Wild Musette Journal

by Liz Westbrook-Trenholm

Therid perched high in a lookout tree where he could spy on the new ground creatures’ warren. The branches overhung the escarpment marking the divide between jungle and desert. Far below, mounds clustered at the edge of the big sand that stretched empty to blue hills on  the horizon. The mounds were the same brown as the desert and pierced by openings like the burrow entrances and air holes of some oversized ground sloth. But these burrow mounds were rectilinear and lay in a grid formation, as if the wind had impossibly driven the sand into miniature mesas of perfect symmetry. The piercings were evenly spaced and shaped into rectangles and arches. Patterns of interlocking squares and triangles framed the openings, their shapes like gems chosen specially from a rare geode. Not shiny, yet intriguing.

A herd of the creatures crawled out of an arch, short, stocky and clustered like their burrow mounds. They surrounded a moving carapace, earthbound like them and dragging itself along the trail. It grumbled, like a beast on the hunt. They passed eventually out of Therid’s sight under the lip of the escarpment and after a time he heard the beast’s growl and the rattle of grit under their feet as they climbed the trail they had carved into the face of the cliff. Heavy, clomping feet, these beings had, unnerving.

Therid lifted sharply above the jungle canopy and then drifted down again, deeper into its camouflaging embrace. He should have fled altogether but curiosity held him, watching through the flicker of leaves. In the clawful of visits he’d made since finding the place during Spring-search, he’d never seen the beings up close.

They trudged into view, squat, with snubby snouts and broad skulls clasped tight with some sort of head cap. So heavy those heads must be to need such thick necks and massive bodies to carry them. Foreshortened and graceless, they seemed laden with the weight of their own being as if contact with the ground had compacted their bones.

As they progressed along their trail, Therid followed parallel to them, keeping well into the trees. They stopped when the trail ended, abruptly, at the jungle wall. The grumbling beast moved forward and began consuming the trees, mashing and tearing at them with jaws that had suddenly opened in its face. Was it feeding? Therid had thought it a carrier of some sort, but perhaps it lived. Perhaps it needed to eat the jungle. But he saw that the beast spat out the shreds of what it took in, spewing the digested material to each side of the gouge it made. The beings tending it spread grit the beast had hauled in its belly on the ground. The beast backed and trampled the grit flat, and then began chewing again.

Not a beast, Therid suddenly realized. A tool. A huge, complicated tool. The ground creatures were using the tool to extend their trail. But why? There was nothing beyond its end but more jungle. And Therid saw no sign of their using the jungle, not for camouflage, not for food. Was it a kind of Spring-search of their own, establishing a territory line? Not possible. They were ground animals, not people.

The beast-machine gave a sudden rising moan and ceased to chew. The creatures rushed around it, prodding it with sticks of various shapes, making barking, chattering noises, like the songless ground things they were. One thrust its forelimb into the machine’s maw. The moan suddenly reverted to its former rumble but the creature screamed high and fell back, its forelimb truncated and spouting.

To Therid’s surprise, it did not leak dust or gravel, but wet red blood, spouting from firm raw flesh. He fluttered closer, trying to smell as well as see, forgetting, almost, to keep his fringes fluttering in synchrony with the leaves of the canopy, to keep his camouflage. He clung to a sapling, staring, waiting. As the other creatures crowded and bent over their companion, he waited. And as the creature stilled and ceased its struggle, he waited. Soon, or eventually, they would lose interest in their companion, and wander off. That’s how it was with ground beings.

He waited.

❦

There are five of us left. Out of the five hundred real that had set out, all but we are gone. Some, faded from grief at the many failed attempts to find a new Eden and some flung themselves into stars to end their eternal boredom.

Joneman lost many golems on the last world we tried. They drowned in their own blood during eruptions of sulphuric gases that roiled up from its lush and friendly surface. It saddened Joneman, who is very fond of his golems. We fled that deceptive world, latest of a string of failures, plunging into the deep sleep, barely caring if we wakened again, letting our Cradle seek another chance for us.

And it found us this. So lovely, the gorgeous umbers, golds, and pinks of the desert, the lush mauves and purples of the jungle, fluttering and sighing like a berobed lady in layered mantillas. The others are ecstatic, convinced. They cultivate golems and, with the optimism of forgetfulness, set them to build as once we had long ago, on that sweet blue and green world where we’d dwelt so many millennia, before our golems fouled it beyond bearing. This will be a new Earth.

So the others think, except for Joneman. Joneman sleeps, his troubled dreams surfacing just enough to let us know he has not faded, yet. He remains too discouraged to join us, despite the visions of this handsome place that we send to his dreams. I fear he too will soon let himself dwindle. Then there will be four, and I, I…

I think this world is seeking a way to kill us, forever and at last. I feel it waiting, watching.

And so I gather golems, mine and Joneman’s, and go out to engage it. And it’s wasted no time in the attempt, however misdirected. I am sorry to have squandered one of Joneman’s golems so early. But, Joneman, if you’d been awake, you’d have stopped me. Or joined me.

The other golems keen and croon at the loss, as is their wont. They look to me hopefully, as to Joneman, who might once have resubstantiated this individual, so great was his force. Not now. And little good has ever come of that. Somehow, their plaintiveness tries me and I am tempted to deactivate them all out of pique at their presumptuousness. But I don’t. Such is my ambivalence. Meanwhile, this one has died, and so now I must take it back for recycling. It’s the least I can do, for Joneman.

Weeping, the golems load the corpse onto the road builder and the jungle seems to answer in protest. It shifts and shimmers ceaselessly, troubling to my eye and mind.

❦

Therid vibrated his fringes in anticipation. The creatures were milling around the dead one. They would soon return to huddle mindlessly in their burrows. They had no camouflage, no knowledge of blending into their surroundings. Go, he urged them. Leave the prize to me. Already he imagined the interest of the females when he arrived at the flocking tree with his craw stuffed with fresh red meat.

With growing disbelief, however, Therid watched them lift the corpse and load it onto the beast machine. When they raised their arms like mourning wings, he screamed in shock.

One being turned sharply and scanned the canopy. Therid froze, but for the ripple of his fringe with the breeze. The being’s gaze swept by him, unseeing. He’d begun to relax when it seemed to collect itself. Slowly, but with unhesitating confidence, it retraced the arc of its search until it found him. Its eyes had dizzying lines of shiny blue radiating away from a fathomless darkness in a round centre. They entered him like a stranger intruding into a rookery, dropping him into mindless chick terror, easy picking for any predator with eyes to see him.

❦

Joneman is here! Jungle tricking and puzzling me and then Joneman, seeing it differently than I. Frail that he is, he yet fills me with an immediate and vivid presence laced with excitement. He launches boisterously into a proposal, the offer of a bargain. His excitement and mine transmit to the other three in city and desert, turning them toward our negotiation.

First Baelwit, distracted from his tunnelling under the city; then jeFO, rising from drifting inner contemplation in the desert into a dance that raises an orange storm; and, finally, grudgingly, Enelra turning her attention from the mortarless mosaics she makes her golems build and rebuild. When she sees Joneman’s plan, her disapproval seeps into the crevices of our self-doubt like the poisonous ground clouds of our last planet. Enelra calls herself a loving mother and is, in fact, an arbitrary bully, seeking always to govern, restrict, force conformity to her limited ways. She is the one who would confine us to the city, limit the golems to mindless automatons of briefest existence, offering them her protective love but truly giving them only death, early to all, earlier to those who show a spark of will or simply do not appeal to her. Not just her own golems, but all of ours, as well. She would gladly suffocate us in her empty officiousness.

Her displeasure adds savour to my satisfaction at accepting Joneman’s offer. I lay my hand on the still golem and my essence flows, silver into its wounds. I restore its hand and, for good measure, mend the nicks and scars its brief life has inflicted on it, despite the extra cost to me. For Joneman, only perfection will do. The other golems fall on their knees making gratingly grateful cries. I do this for Joneman, not for them.

But then a fierce pulse of joy demolishes all lesser moods in a mighty radius. jeFO dances up a storm, Baelwit stamps his feet till the city shakes and even Enelra smears a patina of pleasure over her sulk. For Joneman keeps his bargain.

The mended golem rises, smiling. Joneman glows within, feeding, growing, with us again. The other golems weep and gesticulate, and, for once, I’m at one with them. As they swarm about us, I fall on his neck, and kiss his cheek, and celebrate the return of Joneman, my friend, my love, my reason for being. They lift us up and carry us triumphant toward the city, and I am not angry. I love them, and I pull off the helmets of those who carry us and kiss their shaggy heads, one by one until they glow silver with my Essence and I am nearly spent. But Joneman has returned, and I am whole again.

❦

Therid lifted out of the canopy, and fled fast, back to the flocking place, his heart and mind chaotic with confusion. He plummeted gracelessly onto the speaking limb of the flocking tree, gaping with the effort of his rapid flight. He had just breath to call once, but his urgency spread, call by call until the furthest members of the flock assembled from their daily tasks. By then, his breath recovered, he told them of the new creatures, of the one that lost its paw to its beast. Creatures that were made of meat, and that bled red. Several royal warriors chattered skeptically.

“The red meat, show us, your craw, full,” chortled Mottrack, a huge and handsome hunter who always won the best nest and the finest mate. He roosted at the top of the tree in the first and last rays of the Sun. A magnificent half geode, sparkling with gems, hung in fibre-vine netting among the feathers of his thorax, a weight only a mighty flyer like he could bear. He could afford to be kind in his mockery.

“Shines, the Sun, on your royal plumage,” Therid acknowledged Mottrack’s greatness, then continued his tale. “The ground beings, with the corpse,” he paused for effect, “stayed.”

Beaks chattered with disquiet and a lesser person, barely two levels up the tree from Therid, pecked him. He pecked back, hard, and the person ducked under the force of his certainty. That person would sleep three levels lower this night, Therid thought, with satisfaction. He fluttered his fringes and went on.

“The beings, the body, lifted.” Now cries of protest rang out but he pressed on. “Limbs, raised.” Other persons pecked him, and Therid fluttered out of reach of their beaks, but without submission. “Eyes, saw me!” he cried.

“Shame!” “Liar!” Pecks and accusations rained on him, but he would not, could not stop. It was so hard to explain and what came next would be even more difficult but Therid knew he had to let them know what he had seen. “Eyes, shiny!” The noise reduced a little. “Shine, rose. Shine, shone, in me! Eyes shone, saw, in me!” Complete silence fell. “Shine set. Me, dark. Sad.” Therid rocked from foot to foot, struggling to show the flock. “Creature, its paw, on the corpse.” Therid curled his wing, and spread the fringes over his breast, to show them. Then he ducked his head, as if in sleep, tucking the fringes of one wing up to hide them. He lifted his head then, showing them his eyes. “Corpse woke.” He unfurled his fringes. “Paw, came back. Shine, rose.” He flittered, trying to tell how it had been, to describe the moment when joy bloomed. “Sun after winter dark. Wind, warm for mating.” Before him, Mottrack loomed, like a purple mountain, his aggression ruff spread wide and thick.

“Enough.”

But Therid could not. “In the corpse. In the eyes.”

“Enough”.

“Rose, Sun. Shone, Sun.”

Mottrack reared with a flare of fringes the colour of angry thunderheads, sunlight lancing off the gems on his thorax and claws splayed to tear.

❦

Therid hid in a thorny grove few knew of, exhausted from flying, sore and leaking from the blows and pecks with which the flock had pummelled him. Ground creatures did not feel for their dead. That would denote mind. Animals had no mind. No sun shone in their eyes. To say otherwise was a travesty.

He had escaped Mottrack’s talons, or Mottrack had let him go, unthinkable as that was. Perhaps he’d not wanted to sully his claws, leaving it to the lesser of the flock. These had fallen on Therid, screaming, beating at him with their wings, tearing at him with their claws, striking at him with their beaks. Yet somehow, he’d escaped it all. Perhaps the Sun in the waking corpse had saved him. He dreamed on that for a while, calling to the shine that had come into his mind so briefly, but no answer came.

He heard something wriggling through the narrow entrance to his hiding place. A predator to finish him, swallow him whole, perhaps. So be it. He was flockless, morn and night.

It was his nest-kin, the smaller, who had survived because Therid had been generous, or weak. And his nest-kin’s mate. Followed by the mate’s dam. And then—more of them, until at least seven crowded into the place.

“Come to finish me, you?” Therid asked. His nest-kin chickered and gently preened Therid’s tattered fringe away from the worst of his hurts. His kin’s mate coughed mother-heal into the wounds which stung even as he felt it begin to weave them closed. He was confused, but let himself sink into recovery shock, panting to speed his healing.

When he’d closed his beak at last, hurts mended and the mother-heal expelled before chick madness could take him; his nest-kin could wait no more.

“The beast-tool, was it meat?” Before Therid could answer, the kin-mater asked, “The eyes, the ones that the creature put on and in you, were they good, like Sun, or were they bad, like predator?”

“The limb, truly the beast ate it? And they stayed, unafraid?”

“Of course, unafraid, when they can make dead live and limb grow.”

All had opinions, and more questions. And calls for detail. And chatter and sharing and then the highest of that low group calling, “Let him tell it again. Therid, tell it, the story, all of it, again.” And he did.

They decided. “For ourselves, we must see.”

Before the sun set, they had begun the journey back to where Therid had seen what he had seen, flocking close, like chicks to their dam. They rested in a thick tree that night, nervous with the strangeness, and the danger. They set out again at first light, pausing only to harvest food from among sleepy night creatures that never saw them coming. They flew until they reached the shocking gash in the jungle. They saw for themselves the dark patch in the dust where the ground creature had died, and risen.

