by Terah Edun
She didn’t have long to wait to find out.
Just as the guard’s hand was on the door and he was surging forward to shut it fast, an opposing weight hit the frame with all the force of a runaway mare.
Or in this case a raging heifer.
They all jumped back with shouts as a thousand pound all-brown heifer came bursting through the slightly ajar door.
It was running full tilt when it hit the wood and they all heard a humongous crash as the horns of the bovine cracked the wood and flung it back. With the helpless guard along with it. The door was flung back on its axis with such force that the guard slammed back into the wall with a splat and fell to the floor in a slump as the heifer made its way into the room.
“I knew I should have closed that door!” wailed her stepmother as Mae tried to drag her to some relative safety behind the platform. It seemed like a good idea to put those stone beds between their bodies and the enraged bovine’s.
Everyone else fell back as its eyes looked wild and the ring through its nose was covered in heavy foam sprayed from its nostrils. It did not look calm at all. Its hooves made sharp ringing noises as it struck the stone floor as the heifer ran to the center of the room, where it stopped to paw at the floor in irritation. It swung its head back and forth and made little bucks as it tried to keep an uneasy eye on everyone in the room.
Then a young man came rushing in after the cow. He was old enough to have a position on the farm but clearly was still inexperienced enough to not only allow the bovine to get away from him but somehow let it run amuck inside their home at the same time.
“Stay back from it,” he yelled desperately. “He’s been in a temper all morning.”
“We noticed,” Rivan yelled back at him over the front horns of the heifer.
Maybe the heifer just turned on whoever it was in front of it but it gave another enraged bellow at his words and charged Rivan. He dove to the right side and Mae was relieved to see that only the heifer’s haunch seemed to hit him. Not the horns and not those nasty looking hooves.
Rivan fell to the wall and knelt down, his fingers splayed out in front of him as his hands arched above them. Mae thought he might be crouched to spring into the air like some kind of jackrabbit. But instinct told her that wasn’t what he was doing. His stance just looked wrong. His fingers were arched like a spider’s as his forearms were lowered just enough that his elbows pushed back into lining straight up with the rest of his arm.
In fact, Mae couldn’t see how he was going to even be able to hold that pose for long. It didn’t look very comfortable and no human being could spring forward from a position like that. It was more akin to a wolf’s stance than anything she’d seen someone else mimic.
Then Rivan’s mouth opened and his back seemed to grow as she watched. It didn’t arch, she would have noticed if it had. It was like his torso expanded and his shirt began to strain under the new muscles that seemed to be growing with…whatever he was doing.
My eyes must be deceiving me, she thought in disbelief.
Mae was so entranced that she didn’t even noticed the heifer was turning around to target someone else until he shouted that it was coming for him. The second guard who hadn’t been thrown against the wall like a limp sack of flour stood ready to confront his opponent with a fierce look in his eyes. He was more prepared than any of them it seemed. Just as the cow threw its horned head he flipped into the air and landed a kick straight on the heifer’s back.
“He’s just a youngun!” the inept herder yelled desperately from the corner of room he’d been forced into by errant kicks. “He’s just frightened a bit, being in this strange building.”
Mae didn’t think the kicks were meant to hurt it so much as distract it away from its new focus on Rivan who was still on all four limbs on the floor.
She didn’t know what Rivan was doing but he would miss his chance if he didn’t get off the floor and move.
“Now Rivan!” she cried. “Go under.”
He didn’t question her or maybe that was his plan all along because he then used the distraction to duck and roll on the floor and quickly come up on Mae’s side of the room though still quite a distance away. When he stood up, his torso still looked like it had grown to her but was otherwise normal. She pushed the memories to the back of her mind as they both focused on looking for exits.
Unfortunately there was nowhere to go but out into the garden and at the moment that heifer was facing the same direction. If it went out into that small walled garden where Mae imagined her sisters both lying on the ground propped up by pillows with nothing to protect them as they absorbed the sun’s rays, they’d be defenseless.
She couldn’t let that happen.
Mae jumped to the side and eased around the platform that was between her and the cow.
“Over here you dumb heifer!” she shouted trying to get its attention and draw it away from the tempting garden exit.
Fortunately it seemed more angry than afraid and it whirled around to confront this new loud enemy.
Sweating buckets Mae hastily looked around for a weapon, a shield, anything to keep her from being the next victim. All she saw was a stretcher leaned up against the wall but there was nothing else so she lunged for it. It was used to carry the ill children between rooms when necessary and it was perfect to hold up lengthwise like a barricade. Unfortunately that same stretcher was just cloth twined between two sturdy poles so if the heifer really wanted to hurt her, it wouldn’t stop him.
Then Mae heard a rustling behind her and as soon as she recognized the clip of her stepmother’s heels on the floor, Mae yelled over her shoulder “Stay back!”
Instead of falling back her stepmother came to stand side-by-side with her as she waved a handkerchief she usually kept in her pocket. She was using it to get the heifer’s attention and it was working.
