“You think so?” Sahr asked. He grabbed Amber by the arm and dragged her across the deck to a tall, middle-aged sailor. Amber dimly remembered the man from her childhood – he'd been one of the endless itinerant sailors who'd passed by her parent's shop each morning. “This is Angus McPhee. Once you named him, he couldn't find work as an honest sailor. At least, not until I taught him to forget the ‘honest' part.”
The sailors laughed. Sahr, though, glared at Amber. “Where's his name?” he demanded. When Amber didn't respond, Sahr pulled her right arm out and searched through the blue-fire letters for Angus's name. When he didn't find it, he pulled up Amber's shirt before she shoved him back, causing the crew to laugh even harder. Knowing she had only one chance to take control of the situation, Amber pointed to her right breast. “You're name is right there,” she told Angus as white-hot letters suddenly burned through her shirt. “Your name is written in the bullet which hits you in the chest, and knocks you into the sea to drown.”
The laughter stopped. Amber turned to another sailor. “You are Roberts Allen,” she said, pointing to a new name with suddenly flared up on her leg and scorched her pants. “You will die gasping for breathe in a storm-tossed sea.” She turned to another sailor. “You are William Douglas-Home. You will die when you fall overboard after drinking too much rum.”
As the sailors stared, Amber walked among them naming their fates. She had never been around men whose deaths burned so clearly. She knew everything about these men. Knew how desperately they yearned to escape their fate. Knew that despite all their prayers and pleas, the only thing awaiting them at sea was cold and depth and eternity.
Finally, she stepped back to David Sahr. “As for you,” she said, a massive name igniting around her neck in the purest of white light. “The sea's been waiting a long time for you. Once it takes hold of you, your death will make all the others seem pleasant.”
Sahr smashed her in the face, sending her sprawling across the deck. “We're not slaves to this bitch's skin,” Sahr yelled.
“True,” Amber said, blood gushing from her split lip. “Billy was also fated to die at sea. But I saved him and he's no longer named. I can save all of you. But hurt me, and you're dead.”
Sahr smiled, and for a moment Amber saw him as he'd first appeared – the handsome, unconscious sailor who seemed at peace with the world. Then his face churned back to anger and he yelled for his men to lock her in the cutter's storage hold.
* * *
Sahr sailed for two days with Amber locked in the dark hold, her only light a single porthole and the names burning on her body. Sahr alternated between bribery and threats to convince her to remove their names from her skin. Amber, though, noticed that Sahr never carried through on his threats. That, combined with how his crew treated her, bringing her food and water and unburned clothes, told her his power over the sailors was limited. As long as they feared her, she would be safe.
On the third night, the cutter sailed under a clear sky, the moonlight pushing the sea down as if a child had coated everything in the smoothest of milk. The sailors were silent as the cutter chased a fishing trawler through the night. Amber knew what was about to happen – Angus McPhee's name had been burning white fire for the last hour – but she kept quiet until the ship pulled alongside the trawler.
Suddenly, gunshots raked Sahr and his men. Through a porthole, Amber saw several constables on the fishing trawler shooting at them. Bullets exploded through the cargo hold and ricocheted around Amber, who felt a sense of calm as she watched moonlight pour through the new holes.
After a few more shots, Sahr yelled for his men to cast off. The cutter sliced through the seas, racing downwind as the constables continued to fire. Finally, after a half-hour of chase, the trawler's gunfire stopped.
One of the sailors smashed open the lock on the cargo hold and pulled Amber out. Several sailors were wounded, and Amber saw that Angus was missing, no doubt hit by a bullet and thrown overboard to drown, just as she'd foreseen.
She walked across the deck to where two sailors held down William Douglas-Home, who screamed and cried from a bullet in his leg.
“Is he going to die?” one of the sailors asked.
Amber nodded. “Yes, but not from this bullet wound. And if you do what I say, none of you need die for many years to come.”
At that, David Sahr ran screaming toward her with his pistol in hand. But before he could shoot he was tackled by the other sailors. “Let me go,” he screamed. “She's done this to us. Her. Just her.” But the sailors ignored Sahr and hog-tied him beside the main mast.
