Fiction River

by Fiction River

  Her hands scraped at the bricks. Again and again. Grinding. Tearing. Scraping off layers. Scraping off the lies. Scraping away the pain. Until the rain on her face brought her back home again. She stopped. Felt the rain and the tears all over her face.

  She missed her Da. A lot. Scrubbing at her eyes, she felt the grit and sting.

  “Crap.” She’d rubbed brick dirt right into her eyes. Just great. Wiping her hands on her coat hurt, and now that she was back, she was afraid of grinding dirt deeper into the scrapes. Wiping her face with the arm of her coat, she struggled to stand.

  She should wash her hands, get the brick dust out. Might as well grab a hot chocolate, too. She deserved one, right, after almost getting knocked down.

  There was a caf’ just down the way, where kids from school met up sometimes, laughing, drinking coffees, studying, or just jerking around. She started moving toward it, then veered across the street instead to a quieter place, more cramped. No one there she’d have to greet. She could retreat inside her bubble once again.

  “I just wish...” She didn’t even know. She told herself again, she had it pretty good. But things still felt hard.

  She’d better dry herself off. Shops weren’t too keen on people soaking their chairs. But Solana couldn’t bear to let go of the rain just yet.

  At least twice a season, Solana let herself get wet. Some years, that was a few times a week, if her schedule could stand it. The early years, after Da was sent away, she’d been too busy between schooling and gov meets, and needed to be dry. That was how things were before she placed with Michel.

  People expected it of someone like her, to be dry and neat. Presentable, they called it. Actually, that wasn’t true. People expected the opposite. They expected someone like her to be a ragged mess dragged in fresh from the road.

  “To be respected by fools, you got to act like they do.” Every time. Her Da was right about that one thing, despite the shitty mess he’d made of everything. Despite him being his own special kind of prayer-healing fool.

  So mostly Solana stayed dry and clean. Well spoken, too. Dry, clean, and well spoken meant higher class fosters. People of good will with broken hearts who wanted an errant teenager cluttering up their spare room with angst and noise.

  The ragged-mess kids got ragged-mess fosters: a moldy mattress and crap food. Crap schooling, too, if they got to school at all. Solana heard the stories of kids made to work molding ammo to stockpile, or raising a passel of baby fosters, changing dirty pants and mopping up vomit, all so the fosters could get some extra cash without working for it.

  And she’d heard about the forced-sex, too, from the kids who’d been swimming the pool for awhile. Solana had been dead lucky on that count. Hadn’t ended up with any freaks.

  So she cleaned up her speech and kept herself mostly dry.

  And hoped Michel kept her on until she could be out on her own without trouble from the Lectioners or Nabbers.

  As she walked down the sideway, people who bothered to notice looked at her a little funny. She imagined what they saw: a plump girl with pasty white skin, blotched red from the cold, in a long forest-green coat, a sheet of gray and rain falling on her head. They would all be in their own little cubes of dry, wearing stylish purple suits, or hand-knit sweaters, or even worker-clothes, more sturdy than the rest. But dry they would all be. Only the poorest got wet. Or poets like her.

  Rain was for dreamers, not workers. And she really couldn’t afford to dream. But some days, Solana keyed off her force field anyway, needing with a desperateness to feel cold moisture on her face. To feel something that seemed real.

  After Da had been taken away, it was as if a cocoon of spider silk had wrapped her up and blocked her eyes and ears. Food tasted like dust and she could barely hear the words anyone said to her. She slept a lot. And when she wasn’t sleeping, she would grab small bits of pottery, or metal, and slice into her thighs, watching the red well up in narrow lines. Solana could breathe easier then, somehow. Like the feel of the rain pelting her body, those lines of red told her she was alive.

  Pain was always real.

  It was Michel who suggested that Solana use things like scent and texture to “anchor you to the real.” He helped her plant rosemary in a pot to hang outside her bedroom window, and brought her fleecy blankets for her bed. One day when she got home from schooling, there was a stuffed bat on her pillow. Michel never said anything about it, but Solana cradled it as she dropped to sleep, wrapping its wings around one arm. In the morning, she would find the bat resting on the pillow next to her head, as though it had crawled up on its own, finding a place for itself in the night.