❦

The celebration lasts for all time and for one night, all at once, in that clever happy way we haven’t enjoyed for millennia, even before we abandoned Earth. Joneman keeps to his risen golem, making it his home, reinforcing its being and structure to withstand his full Essence, which glows from its eyes and shimmers around its form. We revel in his presence. He has not been so alive since first we settled on Earth, that richest home of so many before.

At last, I, always the spoiler with the question, ask, “Why do you wake again, Joneman? My love, I’d feared we’d lost you.”

“We have a new home,” he replies. We all focus on him, warily.

“Yes, a new home; we told you that,” Baelwit says for us all.

“But you didn’t care to hear,” Enelra adds snidely. “Hiding in the cradle and leaving all the work to us.”

Our obtuseness amuses Joneman. “A home,” he repeats, “with inhabitants.”

I feel a shiver of apprehension but jeFO cheers, “WE inhabit it!” and dances so contagiously that Baelwit stamps in unison until the ground shakes. Enelra’s walls are rattling and she snaps at them to stop the silly dancing. None of them feel what Joneman is saying.

“All right, Joneman, sweetheart,” I say. “Tell us.”

“I will show you,” he says. And, as I’d feared, leads us to the top of the escarpment where he had returned to us. Mauve and plum fronds flutter over our road, always fluttering.

“Plants!” huffs Enelra in disgust. “You brought us here for plants.”

“I’m fond of plants,” I say, even though this shimmying forest makes me uneasy.

As if to chide my pretence a chittering sound startles out of the ever-moving mass and then a frond detaches from a sinewy trunk and drifts above the road. This is like no creature we have seen in all our millennia: bird, snake, fronds that ripple like the jungle as it drifts with slow pulses of fringed wings. It has opaque violet ovals wrapping a third of its head, which it turns from side to side on its long, sinewy neck, scanning us. Eyes, ears, or both, they flicker and sparkle with life and, oh Joneman, I see the cause for your joy now.

I see intelligence. Not golem-gifted cunning, but true, alien, other-ish intelligence.

A beaklike thing low on its head splits into serrated blades that click and add nuance to trilling cries. The sounds are quite lovely.

“What are these golems?” Enelra demands. “Who made them?” Even she can see what they are.

Baelwit expressed her real fear. “Another lives here? Like Us? That we must expel?”

Joneman beams on him. “Fear not,” he says. “They are godless.”

“Abandoned?” Enelra asks.

“Godless,” Joneman repeats.

“Then how did golems come about?” Enelra demands, forever and always the least nimble of intellect.

“They arose spontaneously,” I conclude, and I shiver again. We are the only other unraised. Until now.

Joneman walks forward in his golem body to meet the being and his golems cry out in pleading and fear, like the sheep they are. The creature rises, drops and rises again on tentacles that stiffen and straighten, coil and straighten again in a fluttering dance that makes JeFO spin, singing happily and raising plumes of dust that rise among its fluttering fronds like smoke or incense.

Another seeming tangle of foliage detaches from the forest edge and resolves itself into a companion of the first being. As it begins to dance as well, it is joined by another, and another and two more, all similar, yet subtly different in shade and size. Joneman’s golems rush to his defence but he calms them with a gesture and they too become caught in the moment, dancing in their stolid, soil bound way. The dance is like a giant, animated flower blossoming and closing, with Joneman and the golems the stem in its midst and jeFO twining about them. The dance speaks of meeting and speaking and, most of all, an essence utterly beyond what I have so far comprehended. Alliance, perhaps, like that of our own kind. Equal to equal? I am entranced.

Enelra quivers. “They worship.”

I wait for Joneman to correct her.

“The sun, for lack of an Other,” Joneman says.

I disagree. That is not what their dance says! Joneman soothes my disquiet with the balm of his presence in my mind.

“I shall have them,” Enelra stakes her claim with her usual presumption. “They require love and order.”

“They will build great monuments,” Baelwit thunders and, after an ominous instant of standoff, the two form their agreement, seeing how perfectly their wants mesh.

JeFO batters their solidity with her inarticulate disagreement. She wants spontaneity, joy, and some kind of spirit only she has and can breathe into a few mad golems who survive their creation by her.

I look to Joneman, who seems not merely content, but percolating with pleasure.

“They are independent,” he says.

“Rebellious?” Enelra bridles. “Eliminate those.”

“They are no one’s!” I exclaim.

Joneman’s mind glows with agreement.

JeFO, in solid form part golem and part inhabitant, leaps and soars like a geyser, understanding. It takes Enelra and Baelwit longer to grasp what Joneman is telling us. That these beings are uncreated, in no one’s image, mental or otherwise. They are free, unimprinted. And intelligent. They will have to be won, and it will not be easy.

JeFO claps and laughs. “Spirit! Being! Inspiration! Dancing!” At least, those are roughly the concepts embedded in her outpourings.

Enelra and Baelwit talk about potential to be moulded, order to be constructed, and monuments. Always monuments. It’s how they contain and constrain jeFO’s exuberance.

And I…

“Joneman.” I call him.

“What is the complaint now!” Enelra snaps.

“We will multiply, Joneman?” I ask.

“Yes.”

More explosive joy. We are so bored with each other, we five. They still don’t understand.

“We shall have war,” I say.

That sobers them a moment.

But jeFO, always jeFO, breaks the moment.

She cheers and claps. “Above and beyond! Others above self! Courage under!” Fleetingly I wonder if Joneman puts her up to it.

Enelra and Baelwit chant responsively about strategy, destructive capability, orderly planning, and fortification. They plan their customary alliance which over the eons has always collapsed into mutual pummelling until they and their golems are spent.

“Oh, Joneman,” I plead.

Joneman’s face is turned from me.

The lovely flower of the Inhabitants’ dance opens and closes in a loop of innocence that I wish could last forever.

“Remember Neanderthal,” I say.

“Brainless. Disobedient,” Enelra snapped.

“Poor builders.” Baelwit, of course.

“Innocent,” I said. “Until us.”

“Until you,” Joneman murmured in gentle admonishment, for, yes, when Neanderthal’s mind could not seem to grow to encompass our magic, it had been I who raised Cro-Magnon, who grew and flourished into descendants whose comfortable solution to their innocent neighbours was genocide. Havoc and destruction lay always in the wake of what I had made.

“A good game, a good game!” jeFO cries. And it had been, so compelling a battle, we multiplied in our exuberance, and, in our exuberance distorted what we’d found. So rose the golems instead, facsimiles of the simple originals, so much cleverer, yet as little like them as a Chihuahua to a wolf.

“Joneman,” I say. “These are innocents. Let us leave them, before we poison their world as we poisoned Earth.”

Joneman turns his gaze on me, but, before I know what he would tell me, a purple storm plunges onto the dancers. Through a tumult of deep purple I see the dancer’s slender neck crushed in a massive indigo beak. The limp body is tossed up, caught, and given a sharp shake. An orb of stone and amethyst sparkles on the monster’s chest as it dangles its victim by the neck and smashes it into the dust of the road. With claws extended from its stiffened lower tentacles, it rakes deep slices into the dancer’s body. Its blood is red. My rage is redder.

Even as Joneman and I surge forward, JeFO, spinning blindly in her contemplation of the chaos of war, blunders into them. The great thing flaps up and gashes her feathered shoulders. It turns on Joneman then, slashing and screaming a harsh, clacking sound. Joneman’s golems rush to his defence and I urge mine with them just as another monstrous thing drops as if from nowhere, and then another, all purple fronds, beaks, and clawed tentacles lashing.

Our golems are soft and vulnerable with no weapons to hand, yet heavy and lethal with loyal rage. They are soon sliced and bleeding, staggering under the onslaught of slashing beaks, clubbing wings, and tearing razor feet. Arms over my head, I rush into one such hellish fury and kick out while punching and tearing at anything I can seize. Acidic slashes split my body’s forearms and shoulders, sucking hard on my essence to close them again, tiring me. A dancer leaps, clinging, pecking, and clawing on the neck of the monster I am fighting. In a flurry of mauve fronds, another materializes aboard one of the tentacles my adversary has planted in the chest of the one it’s killed. They are defending me.

The battle the dancers bring to the powerful dark killers is feeble but distracts them. As my adversary twists its beak around to snap at the annoyance, I kick up into the momentary clear space beneath its thorax. For all its fearsomeness, a blow to its keel bone collapses it into a panting tangle of fronds and writhing tentacles.

It is done a few moments later. Our golems stagger or lie on the ground, surrounded by collapsed creatures, some large and deep purple, some small and mauve, all panting with gaping beaks, the dancers and the attackers alike. Red blood meets red blood in the road.

Enelra rises high, wrapped in glowing purple magnificence, a glowing sun-disc radiating around her head, massive feathered wings spread wide to frame her pouting breast. She looks part Renaissance seraphim, part Aztec god, part pigeon, and entirely ridiculous. She’s not quite able to give up the human visage with its Kore smile she’d adopted so many millennia ago and used to such devastating purpose.

Still, to a dazed Inhabitant, she no doubt looks impressive and, I suspect, terrifyingly ugly. Graciously, she bends to a shattered purple monster and, with a silver touch, heals it. She’s made her choice.

“So the war begins, Joneman,” I say.

The frail, mauve beings in the road bleed and pant and look helplessly to Joneman. And to me. I am sorry, so very, very sorry.

❦

Therid lay, seeing all and knowing nothing. How could this be? His nest-kin, limp, broken, dead in the dirt of this road. Mottrack, mighty Mottrack, crushed beyond flying, his gorgeous plumage and thorax jewel dulled by yellow dust. No more fine hunts. No more best mates. Finished.

And then a monster forms, misshapen wings and hideous visage glowing with dark light. It touches not Mottrack, but Smoatin, one of the most thuggish warriors, lowest of his caste. Smoatin shakes himself, rises, and offers homage to the monster.

How could a being of mind make such a choice? This must be the true being’s enemy. It’s not too late. Therid looks to the one with Sun rising in its eyes. This one can fix broken paws. Can it fix broken wings? Crushed bodies? But the Sun one will not meet Therid’s eye, will not enter him as before. Dark, then.

Therid flutters, dragging toward the forest. Camouflage first, then thought. A touch stops him, cool as winter rains on his wounds. Hypnotic eyes meet his, calling to him to give his mind. They are not Sun, but predator eyes. He has been a fool to think otherwise.

He struggles toward the forest’s protection, fighting the call. The struggle becomes easier, and he realizes his hurts are healed. Then, wonder of wonders, his dead nest-kin joins him, chittering. And the others, those dead or hurt, now alive and whole, flee with him into the forest.

Falling behind, Therid pauses just within a cluster of protective fronds, unable to resist a last look. Bright eyes captured him, but did not hold him. They spoke to him, invited his worship, or his complicity. They stretched and pulled at his thoughts. He saw himself, Therid, roosting at the top of the tree, the very top, in the first and last sunlight of the day. Power vibrated at his frond tips, like warmth at dawn’s edge. It would be power as great as Mottrack’s, greater. He need only serve and worship.

“How?” Therid had to ask. “What meat can I bring? What strength offer to mothers of chicks? What protection from predators?”

From me, all comes from me, the voice in his head told him. Serve, worship, believe.

A thought came then, so faint it nearly evaporated under the warm power of the urge to bask in belief, belief without painful questioning.

Mottrack had not been his enemy, but his superior, proven by size and accomplishment, by the rule of the flock. But not his enemy until the shiny eyes with their silver touch came.

The silver touch.

So. Not Sun. A being, as much greater than Mottrack as Mottrack was compared to weak Therid. But not Sun.

❦

And so it begins. Joneman whom I loved, plays an old game anew, weaving promises of power to the meek to win these small ones to his side in exchange for worship of his supposed godhood. An old trick of mine, that, winning me many rounds in the game. Now he’s made it his.

The mauve beings stare at him, their huge oval eyes inscrutable, their alien thought processes elusive. Joneman glows with profligate power, pouring it into the seeds he’s planted in them, willing them to multiply, to increase his presence. Even so, one argues—argues!—back at Joneman. I feel Joneman’s surprised amusement, even as he seeks to win through argument and invasion. As usual, Enelra and Baelwit play god with the large, dominant ones, overwhelming them with force, brooking no resistance. Joneman and I know that, in the game to come. The clever ones will win the most and small must ever be more clever. Belief is a far greater motivator than fear. And jeFO, she whirls and has no thoughts but joy at a new game. And I—I am most reluctant to play at all.

Joneman’s little creature convulses. Its beak is wide, and it is wracked with hacking, wrenching coughs. Joneman, have we killed it? Vomit spills from its gullet, forming a pool silver with our little seeds that Joneman has so recklessly poured into it. Its thoughts are fading, silencing. Now its fellows are similarly hacking, coughing.

❦

Therid finished expelling the foreign mother-heal. He had almost succumbed to its seductive poison, almost lost himself, like a dam-bonded chick.

Mottrack and his hunters milled and flapped in the dust, still dancing homage, still in danger.

Therid called to them, “Expel! Expel the monster mother-heal!” They ignored him. They were the flock’s best hunters, mightiest protectors, strongest mates, and they were dancing their doom, and the destruction of them all. And it was his doing.

Therid rose as tall as he could. He stepped out of the jungle’s safe embrace. Making his voice high and strident, he squalled, “Who, now, top of tree?”

Mottrack whirled to face him, ruff raised against the challenge, fringes huge with threat, his caste-mates ruffling at his back.

Therid forced himself to move into the open space before them, resisting legs that begged to coil tight and low, fringes that cried to lift in homage or carry him away. Still he held tall. Mottrack’s neck coiled to strike.

Therid fluttered homage. And so that Mottrack would be sure, he chickered, “Homage. To Mottrack. No homage to Monster Creature.”