* * *
Amber landed the sailors fifty leagues to the west of Windspur, with each man swearing a solemn oath by her skin never to return to the sea. As the men waded to the beach, Amber felt most of their names disappear from her body with a kiss. However, the name of one sailor remained, although he no longer burned as fiercely. Amber knew that man would one day break his vow and return to the only life he knew, but there was nothing she could do about that.
Amber turned the cutter back toward Windspur and ran with the wind. She had never piloted a cutter before, but had learned a lot from Miles and her other sailors. As long as good weather held, she shouldn't have much trouble. David Sahr – still tied up beside the main mast – critiqued her every move. When Amber almost swamped the cutter by taking a wave sideways, he laughed.
“That's what happens when you let a woman captain,” he said.
“You should be respectful,” Amber said with a smirk. “Maybe the judge will take your respect into account before he hangs you.”
Sahr spat at her feet. “You ought to do it yourself. For once, actually kill someone, instead of fating them to die.”
Amber resisted the urge to hit Sahr, or to pull the pepper-box pistol tucked in her belt and shoot him.
Once Amber had the cutter on a solid heading, she tied off the wheel and walked around the ship, dropping and raising sails and tightening ropes. When that was done, she was hungry. She asked Sahr where he kept the food.
“There's hardtack in the cabin,” he said. “The wood chest under my bunk.”
Amber found the chest and carried it onto the deck. However, there was no hardtack inside. Instead, a handful of daguerreotypes lay there. Some showed her in the exact same shirt and pants she now wore, standing on the bow of this very cutter, with Sahr dangling from the yardarm. Other daguerreotypes showed Amber hanging from the yardarm. Amber stared at her swollen, broken neck, and the rope that had ended her life.
“Where did you get these?” she demanded, shoving a daguerreotype in Sahr's face.
“That picture will be taken when you arrive in Windspur with me dangling from the yardarm. If you have the guts to do the deed, that is.”
Amber glanced at a daguerreotype – in it, her skin was free of the names, and Sahr hung dead. She threw the picture at the mast, shattering it to dust and shards. She grabbed another daguerreotype, this one showing her spinning in the wind with a rope around the neck, and threw it at Sahr.
“Who the hell are you?” she screamed.
Sahr shrugged. “I'm a child of Windspur. And the sea has cursed us both.”
As he said that, a blazing white name erupted from Sahr's skin – Amber Tolester. Her name ringed his neck, screaming in union to the letters of Sahr's name burning her own body. However, the pain didn't come from Sahr's foretold death. Instead, she gasped as she saw – in the purest of fire and heat – Sahr's life flooding into her.
* * *
My father was a sailor. When I was ten I woke one night to my father's name burning into my chest and the pain of knowing he was dying. I ran to my mother's room and told her. Begged her to save him. Instead, she slapped me for lying.
But in the morning, she learned I was right. She ripped the clothes off me and saw the names and screamed “Witch, witch” as she beat me bloody.
We left Windspur – left my friends and family – to live in London. Foggy, stenching, hat
eful London. All I'd known was Windspur. Now all I had left was knowing when one of Windspur's sailors flared and died.
At twelve, I ran from home and hired on a ship. Became a cabin boy, a cook's assistant, worked my way to able seaman. The sailors all saw the names, but thought them good luck, not being from Windspur and knowing them as real people.
One day a Windspur sailor joined our ship. I tried to hide myself, but he recognized me, said he used to sail with my dad. For days all I could taste was the man's coming death as he fell from the main mast during a sudden wind storm. I feared what the other sailors would do when they learned what the names on my body meant.
So one night, while walking the alleys of London with my father's friend, I hit him across the head with a belaying pin. His name disappeared from my skin with the gentlest of kisses. I'd denied the sea its rightful death.
