“Come, sisters, for the Sea-Glare’s crew can yet empower us!”
And there sounded a rushing and roiling as the three corporeal mermaids flowed out of the hollow.
Bone dared open his eyes. The sea-beings were gone, save for the ones still dissolving into the little moat. “That sounds ominous.”
“They are right,” Irilee said, staring at Gaunt and Bone. “Yet you were right as well … your songs and your … lusts … dismayed them. For the desire that sustains them is a bitter, desperate thing. The desire that sustains you, I see, is very different. True companionship and good cheer torment them.”
“Follow my lead,” Gaunt told them all. This time Bone followed with no reservations.
When they reached the sea, the surf was a wild, thundering thing, pounding against the sand, and there were pirates abandoning ship to frolic with the three mermaids dancing in the waves. Gaunt and Irilee conferred.
“Avert your eyes, Bone and Dawnglass!” ordered Gaunt. “Stand in the water, backs to the sea. Irilee, help me with our weapon.”
As the men obeyed, water surging about their legs, the two women hastily constructed a sand-sculpture. Swift and sketchy though it was, it soon revealed itself as the shell of a trireme. And though Irilee appeared to have lost the power to sculpt with voice alone, still she retained her brethren’s knack for sand-craft, for the little Sea-Glare came alive with improbably clear details, mast, oars, eyes. She molded the little ship like an ardent lover.
Captain Dawnglass bellowed, “You men! Remember who you are! What your home is!” He sang,
Come all ye foul pirates that plunder the sea,
to me way hay, slow the hags down!
Cover your ears but sing ‘long with me!
Give me your time, and slow the hags down!
I’m a deep-water sailor from southern Ma’at,
to me way hay, slow the hags down!
I gave up my rivers for a three-cornered hat.
Give me your time, and slow the hags down!
Irilee sang,
I’m a mermaid turned mortal, and this do I dare,
to me way hay, and slow the hags down!
I’ll take ship aboard the mighty Sea-Glare!
Give me your time, and slow the hags down!
Gaunt sang,
I’m a funereal poet who spins tales of grief,
to me way hay, and slow the hags down!
And I’ve given my heart to an odd lanky thief!
Give me your time, and slow the hags down!
There was a pause.
I’m a thief not a pirate, and not good at this,
to me way hay, and slow the hags down!
So I’ll finish my song with a powerful
He strode out of the foam and bear-hugged Gaunt, kissed her deep.
There was a cheer from the Sea-Glare, and a chorus of :
Give me your time, and slow the hags down!
The mermaids’ song was shredded, and again their individual voices arose.
“Camaraderie!”
“Friendship!”
“Marriage!”
“Ugh!”
And then:
With pathetic good cheer,
You’ve defiled this spot.
We flee marriage’s stink —
this beach we now blot.
Bone dared turn, and saw the mermaids dissolve into hissing, multi-colored spray that danced like quicksilver on a slope, out toward the afternoon sun. In their wake, there rose a groaning wave, and it surged into the shore with the noise and scale of a herd of elephants.
“Oh —” Bone began.
The wave tore him from Gaunt and spun him like a rag in an overturned wash-bucket. At last the air and sunlight found him (it was none of his doing), and he wrapped his arm around a driftwood log, a spindly, old thing like a pale, tentacled beast. It floated, at least, and with its help, so did he.
He paddled to Gaunt and together they discovered Irilee and Dawnglass bobbing and blinking in the sun. Dawnglass’s hat was gone, and the sandy Sea-Glare was lost along with all the mermaids’ sculptures; but the true craft approached, and pirates hauled the foursome into the ship’s boat.
“Marriage …” Bone began, as he and Gaunt regained their balance.
She blinked at him. “How foolish! But if the idea repelled the mermaids, let us not be overloud yet about the truth.”
