by A. J. Armitt
The mud from Manetur’s boots had left grubby smears across the floorboards, but she had not wanted to nag or run around cleaning up and fussing over him. He had been away for a long time.
Instead she had fed him stew; washed the mud, sweat and blood from his clothes and from his body; and after that he took her. He had been silent for most of the evening, but his violent passion and frustration were clear in that moment. It unsettled her, but it was well known that battle sometimes did strange things to men.
When she woke, he had already left the cottage. And so now she was scrubbing his footprints from the floorboards.
She was surprised that he had not stayed with her in the morning. He had been away for so long. She had hoped... It didn’t matter. Whatever he had seen, whatever he had done, whatever effect it had had on him, her husband needed her more than he had ever done before. She had lived her own horror over and over again, every day until Julian had arrived with the news. At least he had come back to her in one piece.
She squeezed the cloth until her pink hands shook and carried the bucket to the door. She tipped its contents just over the threshold, leaving a steaming pool of muddy water with nowhere to drain away. She left the bucket outside and returned to the warmth. She shuffled across the room to the hearth and laid another log on the fire, watching as steam escaped from the damp wood until it gradually began to catch alight and thick white smoke tumbled up the chimney in search of freedom.
Manetur needed her, as much as he needed time; if she was patient, he would come back to her for good.
She sat down in her chair by the window and watched as an autumn leaf drifted listlessly from a branch to the soaking earth below.
*****
Come dawn, on the second day, the effects will start to wear off and you will change: that was what She had said and She didn't lie. That meant it had to be tonight, before he stopped looking like a pig-farmer.
Hohepa glanced up at the citadel before returning his eyes to the slick mud that threatened to send him sprawling with every step he took up the hillside. It stank. Back home, the roads were made from stone and gravel - and the weather was warmer and dryer - there was none of this putrid muck. Still, the living conditions here were not surprising. These aboriginal people lived simple, boring, grotty, uneducated lives.
He would be the last scout into the citadel, the others should already be in. They always travelled separately in case of trouble. The sun was starting to disappear below the horizon and the gates closed at dusk; they did not open again until dawn, which meant that he had to get in now. And the mud was frustrating him. The slopes up to the citadel were steep and any assault against it would be difficult, even without the foul muck to deal with. The citadel would fall, of course, but the loss of life would be unacceptable - a handful of bowmen on the walls could wreak havoc on the advancing warriors below.
He had spent the day in the village tavern, pretending to drink and trying not to engage anyone in conversation. It was not that he was afraid of being exposed - there was enough of Manetur knocking around inside his shrunken head for him to get by - but he felt uneasy. He had wanted to spend the day with the woman - at least that way he could have had a little more fun. He knew the others would have frowned upon it, been disgusted even, but they didn’t have to know. She wasn’t ugly, and she was so willing to please him - and that was just it. It unnerved him how willing she was to give. He could see desperate love in her eyes. It was a strange sensation. Pleasure mixed with pity, horror and crippling sadness. He could feel Manetur seething somewhere inside him.
It was not uncommon for emotion to be referred, but this was stronger than Hohepa had felt before. They were always told not to interact with enemies - there was a risk of discovery. Perhaps there was also a risk of empathy.
The dark was closing in fast by the time he entered the citadel. He smiled politely at the guards that he knew Manetur did not know, and passed through the gates.
*****
Netty lay awake.
Manetur had not come back during the day, and was still not back now that it was night. She had barely slept while he was gone, but she couldn't sleep at all now that he was close.
Muffled shouts and cheers reached her over the sound of the music from the citadel. Manetur was there, she knew - celebrating the victory. She could wait for one more day. But she couldn't sleep.
She swung herself from the bed and lifted the covers to wrap around her naked form. She struck a match and held it to a candle for a little light and warmth and then shuffled over to her chair by the window.
The lights of the citadel illuminated the cloudy sky above it but little filtered down onto the ground around it, leaving it an island of light in the surrounding darkness. Despite the noise, the only visible movement came from the pacing sentries, lit up on the walls for a moment at a time as they passed the lamps hanging there. She saw a torch, a tiny flame against the great darkness that was the citadel, fall from the wall. Netty’s cousin was a sentry; she wondered whether one of those dark shapes could be him. They had been running double shifts since the raiders’ ships had been spotted on the coast, so it seemed likely. She hoped that it hadn’t been him who dropped the torch - that would be sure to draw a punishment if anyone noticed.
A thin beam of orange light appeared from the black walls of the citadel and slowly grew wider and wider. It took her a moment to realise that the gates were opening. She could not understand: the gates never opened at night. Netty looked for the sentries on the walls. There were frantic and sporadic flurries of movement but they were too far away for her to make out what was happening.