Mottrack hesitated. “Expel!” Therid cried again. “Not Great Knowing. Great Predator. Expel!”

“Healed my hurt,” Mottrack cried.

“Hurt you, before healing!” Therid cried back.

“There is no other God but she,” Mottrack shouted.

Therid blurted in his astonishment, “Chick-madness takes you?”

Mottrack struck, but clumsily. As he ducked Mottrack’s beak, Therid heard a hunter cough, then another. Even as Mottrack stalked him, they all vomited, cleansing themselves. All past chickhood understood to their cores the dangers of mother-heal madness, of selfhood shredded to fragments by the intrusion of a dam’s mind.

Still Mottrack came on. Therid spun and dodged until he found himself trapped between the monster’s misshapen feet. A dark, violet light engulfed him, the ugly visage bent to consume him.

Therid shot sideways and up, slashing at the monster’s head in passing. He twisted in midair and dove back down, claws tearing red creases across its shaggy purple shoulders. He screamed to his nest-kin’s mate to come, come now! The monster flailed at Therid but he slipped beyond her reach, up, up. The monster’s fringes lengthened, spread, and, cumbersomely, took the air, even as its wounds closed. Joining him, his nest-kin’s mate dove to slash but Therid cried to her, “Slash, then heal, give your mother-heal, nest-mother.” She flew up beside him, her head twitching side to side with doubt.

“Took us, the predators, with mother-heal. Your mother-heal, strike. Chick madness, give.”

She dropped into the dark glow of the monster, her fringes fluttering for balance, slashed, coughed into its wounds. It flapped heavily, its ground creatures wailing below. Mottrack flew up to its aid, but Therid dropped below him, diving onto the glowing head of the monster who had tried to take him, shame and hatred driving his beak hard. He was careful not to taste its blood. His nest-kin’s mate followed, coughing in each wound he made.

As one, the flock understood. The caste-mates dove at ground creature and monster alike, darting, slashing, retreating. None repeated the mistakes they’d made in trying to fight on the ground. Two other mothers who had come on the night’s journey joined the first and all three coughed, coughed, and coughed more. With each pass, Therid saw wounds reacting to the mother-heal, some closing, only to burst wide again, bubbling red and silver.

The nest-mothers flagged, their flying ragged, their coughs near dry. A ground creature batted hard and grazed one who was too slow.

“Away!” cried Therid and the flock plunged into the jungle, leaving only Mottrack. Therid watched, waited.

The monster shrank and lost its violet light and its fringes. Its ground-creature face twisted, its maw opening wide in a roar that chilled Therid to the core. A nest-mother called, sharp and chiding. The monster gathered into a crouch, staring at the jungle as the last of the glow died in its tiny eyes.

Mottrack coughed, great, wracking heaves that emptied him, bowed him to the ground. The vomit shimmered and squirmed as if alive, but grew still at last in the dry dust. Mottrack thrust high with all his mighty strength. He disappeared into the sky, flying toward the centre of the jungle.

The remaining flock rose as one to follow him. Therid stayed a moment longer, making sure. He could not find one creature without a wound. Most lay in the dust, twitching. Others flailed and emitted gurgling cries as mother-heal madness took them, cut off from the dams that had imprinted them yet with no minds of their own. They would die also.

One badly wounded creature crouched, panting as it stared at the jungle. Its shining eyes, once so dizzyingly captivating, roved back and forth. Therid let it find him. For a moment it stared, chick-madness dulling its eyes. Then a touch of intelligence returned. It raised its paw, the stubby claws extended. Its face split, showing white stones between its jaws. Then its light went out, and it fell.

❦

No one remains. And I—I am done. And glad of it. Let the Cradle die and fall. Expunge our presence from the universe. Live on, little wise one, and do better than we.

❦

Late that night, as only the top of the flocking tree remained in sun, Mottrack called to Therid as he flapped heavily into the clearing. Therid humbly bowed before the mighty leader, awaiting his sentence. Therid shifted to one side of his perch, making room.

“Here, Therid,” he said.

Confusion struck Therid speechless at first. Then he fluttered, in deepest submission. “For me, too dangerous,” he refused.

Mottrack, clacked his beak in surprise. “For Therid, monster-killer, flock-leader, too dangerous? Saw you truths, not saw I. Strong were you when weak was I.”

“Night predator likes tree top,” Therid replied. “Hunters keep flock safe. Get no sleep.”

Mottrack chuckered loudly with laughter, the flock joining him.

“Lower then at night, be you,” said Mottrack. “But top of tree, when council needed, is wise, wise Therid.”

Again, Therid demurred. “Saved us, the Dams.”

Mottrack’s ruff shifted and rose, but then smoothed down.

“Great must be the tree with top so great for such numerous council,” he said. And the flock laughed again. But Mottrack opened and shut his beak in silent respect. He would think on it, Therid saw. His nest-kin’s mate chickered and preened him.

On his accustomed perch that night, Therid slept dreamlessly as the hunters shared the watch. And so he did not see the streak of fire that slashed the sky into the desert.

Liz Westbrook-Trenholm has published or aired mainstream and speculative short fiction in Neo-Opsis, Prix Aurora-winning (2015) Bundoran Press anthology Second Contacts, Prix Aurora-winning (2016) Laksa Media’s The Sum of Us, and Bundoran’s upcoming 49th Parallels. She also writes comedic murder mysteries for Calgary entertainment company Pegasus Performances, with over eighty scripts produced. A retired public servant, Liz lives in Ottawa with her husband, writer and publisher Hayden Trenholm.

by Ruth Asch

Dance, who was once part of me—
stabbed in the foot, one small point pierced—
with bloodied toes whirled on her way:
lyrically departed.

She left a void.
I sit, a void; if voids can contain sorrow.
I build a wall of silence, to keep the ghost away.

For if rhythm should play,
it stirs a double agony:
the wound of emptiness, betrayal,
and a desire which throbs
from deep within, along each limb:
thwarted burning, roused, and trapped.
I cannot spill the spell of music
through this body here,
yet it shakes me—
who once flew
along a breeze of melody,
rocked on phrases sway and swell,
swung on the stem of time.

Dance to me dead—
I am marionette: wooden yet
tugged and twitched despite myself
on threadbare strings of distant syncopation.
With silence I must keep you out, oh ghost Dance.

Years stumble by.

Dance passed on, lightly, lightly…
now through my poetry the deft feet patter:
a fluttering spirit straining to float free;
possessive poltergeist—
seizing, pushing words,
smashing the clear thoughts;
a gauze-white face with pointed rhymes,
tightening rhythm’s embrace.
Just
a hint of haunting music—and
it trips the tongue and steals the breath—
My Muse has put the red shoes on
and dances to her death.

Ruth Asch is a writer with one volume of poetry in print, Reflections, and poems of widely varying style and subject, but always musical quality, appearing in many literary journals. She was 2015 top winner of the Maria W. Faust Sonnet contest. She currently lives near Madrid in Spain, where she has been teaching, absorbing a little local culture, and caring for her husband and four children.

by Christina Ladd

“For one moment’s peace here
I would give up the grave’s peace.”
—Anna Akhmatova

Ekaterina goes into the forest not to die, but to be reborn.

She is not a firebird. Many men have thought so, to hear her sing or—frankly—to watch her eat, and she lets them be deceived. With women  she is different, letting them closer to the truth. It is partly about convenience, for the bathhouse, the dressing room, the dressmakers: they are places for light and touch while the boudoir is for shadow.

It is also about her sister.

She sees her sister once in a generation. They share a day and a night, which is fitting for their lives of half-truths, and for that one day she is entirely seen. Then they must part, one gone and one to stay. Ekaterina can only guess how it is for Alonya, but when it’s her turn out in the world she spends the decades anticipating the tidbits she will pack, the sweets and jewels and ribbons to demonstrate how time has passed for her. Sometimes it feels as though she is hoarding even her breath—each sweet intake of air for Alonya, each odious exhale for herself. And she does bottle air: phials from mountaintops or meadows that are especially fragrant, so that Alonya can uncork them and be amazed.

Sometimes she thinks it would be better to end it, to simply live as sisters together. But that is not her nature. She does not burn and fall to ash. She is not—not—a firebird.

The phials clink on her back now, a sound that would have rung in the fields. Here in the forest the chime dies almost immediately, closed in by the dense weave of the pines. The trees do not like the music, do not find it suitably reverent. Or perhaps it’s her they do not like. Certainly the needles stab her at every opportunity, and the stones conspire with the ice to catch her feet. But she has danced lately at the Winter Palace, terrain far more treacherous than this. She stares out from the path at the darkness of the place, the oldness, and is not afraid. And even when the sunlight slants to a trickle and then to nothing at all, she continues. Her path is not in the dirt but in the heart, and so the darkness is of no consequence to her.

When she is tired, she puts down her pack and flops down beside it. Even her most slavish imitators would balk at such a peasant display, but they are no longer her concern. They are fringe on a shawl, pretty little embellishments for Alonya’s benefit.

Although, the shawl she has brought is less fringed than fraying. It is cut from an old tapestry, one of the ancient weavings they used to use to warm castles as well as decorate them. Ekaterina can remember one like it from long ago; maybe it was even the one she took a knife to. Perhaps Alonya will remember it too.

There is also a dress, a waistcoat, breeches, and silk trappings in motley colors. Always the stories of these things are more important than the collection, and Alonya can wear anything with élan. Especially jewels, which Ekaterina has brought in spades. And spades too: gold-leaf playing cards, painted by a monk who made icons for all the great basilicas until he lost his faith—well, until it was taken from him. That’s a good story; Alonya will like that.

There are also fox pelts, one white and one red, with their eyes sewn shut. She has brought cosmetics that get their sparkle from pulverized rubies, and a hairpin dipped in poison, and a relic of St. Anna the Mother Without Children. There is a mirror that caught the last reflection of Marie Antoinette, and a tin lamp that supposedly contains a djinn. Will they be able to make him appear, their long-lost not-quite brother? She hopes not. From dawn to dawn she will see her sister. She does not want to share.

She rests until her breath is even, but does not eat or drink. This is not Lent. She cannot sneak down to the fruit trees or the larder when backs are turned, and the only cellar is the single bottle of wine at the bottom of her pack. Even if she wanted to drink it, even if the forest did not have ten thousand unblinking eyes, she would not. A generation is not enough to forget herself or the Laws that are her bones. Bones break, but they do not bend.

When she goes to pick up the pack again, it’s heavier than before. Part of this is the illusion cast by her weariness, but part of it is simply true. The forest and her sister’s nearness are doing their work. She wishes she could have had a carriage, or at least a little sledge, but such things are as impossible as food and drink, regardless of her wishing.

The innkeeper at the edge of the forest—a man who did not survive the ebb and flow of travelers by being dim—had insisted on a carriage no less than seven times, but then subsided. She had been dressed with self-conscious poverty, and her pack was far too large for a woman pretending to have nothing. (That was the half-truth, of course: she herself indeed had nothing. It was all for Alonya.) He did not dare let her go off on her own, but what he finally understood, with a fearful light entering his eyes, was that he also did not dare defy her. A rock and a hard place. Well, let him fret.He was well compensated for whatever trouble comes in her wake, even if it’s the secret police. More likely it will be a gaggle of discarded lovers, searching for a sign. Such fools are easily placated.

She travels onward, nether hurrying nor dawdling. The nature of the forest is such that, even if she were to sprint headlong for a hundred versts, she would not arrive one second earlier than daybreak. It is another Law.

A doctor told her there were more than two hundred bones in the body. There are probably as many Laws, but like bones, she does not know them until she feels them; like bones, they will still be there when she is gone. But she does not plan on being gone. Not now. Maybe not ever.

She is walking toward the fire.

As she walks she tries to reckon the cost of her pack. She has lost the trick of it though, having lived on the indulgence of adoration and credit for much of this generation. How much does hundred-year-old wine cost? And boiled sweets—are they kopeks or rubles? She cannot eat but she has prepared her sister’s feast, and at—a hundred rubles? A thousand? She estimates wildly and inconsistently so that she can give either a smug or modest accounting, whichever will sound better. And, as always, there are five hundred rubles. Any less would be a bother; any more would be an insult. Such cuckoo children as they know how to get by.

When dawn—which is in her blood as Law is in her bones—breaks open, the forest sighs and parts its green curtains at last. The orchestral swell of birdsong and wind rise up, and Ekaterina forgets the weight and the ache, and she runs. She sprints. She flies, and alights on the edge of a clearing so perfectly round that it might be the bed of the sun when it’s not in the sky.

In the center of the circle is another round, like a bull’s-eye, but this is one of bracken and ash. It glimmers red and white: red from the coals still spotted with flame, white from the girl blinking and rubbing her eyes, naked as the moon.

They meet halfway, embracing without tears or smiles. Faces cannot hold feelings this large; it is bodies that are needed, sooty and sweaty and finally whole.

Alonya pulls a few feathers out of her hair and places them into Ekaterina’s. Ekaterina undoes her lace collar and puts it round Alonya’s neck. They do not look away from each other’s faces. Alonya touches the skin below Ekaterina’s eyes, lately grown thin and dark, and touches the lines at her lids. Crow’s-feet, they both think, and smile. Crows, hah!

Ekaterina traces the curve of Alonya’s cheek, plump as a child’s and downy-smooth. They are twins-not-twins, separated by time in more ways than one, but impossible to tear apart.

When finished examining each other for the moment—Alonya has acquired bracelets and stockings and ribbons, Ekaterina smudges and the warmth of a hand over her heart that does not fade—they hold hands and go to the tree.

The tree is a sickly little thing that would not have looked out of place clinging to a wind-battered clifftop. It is twisted and blackened, but the few leaves it has managed are so intensely green they put the rest of the forest to shame. Alonya clambers on a branch and lifts Ekaterina up after her. This is their home, their birthplace. Incongruous as they are, this is still the place they can be perfect. Where they can forget their loneliness and be two, even if they are the only two that ever were.