“You are wise, O wife. Ha ha!” He let certain, unexpected thoughts drop like sand scattered through water. Among them: Perhaps marriage is just mortality shared. But then, perhaps neither he nor Gaunt really cared to be mortal. He laughed again. Goblin rowers, glurping in excitement, brought pirates and wayfarers and mermaid to the trireme. Up close, Sea-Glare was a creaking, aging thing, its wood a rich array of colors, legacy of endless repairs. Bone recalled the old philosopher’s conundrum: If you replace all the wood of a vessel, is it the same craft? He wondered then, if you replace all the particulars of a man’s life, is he the same man? What, then, of self-knowledge?
It seemed the only answer available was for the man to board the ship that life offered. So he did.
“Comrades!” Dawnglass bellowed, once all the crew were recovered. “These are my guests! The wayfarers Gaunt and Bone shall have the best hammocks below. And the lovely Irilee … she shall share my cabin.” He kissed her hand, and looked up.
He frowned.
Irilee was gazing in rapture, but not at him.
She pulled away, skipped in wonder about the deck, at last embracing the mast. She reminded Bone oddly of the siren-lured mariner in the old tale, strapped to such a place with ears unplugged.
“Ah, Sea-Glare,” she said. “A wondrous name, for a wondrous craft. Long have I loved thee, mortal thing. As I have ever since I beheld thee above me, dancing upon the waves.”
As the pirates gaped, Gaunt said, “I see there are others who love triremes …”
Bone looked to Captain Dawnglass and saw a narrowing of the gaze and a murderous glint. There was a lonely passion in the corsair’s face, of a sort that might have sealed the mermaids’ triumph, had it only manifested sooner.
Bone put a hand upon the pirate’s shoulder. “Good Captain, you are hardly the first man to lose a would-be lover to … a good friend.”
Dawnglass turned to Bone, his face relaying muted dispatches from a war within his skull. “I can … hardly fault her taste,” he said at last, staring again at Irilee. Then he grinned through the pain, bellowing, “Man the oars! Weigh anchor! I would be rid of this place! We are off to the Contrariwise Coast and rich targets. I shall sleep below-decks for now, in honor of our new … navigator?”
Irilee beamed and nodded.
“Some pirates are wise,” Gaunt said.
Dawnglass snorted and waved her off. As he strode to his duties, he said under his breath, “Ah well; who knows, perhaps one day Sea-Glare will consent to share …”
To Bone, Gaunt added, “Some thieves are wise as well. I’ll listen better to your warnings, Bone.”
“Of course,” Bone said, embracing Gaunt. “We are married.”
“Mm.”
As seamen rushed to their tasks, Bone and Gaunt leaned against the railing near the ship’s glaring eyes, and against each other. The once-mermaid scrambled up the mast. As the sun baked him to a briny dryness, Bone thought anew how lovers dragged people out of their worlds, hauled them somewhere bigger and scarier and brighter, like ship-rats brought blinking into the sun. Though he wondered idly if Irilee, so passionate and so human, would look up one evening and fall in love with a star. Sophrosyne to you, he thought, taking Gaunt’s hand upon the ancient rail, if so.
The band of mortal things, borne by a mortal thing, chased the falling sun.
© 2008 by Chris Willrich.
Originally published in Flashing Swords.
Reprinted by permission of the author.
Chris Willrich lives with his family in the otherworldly environs of Silicon Valley, where he works as a ch
ildren’s librarian. His fiction has appeared in Asimov’s, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Black Gate, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Flashing Swords, and The Mythic Circle. You can find him irregularly on his blog at Goblins in the Library (chriswillrich.blogspot.com) and on Twitter @WillrichChris.
The Gravedigger of Konstan Spring
Genevieve Valentine
There was something more civilized about a town that could bury its dead, if they stayed dead, and so Folkvarder Gray put out the notice for a gravedigger.
John the gravedigger was the best in the Nyr Nord Territory. He dug them narrow and he dug them deep, and when he came to Konstan Spring he provided references from Nyr Odin, where he had been called in to exercise his craft after the second English War for the Territory.
