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# Souvenirs From Other Worlds

#### A Collection of Short Fiction by Annie Bellet

Copyright 2011, Annie Bellet

All rights reserved. Published by Doomed Muse Press.

These stories are a work of fiction. All characters, places, and incidents described in this publication are used fictitiously, or are entirely fictional.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except by an authorized retailer, or with written permission of the publisher. Inquiries may be addressed via email to doomedmuse.press@gmail.com.

Cover designed by Greg Jensen with image from **©** Mafoto **|** **Dreamstime.com**

Electronic edition, 2012

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Thank you to the heroes who made this book and my Clarion experience possible:

Mark and Anges Jensen

Greg Jensen

Neal and Laurie Bellet

Dennis Y. Ginoza

## Table of Contents

Story One: On Higher Ground

Story Two: Dusk and Shiver

Story Three: All is Violent, All is Bright

Story Four: A Hunter's Memory of Winter

Story Five: Delivering Yaehala

Story Six: Counting Down the Stars

Story Seven: Innocence, Rearranged

Submission Story: Pele's Bee-keeper

Submission Story: The Scent of Sunlight

## What this book is and how it came to be:

## An Introduction

When I arrived home from the Clarion Writers Workshop, the question everyone kept asking was "how was Clarion?" and occasionally they also ask "was it worth it?"

I didn't know how to answer then. It was too hard to sum up six weeks of experience, the rollercoaster of stress and elation, the bursts of creativity and production followed by the grind of critique.

Now, as I sit here to write this introduction, I still don't have much of an answer. For those who don't know, this is what Clarion is.

It is a six week long workshop for writers of Science Fiction and Fantasy, taught each year by different professionals. My year, 2011, had Nina Kiriki Hoffman for week one, John Scalzi for week two, Elizabeth Bear for week three, David Anthony Durham for week four, and then the fifth and sixth "anchor" weeks were taught by the joint team of John Kessel and Kij Johnson. Each of us eighteen participants, who were chosen out of a large pool of applicants, had to write a story a week as well as critique everyone else's work Monday through Friday. This meant that beyond writing a story each week, we had anywhere from eight thousand to twenty thousand or more words to read each night and to be ready to comment on the next day.

It's a lot of work. Writing a story a week is tough for many people. Writing a story a week while living away from home, being surrounded by constant social opportunities, and having hours of reading and critiquing to do each night plus hours of class each morning? More difficult than one might think.

I learned a lot. I know this, even if I have trouble putting exactly what I've learned into words. It's difficult to describe the effect of living with seventeen other writers, of having their thoughts and opinions shared with you all the time. There were good days and bad days. Days when I was so sick I wanted to crawl into a bottle of cold medicine and never come out. Days when I wasn't sure it was worth it at all.

Then there were those "aha!" moments. Times when a fellow Clarionaut would say something that struck a chord, or times when our instructor for the week would point out a tip or a trick that made complete sense to me. Those moments of "why didn't I see that before?" and "that is exactly how to do that thing I wanted to try with that story."

But it is tough to really sum those up for someone else, someone outside the experience. So often I find myself mumbling something like "it was Clarion" or "you kinda had to be there" and leaving it at that.

So why this book of stories? Because I didn't get there on my own. My husband lost his job right after I was accepted and for a moment Clarion looked like an impossible dream. But thanks to friends, family, and the people who donated to my Kickstarter project (which is how this book came to be), I was able to follow my dream and attend. This book is for everyone who helped me get there, who made the experience possible, who has assisted me on the road to becoming the best damn writer I can be. Clarion was a brick helping pave that road, I can say that with certainty. For better or worse, the workshop and the things I learned there changed me as a writer, even though I can't sum them up neatly in a few paragraphs.

This book contains the stories I wrote and turned in while at Clarion. Along with those stories are some of my thoughts on writing them and a few quotes from my fellow students and teachers where relevant. As a bonus, I've included the two stories that I used in my application, the stories that got me into Clarion in the first place.

I hope the stories will speak for themselves and open a small window into the Clarion experience, or at least my experience while attending. And those stories are all dedicated to my Clarionauts, my narwolves, because you guys kept me sane, kept me writing, and made those six weeks feel not so far away and not so different from home.

Thank you.

Annie Bellet

(aroooo)

* * * * *

##  On Higher Ground

### Story Notes

_I wrote this story the first week, the bulk of it on a Tuesday night. It was originally over 11,000 words long, but I cut some parts out due to not wanting to turn in a giant novel book. I got it down to 8400 words and then added a few in revision after class when people wanted some things clarified._

_The idea for this story came to me in January of 2011 while I was sick and watching a bunch of Warren Miller skiing documentaries. I sat on the idea of a giant ski race on another planet until Clarion, meaning to write it as my third quarter Writers of the Future contest entry. The story received an Honorable Mention._

_This story got me crowned "goddess of pacing" at Clarion._

* * *

One moment there was snow beneath Kayi's skis, the next just sky. Her wingsuit snapped in the sudden wind as she dropped off the south face of Annapurna. Her eyes watered despite her mask and the pressure shift of falling thousands of feet in seconds popped her ears with a painful squeak.

Kayi angled her body, tucking her poles in along the line of fabric between her arm and torso and angling her skis up, fighting the air that wanted to push them down and twist her legs up. The land beneath her was black, rust, and white; snow and stone blurring into one as she gained speed. Proximity flying, going so close to the steep slope that she could almost touch the snow, was dangerous. Doing it with ski equipment on was even crazier.

She was the only one she'd ever known who tried. This wasn't a filming run, the sky was too grey today for that and the wind too strong for the hoversleds to come up this far. Kayi slid sideways along the cliff face and looked down and ahead. Far below the rocky slope turned to pure white.

Her landing zone. She angled her body up and started to rein in her speed. Seconds fled and she hit the point where her chute wouldn't do any good. No choices now beyond land or crash and die.

Adrenaline sang in her blood and Kayi grinned behind her mask. Screw those assholes who didn't think she was good enough to compete in their stupid race. She could out-ski the disappointment of being an alternate. The disappointment of never being the first pick. Or the twentieth.

Out-ski? Damnit, she could _fly_.

Still falling at just over sixty miles an hour, Kayi's skis touched the snow where the slope leveled out to a fifty degree angle. For a moment she wavered and her poles clipped the thick powder, enveloping her in a thick, cold white cloud.

Then she was down, her wide skis catching the snow and slipping along as they should and only the expanse of the mountain before her. Kayi made wide, lazy turns the rest of the way down, sending up plumes of powder in glistening rainbows as the late afternoon sun finally peeked out of the steely sky.

Andy, her manager, was already waiting with Gem at the hoversled, pacing in the snow. He looked like a dark blot against the bright orange sled.

"Why did you turn your com off?" he said to her as she skied up and pulled off her hood and mask.

"Because I wanted to be alone?" Kayi blinked against the sudden cool air sweeping over her hot skin. She grinned at Gem as he leaned out and signed quickly to her, asking if she'd flown, as he always did after each run.

Tossing her poles and mask into the open bay of the sled, Kayi leaned in and caught Gem's hand, brushing her chapped lips against his bare fingers before sitting on the edge of the sled to undo her skis.

"Hell of a day to be alone." Andy had stopped glaring and started to smile, his teeth thick and white in his dark face. "Monica Alveros called. Kip Salander drowned while shooting a surfing video out in the Triangulum."

Kayi slid her skis into their case inside the hoversled and turned to face him. She had a momentary pang about Kip's death, but the guy had been a serious show-boater and a total jerk the two times their paths had crossed. In fact, last time she'd seen him had been at one of the qualifiers for the Great Race. When she'd barely missed qualifying, again, he'd sent her an empty bottle of champagne and a blank note.

Anyone who did extreme sports, especially on a galactic level, risked death. She was baffled as to why Kip's was so important that someone like Grinder Galaxy's main PR coordinator, Monica Alveros, would notify Kayi and her team personally. Andy's grin got wider as she stopped unhooking her wingsuit and straightened up.

"Kip qualified for the Asgard race," she said softly. Her mouth felt dry and she ran her tongue over chapped lips. "Does that mean. . .?"

"You're in, Kayi. You're going to get to run the most extreme ski race in human history."

* * *

She was still stiff from the cramped trans-galactic flight from Earth out to Asgard and her stomach was punishing her for every drop of the anti-viral and vaccine cocktail they had IV'd into her for the flight. She'd been poked, prodded, and signed about nine-million pieces of legal documents that all boiled down to Don't Die (which was one of Gem's cardinal rules anyway) and, if you do die, Don't Sue (like she had money for an inter-stellar qualified lawyer).

The lodge, tackily named Shangri-la, spread across a valley high in the foothills of the Olympiad Mountains like a giant red birthmark of lacquered steel and plexi-glass. Shuttles up to the cloud of ships orbiting Asgard came and went from the snow field to the east, ferrying those approved to view the Great Race from the hot, plush comfort of the lodge.

Those approved seemed to be all rich ski-TV junkies and overly made-up reporters, Kayi noticed as she stood in the shadows on her narrow balcony. The air here was thicker than she was used to at such altitudes, with an almost smoky aftertaste that clung to the back of her throat.

Her team, being the lowest seed, had been shoveled with little ceremony into one of the bulbous wings of the building, probably as far away from the celebrity contestants as Monica and her people could put them. With the other "hill fodder", as the more lurid zines dubbed those not expected to finish the Race.

She shivered in her Insulwool jumpsuit. Andy wanted her to get in front of the cameras, to try for a couple "interest" pieces. She shook her head thinking about it. _The Girl from Earth_ or, more likely, _The Greenlander, will she survive the descent?_ Like any of these outerworld-born pale-skins knew shit about Earth or could pick out Greenland on a map.

Kayi unclenched her hands. It was still night, the cycle here lasting nearly seventy hours. She needed to check gear, go over the maps and refresh the memorization she'd done on the space flight. She needed to sleep or at least drown out the heady mix of anticipation and adrenaline that always rushed through her right before a competition. Kayi took in a deep, frigid breath, sucking the snow-scented air deep into her lungs.

Screw it. She needed to ski.

She slipped back inside and grabbed her coat and gloves, shrugging into them before snagging the skis resting by the door, waiting for a wax and sharpening. Andy and Gem were camped in front of the screens in the adjoining room, testing her goggle and shoulder cameras. Technically filming by anyone but the approved Grinder Galaxy camera feeds and satellite crews was utterly prohibited but the support people of a Race contestant could have a non-recording monitoring camera in case the forfeit flare was deployed.

Kayi wouldn't deploy the damn flare. She'd die out there before quitting that way. She tugged on her ski boots and opened the door. This was why she had to get out, stupid thoughts like the ones chasing their tails around in her brain. Finish or die. Finish or die. Finish...

"Hey!" Andy called out to her, too late.

"I'll be in soon," she called to him and pulled the door closed with her elbow before he could say anything else. The back of her neck prickled the whole way down the hall to the slide car, half expecting him to come out after her.

The slide car was an empty sterile lozenge that vibrated its way up to the main wing. She wasn't sure where other exits were or she would have avoided the hot crush of reports and prep people that greeted her like a babbling gaggle of geese.

Kayi shoved past a group of women in brightly colored down jackets, keeping her head tucked alongside her skis and poles. She wasn't too worried about being recognized, but the last thing she wanted to deal with right now were the press leeches. There was the slim chance some might have her picture in their Tell-All tablets.

Sneezing at the heavy citrus perfume one of the women had apparently bathed in, Kayi made it to the doors and drafted two men carrying equipment bags out to the hoversleds. Once through the red and black lacquered steel outer doors, complete with faux-Asian patterns, she struck out toward the empty plateau away from the shuttle pad and the bustle. Fresh snow crunched beneath her boots and a sighing wind tugged at her braids. Kayi strapped into her skis and shoved out, heading into the darkness.

She didn't go far, heading just to where the valley started to slope upward and the lights of Shangri-la didn't quite block out the heavy veil of stars. The point nine gravity made her whole body seem a little lighter and lent a heady floating sensation as she slid through the powder.

Her eyes sought the North Star out of habit and she wrapped her arms around herself with a grim, rueful smile. No constellations here, no markers to guide her. The mountains loomed, over fifty-thousand feet of white and black, a void in the shimmering skies.

"I am Kayi Akki Akkikitok, called Kayii Tingiyok," she whispered into the wind, introducing herself to this strange world and whatever spirits might lurk beneath the deep white. "I am here and you will not kill me." She jammed her poles into the thick snow crust and raised her arms, her orange gloves catching the distant light of Shangri-la and flickering in the darkness.

Kayi stood in the snow until Gem came to get her. He skied across the snow and she barely had to look, recognizing his heavy, sliding gate. He wrapped her in warm arms and for a moment she closed her eyes and let his pine aftershave and clean leather smell envelop her, grounding her where she belonged, on a world too far away.

After a long moment she pulled away, tugging gently on his braided beard so he would know it was time to go. Nine standard hours until dawn. Until the Race began and all the hype, the press, the sponsors, and the bureaucrats wouldn't matter. Until it was just her and the mountains.

* * *

Kayi stood with four other contestants at starting area Gamma up on the summit of Zeus, staring out into the jagged expanse of the Olympiads and already running the race in her mind as she ignored the strobe of cameras from the press area. At about a sixty degree drop, the first pitch was steep but wide, avalanche groomed, and not particularly difficult. It was more a show descent before the real work began. Couldn't have everyone wiping out and looking like idiots right in front of the cameras.

Sucking on her oxygen tube, the thick plastic mouthpiece like an adult pacifier in her clenched teeth, Kayi turned slightly and studied the others in her group. Argyle Fontaine was a tall, wan-faced skier with a decent record. He gave her a little nod, though she couldn't make out his features behind his face mask. Gavin something-or-other stood near Argyle, a skier she'd studied videos of but had never met until the lift up.

Beyond them, in a deep red suit with a gold dragon climbing the back, was Arthur Kyoto. Another one of the "hill fodder" skiers like Kayi, his claim to greatness was coming out of nowhere and miraculously winning one of the main qualifiers. She'd caught a bit of his pre-race interview early while getting ready and found herself riveted to the images of him carrying his twin toddlers down the bunny slopes, laughing in the snow. Her own father had taught her to ski in the same way.

He nodded hello to her and she smiled at him, raising a hand in greeting.

The Race coordinators had tried to split up the top five seeds and the darling of this group stood out from the slopes in her signature pink plaid. Coraline Alvaros, the younger sister to the PR woman who'd coordinated Kayi's own journey and stay here. The younger Alvaros had done a metric load of cross-galactic web commercials and was the first woman to ski the Knives on Mirzam Prime. Surprisingly, she'd tossed Kayi a smile which Kayi would have thought was just for the cameras, but then Coraline had whispered "best of luck" in her ear.

On skiing skills alone, Kayi wanted to believe she could beat the people like Coraline. But she didn't have the funding to afford the top tech, the designer drugs, the blood doping, and all the other stuff that was borderline illegal but allowed for those with money. The low-tech Great Race really had quite a bit. Sure, no GPS, no communications, no little extras. Just poles, suit, one hour of oxygen, all the special sports goo needed to keep fueled for the hours of skiing, and skis.

For people like Coraline though, this meant high-tech skis that probably could whisk her down a mountain looking like she'd just come off a zine shoot, whip up a pot of tea, and then press her shirts. Before lunch.

Kayi forced herself away from useless thoughts. This was Asgard. The planet had never been skied. Once out on the slopes there would be something much more scary than going up against top technology and training. With nearly a hundred miles of terrain and a descent of ten vertical miles, the mountain was what Kayi intended to race against. Winning was not dying in a crevasse, or beneath thousands of pounds of crushing, moving snow, or breaking a limb out where a hovercraft couldn't reach and starving slowly over time. Winning was survival. The placement was secondary.

Besides, she had the advantage of genetics and real experience. There was no room in the Russo-Alaskan winters she'd grown up in for weakness or indecision. No need for blood doping either, her Inuit and Norse blood giving her extra capillaries in her extremities and a higher tolerance for altitude. Also that insulating but not camera-friendly layer of pudge which Andy kept begging her to surgically remove so she could be more marketable. Gem liked her thick and she didn't see the point of fighting her blood (and stomach) about it, especially when she was the one who had to stand out on freezing mountains waiting on race officials.

The warning horn blew and jerked Kayi out of her thoughts. She turned and duck-toed up toward the line, skiing closer to the leeches. The reporters even looked like invertebrates, all of them wrapped from hair to feet with masks in place reflecting the wan early morning sun and neon-green tents.

"Greenlander! Over here!" One reporter called out, her voice tinny through the microphone piece in her face mask.

Kayi almost shoved forward and ignored the leech, but she could almost hear Andy grinding his teeth back at the lodge as he watched it all on her head-cam. Small concessions. Right. She turned and spit out her pacifier oxygen tube, giving a small smile.

The reporter didn't seem to want a picture but instead opened a file on her Tell-All and then held up the screen so that it projected onto the smooth snow under the dividing ropes between the press line and the starting area. Gem's face suddenly appeared, his black eyes glinting with secret mirth and his braided beard twitching as he fought down a smile. Kayi's heart gave a little jerk and she almost started signing to him before she realized it was a recording.

Gem seemed to be waiting, then he nodded, acknowledging some off-camera signal before his long gold-brown fingers spelled out a single word.

_Asavarma_.

Her mask threatened to fog for a moment as she blinked hard against the well of emotions stinging her eyes. Though she imagined this whole golden press-release slash interest story moment had been engineered by Andy, it was just like Gem to turn it into a private, special thing, taking the wide, scary world and pulling her back down to the ground.

"What did he say? What does that mean? Do you have a message to send back to him? How did he lose his hearing?" The reporter's breath hung in the air like fog before falling away in glittering mist.

"Just wishing me luck. Thank you. I have to go." Kayi slid up to the starting box, letting her skies poke out over the dramatically carved ledge and stared into the sky.

_Asavarma_. _You love me_. It was their silly joke, their code. His way of reminding her why she wasn't allowed to die out here.

The other four lined up, each ten feet apart. Kayi slipped her oxygen tube back between her teeth, shivering as the frozen spit on it hit her tongue. She shifted her weight from ski to ski, waiting for the blast of music that would herald the start. It was time to leave the world. It was time to fly.

The peal of a heavy bell rang out and she dropped off the edge. For a moment there was nothing beneath her skis and then she hit, carving deep into the champagne powder and leaning her whole body along the steep slope with each turn. The noise from above faded away and it was just her and the mountains. She was almost glad that Coraline, the only other woman in the race, was in her section. The satellite cameras and live feeds would all be focused on pink and not orange. It was something at least.

Kayi let her body warm up and found her rhythm. Flashes of color shifted in her periphery as the other starting groups found the slopes and paths crossed and converged, each of the twenty five skiing their own lines down the first drop.

The next part would be trickier. There were multiple ways down from here and none of them were particularly safe. The fastest route to the finish would be to follow the fall lines of the various slopes and peaks, but that way led through a deep ravine peppered with ice-tunnels and into the Spires, a cave-riddled section of melt-carved granite and quartz which dropped off into Thor's Hammer, a series of unmapped crevasses. Andy had argued for at least cutting over to the Spires from her planned route, but she'd pointed out no company would sponsor a corpsicle.

Kayi shot across the ridgeline at the base of the first pitch, heading across a mostly flat plateau that would drop away into a series of snow mesas, kitchily named Loki's Steps, which descended toward Mt. Athena and the second leg of the race. The stupid quaintness of the mixed Earth names bugged her. Everyone equated it with "low-tech" and it seemed that Grinder Galaxy had adopted themes without checking any of the history.

She shoved her annoyance away and focused on the next turn. In the periphery of her vision a pink blur went flying off a spur of snow-covered rock and headed toward the Spires. Figured.

Ahead of her she caught sight of a red shape and smiled around her mouthpiece. Arthur Kyoto was playing this part safe as well. Finishing, for "hill fodder" like them, would be enough to get noticed, a badge to stick on the wall of life.

The going was peaceful, her thighs starting to burn a little as she worked her legs to glide along the almost flat ridge. The rising sun cast diamonds of light across the snow, reminding her that she'd better reach the Steps before it got too high. The radiation would heat the snow, turning the lovely powder to crud and raising the risks of slides and avalanche significantly. She had hours though, thanks to the long cycle. As long as she stuck to the plan, the route she'd memorized, she'd be down by mid-morning.

In her mind, she heard Daddy quoting Sun Tzu about how no plan survives contact with the enemy. For a brief moment she could almost smell the thick musk of his pipe tobacco as he leaned over, checking the bindings on her skis as they set out into the Saint Elias wilderness to rescue the mountain's latest lost soul.

Kayi turned her head slightly and stared out to where the huge glacial latticework and arched summit of Mt. Athena poked above the surroundings, still many thousands of feet beneath the long ridge. Her father had never left Earth. She wondered what he'd have thought of Asgard and the Olympiads. The atmosphere was thicker than Earth's, but the gravity slightly less and humans could stand at heights here no one at home would attempt. If she'd been allowed her wing-suit, Kayi wondered if she would have just dropped off the ridge and tried to fly down, beyond Mt. Athena. Miles and miles sailing beneath her body.

She checked her oxygen gauge and decided she could live without it. The cold, thin air cut into her throat as she inhaled a shallow breath and tucked her mouthpiece into its pocket on the collar of her ski suit, shutting off the flow from the refillable oxy-packet sewn between the bright orange layers of thermal suit on her chest.

Kayi fell into a rhythm and only slowed after many miles as the ridge began to drop to her right and the cliff drifted into more of a slope. Kayi spied a red shape ahead and grinned when the still-weak sunlight caught a glint of gold.

She skied up alongside Arthur Kyoto and cut sideways, halting next to him on the edge of the Steps. The pitch here dropped down at about a fifty-degree angle, less than the first descent but a prime angle for avalanche risk. The air was still lip-chapping cold and this descent lay in shadow.

"Looks like a heavy snow hit here recently," she said, eyeing Arthur.

"Yep. Should be okay though if we stick to the fall lines and don't disturb the snow on those outcroppings," he said with a broad motion toward the plateaus.

They did look alarmingly top-heavy. Kayi abandoned her plan to ski down using the flatter parts as a way to slow and ease her descent. Threading between the Steps would mean a quicker, less controlled path. It sounded a lot better than accidently dropping off a bluff and taking a few tons of snow down on top of herself.

"Looks like fun," she said. Her heart started to sing with adrenaline again as she stared down into the deep white expanse.

"You want to go first? I don't want either of us to get caught up in the other's sluff," Arthur said.

"Nah. You were here first. I'll hang until you get past the first Step and then follow, sound good?"

He nodded and they shared a grin, his white teeth flashing against cracked, grease-smeared lips.

"Safe skiing," she said lamely. She wanted to say something about his kids, to tell him how she admired him for doing this when he had other commitments, other lives depending on him.

"Good luck, Greenlander," he said before she could find the words. With a shove of his poles, he dropped down onto the slope, skis kicking up sluff in a plume behind him until his red form looked like a Cardinal trying to out-pace a winter storm.

Kayi waited until he shot past the first plateau and cut out of sight, following the natural lines of the mountain. Then she, too, dropped down, crisscrossing his winding trail. The susurrus hush of the skis as she shifted her weight lulled her as she tracked Arthur's progress.

A cracking blast broke her out of her pattern. Then another. Kayi watched as huge slabs of snow broke away immediately in front of her, and then, horrified, as the slabs were followed by a huge mound of snow tumbling off a plateau just above where Arthur's red shape wound down the slope.

She tried to scream out a warning, the distance hopelessly far. His red shape hovered on the edge of the snow wave for a moment, then was suddenly gone.

Her scream was lost in another loud cracking boom, this time so close she felt the vibrations before the snow gave way beneath her skis and suddenly she was surfing along a cresting wave of thick powder that rumbled and hissed like storm-churned waters. For a brief, terrifying second, she hung on that crest, upright and she stretched toward the edge, willing to believe she could ski out of the avalanche's path.

Then the snow sucked her down as treacherous as any ocean wave and closed above her head. Kayi jerked her arms in, one hand reflexively reaching for her avalanche chute, forgetting that she didn't have one this time. More snow smashed into her left side, shoving her hard into another wave and her legs wrenched as her bindings, set tight for this run, strained. Cold clogged her nose and she shut her eyes behind her mask on reflex more than necessity. The tumble whipped her neck forward and she tried to tuck her chin in, ride it out.

Then it was over. The world went still and all she could feel was horrible pressure as though someone had pinned her beneath a wet wool blanket. She opened her eyes and her mouth, regretting it instantly as loose snow smashed into her teeth and she choked hard, the cough emptying the last of her air from starved lungs. The world was blue now, a clear ice blue, as though she encased in glacial ice. Entombed.

_No_. _Stop_. _No dying. Gem. Must get back. Remember his rules._ But she couldn't. She could barely find his face in her mind. _No. Move. Move. Please._

Kayi panicked for a moment, trying to move her limbs as her heart beat grew louder and louder in her ears, echoing the rushing of the avalanche. Her right arm was crushed up against her collar; her glove brushing the raw, exposed skin under her chin.

Oxygen. She needed to breathe. With painful slowness, Kayi worked her fingers over to the pocket with her mouthpiece. She shoved upward with her shoulder, trying to create enough room to push the device up to her mouth. Her shoulder popped and pain radiated down into her arm and through her back. Pain was good. Pain she could use. She clung to it, to this sign of life and twisted her head toward the freed mouthpiece.

It popped in between her lips and she choked hard trying to get enough space to suck the flow valve open through the melting snow filling her mouth. Air. She'd always found the slightly chemical taste from the sealants in the pack annoying, but this time it was the best thing she'd ever breathed, thick and revitalizing.

And going to run out in probably less than half an hour. With that sobering thought, Kayi lay, staring up, or at least, what she hoped was up, into the glacial blue. No one was coming to dig her out. A whimpering sound broke through the rushing pulse in her ears. For a moment she wondered if someone was out there. Then she realized she was making that noise, deep in her throat. She sucked in another sweet breath of air and forced her scattered brain back into problem-solving.

Rule zero of any activity, according to Gem, was "don't die". Was she facing toward sky? Or hundreds of feet of snow and rock? She tried again to wiggle her feet. The right one had a little movement to it. Her left leg was twisted out to the side and from the pressure she thought her ski was still attached and being pulled by the snow, weight on top of a fulcrum.

Kayi wormed her hands up over her chest and made half-scooping, half-breast-stroke movements, shoving her upper body into the little bit of space cleared. Movement was good for her psyche even if she couldn't tell what progress she might be making toward freedom. Blood rushed in her ears and she found herself timing her struggles upward to the thud of her heart.

Scoop, shift, scoop, shift, scoop, shift, scoop, shift. The light above turned from glacial blue to a clearer blue, then, suddenly, her hands scooped and pushed through, the orange gloves disappearing for a moment into the world above. Kayi flopped and wriggled like a landed salmon and her head broke through. Muscles protesting, she worked to sit up fully and spit out her oxygen tube.

She'd been wrong before. This, this was the best air she'd ever tasted. Crisp, clean, best of all -- unlimited.

She dug her legs free and took stock. Her skis were still attached and intact, though one only by grace of the leg strap, the binding itself had released. She snapped it back on, after checking it for damage, and stood gingerly, looking around. One pole jutted awkwardly from the snow just below her position. The other was buried most likely, her straps snapped in the mad tumble down the mountain.

And she had tumbled far. The snow had carried her down almost to the Spires. She oriented herself with the lace-like shadow of Mt. Athena and the farther-off shadows below that Kayi hoped were the granite and quartz formations.

The shivers hit her as adrenaline faded with the recognition of relative safety. With them came coherent memory.

Arthur Kyoto. She spit into the snow and tried to work a yell out of her sore, scraped throat. She managed a credible croak but not much more. Kayi twisted, frantically searching for some telling sign of where he might have ended up, some break in the newly smooth landscape. A hint of red. Anything.

Her injured shoulder protested as she twisted the other direction and Kayi gritted her teeth, side-stepping down the hill to get her remaining pole, taking it into her left hand.

The mountain was quiet, the stillness eerie after the explosion of snow.

_Explosions_. Kayi shivered again as she forced herself to remember what had happened. They'd been careful, taking a line that shouldn't have disturbed the packed snow, not this early in the morning. She heard the sound in her head, vibrations and then a pop almost like an old canon going off.

She broke the silence with a string of curses barely above a whisper. She'd worked the dawn patrol in both Russo-Alaska and Greater Nepal for too many years not to know the sound of avalanche charges. Someone had blown the mountainside deliberately.

The mountain doesn't kill you, her father had always said. The mountain doesn't care enough to bother. People kill themselves on mountains.

Not this time. Kayi's numb lips set into a hard line and she felt like collapsing. Grinder Galaxy. The Great Race, her ass. She'd known it would be a kitschy, glam, inter-galacticly annoying media-whoring sort of spectacle, but naively she'd figured the deadly terrain and sheer length of the race would provide enough fodder for the masses.

She had a camera on. So did Arthur. They also had locator chips sewn into their suits so that the live feeds could track and broadcast the contestants when they hit interesting points in the race and fill the between times with cutesy biopics and one-on-one filmed weeks ago interviews interspersed with the person in question skiing down some slope or another.

Kayi could put it together. Someone in Grinder Galaxy had rigged the slope, probably long before the Race since there had been recent, heavy snow. They'd waited until she and Arthur were both on the slope and blown the charges. Maybe there wasn't real malice in it, maybe some idiot didn't realize that avalanches like that moved at speeds of over a hundred miles an hour.

Fat chance. Anger got her blood moving again as Kayi pushed off and tested her legs with a careful, controlled turn down the slope. They had just made the term "hill fodder" into a gruesome, literal phrase.