Alonya and Ekaterina are the rarest of the rare, scarcer than unicorns, more extraordinary than God’s own revelation. Two cuckoos hidden in the same nest, egg-twins twice as hungry who broke their shell twice as soon. They must also have had twice the fortune, since their first act took all: blind eyes set upon an unhatched egg and raw, wet limbs propelled them bit by bit toward it. It was warm as the sun and twice as golden, but their greed was not so base. They did not want gold. They pressed and pressed with single purpose until the other egg tottered. Then wobbled. Then swayed with nauseating swoops. And then—

And then—

It is a terrible thing to destroy a Phoenix’s egg. They mate but once in a lifetime, and have but one offspring. And regenerative though they are, a thing must first be born to be re-born.

The cuckoo children did not bother to look down on their bitter work, on the luminescent embryo now impaled on several ceramic shards of that cooling shell, or to mourn their brief nestmate. Instead they shrilled and cried so prettily that at last the mother Phoenix returned. A virtuous bird but not a shrewd one, the Phoenix dripped the honey of the dawn into the cuckoos’ mouths. Later it brought them the grubs of the Egyptian scarab, the beetle that can move the sun. And last of all, it brought them two amber beads of sunset, rich and red, in which were trapped two flecks of Time itself. The girls crammed them into each other’s mouths and swallowed them in unison.

Perhaps the Phoenix knew it had two impostors instead of one real child. Perhaps it also had fallen into resignation, deciding that any child was better than no child. Or perhaps it really could not tell, and thought itself doubly blessed. This did not matter to the girls, who called themselves by names they liked and made paper skirts from birchbark.

They decorated their hair with the still-golden shards of the egg they had broken. One of the halves was mostly intact: they used it as a cup to drink from the nearby spring. As for the body…

The Phoenix is the empress of birds, and nothing with wings would touch it, even in death. And so when they tumbled down with wings and legs and wails, they found their work still fresh, still mournful. One pecked at it; the other prodded. And with the instinct that had first compelled them to murder, they then took up the corpse between them and built a little pyre.

That fire still burns. It is their bed and larder, the only way they can release the flame within to burn up the years without. Their nameless sib dies for them again and again; again and again they steal its life away.

If souls are breath then theirs are whispers, one a secret and one a lie. Twins that they are, they have swapped their identities so often that they no longer know which is which, and there is no mother to sort them out again. These half girls have half mothers, one who laid and one who labored, and neither really knew them. They are known only to themselves and each other—two ways of saying the same thing.

Their past recedes; the present resurfaces. Alonya drops down and runs to the forgotten pack. She waits for permission, barely, before ripping it open and demanding the stories that go with the gifts.

“This is the soap they use to wash rusalka, to take away their scales,” says Ekaterina, who certainly had heard the story somewhere, and maybe even in the shop where she’d had someone else buy it. “When they’re clean, their hair is so long and beautiful that men pay by the inch rather than the hour. Rusalka make the best whores.”

Alonya nods as if this is well known, but neither of them has ever seen a rusalka, or any myth beyond their own.

“These are buttons from the Three Dimitris,” says Ekaterina, drawing out seven brass buttons that are certainly of the right period, but which could have come from any coat. One has a bit of a stain, but when Alonya licks it she declares that it’s dirt and not blood. Then she juggles them, and Ekaterina claps her hands. Only Alonya remembers the time of the False Dimitris, and though it was not a good time for the land it was a time when anyone could claim anything, and Alonya certainly got along.

“These are the eunuch’s missing pieces,” she says as Alonya draws out a silk bag containing two leathery pieces that might indeed be testicles, and a number of baby teeth. “They can’t go to the afterlife without all their parts.”

“Maybe he’ll haunt me,” Alonya says, eyes alight at the prospect.

Ekaterina certainly slept soundly before and after acquiring the morbid purse, but maybe Alonya will have better luck.

All through the day they pull things from the pack, squealing and sighing over trinkets and treasures. They laugh over the tales of others as their shadows grow short, they laze in delight as noon crowns their glade, and when shadows creep out again, they turn to Ekaterina’s own tales.

“This is the candle I used to signal to the orphans of Rostov-on-Don that I had deliveries to make. They earned their own weight in bread and milk, and they took my letters and gifts all over town. I ruined four marriages and began fourteen affairs, none my own, and caused one priest to be defrocked. I also revitalized the painting of miniatures and put competent men in charge of the railway.” The candle, a burnt stub of tallow, earns a place on top of both an icon of the Archangel Gavril and a choker made of alternating diamonds and Murano glass.

“This is the plate off which I ate the greatest cake of my life. There were so many berries they probably denuded a forest. I refused to get up for dancing and did not open my mouth to gossip—only to cake. I ate the whole thing.”

Alonya gives the plate an even higher place of reverence, and swears to find the chef before she goes digging in the pack again.

“What—is this…?”

Ekaterina can scarcely hold her tongue; her whole body feels like it’s grinning. Alonya reaches into the nest of fur and silk and uncovers—

“An egg!”

It is not the most exquisite egg in existence, but for the work of human hands, it comes very close. It is enameled in a deep, dark red at either pole, the kind of red that cherries might bleed. It diffuses imperceptibly at first, but by the time the eye reaches the egg’s equator, the color is the fresh, sweet pink of cherry blossoms. The gradient is interrupted at three points, bands of gold embedded with seed pearls and rubies in a neat row. How many apprentices went blind, she wondered when she saw it, trying to find pearls that matched so exactly in color and shape?

“I seduced not the artist but the artist’s wife to inspire this beauty, and then I told her it would win my fidelity if she gave it to me.”

Alonya matches her grin, for she feels the truth of that lie and the lie in that truth: Ekaterina will certainly not stray. But that does not mean the poor matron will ever see her again.

They turn back to the precious egg, full on smugness. There is a lock, too, a delicate thing that invites thievery. Alonya wastes no time undoing it with her clever little fingers, the nails still a little like talons. The diamond pin comes out and hangs from a chain no thicker than a hair, and the seal releases.

Inside, cosseted in red velvet, is a bird cut from a single fire opal. It stands on an obsidian base dotted with smoky quartz and diamond. At one edge is a cross, and Ekaterina, unable to contain herself, reaches out and twists it. A few notes trickle into the air. It is possible that no such sound has ever penetrated to this glade.

Alonya waits until the last note has stopped ringing before she too twists the cross, and the melody takes up where it left off. The composition is Borodin’s, but the song is much older. He must have stolen it. So there is a thief in this nest as well.

Ekaterina takes up the tune with a voice now in the midst of change, and Alonya joins in. If the Firebird’s song guides listeners into peaceful sleep, their song is the laudanum fugue and the bacchic stupor. They begin to dance, circling first each other and then the fire pit, which is low and red. Their steps and song intensify: tendrils of fire grasp at twigs and pages from the dirty book Alonya shredded in her glee. Sepia comes, and roan and ochre, and the fire catches. There are branches in it now, birch and fir and yew, though neither twin has ever stooped to burden herself with carrying. The smoke is very heady.

Alonya leaps, and her nails are talons. Ekaterina shrieks, and the flames answer. Sparks catch on their skin and hair. The twins are baleful skies that have caught the stars and will never ever let them go. They swoop and dive and twirl, not girls, not women, not cuckoos, not phoenixes, not anything but adherents to the fire.

There are jewels in the grass. A glove finer than a swipe of paint floats in the spring. The fire understands these things as offerings, not for consumption but for the way they reflect its light. And it is well pleased.

But even if the fire were angry, or extinguished itself entirely, the sisters would still dance. They would dance through the night if it were the last night of the earth, and all tomorrows hell or oblivion.

When her sister is gone, Ekaterina will build up the fire. She will sing, and play on her flute. When the flames are hottest, she will dance with bells on her arms and her feet. When the fire burns down, she will sleep in the coals and dream. Sometimes her dreams will be memories of all the generations she has spent in the world. Sometimes her dreams will be her sister’s dreams, and she will know all is well. And sometimes she will dream the fire’s dreams, visions of devouring every last crumb and thread, and she will know that her vitality is returning, and that the time is coming when she will go out to scorch the world anew.

Christina Ladd is a writer, reviewer, and librarian. She studied Egyptian hieroglyphics at Harvard and T. S. Eliot at Oxford, but flirts with all sorts of other languages and literature in her spare time. She lives in Massachusetts.

geeklyinc.com/category/reading/

by Andy Tu

Every night when I was little, my mother would turn the crank of a music box, and a metallic lullaby would doze my brother and me to sleep. Those notes would pluck and ping in my dreams, my dreams of floating down a curving, dark river, moonlight swaying along the water and a warm breeze hugging around my blanket. I’d drift toward a never-ending horizon, where bright stars blinked and waited.

On my fifth birthday, after I blew out the red candle on a cupcake, a loud rapping came at our door. My father ran into the other room and I heard the whirring of a machine shredding papers through its teeth. The door was kicked in and my mother yelled words in a language I didn’t understand as she tucked us between her arms in the corner of the bed, her legs shivering like when the train passed in the middle of the night, trembling from her bones. Three men entered, two flipping through our things and a short one waving a silver stick in my father’s face as my father said no, no, I don’t know, I don’t know. When the man raised the stick, my mother threw the blanket over our heads and plugged her fingers into my ears, and I heard the light pitches and soft rings of that lullaby, hopping along a scale, up, and down. Next to me my brother rocked back and forth in the orange glow of light seeping through the blanket and I wondered why he looked so different than I’d ever seen him.

Gradually, my mother spun the crank of the music box less and less as I fell asleep watching shadows glimmer along the wall and listening to vehicles pass our building, the grumble and vroom of the occasional truck or motorcycle. Gradually, my brother began turning in his bed like he’d eaten a bug and it was trying to eat its way out through his ribs. Gradually I began noticing the absence of my father’s printer-ink scent in the morning as he kissed my forehead, the way he’d pull the blankets up and tuck them under my chin. Gradually, I began wondering if he were real or just part of my dreams.

On the night a loud boom shook the ground so hard that the window cracked and crumbled into a thousand pieces, my mother pulled us out of bed and told me that we were going to play a game. I was to follow her and not look anywhere except at her back. Right there, she said, tapping her spine. Then she loaded bullets into a gun and handed another one to my brother, reminding him to keep the safety on until the time came, and when the time did come there were fireworks all around us dazzling through the night.

On the first night in our new home, it was my father instead who cranked the wheel of the music box as I fell asleep wondering where my brother was. The ashy wool of my mother’s coat softened the gravel against my spine and the notes of that lullaby dipped, and climbed, and snapped, softly like powdered fingers, more clear than ever before.

Andy Tu is an up-and-coming writer. His stories, which have appeared in thirty-nine magazines, are inspired by his travels; within the past five years, he has lived in Cambodia, Boston, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Colombia. He is currently querying agents to represent his first novel, a literary thriller, while moving back to his home town in California. Andy writes because every person is a mystery to him, and he longs to know their stories.

by Linda Tyler

Once a week Heather ran our community choir in the dusty village hall. For an hour and a half, we sang songs from around the world. Her favourites, perhaps, were those from South Africa calling for freedom, from Russia praising the deity of our choice, from Scotland lamenting  brave men dying in battle. She would call our chattering group to order by singing a bar or two of whatever we had been practising the previous week, until gradually we came to attention, joining in and taking our places. The sign for us to end the song was when she raised her arms.

“High waving heather,” my friend the English teacher whispered to me.

I recognised her reference to Emily Bronte’s poem. “I hope we don’t sound like stormy blasts,” I murmured.

A woman of over seventy, Heather’s fashion style was nevertheless on trend. Her boxy jumper and beads were brightly coloured; her slim hips were clad in denim. Her hair, though grey, was worn artfully messy on the crown of her head.

Her only failure of age was that sometimes, as she began to sing a piece well known to the rest of us, she forgot the words or tune. Then she would wave her arms, bringing to a halt those of us who were singing correctly, and say, “No, no. Stop. Listen to me.” And off she would go again while we listened dutifully until she finished, before returning to our original version. Then she would nod, pleased we had grasped it.

After the session, we would all pile into the café next door. Occasionally she would join us, pulling a chair over to our long table and breaking into the lively chatter with some unrelated anecdote.

“When I was at Oxford…”

There would be silence as, mugs held in midair, we waited politely for her to speak.

“When I was at Oxford, Yehudi Menuhin was a customer at my local coffee shop. Then I moved to London and bumped into him again!”

We would glance at each other, uncertain how to respond; some muttered to their neighbour.

Did she really mean she had studied at Oxford, I wondered. Once or twice, perched on the edge of her seat in the cafe, she had mentioned other establishments.

“I was a student of music and art at the Sorbonne. Paris was different in those days.” A faraway look would appear in her eyes.

Presently, after one of these announcements was met with bemused looks, she would rise, assemble a smile and say, “I must check the arrangements for the concert next week.”

With wrinkled fingers covered in rings, she would hand round leaflets advertising the latest entertainment in the village hall.

“The cellist is a young man I met when I was in Spain. He was playing in a little taberna—such a wonderful musician—and I invited him to come over and stay with me.’

“What kind of music does he play?” someone asked.

“Oh, all sorts,” she said, pinning up a loose strand of hair, “but he mainly improvises.”

The others round the table would stifle their laughter, burying their faces in the frothy liquid in their mugs. She never drank coffee with us or stayed long.

Sometimes, when on my way to my afternoon book club or setting out to meet my walking group, I would come across her in the high street. She looked smaller, somehow—lost and insignificant.