She realised that the sounds of revelry were changing. The music was still playing, but there were other sounds now: panicked shouts and screams.
And then a terrifying, inhuman roar. A mass of shadows, moving at shocking pace, thundered into the light from the opening gateway. More and more sped up towards the citadel and flooded through the opening, almost blocking out the light entirely.
The music had stopped now, and all she could hear were terrible screams.
Netty ran to the bed and dressed quickly. She pulled a sack from under the bed and began throwing clothes and possessions into it. Manetur had said to her, before he left for the battle, that if the raiders broke through she should take refuge in the citadel or, failing that, she should hide in the western woods. There was a glade there, hidden far in, where they had been married. He would come for her there.
She left the bed and hurried towards the door, blowing out the candle on her way passed. She stopped. Her window…
And then the glass exploded.
*****
The fires raging around the citadel were so bright that it was difficult to tell whether the sun was really rising, but he knew it was. He could feel it in the bile in his throat and the sharp pains that flared up all over his body, making him wince and shudder. He was starting to change back.
His work was done for the night and he had a day of rest and reward ahead of him at the encampment, but he found himself moving in the opposite direction. He could not explain it, but he felt... frustrated. And so he walked away from the citadel and away from the encampment.
Hohepa skirted around a pod of hulking warriors, great, dark shapes against the fires, but they took little notice of him. They should know him: he was marked out as a scout by the bright yellow fabric he had tied at each shoulder and on a band around his head, but he preferred to be cautious. He would change soon, but for now he didn’t want to risk having to explain who he was to one of those brutes if they came at him. Manetur was a good foot and a half shorter than Hohepa's true height, but even then most warriors would dwarf him by another foot. He had been a smaller than average child and so they had named him Hohepa - he will get bigger - the irony was not lost on him now. He had never grown enough to become a warrior, but by that token the constant changes that came with being a scout didn’t last quite as long and didn’t hurt quite as much.
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He stopped with his hands on his knees and spluttered as another wave of pain coursed through him.
Every step became harder as his body continued to prepare itself for the change. He knew that he should go back the way he had come, to find the privacy of his tent. If an enemy caught him during it, he would be virtually defenceless. But he didn’t turn back.
He had fought in countless battles - far more skirmishes - had breached more castles and been through more changes than he could remember. For some reason this was different. Not the job - it was always very formulaic: the aboriginals had been drawn out by a handful of slaves posing as raiders, a small group were captured and infiltrated. Now they were being conquered.
He could not understand why he felt such sadness for these people.
A fresh wave of agony hit him, so powerful that it forced him onto his knees. His head felt like it was being pulled apart in all directions and his joints were creaking like twisting rope. He rolled onto his back. His vision was failing: from complete darkness into a white-grey and back again. It settled, but remained foggy.
Dark, blurred shapes hovered above him in the sky... coming closer. One wound its way towards his face, closer and closer, he started to panic but could not move. With a cold, barely audible slap, it came to rest on his face. Cold and wet. He felt a cool breeze filter through his skull and his fingers and toes twitched as he regained control of his body.
He lifted a hand - a small hand, the change had not completed - and peeled the dewy, red leaf from his face. He let it fall to the earth beside his head, rolled onto his front, raised himself onto all fours and then stood tenderly.
That had been excruciating, but it was nothing more than a warning. The true change would be worse.
He looked up and found himself facing a small house with a chimney, a doorway and a broken, latticed window. The doorway was open, he saw as he stumbled towards it, the door hanging from its hinges. He grabbed the frame for support and stepped into the house, anxiety building within him. There were large, muddy footprints leading inside. The room was dark, but an orange glow was reflecting around the room from the shards of glass still attached to the window frame. On the floor the woman lay crumpled on a splintered chair, her clothing torn and a great, dark mark under her left breast that spread down to pool on the floor amid the mud and splintered wood.
He walked forward tentatively until he was standing above her. Her face was untouched but still wet with tears.
Netty.
He stood there for a moment: angry, horrified, desperate, distraught, but above all confused. He realised that he was crying.
His mouth opened, unbidden: “I’m so sorry, Netty…. I’m sorry I never came home…”
And then he fell, screaming as the change exploded out from his very centre. He could feel each and every molecule of his body fighting to pull away from each other. Instead of creaking, his joints were cracking like splintering wood and a bright light so fierce and hot that it threatened to evaporate him rose up from inside and burst through every pore in his body.
As suddenly as it had started, it was done.
He raised himself to kneel on one knee, exhausted. His leather boots had split to reveal the thick flesh of his feet underneath and his clothes hung from him like rags. His olive skin was ribbed with bands of muscle and black tattoos swirled from his waist like vines, across his chest and back, clawing their way up his neck to his face where they patterned around his big eyes, flat nose, wide mouth and across the top of his shaven head.