Murder. That's what she would call it. If anyone would listen. If she made it down alive. What other nasty surprises were hidden? What would they do now that she'd come out of it. Kayi's neck stiffened. Cameras had to be on her. Digging her way out must have gotten millions of live views by now. Andy would be shitting himself over the potentials of this now that he was likely done panicking about her getting buried alive.

She sucked on her teeth and pulled her collar up to hide her mouth, hide her expression in case someone was zoomed in, and resisted the urge to look up into the sky. If they guessed that she'd put the explosions together as man-made, she'd be dead for sure.

Kayi's brain dumped ideas and worries down onto her as quickly as the avalanche had dropped snow, bumping into all sorts of ridiculous options and plans. She took another lazy turn and then another, slowly cutting over the slope toward the Spires in the distance. There were caves there, she remembered. A place maybe where she could sit, drink some electrolytic protein-filled goo and rest out of the immediate access of the satellite cameras at least.

Skiing worked the clinging ache out of her sore legs and she kept her arm against her body. There were two local anesthetic patches in her aid kit, another reason to stop. It wouldn't fix the injury, but removing the pain would have to suffice for now.

Kayi laughed, the sound hoarse and grating. She hadn't even checked to see if she'd lost anything from her various pockets. They were sealed, of course, but a crushing tumble like the one she'd just taken could break the seals. Her gear wasn't rated for that kind of thing.

She patted herself and found most of her suit pockets still sealed tight. She had fluids and first aid. The only thing missing was the forfeit flare, which had broken loose of its strap on her belly and was now gone. Not an option anyway, not given what she suspected. No one would believe the accusations of a forfeiter. She'd be buried under so much scandal and so many lawyers for even thinking of about it.

She'd probably be buried anyway. She was the Greenlander, the chubby hick from a system humanity had grown beyond and half-forgotten. Poor Arthur Kyoto was basically the same. No standing, no status, no power. His twins would never know that their father had been murdered, that his death had been pointless. It was one thing to face the mountain and lose, but to fail because someone engineered it was wrong in every way.

_Unless you win_ , an evil voice whispered, sounding in her exhausted mind a lot like Andy when her friend and manager had gotten too deep into the bubbly. A winner of the Great Race would have the purse and the inter-galactic public ear.

Kayi shook her head, wincing again. Up ahead loomed the first series of spires, green and blue-threaded black granite jutting up like totemic icons to long lost spirits. She angled toward one that had a thick shadow, looking for an under hang she could retreat into.

She was so intent on just getting away from the camera she imagined still stalked her from miles above that she missed the tracks in the snow at first. Once she saw them, a single skier winding their way toward one of the thicker Spires, Kayi followed, desperately hopeful that she'd find Arthur holed up the way she intended to do, to find him alive and well.

Kayi reached the stone and pulled up when she heard a woman's voice. Disappointment brought acid up into her already raw throat. Coraline. But who was she talking to? A wan hope still lingered for Arthur to be here with Coraline somehow, but there'd only been one set of ski tracks.

Her rattled nerves and new-found paranoia counseled Kayi to caution and she slid forward quietly as she could, slipping right up to the bared tower of rock. Peeking around into the deeper shadows of the over hang, Kayi caught a glimpse of three people, two men and a woman. The woman wore pink plaid. Definitely Coraline.

The men, when Kayi ducked back out for a second, slightly longer look, were dressed in the same gear as the workers buzzing everywhere around the event had worn. A looping double G with the tri-star logo confirmed what Kayi already knew.

"Let me check the maps again," Coraline was saying, reaching for something that one of the men, whose backs where to Kayi, must be holding. "Then you guys can hoversled me through these stupid rocks?" With that statement, Kayi abandoned hope that this was just Coraline forfeiting the race and catching a ride down.

She leaned into the stone and tried to think. It wasn't just rigging the race to provide media fodder and life and death excitement, the game might actually be rigged. Might? Kayi bit her lip. It was time to face reality. She considered stepping out and confronting the cheating party right there, but her brush with death held her still. Evidence. Andy and Gem could witness. She was sure they were riveted to her camera, and though Gem couldn't hear what was being said, Andy could probably make it out even with the low-quality microphone in her mask.

It was too bad that they weren't recording her feed.

Oh. Kayi almost smacked herself upside the head. Her team could. Nothing really prevented it besides fear of being sued, a fear which seemed suddenly so small and stupid as to have become the molehill in light of the mountain of this deadly farce.

Kayi took a deep breath, hearing Coraline asking questions about the route around Thor's Hammer. Now or never. She had to get this down. Kayi slid backward on her skis, making sure no part of her showed beyond the stone. She could still hear Coraline and hoped her mic was getting it also.

She unsealed her left glove and yanked it off with her teeth. Carefully she signed Gem's name, hoping that would signal him without being too obvious to anyone else monitoring her feed. Then she told him what she wanted, spelling out the Inuit words, hoping that would be obscure enough that Grinder Galaxy wouldn't pick up on it.

They had to know that she was right next to their men, however. Even with recorded evidence, Kayi knew she'd still have to make it down to the finish to have a hope of accusing anyone of anything. What else had they rigged out there? There were more ways to die on a course like this than just avalanche. Snipers, worse come to worse, could probably hoversled into the course and just pick her off. Pleasant thoughts.

Kayi grimaced and refocused on the conversation, risking looking around the spire again. Coraline was half turned away, studying a tablet. She tapped a pink finger onto the screen and told them she wanted to be dropped off there. Kayi prayed that Gem had gotten the message in time to record all that.

It would have to be good enough because Coraline and her escort slipped out from the overhang and after a long moment, Kayi heard the whirring of a hoversled. She stayed pressed against the cold stone until it was gone and silence reigned again.

Aware of her tenuous position here, Kayi ducked quickly into the illusory shelter of the over hang. She worried that Grinder Galaxy would just decide to rub her out and then take care of her team but there was nothing she could do about the latter worry. She was still hours of hard skiing away from being in a position to help Gem or Andy. She just hoped they were figuring out some of what was going on. Hoped they weren't already kidnapped or assassinated or something awful.

She'd met Andy when they were both on dawn patrol. He'd recognize those explosions also, she hoped. She had to trust them and take care of herself. That was Gem's rule number one. _Always play with the cards you actually have._

First thing, minimize the risk of being tracked too easily. Kayi sucked down a goo packet, the tart lingon berry flavored gel soothing her raw throat. She pulled the rest of the packets out and set them onto a little ledge in the stone.

Next she removed the first aid kit and opened her outer ski suit, then peeled back the insulating under-suit down off her injured shoulder with as little jostling as she could manage. The freezing air felt good, giving her a shock but numbing the exposed shoulder in a way that wasn't awful. The morphine patch felt like pressing the rough side of Velcro into her skin and then the tiny teeth set and relief washed through her in a tangible wave, radiated out from the little blue patch.

Kayi slid the suit up and closed the insulating layer. She unsnapped her bindings and stepped out of her skis. Her outer suit had to go. The chip that allowed the satellites to easily track and lock her position was sewn into it and the bright orange, designed to be so easily seen against snowy mountain terrain, had become a liability. The quilted, white fabric in her under suit would have to suffice, despite its less than waterproof nature.

_Play the cards you have_ , she reminded herself.

Shivering a little as her wind-breaking layer slid off, Kayi balled up the suit and shoved it into a crevice in the spire. It wouldn't hold anyone off for long, and she didn't dare go out without her glare and wind-blocking mask on, so the camera feed would still be there. The hood part of her mask was silver, thank god. She prayed these measures could buy her a little time and breathing room. Her gloves had to stay on, but she turned them inside out, hoping the grey inner layer would be camouflage enough. Nothing she could do about the boots or her skis so she shoved the nagging doubt from her mind.

She snapped back into her bindings and tucked the first aid kit and three packets of goo into the one pocket on her inner suit. Then she took up her pole, took a deep breath, and set out into the Spires.

Kayi skied in silence; her eyes focused on the quickest path through, watching for telling dark patches and odd shadows that might denote caving beneath unstable snow and thinly covered rocks and other dangers. Her ears strained for the sound of a hoversled and her mind kept trying to feed her gruesome imagery of her own mangled body or what the hood of her mask would look like when a sniper bullet exploded her brains all over.

She just wanted to get down the mountain. There was no race anymore. The most extreme race in human history had turned into exactly that for her, but by accident more than design. The allure of skiing the virgin snows and dangerous slopes of the tallest ascendable mountains in the known universe had died with the last of her sportsman instincts. Died with Arthur Kyoto in a crushing ocean of snow.

A different fire lit her now, pushing her even as she crisscrossed slopes between the blue and green and black towering stones. She wanted to live, not to beat the mountains, but to beat the people who'd tried to kill her in the name of ratings and profits. They were no less impersonal than the rocks and ice and cold.

The deck was deeply stacked against her, but damnit, Kayi suddenly felt a desperate need to _win_. Not from bitterness now about equipment or training or the money and ability to ski on more than one little planet.

The slowly rising sun caught the refractive surfaces of quartz spurs jutting like giant diamonds from the granite spires and drew webs of iridescent light between the stones. In the back of her mind, Kayi hoped that Gem was still recording. Was still able to record. She shoved that thought away.

She skied out of Loki's Spires and turned to the north. She and her team had plotted out multiple courses on the flight to Asgard. They had even plotted the optimal path, what they jokingly had called the "as the crow flies but everyone else dies" course. Through the Spires and then to the north, shooting down a linked maze of steep ravines and directly into the crevasse-laden Thor's Hammer. From the Hammer there was another steep slope, more of a cliff with an almost vertical slope that could drop her onto the straight shot down to the finish just above Shangri-la.

They'd ruled out that course as suicide, even if the crevasses didn't eat her, the hours of extreme carving needed to drop the thousands of vertical feet down the final descent would probably be beyond anyone after the hours of hard exercise preceding.

Kayi pulled her lips into a snarl as she shot down into the ravine maze. Her frazzled brain couldn't recall what stupid name had been bestowed on this place. Win. This path, if she could survive it, it would beat even cheating. Probably. They couldn't risk exposure by using the hoversleds too much or by having Coraline show up improbably early. Reporters might be sycophantic glory hounds, but they couldn't be counted on to be reliable idiots either.

She was onto the final long stretch before Thor's Hammer when she felt the snow vibrate beneath her and a sonic wave crackle in the air. Kayi screamed, more in fury than fear, and aimed her skis sideways, trying to shoot across the breaking snow.

Then the mountain broke away under her and she found herself perched in the middle of the avalanche plate like a grain of sand resting on the tension of water.

She rode the plate as it hissed and burbled, the edges peeling away as the snow gained speed, surging down toward the glacial blue scars of Thor's Hammer below. Icy mists clouded up around her and for a brief moment she felt as though she was flying inside a storm cloud.

Just before the crumbling edges of the plate caught up her skis, the world dropped away, taking the deadly snow with it.

Kayi sailed through the air on her own now, the avalanche speed flinging her out over the deep crevasse that opened beneath, swallowing the mountain's might. She tucked forward on habit more than by conscious design. Ahead of her was the edge of the crevasse and she strained her whole body toward it.

Not that it mattered; she wasn't going to make it.

Kayi clutched her pole and thrust herself forward, arms against her side. She was just going to miss, she could see the gap still to fly across, the edge so close and yet her ski tips were dropping.

Then her tips touched the edge and for a moment she thought she might be okay. But the lip crumbled under her, frothing as the weak layer of snow broke. Her forward momentum died with a rough jolt and she started to fall backward.

Kayi jabbed her pole out and threw herself as far forward as she could. The pole caught and she gripped it with both hands, ignoring the sudden sharp bite of pain as her injured shoulder woke up from its drugged haze. The pole caught ice and stuck and suddenly she slid just enough forward that her skis caught and did their job, pulling her forward.

Another raw scream broke out of her throat, followed by a stream of good Norwegian curses telling the cheating, malicious bastards where they could stick it and how.

The rest of the Hammer was a blur. Sometimes her skis left the ground as she flew over gaps and irregularities, but Kayi was beyond caring. Her shoulder made gravelly sounds and renewed its stabbing complaints with every landing, every sharp turn until finally, blessedly, her right arm went utterly numb.

She almost overshot the final descent but managed to check her speed and drop down onto the nearly vertical face. Each jamming turn was a tiny reminder of exhaustion hell that she felt from her toes to her teeth and her suit was soon soaked through with only the exertion itself keeping her warm now. She wasn't sure when she noticed that the snow below was no longer a far-off vertigo-causing shadow and instead had detail and glittering nearness. By the time she did see the far gentler slope and the clot of dark shapes off in the distance where the finish line lay, she was only a hundred feet or so off the curving final descent.

Kayi made a decision and dropped off the mountain. She flew down the last seventy feet; letting her spasming knees take a final jolt as she landed in nearly hip-deep powder soft enough to take a nap in.

The dull roar of excited human voices grew as she approached. She hoped from the response that she'd made it down first. To win, then to expose this murderous charade.

The crowd took on colors and shape as she approached, skiing upright through sheer will. Her body felt dead, her right arm entirely unresponsive. It didn't matter.

Once she won. . . Kayi stopped that thought. Winning meant she'd be mobbed by press. Maybe the Grinder Galaxy folks would find a way to twist it all up, find time to get some story straight. Winning wasn't quite the answer.

With a hard jerk, Kayi twisted sideways and skidded to stop only feet from the finish line.

She stood there, leaning heavily onto her remaining pole, her eyes scanning the crowd, looking for her team. She didn't see them at first and then suddenly both Andy and Gem shoved their way through the insectile horde of reporters and stockholders. Gem had his computer perched on one huge arm and hope lifted Kayi's head as she drew on the last gasp of her reserves.

The crowd had grown silent, chatter dying away as they realized she wasn't coming across the finish line on purpose. She slowly caught her breath and then pulled off her mask, letting her dark braid drop onto her shoulders.

"This," she tried to say, but it came out as a raw croak and she stopped, swallowed painfully, and tried again, "This race is a lie, is murder. Kyoto died because of Grinder Galaxy."

"Five," Andy called out. "Five racers are dead."

Kayi shivered and clung harder to her pole. Five. She strained to raise her voice, spitting out the words like broken glass. "It's a lie. A set-up. Fixed. Manipulated. You aren't watching reality or fairness."

Gem smiled at her, teeth flashing white beneath his black beard. He did something on his little computer and suddenly the huge plastic view screens that had been showing her own exhausted image a moment before flashed to a shakey, somewhat fuzzy image of Coraline in her pink plaid glory, her whining, thready voice asking about routes and where the hoversled could drop her off.

For a moment, only Coraline's damning questions reigned in the dead silence the recording brought on, as though everyone stood in the eye of a storm. The storm broke, people yelling, asking questions. Beyond Gem, the Grinder Galaxy officials who'd been coming out to try to shoo her team back halted on their snowshoes and froze like rabbits in the eagle's shadow.

Kayi smiled at Gem and raised her left hand, finally releasing the pole. She slowly signed the letters to him. _Asavakkit_. _I love you_.

_Kayii Tingiyok_ , he signed back.

She let her legs collapse, dropping into the snow. _Yes_ , she thought as she closed her eyes, _Kayi is flying_.

* * * * *

##  Dusk and Shiver

### Story Notes

_I've written stories about Remy Pigeon, my Creole psychometrist, before. I wanted to write a story using a zombi from the Haitian mythology and I felt like writing another Remy story. I think the biggest weakness of this story is that it leans too hard on the ones before it and was confusing to those who hadn't heard of the character before (ie my entire Clarion class, oops). I have tried to clear up some of the things that confused them in revision and to make the story stand on its own. Time will tell if I've succeeded._

_During the end of week one, Nina Hoffman ran us through a novel outlining exercise. I outlined a novel with this character that should be written next year. So if you like this story, keep an eye out for more with Remy, he's a great character and I want to spend more time in his head._

* * *

The zombi broke down my front door a few days after Hurricane Katrina had huffed and puffed and blown itself out to the east of Toil d'Crepescule. She used a fire-axe to hack through the weathered wood, giving me just enough time to leap up from my doze and wonder why someone would knock with an axe blade.

Wasn't like the door was locked. But Voodun doesn't tend to leave the enslaved at full mental capacity.

She stepped through the wreckage of my former door with the axe hanging limp in her hands. A partially grown-out weave framed a face as round as her body, her stomach distended beneath a pink sports bra, stretch marks like swamp channels pale against her ashy brown skin. Her sweats were streaked with gray mud and she had on a single flip-flop.

It was her eyes that told me she was dead already. They fixed on me as I ducked behind the big green chair, dull as cracked cement. If that "windows to the soul" crud were true, this lady's spirit was growing weeds.

A hint of recognition twitched through my mind, but she'd seen me and charged. I hadn't expected company. Everyone was holed up, watching the news, reeling from the horror of the last week, and praying that the phone would ring with the voices of those we loved telling us they were safe, alive, free of the chaos that reigned to the east.

Half naked and half awake is not how you want to fight a zombi. I threw up my hands, ready to wrestle the axe away. _Merde_. My hands were bare. If I touched the axe, it would be over. Whatever residual emotions lurked on that thing would rip me away from reality for the few precious seconds that she'd need to end my life.

I kicked the chair into her, knocking her back, and scrambled backward into the bedroom of my shotgun house. Gloves. Needed gloves. There was a pair on the dresser but the dead woman had righted herself. Time to sacrifice another door.

She got through the bedroom door with the same determined smashing that had destroyed my front one, but it bought me enough time to snatch up a pair of gloves and pull them on as I backed toward the kitchen. Zombi aren't indestructible. If I could get to the Louisville Slugger by the back door, I could destroy enough of her body to ruin the magic animating her. Probably.

She swung the axe back and forth, hissing through her chapped lips like a cottonmouth. I tried to get the kitchen door closed but there were fewer obstacles in the bedroom and she caught up to me too quickly. I ducked to the side, letting the axe swing past me and then slammed the door into it, trapping the blade long enough to grab on to the shaft.

Her perfume, magnolias and vanilla, hit me, drawing up the memory I'd felt a hint of earlier and suddenly I knew I couldn't just kill her. Well, kill her more dead at any rate. She'd been my client, after all.

"I'm Remy Pigeon," I yelled at her, hoping to wake some memory of our prior meeting. I'd heard that zombi could regain their minds briefly if faced with powerful emotional connections from their mortal lives.

The zombi twisted the axe and snapped her teeth. Guess I hadn't left a strong impression.

I clung to the handle and we played tug-of-war in the opening. She was only five foot four and gradually I used my ten-inch advantage to shove her sideways into my bed. She let go of the axe and I threw it aside before kicking her hard in the belly. She hit the four-poster frame with a crunch. One of her arms twisted into the bedding and pulled it down on top of her as she tried to get up, giving me an idea.

I'd never bundled a zombi before and she didn't go easy. I sat on her bucking body as she struggled against the six-hundred thread count Egyptian cotton and decided to lock her in the closet. Without the axe, she'd probably take a while to get through the cherry-wood door. And it would keep the Bokor controlling her from seeing what I was going to do next.

Which raised the question of what was I going to do next? I half dragged half rolled the zombi bundle into my closet, trying to ignore the piteous half-kitten, half-angry lizard sounds she made. This had been a woman. A sweet, quiet woman, with a brand new baby and a cheating, drugged-addicted pill of a husband.

A roll of duct tape on one of the closet shelves caught my eye and I did what I could to make sure she'd have a long chore escaping the sheets. Door closed and locked, zombi contained.

I leaned against the wood and took a deep breath. Sweat trickled down through my chest hair and the house was suddenly still. The Bokor must have figured out his zombi had failed and was trapped. Great. Out there somewhere was a Voodun sorcerer who wanted me dead.

I didn't think I'd done anything lately to warrant such a thing. I tried to avoid the practitioners, though as a psychometrist I found myself working for one or another from time to time. Voodun was out of my league. Besides, I'm Catholic.

I looked down at the axe. The zombi was a client and I didn't believe in coincidences. I had her name on the receipt in my files, but first things first.

I pulled my left glove off with my teeth and steeled myself for whatever I might find on the axe. My bare fingers grazed it and . . .

Nothing. Not a hint of emotion, not a single image. It was like the axe had come out of the package and right into the hands of the corpse. I should have been able to pick up on something from whoever had made or handled the axe before this. A store clerk, someone.

Only one way I knew to remove the echoes from an object. _Ce putain de sorcier_. Damn voodoo. Humans leave emotions and impressions on everything we touch but a good Bokor or Houngan can erase the ripples of the past, obscure the echoes.

I leaned the axe against the wall and pulled my glove back on. The filed receipt in my desk told me she was one Rhonda Perry. One hundred dollars paid up front, in cash. No address.

She'd come to me a couple weeks before the hurricane hit. I remembered that when I opened the door she had stood on the porch for a moment like a cat, unsure which side she wanted to be on. But she'd come in, turned down sweet tea because she had "the sugar, you know, from the pregnancy", accepted a handkerchief when she burst into tears, and then produced a delicate, frilly pair of red lace panties from her canvas purse.

Pretty usual day of work for me. I touch things and glean the echoes of emotion from them, often as visions, showing me the past and sometimes a little of the future.

She'd found the panties between the mattress and the headboard and it was clear from the size and her tears that they weren't hers. I'd taken them and touched them, subjecting myself to yet another vision of stupid infidelity. After telling her what she basically already knew, we'd chatted for a little and she mentioned the baby and that she worked as a personal assistant. She had hovered around the question of what she should do.

I'm a psychometrist, not a psychologist. I told her she should leave the bastard and I got the impression, from her determined, bleak expression, that she just might do it.

Maybe she had. Or maybe she'd just failed to mention that the jerk was also a sorcerer who practiced on the left hand, as they called the Bokors. I wasn't going to get the information here.

I pressed my ear to the closet door. Nothing. Carefully I unlocked it and turned the handle. At the sound of that, the zombi started to struggle and hiss again and I quickly closed and relocked the door. Right. No decent dress shirts for me.

Pulling on an undershirt, I still felt naked in just a thin tee and khaki pants. With short sleeves, my gray leather gloves stood out against my dark skin even more incongruously than ever. I looked like the world's most casual hitman.

I used the excuse of clearing the splintered wood and debris to buy myself time to consider what I was going do with the zombi in my closet. I debated calling the police, but they weren't exactly equipped to handle this sort of thing. Chances were that the Bokor would just cut the link and leave me with a corpse on my hands. While I might not be hauled in as quickly as I would if she were a white woman, I could imagine the uncontrolled glee this whole situation would give Sheriff Hargrave.

So, to sort out this myself. Glean what information about who was trying to murder me and why during the remainder of the afternoon and then figure out what to do with the zombi once it was full dark. Maybe by then I could come to terms with killing her more dead.

A flash of turquoise caught my eye as I shoved the chair back into its place in my living room. Her sandal had slipped off in the struggle and gotten lodged beneath the heavy oak base. I picked it up, turning it over in my hands.

The axe had been cleansed. Maybe her clothing hadn't. I certainly wasn't going to touch zombi Rhonda herself. Corpses were the worst, touching one was like drinking saltwater with a vinegar chaser, biting the head off a puppy, and then jumping in front of a train. I didn't want to think too hard on what touching the undead would feel like.

Her sandal was another story. I tugged off my left glove again and closed my fingers over the gritty foam sole.

_Heaving, bucking. How did he find. . . the wind howls and screams and I tear the curtain trying to stand, to get away from Jerry. He's hitting too hard and nose full of blood too hot to breathe but I won't tell him Brett is with Margo. Baking cookies and best sweet tea can't have anymore. Tall lilacs bushing skin and the latticework arch of the door, smooth marble under foot a good place for Brett, and going away let him hit he won't. . ._

I dropped the sandal and staggered over to my chair. Right. She'd left Jerry. Wait, Jerry Perry? That said a lot about his home life growing up. I shook my head, breathing carefully as I slowly pushed away the foreign memories and feelings. Never knew what I'd find when I touched something, but Rhonda's residue was more haphazard than most, maybe as a result of the Voodun. I could still taste her terror like a bruised peach on my tongue.

She'd left Jerry and he'd come after her during the storm. Had he found the baby, too? It seemed like she'd hidden her boy somewhere, with this Margo person. So at least the kid was probably safe, though Katrina had blown herself out around these parts days ago. I guessed the zombification ritual took a lot of time.

The image of the tall lilac bushes and that intricate entrance seemed familiar. I tossed the shoe into the trash bin and opened up Google. When magic falls short, there is always the internet.

* * *

Margo Fisher was one of Toil d'Crepuscule's last great Southern Belles. I'd found the reference I was looking for on our _Welcome_ pages for the city and pulled her address. Rhonda had apparently been this woman's personal assistant while Jerry stayed home to look after the new baby. And smoke meth. And screw his meth-head neighbor.

It's not the town it used to be.

Not the town that the Fisher family had known in the Antebellum years when they built their grand house on Rue Serret, a quiet, tree-lined boulevard on the north edge of town. Tree-lined, anyway, before Katrina's long-reaching tendrils brushed through and denuded the limbs, leaving the whole of the neighborhood looking like God had descended with a weed whacker.

I drove into the circular driveway just in time to hear a gunshot ring out through the buzzing cicada afternoon. I hit the brakes, yanking the key from the ignition as I leapt out. A blue Chevy truck was parked up on the grass in a way that forced me around it as I headed for the porch. The large French doors were ajar and somewhere in the house a baby screamed.

At least the kid was still alive.

My heart beating hard enough to vibrate my ribcage, I stepped cautiously into the house. The white and gold marble floor was just as Rhonda had remembered it. To my left was a huge staircase straight out of _Gone with the Wind_. From somewhere off the hall ahead, I heard a man's low voice, speaking softly in a way that reminded me of my grand-père whenever my cousins were fussy.

As I crossed the foyer, the sickly smell of blood hit me, overpowering the lilac scent the rest of the house carried and a woman moaned. The baby's crying covered the clicking of my loafers on the marble. First time I'd ever found myself happy about a shrieking child.

I followed the sound and the smell to a formal parlor where an older white woman lay across the doorway, bleeding out onto the Persian carpet. Without thinking I dropped to my knees and tried to put pressure on the bubbling wound in her chest.

"Who the fuck are you?" A gaunt man, about my height but with darker skin and worse fashion sense, stepped into view. He had a screaming bundle wrapped in a blue baby blanket tucked in the crook of his arm and a snubnosed revolver pointed at my head.

"Jerry?" I asked.

The smart sections of my brain were trying to get me to dive out of the way, but if I lifted my hands, the shivering, choking woman, who I guessed was Margo, would definitely die. Of course, staying meant there might be two corpses here soon. But two is greater than one, right?

Jerry waved the gun slightly and his eyes narrowed. "Nevermind," he said. "You gotta be that psychic who told my Rhonnie to take my baby away." He smiled like a starving man about to gut a fish.

_Nom de Zeus_. The idea of getting the hell out of the way suddenly seemed a lot more convincing.

"I'm not a psychic, my name is Remy and I want to help you," I told him, which was mostly true. "Please put down the gun, Jerry." I hoped my voice sounded less strained to him than it did to me.

"He said he'd take care of you and he must have, delivering you to me like this." Jerry rocked on his heels, shifting the whimpering baby.

So. Jerry wasn't the Bokor. "He sent your wife after me," I said, following a hunch. "Or I should say, your former wife."

Doubt slackened his features. "What do you mean? She's still mine."

A fresh gush of blood welled up between my fingers and Margo opened her eyes, worked her jaw once like a carp trying to breathe air and then stilled. She died beneath my hands, one moment present and the next a punctured sack, deflated and inanimate.

"Soyez bénis," I whispered, feeling something should be said for this woman. Though it was weak as far as last rites went.

I glared up at Jerry, no longer fettered by my desire to help. Fury burned my fear away.

He'd killed two women through his selfishness. I had no intention of letting it continue. I wanted to take the gun away from him and march him down to the Sheriff myself, perhaps with an extra bruise or ten.

First I'd have to figure out how to take a gun away from a meth-head holding a baby. With my hands covered in blood. Prospects, grim. Though I hated it, I'd have to keep talking this out. For the moment.

"What do you fucking mean?" he repeated, oblivious to the dead woman.

"Rhonda. She's a zombi. I met her this afternoon when she stormed my house with an axe." I rose slowly to my feet, itching to charge him.

"You're lying," Jerry said with all the conviction of a possum standing on the highway. His gun hand dipped and I took my chance.

I leapt over Margo's corpse and slapped my bloody hands along the gun, sending it spinning from his grip. It must have been a while since his last meth hit or maybe the baby slowed him, but he barely reacted. As he shuffled back, I went after the gun, scooping it up from the floor.

"Don't shoot my baby," he stuttered out, all his bravado collapsing as I turned on him with the snub-nose in my hand. If he hadn't just shot an old woman in cold blood, the way he curled his body to the side to protect his son might have softened me.

All right. Maybe it did a little.

"She, she wouldn't give me the baby. Said she'd only give him to Rhonda. But I'm his daddy. Rhonda is coming back. I paid that Bokor to fix it all. Fix you, make her never leave me again. You ruined her, telling her all those things."

"Things you did," I pointed out. Meth and infidelity weren't exactly going to win him father of the year.

"You can't call the cops. I'll tell them you shot that white bitch and tried to take my child." He glared at me, turning sly and my head started to hurt from trying to keep up with his emotional shifts. Drug addicts. _Nom de Zeus_.

Unfortunately, he also had a point. I was the one covered in blood and holding a gun. This would take too much explaining and I still had his zombi wife to deal with back home.

"You're right," I said. "I think it's time for a little family reunion."