“I’ve entered a woodcut in an exhibition,” she would say, or tell me she was arranging to have a piece of her artwork framed. Away from leading the choir, her smile would take on the rigid appearance of a mask.

One day at the end of the singing session she said to us, “I’m having a little party on Saturday. There’ll be food and drink.” She gave her address. “From eight o’clock.”

The others said something about how nice, will try to come if we can get baby-sitters, dog-sitters, husband-sitters, and she said, “Of course. I understand.”

I made some expression of pleasure at the invitation. She said, “Well, you all have the address.”

I nodded. The others had moved away when it occurred to me that there might be a reason for the party. “Is it a special occasion—your birthday, perhaps?’ “

“Yes,” she said. Her voice was thick.

She picked up the sheet music from the top of the piano and tapped it into a neat pile, before pushing the papers into her satchel. Her school bag must have looked like that once, I thought, when she had dreams of an exciting future.

“I’m sure I can come to your party,” I said.

On Saturday evening I drove to her house on the outskirts of the village. The driveway was overgrown and leaves rustled in the wind. Her house was in darkness and for a moment I thought I had come on the wrong day. As I turned off the engine, I was sure my car beams picked out a movement at an upstairs window. I sat for a moment but saw nothing else; I lifted the bottle of wine from the passenger seat and walked to her front door. The sound of the knocker echoed in the night air. It sent a flock of black and white magpies rising from the tall ghostly trees, but it brought no one to the door.

I bent to peer through theletter box. Against the wall stood a table with a telephone; her coat hung on a peg.

“Heather,” I called. “Are you there? Are you okay?”

The only response was the harsh chatter of the magpies.

Gradually the birds quietened again and a heavy melancholy settled back around the darkened house. I waited a while longer, then I got into my car and left.

“You’re back early,” said my husband, looking up from the television.

“It seems the party was cancelled,” I said.

“Strange woman.” He turned back to the screen.

I had an image of Heather as she raised her arms to end our last song and it seemed to me they drooped. And, running through my head, the thought that after all we were the stormy blasts ’neath which she bent.

Linda Tyler was born in London and now lives in a village on the edge of the Scottish Highlands. She has been published by Ouen Press, D C Thomson, Bards and Sages, Riding Light, Alliteration Ink, blink-ink, and Thema. Stories in forthcoming publications include “Grey Wolfe” and “Alban Lake.” A retired lecturer, she now runs self-catering holiday accommodation and is walked daily by her Labrador.

by Daniel Stride

Alice punched the numbers.

“One hundred twenty-one trillion. Quite a lot.”

The man on the park bench looked over her shoulder, and smiled. “You still underestimate by a factor of a thousand.”

Misread the zeros. Damn contact lenses. Alice shoved the calculator back into her coat pocket. “So even if your ringers spent centuries at it—millennia—they would only cover a fraction of the possible permutations.”

“Indeed. To ring the extent of nineteen bells—every permutation as you call it—would take some two billion years.”

“So they can’t possibly do it.”

The fellow nodded across the lawn towards the bell tower.

“Listen. They are doing it right now.”

Alice paused. The clanging song continued apace, each change of the bells mellow and melancholy, yet also subtly different from its predecessor.

“How long have they been at it?”

“Some time.”

It’s like interviewing that M.P. “How long?”

“Less than two billion years, or they would have finished.”

Alice picked her pad and pencil off the bench, and scribbled a note. She needed a drink.

“Returning to the original question, what is the purpose of this strange exercise in campanology? What do you hope to achieve?”

“There are many purposes, mostly aesthetic. I understand my methods are unconventional.”

“And supernatural. Your bell ringers neither eat nor sleep.”

“As you say.”

Alice thinned her lips. “Let us take this in a different direction. These bells are magical, and their purpose is either benign or malevolent.”

He laughed. “They are purely benign. How could anything this elegant be malevolent?”

“This has been going on for an unnatural length of time.”

“All lengths of time are natural.”

“Even two billion years?”

“Even two billion years.”

Two can play this game. “Is this experiment’s duration closer to the end of that mark?”

That rattled him: a slight twitch of the cheek, a flutter of the eyelids.

“I couldn’t possibly comment.”

“To hazard a hypothesis…” Alice drew a deep breath. Down the rabbit hole. “Two billion years ago is when cells with internal organs appeared, paving the way for what came after. Is there a link between these magical bells, and the existence of higher life-forms on this planet? Is your experiment about sustaining life itself?”

She expected either a bark of laughter, or some nervous denial. Instead he merely shrugged.

“We must wait until they are finished.”

“Pardon?”

“If the bells sustain life, life shall end when the ringing ends. Assuming causation, and not mere correlation.”

Alice frowned. “Can’t you stop the ringing to check?”

That did elicit laughter. “I could. But if life suddenly stopped, being right would be cold comfort.”

Alice scribbled another note. “Then perhaps another benign supernatural purpose. Do the bells protect us from enemies? Demons? Hostile space aliens?”

“A most interesting hypothesis.” The man stood, and smoothed his shabby jacket. Then he crossed the lawn, and fetched a small stone from the rock garden.

“What if this protected the earth from demons and space aliens?” he said, as he resumed his seat on the bench. “Rather than the bells.”

Alice took the stone from him. “But it’s just a rock. It doesn’t protect anything.”

“And those bells are just copper and tin alloy, in varying percentages. Yet you ascribe miraculous properties to them.”

“The bells are demonstrably magical. This isn’t.”

“The only magic you have identified is that the ringers neither eat nor sleep. Otherwise, the bells’ nonaesthetic attributes are no different from those of that stone.”

Alice put the stone down on the grass.

“Very well,” she said. “Do the bells possess any malevolent properties?”

“Care to suggest any?”

Alice bit her lip. “The peal does not kill those who hear it, so it can’t be that.”

The twinkle had returned to the man’s eye. “A sound observation.”

“Maybe it causes insanity though.” It would explain much.

More laughter. “My dear girl, the people of this village have listened to the bells all their lives. Do they appear mad to you?”

“No, but—perhaps the bells lure in new victims, and turn them into eternal bell ringers.”

“Do you feel an unnatural urge to swap journalism for campanology?”

“Not particularly.”

“Did any of the bell ringers look distressed when you passed through the chamber?”

“Not that I saw.”

“Then if the bells are malevolent lures, they are very poor at their job.”

Alice shut her Notepad, and stuffed it into her pocket. “That’s all my questions. Thank you for your time.”

The man cocked his head. “Are you quite sure?”

“Well…” One question still lingered on the tip of her tongue. “Are you God? Or a god?”

“Quite the step up in speculation.” He flashed a toothy grin. “Godhood would be a surprise, given that I am the exact opposite.”

❦

The man sat on the bench, eyes shut, his ears filled with the wondrous peal.

“She never did ask if I enjoyed the music,” he said.

Daniel Stride has a lifelong love of literature in general and speculative fiction in particular. He writes both short stories and poetry; his first novel, Wise Phuul, was published in November, 2016 by small UK press, Inspired Quill. Daniel lives in Dunedin, New Zealand.

phuulishfellow.wordpress.com

by Mike Murphy

Elias Farrell founded Look Ahead Enterprises—a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company designed to do the impossible—in 2027.

On the morning of March 8, he met with a potential client, Jeff Healy, in Farrell’s well-appointed office. He offered him a seat, which he took, and something to drink, which he refused. “Let’s get down to brass tacks then,” Elias said. “How may we help you?”

Healy was a bit nervous, like many new clients. He began, “I was referred to you by a—a business associate of mine, Charles Kilpatrick.”

“How’s he doing?”

“He’s fine. He said that you solved a tough problem for him.”

“He’s too kind,” Farrell smiled and replied. “We merely showed him the way.”

“How did you do that?”

“I can’t speak of specifics. Look Ahead Enterprises places great value on our clients’ confidentiality.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“What problem would you like us to deal with?”

“I—uhm…”

“Anything you say here will never leave this room. I need to know what your problem is to see if we can help you.”

Jeff paused uneasily, but finally spilled. “It’s my son—Alex. He’s fourteen.”

“That’s quite an age: No longer a child, but not yet a man.”

“He’s starting to act—strangely.”

“How so?”

“Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Farrell. Alex is a good kid. My wife, Trish, and I raised him right—with love and discipline.”

“I don’t doubt that for a minute.”

“He seems to have fallen in with a bad crowd. He’s started skipping school, and talking back to Trish and me. We’ve done everything we can think of, talked to all kinds of specialists, but we’re at our wits’ end.”

“I can imagine.”

“Charlie said you give DVDs to your clients.”

“For a small fee, yes.”

“I thought that,” Healy went on, “if I could show Alex video proof of what he’s going to become if he continues down this road, it might straighten him out.”

“May I assume you’ve looked over our fee schedule?”

“I have. I’ve already filled out the paperwork too. I think the One Look package would be best.”

“From what you’ve told me, I agree.”

❦

“Simply put,” Farrell summed up, “with the proper programming, our computer can momentarily subvert natural forces and the laws of physics to peek into the probable future of any person we choose.”

“Probable?” asked Healy.

“Our best estimate is 89.6%.”

“So what I’ll see here today—what I’m paying for—isn’t the definite future?”

“Most likely it will be,” Farrell said. “Some factors beyond our control make it impossible to reach 100%.”

“Such as?” Jeff prompted him.

“Free will, for one.”

“I don’t get it.”

“A fictional example: Walking home tonight, I cross the street and get hit by a bus. If I delayed crossing that street by even a minute, the bus would pass me uneventfully, and I would live to see another day.” He looked Jeff in the eye. “That percent,” he said, “is the absolute best we can provide. If it’s not sufficient for you, I can cancel your contract.”

“No,” Healy replied emphatically. “I’m going through with it.”

❦

It took Elias Farrell ten minutes to ready Healy’s viewing room. He explained to Jeff that his look ahead would appear on the screen before him, unfortunately without sound—something his programmers hadn’t been able to work out yet. The computer would select what it believed to be the subject’s most important future day. The DVD recording would begin as soon as the video appeared on the monitor. The One Look would last approximately a minute and would be date stamped.

The monitor flickered to life: Healy’s house. The date stamp was a little over a year from now. The video moved inside the home to show his son and wife. They were talking about something while Trish put papers into her valise. He was nowhere to be seen. To Jeff’s shock, the on-screen Alex pulled out a gun and, after some heated arguing, shot Trish twice in the chest. Seconds later, the screen went blank. Healy sat staring at the monitor, slack-jawed. He couldn’t believe it. “Can this be changed?” he asked, hoping against hope.

“It’s possible,” Farrell told him. “Any actions you, Alex, or your wife takes mightinfluence the future.”

“To the point where that won’t happen?” Jeff asked, pointing disdainfully at the screen.

“Maybe.”

“Then we’ll do it!”

“Do what?”

“Whatever keeps Alex from shooting Trish.”

Farrell was confused by his client’s words. “We have no way of knowing what actions to take.”

His client was dumbfounded. “Your computer can’t tell me what to do to set things right?”

“No, sir. It’s only a viewer.”

“So I can possibly save her life, but I can’t know how?” Healy asked, his face growing red. “By dumb luck, I might do something which will keep that from happening, but I could also bring it about quicker.”

“That is the paradox of time.”

Jeff rubbed his eyes for a moment, trying to keep all this information in his head. “Any advice, Farrell? Any at all?”

He paused for what seemed like forever and then muttered, “Well…”

“There is something?”

“It’s very expensive.”

“Tell me.”

“You must promise that my suggestion will go no further than this room. If it were to become public knowledge, my future…”

“I promise,” Jeff replied eagerly.

Farrell took the deepest breath Jeff had ever seen anyone take. “They do exist,” he began.

“Who?”

“I could set you up—with a fixer.”

❦

“His name is Tomlinson.”

“What’s his first name?”

“No one knows,” Elias answered. “He goes only by Tomlinson.”

“What does he do?”

“You should know that fixers are outside the law. The Feds usually turn a blind eye to them—but not always to those who hire them. Our operations here are sanctioned by the government. We are answerable to the government. Tomlinson and those like him are not.”

“I understand,” Jeff said. “What does he do?”

“Fixers have equipment beyond ours. They’re able somehow to analyze a problem shown by a glimpse into the future and prevent it from occurring.”

“So Tomlinson can stop what I saw on that screen?” Healy asked hopefully.

“He’s the best chance you have.”

“How do you know about fixers?”

“Let’s just say that you’re not the first client whose One Look was negative.”

“Tomlinson’s good?”

“Very good—and very expensive.”

“How do I contact him?”

“You don’t. He’ll contact you,” Elias continued. “A friend of mine knows how to reach him. I’ll have to give her all your information, including a copy of the video record. She’ll forward everything.”

“Whatever he needs. I definitely want to hire him.”

“You don’t hire him.”

“Huh?” a befuddled Jeff asked.

“He decides whether he’ll accept you as a client. If so, he’ll call you. If you don’t hear anything within a week, his answer is no.”

“A week! I don’t want to let a week go by!”

“I might be able to set you up with another fixer who may have more availability.”

Jeff tried balancing quicker help against skill in his mind. “You said Tomlinson’s good?”

“The best.”

“I want the best. How long before he gets my information?”

“I should be able to reach my contact tonight. Tomlinson will have your records within twenty-four hours,” Farrell assured him. “Do I have your permission to continue?”

“Of course!”

“I would appreciate it if you forget who directed you to Tomlinson. If the government finds out about…”

“No one will ever know.”

❦

Seven interminable days later, Jeff’s cell phone rang. “This is Tomlinson,” he heard.

“Yes?” he responded eagerly.

“I’ll take your case.”

“You can prevent the shooting?”

“I believe so.”

“You believe so?”