“I saw it going for the door,” her stepmother said angrily. “They’re my daughters Mae. Just like you’re my daughter. I’m not leaving the three of you in harm’s way if I can help it.”
Mae’s stomach dropped in despair. The only thing Mae could think of at that moment was how ironic it would be that they would die together side-by-side.
After this day was over her father would be left alone in the world.
His wife and second oldest daughter gored to death.
His oldest daughter forever asleep in a forest capsule.
His two youngest children dead by fatal illness.
What a family ending that would be.
13
For her part, her stepmother stepped right up to Mae’s shoulder and began clapping her hands together loudly.
“Hey you,” she shouted. “Ugly. Come away from that door.”
It snorted and bellowed. Then it stepped forward while lowering and raising its horns in an aggressive manner. To both their surprise and fear it began to follow them.
Mae felt sweat trickle down her back as she backed up with her stepmother slightly to her right and hoped they didn’t get blocked into a corner.
“Mae guide it over toward Donna Marie,” Rivan shouted as he leapt over the sickroom platform trying to get to her.
Mae had no idea what he meant. The last time she checked Donna Marie was over to the creature’s left but it was swung wide and she couldn’t really see what was going on over there.
“Here, I’ll hold the stretcher,” her stepmother quickly said. “Get an idea of where she is!”
Pleasantly surprised that she had read her concerns so easily, Mae handed over the stretcher sideways and simultaneously ducked down to see what she could see between the bovine’s legs.
She immediately spotted the foreign woman.
She crouched on the ground, her skirts spread about her, and her hands buried in the stone floor. Mae gasped aloud.
But she didn’t have time to ask Donna Marie what she thought she was doing. Instead the bovine began to make angrier noises.
Desperate not to be gored into
a corner, Mae shouted, “I’ve got it stepmother, we’ll push it west together.”
Her stepmother immediately stepped to the right and began frantically yelling at the confused bovine and waving her handkerchief like a battle flag. Mae began simultaneously thrusting the stretcher after she took it back and this time the heifer responded by backing up nervously. A couple steps was all it took to be caught in the silent floor casting Donna Marie had made.
It reached up like a net to wrap around the frantic heifer who tried to lunge away only to be trapped even further, failing to its knees as the unstable floor rose up around it. Everything but its head was covered in the vines made out of melted stone.
The heifer began to moo piteously, all the fight gone out of it now that it was trapped.
“That casting will only last a few minutes!” snapped Donna Marie in a huff. “After that the concrete will either seal fully around it or crumble to dust. Since I’m neither keen on letting it go nor encasing a cow in a floor, I suggest you get to moving.”
A lot of shouting went up but the general idea was that they needed to find something that would render it docile when she let it go.
Mae frantically looked around the room but the second guard beat her to it. He broke open the lock on the medicine cabinet attached to the wall and reached in desperate for something that would help them subdue the heifer.
Apparently, he found just what he was looking for because he shouted in excitement at his partner, grabbed it up, and both guards jumped over the encased bovine’s fallen form.
Producing a whole glass bottle of ether the guard ripped off one of his sleeves, broke open the bottle and poured the entirety of its contents on his makeshift rag.
Mae’s stepmother wailed behind them all, “Do you know how expensive that was!”
“Would you rather have a rotting cow encased in the floor?” Mae muttered to herself. “Because that just sounds like a putrid mess.”
Rivan spoke up firmly then and said, “I think is our best shot.”
Luckily no one actually holding the heifer in place was paying her stepmother any mind and the guards continued on with what they were doing. One put itself leaning over its neck and used the ether-soaked rag to cover the bovine’s nostrils. The other grabbed its jaw and shut its mouth to prevent breathing from anything but its nose. A few seconds passed by as everyone tried to regain their composure and waited tensely to see if the heifer would stop struggling. The foreign woman’s bands of melted stone were still tight enough to bind its legs and torso from moving but it wasn’t stopping the heifer from jerking its head about so they could tell it was still struggling.
Mae almost felt sorry for it.
If it didn’t stop thrashing about it soon, it would do more damage to itself than anything they had done. Just as she was beginning to think that the ether wasn’t working and the bands of melted stone began to drip down the heifer’s sides like melting silver candles, the heifer’s head seemed to slump over to the ground. It had finally given in to the gas.
Mae gulped as slowly the first guard removed his hand from his mouth and carefully poked it in the cheek. It didn’t move.
“It worked,” he said in relief.
General mutters of ‘thank the gods’ swept over the room as they all realized how close they’d been to being stomped to death by a cow of all things.
Donna Marie removed her hands from within the floor first and then off the ground the entirely. As she did it seemed that her magic was stripped back as well and the bands that had been encasing the bovine all dropped away in a rush of liquid stone.
The liquid stone dropped into the dip on the floor around the heifer as if it had never been raised up in the first place.
“Now what?” Mae’s stepmother asked in a hoarse voice.
“Now,” Donna Marie said. “We wake the cow up, it should be dazed and confused so it won’t make much trouble and you take it outside where it belongs.”