So I learned to change the fate of the men on my skin. I learned to read what the names told me, to track them down. The only difference was that when I met another Windspur sailor, I always killed him the first chance I got. Just to show the sea there was no fate it could decree which I couldn't change. One by one the names vanished from my body. Eventually, there was only one left: Amber Tolester.
I knew right away this name wasn't right, as if the sea was playing a trick on me. A little girl of Windspur who had recently lost her parents, and who now carried the burden of names as I once did. I felt the names on her body echoing to where the names had once been on me.
Then the pictures began appearing. Each time one of the sailors named on Amber's body died, a daguerreotype would appear on my bunk. Some showed Amber as a young woman; others myself. Some showed me dead. Others her. I knew the sea was taunting me for defying its will, but I didn't care. I refused to be fated by anyone.
As I caressed my link to Amber, I prayed she would learn – like me – that we weren't fated to suffer this damned lot in life. That once she learned, I would no longer be alone.
But instead, Amber merely watched as the men sailed away to their deaths, never knowing the pleasures to be had in changing their fates.
So I decided to teach her.
* * *
When the story finished running through Amber's mind, she pulled the pistol and held it to Sahr's face, remembering her fear when he'd held the same pistol to her own head. His name burned red around her neck as Sahr's memories of murder polluted her with their touch.
But instead of pulling the trigger, she sat down on the deck beside Sahr. “So you think the sea has cursed us? And the daguerreotypes are a warning?”
“You have a better explanation?”
Amber glanced at one of the daguerreotype shards on the deck beside her. The silver halide which had fixed the image of Amber's body to the photographic plate fell away before her eyes. She watched the image disintegrate for a few moments before throwing it overboard.
“It doesn't matter,” she said, reaching into the box of daguerreotypes. “Doesn't matter if the sea did burn these names into us. Only matters what we do with them.”
As Amber stood up, she glanced at the waters all around them. Sahr's name burned white hot on her body. The sea screamed for Sahr – begged Amber to throw the vile man overboard so it could have its way with him. Amber dragged the bound man to the railing and leaned him over the water. The choppy waves threw spray at them as the sea reached for Sahr.
For the first time, Sahr looked afraid. “Don't give me to it,” he said. “I only wanted you to learn. To free yourself like I was freed.”
Amber nodded. She grabbed one of the cutter's sets of block and tackle, threw a rope over the yardarm, and tied the rope in a noose around Sahr's neck. He thrashed and kicked, but he was still bound hand to foot and couldn't stop her.
Once everything was ready, she asked Sahr if he had anything else to say. He cursed her, but also smiled as she tightened the noose, as if pleased that Amber had finally learned what he'd been trying to teach. He continued smiling as she pulled the rope through the block and tackle, the pullies whining to the cordage, his smile never ending even after he hung limp from the yardarm, spinning right then left as the wind howled in anger at Sahr's death not being given to the sea.
Only with Sahr's final kick did his name vanish from her body with a perverted kiss.
* * *
When Amber neared Windspur's harbor, she dropped the cutter's sails and drifted until several ships, including the Andercoust, approached. Miles jumped onboard and helped steer the ship into the harbor. Miles asked several times if Amber was well, glancing from Sahr's body hanging from the yardarm to the names still visible on Amber's skin. She assured him she was fine.
Amber stood on the cutter's bow until they docked, then walked through the stunned crowd on the pier. She noticed Richard Beard near the dock with his daguerreotype camera, where he'd been taking landscapes of buildings. She started to ask if he'd taken a picture of her on the ship, but stopped, already knowing the answer.
After all, two different versions of the picture were now burned into her life.
* * *
The following Sunday, Amber and Billy married. Billy was still recovering from his injuries and could barely speak, but he croaked his “I do” and kissed Amber in a long, tight-hugging embrace. All of the sailors and townsfolk cheered, tactfully ignoring the names pulsing a deep blue through Amber's white wedding dress.
Amber continued to captain the Andercoust. Miles and the other sailors taught her all they knew and soon she could out sail the best of them. She sailed the Andercoust in storms which drove lesser captains to port, but none of her crew were ever injured or killed. Sailors spoke of her uncanny knack of stopping accidents before they happened; of arriving in time to save drowning sailors from other ships. Soon she was known as the luckiest captain in the fleet and every sailor begged to join her crew.