“Even my methods are not foolproof,” Tomlinson replied, sounding a bit annoyed. “You’re free to back out. Tell me now before I waste my time.”

“No, no,” Jeff added quickly. “I don’t want to back out.”

“Good.”

“Mr. Farrell spoke very highly of you.”

“I’m the best,” the voice proudly answered. “My fee is $25,000, up front.”

Jeff was taken aback by the amount. “Twenty-five—”

“Having second thoughts?”

“I’m used to paying for services rendered. It’s how I do business.”

“This is how I do business. Take it or leave it.”

“How do I get you the money?”

“I’ll let you know.”

“How do you keep the shooting from happening?”

“Simple: We alter the timeline.”

❦

“The what?” Healy asked the voice on the phone.

“That’s what we call the order of time,” Tomlinson explained. “Think of it as a long, straight highway. Everything’s in order: Tuesday follows Monday, and Wednesday follows Tuesday. What I need to do is put an ‘exit ramp’ on that highway.”

“You realize there isn’t much time.”

“I know,” the voice assured him. “Starting tomorrow morning, I’ll need daily updates from you.”

“On what?” Jeff asked, confused.

“Everything you did the previous day—from what you had for breakfast to when you went to bed. The same goes for your wife and kid. The more information, the better. If you and Trish had pillow talk, I want to know about it.”

“For what reason?”

“Time is strange, Healy. We don’t know what might influence it. I need to cover every base. The slightest omission could cause trouble.”

“Gotcha.”

“You haven’t shown your boy that DVD, have you?” Tomlinson asked urgently.

“No,” Healy answered. “I thought it best to wait and speak with you.”

“Good thinking. Don’t. It might give him ideas. Don’t show it to anyone.”

“How do I reach you?”

“I’ve downloaded an app onto your phone while we’ve been talking. Every morning at 9:00, call me at star 7809. Your words will be recorded, and I’ll expect a full accounting.”

“You’ll get it.”

“You’ll notice that your caller ID is showing this as an unlisted number.”

Healy glanced at the phone’s display and replied, “Yes.”

“Never call me beyond your updates.”

“What if something important happens?”

“It can wait for the next update. Any extra calls increase the chance I’ll be identified and caught before I can help you.”

“I understand.”

“Have you told your wife about this?”

“No.”

“Don’t,” Tomlinson ordered. “During tomorrow’s update, you’ll learn how to transfer my fee.”

“I’ll have the money ready and waiting.”

“You may not hear from me for prolonged stretches of time. You might think the period of silence excessive. I assure you it’s necessary. Finally, in order to save your wife’s life, I may need to make requests of you.”

“What kind of requests?”

“I may need you to do or say certain things.”

“Couldn’t we just keep Alex away from Trish?”

“Certainly not! Some major things will happen to you and your loved ones during this time. However, intentionally altering your family life will make our goal much more difficult to attain—perhaps impossible.”

“I’ll leave things be.”

“Good. Remember: Your first update is tomorrow morning at 9:00.”

❦

“Well, yesterday I got a raise, so Trish and I went out for dinner at our favorite…”

❦

“I had to go to Alex’s school. He got into some trouble with his…”

❦

“Yesterday was our boy’s fifteenth birthday, so we all…”

❦

“It being Black Friday, Trish hit the malls early. Alex and I stayed home and watched some football…”

❦

“…and went to bed. Tomlinson, are you getting these updates? I haven’t heard from you in months. The day of the shooting is coming up. Have you done anything to prevent it? Tomlinson!”

❦

“How about the two of us play hooky from work today?” Jeff asked his wife.

“What?” she answered, surprised.

“We’ll send Alex off to school and call in sick. We could go out to lunch, to a movie, to the museum. Whatever you like.”

“That’s a great idea,” she replied after a brief chuckle, “but I can’t. I’m showing the Cartwright place to three different couples this afternoon, and I’m told they’re all eager to buy. We could sure use my commission.”

“Yeah, but…”

“Maybe next week?”

Jeff sighed. “I suppose.”

“We’d better get moving,” she said, looking at her watch. “Could you please take out the trash? I’ve got some papers to get together.”

❦

In his grungy T-shirt, jeans, and once-white sneakers, Alex was as dressed up as he ever got. “Hi, honey,” Trish greeted him from her seat on the couch, looking up only briefly before going back to collecting her notes. “Sleep well?”

“So-so,” he answered. “Mom, I—I need some money.”

“Would ten bucks do?” she asked, zipping up her valise.

He awkwardly pulled a gun from a pants pocket. “I was thinking more of everything you have.”

“Alex, where’d—What are you doing?”

“Don’t move,” he ordered. “How much money do you have in your purse?”

“I’m not—not really sure. About fifty dollars, I think.”

“I want it.”

Trish began doing as she had been told. “Okay, the trash is out,” Jeff announced, walking into the living room. “It looks like the raccoons…”

“Sit down, old man!” Alex exclaimed, pointing the gun at his dad.

“Put that down!”

“When I feel like it,” the teenager said. “Give me your money. Now!” Jeff slowly took his wallet from his back pocket, removed the bills, and handed them over. “That’s it?”

“Every cent.”

Alex counted it quickly. “That’s not even a hundred bucks!”

“How much do you need?” Trish asked.

“A lot more than this.”

“Who do you owe the money to?” Healy inquired. “A bookie? A dealer?”

“Shut up!” Alex yelled, sweat coming to his pimply brow. “We’re going to the bank, and you’re gonna get me the money I need.”

“There’s not much in the account,” his mother told him. “I paid the bills the other day.”

“When will there be money in it?”

“Friday,” Jeff told his son. “We both get paid on Friday.”

“He won’t wait until Friday.”

“He?”

The doorbell rang. “Who’s that?” Alex asked Jeff nervously.

“How am I supposed to know?”

“It could be him.” The bell rang again. “You’re gonna take care of this.”

❦

Healy stood on the threshold. Behind the open door, Alex held his gun to Trish’s right temple. Her cheeks were wet with tears, and she was doing all she could not to weep aloud.

The man on the stoop was about forty-five. He was short and a little chubby. Jeff had never seen him before, but he knew that voice. “Good morning, sir,” the visitor said in a friendly tone. “My name is Tomlinson, and I’m with the Your Opinion Matters Research Company.”

“I’m afraid that now isn’t a good time,” Jeff informed him.

“I only have a couple of questions to ask. Won’t take but a minute.”

“Well…”

“Answering them will qualify you for some valuable prizes, including a fabulous cruise to Alaska.”

“Answer the questions and get rid of him,” Alex whispered through his teeth.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Jeff said.

“Thank you, sir. With all of the crime in today’s society, do you own—a gun?”

“I do not.”

“If you were to purchase a weapon, would you have any preference as to the type? Say, a revolver, perhaps?”

“A revolver would be good to have.”

“Thank you, sir.” Tomlinson removed a bulky, unsealed envelope from his coat pocket and passed it carefully to Healy. They exchanged an understanding glance. “Here are your chances on the cruise,” the fixer said. “Good luck.”

“Thank you.”

“Good day,” Tomlinson said before turning and walking away.

Healy shut the door.

“Let’s get m—” Alex uttered before taking a bullet in his right leg, dropping his gun, and falling to the carpet.

❦

Tomlinson called Jeff at the hospital. “Your case is closed,” he told his client.

“Didn’t you cut that rather fine?” Healy complained.

“Not intentionally. Working with the timeline, I realized there was no way to prevent the shooting aside from visiting your home and getting you a weapon.”

“Another minute or two and…”

“My attempts to prevent the problem must’ve jostled it to a slightly earlier time. It should not have been happening when I arrived. It should not have begun for another eleven minutes.”

“Eleven minutes?”

“Exactly.”

“Tomlinson, I…”

“Your account is paid in full. Goodbye, Mr. Healy. Best of luck in your—future.”

❦

“The doctors say he’ll be fine,” Healy told his wife as he walked back into the waiting room.

“He could have killed us, Jeff,” Trish said. “Our own son could have killed us!”

“I know,” Healy replied sadly.

“What do you think he needs the money for?”

“Not a clue, but I’m going to find out. Alex is getting his act together starting now.”

“Where did you get the gun?” his bride asked him.

“Tomlinson gave it to me,” he answered her.

“The man at the door?”

“Right.”

“He just happened to show up with a gun right when we needed it?” she said incredulously.

“It’s a long story.”

❦

Later that night, Jeff noticed that Tomlinson’s app was still on his cell phone. He couldn’t resist.

“The number you have called,” he heard, “has been disconnected. No further information is available…The number you have called has been disconnected. No further information is available…The number you have called has been disconnected. No further information is…”

Mike Murphy has had over 150 audio plays produced in the U.S. and overseas. In 2016, he won two Moondance International Film Festival awards. Mike’s prose work has appeared in Dime Show Review, Gathering Storm Magazine, Zeroflash, Inwood Indiana Press, Zetetic: A Record of Unusual Inquiry, With Candlelight, Asymmetry Fiction, Lyonesse Fiction, Communicators League, Theme of Absence, Visions With Voices, Fabula Argentea, and The Flash Fiction Press. In 2015, his script The Candy Man was produced as a short film under the title Dark Chocolate. In 2013, Mike won the inaugural Marion Thauer Brown Audio Drama Scriptwriting Competition.

www.audioauthor.blogspot.com

by Pat Tompkins

As the sun circles the flat earth,
you of the one true religion,
smarter than the dumb animals,
believer in alchemy and phrenology,
remember the fate of dinosaurs.

Regard a pinch of sand, blade
of grass, bead of water.
Listen to the wind and waves.
Melt snow in your hand.
Taste salt of tears and heat.

Question those who are sure.
A plague on soothsayers.

Pat Tompkins is an editor in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her poems and short fiction have appeared in KYSO Flash, Grievous Angel, Thema, and other publications.

by Kyle Owens

CLOSEUP SCHOOL PHOTO:

First grader, OSCAR WILLIAMS, stares back at the camera, smiling in the full spirit of happiness. An American flag stands in the background. Soft brown eyes echo the tone of his skin. Black hair, cut close to the scalp, crowns his head.

PULL BACK:

INT. APARTMENT (KITCHEN)— DAY

WILMA WILLIAMS (forty, black female) sits at the kitchen table with the interviewer. She stares at the photo lovingly.

“This is his first grade picture. He wore his Detroit Lions shirt that day. He loved the Detroit Lions. It’s all he talked about back then. I have a larger photo of this one hanging up in the living room. That’s my favorite photo of him. Just look how happy he is here. He was always a happy child. Never had any problems with him until he got to be about eight years old.”

“What caused him to change?”

“His father was shot and killed.”

Her words go off like a grenade.

“That had to be a very traumatic thing for the whole family.”

“It was. Roger was a good man. He had a good job at the grocery store. It’s hard to find a good job in Troit so we knew we were blessed.”

“Do you know who killed him?”

“No.”

Wilma is quiet. The clock on the wall chimes for the top of the hour. The voices from people walking by the apartment filter in through the bars across the open window.

“We ran out of milk and he went to pick some up for supper that evening down here on the corner at the Rite Shop. And he got shot and died on the sidewalk on his way back. The guy that shot him took his wallet, watch, and even took the jug of milk he bought.”

The silence slides by like razor bites.

“Did anyone see who did it?”

“No. Nobody gets caught in Troit.”

“Why?

“We’re expendable.”

The interviewer is startled by her words said in such a calm and exact tone. She stares at the refrigerator covered in photos of her son held up by butterfly magnets.

“No one’s expendable.”

“That’s white man talk. We black folk have been expendable since they been making people.”

She gazes away and then her eyes softly reach up to his.

“How did losing his father change Oscar?”

“He was much more quiet. I could tell he was taking on demons.”

“What kind of demons?”

“Guns.”

Boys become men
across the nation.
Do what’s best
for the family’s reputation.
But Troit is different
where fathers are none
so little boys
are on the run.
No guidance, no protection,
no hand to grab.
So the gun
becomes the Dad.

CUT TO:

EXT. APARTMENT STEPS—DAY

A mist of rain falls against the sky. Drips of water fall into an old metal coffee can positioned beneath a leaking gutter. The interviewer is talking with FRO (black male, twenties) while they sit in white plastic chairs.

“Pick was a really good guy.”

“How did he get the name Pick?”

“He saw this cat murdered when he was nine. The guy that shot him ran off and Pick went over to where the dead guy was lying. Half his head was gone, man. Just blew it right off and blood, flesh, and bone spiderwebbed all over the wall. Pick saw the dead guy and the cat had a bag of cocaine at his side so he just picked it up and before morning came he done and sold it all and was a rich man. ”

Laughter spasms through the rain.

“Was that the first time he saw a man murdered?”

“No.”

No fathers in the home,
mentors out of sight.
So they walk the streets
and learn that might makes right.
Mothers lie awake
hearing sirens and screaming.
Welcome to the life
where boys are raised by women.

CUT TO:

EXT. HOUSE—NIGHT

JENNY BROCK (black female, nineteen years old) is sitting on the steps in front of her house with the interviewer. The street lights, those that still have their bulbs, begin to flicker to life.

“How did you meet Pick?”

“At the club.”

“Which club?”

“Deuces. I’m a dancer there.”

“Did he come up to you after the—what do you call it—show?”

Jenny laughs as she buries her face in her open right hand.

“Call it what you want. No, he didn’t come up to me. I went over to him.”

“Was it an instant attraction?”

“Yeah.”

“What attracted you to him the most?”

“He had money.”

“Money? That’s not very romantic—you know—to just to be attracted to his money—is it?”

“I don’t live in a very romantic place. I’m just trying to survive. In Troit you don’t pick men you love. You pick men you need.”

Deceased, expired,

departed, gone.

Slain, slaughtered,

stack of bones.

All our bloods

piled into a hole.