The ‘you’ she was referring to obviously was the herder as she was looking directly at him.
He was trembling behind the heifer’s back with a distinct wet stain on his pants.
“Yes mistress,” said the herder as he held up a thick rope with halter attached.
Why the halter and rope hadn’t been on the heifer in the first place Mae couldn’t say but they all would have a story to tell their compatriots tonight, a runaway cow stopped by a melting floor.
“I’ll put the halter on it now,” the herder said as he sprinted forward toward the resting and placid bovine.
“Why don’t we help you with that?” the second guard said hastily as he tentatively lifted his ether rag from the cow’s face and grabbed for the rope.
“Oh yes, of course,” the herder said hastily as he handed over the halter with a sheepish smile.
Mae and her stepmother watched in what Mae liked to think of as aftershock as the two guards carefully prodded the cow into standing up and corralled it out the door of the sickroom with ease.
Then Mae put her flimsy stretcher, which she’d still been holding up like a shield, on the platform behind her and slumped over in relief.
For her part, the foreign woman was stumping on the part of the floor that she hadn’t left since she started casting and was currently running waves of power from her hands over the lumpy melted stone. Mae could tell because her fingers were glowing as she moved.
When she was done, she looked down at the floor with a smile.
Curious this time, Mae silently went over to see what it was Donna Marie was doing now. When she was standing practically on top of the previously upturned floor Mae saw to her surprise that it was now smoothed over as if it had never been disturbed in the first place.
“That was some fast thinking,” Mae said as she met Donna Marie’s confident look hesitantly.
Donna Marie nodded in acceptance of her due gratitude and walked over to the door that led into the hallway. She immediately put her hand up on the wood and slowly drew her fingers down its length. As she did the wood, bent and scratched, began to shift back into a more natural state.
Not wanting to stare but not knowing where else to look, Mae turned back to her stepmother to ask if she was alright.
As she began to walk over, Rivan brushed by her and murmured “Why don’t you give her a minute? Let her gather her thoughts.”
Mae blinked and looked at him as kept walking by like he hadn’t said a thing.
Turning back to her stepmother, she took in her careful attempt to put together a collected appearance and she could tell that she was still in a fragile state. So Mae followed his suggestion and left her alone. Following Rivan Mae began to help straighten up the room as if they fought enraged cows with random implements and magic every day. As he walked around the room picking up debris, Mae got distracted by Rivan’s shirt.
She remembered the moment in the midst of the frantic madness when he had crouched down on the floor. She wondered still what he’d been doing. As her eyes caught the rips in the seams above his back and the strained fabric at his shoulders, Mae wondered not for the first time what it was this other foreigner was hiding.
She opened her mouth to comment on it, but to be honest she didn’t have any idea what she’d seen. Rivan turned to her mid-lift of a broken chair and raised an eyebrow at her.
Mae almost said something but he turned away and just like that the moment was gone.
Her concentration was broken further when her stepmother came up beside her with tightly crossed arms and a furrowed brow.
Uh oh, what now? Mae had the presence of mind to think before she spoke.
“Just visitors huh?” her stepmother asked with a tight look over at Mae.
Mae gave her a weak smile, she was caught out in her lie.
“Well, imagine if they hadn’t been here and if the children hadn’t been in the garden,” Mae said acting shocked. “It could have been a catastrophe.”
Her stepmother blanched at the thought of w
hat had happened to the siblings had they been present in the room.
“I should go calm those in the hallway,” her stepmother said with a frazzled look. “They’re beginning to crowd in asking for answers.”
Mae glanced over her shoulder. She didn’t see anyone yet but she allowed her stepmother her escape. She’d be a bad daughter if she hadn’t and tell the truth, it was kind of a relief to stand by herself for a moment and just gather her thoughts.
14
Before long she was alone in the center of the room.
The others fluttered about the room or stood in their own isolated spaces, but no one bothered anyone else.
It gave Mae time to realize that everything she had wanted was in reach if she just grabbed it and if she didn’t, well, she wasn’t promised tomorrow.
The best mage she’d ever known came over then as Mae snapped herself out of her own funk.
Grimacing Mae said, “You’d think after the day and night I’ve had this would just be one more thing you know? But my heart is still beating fast. My pulse racing. My life flashed before my eyes today.”
“More so than when you came face-to-face with your kingdom’s most fearsome warriors?” Donna Marie asked delicately.
Mae shuddered. “I’d say just about that level of fear.”
She was being truthful there.
“Hmm well, no one said one death is worse than the other,” Donna Marie said wryly. “Death is death whether is by a sword or a cow’s horns. Although this one here is a particularly crazy tale.”
Mae nodded furiously.
“Though if I hadn’t seen it myself, I would have said the person telling the story was too inebriated to tell reality from fiction,” Donna Marie said with a laugh.
Mae snorted. “You can say that again. Who ever heard of a cow trapped in a melted floor?”
Donna Marie shook her head. “The wonderous things I’ve come across in my travels never cease to amaze me.”