* * *

It was a little awkward to get my gloves rinsed off and then move them into the car while still keeping at least the threat of the gun on the murderer, but I managed. First and hopefully last time in my life I had to say "keep both hands on that baby" with serious intention.

We drove back to my home, the baby's cries the only conversation and his baby powder and baby shit stink slowly permeating the car and making me wish I had a hand free to roll down the window. Jerry didn't offer any more explanations and I was too angry to ask. My mind ran down options for what to do when we arrived, but there was no way to tie a bow on this mess and ship it.

The state of my home as we drove up solved one problem. My navy blue sheets with their lovely subtle pin-striping were shredded and strewn over the gravel driveway and the sheet of plywood I'd set over the gaping door was flat on the porch.

No point in even getting out of the car. Zombi Rhonda was gone.

"Where is your Bokor?" I asked Jerry as I backed Renault up. I kept my eyes on the surrounding yards, half expecting the zombi to leap out. I wished I'd locked up that axe. Then I saw tire tracks, fresh in the side of the driveway. The Bokor must have collected her.

Intellectually, I told myself it was all righ, but I couldn't quite get my shoulders to relax.

Jerry swallowed hard like he was gulping through a straw. "I can't, I—"

"Jerry," I said, looking at him and drawing his name out like a warning. I omitted his last name since I wasn't sure I could say the combination without giggling, a reaction wholly inappropriate to the circumstances.

"Caiman Bluff," he muttered, backing down as the baby twisted in his swaddling and screwed his face up for another good screaming session.

I headed out of the town, toward Bayou Delphine. Caiman Bluff was out far enough that civilization changed and the swamp laws took over. Family law and old practices brought over from Haiti and some closer to home.

The overcast sky turned dark as dusk dropped like a funeral shroud over the thickening forest as the Baldcypress and River Birch trees gave way to Blue Beech and Hickory as we climbed up away from the swamps. Spanish moss draped the trees, obscuring the woods beyond and, as the road turned from asphalt to gravel to dirt, it drifted down to scrape sickly fingers over the roof of the car. We were driving to nowhere and Renault wasn't built for off-roading.

I was just about to call Jerry out on his muttered directions when lights filtered through the trees ahead and the path turned, dumping us out onto a cement pad. The forest opened up to reveal a house perched on the high bluff, its spindly porch clinging to the cliff and overlooking the bayou far below. The house itself was a one storey building clapped together from rough-cut lumber and tin sheeting.

"Out," I said and motioned for Jerry to move. The fresh air outside was a welcome change from the stale baby stink of my poor car. I took a deep breath and indicated with a wave of the revolver that Jerry should precede me.

The front door was open and candles burned on every surface, giving off a rancid fatty meat scent. It reinforced every Voodoo horror movie stereotype I could think of and dropping this Bokor in my estimation. Not that I held a good opinion of people who tried to kill me. What next? A white goat and a pile of dolls?

A woman started to sing a low, soothing lullaby and the baby redoubled his screaming efforts. Kid had vocal chords made of titanium and the endurance of a rhinocerous.

"Papa Datiyfu?" Jerry called out after glancing nervously at me.

The Bokor stepped through a beaded curtain. He was small and rounded at the edges, hunched shoulders, bald head, but his gaze felt as heavy as a Louisiana heat wave, settling on us with thick-lidded intensity. Evil in a Hawaiian shirt. Fantastic.

I stepped to the side of Jerry, making sure I had a clear shot. Tiny red dots danced in my vision and I clamped my mouth shut, suddenly worried about drugs in the incense clogging the air. Then zombi Rhonda stepped up behind the Bokor, still humming, still vacant-eyed, and I felt Jerry flinch back.

"What did you do?" he whispered, wavering on his feet but still clutching the baby.

I don't know how the Bokor heard his words over the child's whimpering, but he smiled, white teeth flashing. "I did what you asked for. Rhonda will take care of you and never question anything. After she takes care of the man who ruined your life, of course." His gaze snapped back to me and he pointed, his lips moving with words too quiet to hear.

Rhonda stopped singing and started to hiss again. Not good.

"Hold out the baby," I whispered to Jerry.

He didn't seem to hear me so I elbowed him hard, shoving him forward a step. This jostled the baby in his arms and the child's cries doubled in decibles.

The Bokor, busy with his spell casting, missed the sudden change in his zombi. She staggered forward and then hesitated, a shadow of life returning to her face. She focused on the crying child and the lights came back on in the abandoned house of her eyes. She screamed, the sound like a hundred breaking violins.

The Bokor turned even as Jerry stepped forward, his profile bleak with horror as he reached out for his wife. She stared at the baby as her banshee cry died in the space. Then she turned on her master, hands like claws ripping into him before he could react. She attacked him like a wild thing, biting and clawing and finally kneeling on his chest as she bashed his head into the floorboards over and over until it pulped like a melon.

Jerry and I watched, both helpless in our own ways. I'd hoped that she would regain her mind, that the baby would be a strong enough tether to pull her home, but I hadn't counted on her rage or her grief. I hesitated to shoot, torn between her and the Bokor.

When the Bokor's heart finally stopped, so did the magic animating Rhonda, taking the choice from my hands.

The candles flickered and the baby kept on crying. Jerry stumbled forward and hovered for a moment over the dead shape of his wife. I started to speak but couldn't find the words. The incense tickled my nose and pushed my thoughts away, making them slippery. It was time to get the hell out of here.

Jerry looked over his shoulder at me and then ran deeper into the house. _Merde_.

I hesitated. This wasn't my mess anymore. I didn't think Jerry would try to come after me. His eyes had been almost as empty as his zombi wife's. Knowing I'd proably regret this, I followed.

Banging from ahead drew my attention as I crossed into a kitchen area filled with more candles. Jerry had gone through the back and stood on the porch, lit only from the haunting glow below. He'd kicked out a section of the rotting wooden railing and stood facing out over the bluff.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I've ruined everything for you. I wanted, I just needed. . ." I couldn't make out his face, but when he spoke his words were thick, as though he choked on tears.

He wasn't speaking to me, I realized, but to the whimpering baby in his arms. I edged closer, pocketing the revolver.

"Jerry," I said softly, desperate not to spook him. "Don't do this to your son. Brett can have a life. It's not all over." It pretty much was for Jerry, of course, once I figured how in God's fine name I was going to explain this mess to the police. There was no point brining all that up right now, however.

"I don't know," he said, turning to face me. He backed up, his heels hanging over the drop into the dark whispering woods far below. "I can't. I didn't."

I held out my blood-streaked, gloved hands in supplication, showing they were empty, trying to demonstrate that I was not a threat. "We'll sort this out back in town. Come back this way."

For a moment I thought he was listening. Jerry stepped toward me and thrust Brett into my outstretched hands. I gripped the baby and pulled him closer on instinct, frozen in surprise.

"No!" I yelled even as he moved back and dropped off the veranda.

For a terrible moment he seemed to hang in the air, a dangling puppet just before its strings are cut. Then he fell into the textured black of the swamps below, his death heralded by the sharp crack of breaking branches.

Then the night grew still. I slumped back against the siding. The metal still held residual warmth from the sun. In my arms, the baby gurgled and stopped crying. His eyes stared up at me, shining bits of glass in the weak light. His blanket was wet and he reeked of urine and worse, but I clutched his tiny life close and stood in the dark for a long time.

* * * * *

"Were it my story, I would throw the baby out with the bath water at the end." –Andy

##  All is Violent, All is Bright

### Story Notes

_I wrote this story to try my hand at writing a Robert E Howard/Fritz Leiber sort of story and to try to give it the feel of those early fantasy works. Judging from the comments I got on it, I succeeded. And that's good enough for me. I love the characters and world I created for this and hope that I'll write more stories or a novel or four with them in the future._

* * *

The two riders wound up a switch-backed trail toward the jagged spires of the Eastern Pass and found the road to Ilumshiir blocked by a rock-fall. The riders pulled up on the high ridge, deciding whether to turn back toward the destruction behind them or to go west into the Redgrim valley. Deep wagon ruts and the muddled prints of many feet showed refugees from the war in the Stormlands had chosen the valley.

The riders were a mismatched pair, stained with dust both grey and red. One was a warrioress of Kabyl's obsidian deserts, well armed and dwarfed only by the size of her iguanodon mount. The other was as slight and golden-skinned as her companion was muscled and night-black. She rode an okapi without saddle or rein and under her many veils golden tattoos shifted and danced along supple limbs, the marks of a sorceress of Simorgh.

In the sky behind them swelled the first terrible storm of the rain season, chased along by the Skyborn and Stormlords warring. Back was not an option.

"If this rock-fall is natural, I'll eat Eshe's tail," Aza, the Kabyl, said. "Someone wants the refugees to head into the valley instead of taking the higher road." She gestured up the narrow path toward the too-neatly stacked rocks with one long arm.

Panya, her veiled companion, shrugged. Exhaustion painted dark circles beneath her orange eyes. From the bag slung at her hip, she lifted a bone cylinder. It was as long as her forearm and set with many white and black stones. More black than white, now.

"We don't have much time," she said. "If all the stones turn before we reach the Binder-Priests at Ilumshiir, the demon will escape and neither you nor I will survive a second encounter."

"Nor will we outride those clouds." Aza squeezed her muscled thighs, sending Eshe, her mount, forward.

She looked out over the deep dull wound of the valley below. Smoke rose from a village in the distance and her ever-hungry stomach rumbled at the thought of food not dried and seasoned with travel grit.

"Down then," she said. "Perhaps these mudders will have meat and a place to shelter from that storm."

* * *

The only meat the fat men in the village had was fish, salted and dried in the last wet season. Panya bargained with the four men who had come out to greet them at the village arch. They offered up a round of fragrant goat's cheese and cakes made with sorghum, yam, and chilies to go with the string of dried green khep fish.

Aza sat on her mount, watching the slight shivering of grass curtains in the bamboo houses. The village was small, perhaps thirty dwellings, all on stilts stuck in the cracked red earth that lifted their floors to eye-level with the mounted warrioress. Faces flashed behind the curtains but none besides the five men stepped out. The fatness of the men worried Aza, though she couldn't quite finger why. The rains had clearly yet to come, the river beyond the village was a trickle of red-brown thick with silts and bilflies clustered in lazy bunches over the tepid, sour water.

Usually children, shy at first but inquisitive, were the ones to greet her and Panya, as curious about the giant lizard and her giant rider as they were about the tiny sorceress and her big-eared, striped mount. No children emerged in this village. Aza heard no laughter, no sounds at all from the quiet huts. She felt eyes on them and didn't like it, shoving away the thought of a rabbit in an eagle's shadow. She put her hand on the Oliphant ivory hilt of her sword and kept her gaze on the houses until Panya turned to her.

"Seven _kemis_ seem fair?" Panya said, indicating that Aza should count out the square copper coins and hand them over.

Aza grunted and tossed the coins down onto the red earth. The talkative man gave her a toothy half smile and picked up the coins in a heavy fist.

"There's caves, just up there," he said, pointing to a cliff beyond the village that rose steeply toward the high plateaus. "The first cave is big but not so dry. Inward a little are the ones we use for storage during the rains. Should shelter you well enough." He shrugged, too casual and Aza saw strange looks traded among his companions.

Panya thanked the men and took the sack of goods they had bargained for. The pair turned their mounts toward the cliffs as the first peal of thunder echoed down the valley, heralding a wave of cool, damp air and carrying the scent of promised rains.

Aza watched the houses as they rode between toward the cliff path. For a moment one grass curtain flashed aside and she would have sworn that inhuman eyes set in a triangular face peered out until a brown hand yanked the curtain back. The last thing she saw before they left the village was the flash of an ankle beneath another curtain whisking closed, and the sound of silver bangles jingling.

* * *

Clutch Mother felt the thundering storm vibrating in her bones as the smell of warm bodies filtered down into her deep cave though tiny cracks in the upper stones. Spicy human scents mingled with something colder and larger, tangy like a lizard. Excitement flushed her green blood through the thick coils of her resting body, pumping renewed energy into her four hearts.

All around her slept her children, grown thin and hungry since their last meal weeks before. The more human halves of their bodies were leathery and tight, scaled skin sticking to breasts fallen flat with hunger and outlining ribs. The scales on their tails and arms had turned dull instead of burnished and their hair hung lank and grey.

At first the refugees had been fatter and softer and so plentiful that she and her children rarely went hungry, even letting some rest in the outer caves unmolested. As the sun season stretched on, those fleeing the war turned tougher and leaner and fewer.

Clutch Mother yawned wide, her forked tongue tasting the air. From her mouth crawled four tiny sand-colored asps. A hissing command sent her scouts up through the stones to bite and soften the prey.

The roiling storm had brought food to her caves. It was time to wake her children.

* * *

Panya and Aza entered the cave on foot, leaving Eshe and Deka out on the wide ledge in front of the gaping cave mouth. The first chamber was as wide as three war Oliphants trunk to tail and half again as deep. There were the remains of a firepit, long cold, to one side where the late afternoon sun poured in through gaps in the stone and mud ceiling. Faint traces of urine and ox sweat lingered in the back of the cave. The large chamber had two off-shoots, both leading into a wide tunnel that split into a honeycomb network of chambers.

There was another scent in the air as the two explored a couple chambers farther inward. Metallic and acidic, resting on the tongue and setting the tiny hairs on the back of Panya's neck to shivering.

"I'd almost rather sleep in the storm," Aza said, touching a deep gouge in one wall where the light from Panya's sunstone revealed a dried black mark that stank of blood.

"That storm will last days," Panya said, motioning that they should go back toward the outer caves. "We'll need shelter else we'll drown in rain and history will remember us as fools if at all."

"Everyone history remembers is dead anyway," Aza muttered. She settled her rhino-hide shield on her shoulder and followed Panya out.

"I think that third chamber with the three paths off will be our best option. The roof looks sound enough."

"Eshe won't fit in there," Aza said, undoing the iguanodon's girth and rubbing the tough purple hide with a broad palm. "And I doubt after last time she'll let you shrink her down."

"I was tired," Panya said as Eshe burbled her agreement to Aza's barb.

"You are tired now," Aza said and Panya had nothing to say to that.

Panya pulled out the okapi statue that hung at her throat and whispered the words that set Deka away. While Aza rubbed her mount down and hauled their gear into the chosen chamber, Panya took her sunstones out into the fading light and refilled their glow. As she made her way back, she took a different route, checking the chambers around their chosen resting place carefully and committing the turns and crannies to her considerable memory.

Aza strapped Eshe's tail spikes on as well as fitted the thumb blades to the iguanodon's large front claws. If trouble was coming for them from somewhere in these caves, Aza didn't want to leave her mount without defense. The iguanodon moved to the deepest part of the large cave and settled against one of the walls, curling up with her feet tucked beneath her massive body.

Panya met up with her companion and they settled down on their bedrolls, eating a meal of sorghum cakes and fish. Not sure what might be listening, they talked with hand signals as they ate, blending the pidgin into their natural movements of eating and shifting.

Then, prepared as they could be for whatever might come for them, they settled in to rest, Aza taking first watch with her long Kabyl sword bared across her knees. Thunder echoed down the caverns and the first torrents of rain began to fall.

* * *

Clutch Mother's scouts hesitated at a branching and paths. Down one way was the hot scent of humans. Down another, a thicker scent not unlike their own, as though some great cold-blooded beast slept beyond. That way also carried the scent of fresh water and the desert asps shrank back, choosing to head toward the human's heat.

The one in front caught the glint of open eyes and flattened its thin body against the rough cavern wall, sliding silently toward the watcher. The human's soft skin beckoned with pulsing warmth and the snake aimed its strike for the bared flesh of a calf.

The other asps slipped up behind the sleeping form of another human. Her veils and cloak obscured her warmth and they hesitated, sliding silently around her lumped shape, looking for an opening. A bared arm, tossed over her black-haired head, offered a prime target.

Before the first asp could strike, a high-pitched chittering broke the silence, jolting the half-asleep swordswoman fully upright. A sandaled foot struck out and crushed the snake beneath it, grinding its twisting body into the rough stone floor.

The tattoo on the sorceress's arm awoke just before the hapless asps could sink venomous fangs into the bared golden flesh. A mongoose curved away and struck with a warning cry, its supple golden body leaping free from skin. The magical creature took out another asp and the tip of Aza's sword found the final scout.

Deep in her lair, Clutch Mother felt her scouts deaths like the sting of a wasp, one, two, three, then four. Her children were already wending their way in a hungry, slithering flood toward the humans above, too far gone for her to call them back. She shook her thick, triangular head at the quick jolt of unaccustomed doubt. Her children were many and harder to crush than her tiny scouts. They would find and kill the humans and their beast and then they would bring her the creatures' hearts, eyes, and spleens.

It was always so.

* * *

"I thought it would be something more than tiny snakes," Aza said. Tired as she was, she couldn't quite keep a note of disappointment from her voice. Battle-need rippled in her muscles and her sword blade was hardly wet enough to quench her deadly lust.

"I think you will get your wish as these are no usual asps," Panya said. She pulled a small pouch from beneath her veils and poured a measure of iridescent dust into one palm. Her mongoose scouted the edges of the room, sniffing and chirping as it checked the walls for more tiny serpents.

Panya gathered the asp bodies into a pile and poured the dust over them, her lips forming words that Aza could not make out in the dim light from the single sunstone resting on her pack. The dust hovered in the air and then formed a shape, coalescing into a creature not fully snake nor woman, but somewhere between, with long-clawed hands and a thick, whipping tail where legs should be. The mirage hung above the bodies for the space of three surprised breaths and then dissipated.

"Lamia," said Aza with disgust, thinking about the silver bangles she'd seen in the village. "And when we're dead and eaten, those fat villagers can waddle up here in sunlight and pick our bones clean of metal and silk."

Whatever reply Panya might have made drowned in the chiming of tiny bells. She held up a pale palm and sighed. "Lamia. Many more, coming up all the ways."

Aza hefted her shield and grinned blinding white in the half-light. "See you in the middle, little mouse."

Silent and quick, the woman dispersed, each taking the path they'd discussed at supper, each whispering a prayer to the gods of the other for a good battle and safe return.

* * *

The first lamia shoved aside her sisters and slithered up a twisting path. The sickly sweet smell of human sweat drove her hunger-crazed and her long claws clicked open and closed in anticipation. She raced ahead of the pack that had taken the eastern tunnel and followed her slit nose and tasting tongue.

The lamia stopped, confused, as she came to a woven cloak, still warm and stinking. A tall shadow unwound from a cleft in the stone, its body heat temporarily masked by the trickling rain and wet rock. A sword flashed out and the whipping blade cut into her neck and tossed her scraggled head from her shoulders in a gush of thick green blood.

Aza stepped over the twitching body, cutting the tail into three pieces before she moved down the path, picking up her cloak as she went. She left the sunstone in the pocket of her leather jerkin. The lamia's eyes had blazed red in the darkness. Good enough for her. She set out to hunt more glowing eyes.

* * *

Panya raced down the western tunnel, one hand trailing along the wall to keep her bearings in the dark. She'd sent the activated sunstone with Aza, knowing the warrioress might need the light. Her hand brushed air and Panya ducked into the narrow channel. It opened into the central passage, though it would be a tight fit even for her slight frame.

The slightest shushing of scales on stone warned her and Panya turned as glowing red eyes flashed by the opening and then returned, the lamia squeezing her human shoulders into the passage as her sisters crushed in behind her, all hissing with hunger and deadly desires. Panya held her nerve and slipped deeper, pushing her body through the crack but not quite exiting into the passage.

The lamia shoved farther in until Panya could smell their sour, acrid scent like burning hair and rotting fish. Nearer. Nearer. Red eyes blazed above dripping fangs as the first snake-woman opened her jaws wide and her breath like Death's own washed over Panya grimacing face.

Now. All the lamia that could fit in the passage had crammed in. Panya's fingers moved like a spider's, spinning closed her deadly web. The tiny golden spiders that usually circled her ankles felt the command and, back behind the revolting lamia, closed the web across the opening with deadly golden threads that would burn and strip flesh from bone when touched.

The lamia in the rear pressed in and started to scream as the brimstone silk did its job but Panya's trap was not yet done. From off her shoulders lifted the gold bodies of bees, Arcani wasps the size of a human thumb and bred for their poisoned sting and crippling bite.

The narrow passage turned into a pit of death as wasps swarmed and the burning silk killed all escape.

Panya slid out into the central passage and heard the wet smack of flesh on stone. Without a backward glance, she moved off toward the fighting, hunting down the lamia who might have taken this middle way.

* * *

Aza smashed her rhino-hide shield into a snake-woman's misshapen face, slicing her across the eyes with the shark's teeth rim. She'd drowned the black rhinocerous who formed her shield with her bare hands in the bay of Gbo and then killed the shark who appeared to steal her prize. The razor teeth went through flesh as though it were the soft cheese she had eaten at supper, splattering the lamia's eyes in a wet gush.

Another snake-woman closed in, striking with her barbed and poisonous tail. Aza dodged and used her sword to remove the offending appendage. Her blade snapped up and took care of the shrieking lamia's head before she pivoted and helped another into the wall with a sharp smack of her shield.

Stepping over the bodies, Aza laughed and bared her teeth as the tunnel filled with more glowing red eyes. Sweat slicked her body. She was warmed up now, she thought. It was time for less finesse and more slaughter. Leaping forward, her blade went hunting for the first volunteer.

* * *

Panya found herself cut off from the eastern passage by a roiling clot of angry lamia. The monsters seemed unhappy with the ruin of their sisters. The sorceress turned and ran toward the outer cavern but three lamia lurched up from the stone floor, red eyes giving her warning just in time to turn aside.

Into a dead end. She had no trap set here. The far wall appeared too soon and she heard the scraping of a thousand scales behind.

Panya turned and set her back to the wall, watching as the dark room filled with the bloody glow of ruby gazes. Claws clicked and snapped and inhuman noises issued from half-human throats.

"Look at poor little me," Panya said, stripping off her veils by the handful as the creatures closed in. This group was warier of her than their sisters had been.

Her golden naked body, hot with exertion, proved too great a lure for the lamia and their caution died as they surged forward on three sides, green venom shining as it dripped from needle fangs.

The silken veils rose up in an obscuring cloud, strangling the first lamia and trapping two others in twisting, roiling coils of bold and killing color. The other lamia tore through their sisters, shoving the dying aside as they salivated for the tiny woman.

The silks fell away but Panya was gone. In her place was a tigress like those that live in the jungles of Ramaya, orange of eye and gold and black of fur. Her claws rended the chest of a lamia and her thick teeth dug into the scaled body of another. The lamia closed in and struck but their needle fangs broke and their claws slid off the heavy fur.

Growling, tiger-Panya turned the dead-end into a heaving pile of dying snakes. When no more twitched and all the red lights were out, she took off back down the passage.

* * *

The final three lamia, smaller and more cowardly, turned and fled back down toward Clutch Mother, one nursing her bleeding arm. Their ruby eyes blazed with fear instead of fury and their winding tails couldn't seem to help them flee with speed enough.

Darkness and heat flared in the vision of one and she screamed warning to her sisters as searing fire kissed her belly. The lamia looked down and saw her skin parted hip to hip. Her glistening intestines spilled out into her hands, flat and empty as the tunnels left behind by mud worms.

Aza flipped her sword up and sliced the shocked lamia's body into three neat pieces. Her shield, turned from dull black to a deeper shine with snake blood, flashed out and stunned another unfortunate creature, her lanky grey hair catching and tearing on the shark's tooth rim. She jammed her blade into the lamia's mouth and yanked it out through the cheek in a fresh spurt of bone and blood.

The third lamia tried to turn back. Tiger-Panya sprang from a side tunnel and took the snake-woman down, her jaws crushing the bony head and her hind legs raking the lashing tail into stinking ribbons.

* * *

Clutch Mother opened her impressive maw and screamed her sorrow into the stones, setting the whole of the caverns vibrating. Her children were all dead, each life snuffed out by the murderous prey above. A hundred feet of coils unwound as she set off up the passage, her thick body filling the tunnel and her scales rubbing the stone smooth as she went, boiling forward like lava burning new channels.

* * *

Tiger-Panya felt the vibrations through her paws and took off at a run toward the cave where her bag still lay. She heard the Kabyl warrioress running behind her. The lamia had a protector, a brood mother full of foul powers who had infested this nest of evil. It seemed that mother was less than happy with her and Aza's work this night.

The women reached their resting cavern just as the vibrations and oppressive rumbling grew close. Tiger-Panya paused only to grab up Aza's purse in her teeth and then she plunged into the passage toward the large outer cave.

The cave was soaked with rain and slick mud coated the floor. Eshe lifted her head from her tail and looked at the two of them as they slammed into the open, as though to ask what their rush was. A blaze of lightening lit the sky beyond the open cave mouth and as the crackling light faded, another, more steady glow lit the cavern.

Clutch Mother jammed her thick body out of the passage. Aza leapt and struck with her sword, the metal raising smoking welts but not piercing the mighty scales.

Tiger-Panya shifted then, shaking off the vertigo of the change with a tense shudder. She gripped Aza's purse in her hands and screamed to get the huge serpent's attention. The great diamond head, big as an water buffalo, swung away from the annoying warrioress and Clutch Mother's body uncurled.

She struck, fangs white and gleaming, seeking to swallow the tiny sorceress whole.

Aza cried out a warning but Panya sprang up to meet the falling jaws. The mighty mandibles closed tight.

For a long moment, Aza felt that time had stopped. She gripped her shield and sword in petrified horror.

Then the giant vermillion snake began to shudder. The Kabyl sprang free of the coils as they curled and convulsed, retreating to the far end of the cavern with her snarling, unhappy mount.

Clutch Mother twisted and twisted, her mouth opening and closing in fetid, suctioning gasps. Her main heart caught fire and her scales turned to paper, ripping open on the rough stone cavern walls, ceiling, floor as she tried to eject the poison from her body.

Finally, she laid still, three hearts still smoldering and beating with irregular, dying thumps.

A small gold mouse skittered across the cavern floor and sat on Aza's sandaled foot for a moment before Mouse-Panya turned from the creature that was her namesake back into her human form.

"Silver coins," she whispered from her raw throat. "Silver is their poison, just as all metal is mine. But we have to cut it up and destroy the hearts to be safe." She collapsed and hardly protested when Eshe's cold tongue bathed her bloody cheek.

"I will do it," Aza said, wrapping her friend into her own cloak and laying her on the driest part of the floor. "Sleep, little mouse."

* * *

The rains finally ceased on the afternoon of the second day since the two mis-matched women had gone into the cursed caverns. The cursed women had all fallen into a sleep from which none had awoken on the first night and their scaly bodies had turned back to flesh, but the men were not brave enough to remove the binding silver charms.

Sunlight made the greedy ones brave enough to take up silvered weapons and make their way to the steep path up to the caverns.

Surprise stopped each in his tracks as a the golden woman on the okapi picked her way down the trail, her veils stained with blood but her body seemingly intact. Behind her followed the giant warrioress, her white teeth bared as she sat astride the eggplant-skinned iguanodon.

"I am a sorceress," the golden woman said, waggling her fingers and shaking her head at the men as they backed away from the road.

"I kill snakes to break my fast," said the Kabyl and her grin promised pain more than mirth. Her huge black hand rested on the ivory hilt of her sword and she pulled free the blade a finger's breath, offering death with a shrug.

The men glanced between them, none greedy enough to face the strangers but each still full enough of fattened pride that he would not be the first to retreat. Then the sorceress took out a bone cylinder and her orange eyes narrowed.

"Two left," she said to the warrioress.

"How much time?"

"A week, if luck holds."

The Kabyl slid her blade back into its sheath with a heavy sigh.

"Luck isn't holding," the sorceress said, as one gem shimmered and shadows bled onto the clear surface like ink on water. "Ride, ride for Ilumshiir, as though the demon himself nips at our heels."

With a whooping cry from unhappy throats, the two riders set leg to mount and charged off up the valley road, the thick red mud flying in their wake like splashes of blood on the landscape.

* * * * *

"The lesser seen try/succeed cycle." -Josh

"Competence porn." -Bear

##  A Hunter's Memory of Winter

### Story Notes

_I'd had the idea of a hunter in turn of the century Russia being hired to kill a Rusalka and finally got around to writing it during Clarion. I also wanted to try my hand at a very spare prose style (especially compared to the other story I turned in for week 3, my Howard/Leiber pastiche) and so I tried to write using as few adverbs as possible. I also wrote the story in present tense, which isn't something I write in often. And by not often, I mean that this is the third story ever that I can recall using it. It went over well with the group and I did very little revision other than to clarify a few things (as Elizabeth Bear says, I don't have a transparent head apparently)._

* * *

A tall man enters the Traktir and glances around at the wooden tables crowding the thick stone walls, looking for someone. Even though he is late, he enters alone so Ka knows he must be Pervoi Tarakov and that he is here to hire her.

Rusalka, his letter said when it caught up to her in Pskof. Her reply told him she would wear a blue shirt with red embroidery. It is the nicest shirt she owns.

His eyes are the bright blue of lake water in sunlight, his hair golden straw. She lets him watch her face but keeps the scarred side hidden behind her curtain of dark hair and turned away from the bear-fat lamps. He clears his throat but she slurps the last of her _tyurya_ , the dregs of the sour rye in the soup clinging to her teeth. After she washes them down with _kvass_ , she looks at him straight on.

"You are Karaka?" he asks, shifting on the rough-hewn bench and trying not to stare at her ruined face too long. There was a time she would have cared what a handsome man thought but today she stares back. After a moment he drops his gaze and she does not think he will question her identity or ability.