  Michel also badgered the gov for extra credits to get her a “talk therapist” to help her with “grief issues.” Yeah. Pretty stang. Even though it was a pain in the ass sometimes. The talk therapist was pretty okay and actually helped Solana think things through better. Helped her make connections between things. When Solana’s Da got taken, they’d sent her to a psych who’d made her act things out with dolls, which she hated, and put her on drugs which muffled everything, which Solana hated even more.

  So yeah, no drugs, and no cutting slices which left thin scars spidering her legs. Just walks. Plants. And rain.

  Speaking of...She clicked on her force field to block the water, and boosted it with a little heat and air. Not enough to really dry her out—she didn’t have the cred for that kind of a boost—but enough to make her just damp, instead of wringing.

  The caf’ was just ahead of her, warm golden windows glowing into the gray afternoon, arches framing what pastries were left after a day’s worth of customers. Solana pushed open the heavy, brass-bound door with her shoulder, and bells rang, announcing her arrival. The place didn’t feel much larger than Solana’s bedroom. Enough space for a low bar along one windowed wall, and four small, round, marble-topped tables, antiques salvaged from some long-closed fancy restaurant, she guessed.

  Solana unzipped her coat as the warmth of the caf’ embraced her. Something inside of her relaxed.

  Cinnamon, toasted sugar, and underneath it all, the smell of coffee. Solana looked wistfully at the flaky crust of a chocolate-filled croissant. No way did she have enough credits for a pastry and hot chocolate. If she was smart, she would get a black coffee, and load it up with brown sugar and cream.

  But chocolate was what she was craving. Her therapist told her to listen to her body and emotions, to figure out what she really wanted. Chocolate was it today.

  The woman behind the counter smiled, bright and sunny. Her skin was dark brown, warmed up even more by the bright orange shirt she wore. She was like the opposite of the day outside. Solana wondered if the woman knew to do that on purpose, or if that was just the way she was, naturally.

  “What can I get you?” She caught Solana’s eye. “That croissant is half off, since it’s near the end of the day.”

  “Just a hot chocolate. Please.”

  “OK.” The woman pressed the screen inlaid into the counter top, then looked up and smiled again. “Make a wish.”

  Solana’s brow furrowed. “What?”

  The woman pointed to Solana’s neck. To the silver charm Da told her was her mom’s. A heart with wings, like it was ready to fly off her collarbone at any moment. Fly somewhere she’d never seen before.

  Solana shook her head.

  “The clasp is turned ’round front. Right next to the charm. That means you get one wish.” The woman smiled, a warm and gorgeous grin that included Solana in it, just like they were old friends.

  Solana grinned a little back.

  “Three credits for the chocolate.”

  Solana held out her right wrist to the scanner.

  “Ouch. That looks like it hurts. You OK?” The woman’s face lost its smile. Her eyes narrowed with concern as she saw Solana’s palms.

  Solana felt the red creep up her throat and stain her face.

  “I’m OK. ’Z there someplace I can wash them?”

 
The woman nodded and waved a hand. “Back there. Your chocolate will be ready by the time you get back. Let me know if you need the med kit.”

  There was a door tucked behind an ornate screen, all black and gold, and painted with peonies.

  Solana hung her coat on the brass hook screwed into the back of the door before she locked it. Looking at her face in the mirror above the sink, she was surprised the woman had even let her in the shop. She looked like crap, brick dust striping her pale face, streaked with tears and rain. Hair lank, plastering her head. Then she looked at her hands. They were ripped to shreds, with pieces of skin hanging off, and blood still beading up. Tiny bits of brick and dirt embedded in the cuts.

  Turning on the old water taps, she put an old-fashioned stopper into the drain, then eased her hands below the water line, hissing through her teeth.