The cottage seemed even smaller now, the woman a tiny, broken thing. He leant forward to stroke the hair from her face and stare down at her. A tear escaped from his eye and fell. It splashed onto the tip of her nose and rolled down to settle in the corner of her eye.
Hohepa felt his head clear and turned to look out of the window in the direction of the camp. Silhouetted by the risen sun and the fires of the citadel, falling leaves drifted around the tree like a flurry of snowflakes.
***
Alex MacKenzie lives in London, has an MA in Ancient History and spends his time playing sport and writing fiction.
Threads of Love
By Rachel Dove
Sinking further into his high-backed, leather chair, Bob stared at his plump secretary, Beryl, as she recited his agenda for the day. Meetings, conference calls, author readings, all packed tightly into neat little slots; half hour slots of boredom; going through the motions. Each slot bringing him closer to the inevitable decay of old age; to death. Retirement was not something he sought. Why would he?
Sitting staring at his wife all day? Rattling around their huge country house, staring at all the useless shit she had filled it with over the years? Ornaments of fat, docile faced cherubs, vases the size of an average family’s bathroom filled with expensive, putrid smelling rare plants? No thank you.
Truth was - Bob Vista had it all: Chief Editor at Vernox Publishing, hot young wife, two-point-four kids in private school, flash country pile, money to burn; all by the age of forty. He had his own hair and teeth, hell he was quite a catch.
The problem was, he was bored; bored shitless. There was no challenge anymore, no va-va-voom, and no lead in his rapidly shrinking pencil. He spent his days going through the motions, doing his duties, getting it up for his botoxed wife and listening to this fat bitch.
Staring at Beryl through glazed over eyes, he suddenly realised that she had stopped speaking and was now staring at him quizzically. Fuck, was he speaking aloud?
“Mr Vista, would you like me to send her away? I have told her that your time is very important, but she was quite insistent.”
Bob snapped to attention. Who? Rubbing his head through his floppy, brown hair, he nodded and beckoned to Beryl. “Sure, sure, send her in. Come back in five to get me for my meeting, you know the drill.”
Expecting to see an author weighed down with pencils, desperation and manuscripts, he was unprepared for who walked in.
This girl was timid, like a librarian mouse. She wore a long, dowdy, brown skirt, plain white blouse and carried a huge carpet bag. Her black leather flats screamed school-marm and the low set, tortoiseshell glasses, perched on the end of her long nose did nothing to improve her looks. She was nervy, jumpy, and seemed to be terrified of the space she was taking up in the room, scrunching her whole body into a submissive slouch before him. In spite of her plain appearance, he felt his cock twitch for the first time in years. This girl was an oddity wrapped in a conundrum. Boy, did he want to get his hands on this Rubik’s Cube!
Finally closing his mouth, Bob motioned to the chair in front of his desk. “Ah, so, Miss….?”
“Endora, Jane Endora. T-t-thank you so much for seeing me, Mr Vista, I am so grateful, I just really want to get involved in publishing and...”
“You’re not an author? I thought...”
“Oh no, Sir, I do write, and read a lot obviously, b-but I really want to be an editor, and I just had to come to see you in person to beg for a chance to work in your firm.”
Her speech was hurried; quiet, whispered tones that slipped from her lips like dripping honey.
She averted his gaze, staring instead at the carpet, desk and wall. She clung to the large tapestry bag on her lap, her unadorned white fingers gripping and squeezing each other like pale survivors to a raft.
Bob sat back and thought for a moment. He had to get to know this girl better; there was something about her that engaged him. Her eyes were at odds to the rest of her dowdy form; Ice blue, penetrating. She was dull and geeky, that was apparent, but those eyes sucked Bob in and desire pooled in his ulcerated stomach like white hot fire.
Who was this woman? Why did she make him feel like this?
He smiled. They were looking for an administrator; someone who could deal with the filing, photocopying, and the other tedious crap no-one else had the time or inclination to do. He nodded and pressed the intercom.
“Beryl, I think we’ve just found our new
office girl.”
*****
Over the next few weeks, Bob came to life. He had a spring in his step and a permanent boner. Jane occupied his every waking moment; every thought, feeling; every wank in the shower. He bounced out of bed every day, driving to work earlier and earlier.
His wife, Char, never even noticed. Or if she did, she never commented. The extra hot sex and dirty presents from her husband were most welcome though, and she even finished things with Jesus, the sweaty Cuban gardener she had been bonking these last six months.
Their two boys did not notice the change either. They were too busy with their own selfish lives to pay any heed to their father. As long as he bankrolled their hobbies, Bob could turn green for all they cared.
Two months into the job, and Jane had settled in quite well; she had been given her own office, conveniently situated next to Bob’s. They had lunch together most days.