She pulls out his letter, the paper travel-worn and fraying, and shrugs. "You want a rusalka killed. I told you my fee."

"I do," he says. "I need it done before the full moon." He glances around, but the few other patrons here are busy with cards or deep into their cups. His yellow silk purse clinks on the table.

"Where?" Ka asks. She fingers a coin. Gold. Half up front, half when her job is done. She does not worry he will short her. Her reputation is well known and he can see for himself her guns, the LeMat at her side, the rifle leaning against the bench.

He taps his long fingers on the table and then scratches a rough map into the soft, blemished pine.

"This." He punctuates it with a spilled droplet of broth. "Is here, in Salvino. Here, the Valdai Hills beyond Edrovo. There is a small lake and by the eastern shore are three white stones. The rusalka comes there every dark of the moon."

Four days. It is enough time on motorbike, though the roads here are un-patched and full of stones.

"Good," she says, dismissing him.

Like most men who would rather hire another to fix their mistakes, he wants more. He opens his mouth and she can see the desire to explain, to keep her from passing judgment on him. Ka holds up a hand.

"I will return when it is done," she says.

"Don't you want to know why?" he asks anyway.

"No," Ka says.

"The rusalka will be free of the lake on the next full moon and she will come for me. What if you fail?" Fear makes him less handsome.

"I never fail," she says.

* * *

Ka sleeps on the side of the road until the third night and makes good time despite the rough hill roads. She stops early on the third night and asks an old woman for space in her shed and fuel for her bike, offers a rabbit she shot in the road. The old woman smiles with too few teeth and says that everyone calls her "babushka." She seems too alone to be anyone's grandmother but feeds Ka _pelmeni_ dumplings stuffed with fresh meat that tastes like spiced memories. When it threatens to peel a scab from her heart, Ka puts down her plate and withdraws to her wool blanket.

She sleeps later than she meant and buys oil off the babushka. The woman has said few words to her which Ka mistakes for the usual disapproval.

"You go to find the rusalka?" the babushka says as Ka shakes the last of the oil into her tank and hands back the jug and funnel.

Ka studies her for a moment but the old woman's face is as lined as her palms and as difficult to read. Ka can find no reason to lie. This lone woman is no threat to her mission.

"Yes," she says.

"I hear her singing sometimes. Soft on the wind, so much sorrow." The babushka stares over the top of Ka's head, out into the hills beyond.

Ka nods, saying her thanks for the meal and the oil. She walks the motorbike out the garden gate.

"You will fail," the babushka says.

Ka's shoulders tense and a flash of anger, hot and unwelcome, knifes through her. She turns back and glares at the old woman.

"You do not know me. Why would you say this?" she asks even as she wonders why she bothers to argue with this lonely babushka. For all she knows, this is the first conversation the woman has had in a month.

"You have a heart like winter. The rusalka craves life and warmth. She will not let down her guard around one who is dead already." The babushka smiles and her creased face turns from damaged leather to crumpled paper with contours and depth.

"There is nothing in this world I cannot kill," Ka says. She kicks her motorbike awake and her tires spit up a tiny storm of red grit. The words are sour on her tongue as she drives away.

* * *

The road to the lake is overgrown and just before dusk she passes a run-down farmstead. The roof is half-caved in and the garden gate is a riot of spring vines. Beyond, Ka sees the glint of sunlight on water and she shuts off her motorbike.

Ka stashes her bike inside the wall of the house. Broken furniture, polished and lacquered, litters the floor. A faded yellow ribbon dangles, caught in the broken boards of a bed. The materials are richer than she expects in this rural home and Ka thinks of Pervoi Tarakov's yellow silk purse. Money lived here, once.

She knows the stories of how rusalka are made. A woman wronged, dying in a body of water, trapped there forever save for when a blue moon rises in summer. A rusalka is doomed to lure and consume unwary men until she gets justice or is destroyed. Ka has silver bullets she made herself and had blessed by three priests. Her folded-steel knife is also blessed. She will find a way to kill this thing.

Ka takes her rifle and her woolen blanket out to the lake. For a moment she stands and listens to the wind hush through the pines overhead. Like all places to her, it tastes like snow. She finds the white rocks. One has a dark stain at shoulder-level to Ka, about where most women's heads would be. Rusalka are made by suicide or murder and Ka, thinking on Pervoi Tarakov's flat summer eyes, would put her coin on murder.

She shoves those thoughts away. This is not part of her job. She is here to hunt things that others will not hunt. Nothing more.

Nothing less. Ka finds a place inside the whispering trees with a good view of the white rocks and lays out her blanket. She cuts branches and makes a blind. As night steals up into the hills, she settles down to wait with the butt of her Vintovka Mosina pressed against her plain linen shirt.

Full dark descends and the stars wink into being until there are too many to count. The air turns from summer warmth to summer chill but Ka does not shiver. She has known true cold and this is not it. She waits with her unscarred cheek pressed against the cold wood and iron.

She hears the music first, a sound like the chiming of tiny bells. As it grows closer it shifts from clear and piercing to soft humming. The air seems heavier, taking on a scent that Ka associates with funerals; rose-water and old blood.

The lake ripples and turns green, glowing as though lit from beneath. The rusalka walks from the water and sits on a rock, carrying the glow with her. Her skin is pearlescent, her hair ink black. She sits naked on the stone and pulls out a glowing comb, stroking it through her hair as her song takes on words.

I do not care for water

In the embrace of my cold cold pond

A lover's hands, hard and jealous

Always entwined 'round my neck

They come to me in moonlight

Sad men, heartsick with singing

I seduce the life denied me

Stolen from the lover's lips

Death holds no beauty

Only an absence

I leave them here, as he left me

Dead beneath the rippling

Until the day he comes to me

And I can drown him with a song

One foot in the waves, I'll sit

Combing water from my hair

And for a long moment, Ka listens, absorbed despite herself in the rusalka's tale of love turned deadly. The sorrow laps as insistent as waves against the locks around Ka's memories and her eyes burn with tears she has never shed.

When she pulls the trigger, it is more in self-defense than out of planning. The bullet never hits the rusalka. Green light flares and Ka watches, her finger still holding the trigger all the way down, as the bullet slows and stops, falling into the lake with a tiny splash.

The rusalka stops singing and stares into the woods. Ka holds her breath and slides her left hand down to grip the hilt of her knife. She does not think the creature can leave the lake, but she is ready. Her finger eases off the trigger.

The rusalka does not give her a second chance. The green light winks out and the only sign of the creature's movements are a splash as she dives back into the lake. Ka lays on her blanket until morning, clutching her rifle.

The moon will be a sliver the next night and Ka decides to go back to the old woman. She hates to ask for help but her silver bullets have failed and her quarry gone to ground. She worries that she will not kill the rusalka and her mind turns the old woman's words around and around, hunting for meaning.

The road down takes her back to the withered babushka's gate and Ka stops but cannot find the words to ask what she wants to know. The old woman does not seem surprised to see her and after clucking her tongue against her few teeth, she invites Ka to share her meal.

"Do you know a way to lure the rusalka out before the dark moon?" Ka asks after she eats her fill of the _tyurya_ the woman offers her in a chipped porcelain bowl.

"A man would lure her," the babushka says. "But a woman? Not without shared suffering." The old woman touches Ka's wrist, shoving back her sleeve, and reveals the thick rope of scar encircling it.

Ka yanks her arm back and sticks it under the table like a petulant child. She wishes the woman had vodka to offer though she never drinks while on the hunt.

"What is your name?" the babushka asks.

"Karaka," Ka says. She sees no harm in giving it. It is a given name, not her true one. Her real name is buried in years and deep snows. Ka gives her a look that is meant to quell any more talk but it is as effective on this old woman as glaring at the sun for being bright.

"Who would name a girl 'punishment'?" the babushka asks.

Shoving her chair out, Ka leaves the hut, making a rough bed beneath the eaves.

She sleeps in fits and shakes and blood on snow glittering in green light haunts her from inside dreams she does not wish to recall. The babushka wakes her with a gentle hand, the first human touch Ka has allowed in a long time. It is a sign to her of how disturbed she is that she does not cut the old woman's fingers off on instinct as she wakes.

"How do you know so much of this rusalka," Ka asks.

"She was my granddaughter," the old woman says after a long pause. She motions for Ka to sit at the table. "I pushed her to marry Pervoi and his money. It was my mistake and those she lures here pay my price, again and again."

"How do I kill her?"

"You cannot bring Pervoi here?" The babushka sighs as Ka shakes her head.

"I was hired to stop the rusalka. I cannot kill those who hire me. Bad business, that."

For a time, they eat in silence. Ka starts to think that the old woman will not help her but then she speaks, her wrinkled face a map of sorrow.

"You must lure her to you and take her comb," the babushka says as she watches Ka eat a breakfast of rye bread, goat cheese, and pine needle tea.

"Will taking the comb destroy the rusalka?" Ka asks.

The old woman nods her head. "Lure her, show her your pain."

Ka sips her tea, letting the bitter liquid wash away the night and appease the taste of winter. "I don't know how," she says, but she considers the words, the rusalka's song echoing in her mind.

"Tell her your story," the babushka says. "Give her a map of your scars."

* * *

Ka goes back to the ruined house. Again she puts her motorbike away and waits for nightfall. This time she stands by the stones with her most prized possessions, her weapons, gathered with her.

When the stars blanket the sky and the sliver of moon rests in the pines, Ka picks up her Vintovka Mosina rifle. She chooses to begin with the easy memories.

"I took this rifle off a Cossack who tried to rape me," she says. "I shot his horse out from under him." She lays the rifle aside and draws her LeMat pistol from its holster. "This I won from a French Dragoon fresh off the boat in Libava. I played him forty-seven hands of Svoi Kozyri and he had nothing left but this gun to wager by the end."

This, too, she lays aside, stacking it onto her wool blanket beside her rifle. Then she draws her knife and turns the blade from side to side so that the patterned steel ripples like the surface of the lake. There is no green light yet, but Ka feels the air changing, growing expectant and even the insects are quiet as though they, too, listen to her story.

"I took this knife as payment from a Portuguese merchant when I hunted and drowned the Afreet that killed his crew." Down onto the blanket it goes.

Ka reaches for the horn buttons on her shirt and pauses as a hint of green smears the reflective surface of the lake. Her prey listens. With a deep breath that tastes more of rose petals than wet snow, Ka begins to remove her shirt.

She never fails to do what she says she will. If this is the way, she knows she must tear open the wounds and draw her prey in with blood.

She removes the linen and touches the scar on her neck. "This is where the demon-possessed Aleksei wrapped his whip around my throat and pulled me from beneath my bed." Next, a long, wide scar running from collarbone over ribs to her hip. "Here I tried to stop him and his men from beating papa to death. I got in the way of a sword." She remembers the flat of the blade smacking into her side, knocking her back and leaving a raw weeping wound.

Ripples form in the lake absent of wind and the green glow spreads, suffusing the water. A soft chiming of bells like a question pushes her onward, asking for more.

Ka slides her shaking fingers up to her face, shoving aside her thick braid. Her fingertips brush her ruined cheek. "This is a burn," she says. "I brought Aleksei a cold supper one night on the Steppe. He gifted me the mark to teach me what warmth was."

A dark head breaks the surface and slowly the rusalka emerges. Ka closes her eyes and wraps her arms around her body, the chill of the night a distant rival to the freezing memories she rips open now. She cannot stop, the words keep rising above the scars, dragging her forward.

"It snowed. Every day it snowed until the horses refused to move and the trains froze to the tracks." Ka touches her wrists, feeling the thick ropes of scar that cling to her wrists like bracelets she cannot remove. "He dragged me along in chains, taking bets with his men on how long I'd survive." In her mind, she sees the white snow and Aleksei's red eyes, the demon laughing as it goaded the man.

Ka opens her eyes when the rusalka touches her arm and pulls her toward the rocks. She follows the creature and lets her unravel the thick braid. The rusalka's skin feels softer than feathers, not at all like the scales Ka expected. She lets the rusalka pull her into an embrace as they sit leaning like lovers on the white stones. Water soaks Ka's trousers and she shivers.

"You have beautiful hair," the rusalka says. "I had yellow ribbons for mine, once." Her voice sifts through the air, sounding as intimate as a whisper and yet seeming to come from somewhere far away. The rusalka draws out a comb from her slick, wet locks. It is silver bone, carved in the shape of a sleeping woman.

Ka feels a comb slide into her own hair and then the tears come. She almost reaches for the glint of carved bone in the rusalka's hand but her limbs are too heavy. Without the cold wrapped around her heart, she does not know how to do what she must do. No one has shown her such understanding.

"What was your name?" Ka asks, her voice clashing against the soft glow the rusalka bathes them in.

"Ofimia," the rusalka says. "Pervoi sent you." This is not a question but Ka answers.

"Yes," she whispers. "I have come to kill you."

"I know," the rusalka says with a hint of laughter crowding out the sorrow in her voice. "You shot at me last night." She curls an arm around Ka's bare waist, resting her pointed chin on Ka's scarred shoulder so that they sit cheek to cheek, breasts against spine.

Ka smiles and stretches her ruined face in a way she has not for many years.

"I'm sorry," she says. She does not want to move, but the comb rests in her hair and she still has a job to fulfill.

"No," says the rusalka. A green-limned hand pushes the comb through Ka's hair in a final stroke and then presses it into her chilled palm. "I am dead already. Will you make me a promise?"

Ka shivers and part of her wants to keep the comb in her hair, to dive beneath the lake with the rusalka and know such peace. Instead she nods and turns her cheek to look into the creature's dark eyes. The rusalka brushes her lips against Ka's. She tastes like tears.

"Tell me what happened to Aleksei," the rusalka says.

* * *

The comb in her trouser pocket glows green even in daylight and Ka wraps it in a scrap of wool before she enters Savino. She pays a grubby child a chip of gold to take her message to Pervoi Tarakov and then waits in an elm grove off the road toward Bologoi.

It is late afternoon when he finally comes, dismounting his horse and striding into the grove without fear.

"The boy said you await your final payment," he says and smug hope brightens the flat blue of his eyes. "Have you proof that she will haunt me no longer?"

"Yes," Ka says. She removes the wrapped comb and holds it out.

He crosses to her, never seeing the knife she carries in her right hand. She steps in close, letting the wrapping fall and the glowing green comb glimmer between her fingers. Something warns Pervoi and he stops short, his eyes flicking up to her face. Too late.

Ka whips her knife up and the blade cuts through his throat in a splash of red. He falls first to his knees and then to his side, hands clutching as they try to hold back the flood from his neck. Ka watches him work his jaw as though if he could find the breath he would curse her. Then his eyes turn to glass and his jaw stills.

The comb dissolves in her hand, pearlescent sand trickles through her fingers and disappears before it touches the earth.

"You are the last," she says to his corpse.

Ka takes the road north east. The air tastes only of dust and her last swallow of tepid water from her canteen. The sun glints off the trees and when she closes her eyes for a moment, nothing lurks in the shadows behind her lids. As she turns at the crossroads, heading toward Medviedeva, Ka hums a haunting song, bringing the memory out into the sunlight and setting it free.

* * * * *

##  Delivering Yaehala

### Story Notes

_This story came to while I was checking out the totally awesome library at UCSD. I was on the top floor, admiring the view when one of the oversize books caught my eye. It was a gorgeous book on the history of sea-faring in Oman. I found a passage in it referring to the harvest of Frankinsence and that was that. I wrote this story because I wanted to write more otherworld fantasy and I wanted to try out a more parallel narrative in terms of themes and character histories. I think it turned out well, though if I had let the story brew in my head as long as I normally sit on story ideas, I think I could have expanded this and made the peril even more perilous. As it is, I am happy enough with it and it was well-recieved (even with unicorns)._

* * *

Alila hung from the side of the cliff by one leg and one hand, her other leg stretched out and her bare foot braced against the rough trunk of the frankincense tree. The tree's thick branches grew in gnarled tentacles out into the dry air, seeming to hover over the canyon floor a hundred feet below. Carefully, she chipped away at the frankincense resin that gathered in gashes she'd cut a fortnight before. The silvery, opaque, and fragrant nodules dropped into the sack she'd hung from pegs driven into the bark.

High above, a sand eagle wheeled, casting a narrow shadow and the wind sang a susurrus song through Alila's hidden canyon. Her twin unicorns, Hezi and Gabi, rested in the shade of a rock outcropping, safe from the high afternoon sun. Alila tried not to look down too often to pick out their dust colored shapes. She was used to heights but that didn't stop her from growing dizzy if she contemplated how broken her little body would be on the unyielding rocks below.

Alila wiped her forehead with her free hand, letting the chisel dangle on its leather cord. Only a few more trees to go and then she could head down and rest in the shade until the cool of night when the nine moons rose. Though high above them, Alila sensed the unicorns eagerness to being their twice yearly trek to the Mirror Sea.

Gabi and Hezi broke into a chiming chorus of warning calls and their voices rang like prayer bells in the canyon. From her vantage point, Alila scanned, looking for trouble as her hand went to the knife in her loin cloth. She'd faced down the lean rock lions before, but had never seen one desperate enough to come down the steep path into the narrow canyon.

Not a rock lion. Trouble came in the form of a figure on horseback, sliding more than riding down the boulder-filled cleft that led into Alila's tree-lined gorge. Hezi and Gabi emerged from the rocks, their wide heads down with curved horns and ears pointing toward the intruder. The rider's horse skidded to the canyon floor and fell to its knees with a groan that carried up to Alila's perch.

Alila tied off her incense bag and hooked it to the rope slung between her scarred breasts. She climbed down, making sure the seed pods on her wrists and ankles shook with every motion. The pods buzzed with a sound like the finger-length hunter wasps, warning off cliff vipers and scorpions that might be sunning themselves on the ledges.

The horse wasn't moving by the time Alila set a bare foot on the rocky floor. She drew her knife anyway, murmuring to the unicorns as she ducked beneath the outcropping and gathered her dajib robe and headscarf. She donned the clothing quickly, masking her gender and wrapping the headscarf so that it covered the two tattooed tears beneath her left cheekbone.

Clothed, she made her way carefully toward the fallen horse. Its sides had ceased moving by the time she drew close and the smell of fresh blood overpowered the constant scent of frankincense. Alila had thought that the horse was one of the striped desert horses the nomads favored, but its stripes were drying blood oozing from fly-crusted wounds.

The rider was swathed in brown silks also stained heavily with blood and the orange grit from the hills. Lapis beads hung from dusty brown braids that obscured the woman's face and for a moment Alila thought she, too, might be dead, but then the woman moved and made a wet sound in her throat.

Alila motioned to Gabi and pointed up the canyon path. "Scout, Gabi, scout."

The unicorn snuffled, lifting her head, and trilled acknowledgement of the command. She set off up the path, her padded cloven feet making no noise on the rock. Convinced that the unicorn would warn her if those who had killed this horse and hurt this woman approached, Alila sheathed her knife and crept up to free the woman from the dead beast.

The woman moaned as Alila dragged her out of the saddle. The woman was heavier than she expected and Alila sucked in an anxious breath. What she'd mistaken for volumes of fabric was actually the woman's heavily pregnant belly.

She left the woman propped against a boulder and ran back to fetch her water skin. When she returned, the woman's eyes were open. They weren't the honey brown or black that Alila expected, but jade green.

Alila froze. This woman wasn't just in trouble. She _was_ trouble. She shouldn't have been there. No one in the Pashenae of Namoh would dare hurt this woman. A shiver stole over Alila despite the afternoon heat, raising lizard bumps along her skin. For a moment she considered walking away, pretending she had never seen this woman. But there was a terrible, yawning hopelessness in those jade eyes that called to her, reminding Alila of a time when she had been the one bleeding alone and desperate in the desert.

"Shh, Serana," she murmured, using the proper title, as the woman tried to scrabble back from her. "I have water for you."

The princess bit her chapped lip with pearly teeth and nodded, sagging back against the rock. Alila knelt and helped her drink. Her jade eyes turned toward the path and fear clouded them again.

"My unicorn watches for those that pursue you," Alila said.

The princess nodded and her throat worked as she sought to speak. "You smell like Hojari incense," she said in a rasping voice, wrapping her arms protectively over her bulging belly. Then she sagged again, her eyes closing.

Resigned that she would not be setting out at moonrise unless she wanted to leave a royal princess alone in the canyon, Alila went about setting up camp around the sleeping woman after checking her carefully for injury. She was whole, only minor scratches and bruises blemishing her smooth, pampered skin. Alila used an empty sack to cover over the blood trail on the canyon path and, with Hezi's help, dragged the dead horse a distance off.

She didn't dare a fire, not wanting the light or smoke to draw whoever had been desperate enough to harm a princess. The cuts in the horse came from arrows and, in two places, a sword. Men had done this and Alila had no desire to face them, even with her unicorns to help defend.

She sat in the dark before moonrise and tried to remember the stories about the Pashet's Purdah, his collection of perfect women. One had eyes like amber and skin like ebon wood. One had hair like honey and skin like milk. One, the favored from the tales, was said to have hair like fire and eyes the color of the sea. Alila thought this one here must be the princess who had come as a gift from the Kingdom of Majlis, far to the south. She was said to have hair like almond skin and eyes the color of unblemished jade.

Yaehala. That was the name that whispered in Alila's memory. She had been away from the villages too long, for last the news she heard, none of the Pashet's women were with child.

Gabi came down from the path and Hezi lipped Alila's tightly cropped curls before she went up the path to keep watch. Her twin settled down, folding her long legs gracefully and then resting her tea-cup nose against Alila's ankle. Alila smiled as the unicorn's breath and beard tendrils tickled her skin. Gabi's fathomless eyes closed. The unicorn was right, Alila decided. There was no point in laying awake brooding. The princess would have answers in the morning or she wouldn't.

Alila fell asleep as the first moons rose, part of her praying that the woman would vanish in the night and take her trouble with her.

* * *

The princess had not vanished. The sun rose beyond the canyon walls, waking the insects and charming them into singing the desert's morning song.

"Eat, Serana," Alila said, handing the princess a trail cake of dried fruit, fat, and honey wrapped in waxy, purple izgo leaves.

"Call me Yaehala," the woman said around bites. "What is your name?"

Alila had turned away to lower her headscarf and eat. "Ali," she mumbled.

"The unicorns are real," Yaehala said and her tone struck Alila as funny, but it seemed rude to laugh at a princess so she stuffed the rest of her trail cake into her mouth.

"Of course they are real," she said, trying to keep derision out of her voice.

"I thought I had dreamed them. But they do not like men."

Alila sighed and took a swig of water from the skin before wrapping her headscarf back around her face and turning to the princess.

"I," she said, "am not a man." She said the words coldly, hoping to convey that the princess should stop asking questions.

Yaehala ignored her tone, rubbing her belly as though to reassure herself the baby was still there. "Their legs are so thin but their bodies are muscled more like a lions than a horse. Is it true their beards find water and their horns can close wounds?" She stared at Hezi, who was licking the rock on which Alila had placed a double handful of wheat, her blue tongue catching up the last stray grains.

"Or open wounds," Alila said pointedly and then she whistled for Gabi to come down and get her breakfast. The princess was wrong about the healing part. Unicorn saliva healed, not the sharp, curving horn.

"Their eyes are like the sea," Yaehala murmured, struggling up to kneel and leanforward. "Ohah. I think I see waves moving."

"They came from the sea, left behind in the desert when Wave Mother turned her back on the young god Sahid. That is why they are the color of sea foam and their eyes carry the memories of the depths." Did this foreign princess really not know anything? Alila stood, wiping her hands on her dajib. She started to pack up her little camp.

"I need to get to the falls at Gwadar, do you know where this is?" Yaehala also stood, planting a palm against a boulder. The lapis beads in her hair jingled and Alila wondered if all the Pashet's women were decorated so that they made noise wherever they went, like fat lap dogs with belled collars.

She knew where it was, the bay at the end of the Makra river when the water poured into the sea. It was two days' journey south of the city of Rivah, where Alila sold her frankincense twice a year in the covered markets. If they took a slightly altered route from the normal and cut over to the Sea road, the Falls were almost on the way.

Alila shook her head. She couldn't take this woman with her. It was madness.

Yaehala misread the gesture and started to explain where Gwadar was so Alila had to hold up a hand and cut the princess off.

"I know where it is. But I must go to trade my incense. I will give you water and point you the way to the nearest village." That seemed the least she could do, if the most she were willing to.

Desperate fear clouded Yaehala's eyes again and she clutched at her swollen belly. "Her mercenaries will find me if I go to a village. My only hope is to get to Gwadar."

"You are a princess, Serana, and look to be carrying the Pashet's child. Who would hunt you and live?"

Yaehala's jade eyes narrowed and then stared beyond Alila for a long moment, as though the answer lay somewhere over her shoulder, tucked away on the tree-covered canyon wall. Alila shrugged and started harnessing up the unicorns, loading the sacks of frankincense into their panniers. The enemy of the princess wasn't her problem.

"First Serana Medb," Yaehala said, laying a hand on Alila's arm. "Zwigir mercenaries hunt me. They killed my guards and my horse. They will take me to her and she will cut the child from my belly and claim him as her own."

"The Pashet's First Serana hunts you?" Alila mulled this information over. If the child that Yaehala carried was, as she claimed, a boy, it would mean that the Pashet would marry her and raise her up to Pashetta to rule beside him.

Curse her. Alila stared at the jade eyes filling with tears and bit her lip behind her headscarf. Hezi twisted her long neck around and lipped at Yaehala's arm, catching her dirty silk sleeve in her teeth. The unicorn tugged gently. Gabi came up alongside and tossed her head in the air.

"Seems my friends have already decided," Alila muttered, not really angry with her unicorns. They had come to her in her time of greatest need and now it was clear they wished to help this desperate woman. She knew she would be a fool to ignore them.

"You will take me to Gwadar? I will reward you there, I swear it." The hope in the princess's voice wrenched at Alila's heart, dragging her into a firm decision. A pregnant woman. Here. The gods, it seemed, had dragged her full circle, offering up a strange sort of amends.

"Yes," she muttered. "But if there is trouble on the way, I am no warrior." Killing had gotten her into enough trouble in life. She would not break her vows for a stranger, god-willed atonement or no.

* * *

Alila finally convinced the princess that the unicorns were strong enough to carry her weight. Resting on the thick goat's wool pads, the two women made their way out of the canyon, Alila's eyes searching the sun-baked hills for signs of the mercenaries. They stuck to the narrow ways and rockier parts as they crossed from hill to desert, Alila and her unicorns picking ways that men on horseback could not traverse.

She left Yaehala and the unicorns near moonrise and went to a tent village, bartering with the herders for another dajib and headscarf, the weave a striped pattern of desert colors, orange, grey, and sulfur. They buried the princess's bloody silks in the shifting sands and rode on, stopping only to rest in the hottest part of the day.

The first two days, Yaehala left Alila mostly to her own thoughts, giving up on conversation after a couple abortive tries which Alila fended off with flat stares and hunched shoulders.

When the moons rose on the third night, the princess refused to be silent any longer.

"Ali," she said, jerking Alila out of her own thoughts. "How did you manage to tame two unicorns?"

Alila ran her fingers through Gabi's silken mane. The unicorns had settled into their tireless running walk, gliding more than moving across the shifting sands that moved with the moonwinds like shadowed waves rolling across a distant sea. They knew the way through the dunes after all these years of traveling with Alila on her trading route.

"I was alone in the desert," Alila said, looking ahead between Gabi's curled ears. "They found me and I followed them to that canyon where I found you. I've harvested the frankincense ever since."

"I think there are many holes in your story," Yaehala said. Her voice was gentle, if curious.

Alila shrugged. Her words were true enough. She did not know how to tell the full story anyway. How to describe the vast emptiness inside herself when she'd crawled, bleeding and broken, into the desert. What the clear, cold water against her cracked lips had tasted like. The first dim sight of the twin unicorns, the feel of their smooth tongues licking the grit from her wounds.

Nor would she have told the princess the other things, the reasons she was alone in the desert, the reason for the scars on her breasts and between her legs. Alila had kept the tattoo beneath her left cheekbone hidden as well, though the headscarf grew heavy with accumulated sand and the skin around her mouth chafed from wearing cloth next to it for such a prolonged period.

They rode in silence for a while. Alila listened to the other woman breathing and realized she was growing accustomed to having another human with her. In a few days, they would reach Gwadar Falls and Yaehala would leave, returning Alila to her solitude. The princess hadn't been a bad companion. Mostly quiet, she had never complained about the lean fare of trail cake and tepid water, or sleeping on the ground wrapped only in her dajib. The only thing she asked of Alila was that they stop every now and then for her to piss.

Alila snuck glances at the princess and finally relented. She had no desire to talk about herself, but she decided it would be safe enough to let the princess speak.

"What awaits you at Gwadar?" she asked.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Yaehala jerk in surprise and turn her head.

"Araji ships, sent to carry me," she paused and rubbed her belly, "Us, to the sacred isles until the Pashi is old enough to return and claim his birthright."

Alila nodded. The devoted of Araji offered sanctuary that no nation or mercenary would breach. "How do you know it is a boy?"

"I pilgramaged to the Oracle at Dhofa. It was there that Medb's plan first showed itself. She came with me. I thought her my closest friend and we had both gotten with child inside the same month." Yaehala's voice turned bitter. "When the Oracle told her she was with girlchild and that I bore the son, a man who would be ruler of all Namoh, I should have known. She tried to poison me first, so that I would lose the child. My servant, Amag, insisted on tasting my food." The princess twisted and looked behind them.

Alila followed her gaze, seeing nothing but swirling sands under blue and green moonlight. Whatever Yaehala saw there, it was behind them in the clouded world of memory.

