All Hallows

by W. Sheridan Bradford

  “Oh for the love of… get off me, you short-haired hippie! I’m not a tree. Don’t kiss my hair—I haven’t washed it in… unhand me, you silly kittock!”

  Uriah’s reply was silence, which was far more alarming than her usual playfulness. A tummy filled Maren’s face, well-toned under a touch of puppy-belly softness, Uriah having overshot somewhat—or perhaps not. Uriah knew her charms as well as any witch Maren had ever met.

  Heat dripped onto Maren’s scalp. Uriah shivered against her, ancient youth suspended in aching arms.

  Worried at the second drip, fast after the first, Maren inhaled deeply, casting for blood. She discarded cat fur, chupacabra drool, her seeping wrist, and the airborne remnants of the pickup’s former occupants. Nothing.

  “What are you—?” Maren began to ask, and then she knew. She’d seen Uriah Lee cry several times before, emotional as she was known to be—but never before had Maren seen Uriah cry for herself.

  “I froze, Maren. I haven’t done that in… I stood before the Macedonians, alone and unafraid. I was beaten and nearly killed, but I fought. Cowardice is worse than death.”

  “I wouldn’t call it—there is something about Feri that… Uriah, I will require surgery if you persist. My back won’t take it. The wolf is gone. It’s over.” Maren prayed that the universe would let her be accurate for a change.

  “I don’t want to dance,” Uriah whispered, her lips as hot as her tears.

  Shock uncoiled in Maren’s chest; numbness spreading to her face. “Come now. You always dance. You practice incessantly. Have forever. You must perform, or you will create a—”

  “—Like hell I must. Listen to yourself, Maren.”

  “Don’t use my own words against me.” Maren snapped. She hugged Uriah briefly in response. “Then again, who am I to argue with such wisdom? You are your own person, Uriah. I support no other stance. However, you’ll disappoint an anticipative crowd. At an assembly, they’ll be… rowdy. They’ve paid dearly to be in the area. They want to see you.”

  “I don’t care. Not tonight. They aren’t why I practice. They’re not why I dance. Please, Maren. I just want to be with you.”

  Maren found she had no words. Uriah leaped to the ground to wipe at her face; Maren’s spine decompressed with the agony of relief.

  “Will you use this against me?” Uriah demanded. “Will you tell?”

  “Use what? Tell whom? Feri is… she’s terrible in that form, and the holiday has… She’s been slave to the claw for too long. She has become primal, monomaniacal; cruel. She is a brute beyond reason right now, and an adversary none would seek. It is hard to have seen her other side—to know the extremes of her being: to know her devotion. Her frailty.”

  “Frailty! She’s the size of a longhorn on its hind legs, and she’s stronger than… she tore a man in half. She—”

  “—Uriah, trust me in this. Feri is a sickly girl who was changed at a tender age. It takes weeks for her to shift in either direction. As a girl, she is delicate beyond… when we last met, I strained to hear her across a table the size of a buckler on a stump.”

  “Maybe she deafened you first.”

  “I won’t tell anyone. I bear her scars, and I got those when I was younger and more prepared than I am today—nor had she come into her full strength.”

  “I can’t process how you were able to defeat her before—were you afraid? This time?”

  “Beyond thinking. When she came for you, I was taken to my childhood. I heard the bar crack on the door, the snap of rawhide, my mother… she found my eyes through the boards, beseeching me not to scream. I saw the day they came for her; men who were drunk and groping and wrong. But this time, it was you.”

  “Promise you won’t speak of how I… of this?”

  “Only with those present.”

  Uriah Lee sniffled, poked at her spiked hair, and opened her mouth to speak. Maren hissed at the icy bite of her necklace, and Uriah flinched in unison, grabbing for her earlobes.

  “Elderberries!” Maren said, trying to get her fingers under a spoon in an indelicate position.

  “What can be worse?” Uriah wailed.

  “Why, me,” said a strangely accented voice. The figure walked forward, chips of concrete and cobbles of pavement crunching under delicate feet.

  The woman’s features were entirely symmetrical, her proportions exaggerated such that she appeared to be composed of smoke and marble. That she was dressed in an undulating smear of black oil and yellow clay did little to break the perception.

