictus.
You have to hurry, Mary’s voice said to Lucy. She turned back—surely she was close, so close to the source of the light. She managed somehow to turn a corner while standing still, and the light was all around her, seeping into her bones.
I’m Mary Silverhands now, she thought, distracted by the power washing through her. Someone was shouting, Devon was shouting, shouting at her, and she put out a hand and recoiled in horror as her energy and his met and marred each other.
She watched as Devon fell away into pieces, as he was unmade by the collision of the light. Sorrowfully, she kept her own edges from raveling, rewove them. The energy roiled through her, wore her like a wave, but she closed her eyes and focused, drew her awareness down into a single point, and relaxed and opened them. She stood in the chamber, alone except for Jusef, who stood staring at her. Char marks were laid upon the wall to mark the sailors’ passing. There was no sign of Devon.
Lucy led the way back to the camp. He followed her in silence. She walked feeling the energy leak from her, feeling it collide with the world. It was a constant struggle to keep from changing it, to keep from doing things like letting wildflowers spring up in her wake, or the air in her lungs be breathed out as lastflower perfume.
At the camp and the pit’s edge, she paused.
He took her hand, level-eyed. She leaned to touch her lips to his and this time she did give into the urge. With her kiss, he breathed in sweetness: the air in a pear orchard just as the first sunshine touches the blossoms open. He rocked back on his heels with the magic’s passionate force, his green eyes wild and entreating.
She unfolded great falcon wings and leaped into the pit, flying upwards towards the dot of light so far above. He fell to his knees and watched, watched as a new goddess ascended towards the skies of the Lesser Southern Isles.
In 2006, there was a craze for fantasy pirate stories. Shimmer Magazine did a pirate issue, and there were at least two anthologies as well, including one edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. By then I was starting to think writing on spec for theme issues was usually a bad idea, but a couple of stories did get sparked by thinking about pirates.
This story started with the title and the idea of an expedition to recover a magical artifact—one of the classic fantasy plotlines. It’s also the story of Lucy trying to figure out her sexual identity—drawn to both the non-threatening youth (who turns out to be very threatening) and the sexy pirate captain.
Up the Chimney
I should have known better. There we were dozing by the fireside, old Tom and me, and there’s a stranger telling some story of funerals and cats. Old Tom, he leaps up, whiskers abristle. Shouting “Then I’m the King of Cats” and disappearing up the chimney!
I’ve always been a skinny lad, and quick-witted to boot, so I leaps over the embers, which were dying then anyhow, and scramble after Tom. It’s my chance to get to Fairyland, I figure, and old dad, he’d always said, grab opportunities as they presents themselves.
If I’d known then what I know now, I’d have kept sitting there and waved Tom on his journey. It’s Fairyland, sure enough, but it’s a cat’s notion of Fairyland. Maybe there’s one for all the creatures, horses and rats and huntin’ dogs. But their notion here of entertainment is chasing mice, the whole kit and court does it for hours on a time, and then they drink cream and eat sardines. I’d give my soul for an honest pint of beer.
The women, aye, they’re pretty enough, but they’ll claw you to death sure as eagles fly, and they stink, more to the point. They reek of musk and blood, and in the evenings they all sit around grooming each other and purring, an unsettling sound that unmans me whenever I hear it.
King of Cats, be-damned. I’d search for some other Fairyland, but where might I end up? A fish’s land, where it’s never warm nor dry, or a beetle’s, perhaps. At least I have my fireside here, with old Tom cleaning my ears while I wait for some new story to set me free.
“Up the Chimney” was written for a flash fiction contest held by EscapePod. It did not win by popular vote, but editor Stephen Eley did purchase it for a podcast and it later appeared online in the Postcards from series.
I’ve always been fascinated by the folk story in which a man recounts having seen an odd funeral the night before. At the end of it, whatever cat is nearby raises its head, says, “Then I’m the King of Cats!” and vanishes away. Here I allowed the cat to take someone with him, a scullery lad who is, by this point in the story, heartily tired of a cat’s vision of Paradise.
The Silent Familiar
The Wizard Niccolo was not happy. At the age of 183—youthful for a wizard, but improbable for an ordinary human—he had thought certain things well out of his life. Sudden changes in his daily routine were one. And romance was another—even if it was his familiar’s romance, and not his own.
"Could make an omelet with it, I suppose,” he grumbled to that familiar, the tiny dragon Olivia. She sat on the cluttered mantle, wrapped around her egg, still marveling at its production and entirely too pleased with herself. A pair of alabaster candelabra sheltered her in a thicket of gilt spirals, and a stuffed salmon, labeled “First Prize—Thornstone Village Centennial Celebration,” regarded her with a sour gaze.
“Master,” she said, blinking luminous eyes. “Have I not served you well?”
“For the most part,” he admitted.
She stayed silent, so after a pause, he said, “Yes, invariably, Olivia. But who will hold your loyalty, that egg or I?”
“Both,” she said and stoked her scaled cheek along the egg’s smooth surface. “But I will never value it higher than my service to you.”
Wizards’ familiars are unnatural creatures. Some are much like any other animal: a cat, perhaps, with black fur, a droop-winged crow, or a snake with emerald scales. Others look less innocuous and more fantastical—homunculi and tiny, perfect dragons like Olivia, or shaggy-warted mandrake plants. Given this, it is surprising that two of them had managed to have compatible body parts, let alone produce an offspring. And yet, three months after a purely platonic sojourn of Niccolo with a sorceress whose library was vast enough to entice all sorts of other mages to her door, this had happened. Niccolo had been researching how the gods manifested themselves, and the library tomes had been unfamiliar enough to hold all his attention. Enrapt in ancient texts, he had overlooked Olivia’s activities.
Niccolo scowled at her. “Do you i
ntend to make a habit of this?” he demanded.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Olivia said absently. “I didn’t like the last part, the laying. The getting ready to lay, though…”
Niccolo put up his hand. “I do not want to know.” He turned away. “How long till it hatches?”
“I don’t know,” Olivia said. “I’ve never done this.” She crooned deep in her throat, an unsettling noise Niccolo had never heard her make before.
Grumbling, he stalked out. It’s probably not even viable, he thought. How long would Olivia fool herself into believing it would hatch? When he had created her, coaxing her winged form from a malachite shard, a bit of bone, and a lizard’s scale, he had endowed her with a sardonic wit and a capability for banter—requisites for any wizard’s familiar. But he had always prided himself that Olivia was smarter than most. Smarter than this deluded maternal ambition would seem to indicate.
Had he erred when making her? Familiars were repositories for wizards’ emotions, one of the means by which they stripped away their humanity and became immortal. Perhaps he’d put too much in her, though. He considered thoughts of a new familiar, but reluctantly. At times, when Olivia rested on his shoulder or curled in his lap, he felt the struggle of his emotions, the desire to pet her like a cat warring with a shrinking away, a don’t-touch-me shudder. He was still young for a wizard, still trying to learn what magic meant. Still trying to become more than human.
He sighed. After a few months, he’d try to get Olivia to see reason and abandon her effort.
Three months later, Olivia still spent most waking hours curled around her egg, drowsy contentment evident in the set of her wings. Niccolo had resigned himself to her absent-mindedness. He had been working on a set of experiments involving aqua vitæ and a supposed phoenix feather, coaxing bits of down away from the shaft. He hoped to evoke fiery gold, but so far all he had was soggy fluff.