"I left her," she whispered, so softly that the moonwinds almost stole the words before Alila could make them out. "When the mercenaries came. I rode through them, thinking only of my baby. Amag is the one who wrote to the Ajali, who arranged for my safety. We had no proof, nothing to go to the Pashet with. Medb is his First, and I am the newest. Until the Oracle's word is made flesh in my son, I am nothing."

Alila nudged Gabi closer to Hezi and Yaehala. Tears glittered on the princess's skin, refracting the moons' light like precious gems. She stretched an arm out to Yaehala and caught the princess's soft hand in her own calloused one.

"I left her," Yaehala whispered again.

_I, too, know what betrayal feels like_ , Alila wanted to say, but the words caught like honey in her throat, so she stared ahead into the moonlit sands, offering all she could through a gentle squeeze of her hand, human skin on human skin.

After a long moment, the princess sucked in a shaking breath and squeezed back.

* * *

The multi-colored desert dunes gave way on the sixth day to more and more low scrub bushes and patches of yellow-green grass. Alila had avoided the oasises for fear of tongues carrying tales of a pregnant woman with jade eyes. The unicorns could find ground water with the sensitive tendrils on their muzzles and call it forth from the ground with their horns. Supplies, which Alila had packed for two unicorns and herself only, grew thin as she tried to go without to help the always hungry princess get enough to eat.

When she spied the low profile of mud huts, Alila decided to leave Yaehala behind with the unicorns and venture into the little village. The smell of fish drying caught her nose and made her concave stomach grumble, reminding her of the sparse meals she had been consuming. The village lay along a tributary to the great Makra river. Unicorns outpaced horses, though not perhaps loaded with riders and full panniers of frankincense, Alila started to think that perhaps they were well free of the princess's pursuit.

Alila bargained in the village for dried fish, a fat skin of camel's milk sweetened with honey, and fresh melon, imagining the smile on Yaehala's face when she saw this bounty. She made her way back down to the wadi where she'd left her unicorns.

Child's laughter and the clink of a goat bell greeted her. Alila almost dropped her purchases in her haste to get over the edge of the rocky hill.

A boy dressed in a rough goat hair vest and leggings sat beside the princess, playing a puzzle game with a piece of bright, knotted thread. For a moment, Alila did not see the unicorns, but then her frantic eye picked them out among the yellow and sand colored rocks. Gabi and Hezi had lain down, tucking their opalescent horns beneath their thick dust-colored tails, holding perfectly still, looking like two more rocks in the landscape.

At least her unicorns were smarter than the thrice-damned princess.

"Hai!" Alila called down.

Yaehala looked up with what Alila wanted to imagine was a guilty expression. She waved and Alila sighed, then picked her way down into the wadi.

"Thank you for the game," the princess said to the goat boy. "But my friend is here, and I must go."

"Yes, yes." He grinned at her, young enough that there were still gaps in his teeth.

Alila seethed inside but set down her purchases. She started as the boy stepped up beside her and tucked on her dajib.

"Are you princess too?" he asked and Alila's anger boiled up. She clasped his shoulders, meaning to set him away from her. The boy, surprised by her sudden, strong grip, clutched at her headscarf, pulling it away from her face.

He screamed as her cheeks were revealed and twisted out of her grasp. Alila released him, cursing and scrambled to get her scarf back into place.

Too late. She met Yaehala's eyes and saw the shock and fear glowing in them. Acid rose from Alila's stomach and she held out her hands, though as a warning or in supplication, even she wasn't sure.

"Killer. Unclean." The boy's cries followed him out of the wadi as he dragged the lead goat with him, the heavy bell chiming like a death knell.

"What are you?" Yaehala asked. Her arms clutched at her belly again, as though she needed to shield the unborn child.

Alila swallowed the stinging bile in her throat and pulled her headscarf down again revealing the two red tears in the afternoon sunlight.

"Murderer," Yaehala said.

Gabi and Hezi rose and padded on quiet feet to stand beside Alila, solid walls of flesh and fur. She tangled her hands in their frothy manes.

"As you knew, there were holes in my story," Alila said, the words like grit on her dry tongue. She drew strength from her unicorns. They had not abandoned her.

"Did the two you killed deserve it?" Yaehala said after a tense moment. Her jade eyes flicked to the unicorns and then back to Alila's own dark gaze and there was a pleading look in them.

"No."

"Explain," Yaehala demanded. She straightened her slender shoulders and lifted her chin. For the first time since they'd met, Alila saw the princess as she must have been at court, imperious and proud even in rough woven dajib and dull colors.

"No." The word was a door sliding closed between them.

Alila couldn't tell the story. Her throat clogged and her chest burned as though the thick scars where her nipples used to be were fresh-made wounds. The past was a dark thing, a dust storm waiting to envelop her world and wipe away everything familiar. She clung to the unicorns and stared the princess down, breathing in tight, shallow gasps.

After many long moments, Yaehala turned away.

They left quickly, an uneasy truce between them, the princess clearly deciding that Alila and her unicorns were still useful to her and shouldn't be abandoned this close to her destination. There was no banter between them and Yaehala kept her eyes on Hezi's neck.

Alila rode in tense silence, outwardly still but curling in pain within. She'd replaced her headscarf more from habit than need and hot tears dripped unwanted from her eyes and left salty trails over her mouth.

A shadow passed over her and Alila looked up into the deepening blue of the dusky sky, expecting to see an eagle judging from the size of the wings. Instead the arrow-like body of a Seeker lizard, long in the tail with a sharp V of wings, floated above them, circling before turning off toward the river on their left. Alila pursed her lips. The lizards weren't native to these parts, much preferring the skirling peaks in the east where the Zwigir roamed on their spotted horses.

Zwigir. She cried out in alarm, almost in unison with Gabi and Hezi. How many shadows had circled them on their ride toward the sea, how many times had she thought them only curious char buzzards or sand eagles? Alila cursed.

Yaehala, riding some distance off, twisted and called out something that the evening wind stole away. The sound of many horses, racing quickly over the hard ground, punctured the air.

"Ride. Flee," Alila yelled, knowing that Hezi and Gabi's sensitive hearing would catch the command even if Yaehala couldn't.

She ducked down and pressed her face into Gabi's whipping mane as the unicorn shifted from her running walk to her great springing run. The panniers bounced and jostled, the woven reeds cutting into Alila's legs. Gabi leapt and soared through the air, landing for a stride and then leaping again, covering the ground with frightening speed.

The unicorn cried out as something buzzed by Alila's head. She gripped Gabi's mane and twisted around, her eyes watering and her vision blurred. A thick quarrel stuck out of the unicorn's flank. Dark blood ran from the wound and Gabi's stride turned lopsided. But the unicorn didn't stop.

Another terrible scream, like a bell breaking, pierced the air and Alila saw Hezi go down. She shrieked at Gabi to stop, to turn back for her twin, but the unicorn's ears were flattened to her head and she ran with pain-crazed leaps, froth flying from her narrow mouth.

Alila beat her fists on Gabi's neck until her hands were numb. Her thighs were on fire from clinging to the unicorn's back and her calves were a nest of welts from the bouncing panniers.

Finally, as full dark fell and the green light of the first moon tinged the horizon, Gabi staggered to a stop. Alila more fell than dismounted and lay gasping on the warm ground.

She pushed herself to her feet and drew her knife. The quarrel had a broad hunter's head on it and she murmured apology to Gabi as she cut it free. The unicorn's blood was amethyst in sunlight, but looked sickly black beneath the rising moons.

Gabi nuzzled her before twisting to bathe the wound with her long tongue. Alila pulled off her headscarf, grabbed her water skin, and sat down again, taking deep breaths of the cool night air between painful swallows of tepid water.

Hezi. They had to go back. Alila looked around the scrubby flats for a landmark. She saw the skeletal shapes that might be baobab trees in the distance and stumbled to her feet. Gabi followed behind, trilling softly and bumping her back with her nose.

"Sah, sah, my love," Alila murmured. "We'll go back as soon as I get rid of those panniers."

She left the panniers in the shadow of the first tall tree. Nearby the river burbled and Gabi headed for the muddy banks, sinking her head into the dark water up to her horn.

Five of the moons were above the horizon by the time Alila and Gabi found the trail of the mercenaries. The ground was scuffed and bloodied where some kind of struggled had taken place and there were drag marks and many hoof prints leading away, back toward the rocky hills where the village lay. Alila sent a prayer to the nine moons that Hezi was still alive and set out after the mercenaries.

She reached the edge of the hills at all moons' rise. A cough in the dark warned her about the sentry and Alila veered off into shadow, sliding as silently as her protesting legs would let her to the ground. She crawled toward the glow of a small fire and saw two men sitting at it. The cough had come from somewhere to her right. She let her eyes pick out the shifting movement of a third man leaning against the thick trunk of a twisted scrub bush.

The rest of the mercenaries were camped down in a deep wadi between two pieces of rock where at some point in the distant past a river had cut a sheer cleft that formed a natural blind before plunging underground. The three sentries guarded the entrance, the moonlight and their fire providing too much light for her to slip past.

Alila stayed low to the ground, thigh muscles a web of pain now, and crawled to the lip of the cleft. Three more fires, larger than the sentry one, burned below, illuminating the camp. Most of the mercenaries seemed asleep, content to trust their sentries. One was awake at the middle fire. A blanketed bundle leaned against the steep wall and when it moved, Alila realized that Yaehala was here and still alive.

But where was Hezi? There. Alila crept along the lip further until she saw the shape she'd mistaken for a large rock. Hezi lay on her side, held down with a web of ropes and stakes, her opalescent horn chained with iron and her muzzle wrapped in wool. Dark blood streaked the unicorn's side and reminded Alila of Yaehala's dead horse.

Hezi's side was moving. She was alive. Alila let out a shuddering breath she hadn't even been aware of holding and slid on her belly to the far edge of the wadi. The deep cleft narrowed here, but the farthest part wasn't as steep as the walls. Alila hoped that Hezi, if unfettered, could leap up this part and escape.

Hand over hand, picking her toe and finger holds with terrified care, Alila climbed down the wall of the cleft. Pebbles and grit slid away from her grip and made sounds like thunder in her ears as they trickled down the wall ahead of her. Heart in her throat, Alila waited with every move for the sharp punch of a quarrel digging into her back.

None came. Her feet touched the floor of the wadi and Alila dropped down low. She drew her knife and slid up to the unicorn. Hezi tried to raise her head but Alila put a calming hand on her. One dark, sea-storm eye rolled open and looked at her. Then the unicorn calmed.

Each rope took too long to saw through and she started to despair that she could finish before moonset. Alila watched the camp, trying to pick out any sign of movement or alarm through the flickering shadows cast by the fires. She kept her hand on Hezi, freeing her horn and head last. Finally, as the first moon dipped below the edge of the wadi, the unicorn was freed. All she had to do was climb onto Hezi's back and leave this place.

Alila hesitated. Yaehala had said that Medb would cut her open and take the child. _That must be the reason she is still alive_. She pressed a hand to her own barren belly. Zetha's ghost must be laughing, she thought. Zetha. Alila's betrayer. Her friend.

_Full circle_. When Yaehala died, it wouldn't really be Alila's fault. She'd tried. Just as she'd reached out her hand and tried to stop her friend's tumbling fall.

Right after she'd pushed Zetha in blind rage.

"I didn't know you were with child. I didn't know you would fall," she mouthed the words, crouching beside the unicorn as Hezi licked at her furred sides, closing the gashes.

She didn't see how to get to Yaehala. Here, in the shadow of the narrowing cleft, she and the unicorn were hidden for the moment. To get to Yaehala she'd have to cross a camp of sleeping, dangerous men and somehow get the princess away from her watcher.

It was an impossible task.

Even as she thought this, Alila's eyes scanned the cleft wall. There was a ledge about twenty feet above that ran nearly to where Yaehala's curled body rested. The man had his back to the rear of the wadi, not expecting danger from this direction. A terrible plan formed in Alila's mind and she lifted her fingers to brush against the slightly raised tattoos on her cheek.

Nothing would calm the storm of the past or heal the scars she carried both outside and within. Alila pressed her palms together and bowed her head, remembering the warm, soft strength of Yaehala's fingers twining around her own. She had no desire to add power to that dark storm. She had accidentally killed her pregnant friend out of grief and rage.

Alila would not leave another to die. She could not ignore this chance. She commanded Hezi to wait in the shadows with a whisper only a unicorn could hear. Then she started to climb again.

The ledge was mostly clear of debris and pebbles. Alila descended when she was right behind the man, drawing her knife as she dropped behind him.

He heard her feet touch the ground and started to turn. She caught his greasy top-knot with one hand and pulled his chin down toward his chest, the way she'd used to kill goats for feast days. Her blade sliced through his throat, warm blood spraying.

Her vow to never kill another human died with the mercenary. It was nothing like slaughtering a goat.

Swallowing bile, Alila wiped her blade on the dead man's dajib and crawled forward to Yaehala, placing her hand over the princess's mouth as she gently shook her.

Jade eyes snapped open and the princess blinked rapidly, as though she believed she dreamed. Alila eased her hand off Yaehala's mouth and quickly cut the ropes binding the princess's ankles and hands. She motioned toward the back of the ravine with her head and then crept along the wall, keeping an eye on the slumbering mercenaries.

Alila wanted to cry with relief when they found the shadows at the rear of the cleft but she held it in and instead motioned to Hezi, miming that Yaehala should mount the unicorn.

Yaehala pointed to Alila and shrugged elaborately. Alila motioned to the cliff and then started to climb, refusing to give the princess a choice about riding the unicorn. If the woman wanted out of here, she'd figure out what she had to do.

Stones rattled and Alila turned her head as Hezi bounded up the nearly vertical slope, touching down only once before gaining the top in a soaring leap.

Shouts rang out from the camp and Alila set her feet and hands to climbing with reckless speed. She slipped twice, but her scrabbling toes found tiny purchase and she dragged herself up to the lip. Gabi bit into her dajib and dragged her fully over, nearly flinging her to her feet. Alila didn't hesitate. She leapt onto the unicorn's back, her hands twisting in the silken mane.

They fled, shadows over the landscape, making for the sea.

The unicorns chose the path, Alila and Yaehala too tired to do more than cling. When they plunged into the river, the cold water shocked the women awake and Alila scooped water into her hands, splashing it into her dry mouth, washing away the bitter tastes of fear and panic.

Even the fast horses of the Zwigir couldn't catch up to unicorns running at night. As moonset brought deep dark to the landscape, the unicorn horns glowed, opalescent light guiding them across the sloping plains.

They ran through the dark and into morning, the day warming up as the followed the river until it joined the broad expanse of the Makra on its plunge toward the sea.

The sun soared white and merciless overhead as they reached the green hills that blocked their view of the sea. Far behind them on the plains, Alila saw dark shapes spread out in a hunting formation. Riders. She didn't need to guess who they were.

"How," Yaehala's voice died in a croak. She licked her lips and tried again, "how far?"

The unicorns were slowing. They had dropped from their soaring gallop down to their running walk, sides heaving and foam dripping from open jaws. Even they weren't tireless. Alila turned back from watching their pursuers and looked ahead.

Too far. She stroked Gabi's sweat-soaked neck. They needed to run again if they were to have any hope. She nudged the unicorn toward the river and her companions followed.

"We have to let them rest a moment," Alila said, sliding down from Gabi's back as they reached the grassy bank. The unicorn heaved a sigh and stumbled into the water. Yaehala slid off Hezi and collapsed into the grass.

The two unicorns waded chest deep into the river and dunked their heads. Alila thought about following their example, but she wasn't sure she'd have the strength to stand in the current or lift her head above water. Instead she crawled to the edge and drank deep.

"They will catch us if we linger," Yaehala said, though she made no move to get up.

"We will run in a moment." Alila said. She refused to meet Yaehala's gaze as the woman crawled up beside her and dipped her own hands into the water.

"Tell me about the tattoo?" Yaehala asked softly.

A Seeker lizard's narrow shadow flashed over them, darkening the grass between them for a moment until it circled away.

"Zetha. She was my friend. We were born in the same summer. I was bethrothed to a rich man and she wanted him, though she had, I knew, given her body to a fisherman." Alila stared at the rippling water and a bitter laugh crowded in with the words in her throat. "She threatened to lie and tell his family that I was no longer a virgin unless I called the wedding off. She would have ruined me, shamed my family. I pushed her, harder than I meant. The fall broke her neck."

"Two tears. Two deaths," Yaehala murmured.

"She was pregnant. I didn't know." Alila turned and faced the princess then, tears rising. "I didn't know." It hadn't come out until afterward when Zetha's sister confessed the pregnancy. Zetha's family, outraged, had demanded that Alila be put to death, but her own family's standing had granted her a terrible false mercy.

"So they marked you," Yaehala said.

"Here," Alila touched her tattoos. Then her chest and finally the place between her thighs. "Here as well. They cut away my womanness and left me in the desert for the gods to decide my fate."

"The gods sent you unicorns." Yaehala had tears in her jade eyes and Alila thought for a moment that they were only a mirage, her own blurred vision playing tricks on her. Then the princess touched her cheek and bowed her head, her warm forehead touching Alila's.

"We must go." Alila pulled away and rose, her legs nearly giving out beneath her as she whistled to the unicorns.

Gabi and Hezi emerged from the river cleaned of sweat but still with haggard looks in their shifting, deep-sea eyes.

"Sah, sah, we must flee," Alila said as she helped Yaehala onto Hezi's back.

They fled. The riders were far closer than they had been, but the sloping hills kept the women out of bow range as the unicorns made a final springing dash for the sea.

At the crest of one soaring leap, Alila caught the glint of water. At the crest of the next leap she realized that what she'd mistaken for wave sound mingling with the horrible pounding of her own racing heart was actually the sound of the Gwadar Falls plunging toward the Mirror Sea.

A quarrel thunked into the turf ahead of them; Gabi springing sideways to avoid another as it hummed through the air. Alila cried out above the rushing noise of the falls, screaming a warning to Yaehala.

More quarrels filled the air and a sharp pain almost wrenched Alila from her mount. Burning agony shot through her shoulder and her left arm no longer gripped Gabi's mane. The scent of her own blood filled her nose and the world blurred to red spots as shadows threatened the edges of her vision. She started to slide sideways.

A strong hand caught her up and suddenly Yaehala was there, the twin unicorns leaping in tandem. The princess gripped Alila, keeping her astride.

The hill leveled out and then dropped in a steep, grassy dune to the white sand of a curving, crescent beach that shone like the third moon to Alila's blinking gaze. Three ships with red and silver sails moored in the shining silver sea and Yaehala started shouting in a language Alila didn't recognize.

As the unicorn's hooves hit the sand, the quarrels stopped and disappointed cries rang out from behind them. Men and women with shaved heads and red robes swarmed out of tents on the shore, loading crossbows and drawing long knives.

Alila twisted her head around, biting down against the agony the movement poured into her. Behind them, on the rise of the hill, the mercenaries had stopped pursuit, thick horn bows lowered. They hovered there a moment and then peeled away back over the hill, seeming to dissolve into the sky.

The unicorns raced right to the sea's edge and plunged into the waves. Warm, gentle hands pulled Alila down into the surf and she let her eyes close.

* * *

"Come with me." Yaehala rested her fingers on Alila's palm.

"I am anathema. Marked. Forbidden." Alila turned her face away but the princess tucked her hand beneath her chin and pulled her back to facing.

"The Araji priests do not care. They will grant you sanctuary with me. Their islands have many rivers and glades. Gabi and Hezi will be happy, playing on black sand beaches and sleeping with the sea as their lullaby."

"You are cruel to use them against me," Alila murmured but she couldn't put any sting in her words. "Namoh is my home." It was. She knew that she would miss the desert winds, her canyon filled with cool shadows and heady frankincense.

"And when my son is old enough, you and I will return here," Yaehala said, her beautiful face set with stony resolve. "Let me share this respite with you. Please, Ali."

"Alila," she murmured. She shut her eyes and breathed in. Someone in the camp on the beach was burning frankincense, though not the quality of the resin she'd left behind them. Respite. Sanctuary.

Alila closed her fingers over the princess's, human skin to human skin, and nodded.

* * * * *

"Jade-green eyes flash hard." -Worrad

"It's got tough-ass unicorns!" -Brooke B.

##  Counting Down the Stars

### Story Notes

_I got sick in week four of Clarion and by week five was fully infused with Clarion plague. I sat down to write a gentle Scandinavian fairytale and suddenly my brain grabbed at an idea I'd had a few months ago and ran with it. So instead I wrote this story of being stuck. It went over with most of the group like a brick to the face, but both Kij Johnson and John Kessel loved it. I was trying to write a story about how we sometimes get stuck in our crappy lives. I also wanted to just kill all the things. All of them. Again._

* * *

Patricia Halbrook stood at the lookout pull-over on Three Band Butte just outside Mercy, Colorado, population six-seventy-one minus one, and held the blue ceramic jar over the vast darkness swallowing the cliff face below.

The jar was not bright grey eyes. It was not a bellybutton pierced on a winter night with a lighter and a safety pin. It was not stories told in a blanket fort or rice-krispy treats and cocoa on a snow-day home from school. It was not hands twined together in the dark as the stars counted down in the sky and dawn took over the world.

"This is not the sum of her life," Patty said. Then she threw her twin sister's ashes out into the darkness and walked back to Penny's Buell motorcycle.

The ride down the Butte and back to the outskirts of Mercy was cold, the sky clear and full of more stars than Patty ever saw in San Francisco. She pulled up to the trailer home and cut the engine.

Memory more than sight took her out behind the triple-wide they'd grown up in and back into the brush to the old brick chimney. The metal box was still there, hidden on a shelf up inside the crumbling stack. Patty took it back to the trailer and banged her flashlight against the wall until it stayed lit.

She pulled the diary out of its plastic sleeve, the rose-patterned cover worn but familiar. Chanel perfume stung her nose and threatened to bring back the tears she'd shed when the County called the day before asking her if she wanted her sister's remains.

Gran hadn't even had the guts to go pick up Penny's ashes. Anger replaced the grief and coiled like a living thing inside her. In the dim light, Patty leaned against the wall of the run-down trailer and started to read about her sister's lost years.

She fell asleep with snot and tears drying on her face as dawn thrust bloody light into the trailer. The final entry of the diary was from three days ago and contained Penny's suicide note. Just a Polaroid photograph of her face- too thin, marked with sores from the meth, eyes bright as a child's with hair like black licorice stuck up at odd angles. On the back of the picture were scrawled a handful of words.

_I got too tired waiting. I'm sorry, Trish_.

When Patty woke, she knew what had to be done. She stood in the bathroom, staring into the cracked mirror. With Penny's candy-apple-red lipstick, she wrote names.

Gran.

Russell and Darryl Marsh.

Deputy Luke Gains.

Shirley Margrave.

Patty stared at the list a moment and then nodded. It was a good start.

The trailer looked different in daylight. Emptier, as though the darkness the night before had given it more of a presence. The picture frames that used to march down the hallway wall, holding bright lies from their childhood were gone. Only clean shapes in the pale yellow paint remained. In the room she and Penny had shared, the bunk bed was missing, replaced with a double mattress piled on a sheet of ply-wood. The red and blue dresser was still there and the unicorn snow globe. Patty shook the globe but the music that used to play when it was agitated stayed silent as though even it were unwilling to offer anything to this place.

Looking around the house, there were no hints that it had ever held a family. That Penny had ever had a twin. It didn't matter. Patty hadn't wanted to come home anyway. She would do what needed doing, make those responsible apologize, and then she could move on.

* * *

The road to Gran's house was bumpier than she remembered but the motorcycle handled it okay. Patty was glad that Penny had kept the powder-blue and chrome Buell. They'd fixed the bike up together the summer before Patty left for basic training.

The red barn had a hell of a lean to it now and the pine tree growing over the cottage looked half dead. Smoke curled up from the iron chimney and the acidic scent of coffee greeted Patty as she cut the bike's engine, propped it against the porch, and climbed the steps to the front door. The door was ajar, the screen hanging over it.

Patty didn't knock. Gran sat in her whicker and gingham chair in the narrow front living room, holding a pink mug of coffee. Gran's skin had the texture of a scrap of leather and her expression looked like someone had used her as a rag, crumpled her up, and thrown her away.

"Figures you'd come back now," she said, slurring the words through her dentures.

"You didn't even pick up her ashes. They had to call me."

"She sinned, that girl. I didn't hear of her repenting. They said suicide." Gran crossed herself, her coffee sloshing.

"She had help, Gran. All kinds of help leading her up to it."

"What do you know 'bout that? You left us. Think sending a few checks and calling at Christmas absolves you somehow? Go away, Trish. She's gone and there ain't nothing left for you here." Gran's words ended in a cough and her eyes slid away from Patty.

"You were here. You could have done something."

Patty clenched her fists, the scrawled, scared words on the pages of her sister's diary flitting through her mind, each imagined pen stroke a stab that pierced skin. She crossed the space between her and Gran, snatching up the lace-shaded lamp and ripping the cord from the wall. The pink mug spattered on the scarred linoleum as she yanked Gran up and tied her arms behind her with the electric cord.

"This what they teach you in that Army? I am your blood, girl!"

Patty dragged the old woman down the hall to what Gran had always called her "powder room". She kicked the cracked baby-blue seat off the toilet with one boot and shoved the old woman's head down into the water.

"You aren't good blood, Gran," Patty said when she dragged the sputtering woman up for air. Gran's bun had come down and her hair hung in wet, ashen tentacles around her face.

"Ungr. . ." Gran said and Patty shoved her head back down.

"I can't get Grandaddy to apologize for what he done. Did. He's dead and God'll have to sort that out. But you." Patty pulled Gran back up. She'd stopped kicking and her head hung in Patty's hands, twitching back and forth as though shaking her head no would deny the whole situation.

"You," Patty said, bending down until her cheek dampened from the shivering grey hair. "He kicked her belly. Kicked and kicked until she bled so bad they had to put two pints of blood back into her. After she _drove herself_ to the hospital. You did nothing."

"She was the devil's whore. That was a sinning baby, meant to suck the last bit of money your daddy put by." Gran coughed and spit out her upper denture. It landed with a plunk in the toilet. "You was gone. I dint see you come skipping back to raise no baby."

Patty shoved Gran's head down again. "Apologize," she hissed as the woman started to struggle again. "Say you are by God sorry."

Gran's whole body seized up and Patty pulled her head out of the toilet. She flipped her over, her wet fingers struggling to undo the wound electrical cord. Gran's lips split in a horrible rictus and she vomited water and bacon and coffee. Then she stilled and the room went quiet save for the slow drip of water off the toilet bowl.

"Shit." Patty sat back, little twitches going up and down her arms. She knew she could try CPR. They'd trained her in the Army for it. She knew exactly what to do when someone suffered a heart attack. Instead she sat there until the shivers in her limbs stopped and she felt like she could breathe again.

Patty got to her feet and stepped over Gran's body. She almost said she was sorry, but bit down on her tongue before the words made it out. She hadn't meant to kill Gran. Maybe. Bile burned her throat and she choked it down. The Army would tell her this was a normal reaction to a first kill. She'd never seen direct combat in her three enlisted years, but they tried to prepare each recruit for it.

"Shit, shitshitshit," she muttered again, backing out of the bathroom. Gran wasn't going to apologize now. Well, maybe to Penny herself, if Gran was right and there was a hell.

Hell. Okay, she thought. She could work with this. Her Sergeant would tell her she was sprinting past the point of no return. But maybe it wasn't so bad. She hadn't managed to get any kind of apology out of a tired old woman, so what luck did she think she'd have with people like the Marsh brothers?

"Maybe I'll let God sort them out," she said.

* * *

She took Grandaddy's old army issue M1911 pistol from the bedroom closet, tucked a handful of bullets into her pocket, and fled the house, locking it up behind her. A mile or so out from the trailer, Patty spun the bike out into the dust and gravel and threw herself down, dry heaving until finally a wet line of yellow, acidic bile dripped from her lips. She wiped her mouth on her sleeve, picked up the bike, got it running again, and headed on to the trailer.

She crossed Gran off the list after debating whether dead counted as an apology and decided to go see Shirley next. Shirley had been Patty and Penny's best friend until they were thirteen. That was the year the silver mine finally shut down and the population shrank. The mine was gone, but the meth flowed in to fill the void for those too poor or too stuck to move on.

Their dad started cooking with Shirley's dad and when the whole lab blew that fall, things got bad for a while. Mom had stopped taking care of anything by that point, drinking and talking only to the cuckoo clock, every hour on the hour.

Daddy had a pension from the mine, a bit of money put away for everyone. Gran wouldn't let anyone touch it except for the tiny amount she had to give by law. Mom got sober and took off with a Country and Western singer, leaving Patty and Penny to file for emancipation or else live with Gran and her bible, which meant also living with Grandaddy and his cane.

Shirley. Patty wrenched her mind back. Crawling down the long thorny slope of memory wouldn't serve anyone now. She knew from Penny's diary that Shirley was working nights at the Reel'm Inn tavern down in Gennerton.

She also knew that Shirley had started feeding Penny meth. Something to perk her up after she got out of the hospital, something to make her forget the baby. And it was Shirley who had introduced Penny to Luke Gains in the first place, the man who, as Gran had put it, got Penny with the devil's child. Deputy Luke Gains, these days.

Luke was a dirty cop, though Patty only remembered a football player with big hands, blonde hair cut a bit too long, and an easy, clean smile. He was probably about as dangerous as the Marsh brothers, but Patty couldn't be sure. She'd been gone too long. The landscape of her memory did not quite match up with the picture her twin had painted with her purple and green gel pens.