Tomorrow they’ll be endless ashes

these people we used to know.

CUT TO:

EXT. PARKING LOT—NIGHT

SKIDS (twenties, black male) is sitting on the tailgate of a Chevy LUV pickup truck eating spicy potato chips from a bag. The interviewer is sitting beside him drinking a root beer from a can.

“How did you meet Pick?”

“We went to school together. We was tight.”

“Was it your idea to start a rap group?”

“No, it was his—well, I guess it was both of ours, but he had thought it out more. Anybody that listens to hip-hop always starts thinking about putting a group together or trying to lay some tracks down. That’s just the nature of it.”

“Why do you think rap music has such an impact around here?”

“To get out of Troit. Music could be the way. Ain’t but two ways out of here in most of our eyes. That’s in music or in a body bag.”

Skids smiles and his large white teeth brighten the dark.

“What were you going to call the group?”

“Death Riders.”

“Death Riders? Why that?”

“Look around you. Spend a few nights in Troit and let’s see what name you come up with.”

Laughter spills forward from both men.

“Was Pick a good rapper?”

“Oh yeah. He could cut’cha with his rhymes. But Pick wanted to go to the next level in rap. Pick really thought that rap had stopped evolving. We was going to do it different. We weren’t going to sample anything. We was going to write our own hooks as well as the raps. We played our own instruments. He thought rap needed to get out of the sampling stuff and create its everything. Show the world we got talent that can create from the nothings of our lives into the something of yours. One thing that upset him more than anything was when they started sampling TV theme songs. That just made him insane. He thought that showed no creativity at all and we were going to change that. Then he got shot.”

Hope seems to rubble about his eyes.

“Did you see it happen?”

“No one sees it happen. It just happens.”

“Who shot him?”

“Probably one of the pimps he was robbing.”

“He robbed pimps?”

“Oh yeah. That’s the way to get good money. He wasn’t into cocaine or drugs himself, well—beer he liked—you know, Colt .45. He guzzled the stuff. But he’d rob the pimps for the money to get for the group or if his mother needed money for rent or groceries. He’d do anything for his mother. His goal was to get the group going and then when we got successful he’d move his mother to Beverly Hills.”

“Why Beverly Hills?”

“It just sounded safer to him. He’d get her a big house in a gated community and he wouldn’t have to worry about her anymore.”

“Was the group having any success?”

“Oh, yeah. We cut one song up in his girlfriend’s apartment and put it out here locally. Even got a radio station to play it some. It was hittin’ too. People liked it. Then he just got shot. Ended everything. When you’re robbing drug dealers you aren’t playing with fire. You’re in the fire thinking you can get back out. But he didn’t get back out that night.”

Time ruins
in silent moments.
Causing all to be gone
before the eye can notice.
Life becomes a broken garden
scattered gone by nature’s riots.
And all that’s reaped
are seeds of silence.

CUT TO:

EXT. SIDEWALK—DAY

MALLARD RAYMOND (black male, forties) walks down the street with the interviewer with his pit bull, Mr. Pops, on a leash.

“You were Oscar’s uncle?”

“Yeah. I’m his mother’s brother. He was a great kid too. I really thought he was going to get big with his music. I work down at the radio station…”

“You a DJ?”

“No. I’m the janitor. But I’m in good with the night crew and I brought his music up to them on a cassette tape one night and told ’em that I have the next big thing outta Troit right here. They listened to it and they just loved it. Played it on the air that night. Everything was looking bright. I was going to be their manager. At least that’s what I was angling for. I thought since I got their music on the air then that would put me in good standing with ’em, you know. I got down an old road atlas and began circling places they could play at and thought about getting some shirts made and stuff like that. I was into it big time.”

Mallard laughs which highlights his missing front tooth and then his expression changes to a clot of regrets.

“But it just didn’t work out. That’s what a body gets for dreaming in Troit.”

They walk by an abandoned building with no windows or roof, with trees growing up out of its crumbling concrete floor and gang signs painted on its clay brick facade.

“There’s no hope around here. None at all. You just do what you can do to get by. You don’t live in Troit—you survive Troit. All of us here is here because we can’t get out. If we could get out we’d get out. We’re at the bottom of the world here. Move over Antarctica, Troit is taking your place.”

Mallard laughs as he stops to let Mr. Pops relieve himself against a metal post missing its sign.

“There has to be some hope here, doesn’t there? I mean, can’t you get government assistance or something to…”

“Government assistance? Man, how white are you? I’ll tell you what government assistance got us. It got us lead in our water. That’s what government assistance getcha’ in Troit. They took the wet out of our water and replaced it with lead. That’s all you gotta know about this place. We’re the bottom. We’re not forgotten—we’re worse than that. We’re ignored.”

Can’t drink the water.
Can’t walk the streets.
Any glimmer of hope
despair quickly defeats.
It’s just one million lives
without a point.
Welcome to the city
the dead call Troit.

Kyle Owens lives in the Appalachian Mountains. His work has appeared in Eastern Iowa Review, OdyssaMagazine, The Breakroom Stories, and The Arcanist, among others.

by Mary Cresswell

Let’s go now while the going’s good:
Little Red Riding Hood ran to the wood
ran to visit her granny’s house
ran and tripped into the grey wolf’s mouth
like everyone reckoned she probably would.

She never got wet without making a flood,
whatever she did was crass and lewd,
the boys she brought back were smelly and rude…
…Oh, let go now!

She was gone for a bit but she’s back in the hood
true to her family, true to her blood.
The old goats dribbled, the old cows mooed,
the fastidious sneered as they once pooh-poohed
but the party’s begun like we knew it would:
…Let’s go now!

Mary Cresswell is a science editor turned poet. She is from Los Angeles and has lived on New Zealand’s Kapiti Coast for many years. Canterbury University Press recently published her collection of ghazals and glosas, Fish Stories. Her poems are widely published in New Zealand, the US, Australia, Canada, and the UK.

www.bookcouncil.org.nz/Writers/Profiles/Cresswell,%20Mary

by M. A. Akins

It started with the crow.

I reserved my Saturday mornings for long walks with Rufus and Max, my dogs, my boys. I always referred to them as The Boys, which sometimes confused people when meeting me for the first time. They got used to it. Fortunately, I had met a couple of like-minded spirits, Anke  and Robi, in August after my transfer to Stuttgart, Germany, and we enjoyed each other’s company on most mornings while their dog, Daisy, and my two frolicked.

After our walk in the fields one Saturday in October, Anke invited me to join them for brunch. She said the warm day demanded some leisurely balcony time, so she dropped us off at the apartment, and I told her I would be there after feeding The Boys and showering, about an hour or so.

I opted to wind my way through the small back streets of the village to avoid the bustle of the last shopping day of the week. The blackbirds and sparrows sang and rustled around in the brush near a small lake as I passed by. Regardless of whether other people stood nearby or not, I greeted the birds with a good morning and wished them a nice day. I always did this. I knew they didn’t understand, but on more than one occasion, I felt as if one of the blackbirds was following me, landing on a fence or a sign or a bush a few feet ahead of me. I could almost reach out and touch it when it would flutter off.

Robi and the smell of bread greeted me at the door when I arrived. On the balcony, jams, cold cuts, cheeses, butter, and breads filled their small table. After I sat down, Anke poured coffee. I sliced a baguette in half lengthwise.

“There is a rumor the pasture and surrounding trees in our forest up the street are going to be cleared for more housing,” Anke said while spreading butter on her brötchen. “They will have to rip out a third of the trees at least. The mud will run down the paths and destroy most of the trails for who knows how long.”

“I love walking there in the evenings,” I said. “Mornings in the park are great, but The Boys and I will get bored if we have to do that twice a day.”

“It’s only a rumor,” Robi said. “For now.”

“Have you talked to the Forstmeister?” I asked.

“He would never tell us anything.” Anke sipped her coffee.

“I don’t suppose there’s a way to stop it.” I said, as I rolled up a slice of meat and cheese together, then bit off a chunk.

“We could protest, but housing is a priority,” Robi said.

“Let’s hope it’s a rumor then,” I said.

We discussed other locations to walk, the pros and cons of each, but I couldn’t help but feel cheated, robbed of a location near enough to my apartment where I didn’t need to drive, burdened by the heavy traffic the Stuttgart area had become famous for.

A part of me wanted to stir into action, but as had happened so often in my life, I knew I would let the moment slip by and return to a more passive self. I would once again become the person who had allowed my wife to walk out of my life without a fight, had allowed a well-deserved promotion to pass over me without contesting its validity, had allowed my neighbor to destroy part of my lawn without demanding compensation. Within moments, I had rationalized and decided this was not my fight.

After finishing the bread, we packed the leftovers away in the kitchen and returned to the balcony. I crossed my legs and turned my face to the sun. Crows squawked across the street, and battled over something or other on the sidewalk.

“Would you look at that?” Robi said, after he returned with a couple of beers.

I turned to see a crow with its head wedged between two pickets while two others bounced around on the sidewalk below him.

Without putting my shoes on, I rushed out the door and across the street. The crow beat its wings and cried out. The other birds scattered as I approached.

“Calm down, little one,” I said as I approached. The crow’s head rested on the upper rail, and I feared it might break its neck if it kept thrashing about. I placed my left hand under the bird’s body and lifted enough to relieve the stress on his neck. The crow’s wild eyes looked into mine.

“I forgot gloves mister, so please don’t bite me.”

With my other hand, I took the crow’s head. It relaxed and seemed to settle its body’s weight into my hand. The wings stopped flapping. The eyes closed. I feared it might have died of fright, but then the eyes opened again. I lifted body and head together till it was no longer trapped. I only then noticed how majestic, how large it was. It rolled from my palm and opened its wings, catching the wind and flying into the nearby tree. We watched each other for a moment, and then feeling I had saved a life, I took a deep breath and turned to cross the street. The wind blew before I stepped from the curb, and I thought I heard the words Thank You, but when I looked again to the crow, it had already taken to the skies.

“You have a friend for life, you know,” Anke said after we settled back into our seats on the balcony. “They have a long memory.”

“Besides, crows are good luck,” Robi added.

“Then I better buy a lottery ticket.” I raised my glass and we toasted luck.

And then there was the bunny.

One morning, one very early morning, The Boys and I walked in the park without Anke, who had decided to take a day off and sleep in. It was one of those early November days where it felt like there should have been frost, but there wasn’t. The grass had recently been mowed, so the deer stayed hidden away in the trees. Darkness blanketed everything.

After we left the street, away from any possibility of running into a car or jogger or biker, I turned first Rufus, then Max, loose from their leashes. They bolted down the path. I didn’t worry about them straying too far, and they enjoyed the freedom to explore the nearby stream and wander a few yards into the open grass area.

They wore illuminated collars, Max in red and Rufus in blue. I could see the bright collars right halfway across the park. A blue glow approached from ahead, so I thought Rufus was returning for a treat, but then a shadow fell in behind it. I pulled my flashlight from my coat just as a greeting reached me.

“I don’t run into too many people at this hour,” I said.

“I am running a bit late, I’m afraid,” said a man. “I hope I didn’t startle you.”

“Late? It’s only 5:30 a.m..”

“Yes. And I must be going. Sorry to be so rude. Maybe another time.”

And with that, the man vanished into the darkness. His passing happened so quickly, I didn’t have time to see what kind of dog partnered him, something I am usually quite keen to know. To be honest, I didn’t even get a good look at the shadow. I turned once again to my own task to see the red and blue of The Boys bouncing in the middle of the park.

As we approached the far side, a place on the path where the stream burbles under a small bridge and The Boys on warm days quench their thirst, a place you can choose to venture up into the forest or go around the corner to follow a line of houses, I saw another shadow dart up into the trees. Or had I? The Boys would certainly have taken notice, but then they had not alerted me to the presence of the stranger and his dog. I shook my head and laughed as Rufus drank from the cold water near the bridge.

I then remembered a meeting I needed to prepare for and hurried The Boys along. Max stopped near a fence and busied himself more so than I had ever seen him previously. He ran back and forth from a meeting of two fences, one chain link, the other wooden, painted red. I didn’t have time to investigate his finding, a mouse I reasoned, and urged him onward. Rufus flew ahead, but Max did not want to leave. Despite my demands, he remained. I put him back on his leash and dragged him along until we were far enough from his obsession to free him once again.

My decision not to consider Max’s finding troubled me throughout the day, and while I had convinced myself there could not have been anything to see, I concluded we should take our evening walk in the park again to satisfy both his and my curiosity.

That evening The Boys and I returned to the park. The sun settled just below the hill casting a slight orange glow at the top as if the trees had begun to burn. Few people continued to mill about as the air chilled and the sky darkened. The lampposts, set every fifty or so meters apart next to the path, flickered on against the dimming twilight.

Max ran ahead and stopped at the spot once more. His head turned to make sure I followed him, then back again to the object of his intense interest.

Upon arriving I turned on my flashlight and scanned the area in front of the fence. I could see nothing.

I stepped back and panned the beam up and down the path, then into the park where Rufus ran in the direction of the stream. I searched the walkway again not wanting to be thought a burglar or peeping Tom should a passerby happen to see us nosing around outside someone’s house.

Max grew more excited and stuck his nose against the metal post of the fence, clawing the dirt underneath. I moved him aside and shined the light where he had just scraped away some earth. On the other side of the fence, the beam struck white and gray fur. At first I thought the poor animal was headless, only seeing a body, but then it moved.

I ran to a low gate and leapt over it. When I reached the corner, I dropped to my hands and knees and returned to the corner area of the fence. Once again, I found a white and gray fur body, but this time with a head and long floppy ears attached, stuck under the chain link. I tried to free it, but feared I would kill it or cause it great injury in the attempt to pull it from under the metal.