  The witches did not bow, or move, or speak. Tocaya did not demand worship, and to incite her would be foolhardy. The incarnation of the goddess glanced at the burning pickup; at the remains of the slaughter; at the bent poles and broken ground.

  “I sometimes ask myself the same—is there worse than me? Some think so. Feri follows a silent god known to her from a book written by men.”

  “Is Feri not yours to command?” Maren asked.

  “She was His creation first. How correct that is, I won’t disclose. She believes that He gave her life, miserable though that life was.” The avatar smiled, white teeth against shining oil. “That is not here or there. Sarquito alerted me to a spot of noise. I see now I’m not needed, though you could use a maid.”

  The vinyl and clay material slid across her exaggerated curves, the pattern as infinite as cream in coffee: separating, rejoining, swirling.

  Uriah was mesmerized, one hand lifted to her purse, a marauding raccoon interrupted by a flashlight and a shout.

  “It’s her,” she said, as though Maren had not noticed.

  “Could be,” Maren allowed.

  The avatar noticed Uriah’s footing—she was ready to run—and a tremble from deep within the earth’s crust levitated Uriah several inches higher than her toes could reach. Tocaya gave Uriah a frictionless spin.

  “Who broke the power poles?” the goddess asked. “Heavy work for mortals.”

  Maren cleared her throat and risked smudging a neon shoe to slow Uriah’s wild rotation. “I threw… that burning pickup collided with a light. The rest is Feri’s collateral.”

  “You hide it well,” Tocaya said to Uriah, spinning her harder. “Feri has twisted your ribs and cracked a clavicle.”

  “It hurts,” Uriah admitted. “If I’d said anything, Maren would just make a big—”

  “—Why didn’t you tell me?” Maren demanded, her hands roving for salve.

  “See what I mean? I’m going to hurl, by the way.”

  Tocaya stopped the spinning and plunged a slick finger into Uriah’s upper chest with no visible exertion; the young witch grimaced and squirmed.

  “There,” Tocaya said. “Good as new.” Tocaya set Uriah spinning again.

  “Maren… ask her for… that recipe,” Uriah said, speaking when she had line of sight.

  “Your partner knows—she just doesn’t know she does. The requirements are the same as… but then, Maren already wields more magic than is good for her.”

  Tocaya turned her attention to the silver-haired witch. “You bested Feri with your bare hands. One of my finest creations. There at the end; that was… bravo, Maren. I’d not have thought you could drive Feri away.”

  “That’s two of us,” Maren agreed.

  “When she was made, I presumed noisy quantum storage in a lattice entanglement would suffice for… did you crack her genetic code?”

  “I couldn’t even crack her ribs. I have much yet to learn—just as you have much to remember,” Maren said, a tartness in her tone.

  The oil and clay of Tocaya’s avatar broke apart as though splashed with dish soap. “You strike too close,” the goddess said. “But no, you are fishing.”

  “I speak but for myself,” Maren said carefully, aware that Uriah was stabbing her with a stare—the little witch strained to put a stop to her spinning.

  “We mortals live but a short while, yet I have already forgotten much,” Maren continued. “I can’t begin to imagine what you
must… there are constants, of course, but when it comes to—”

  “—Emotions,” Tocaya whispered. “That’s what I witnessed. I could count your last synapse, yet I would still be mystified by irrationality. If you could fathom my mind, you would understand the curiosity.”

  “A pity that I cannot… Well, there we have it,” Maren said. “The case is closed, though it must be labeled as unsolved.”

  “You know what you did.”

  “Do I? What is more difficult than knowing the self? I would have boasted of a fair understanding only this morning. I was wrong.”

  “Even if you do not know, I should.”

  “Perhaps. Powerful as you are… if I can’t fully know myself, how much harder to process billions of erratic minds? If the unknown does not explain what I did—or quite how—it allows for the possibility.”

  “You always said anything can be—” Uriah began, but was twisted away.

  Maren jabbed at a spoon under her blouse; it was so cold she thought it might stick. “What I said a thousand years ago could change tomorrow. I’m no more certain of what I say today. I wish I knew what happened, but I don’t. I’ll investigate, of course. Tocaya will understand the delay. The thrill of the chase. What new can exist in a universe known to the quark? It is chaos that keeps us searching and sharp.”