She didn't know where Shirley lived now, but she knew where the Margrave's land was so she started there. The dirt track wasn't overgrown and someone had poured fresh gravel in front of the second trailer in the big rocky field on the north side of Mercy, so Patty stopped the bike there. A Toyota, its rims pitted and rusting, was parked under a white plastic car port.

Patty checked the gun again. The cartridges looked okay but it had been three years since the Army and she hadn't touched a gun since. Accountants didn't really need them, even in California. The .45 was heavy but she'd been a good shot, once. Like riding a bike, she hoped and shoved away the memory of Penny and her learning to keep the motorcycle upright and going the way they wanted. They'd had identical scars from the wipe-outs like creeks flowing down their elbows and shins.

"Jesus," a woman said as the door to the second trailer swung wide. "I thought you were Penny for a moment."

Patty set the kickstand and kept the gun low at her side, hidden by her leg.

"Shirley?" she asked, eyeing the skeletal, red-haired stranger. She could see some of the girl she'd known in this woman, but the wraith before her looked forty instead of the twenty-one Shirley would be.

"Yeah," Shirley stepped down, her bloodshot eyes blinking against the afternoon sunlight. "That you, Trish? Shit. I thought you was never coming back to this place."

"Things change," Patty said. "What happened to you, Shirls?" _Why did you drag Penny down with you?_

"Fuck you," Shirley said. She pulled a pack of Virginia Slims from her shirt pocket and slid one out. Her hand shook as she lifted the lighter and the air between fogged with menthol-scented smoke. "You ain't been here."

"Penny was here," Patty said. The gun felt warm and strangely less heavy in her hand. It was a solid thing against her leg, reminding her of her options.

Shirley's thin lips pressed into a line and she looked at her feet, scuffing one flip-flop into the rocky soil and kicking up a puff of yellow dust.

"You coulda taken her with you," she finally said after long enough that Patty had thought maybe Shirley wasn't going to respond.

"You fucking know I couldn't." Patty brought the gun up and Shirley dropped her cigarette, her eyes snapping back into focus. Penny hadn't passed the GED, so the judge hadn't granted her emancipation status. "I sent money. Even a bus ticket, once I got to San Francisco. I guess she was already hooked by then. Hooked by you."

"Trish. Come on. You don't wanna do this. I didn't mean to. You don't know. You know shit." Shirley believed the gun, Patty realized: urine left a stinking, wet splotch on the woman's shorts. More sure she'd shoot than even Patty was.

"Say you are sorry. Apologize for killing my sister." Her other hand came up and steadied the gun.

"Fuuuck." Shirley's jaw started working up and down as though she had shoved a lump of gum between her teeth. "Penny killed herself, everybody knows. I wasn't even there."

Her finger squeezed the trigger and she let her arms and shoulders absorb the recoil. That part was like riding a bike.

As her ears stopped ringing from the shot, Patty slowly lowered the gun. She'd closed her eyes right after pulling the trigger and she had to force them open. Shirley lay face down on the gravel, the back of her head missing. It looked like something out of a movie, unreal. Movies didn't have smell though, a hot salty smothering wet scent. Patty turned away, her limbs heavy, the gun dangling from her hand.

She shoved it into the worn leather holster and tucked it away. No movement in the hills and the road was still empty. Time to get moving. There was nothing in her cramping belly to throw up and she ignored the discomfort, focusing on Penny's haunted gaze in the Polaroid photo as she pulled it from her pocket and touched her lips to the film.

* * *

The Sunny-Mart smelled like old popcorn, and Billy, standing behind the counter, had traded his comic books for an auto-trader magazine, but everything looked about the same as it had five years before. Patty pushed through the door, checking her reflection in the glass and then her coat sleeves for blood, for some sign of what she'd done. She looked clean enough, she thought.

"Trish? Jesus. Guess you heard." Billy set down his magazine and came out from behind the counter. "I'm real sorry," he added, shuffling his feet as he wiped his hands on his red tee-shirt.

Anger curled up through her, but it was smoke-thin. Billy hadn't the brains or balls to do anything to anyone, or for anyone. She couldn't bring herself to be mad at him, not really.

"Yeah," she said. "I heard."

"She was, I mean. I'm sorry."

"Shit, Billy," she muttered, turning away from him and heading down the snack aisle. "You didn't do anything. It's okay." Billy's repeated apology threatened to bring tears and melt through the ice locking up her emotions.

Patty got a bottle of black hair dye, a disposable cell phone, and an energy drink and set them on the counter, fumbling for her wallet.

"This all?" Billy asked, still not meeting her eyes.

"Yeah."

"Didn't think you'd ever come back," he said, finally flicking his eyes up as he slid her change over the smeared glass covering the lotto cards beneath the counter.

"Me either," she said.

Back at the trailer, she found a pair of scissors in the kitchen.

Her hair filled the sink, a pile of dirty straw. She applied the wet, inky dye and waited. Penny had had naturally blonde hair, too, before she discovered loud music and a need to be different from her quiet twin. Penny had joked that she was the shiny one.

"Shiny penny for your thoughts?" Patty asked her twin's face in the mirror. Penny didn't answer, just stared right through Patty as though she were the reflection instead. Eye-liner gave her the hollow-eyed look from the photo and the lipstick went on with a smear that echoed the names scrawled on the glass.

Penny's clothes were tight on Patty but she found a dark blue tank top that smelled of sweat and perfume. She pulled on her sister's leather jacket. She kept her own jeans; her thighs would never fit into the pencil-slim rags Penny had apparently used as pants.

The jacket hid the gun well enough, the shoulder holster an uncomfortable lump beneath her arm. She ran her hands through her short black hair, mussing it up.

Patty crossed out Gran and then Shirley's name on the mirror. She took one last, long look at the reflection there. A hot, terrible need uncurled within her, twisting and twisting until she felt as though she would turn inside out. She lifted her hand in front of her eyes.

Her guts stopped twisting and she let the need drain out, replaced as the aching cold seeped back through her.

"Okay," she whispered.

* * *

She got Deputy Luke Gains's number from Penny's diary. He seemed skeptical about meeting her at first, but he gave in when she turned her best wheedling sister voice on him.

Patty thought her Army buddies would have been proud of her for thinking tactically. The cop would probably come alone; after all, Patty had said she wanted to discuss really sensitive papers her sister had left behind. Covering his own ass would, she bet, bring him out here more than anything.

"Here" was a look-out spot a few miles outside Mercy where the old mining road carved its way like a lightning bolt through the foothills. No one was likely to drive by and no one would be around to hear a gunshot or two. His car wouldn't be found for days, either, though that didn't matter as much.

Patty waited as the sun set, watching the first stars wink into being. She didn't make a wish.

The lights from his car warned her of the approach even before the sound of the engine careened off the rock walls of the canyon beyond the pull-over. He pulled up like a cop would, leaving his lights on and pointing at her. She could only tell his height, not see his features.

"Penny? No. Shit." Luke's voice hadn't changed much, still smooth even full of nerves. "Trish? That really you?"

"Yeah." She thought his arm moved, but she wasn't sure. She had her gun ready, down against her leg like before. "We need to talk." Like hell, she thought. _Point of no return, crossed and done_. _Mission, go_.

"You look just like your sister," Luke said, coming forward. His stance warned her. He had his gun out, too, holding it in a mirror of her own.

They both brought their guns up at the same time. He had the light behind him though, a silhouette against painful whiteness.

Patty squeezed the trigger a moment before Luke and the thought occurred that he'd probably never shot anyone. Not like her. No hesitation now.

She missed. Her shot took out one of the headlights. Bullets pinged off the metal guardrail behind her and she dove to the side. A boot came down on her arm as Luke closed the distance impossibly quick.

Quarterback. Right. Shit. She'd forgotten so much.

She hadn't forgotten how to fight hand to hand. She'd kept up that, the judo and jujitsu. Her hand, numb and throbbing, released the gun but she brought up her legs, scissoring his knees.

Luke went down hard and rolled away from her. She scrabbled to her feet and rushed him, barreling into him before he could get fully upright. He swore, a stream of curses that blended into gibberish heat over her head. They struggled for a moment, twisting, and he grabbed a handful of her short hair. The ragged ends ripped free in his hand as she got her hip underneath him and flipped.

He flew, slamming over the guard rail. His scream cut off with a sharp smack.

Patty half crawled to the railing and tried to see into the dark below. She held her breath and listened. No sound of movement. She touched a hand to the burning area of her scalp and it came away wet. She licked the blood off her palm and shoved her hair out of her eyes.

As she searched for her gun by the remaining headlight of the station wagon, a coppery glint caught Patty's eye. She bent and picked up the penny. Laughter drifted in on the cold wind and a whisper tickled her ear, saying "shiny penny for your thoughts."

She spun around, the cold resolve inside threatening to melt away, the layer revealing itself as thin as first freeze on the surface of Gran's pond.

"No," she said. Not yet.

* * *

The Marsh brothers lived in a sprawling ranch house built in the 1980s when the silver mines had been in full swing. They came from a long line of ne'er-do-wells and petty crooks and the twins' daddy had always said the only good thing about the Marsh family was that no one in it lived much past fifty.

Penny had stopped getting her fix from Shirley after her money ran out, after Luke had left her hanging when Grandaddy kicked her belly in. She'd called Luke but he left her bleeding his baby out dead onto the ground, claiming he had no part in family business like that. Penny's words about it in the journal were terse, quick, her pen strokes slanted. Those pages had tear stains.

The Marsh brothers had been all too willing to let pretty little Penelope Halbrook pay them with the only thing she had left. Penny had saved the motorcycle, even in the worst days of her addiction, writing in the diary that it wasn't hers to give. _Half belongs to my twin._ She wrote that she told the brothers her sister was coming back, coming home.

She wouldn't trade the bike. So she traded her body. Penny hadn't written that, but it was there between the words she had put down in her more erratic entries. She'd talked about TV shows that didn't matter, ranted about spiders in the walls and how the wind wouldn't stop creeping in during the winter. She'd complained in purple ink about the power being shut off at the trailer and how she'd had to go groveling to Russell and Darryl for the rest of the snow season.

What they'd done to her was there in her eyes for Patty to read. In the hollows of her cheeks and the oozing scabs on her once freckled, lovely skin. In the pile of ashes she'd become, giving up on living, on waiting for the missing half of her to come back. Her twin had given up because of all of them, every name written on that mirror.

Beneath the ice in her heart, something woke up again, the hot need taking a new shape. Grief gave the devil life, guilt gave it claws.

Patty turned off the bike and let it roll up the road to the ranch house. Lights were on and she heard some kind of pop rock pulsing from somewhere inside. She watched the house for a minute. Two trucks were parked on the ragged lawn and a silver van sat to one side, its rear wheels stripped and up on blocks.

She couldn't go in here with her gun blazing. She only had five rounds left plus the one in her pocket, wrapped in Penny's photograph. Patty debated waiting and trying to pick them off if they left the house, but the night wasn't getting younger and if they were both here, as the trucks pointed to, they probably weren't going out before daybreak. What she needed to do needed doing before dawn. Her right arm had started to throb and swell where Luke Gains had stomped down on it and the lack of food and sleep turned the edges of her vision to moldy fuzz.

She would have to work with what she had on her side: surprise.

Patty licked her lips and left the gun in its holster. She slipped up to the side of the house toward the dark shape of the woodshed, her footsteps on the grass sounding like someone walking over Cheerios to her own ears. No one came tearing out of the house, so she assumed the music must be covering her noise.

She found an axe leaning just inside the shed and hefted it. Her stomach turned at the thought of what she might do. _You drowned your Gran_ , she told herself, mentally trying to conjure her best drill sergeant tone, _don't turn into a pussy on me now_.

The kitchen looked empty when she peeked over the windowsill in the door and the knob turned in her hand. She slipped inside the house, moving as quietly as she could, keeping her back to the wall. The kitchen lights were on, but the hall ones weren't. The walls were as bare of pictures as those in Penny's trailer and painted apartment white. Light penetrated from the kitchen enough to see and Patty went toward the music, following her nose as the smell of pot grew stronger. There was something under that herbal smell, a scent both chemical and rancid. She fought her gag reflex and shifted her grip on the axe, wiping sweaty palms against her jeans one at a time.

The first room she came to, a sunken living room beyond the kitchen, was empty of people but she saw movement up the two steps that led to a wide opening beyond. A man crossed the opening, the shine of his bald head identifying him as Russell, the older Marsh brother. He didn't seem to look her way but Patty shrank back against the wall beside the door and waited a few breaths before peaking around again.

"The fuck you doin'?" Russell's yellowed teeth and pocked chin confronted her as she twisted for another look. He'd crossed the living area quickly, and was almost to her. His brown eyes widened and he froze, his rancid breath bearing down on her, still hazy with pot smoke.

"No," he said, holding his hands up. "You're dead."

"Not yet," Patty said and she swung the axe.

The sharp wedge caught him in the side and stuck. He screamed like a rabbit shot by a BB gun and fell backward, tearing the axe from her grip.

Movement, little more than a shadow, caught her eye and Patty plunged into the living room just as Darryl, coming up through the hallway, fired the first blast from the sawed-off shotgun in his hands.

Buckshot ripped through her calf and she hauled herself toward the screaming Russell more on instinct than anything. The axe haft beckoned, waving back and forth as Russell twitched and rolled on the floor, sliding on the hardwood in a growing pool of his own blood.

"Fucking bitch," Darryl yelled.

Patty's brain kicked in as the hard lump of the gun in the shoulder holster reminded her she wasn't unarmed. She hauled herself behind one of the pair of ugly green velvet couches and dragged the gun out, blinking to clear the red spots dancing across her eyes.

"Penny's dead. I found her goddamned corpse. Who the fuck are you?" Darryl's voice sounded no closer than the screams of his brother.

Patty swallowed and tried to pinpoint where in the room he was. She'd have to make her shots count. Russell's screaming sharpened and then dropped to gurgling groans. She guessed that Darryl had helped his brother pull the axe free and cursed her missed chance.

"Who. The fuck. Are you?" Now Darryl's voice was closing in.

Patty bit half through her lower lip to distract against the pain in her leg and swung up to kneeling, bringing the M1911 above the line of the couch.

She squeezed the trigger as she rose and shot Darryl in the shoulder, pulling his own shotgun blast up and to the side. It peppered the far wallpaper with crackling impacts. She aimed her second shot better and took out the side of his face, leaving one brown eye staring from under a shock of thinning brown hair as he collapsed sideways.

Patty dragged herself to her feet and aimed the gun at Russell. Red froth burbled from his lips as he choked on his own blood. She pulled the trigger again and again, firing into his twitching body until nothing in the room moved and the hammer clicked down on empty.

"Trish," she said, so quietly that she barely heard herself above the music still pulsing out of the upper den. "I'm Patricia. Penny's twin."

She used the axe as a crutch to get out of the house but there was no way she could take the motorcycle. The red spots danced in her vision again as she forced herself back into the house. She found keys to the smaller Dodge truck in a carved wooden bowl on the kitchen counter.

She drove with her left foot, grinding the truck through the gears as best she could and trying not to swerve too much. She took the road back down, beyond Mercy and out toward Three Band Butte. She drove past the area where she'd tossed the clay jar that wasn't her twin and wound her way out to the plateau. Patty shut off the truck and stumbled out to a large, flat boulder that rested against other, smaller rocks.

In daylight, the rock would be striated with muted orange, black, and red. In the starlight, it was blue-grey, shifting shadows like the rest of the landscape.

It took Patty three tries to get up onto the surface of the rock. Her hands were scraped raw, her right arm half numb, and her right leg felt as though she'd shoved it into a wasp nest. She rolled onto her back and stared up into the sky. She pulled out the gun and rested it on her chest. With numbed fingers she loosened the final bullet from her pocket and loaded it into the chamber by feel.

The late-night wind hustled over the plateau, scouring away the sour memories and carrying a hint of Chanel perfume. Patty shivered and then the ice inside her broke apart with a heaving sob. The devil of guilt and grief struggled out of her throat and she curled up on herself, around the heavy, cold weight of the gun.

"Penny," she cried. "Penny girl, shiny Penny. I'm back. I came back. I'm so sorry. I didn't hear you."

She hadn't felt her twin die. Studies said twins were often connected in crazy ways, but Patty knew now that she hadn't been. If they'd been connected, she'd have known. She wouldn't have ignored things. But she'd feared being Trish from nowhere Colorado again, a girl with broken language and an ugly past. She'd feared getting stuck, stuck like Penny.

She blew her nose into the shirt that still stank of her sister and lay back, cried out. With the devil gone, Patty finally felt the hole inside that Penny must have lived with all these last five years. Hollow. All hollow.

There was only one name left that belonged on that mirror, one last person who had wronged her twin.

The sky lightened from soot to ash and the stars began to fade. Penny's favorite time of day. Patty's left hand reached out and her fingers scraped the bare rock beside her where her twin's hand should have been.

Alone, she counted down the stars- one by one as they slipped away and dawn turned into a rusted blush on the horizon.

When only the bright light of Venus, the Morning Star, was left in the pale sky, Patty made a wish. Then she lifted the gun, closed her lips over the barrel, and squeezed the trigger.

* * * * *

##  Innocence, Rearranged

### Story Notes

_I almost turned in something else for my final Clarion story but then, at her reading, Kij Johnson read us Storykit and I had to go home and work on this story instead. I'd had a different title and about 1200 words on a story that functioned around the same central idea, but once I got back I realized the story I really wanted to tell and sat down and wrote that. Part of the point of this story was to demonstrate that I could write a story without killing anyone and with more sedate pacing that still was one people would want to read to the end._

* * *

Mai goes for her daily run, glad that spring has arrived and freed her from the treadmill. She usually makes a circuit down through the gardens but today she turns and runs uphill, toward the cherry orchard. At first, her calves feel like lumps of wood, but she warms up and finds her stride. When Love, who she has started to call Pembroke in her head as a tiny rebellion, told her to start running two years ago, she hated it. Now, this is her favorite time in each day. This is also the only time she is allowed to wear pants.

Pembroke seems to think that running will keep her from turning into a woman. Her period, which made him so unhappy before, has stopped. The dresses he buys her hang on her bones and she feels less like the little girl he wants her to be than a doll made from sticks.

The cherry trees are in bloom. Pink and white petals drift down, fragrant snow, and she raises her hands, brushing branches to shake down more as she runs past. Mai crosses to the end of the orchard and looks up to the rocky, sparsely forested hills beyond. She knows there is no one and nothing out there because Pembroke has told her so many times over the years. Only the villa below her and the people who work the gardens, people who do not meet her eyes. People who speak a language she cannot remember.

Pembroke has business today. He is locked in his office. Mai does not think he will mind if she runs for more than her usual hour. He will not even notice as long as she is back before tea.

She sets out up the hill. Her feet leave impressions in the moss, and small brown speckled birds call out to each other as she pushes through untamed branches. The villa, when she looks back, is invisible, but Mai thinks she can find her way back by going downhill when she's ready.

It is mid-morning when she hears the sound of a stream. She follows the fresh scent of water, wishing she'd brought a bottle along with her. Pembroke only drinks water from bottles. Mai dips her hands in the clear brook and splashes cold water on her face, but doesn't drink. She follows the stream back down the hill as it curves off to the right of where she climbed up.

The stream ends in a pond tucked away in the clumped shade of trees Mai doesn't know the name of. Tiny purple flowers drip from the trees as though garlanded there by an invisible hand. The area around the pond is pebbled with dark green stones that shine brighter green where the water laps against them. Mai picks one up and rubs the smooth surface with her thumb.

Jade. The floor of this place is jade. It glints in the water as well until the depths swallow too much light for her to see down further. Mai wonders if Pembroke made this place, but the untrimmed trees and sheltered wildness here don't seem like his style. He likes his world controlled, orderly, everything in its place.

The sun hangs overhead, beating down and the skin beneath her tee-shirt is prickly with sweat. Mai hesitates and then strips off her clothing, her eyes darting around the glade, looking everywhere but down at herself. She folds her clothing with precise movements, lays them on top of her shoes, and then walks into the water.

The pond is colder than the stream and her jaw clenches as she slides in. Her braid floats like a snake behind her and Mai kicks off the bottom, swimming out to the middle of the pond. It is nothing like swimming in the infinity pool on the deck at the villa. She dunks her head and opens her eyes under water.

There is no sting of chlorine and the sunlight paints shadow worlds in the depths below. The pond is very deep, the jade beach dropping off into darkness. Down in that dark shines a glint of gold. Then of blue. Gold, then blue. Something moves in the water far beneath her and Mai comes up for air.

The water around her churns and she screams, forgetting how to swim for a moment in her panic. She goes under and her legs kick at the swirling water. Then a wave, rising from deep within the pond, lifts her up to the surface and carries her back to the shore.

Mai gasps on the beach, her body half in the water. She rubs her eyes and blinks against the light. A huge serpent, scales blue and gold, rises from the pond and she wonders if she has passed out.

The water dragon shrinks as it reaches the shore. Mai scrabbles backward, only her feet in the water now. The dragon morphs from a scaled beast with a bearded, wolfish head into a boy not much older than her sixteen years. His skin is blue and his eyes are gold. His hair is less like human hair than like vines, tendrils of water-grass colored like the jade beneath her body. When he smiles, his teeth are black.

Mai bites her knuckles and holds as still as she can. Her clothes are too far away and she doesn't think screaming will help. Screaming has never helped her.

The dragon-boy says something in a language she doesn't know. She shakes her head. Her hair has come out of its braid and flops around her shoulders. She pulls the thick black strands over her chest, ashamed of her brown nipples, cage-like ribs, and bony chest. Her hair doesn't quite reach her thighs and her girl place is bare, shaved every morning as Pembroke requires. She squeezes her thighs shut and gulps in a breath.

"I don't understand you," she says, because the dragon-boy has cocked his head to one side like the canary Pembroke bought her when she was nine and he moved her out of the pink room.

The dragon-boy says something else and crouches down, holding out his hand. Mai tries not to look between his legs as she gets slowly to her knees. She touches her fingers to his, telling herself that this isn't real.

His fingers are warm and smooth and slick. He smiles, black teeth against blue lips. His eyes are shaped like hers and he looks so different from Pembroke that her fear of him feels as insubstantial to her as wind.

"Rin," he says and touches his chest.

"Mai," she says, touching her own chest. She pulls away from him and looks up at the sun. "I have to go," she says. He smells like green tea and the thick red clay she spins on her pottery wheel. He's not real, she tells herself. She is sick from the heat or from not eating enough or from dehydration. Or her heart is sick. She has conjured him.

Mai stands and backs away. Rin does not follow her but he watches with his head tilted as she pulls on her teeshirt, then her pants and shoes. She runs away. She is good at running.

* * *

Mai barely gets back by tea time. Her shoes leave partial tracks on the tiles of the main room. Pembroke comes out of his office, wearing his usual white shorts and buttoned-down shirt with the tiny horse on the breast. His light brown hair is mussed as though he has spent all morning running his fingers through it.

"Where were you?" Pembroke asks.

"Running," she says. "I found a pond and went for a swim." She holds up her damp braid as evidence. Her tongue feels thick with the things she has not said.

"Go shower," Pembroke says. He is already staring beyond her, out to the south terrace where silent brown-skinned servants are setting out afternoon tea. "You don't know what might be in the water here."

Mai chokes back a nervous giggle and goes to obey him, relieved that he takes her at her word and doesn't press for more. As she washes the sweat from her skin, she wonders when she stopped thinking Pembroke's eyes were the perfect color of blue.

When Pembroke comes to her that night she touches his hair and closes her eyes as his pale hands smooth her skin over her bones. She calls him Love the way he likes but in her mind she pictures tiny purple flowers and a jade tunnel that she can run down and down forever.

* * *

Mai stays away from the pond for two days. On the third day she has grown tired of arguing with herself and sets out up the hill. She takes a more direct route, carrying a Hello Kitty lunchbox containing rice cakes, a juice box, and half a chocolate bar that she secreted away on her last birthday. She stands at the shore and calls out Rin's name, feeling like an idiot when the water stays clear and still.

It is only when she tosses a handful of green stones out into the depths that the water churns and spits up the blue dragon-boy again. This time he is not naked but wears yellow silk pants tied with a strand of black pearls.

He sits in the shade of the trees with her and tastes the food she has brought, making faces when he discovers it makes her laugh. Mai flinches when he reaches for her hand and his gold eyes look hurt, his greenish brows knitting together. He holds out a blue hand and tilts his head, asking the question with his face since she still can't understand any of his words.

Mai reaches out and sets her hand on his. He folds his fingers over her and pulls her hand to his mouth, licking her skin with a blue tongue. His tongue is warm like his skin and just rough enough to tickle. She smiles as a dizzy feeling uncurls in her belly and snakes up to her head.

Rin says more words she doesn't understand and motions to the salted rice cakes. She thinks she understands and nods. When he lets go of her hand she is sad. It is the first prolonged contact she has had with anyone since her mother handed her over to Pembroke ten years ago. It is the first touch she has chosen for herself.

Mai takes his hand back, watching his face to make sure he isn't angered by her forwardness. When he smiles, she pulls him closer and touches her lips to his chin. His skin there isn't slick like his hands but textured as though there are tiny scales growing there. He tastes the way the clear water smells, fresh and sharp and natural. Rin bends his head and when his lips touch hers, Mai doesn't pull away. She keeps her eyes open and in the golden depth of his eyes she sees an image of herself wrapped in green silk with her hair loose over her shoulders and draped in pink pearls.

She jerks back and searches his face, but the mirage is gone and his eyes are non-reflective swirling gold again, empty of herself. Mai wants to ask him so many questions, but they have no language in common.

* * *

Pembroke stands directing two men in coveralls outside the pink room. Mai cannot slip past them without him seeing so she doesn't try to sneak. It is well past tea time.

His grip on her arm will raise a bruise later but she keeps her eyes fixed on his white tennis shoes and her mouth pressed shut.

"Where were you?"

"Running," she says.

"With a lunch box?" Pembroke shakes her arm and Mai almost drops the box.

"I wanted fresh air. In the orchard." She thinks of the other day and takes a risk as fear sweat tickles her spine. "Ask the gardeners. I know at least one saw me up there, resting under the falling petals."

He lets go of her arm and sighs. The two men have stopped painting and watch until Pembroke glares at them. "Go shower," he mutters to her and she knows she has won. He will not check with the gardeners. She has never lied to him so directly before. She has never had anything of her own, anything to protect.

She takes care with her outfit, just in case he's still angry. Mai chooses the white dress with the tiny red cherries on it and a clean pair of white cotton panties. She uses the curling iron to give her pigtails bounce and puts baby powder on her armpits. When he comes to her room that night she is ready to use every method of keeping him happy that he has taught her.

But Pembroke sits on the bed and plucks at the lace hem of her dress, his eyes staring at the sea-green wall and the shadows her unicorn lamp casts there.

"I am going away for a few days," he says. His fingers brush her thigh but his hand doesn't wander higher.

"Okay, Love," she says. He has gone away before. There will be a dead-eyed woman who doesn't speak to her here in the morning, Mai thinks. That is how it has been before when he travels on whatever his business is. It seems to involve a lot of time in his wood-paneled office behind the huge hardwood desk, yelling into the telephone.

"I don't want you going outside for runs while I'm gone. If you got hurt out there, I'd be devastated. You know that, right? You'll run on the treadmill until I return."

Mai thinks of Rin and the gentle brush of his lips. "Okay," she says. "I don't want to worry you." She smiles, knowing he will mistake it as being for him instead of just at him.

"You are a good girl, Mai." Pembroke's hand lifts from her thigh and his thumb rubs over her lips. Mai feels as fragile as a vase, holding her secret in the hollow of her body. When he leaves without demanding the use of her body, she curls into a ball on the turquoise coverlet and presses her face into her pillow, her hand between her legs. She thinks about blue skin and lapping water.

* * *

The hard-eyed woman falls asleep in a rattan chair on the terrace and Mai runs in her sandals all the way to the pond. It is afternoon and Rin is already out of the water, stacking jade stones into towers as he waits for her.

When he leans in toward her, Mai takes his hand and kisses him. She wraps her other hand in his hair. It is spongy and wet and the green tea smell grows stronger when she squeezes the thin vines.

"I want to swim," she says, pointing at the water. She pulls away from him and strips off her dress, pushing away the embarrassment that rises. Mai hopes Rin will like her as she is because that is all she has. She is tired of trying to be something else.

He laughs and pulls her into the water, his silk pants dissolving as it passes their waists. Mai swims out and flips onto her back, floating. She tugs at her braids and pulls the bubble-gum colored plastic ties out so that her hair fans out around her. Rin dives beneath and comes up. His legs fuse and his body beneath the water seems to go on forever, glinting blue and gold down into the depths. He folds his arms on the surface of the water as Mai might on a table and rests his chin on his hands, watching her.

After a while she gets too cold and swims to the shore. The jade stones are smooth and warm from the sun. Rin sits beside her.

Mai points at the water and says, "Water." She looks at him, trying to convey what she wants.

His head tips and then Rin smiles and tells her a word. She repeats the word, tucking it away in her memory. She points to a tree and asks again. When they have exhausted all the simple things around her that she can find, she touches her hair.

Rin closes his hand over her own and combs their clasped fingers through her hair. He doesn't give her one word but many, a soft stream of language that flows around her. His words wake her memory and she responds with a phrase.

His hand turns to a fist in her hair and his lips press together. He says something else, his tone soft and the words turn up at the end as though he has asked a question.