I rang the doorbell of one of the houses sharing the yard. A young woman I recognized from my walks answered the door, and while I might have otherwise made some small talk, I told her about the trapped bunny. She pointed to her neighbor’s door. I thanked her and quickly rang his doorbell.

A tall, stooped man with gray hair came to the door. He had a gentle look in his eyes, and given my appearance, dirt-covered knees and black knit cap, showed no apprehension. In broken German, I asked him if he had a bunny.

“I am afraid I lost her two days ago,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

“I found it, but we need to hurry. I need wire cutters. Do you have any?”

He didn’t understand, so I rang his neighbor’s door again. She spoke English better than I spoke German; I asked her to translate for me.

She told him about the bunny and repeated my question.

He quickly ran back into the house, returning a moment later with cutters.

We jogged back over to the bunny. I put my free hand on her body to calm her and keep her from jerking at a bad time, or at least, I hoped it would. I tried to cut the fence near her head, but feared hurting her with the cutters. I worked my fingers up to the neck and slid the blade along my finger also hoping I would still have the finger after squeezing the blades together. A welcome snap rang in my ear. After two more snips, I pulled the bunny from her self-imposed snare and handed her to the old man.

He held her firmly under her chin, and kissed the top of her head, caressing and crying. He tried to thank me, but could not say the words, not in any language. I understood. I imagined in that brief moment how I would feel if either of The Boys went missing and then turned up again.

The Boys!

I handed the cutters to the young woman and turned to leave, when the wind gusted from nowhere. I heard Thank You in that wind and whipped my head toward the bunny, now draped over the man’s shoulder on his way back home. The bunny looked at me and blinked.

And along came a deer.

Winter came early to Stuttgart that year. A blanket of cold, white powder greeted me and The Boys when we stepped outside for the morning walk. Rufus dipped his nose in it. Max ran in circles. They love snow.

“Typically, the snows fall in January,” Anke said when we met on the way to the park. “We might get a few flakes in December, but certainly not this much, and it’s still coming down. It really is quite amazing.”

“It’s beautiful,” I said. I had grown up with snow in the winter, but since moving to a warmer climate years before, had not seen it in some time.

We walked through the streets without talking and enjoyed the muffled silence.

I freed The Boys from their leashes at the park entrance, after Anke turned Daisy loose. The dogs ran ahead. Daisy threw herself to the ground and rolled around as if making a snow angel. Max plowed snow with his nose.

The snow lessened the darkness normally oppressing the wide open grassy park. I could see farther than when a full moon glows brightly in the early morning sky. The colored light from the dogs’ collars reflected on the snow as they roamed. The park resembled a live action snow globe in grand scale.

“I can’t remember seeing this place looking so lovely,” Anke said.

“It truly is,” I said. I had seen wondrous snowscapes in both pictures and as a child growing up in Indiana, but something made this setting even grander, both in its simplicity and beauty.

As we walked, the conversation drifted to building snowmen, making angel forms on the ground, and hoping for a white Christmas, something Anke assured me had never happened in her lifetime. I told her it was not all that common where I had grown up.

When we arrived at the fork in the path, the dogs turned their attention in the direction of the forest. They stared as the walkway vanished into a curtain of falling snow swirling in a tunnel of barren trees. I wondered what had arrested their attention from their need to explore and joined them in their waiting.

A gust of wind blew the snow sideways and halved the distance we could see. I looked down to the dogs now sitting on their haunches, then felt a gentle tap on my side. I faced Anke who motioned forward with her chin. From the wall of white stepped a buck. His antlers told me he couldn’t have been more than three, old enough to know better than to present himself to three dogs, two big enough to run him down. But the dogs sat there. I had seen Max run after a deer much farther away, yet with this one a mere fifty feet away, he did nothing, not even bark. The wind blew hard, harder than at any other time that morning, mixing the snow on the ground with that coming from above. The white engulfed everything. We could see only each other. When the wind settled, the buck had disappeared. We walked to where he had stood, but could not find him or even a footprint.

“I would never have expected to see something like that,” Anke said as we stood there with the dogs sniffing around. “And he was so big. I have never, ever seen a deer like that here.”

“No, me either. Do you think the snow confused him?”

“Who knows,” she replied. “Deer are not smart animals. Come on, I have to get ready for work.”

I looked at my watch and realized we were running well behind our usual schedule. The dogs had already turned back to the main path to resume their playfulness and exploring in the snow.

The snow tapered to flurries by the time we reached the street again, and ended completely before we parted ways. Before I said goodbye, I asked if we could go together into the forest for the evening walk; maybe the buck would show himself again. Anke told me she would return too late to go with me and that Robi would be taking Daisy with him to work.

“Besides,” Anke said, as she departed. “The forest is too dark after work. It’s dangerous.”

Throughout the day, my thoughts of the buck distracted me from my work. I wanted nothing more than to see its beauty standing before me once again. I hoped to finish early and get home before the dark set in. This did not happen. In fact, I returned home much later than planned.

After I changed into my hiking clothes, I gathered The Boys and rushed them outside, barely remembering their leashes and a flashlight.

No more snow had fallen since the morning and the walkway in the park was well worn from the many people taking advantage of the fresh and powdery snow. Fresh tracks from cross country skis had cut grooves just off to the side of the path, while toboggans had worn the side of the hill down to the grass. But the park lay still now.

The half-moon, hidden behind clouds that morning, illuminated the park so completely, I didn’t need to turn on my flashlight. The Boys ran and chased each other through the snow and, as if they could read my mind, turned up the path into the forest.

Upon reaching the cobblestone road, a road built for tanks and military vehicles to run between two bases, a road now used by hikers, bikers, and people walking their dogs, we turned to journey further into the forest. Powdery snow glazed the cobblestones, and in the moonlight, they looked as if no person, dog, or bike had yet disturbed them. I considered what I had seen just a few yards earlier and doubted what I saw. The moon and the trees played tricks with my vision. I turned on my flashlight and pointed it to the ground, sweeping the beam this way and that. The snow lay unbroken.

I reached in my pocket to pull out my smart phone to take a picture, when I discovered I had forgotten it in my haste to get here. After another minute, I switched the light off, and we moved forward.

In one hundred yards, we reached an intersection, where a dirt and stone path crossed the road. If we turned left, the path would lead us up a hill, deeper into the forest, while turning right would take us in a circle back to the park. I debated the wisdom of proceeding. If Max or Rufus became injured, or worse still, I did, hours would pass before anyone would find us. I nearly turned around when I heard a grunting sound unlike anything I had ever heard. I looked up the path to see the buck from earlier that morning. When had he come? I had heard nothing. The Boys did nothing.

The buck stared at me. Maybe he was surprised to see us here in this place at this hour. He stepped forward, nodded his head, and then wheeled around to face up the hill. After five steps, he stopped and looked back to me. Elated as I was at the opportunity to once again see such a magnificent animal, I had not moved an inch in any direction. I didn’t even know what direction I should go at that moment. The buck signaled me to follow and then proceeded once again. I followed.

Halfway up the hill, perhaps no more than five or six hundred yards, the buck turned right, down a small path no wider than one person. The path appeared to exist due to animal traffic, and I couldn’t be sure it would even be visible without the snow exposing it. Surely the plants would hide it throughout most of the year.

Before my nervousness overtook my courage to continue forward, the trees thinned and the path opened wider and wider until we came upon a clearing. The moon shone brightly on the snow in the open area, casting a blue light on every bush, every hedge, every tree, and every animal. Badgers, fox, deer, and almost every other creature that lived in that forest stood there. A swoosh by my head made me spin around. By the time I returned my gaze to the buck, a crow had landed on his right antler. It stretched its wings, then folded itself back up. It cawed at me.

“Well, hello again,” I said. “If you are the crow I saved, that is.” The bird darted its head up and down as if to tell me it was.

The Boys sat, one on each side of me.

I heard a man’s voice say hello from behind, and when I turned to see who had called out to me, I saw the man who passed me a month ago. His dog ran past me to land beside the buck, which bent down and sniffed him.

“Welcome to night in the forest,” he said. “I did not expect to see anyone else here. Not many people are brave enough to come here in the darkness, even though, I am sure you have noticed, it is not all that dark. You are American, are you not?”

I told him I was. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on where I knew him from other than that brief encounter.

“I did not mean to be rude when we passed—when was that? November?—but it was a long night and I needed to get to work.”

“I understand,” I said. “I was a bit behind that morning as well. I was only surprised at how quickly you came out of nowhere.”

“I have learned to be quite light on my feet,” he said, once he reached the buck and patted him on the side of the neck, as if he were patting a horse. It was then I realized the buck stood at nearly the size of a small horse, a Haflinger perhaps, certainly greater than any I had seen thus far here. The crow cawed.

“I hear you are the one who saved my friend here,” the man said. He pointed to the crow, which once again stretched its wings. “He is very grateful.”

“I guess. I can’t tell one crow from another, to be honest. If it is, then it was my pleasure. No creature should suffer and die the way he was going to.”

“I also heard you saved a bunny down in the park,” he said. “Is this true?”

“Yes, that would be me,” I said.

“And what are you doing here? In Stuttgart, not here in the forest.”

“I’m sorry. Who are you?”

“I am being rude once again. Sorry. My name is Volker Haidele.” He reached out his hand to me, and I shook it while giving him my name.

“I’ve heard that name,” I said. “You’re on the city council, or something like that. That’s where I recognize you from. I saw your poster in a few places during the election.”

“Now that you know what I do…”

“Ah yes. My turn to apologize for being rude,” I said. “I work at the Stuttgart University as an exchange professor teaching American literature and English. I’ll be here a couple of years. I have to tell you: I love the culture.”

“And yet it is not perfect,” Volker said. “Have you heard they plan to destroy the forest here?”

“This can’t be the same forest,” I said. “I heard it will be the upper part of the small wooded area nearer the top of the hill. We can no longer be anywhere near that. This can’t even be the same forest. I’ve been walking there almost daily, since I moved here, and have never seen this place nor walked over the small path that led us here. We walked a very long distance to get to this clearing; at least it felt like we did.”

“What seems small in the day can be very big at night.”

I didn’t know what to think of that, so I said nothing.

“In a month’s time, the destruction begins. I have stated my opposition to this, commissioned studies, and even proposed alternatives. All of this falls on deaf ears. I’m in the minority party, and have even fewer fans in the public. These creatures consider you a savior of sorts. Do you think you can help me save the forest?”

“Rescuing a couple of animals in distress does not make me a savior. I was at the right place at the right time. I’m sure anyone else would have done the same. Besides, I’m not even German. What could I possibly do?”

“I can only tell you what I am doing and what I will continue to do,” Volker said as he raised his hand to the crow, who climbed down from the antlers to perch on the back of his hand.

Volker strode over to me and raised the crow. I looked first to Volker, then to the bird. She stared at me, and without warning hopped to my shoulder. I was startled, but did not jump. I felt her and thought I could hear her heartbeat. She stretched out her wings, the left one lengthening behind my head. Rufus looked up to the crow, but remained in place.

The buck walked over to us and sniffed Max, then me, then Rufus. He stepped away afterwards, and his dark eyes met my eyes. I wanted to tell all of them how sorry I was I could do nothing, how weak I felt as a human, but the words did not come to me.

“I’m not sure I can help you or even what I can do, but let me think about it,” I said.

“I guess that’s all anyone can ask from you.”

A breeze tossed the snow about, and the crow leaped from my shoulder and alighted once again on the buck’s antlers. Unseen birds flapped their wings and took to the sky, bringing down curtains of snow, while the other woodland animals turned away to leave the great clearing. In a few minutes, only Volker, the buck, the crow, the dogs, and I remained.

“Come,” Volker said. “Let us return to our homes. I need some coffee before the day begins.”

I didn’t understand what he meant by that, but the buck suddenly walked around us and proceeded back down the small path. We followed in silence until we reached the cobblestone street, where we made our farewells. As the buck wandered into the trees, the crow leaped into the air and vanished into the high canopy.

As we walked back to the city, Volker and I talked about the politics of the region while the dogs returned to their frolicking, kicking up clouds of snow at every turn. Once we reached the point to part ways, he gave me a business card and told me to call him for a beer. I agreed.

“I apologize for once again having to rush off,” he said, as he jetted down the street.

I hurried the rest of the way home eager to put on some hot water for tea. After I put on my pajamas, I looked at the clock on the stove as I turned on the burner and was shocked to see that it was morning. It was not time for tea. It was time for coffee as Volker had said. We had been out all night, and I had no time to go to bed.

As I showered, I reached my decision to come to the aid of the forest. I didn’t yet know what I could do, how I would go about doing whatever I decided to do, or even where to begin. I only knew something had to be done. I could not allow others to fight this fight alone. I too needed to be a part of it.

M. A. Akins is an emerging writer of speculative fiction. He is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Fiction at Lesley University and lives in Indiana, where he spends his non-writing time wrangling nine cats.

by Rosemary Gemmell

The sea is still today;
no white horses
dancing the waves
foretelling black storms.

Only the empty stares
from a painted carousel
reminding me
life is circular.
We all return
to the quiet earth—
except for you.

You sing and play
in the fathomless ocean
where kelpies breathe life
into drowned lungs.

I watch the turning seasons
beside the silent horses
on their endless ride
through time and space.
Hoping the calm water
will cleanse dark thoughts
to let me glimpse you dancing.

Rosemary Gemmell is a historical and contemporary novelist from Scotland. Her short stories, articles and occasional poems have been published in UK magazines, in the US, and online; several stories have won awards. Rosemary has a Post-Graduate Masters in literature and history and is a member of the Society of Authors, the Romantic Novelists’ Association, and the Scottish Association of Writers.

www.rosemarygemmell.com