  After cleaning the cuts as best as she could, she let the water glug its way into the pipes, and was glad to see that the toilet room had another old-fashioned thing: a paper towel rack. She ripped a couple off and patted at her palms.

  Michel was going to explode when he saw them. She’d have to do extra sessions with Dr. Wong. Shit.

  “Why’d you do it?” she asked her reflection. Her reflection told her she needed to wash off some grime. She carefully wet a towel and wiped her face. Her blue eyes told her nothing new. Just that she was messing up again.

  Then she caught sight of the charm, sure enough, the little lobster claw hook nestled up against the winged heart.

  What in the world would she wish for? To have Da back? To fall in love? To get through the next few years alive, and not having to move to a new foster? More money? Better grades?

  What?

  She bit her lip, eyes moving from their own reflection and back to the winged charm.

  Solana whispered to her reflection. “I want to not hurt anymore.”

  Then, carefully, she turned the clasp back, so it rested on the small knob of bone, where her neck and back met right above her shirt.

  “Okay,” she nodded. “Okay.”

  Back in the caf’ she slung her coat over a chair at one of the round tables and went to the counter where a cheerful yellow bowl steamed, swirls of cream and pale brown forming the shape of a small tree just on the surface. The woman behind the counter paused from cleaning the steamer, still smiling.

  Solana reached for it, before remembering her hands. “I...”

  “Oh no. I wasn’t thinking! I can get you a mug with a handle, they just don’t hold as much.”

  The woman paused a moment then, like she was thinking. A bit of silver winked at the corner of her left eye, where she’d pasted a small jewel. Solana had missed that before.

  “Or if you’re willing, I could try something.”

  “Like what?”

  “I could try to heal your hands.” The woman pitched her voice low, even though they were the only two people in the caf’. You never knew who was listening in.

  “I have a small gift. Not much, but enough for that.” She nodded at Solana’s palms.

  The woman looked like she was serious. But that was just crazy. That was...what had gotten Da taken away. Him and his “church” with the laying on of hands in the “pastor’s” basement room.

  All that stuff wasn’t real.

  It had put Solana’s life in danger. She’d almost died from fever, had been burning up for days. Da finally took her to clinic when she started shaking so hard she bit through her tongue. It was the blood that snapped him to, Solana guessed. She’d been too out of it to care. The throbbing in her tongue was about the only thing she was able to notice, her brain was so gone with the fever.

  By the time the fever had cleared, her Da was gone. They had taken him away. Child endangerment.

  She got picked up at clinic by her first set of emergency fosters. Then started the rounds of interviews. The shuffling. The trying not to look crazy. The speaking calmly. The hiding the cuts on her thighs.

  Making sure the small shard of Mom’s broken tea cup stayed hidden in the pocket of Solana’s favorite vest, wrapped up so it wouldn’t cut unless she wanted it to.

  The woman in the orange shirt held out her own hands, waiting.

  Solana backed away from the counter. “I don’t think so.”

  She grabbed her coat and fled under the jangling bells of the heavy door.

  “Your chocolate!”

  Then she was back out in the rain, struggling back into the forest-green coat, activating the force field without thinking.

  Crapcrapcrapcrap. Solana clenched her hands, willing herself into the pain again. She didn’t deserve the rain. Stumbling her way down the street, she turned toward the squalling gulls. One block. Two blocks. The brackish smell hit her nose as she walked toward the dunes at the end of the street. The rain was a sheet of gray meeting the churning ocean, whitecaps boiling and heaving. The wind turned her hair into coiled whips that struck her cheeks.

  Cresting the damp sand, beach grass swishing at her legs, feet sinking, she walked toward the waterline and stopped. Turned off the force field. Held out her aching hands, palms up. Shredded skin met the benediction of cold rain.

  A small prickle at her collar bone made its way through the wet on her head and the painful heat of her palms. The winged heart. Her wish.