"I don't know what I said," Mai says. "I just remember. . ." She trails off and looks down at her thighs. She remembers her mother, or at least a woman she thinks was her mother. The words she spoke to Rin were the ones her mother said over and over as people who are no more than blurs of color in Mai's memories talked to the tall white man she would be taught to call Love. Mai knows that she must have understood those words once but none of them have meaning now and none of them are the names of trees, water, rock, purple flowers.

Rin tips her chin up and snaps his fingers. He opens his hand and reveals a bright blue scale nearly the size of his palm. Gently he pushes her onto her back and lifts her hair off her body. Mai's heart jumps and she feels the familiar panic in her gut but shoves it away. This is Rin. He is hers.

He starts on her chest; the scale tracing symbols that she guesses are letters. The scale is softer than it looks; brushing over her skin like a petal and leaving blue lines behind like a piece of chalk. She doesn't know what the words mean at first but he writes the same lines over and over. Heat builds between her legs and Mai presses her thighs together, blushing. When all the skin on her front has writing, Rin slides his fingers beneath her bony hip and turns her over. Mai lifts her arms and lets him pull her hair off her back. Her muscles clench and she breathes through her nose. This position has too many memories tied to it and she feels exposed, vulnerable.

Rin's fingers stroke down her back and he starts to hum. Mai relaxes, resting her head on her crossed arms. She catches his smile out of the corner of her eye and then he resumes writing on her body. The soft brush of the scale lulls her and the warm sunlight softens the air until she is drowsy.

In her half-sleep, Mai hears the words again. Rin writes the symbols a final time down the sole of her right foot and then turns her over. His blue body comes over hers but though she can feel the thick warmth of his erection and lets her thighs relax, he doesn't try to penetrate her. His lips touch hers and she breathes in the air he breathes out. His fingertips brush her eyes and she closes them.

When he speaks, she understands the words.

* * *

The sun is a red disk hanging over the gardens when Mai returns to the villa. Her head hurts with possibilities. She slips into the house and ignores the glare of the woman hired to mind her.

Mai stands in the shower a long time without turning on the water, her fingers stroking the words on her skin. She brings her hand to her mouth and tastes her own salt and baby powder scent.

When she turns on the water, the tears come, her thin shoulders shaking. Rin whispered many promises, each like a gem dropping from his lips into her throat until she felt full and heavy. She would be his queen. She would live in his palace and never want for anything or be made to do anything she did not agree to. She had asked him why, rolling the words around on her tongue and clicking them against her teeth.

_"I am lonely, too."_

The tap water is wrong, metallic. Mai shuts it off, watching the last of the glittering blue writing swirl down the drain. On her way to her room she stops and stares at the pink room. The furniture is the same but the walls have been freshly repainted and are bright when she flips on the light. The white bedspread is neatly made on the child's bed with its heart-shaped headboard. Nightlights in the shape of fairies decorate every outlet, their stained-glass wings dark.

She goes to bed without eating and lies on her back, watching the patterns cast by her lamp. She runs her hands over her skin and wonders what it would mean to be whole.

* * *

The woman does not let Mai out of her sight the next day and Mai is glad for the excuse to sit in the shade and kick her pottery wheel until the red clay wobbles and droplets fly out into the sunlight. Some hit her bare legs below the hem of the green summer dress and run down her legs looking like old blood. Her mind is not on the pots but on the blue scale tucked into her jewelry box.

She washes the clay off before tea is served and pulls Rin's scale out. It is almost too warm against her skin and when she tips it up she sees Rin in his dragon form, curled beneath the water, and hears his voice like a wave in her mind repeating a phrase over and over in a language she can almost understand.

The front door opens and Mai starts as she hears Pembroke calling her name. She closes her hand around the scale and leaves her room.

In the living room, Pembroke stands with a purple duffle bag under one arm. A young girl of maybe six or seven years stands beside him. She wears a frilly dress so new that Mai can smell the store's incense on it and her black hair is straight and streaked with dust. Her almond eyes are wide as she looks around, trying to take in the large villa and all the details at once. It is a look Mai remembers, from the inside.

"This is Hana and she is going to stay with us for a while," Pembroke says. He sets down the bag and pushes the little girl forward with a hand on her back. "Show her the pink room and then we will have tea, all right?" His eyes are on Hana even though he speaks to Mai.

"I am Mai," she says, trying to smile. Her heart beats faster and faster and she hears water rushing in her ears. She takes Hana's hand. It is tiny and warm. There is dirt under the girl's nails.

Pembroke nods and goes toward his office. Mai bends and picks Hana up, resting her on her hip. The girl weighs very little. If she stays here, Mai thinks, she will learn to weigh nothing at all. She looks down the hall to the pink room as she walks but doesn't turn that way. The little girl says something to Mai, babbling a quick stream of words that mean nothing and one of her little hands tugs on Mai's braid.

Mai smiles at her and opens her other hand. Hana blinks down at the blue scale and reaches for it, hesitating at the last moment and looking up with wide dark eyes. Her chin wrinkles and quivers and her nose has started to run. Mai looks out through the open terrace doors toward the cherry orchard. She sees the years going by and all the tears that Hana will shed.

She closes her hand over the scale again and clutches the girl with both arms. Then she is out the door, running barefoot from the terrace and into the orchard. Petals fall around them and Hana struggles, half-screaming something.

Mai opens her mouth and words erupt from her, tiny seed pearls spilling over her lips and dropping down into the space between their bodies.

"Trust me, I love you, everything will be all right," she says in the language she has started to remember. Her words are a mix of those her mother spoke and those which Rin has given back to her.

Hana quiets and buries her head against Mai's chest. Though her legs and lungs burn, Mai doesn't stop until she reaches the pond. She stands on the jade shore and calls out Rin's name as she tosses the scale into the pond. Then she plunges into the water until it closes over both their heads.

Blue and gold scales coil around them and pull them down, down, away from the daylight and into the deep.

* * * * *

"When your language is under control and it's not doing appalling things, it's amazing." -Russel

## Clarion Submission Stories

##  Pele's Bee-keeper

The world was pain and light. Jackie didn't want to go back to that, but a voice insisted.

"Gensh, amik gensh," the voice said.

"I don't," Jackie started to say, then her mind woke up and the language came to her. "I'm here," she said in rough Farrakhani. She licked her lips, tasting bitter ash and metallic blood. Jackie opened her eyes and blinked against the warm sunlight. A shadow came over her and after a moment she realized it was a face.

Her rescuer was covered in a bright purple robe, complete with a veil over her face so that only a small swatch of golden skin surrounding large hazel eyes was revealed. A woman perhaps, Jackie thought, judging by the long lashes and the soft, light tone of her voice.

"Drink this, it will help with the pain," the woman said, her words clipped and accented, making Jackie wonder if the language wasn't her native one.

She obeyed, hissing as she lifted her head and disturbed her shoulder. _Damn, that's gotta be my collar bone. That's six weeks or more out for me, Miles will whine to no end about the fetch and carry._ She started to chuckle until she remembered. Crash. Miles. His gurgling screams and that horrible warm wetness.

Whatever was in the water, which tasted slightly sweet, started working immediately. Warm relief shoved away the pain and she laid her head back onto the soft thing beneath her body. A blanket maybe? She wasn't sure.

"Miles, my pilot," Jackie asked as the woman's head reappeared above her, "he's injured, too, I think. Did the others get him out?"

"Others?" The woman shook her head and a shadow passed through her green-gold eyes. "There are no others here, only I."

"And Miles?" Jackie was annoyed. Why wouldn't this woman just say. She started to fade again and fought it, reaching with her left hand to grab at the woman. The medication refused to let her win and the dark claimed her again.

* * *

When she awoke she was inside. The lights had multi-colored paper shades and gave the large room a warm glow. Jackie struggled to sit up and leaned against the headboard of the soft bed she'd been placed in. The room had shelves and cabinets along the edges with neat labels on them in a language that she couldn't make out. Opaque jars lined many of the shelves and Jackie smelled fresh brewing coffee. There was no sign of Miles.

A curtain twitched aside and her rescuer entered, carrying a tray. The woman was tall, Jackie thought they'd look eye to eye when standing. Her robe swirled around her body, making her shape impossible to determine, but Jackie guessed she was fit enough to be living out here alone.

"How do you feel?" The woman set the tray down and knelt beside the low bed.

_I'm injured, alone, and you won't tell me what the hell happened to Miles. How do you think I feel_? Jackie took a deep breath. "Floaty," she said. "The pain isn't so bad. Miles is dead, isn't he?" She forced out the last, making herself look at the possibility head on.

The woman was very still for a moment and then slowly nodded. "If Miles is the red-haired one, yes. He's dead. I stopped the fire in your shuttle."

Grief threatened to shred the bandages the pain medication had laid over her mind. Dead. Nothing she could do there. She took a deep breath and regretted it.

"Careful. Your collarbone is broken, here." The woman touched her right shoulder to demonstrate. "Your arm, too, I had to cast it. Your head just took a little glue, no concussion. I am Darya."

Jackie almost smiled at the quick, clinical delivery of this information. Not a woman used to company, she guessed. A woman in veils with no surname. Curious.

"I'm Jackie, Jackie Banner. Captain of the IOU. I need to contact my crew, get the other shuttle down here. Also, figure out what happened on my ship." What had happened to her crew. Why hadn't the other shuttle come down here yet?

"They are in orbit around the Jewel. Contact from here can't happen for another thirteen standard hours. You need to rest. After you drink this."

"I smell coffee," Jackie said, her mind peeling away again. She did want to rest, wanted to sink into the soft quilts on this strange bed and leave everything behind forever.

"No coffee for you yet. Meds, then sleep."

Jackie obeyed, sliding down into the covers.

* * *

"I went back to your shuttle. To get my cargo." Darya's soft voice broke Jackie out of her dark thoughts.

As soon as she awoke, Darya had made Jackie take more medication and then presented her with a tiny feast of fresh fruit and nuts and smashed, cooked yams. Chewing hurt, but no more than breathing. She forced herself to eat, if only to keep up her strength and pass the time until her ship could be contacted.

"Is, I mean, Miles. His body." She bit her lip.

"I laid him out and put a sheet over him, inside. He is safe." Darya studied her for a moment. "He was more than your pilot? Your lover?"

_Is it so obvious?_ "Sometimes. He's been a friend a long long time. Was." Another wave of grief slammed into her and she choked on a piece of starfruit.

"I did not mention the ship because of him. I mention because I think you were bombed." Darya set down her water glass and folded her hands in her lap.

Jackie's head snapped up and she raised her left hand to touch her sore head in reflex as it protested the sharp movement. Her braids were crusted and rough above the cut on her forehead. "Bombed? What do you mean?" She wondered if the language barrier were playing tricks with her.

"Your console, it exploded, yes? I looked at it, after moving your pilot. I think it was deliberate, not a malfunction."

"Why would someone want to rig my shuttle?" Jackie glared at Darya. This was a headache she didn't need. It had been weeks since they'd docked anywhere, and no one had been on the ship but her crew. Their cargo was the stuff for this moon, and some bulk plastics for a new Chen Zho station out past Centarus. _And those Mudhemedi documents._ Jackie shoved that thought aside. Not even her crew knew about those.

"You would know better than I," Darya said.

Jackie shook her head, but her thoughts churned with the possibilities.

Laine barely left the engine room and had little interest in the shuttles unless something mechanical was wrong, Carsten had been learning the helm lately, and Aitor always did whatever his cousin, Carsten, told him to. She'd taken Aitor on mostly as muscle for using the lifts and moving cargo.

A bomb. That could have gotten anyone. It made no sense.

"How would you know what a rigged explosion as opposed to a malfunction looks like anyway?" Jackie asked, dark eyes narrowing.

Darya's expression was impossible to read behind her veil. "I do."

There was no response to that. Jackie looked away. Laine had been buried in manuals when she and Miles had departed. Jackie was going to stay on the ship, but Aitor didn't feel well, and Carsten and Miles had always been at best coldly civil to each other, so she didn't want to send them down together for the drop. So she'd gone with Miles.

Had Aitor's eyes slid away from her when he told her he was sick? Where had Carsten been then, behind her? Had Aitor glanced at his cousin? Why? She tried to replay the events in her mind but it was hazy.

"No," Jackie said. "I'm sorry, you have to be wrong. That explosion could have killed both of us, and without me no one can fly my ship. I've got the codes; I'm the only one with the codes."

She had to keep the codes close, not just because you could never be sure of anyone, not in space, not out here on the edge. _Can't risk someone finding out about the other missions, the ones that don't pay. Can't risk losing my ship, not now, now when the resistance needs help so badly._

"Don't trust your crew so much then?" Darya said and her tone stated clearly that she felt Jackie wasn't thinking it through.

"Take me back to my shuttle. I have to see for myself."

Darya looked as though she might protest, her shoulders hunching under the bright fabric. Then she nodded.

"When it is light out, we'll go."

Jackie sank back and sighed. More waiting.

"What was in those cargo crates anyway?" she asked, wondering if perhaps someone had wanted to destroy that cargo. The manifest had said only "agricultural supplies, organic."

"Seeds, and my beehives," Darya said, motioning to the shelves and cabinets.

Abruptly a memory came to Jackie. A large black insect with glinting blue wings resting on her arm in the smoke-filled shuttle. Her arm. Bones all wrong under the dark skin. She glanced down at it in the sling, but the cast covered everything now.

"So that was a bee," Jackie murmured. "Did some get out in the crash?"

"One hive was destroyed, despite the wrappings." There was a hard catch in Darya's voice at this, as though she were stricken with sorrow about it. "Two made it; the bees are waking up now. They must acclimate in the greenhouse, then I'll move the hives outside."

_Bees. I lost my best friend and she lost some bees._ Thinking about him conjured Miles' laughing freckled face. Bees and a mysterious woman. Miles would have been thrilled about this adventure. _If you hadn't died, it would be an adventure_. A deep shiver went through Jackie and she realized she'd been quiet a long time. Darya just sat, silent and still, watching her.

"Why bees? Why are you here?" _Think about something else. Anything else_.

"Do you feel you can stand? I can show you." Darya rose in a smooth, graceful motion.

Jackie shifted and swung her legs out of the bed, using her left hand to pull away the covers. Her undershirt was still on, though missing the right sleeve now, but she lacked pants with her jumpsuit removed.

Her thighs and knees were mottled with reddish bruising. Jackie was impressed since it took a lot for her dark skin to show damage like that. She knew it should hurt more, but the meds created a squishy barrier against that reality.

She stood. "Pants would be nice." She looked down and realized her ankle holster was missing as well, though she still had socks on. She guessed her side-arm was still in its locker in the shuttle.

"Your jumpsuit is ruined, but your boots and gun are fine. I will find you pants. Please wait." Darya slipped out through one of the three curtained doorways.

She returned and helped Jackie pull on a pair of wrap pants that were soft and smelled herbal, but clean. The boots were harder to get on, but the two women managed. Jackie made no comment as Darya strapped the ankle holster to Jackie's left leg, but she smiled to herself as at least a small piece of the mystery was solved. Darya's long, calloused fingers knew exactly how to fit the holster on, the strange woman barely looking at what her hands were doing as she snugged the gun into place. _Definitely not what she seems_.

The robes, the veil. Her knowledge of guns and explosives. The mysterious woman had seen war, Jackie was sure of that. But which faction? Which war?

Clothed and more or less steady, Jackie followed Darya through another curtain into a dim hallway. Darya hit a code into a solid door panel and it slid aside. Warmth and heady scents of growing things rushed out to greet them. The lights flicked on, revealing an immense greenhouse. Trees, some six feet or more in height, bore heavy fruits while tables full of leafy plants filled the expanse. Flowers of numerous colors and shapes overflowed their pots. The place brimmed with life, a lush paradise enclosed in glass.

Jackie stood just inside for a moment, taking breaths of the humid, earthy air, as deep as her injuries would allow. Slowly the pieces fell into place.

She looked at Darya with a little awe on her face. "You're terraforming. That's what you need the bees for. Right? You're trying to single-handedly transform a barren moon into what? This?" She waved her left arm about and regretted it as her shoulders shifted and the pain stabbed through the medicine blockade.

Darya laughed, low and soft. "Yes. And I will. Pele is not barren or we wouldn't be breathing. The seas are teeming with phytoplankton, and a few other organisms. The land masses are volcanic, the soil here is rich and ripe, a womb awaiting its seed. I am just the sower." Her hazel eyes turned more gold than green under the lights and burned with deep passion.

_She's a fanatic. With plants. Weird._ Jackie smiled despite herself. It was an ambitious idea. She could admire that. Plenty of people thought running a skeleton crew and dragging all sorts of strange cargo along the galactic rim was crazy too. Those people died old and boring in their beds.

_Not screaming and burning and alone_. Again the wave, and again she forced it back.

A light touch on her arm drew Jackie's attention. Darya had moved up close enough she could see the veil move as the other woman breathed. Understanding filled those lovely hazel eyes and somehow it was more painful to see than pity would have been.

"Come, Jackie," Darya said, "Come see the bees you brought me."

The hives were two large boxes, almost cone-shaped near the tops, with large slats that turned out to be vertical drawers. The bees were still sluggish from cold storage, but some took flight around the women as they approached. They were black with bluish wings and as long and thick as the first joint of Jackie's thumb.

"Those are honeybees? I thought they were supposed to be yellow and black, and well, smaller."

Darya laughed again. "Some are. These aren't. The gravity here is a little less than standard, the oxygen a little more. These should do well on Pele."

"Pele? My star charts just have a designation and number. Did you name it that?"

"No, not I." Darya turned away so Jackie could not read her face as she added, "It was named by others, long before I came here."

A bee landed on Jackie's arm and she froze, all her questions slipping away. "Is it, do they sting?"

"Yes, but they are nonaggressive. Nasty sting if provoked, however." Darya turned back. "Just lift your hand gently and it should take off."

Jackie did, and the bee vibrated its wings, lifting away and disappearing among the thick, waxy leaves of a breadfruit tree.

The remaining hours until daylight passed quickly. Darya deftly avoided any personal questions and instead distracted Jackie from both her curiosity about the woman and her own problems by explaining the ecology she was trying to produce. It was, as Jackie had suspected, an ambitious project.

The valley they were in was just her test ground; Darya had hope that once she'd unleashed the plants and bees into the environment, nature would take her course and begin working all on its own. If the bees survived, Darya planned to bring in other insects, and maybe bats as well. All Jackie managed to learn was that a settlers conglomerate paid the strange woman to do this.

"Aren't you lonely here, though? Why don't you have assistants?" Jackie asked.

Tension vibrated through the other woman and she turned her face toward the ceiling. "It's daylight now, we should go to your shuttle. If you still want to, that is." Darya said. "Do you need more meds?"

The meds were fading, the pain getting sharper. Jackie shook her head. She wanted the pain. The meds deadened her brain, fogging over things. She needed to think clearly. "Let's go."

The skimmer drifted across the plain towards the glinting wreck and Jackie wondered if running wouldn't have gotten them there faster than this old machine. Darya seemed to read her thoughts and pointed out that there were pockets of sharp volcanic glass beneath the soil, making foot travel dangerous.

Jackie stepped off the skimmer and walked into the dim interior of the shuttle. She paused, staring at the shape under the indigo sheet on the cargo platform. The cloth had slipped, revealing a shock of deep red hair. Miles. Miles grinning, his teeth coffee-stained and slightly crooked, holding the vial of dye. "Just enhancing what the good lord gave me." She gritted her teeth and looked away.

The front of the shuttle was a mess. Jackie forced herself not to think about the dark stains and mangled webbing as she picked her way to the console. It was blown apart, looking very much like something just beneath the screens and control array had torn through. Burning plastic had pocked the entire area and melted wires hung loose like orphaned vines.

"Plastique." Darya's voice startled Jackie. The robed woman slipped past Jackie and bent in front of the torqued plastic and metal where the blast must have originated. "This bit of shielding here; it made it act like a shape charge, pushing it out through the screens. And this fracture here..." She motioned to a deep, long scar in the side of the console.

"No, that was there. Not that big, but there. Laine said it wasn't critical, so I had her leave it." Jackie shivered, ignoring the lance of pain up her neck and then down her right arm. She wanted to reject what Darya was saying, reject the melted, blown apart mess in front of her. She brought her hand up and rubbed it across the bridge of her nose. "It made it worse, didn't it?" Ignoring reality in space got you nowhere but dead.

"Yes."

"So it could have been an accident. This much damage, I mean, not the explosion." Jackie thought about Aitor's face shifting away, Carsten standing big and cool behind her. "Designed to keep me here for a while, keep me busy." She said the last more to herself, slipping back into Esper from Farrakhani. If Darya understood she gave no sign.

"It is possible. But why disable the shuttle? To steal your ship?" The robed woman rose to her feet.

"No. I have a guess." Jackie hesitated. This woman was alone out here, just an employee of a conglomerate. It was unlikely she was a spy for one of the factions, or even involved at all in the various disputes and wars that flared up as regular as a sunrise in the galactic race for wealth and power. But Darya's strong hands deftly attaching the ankle holster to Jackie's leg was an image she couldn't afford to ignore.

The veils and robe. Farrakhani women sometimes wore a type like this, to signal the loss of family. There was a sect of the Farrakhan faction, the Akkisti, orphaned warriors trained in secret. Supposedly they were responsible for the genocide at Cerebin. 300,000 people had lived there. Then, none. None alive. No one knew what had really happened. The Akkisti had become more legend than anything, these days. Her brain felt slow and jumpy from the meds.

"Are you Akkisti?" Jackie said.

Darya flinched as though struck, eyes narrowing. "Why would you ask this?"

"My gun," she said, motioning to her ankle, "and this, this mess. You can read the explosion; you knew it wasn't from some tech failure. Your accent, your dress. All of it. You're not what you seem."

"Are you, Jackie Banner?"

_Those documents, the lists, will save lives._ "I am captain of the IOU, yes. I work for no one but myself." _That job isn't work, it's personal, I promised Inri. And the Mudhemedi didn't, don't, deserve what has happened to them_. She lifted her chin. Just as she'd thought, they were of a height, hazel eyes staring into her own black irises.

Darya held very still for a long time. Jackie's hand twitched and she pressed her tongue against the back of her teeth. Then Darya's head dipped, twice, in what might have been a nod. Jackie waited, willing the woman to answer her question.

"I am not just a bee-keeper, no. Before this I lived another life. Here, now, I am what I am. I am terra-forming Pele. And keeping an eye on the ansible array in the system."

"What?" Jackie said. There was no listed ansible in this system. She bit back pointing that out. It wouldn't be the first unregistered array.

There was a distant crack like thunder. Jackie looked questioningly at Darya. "Storm coming in?"

"No, not here. You came in over the ocean, yes? And then made a descent toward here?"

"Damnit. That was our other shuttle then," Jackie said, putting it together. "Out of time."

She walked out of the ruined craft and shielded her eyes from the rising sun. The gunmetal glint of the second shuttle appeared, making a far more controlled glide and landing than she and Miles had managed. Jackie knew who would be on board. She wondered what Carsten's explanation would be and thought about drawing her gun. She glanced behind her as Darya emerged, recalling the side-arm still in its locker in the shuttle. The other shuttle settled, kicking up a haze of black and red dust.

"Maybe I can still get out of this without shooting," she muttered. Darya said nothing as the hatch opened and two figures walked across the field toward the women.

Carsten was six and half feet tall, a head taller than Jackie herself and hulking with biogenetically enhanced muscles. His cousin was shorter, maybe five eight, but just as musclebound. Both men were armed, Aitor carrying a rifle. Jackie had no idea where he'd gotten that.

_Maybe Miles and I let ourselves get too distracted, with the easy jobs lately. Or maybe Miles was right to dislike Carsten. Maybe?_ She shook her head and winced. Too late to go for the ankle gun now.

"Captain!" Carsten's voice boomed across the closing distance. "Are you all right?"

Jackie hesitated. He looked genuinely concerned, dark brows knitting over light brown eyes. He stopped ten meters or so from her and looked at Darya. Behind him, Aitor stopped farther away, rifle held easy and ready in his hands, but not quite pointing at anyone, yet.

"Who's that? Where's Miles?" Carsten said.

Decision time. Miles would have played it cool, talked them into thinking she was totally in the dark about what might have gone on here. Miles would have made it work without violence or accusations. She glanced behind her and saw the indigo body lying amongst the shadows inside the ruined shuttle.

"Miles is dead," Jackie said evenly. "The bomb killed him. Why'd you do it, Carsten?"

His face shifted like a mask slipping on. Or coming off.

"No one was supposed to get hurt. I mean that, Jackie. I don't know what went wrong." He glanced behind him at Aitor, who now held the rifle pointed at Jackie.

"I got hurt. Miles got dead." Anger rose in her, mingling with grief. These idiots had served with her for a year, and then had killed her best friend by accident, and for what? "What did you want with my ship?" She ground out the words as though chewing gravel.

"You picked up something, a package, last jump stop. We'd heard you were helping those vermin, but couldn't believe it. Not neutral, don't give a damn Jackie. What the hell are you doing with lists of Farrakhani supply caches, Jackie? Going to hand them over to the Mudhemedi rats?" Aitor called out.

Jackie heard Darya gasp and turned her head sharply to look at the woman. It was a mistake. Her broken collarbone shifted and nauseating pain danced through her. She dropped to her knees with a whimper, trying to breathe through it and focus.

Carsten aimed his gun at her. "I'm sorry it had to be this way. But you're aiding the enemy."

"What damn enemy? Don't tell me you're allying with a faction now." Jackie looked up, fighting another wave of pain. She turned her body slightly, giving him her injured right side and hiding her left as much as she could. She inched her left hand down her leg.

"His accent, the short one." Darya said in Farrakhani. "It is ironic, yes? He is Akkisti."

Aitor tipped his head to one side as Carsten took a couple steps closer. He called out in Farrakhani, "I am. This does not concern you, Mamme. We will not trouble your moon here long."

Carsten glanced back at Aitor again and Jackie slipped her hand under her pant leg. Aitor nodded and Carsten looked almost apologetic.

"Sorry, Jackie. I didn't want it to come to this."

"You can't fly the IOU without me," Jackie said, speaking softly, willing him to come a little closer.

He did, taking a few more steps toward her as he raised his gun. "Yeah, I know. But Aitor says local has to have a way to communicate with somewhere outside this place or we'd have no delivery order for here." Carsten jerked his head toward Darya. "Jewel Box is remote, but we'll figure it out. Too bad our captain got burned up in a shuttle accident."

Jackie took a steadying breath and risked a glance at the other woman. Darya stood a little ways off, green-gold eyes narrowed against the sunlight, her hands tucked into her sleeves. No help there, not for Jackie. She cursed herself for liking the quiet, competent woman.

_Saving my life, then standing by while I get murdered. Great, thanks_.

"Carsten," she said. "I have a final request."

"Stay out of my line of fire, Carsten," Aitor growled as the big man moved closer to Jackie.

No luck there, but Jackie figured going down with one was better than nothing.

"What is it?" Carsten held his gun steady and towered over her.

"Be like Miles," she said, jaw tight.

"What?" He blinked at her.

"Die screaming, you asshole."

Jackie brought up the .32, squeezing off a close-range shot into Carsten. He collapsed forward as the frangible round tore into his belly.

She threw herself to the left, praying Aitor wasn't a legendary shot. The shock of agony through her body from her broken bones nearly blacked her out again, but she heard the shots clearly.

One, two, then three. Quick, the first almost on top of the next with a slight pause before the third. She waited for impact, something. All she heard were Carsten's horrible gurgling moans.

"Jackie?" Darya's voice was as soft and calm as ever.

Jackie opened her eyes and saw the woman moving toward her, Jackie's own side-arm held loosely in one hand. She forced herself upright and climbed to her feet.

Darya kicked Carsten over and the huge man stared up at her with glassy eyes, his moans turning to garbled begging in both Esper and Farrakhani. Slowly Darya unhooked her veil and then pulled back her hood.

Her face was scarred, a thick rope of whitish tissue disfiguring a full and otherwise lovely mouth. Her head was nearly hairless and the skin had a too smooth, plastic look. Jackie realized they were grafts. On the left side was a deep furrow just above a misshapen ear. Elemental weapons had done this, weapons outlawed by treaty among the major factions since the devastation of the main Mudhemedi colonies on Segina, fifteen years before. Jackie had seen footage. Everything on fire, a fire that spread and spread, burning all it touched. Animals, people, metal buildings. Things that shouldn't burn.

"Misc Mudhemedi," Darya said, "Sor gale, a'mud ismam."

_I am Mudhemedi. This death, that life may continue_. Inri had taught Jackie a little of his people. Enough.

Carsten's eyes widened and then Darya pulled the trigger and his face spread out over the black and red plain. Jackie looked away and shivered. She walked to Aitor's body.

Two in the chest, one in the head. Perfect shots.

"I am sorry I called you one of them," Jackie said, walking back to Darya.

The woman pulled her hood and veil into place. She shrugged. "I am what I am." She motioned to the bodies. "I will take care of this."

Jackie nodded, suddenly very tired. "I'll take the working shuttle. And Miles. You can do whatever you want with the ruined one. I'm sure I have an extremely confused engineer up on my ship right now. If they left her alive."

She didn't want to think about that. She didn't want to think at all, just collapse and sleep and wake up to a grinning, freckled man and a warm cup of not too stale coffee.

Darya talked her into going back to her compound. Jackie was too drained and in too much pain to argue much. The morphine put her out again and she awoke numb and determined.

Darya handed her a warm cup of fresh coffee and Jackie almost broke down crying right there.

"I wrapped your pilot and put him in your shuttle. We should go now, before you get tired again. You need meds and sleep. Much sleep."

Jackie didn't argue. The skimmer took them out to the plain one last time. There was no sign of the two men other than drag marks that disappeared into the red and black earth.