  “Sophistry will not work on me. Either you will not tell me, or you… count it a boon that I do not invade your mind,” Tocaya replied. “But enough of that. If I must embrace chaos, as you claim, I’ve been provided plenty. I have places to be. Do you vow not to hurt Feri again?”

  “If it can be avoided. I didn’t know I could hurt her. I’m not happy that I did,” Maren added.

  Tocaya’s avatar shimmered. “Feri is more surprised than injured. She will be… inspired to revert for a while. Oh, but I would like to know how.”

  “And I would like to tell you. My best guess is… in my experience, great trauma allows for what cannot later be replicated. Where is greater magic than science misunderstood?”

  “It was not an item from your purse?”

  “No. My bag served me well, but it held nothing to counter Feri in her wrath. Didn’t tote my sword.”

  “And so you used a candy bar. As one does.”

  “Precisely. Forgive an old woman, Tocaya, but protocol dictates—”

  The avatar chittered musically; Uriah grunted as she hit the ground. “Am I truly so hum-drum? Did you demand that Feri present her identification?”

  “There was little doubt and less time,” Maren said, meeting Tocaya’s slate eyes at the expense of developing a tic in one of her own.

  “Uriah? You, too, would doubt me?”

  “No, but Maren is a stickler for… I don’t know what to believe tonight, goddess,” Uriah said, her head hanging. “The senses can betray. The grace does not.”

  “Really? Such faith. There is not enough of it in this world. If your rituals are never wrong, let’s do this right. Will you be saying grace?”

  “No,” Uriah said quickly, her voice that of a choir girl caught in the communion wine.

  “I’ll say it.” Maren’s necklace felt as though it would freeze her sagging dugs until they shattered like daisies dipped in liquid nitrogen. “I would ask to chew a spoon.”

  “Do whatever you want. It’s your game. Mind that the spoon you select is not a known lightning rod.” Tocaya smiled pleasantly. “I forget how this works, exactly. Maren is chomping at the bit, or she is about to be. Uriah? Fill me in, child.”

  Grounded, Uriah rubbed at an ankle she brought effortlessly to her thigh.

  “She… Maren will say a prayer, sort of. Then she’ll pay the arbiters. That hurts, lots—drives you batty. We’ll have to wait for her to… she’ll light-up,” Uriah said, making jazz hands for emphasis. “Then you make a claim. The ancients pass judgment on pronouncements. Red or blue. Red’s bad. A lie. You can… it can be totally short. I am Tocaya—like that.”

  The avatar touched her chin. “Short? But if pain is part of it—madness—why the brevity? You, Uriah, know the importance of an entrance. I’ve made my first, and it did not impress. I plan to give you pointers with my second. Maren? Ready? Ah, your spoon. A fine patina. Copper?”

  “Older than I am,” Maren said, her body popping with gooseflesh. She glanced at her waistcoat’s final chain. It worried her that the night worm might be destroyed by the coming ordeal.

  “Why that spoon, if I may ask?”

  “My mother’s mother stirred-up trouble with this. A terrible cook, grandmother was. The bowl tastes of soot to this day. The handle’s yew in sharkskin. Good for biting.”

  “Copper’s safer than lead—that can make you crazy, don’t you know?” Tocaya’s avatar laughed with something disturbingly close to insanity, and she began to talk loudly to herself. “Yes, I’m quite aware. They don’t know me. Don’t trust me. Scarcely have the sense to fear me.”

  Uriah squeaked, her voice failing. The oil-clad body turned to the little witch. “It’s what I get, you know? For dressing down?”

  “I believe you,” Uriah mumbled. “She’s the one who’s pig-stubborn about identities.”

  “Stuff it,” Maren said, readied her grandmother’s spoon, and spoke a short grace in a trembling canter. Maren’s orange teeth sank into the handle.

  The lancination she’d expected was dulled by prior events. The severity was little worse than a basket of seven-penny nails passing slowly through her body.