Occasionally people who weren't from Windspur would board the Andercoust and ask Amber about the rumors. Of the names which still circled her body. Whether those named men were still fated to die at sea.
Amber would shake her head and say she hoped not. If the visitors persisted, Amber would point to a silver-framed daguerreotype hanging on her cabin's wall. She'd ask if they noticed anything strange about the picture. The visitors would stare at the image of Amber on the ship. Her body free of the names; Sahr hanging from the yardarm. While the missing names always puzzled visitors, if that was all they noticed Amber simply nodded and said that was indeed the truth.
But sometimes a perceptive visitor would see a picture of Amber hanging from the mast, her body still covered in the names, her neck bent at an impossibly strange angle, and Sahr alive and laughing as he piloted the cutter.
The startled visitor would ask how this was possible. Was this some trick of the sea – angry because it had been denied Sahr's death?
Amber always laughed at such questions, but if the visitor pressed for an answer she'd point seaward and say the answers lay out there. All the visitor had to do was let the sea add his or her name to Amber's skin.
“Perhaps we can seek the answers together,” she'd whisper as the visitor stared in fear at the names swirling her skin.
So far, no one has accepted her offer.
A Twenty-First Century Fairy Love Story
Such was the love story of Aithne Glaistig and Gillian Dhu – ancient fairies, long gone from their land, finding love and peace in Chicago until Aithne suddenly died. She was healing a pawpaw sapling in the alley behind their house when a mugger hit her across the head with an iron crowbar. By the time Gill reached her, nothing could save his love. Aithne gently caressed his pale face, then grabbed her heart and pushed it into his chest as she turned to dust in his hands.
Gill, though, refused to accept her death. He paced nervously across their Victorian house, calling down awful curses upon the man who'd murdered his love. Over and over he placed his hand inside his chest and gingerly touched Aithne's beating heart. He cherished the warmth and love i
nside the heart and wished they'd never left their ancient lands for this awful city of iron and steel.
And so time passed.
* * *
Six months after Aithne's death, Gill stood before a hospital window. On one side, him, long fingers tapping out a rhythm on the glass which only he could hear. On the other side, babies, desperate newborn babies.
Gill drummed his fingers in silence as he watched a nurse in scrubs and facemask fuss over a tiny baby no bigger than Gill's palm. A heart monitor and respirator hummed beside the tiny girl, who didn't stir in her plastic bassinet. For a moment Gill forgot his suffering as the infant's pain overwhelmed him. The girl was a month premature and near death from cocaine withdrawal. Tears filled Gill's eyes. He couldn't understand why a mother would do something like that to her unborn child. But then, he understood few things about humans, such as how they could kill someone as perfect as his Aithne.
As Gill watched, the nurse grew frantic. For a moment Gill turned away, having no desire to experience yet another human tragedy. However, he also knew he couldn't stand another night alone in his house, feeling Aithne's heart beating beside his own but knowing Aithne was gone forever. Once again he tapped out a rhythm beyond human hearing on the glass divider. Satisfied that neither the nurse nor any of the babies inside were fairy, Gill stepped toward the neonatal unit's door. Luckily the lock wasn't made of steel. He waved his hand over it and the door swung open.
The nurse glanced suspiciously at Gill as he entered the room. For a moment she saw an impossibly tall and thin man with flowing black hair and pale skin wearing a suit of woven leaves, moss and grass. But then, as she looked again, she knew she'd been mistaken.
“Dr. Ballard. I was about to buzz you.”
Gill nodded, ignoring any thought on who Dr. Ballard might be. The nurse had been thinking of Dr. Ballard, so Gill was Dr. Ballard. Before the nurse realized her mistake, Gill walked to the little girl's intensive care bassinet and reached under the warming lamp. He rested his long fingers on the girl's chest, feeling the raspy breathing as the baby breathed her last.
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