"Good luck, Darya bee-keeper." Jackie managed a half smile as she nodded. "And thank you."

"Thank you, Jackie Banner. Why would you help the Mudhemedi? We are a lost people."

"I made a promise to a man, once."

"Was he a lover, too?" Darya's eyes crinkled in amusement.

"Sometimes," Jackie replied and smiled back. She turned and stepped into the shuttle, letting the airlock door close behind her.

She settled carefully into the pilot seat and gingerly strapped in, glad for the pain killers. Jackie took a deep breath and hit the controls to start the shuttle. She glanced left to the co-pilot seat, a pang of loss digging deep. Then she did a painful double-take.

Tied into the seat was a large jar of coffee beans with a note scrawled in crisp Esper. "Thank you –the bees."

* * * * *

##  The Scent of Sunlight

Queenie Hayes strode quickly, shoulders hunched, through the freezing fog and shoved aside the broken front door to her apartment building. It was nearly three in the morning and she kept her right hand inside her purse, clutching the pepper spray, until she reached the landing outside her door.

Tap, taptap. Tap, taptap. She heard stirring within in response to her knocks. Shivering in the unheated hallway, she glanced around. The florescent lights flickered above the stairs, humming like tired glowbugs. The light on her own landing was burnt out, still. The chain rattled and Queenie listened as the deadbolts slid aside. She waited to enter until she heard the scrape of Angel, her eight year old son, pulling the chair away from the door.

"Hey, sweetheart." She ruffled his thick short curls which earned her a suffering look. "Any messages?" she asked as she relocked the door.

"Two," he said and pointed at the pad by the phone. "Tabby went to bed at eleven, I made sandwiches but we're out of milk," he added.

Queenie pulled off her shoes and dropped her purse with a sigh. Fridays were the worst. During the week she worked day shifts at the deli and was home in time to get the kids after school. The deli wasn't full time and paid not nearly enough, forcing her to work at the bar on weekends. Mrs. Jimenez, who lived near the park, took the kids on Saturday and Sunday nights, but couldn't do Fridays. That left Queenie working until two or three a.m. and Angel watching his four year old sister.

Angel perched on the faded yellow floral couch, sleepy eyes dark and solemn as he watched her. _He's growing up too fast_. Queenie shook her head and walked the few steps to the narrow kitchen and checked the messages.

Written down in Angel's blocky but legible handwriting was a note saying Mrs. Jimenez couldn't take the children this weekend because she had to visit her sick mother in law. Queenie sighed again. With rent due in a week and a half she couldn't afford to ask for the time off.

Angel and Tabby would manage. They'd have to.

The second message was from Ms. Stringer, Tabby's kindergarten teacher. It only said she'd called, nothing else. Queenie shivered. Teachers called only when there were problems, and she couldn't afford problems right now.

"Angel baby, did Ms. Stringer say anything when she called?"

"She asked for you, I said you'd gone to get milk and would be right back." He shrugged and then looked at his feet in their bright green socks. "Will you tuck me in?"

The apartment was generously called a 'double studio' and Queenie had hung a curtain across the opening between the living room and kitchen area and the makeshift bedroom beyond. In the soft glow of the caterpillar nightlight, Queenie could make out the smooth lines of her daughter's face. Tabby's eyes opened as she and Angel entered the room.

"Mommy, hi," she said, her voice thick with sleep.

"Hi, little tiger, go back to sleep." Queenie knelt and kissed Tabby's forehead.

Angel climbed in on the other side of his sister and Queenie tucked the thick blankets around both of them.

"Tell a story, mommy." Tabby's smile was like sunlight in the dim room.

"You want a story, too, Angel?" She smiled back as the aches in her feet and back faded. She was home and her children were safe.

Angel nodded and then said, "tell us about the Veldt."

"Veld veld veld," Tabby chanted.

Queenie shifted to sitting cross-legged. The Veldt was something she'd made up after reading a story as a little girl. Like her kids, she'd lived in the city her whole life. She'd never known a world not full of concrete and smoggy skies. The Veldt was her escape, somewhere beautiful and natural, with golden grass and a bright, shining sun.

"What do you want to know?" She was very tired, so tired she could almost close her eyes and slip away into imagined sunshine and a breeze carrying the scents of oranges and cinnamon bark. "Angel is a prince of the Veldt, did I tell you that?"

They both nodded.

"But I'm not a princess," Tabby said.

"No? What are you? A gazelle maybe?" Queenie rubbed her hand over her eyes. Tabby loved this game and she wished she could feel more than just exhaustion.

"A tiger!"

"A tiger? A fierce tiger, too, with lots of stripes. And you take good care of Angel," she said. Queenie opened her eyes and smiled at her kids.

"Are there horses there?" Tabby asked.

"Yes, pretty golden horses with tails that swish the ground," Queenie answered.

"And stripes. Gold stripes." Tabby's eyes closed.

"You think everything has stripes," Angel muttered.

"Not mice," Tabby said, her eyes still closed. "They got purple spots and big long tails and jump really far."

"That's so the eagles don't eat them," Angel said, closing his eyes too.

Queenie took a deep breath. She hardly needed to tell the stories; her fantasy world of the Veldt had become her children's now.

"Mommy is queen," Tabby said, "who is king?"

"A mighty hunter who always makes sure that we have horses to ride and good things to eat." Queenie put in the mighty hunter part for Angel and was rewarded with a sleepy smile.

"He'll teach me to hunt," Angel said.

"Yes, but only if good kiddos get sleep. We're going to the park tomorrow, remember."

She leaned forward and kissed both children goodnight. She was too tired to do more than tug off her jeans before crawling into her own bed. She fell asleep rocked by the gentle breeze and the strong arms of her King holding her close and keeping all her fears at bay.

* * *

The autumn wind carried a hint of winter but the sun shown today, a dull disk diffused by a brown sky. The park, which was nearly the whole city block, was safe enough in the daylight. The trees had already shed their sad leaves and the bare branches stretched like old fingers over the muddy, patchy grass. Half the park was paved, the basket ball court the most populated area as skateboarders watched young men play games of two on two.

The best part about the park wasn't the listing swings or the rotted play structure that was really just a single tower with a cracked blue plastic slide. The reason to come here was the carousel. It was a relic of better days, but the plump woman who owned it kept the thing running as long as there was no rain or snow.

"Horsies, horsies, horsies!" chanted Tabby.

Angel was trying to look more grown-up but Queenie could feel his trembling excitement through the tiny cold hand clutched in her own. She carefully reached into her purse and extracted the dollar bills she'd kept out of her tip money for today. Most of her tips went to groceries and school supplies and all the other little things that came up on a seemingly unending basis. But her kids were just kids. She hated saying no to them all the time.

"One dollar for you, Angel. One dollar for you, Tabitha." Queenie smiled as they got in line for the carousel. The line was never long, only a handful of other children stood waiting for the ride to end.

The tinny music came to a halt and a dozen laughing children climbed down along with a few parents and the odd teenagers on a Saturday afternoon date. Queenie kept a grip on Tabby's hood to prevent her daughter from slipping to the front of the line.

"You wanna ride with your girl, Queenie?" Linda, the operator, asked.

"No, that's okay, thanks," Queenie started to say.

"Mommy, ride the horsies with me, please please?" Tabby looked up at her with liquid brown eyes that shown with hints of pale orange in the diffused sunlight.

"One dollar for both of you, it's a Saturday special for regulars." Linda winked at her.

Queenie's jaw tightened. She didn't want charity, she wasn't that type of woman. But her baby's eyes and the tug of Tabby's little hand on her coat broke her momentary pride.

"Okay, baby. I'll go with you," Queenie said, then added as she stared Linda in the eye, "Just this once though. One time."

Linda nodded. The message delivered and pride restored, Queenie's kids handed over their dollars.

Angel raced away around the carousel to search out his favorite lion. Tabby went right to her favorite, a yellow horse with purple bridal and what might have once been bright silver accents meant to represent metal but which now were chipped and grey.

Queenie climbed on and helped Tabby up in front of her.

"My Veld horse," Tabby said, smiling up at her mother.

"Where are his stripes?" Queenie said.

"Right here, mommy." Tabby pointed at the faded and chipped yellow paint.

The music started and the carousel slowly turned, their horse beginning a gentle ride up and down, up and down. Queenie gripped her daughter and closed her eyes, trying to imagine what Tabby saw.

The carousel and the park faded away and the music became bird and insect song. The sun was hot on her upturned face and the horse beneath her shifted and moved, impatient to run. His fur was soft as clean sheets and his mane tickled her fingers.

"Mommy! Mommy! See, mommy, we're here!" Tabby's shrieks made Queenie open her eyes.

She blinked and forgot to breathe. She shook her head but the vista remained.

All around them, as far as she could see, spread out rolling golden hills studded by the occasional Acacia tree. Large dragonflies with iridescent wings danced between the stalks of grass. Beneath Queenie and Tabby was a stocky horse with bright gold stripes and a mane of silky yellow that fell to brush the grasses below. She could feel the beast breathing, his sides beneath her legs moving in a hypnotic rhythm. The breeze rippled through the grasses in a never ending wave and the air smelled clean and earthy.

She and Tabby both didn't have their coats, their bare dark arms soaked in the warmth of the place and Queenie reveled for a moment in the delicious heat on her skin. She tried to remember the last time she'd felt this warm and whole. Never, maybe.

"Mommy, can we ride? Where's Angel? Find him?" Tabby twisted around to look up at her mother.

Queenie stared down at her. She didn't know what to say. This couldn't be real, could it? And if it was, where was Angel? Had he not come with them? She wanted it to be real, something deep within her came loose for a moment and she was able to breathe again. She breathed deep.

She didn't know how she'd gotten here. If she could go back, get Angel, would she be able to return?

"I think, baby," she said slowly, "I think mommy isn't getting enough sleep, or food, or something. We'd better go."

"But," Tabby started to say.

Queenie closed her eyes and pictured the carousel, pictured Angel riding the lion. She heard Tabby's whimper of disappointment followed by the strains of music and the shouts of the basket ball players. The park, her escape from the city, seemed small and dim when she opened her eyes. The air tasted metallic and bitter and the cold hit her with a physical punch.

The carousel ground down to stopped. Tabby tried to slip off the horse, but Queenie grabbed her.

"Tabitha, listen to me. Don't mention the Veldt to anyone, okay?" She added, "Not even Angel," as she saw the look in her daughter's wide eyes. "Just, not yet. It's our secret."

"We go back?" Tabby asked.

"I don't know, baby. I don't know." Queenie lifted Tabby down and then slid off the wooden horse. _I wish it were real. I wish we could have stayed in the sunlight forever._ She'd never felt more tired.

The ten block walk back home was subdued. She left the kids in front of the TV and went next door to the Minute Market to get milk and more bread.

In the shower before work, Queenie looked down at her body. She was thinner than she'd ever been and her arms looked like the branches of the park trees, pale brown and weak. She told herself that was it; she wasn't eating enough, sleeping enough. Years ago, before Angel, before everything, she would have given anything to be so thin. Thin enough to hide. To be overlooked. Now, at twenty five, she felt only tired. Used up. A shell full of nothing but determined survival fueled by the burning love for her kids.

Things would be different for them. She'd make things different. And she didn't need a stupid fantasy world to do it.

Queenie normally skipped her short lunch break at the bar in favor of more tips, but she forced herself to choke down half a basket of chicken strips and a few tater tots. When she got home, Tabby was firmly asleep and Angel didn't say much.

He climbed into bed with her, though, his body small and warm as he nestled against her. She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close. His hair smelled of pert plus and underneath that indefinable yet unmistakable scent that said _mine_ to Queenie. _Mine_. His pulse was fast and light like a bird's. He said nothing of the Veldt but Queenie fell asleep with the image of her son racing across golden plains on the back of a lion, his laughter sparkling, a tangible thing in the bright air.

* * *

"You finished your homework?" Queenie asked Angel.

He nodded. "Read to me?" he said, ducking his head.

_Still my baby_. Queenie smiled. "Yeah, sweetie. You guys got library books with Mrs. Jimenez last week, right?"

Both kids dashed off to grab books. Queenie leaned back into the sofa, adjusting where her hips were to avoid the hard bit of wood that stuck through a thin spot in the faded cushions.

Angel came back with a book on India. The cover had heaping baskets of rice and a cinnamon-skinned woman in bright colors smiling at something just out of sight.

"India? For school?"

"We're gonna be learning about it this week." Angel shrugged. He was shy about how interested in school he was, but his book smarts made Queenie damned proud.

"Cat in Hat, Cat in Hat, Cat in Hat." Tabby bounced up onto the couch and jammed her book under Queenie's arm.

"Tabby, your brother was here first. We'll read about India and then I'll read the Cat in the Hat, okay?" She pulled her baby close and let the book slide to the floor.

"Tabby," Angel said with a sly look, "Know what they got in India?"

Tabby shook her head as Queenie opened the book to the first chapter. It was about a family working in rice fields.

"Tigers. Biggest ones ever." Angel smiled.

"Tigers!" Then Tabby thought about it. "Not biggest. Veld has biggest ever. Tell him, mommy."

Both kids looked to her and Queenie suppressed a sigh. She didn't want to think about the Veldt, to face what had happened the day before. It only scared her. She felt small and young and so very cold.

"The Veldt has big tigers, too. Just like India," she said, trying for a happy medium.

"No, no. They bigger." Tabby shook her head, her tiny pink mouth set in a stubborn line.

"Don't be a baby. The Veldt isn't even real, stupid." Angel's words shocked Queenie and she looked at him. His face was tight and hard.

"Angel! Don't talk to your sister that way."

"Is not true, Angel. Mommy and I were there yesterday." Tears made Tabby's eyes shine as they spilled slowly over onto her round, dark cheeks.

"No you weren't. Lying is bad. Mom, she's lying," Angel said.

Both children looked at her again, their faces accusing, Tabby's also full of sorrow and hope. Queenie stood up, pushing them both away.

"Angel, go take a time out. No, don't argue with me, boy. Do it." She didn't want to yell but she was too tired and her voice rose without permission. "Tabby, you too. Go be quiet and count to fifty. Then we can read. Now, Tabby."

Both kids glared at her and Tabby stuck her tongue out at Angel. Queenie pretended not to see that. They disappeared behind the curtain and Queenie sat back down on the couch, gathering both books up and setting them next to her. She could hear whispered arguing coming from the bedroom, but couldn't bring herself to go enforce the quiet time.

The world felt darker, colder. Her tiny apartment was dingy, closed in. She couldn't take the tightness of it anymore, not after that taste of blue sky and sheer openness the day before. It was burned into her memory as real as any of her other memories. Peaceful, safe, warm. Everything she longed for, there for a moment, a brief taste, and then ripped away again. Her eyes burned and her throat tightened but she refused to cry. If she let go now, fell apart even a little, she might never pick up all the pieces.

"Mommy! Mouse, mouse." Tabby dashed out of the bedroom, pointing behind her. "Angel caught it."

"What?" Queenie got up, horrified. They didn't have mice in this city, just rats. Big ones that carried who knew what diseases. If Angel got bit. . . Queenie forced away the worries, horrified that her first thought had been _I can't afford a doctor_.

She stumbled into the bedroom. Angel knelt on the bed he shared with Tabby, his hands loosely cupped around an impossibility.

It was a mouse, but not just any mouse. It was about the size of Tabby's fist with a long golden tail that curled around Angel's wrist and big violet eyes. Its golden fur was marked with bright purple spots.

"It's a Veldt mouse," Queenie said.

Both children gave her the look that said "duh".

"We need a box or something, get that one Angel's shoes came in." Queenie doubted that the mouse would stay in the box, it looked like it could jump as high as her head with its long hind legs. But it seemed content to sit in Angel's hands.

Tabby dug through the closet and dragged out the shoebox. Angel gently set the mouse down in it. Queenie pulled open the dresser and grabbed a tee shirt that was destined for the patches box anyway and made a little bed in the box. The mouse curled up with a tiny squeak, its tail wrapping around its body twice.

"His name is Wudget," Tabby said as they carried the sleeping mouse to the kitchen table.

"How come you get to name him? I caught him." Angel had forgotten the previous argument already.

"Hush, both of you. Tabby came up with the mice, remember? They are hers." Queenie shook her head. This wasn't happening. But it was. She couldn't deny things, not like this, not in front of her children. Maybe the hallucination would go away. Maybe, just maybe, it wouldn't.

The phone rang.

"I'll get it!" Angel yelled, startling Wudget the mouse.

"No, Angel, I'll get it. Get a dish and put some water in for Wudget," Queenie said. She reached over and answered the phone. "Hello?"

The voice on the other end was female and sounded friendly enough. "Ms. Hayes?"

"Yes?" Queenie wondered if this were Ms. Stringer. Why would a teacher call on a Sunday?

"Ms. Hayes, I'm Ingrid Williams, and I'm with the Office of Children and Family Services."

Queenie went dead still and then swallowed. "Yes?" she said, keeping her voice utterly flat.

"Some teachers at your daughter, Tabitha's, school called us because they were concerned. So I'm just doing a follow-up, all right? I only need to ask you a few routine questions, if you have a minute?" Ingrid's voice was casual, calm. The way Queenie talked to her kids when they were scared.

"Do you have kids, Ms. Williams?" Queenie asked.

"Mrs, please," the woman said, then hesitated before answering, "yes, Ms. Hayes, I have three boys, all grown now."

"And," Queenie said, biting into the words, "did a stranger ever call you and ask these 'routine' questions?"

"Now, Ms. Hayes, you sound upset. This is really nothing to be worried about. I'm calling because people are concerned. We'll just get started then, all right?"

It was not all right but Queenie just clenched her jaw and said nothing.

"All right. Do the children have grandparents?"

"Don't you have that information?" Queenie said. "My mom is dead, and Bill is in jail for it." She refused to call him dad. "And before you ask, no, the dad isn't in their lives either. Thanks for reminding me that I'm a fucking statistic."

"Mommy, you can't say that." Angel looked up at her from his perch on one of the green metal dining chairs.

"Ms. Hayes, please. I'm not here to upset you. Maybe we should do this in person."

"I have to go. My kids need lunch." Queenie said and slammed the phone back into its cradle. She clenched and unclenched her fists.

"We just had lunch," Angel pointed out. "What did that person want?"

"Did Tabby have her lunch on Friday?" Queenie said once she'd gotten control of herself again.

Angel's guilty look told her all she needed to know. He mumbled that he was sorry.

"Hey, it's okay, Angel baby." It wasn't, but she leaned so heavily on her son. His mistakes weren't his fault. She'd been called and asked about forgotten lunches before. Queenie sighed.

"Mom," Angel said as she lowered herself into a chair and put her head in her hands, "Mom, this woman came out a couple times last week and walked Tabby in. She tried to ask me stuff, but I told her I had school and walked off fast."

"That's Ms. Stringer," Tabby said. She was running a gentle finger over the polkadot body of the mouse and the little impossible thing was purring.

"So she saw I wasn't with you guys." That made sense. Queenie rubbed her hand over her eyes. Another thing to deal with. But she'd manage. She always found a way.

* * *

Ingrid Williams proved impossible to avoid. Queenie had hoped she was like most social workers, overworked and uninterested. But the woman called back, twice, insistent while remaining calm and full of fake understanding. Monday afternoon, Queenie was home, so she couldn't avoid her anymore. She arranged for a home visit on Tuesday.

She sat in the shower a long time, letting the hot water run over her. She knew she should be out reading to the kids or interacting with them, but she was so tired and the heat felt like heaven. She curled thin arms around her legs and let her mind drift to the Veldt.

The shower filled with the scent of oranges. Oranges were Tabby's favorite fruit, while Angel always loved pears. The two had decided that a special fruit called the mego grew in the Veldt on vines along the ground like melons. The mego had the flesh of pears, only bright purple (everything was purple if Tabby had her way about it) and the outside was the skin of an orange. They grew on dark green vines and ripened in the sunlight.

Queenie forced herself back. She didn't know what was happening. It seemed easier and easier to slip away into that other, happier world. The world that was now invading even her waking hours. She idly wondered if she could conjure a king. She sighed and turned off the water.

The kids had the TV on to some news program but were playing on the floor with Wudget, making him a little maze of empty paper towel rolls. The whole apartment smelled like oranges.

Queenie cried out in surprise as she saw the couch. It was overgrown with dark vines. Head sized mego fruit, the skins orange and purple striped, rested on the faded yellow cushions.

"Where did that come from?" Queenie asked.

Both kids looked up at her and shrugged in a painfully similar gesture.

"Dunno. It just started growing," Angel said.

"Will you peel one for us, mommy?" Tabby beamed up at her. "I bet Wudget wants some too."

Queenie hesitated. She didn't know what was going on, but her children accepted it in stride. _I want something different for them. No one is getting hurt. Why not?_

They had a tiny feast of fresh fruit. Even Wudget, who curled up and fell asleep in Tabby's lap afterward, much to the four year old's delight.

On the news there was a couple minutes of coverage about a shooting that had happened last night only a few blocks from where they lived. Then the news cut away to breaking coverage of a fireman getting a tiny Siamese kitten out of a tree somewhere uptown.

"You know, ma'am," said the handsome, young, white, fireman to the pretty, young, and white news reporter after she told him he was a huge hero, "most kittens get themselves out of trees."

Queenie chuckled. True that. Most kittens had no choice. You could stay and cry about things, or just climb down and get on with life. She got up to clean the apartment for the Child and Family Services visit.

* * *

Queenie ended up picking all the mego fruit and hiding it in the cupboard with the plates. She threw a clean sheet over the vines. It wouldn't look right to have a mysterious plant growing on the couch. Queenie didn't even know how she'd answer those questions.

The knock came at the door and she shoed the kids into the bedroom with Wudget. A rodent in a shoebox wasn't a good impression either.

Ingrid Williams turned about to be about sixty with even white teeth and her grey hair pulled back in a bun. She looked like a TV show grandmother.

"Mrs. Williams, I'm Queenie," Queenie said as she ushered her to a chair at the dining table. _Welcome to the crazy house_. She couldn't very well invite her to sit on the couch, but the thought made her smile.

"I'm aware you don't want me here, Ms. Hayes. But Tabitha has been going to school without her lunch some days. Now, you're not on government assistance, is that right?" Mrs. Williams set down her purse, a large woven contraption, and then pulled out a little notebook.

"No, ma'am. I provide for my kids." Queenie reminded herself to stay pleasant. "The apartment is close to the park, they always have food, and I pay all the bills. Sometimes Tabby and I just forget her lunch at home. I'll make sure it never happens again."

"You work at a bar on weekends?"

Queenie stiffened. This woman probably knew everything, so why was she asking? "Yes, but the kids stay with a woman down the street, Mrs. Jimenez. I have her number, you can call and check with her."

"I did call her, this morning." Mrs. Williams eyes were full of pity, but her mouth was tight. "Her machine said she's out of town until next Sunday. Who stayed with the kids this weekend, Ms. Hayes?"

Queenie sighed. She knew the law. You can't leave a kid alone, not under eleven years old. It didn't matter how responsible Angel was. The law didn't care.

"I'm not stupid," Queenie said. "I take good care of my kids. I work hard. Not everything is perfect all the time, but they are good kids and I'm a good mom. Why are you asking me this stuff? Can't you just check a box or whatever and leave us alone? We're fine. We're doing just fine." Her voice rose and rose and she clenched her fists so hard she could feel the nails digging right into her palms.

"Calm down, please, Ms. Hayes," Mrs. Williams said. She leaned forward and put a cool, dry hand on Queenie's arm. Her skin was soft, lined but pale. Milk and rose petals. "I know you are trying, but it is easy for a young mother to get overwhelmed. We're going to do what we can to make things easier on you. Now, no one is talking about taking the kids away, yet, but I can't just mark a form when I know that little ones are being left all alone, now can I? What kind of woman would I be. Try to see things my way, all right? We both just want what is best for your children."

_Take them away?_ Queenie froze. No one had said that. She hadn't said that. Why was this little grandmother bringing that up? She took a deep breath and pushed back her chair.

"Tabby! Angel!" she called.

"Mommy? Are you crying?" Tabby came out, Wudget riding on her shoulder.

"No, baby. Everything is fine." It was, Queenie realized. There was a door open in her mind now, a door that maybe had been open a long time, waiting for them all to walk through.

"What," Mrs. Williams voice finally took on a sharp note, "what is that. . . thing?"

"He's Wudget," Tabby said, making Queenie laugh, a nervous hiccupping sound that rang hollow in the small room.

"Mom?" Angel stepped in close to his sister, unconsciously putting himself between Tabby and the social worker.

"Get your coat, Angel, and Tabby's. We have to go."

"Where are you taking them? What is that? It looks . . . alive. Ms. Hayes, you must answer me. This interview isn't over. I don't want to do it, but I could have someone down here tonight to take these kids."

"Mommy, she's gonna take us?" Tabby's eyes filled instantly with tears and she stared at Mrs. Williams.

"No, baby. No." Queenie glared at Mrs. Williams. "Don't scare my kids. Nobody scares my kids. And nobody takes them."

Angel had his coat on and Queenie walked past Mrs. Williams to grab her own jacket. She gently took Wudget from Tabby and tucked him into her pocket. She considered reaching for the Veldt here, but the social worker was shrieking and the dark, dingy walls of the apartment closed in around her, making the open plains and sunlight feel a lifetime away.

But Queenie knew where they had to go, and she knew what she would do.

She picked up Tabby and settled her on her hip, careful to avoid the pocket where Wudget rested. Then she took Angel's hand and opened the front door.

"Ms. Hayes, you cannot leave. This is insane. Just sit down and talk to me, all right?" Mrs. Williams took gulping breaths and tried to regain the mask of calm, friendly efficiency.

"No," Queenie said slowly, as though giving it some thought, "it is not all right. Did you know, Ingrid, that most kittens get themselves out of trees?"

She left the woman standing in her kitchen, mouth open like a dead fish.

* * *

It was nearly five o'clock, and the daylight fading, when they reached the park. Linda was pulling the gate closed over the entrance to the carousel. Queenie and her kids broke into a run.

"Linda!" Queenie yelled.

The woman looked up and waved, halting her locking up.

"Please," Queenie said, catching her breath and putting Tabby down, "we need to ride the carousel." Queenie pulled a handful of bills out of her purse, not caring how much was there. It wouldn't matter soon.

Linda looked at her, then down at the kids. "I've closed up the walls."

"We don't need it to run, just let us sit on it for a little while. Please, Linda."

"Please, Linda?" Tabby and Angel repeated, though both had worried looks and kept glancing up at Queenie.

"Okay, okay. Keep your money, Queenie. Just a few minutes though."

Tabby went right to her yellow horse, but Queenie kept a tight hold on Angel's hand.

"You have to ride next to us, Angel. Just this time, okay?"

"What are you doing, mom?" Angel said.

"Hush, baby, you'll see." She prayed she was right. This had to work.

She hugged Tabby close and Wudget crawled out of her pocket to rest on the little girl's shoulder. Queenie reached out and took Angel's hand. His little palm was warm in her cold fingers and she felt his heartbeat through his thin wrist.

She closed her eyes. The air was stuffy in here with the big wooden shutters drawn down. There was only dim light behind her lids.

She reached for warmth, for sunlight and safety and a place were her children would never know walls and how the world closed in around you day after day, taking all the good choices and leaving everything cold and dark and hard. Queenie reached for the Veldt.

The world faded and warm wind replaced the still, chilled air. She heard her children gasp, but didn't open her eyes until she felt the sunlight on her face, hot and bright, remaking the world behind her lids into reds and golds.

The Veldt spread out around them, just as it had before. High above an eagle soared, pitching a keening cry into the air that made Angel shriek with glee. Queenie looked at her son. He rode a striped pony, the calm beast pressed close to the big gold horse she and Tabby sat on. Her horse now had a purple bridle and Queenie reached forward with one hand to catch the smooth leather reins between her fingers.

"Mommy."

She looked up at Tabby's soft exclamation.

In the distance sat a rider, tall and proud on a big golden horse like the one beneath her. He raised one sun-darkened arm to them in greeting.

One by one, Angel, Tabby, and Queenie lifted their own arms in a wave that stretched across the golden distance.

* * * * *

Want to read more by Annie Bellet? Check out the novel "A Heart in Sun and Shadow"

In an ancient Wales that never was...

The twin brothers Emyr and Idrys are cursed to live as hounds; Emyr by night, and Idrys by day. The twins believe they will be trapped this way forever until they meet the fierce and curious Áine, a changeling woman born with fey blood and gifts struggling to fit into a suspicious human world.

Áine unravels the fate of Emyr and his twin as all three of them fall in love. To free her lovers from the curse, she embarks on a journey to the realm of the fey where she confronts her own unique gifts and heritage. Ultimately, she must decide where her heart truly lies and what she's willing to risk to get what she desires most.

The first book in the Chwedl Duology is now available in trade paperback and all ebook formats.

About the Author:

Annie Bellet lives and writes in the Pacific NW. She is a Clarion graduate and her stories have appeared in magazines such as AlienSkin, Contrary, and Daily Science Fiction as well as multiple collections and anthologies. Follow her on her blog at "A Little Imagination"

* * *

This book and my Clarion experience would not have been possible without the help of many people.

Grand Supporters:

Karlina Merkens, Graff Haley, Allen Neuringer, and Gabriel Yapuncich

Supporters:

John Murphy, Jamie Lackey, Leslie Schweitzer, Adam Isreal, Geoffery Panketz,

Peta Freestone, Jonatan Lundback, Juliet Davidow, Julia Kahn, Josh Monken,

and Karen Fowler

Find more great books at Doomed Muse Press

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