Folkvarder Gray looked over the letters, and then he shook John’s hand and took the “Gravedigger Wanted” sign out of the window, and felt very satisfied.
The water in Konstan Spring was warm all year, and it ran clear and pure, and once you drank it all your cuts and aches and pains vanished from you as if they were caught up in the current.
The town was young (everything in that country was young) and did no great business. The land around the spring had to be worked to coax any crops from the dirt, and it was so far from the sea or the railroad or the Nations tribal gatherings that there was no profit in hotels or in trading.
The general store and the saloon, the chemist and the town lodge, the blacksmith and the whorehouse, tended to those who lived there; there was little other need. The folkvarder’s office, with its little jail cell, stayed empty. There was no trouble to be had; people only found Kostan Spring by accident, and often hurried through on their way to someplace greater.
All the same, some lonesome souls had found their way to Konstan Spring.
It was a town that suited painstaking people, and when the town gathered for meetings to decide if newcomers should be given the water, the votes were orderly, and there was hardly a raised voice in the lodge.
(Mrs. Domar was sometimes louder than most people cared for, but the town was loyal to its own—where else could someone go, who had tasted the water in Konstan Spring?—and no fuss was made about her.)
The only man to bring the water out of Konstan Spring had been Hosiah Frode, the old chemist. Two years back he had written “KONSTAN’S ALE—MIRACLE TONIC” on his wagon and taken three barrels, early one morning before Folkvarder Gray could stop him.
Everyone waited to see what would happen. No one said it, but they all worried—if the gunslingers and the gamblers and the ill-living folk got wind of Konstan’s Ale and came looking for the spring, the town might be overrun with greedy sorts, and they would never be rid of them.
It was a dark winter.
But Konstan Spring was a practical town, and even under the shadow of trouble, they all made do. Kit down at the whorehouse hired a few new girls all the way from Odal in case city men had finer tastes, and she taught Anni the blacksmith’s daughter how to cook sturdy food so she could work the kitchen when all the rich, sickly gentlemen came looking for the water.
But the water must not have been such good luck to Hosiah Frode, because he never came back, and no rush of travelers ever appeared.
Secretly, Folkvarder Gray suspected Frode had angered a higher power with his thieving, and been struck down by stronger hands than theirs—the water was a great gift, and Frode should have known better than to abuse it.
It was a shame, Gray thought; Frode was a liar and a thief, but he had been a fine chemist, and Gray respected a man who was able with his work.
Frode never returned.
By spring, the men in town had developed fine enough taste to call on the new whorehouse girls from Odal (Kit had chosen the very best), and Kit sent Anni the blacksmith’s daughter over to the chemist’s.
No one complained about the change; Anni had been a terrible cook.
When he came into town, John the gravedigger took the room above the chemist shop. Anni lived in back of the shop, so the upstairs had been sitting empty.
The best the room had to offer was the view of the fenced-in graveyard past the new-painted lodge.
The flat, empty ground had never been touched; as yet, no one who lived in Konstan Spring had died.
The room above the chemist was small and Anni was an indifferent hostess, but John didn’t move quarters. People figured he was sweet on Anni, or that the view of the graveyard was as close as a gravedigger could come to living above his store like an honest man.
No one minded his reasons. Anni needed the money. In Konstan Spring the chemist never did much business.
The first man John buried was Samuel Ness, who got himself on the losing end of a fight with his horse.
The grave appeared one shovel at a time, sharp-edged and deep as a well. There was no denying John was an artist. The priest thanked John for the grave even before he asked God to commend Samuel’s soul.
“Won’t work,” muttered Mrs. Domar.
Mrs. Domar was Samuel’s nearest neighbor. She had come to Konstan Spring already a widow; her husband had fallen ill on the road, and died in an Inuit town just twenty miles from the Spring. She persevered, but the stroke of bad luck had turned her into a pessimist.
Samuel had a young orchard at the edge of his property line, and Mrs. Domar knew that if there was a way Nature could work against her inheriting that little grove of apple trees, it would.