  What came for her mind was more effective, but even that was far away: her mother’s screams; the creak of belts and boots, the stink of unwashed bodies, the shouts and dismissals, the rasp of straw; heels pounding the boards inches above her—later, the pop of flame, the smell of roasting mutton, the taste of boiled lotion hazing the air…

  Circles of light rimmed wide holes in Maren’s hands, although her flesh and bone remained intact. She had a mad urge to mash the circles together, suddenly annoyed at the certainty of colorful absolutes.

  Instead, Maren held her palms flat and open until the initial burn shrank to twin pools of low flame, as though liquor or perfume were cooking-off in her hands.

  “Ready or not,” she said shakily, her silver hair rising as a storm of static roiled around the avatar.

  “Wonderful! Uriah, let’s do you next. We can take turns. This is going to be super,” Tocaya giggled, her hands beating together rapidly below her chin. “No—let’s do me next! Dibs!”

  “First you have to—” Uriah began, but she was lifted back into the air.

  “Right, I need to… how’s it need to be presented? Shall I compose a poem?”

  Uriah Lee raised her head to meet Maren’s streaming eyes. “Any statement will do. It can be—”

  “—Short, yes… but I have been carded. I get to be indignant! Next time, ladies, you will know my name. Let’s give this a try, shall we?”

  “Yes,” Maren said, because there was nothing left to say. She kicked Uriah softly in the shin to stop her renewed spinning.

  Tocaya giggled uncontrollably, held her hands to her sides, a jittering mimic of Maren’s crucifixion. The avatar’s mood evaporated. “I want more! I want a preface!”

  Uriah began to speak, but the street shook: asphalt buckled and oozed, breaking apart into a desert of drying mud.

  Thousands of feet from corner to corner, purple lightning exploded in the sky, each lance striking the moon, or appearing to, the sound downtuned and alien. The bolts spread slowly, serpentine veins of a wizard’s crooked fingers, the crack and boom of the assault hammering far above the usual ceiling of atmospheric disturbances.

  Purple light intensified overhead. The sky burned, the heavens grew hot; ozone fell like drops of rain. The outlines of a nightmarish being miles in height were revealed: too massive to be real; too horrible not to be.

  Uriah stuttered between a scream and a sob, but Maren lowered her gaze to meet Tocaya’s, clenching her grandmother’s spoon between her teeth as she s
hivered uncontrollably before the avatar.

  Fantastic as the scene was, Maren held fast, for hallucinations and tricks of light and sound could be the work of elaborate drugs and spells—not that she had seen anything like this since the battle for Olympus.

  Still, an accomplished magician might be able to pull-off such a show—Mudmush, if he dedicated a lifetime to its preparation.

  Thinking of the necrolich, of the eternal shame it would bring her to kneel before him in fear, Maren scored the spoon, anger her ally. If the arbiters showed Tocaya to be false, Maren’s next action would be to see exactly what it would take to kill the undead.

  Thoughts of Mudmush allowed Maren to enter her samatha-bhāvanā—so much so that she nearly tumbled out of herself. Maren reined-in from the brink.

  Tocaya’s avatar dropped a glistening hand to the ears of a jaguar that had escaped Maren’s notice and, apparently, a well-funded zoo. Uriah, too, noticed the jaguar, if her peep of recognition were a clue.

  The aching chill of her necklace bit into Maren’s chest. Within her meditation, she idly wondered whether crystalline growth would reach her heart.

  “Do you know your Shakespeare?” Tocaya spoke like a nervous schoolgirl—one who was not overshadowed by a creature past all scale of estimation.

  Maren’s mind sought to take flight a second time, but she rolled the spoon to the corner of her mouth; it kept time against her teeth as she spoke.

  “We met him, way back when. Well, saw him. We caught the first showing of Macbeth. Uriah’s idea. The Berridge boy was to play the lady, but he sickened and died. That was at Hampton Court Palace, wasn’t it? Uriah? She’s not listening. We snuck through by way of Boleyn's gatehouse, and… I’m rambling.”

  Tocaya nodded. “You are. Badly. Well then, sisters, please accept this truncated sonnet. I’ve killed an iambus to reduce the composition. Keeps it fun.”

  “Fun,” Uriah said, her tone dull.