  Solana got to her knees in front of the roiling ocean, wincing as her weight hit her right knee. Stiff fingers undid her coat just enough to reach the charm. Touching one fingertip to the silver, she raised the other to the sky. Rocking on damp sand, she repeated the words. Three times, just like Da taught her.

  “I want to not hurt anymore.”

  “I want to not hurt anymore.”

  “I want to not hurt anymore.”

  The ocean roared and pounded, but the rain began to ease, wind dying down. The charm burned beneath her finger, growing warmer, then it just...stopped.

  Solana took a heaving breath as rain pattered softly on her head. A wave of salt water came almost close enough to touch her knees. She should move back. But she wasn’t ready yet.

  The next wave touched her legs, salt water meeting her rain-drenched coat. Solana sank back onto her heels, letting the ocean come. All the way back to her shoes.

  Finally, it was deep enough. She moved her hands down, carefully, and immersed her palms in the salt, salt sea. The water felt like ice crystals on her skin.

  Her hands...didn’t sting. The salt didn’t hurt.

  Scrambling to get her feet back under her, Solana got some space between herself and the ocean waves. Then finally, she looked down.

  Her palms were pink and whole. The charm had worked.

  She started to laugh. “Thanks Da, you crazy man.”

  Then she remembered. Her mom’s face, leaning over her cot and smiling. The one image she had that was her own, not from some vid or picture. Solana’s own eyes had seen her mother’s face.

  “Thanks, Ma,” she said quietly, barely audible above the frothing ocean waves.

  The rain slowed even more, finally stopping. Solana wiped the new skin of her hands across her wet face.

  The gov wouldn’t let her see her Da. Not for a few more years. But maybe by that time, it’d be okay. She would be okay.

  She would know some things: like when to go to clinic, and when a charm would do. Like when it was safe to be near the ocean and when you needed to get away from the waves. Like when to use a force field and when you really needed to walk out into the rain.

  And when it was time to get warm in a caf’ with a bright faced server who wore orange clothes, and could teach you some things about healing. Maybe.

  Solana started walking. Steadying her feet on the sand, she realized that even though she was still limping, the pain in her hip was gone.

  And she was ready for that hot chocolate now.

  What Alanna Wished, How, and Why

  Dave Raines

  We stay with fantasy and magic for a while. Dave Raines’ story, “What Alanna Wis
hed, How, and Why” focuses on something we haven’t seen yet—a magic system.

  Dave has appeared in two previous Fiction River volumes, Haunted and Editor’s Choice. His strong short fiction has also appeared in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.

  Dave’s inspiration for this story came from some of the greats in the sf/f genre. He writes, “Long ago, Robert Heinlein’s Magic, Inc. and Randall Garrett’s stories about Lord Darcy intrigued me as they laid out ‘scientific’ rules and laws governing the practice of magic. Given the theme of ‘wishes,’ I wondered if (a) there’s a difference between wishes and magic, and (b) if so, what rules governed the use of wishes.”

  He answered that question brilliantly, and came up with a new magic system all his own.

  “Name Newton’s three laws,” Daddy asked.

  “Oh, Daddy,” said Alanna. “Could you get any more simplistic?”

  From her seat on the couch, the living room surrounded her like a hug from an angel, the light from the fireplace low, the paintings of Mom, portraits of the three of them, and one of Daddy on his first unicorn. When they first moved in after Mom’s death, Daddy had paid for a Home Blessing Wish, a Class B wish that probably cost half a year’s wages.

  Her home felt like a sanctuary. A deep breath slowed her heart rate.

  And Daddy in his favorite chair, that was homey too, the black leather wingback, where he could see the scryscreen but wouldn’t fall asleep. Not very often, anyway.

  He smiled. “I’ll be sure to make it harder as we go. Right now we’re on the fundamentals.”

  “All right.” Alanna shifted her vocal tone up into her nose in a fair imitation of Mr. Albertson, her Wonderworking teacher. “Isaac Newton, the first to identify the regularities of Wishes, formulated the Three Laws of Wonderworking. One, the universe is benign. Two, anything is possible. Three, difficulty is exponential.”