It was the usual funeral, except that the priest, after the service, suggested that John fill in a little of the ground before the body went inside it.
John obeyed. He wasn’t one to argue with the clergy.
Two days later, Samuel Ness wriggled his way out of the shallow grave and came home to his farm and his orchard.
“I knew it,” muttered Mrs. Domar as soon as she saw him coming.
John, if he was surprised, said nothing. He smoothed down the earth after the priest had taken back the headstone, and for a few nights, if you walked all the way from the outlying farms to the chemist’s, you could see John sitting at his window, looking out over the sparse graveyard as if deciding what to do.
Everyone worried. They’d feared a gravedigger would lose the will for it in Konstan Spring, and they worried that if he went out into the world there would be questions about his hardiness. They had been lucky with Frode, but luck gave out any time.
People suggested that the folkvarder meet with him and point out the hundred-year contract John had signed. They suggested the priest give him counsel. Some suggested Anni should. If he was sweet on her, her kind face would do some good.
Philip Prain, who minded the general store, was the brave one who finally asked John what his plans might be, now that everything was in the open and John knew that the water wasn’t just for one’s health.
John said, “Try harder, I reckon.” After a moment he asked, “We see a lot of travelers?”
Folkvarder Gray and Prain and Kit down at the whorehouse held a Town Council meeting to discuss the problem.
They spoke for a long time, and made up their minds on the subject. They planned to put it to a vote before the town, since the town was very strict about having a say, but none of them would object. John was a treasure they couldn’t lose, and there were bound to be some drifters coming by sooner or later.
In the normal way of things, strangers would have a drink at the saloon and a girl at the whorehouse and ride out the next day, but there was no record of travelers once they were this far into the wild; not everyone can be missed.
The first drifter came on horseback a few weeks later, before there had been a formal vote.
He ordered liquor all night, and went to bed with one of Kit’s girls, and fell asleep without ever having tasted the water from Konstan Spring.
He suffered a horrible attack in his sleep. Some nightmare had troubled him so that he’d twisted his neck up in his blankets and broken it.
Anni brought John the good news.
“You cut the ground so clean,” Anni said after a time. “Where’d you learn?”
“Started young,” he said. “Buried my ma and pa when I was twelve. Practice.”
Anni nodded, and after he was finished they walked home side by side.
She was a quiet sort of girl, and John kept to himself, but Konstan Spring began to lay wagers for the month they’d be married. Anni’s father, the old blacksmith, wanted it at once—the gravedigger got a hundred dollars a year. Samuel Ness thought it was too soon for a man to be sure he wanted a wife; he said no one should rightly marry until the spring, when the flowers were out.
Kit at the whorehouse swore they’d never get married, but everyone said it was only because John had never given her any business; she had sour grapes, that was all.
For the whole winter it went on that way. The town welcomed four men, each traveling alone, bound for New Freya or Odin’s Lake, and one as far south as Iroquois country. Each one had gotten lost in the dark cold, in the snow or the freezing rain, and found themselves outside the saloon in Konstan Spring.
Each one spent the night at the whorehouse—Kit insisted—and of course it was much better to have a hot mug of mead to burn off the frost of a long ride, so there was no occasion to drink the spring-water.
The next morning John got a knock on his door from the Gerder boy who worked at the post office, or Mary the redhead from the whorehouse, to let him know he had a job to be getting on with.
Four travelers was less than it should be, even in winter, and they all worried that a gravedigger of John’s skill would tire of having nothing to do. John, however, seemed happy to dig only one perfect grave a month for that whole winter; each one straight as a ruler, crisp edges, ground as smooth as God had ever made it.
People in Konstan Spring began to warm to him. For all they were patient, they were proud, and it was a comfort that the gravedigger of Konstan Spring knew the importance of a job done right.
Finn and Ivar Halfred were clerks who stumbled into Konstan Spring just before the thaw—the last spoils of winter for John the gravedigger.
Lightspeed Magazine Issue 21 Page 15
