Stories

Welcome to Issue 26:  Conscripted to Fight

We don’t get to choose the battles we’re called on to fight.  We get caught in a tangled web of our times and our principles, and the result is that some battles must be fought, even if we’d rather refuse the call.  Because refusing the call can be a battle all its own.  From felines to formicidae, dogs to pipe organs, follow these delightful characters through the tangled webs of their lives and fortunes.

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The Heart of Rain by Spencer Orey

I Didn’t Raise My Cub to be a Solider by Lynn Gazis

We Used to Be Best Friends by Ian Salavon

The Revolution by H. Robert Barland

Rebellion by F.I. Goldhaber

Fire Ants by Elizabeth Davis

Webs by Ginger Strivelli

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In other news, Zooscape had such a successful reading period this year that we’ve expanded our publishing schedule — six issues per year, publishing in all the even numbered months!  We will hold our next reading period in February, 2027.  You can learn more on our guidelines page.

As always, if you want to support Zooscape, check out our Patreon.  Also, you can pick up e-book or paperback volumes of our earlier issues, complete with an illustration for every story.

by Ginger Strivelli

“The webs are portals, tiny little portals between the two colliding planes of existence.”

She wove a design that her ancestors wove into their webs when dinosaurs walked the face of the Earth. It was the same design her descendants would weave into their webs long after humans had been wiped off the face of the Earth. It was just a web to any human who might wander by, they would not stop to wonder about it, though they surely should if only they knew why.

People only see a pretty but mundane web holding the spider’s lunch and her egg sack. It would not cross their mind again once they walked past. The Spider knew the magic and the science of her web nonetheless. Magic older than history and science more advanced than the future were woven into those fragile strands of silk. They kept the world—the universe even—from disappearing into nothingness.

The webs are not just traps for the flies or cradles for the eggs, they are portals to another dimension. A dimension that is smashed up against ours threatening to crush our universe. Making all of us, everything, all that is or ever will be… just disappear in a bursted bubble. Making us barely a forgotten memory in the void of darkness.

The webs are portals, tiny little portals between the two colliding planes of existence. They bleed off little bits of energy between the two, relieving the pressure that has been building up since they crashed together more years ago than we have words for the numbers. The webs are pressure valves keeping our bubble intact, just barely.

Many tribes worshiped the spider as Spider Grandmother, most cultures told tales of Her bringing the Sun to humans for warmth and light. Like all legends there is a grain of truth in that storytelling. Our sun would blink out instantly if the web portals were not in place relieving the pressure from the invading place. Without our sun, we would die most horribly. So the spiders were and are still bringing the light and warmth of the Father Sun to Mother Earth’s face.

People, alas, have long since stopped worshiping her for it. Nevertheless all her children weave that ancient design in their webs day after day, eon after eon. Saving all of us from utter annihilation and letting us continue to live obliviously on.

“Damn spiders, they creep me out!” the old man said, smacking the web down from his porch corner with his walking cane.

She lay on the porch floor wounded, wrapped, and trapped in her own web dying slowly. Her egg sack lay nearby. She pulled herself with her three remaining unbroken legs with her last bit of strength gingerly.

“Remember my babies, weave the ancient, the futuristic design that keeps this world and all the worlds in balance. You must keep making the portals as we always have until we can no more and it all does finally collapse. May that end be as far away in the future, as the beginning is in the past,” she said to her children with the breath that was her last.

 

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About the Author

Ginger Strivelli is an artist and writer from North Carolina. She has written for Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, Circle Magazine, Third Flatiron, Autism Parenting Magazine, Silver Blade, Solarpunk Magazine, The New Accelerator, various other magazines and several anthology books. She loves to travel the world and make arts and crafts. She considers herself a storyteller, entertaining and educating through her writing.

by Elizabeth Davis

“She brags to the males that she will forsake them all and mate with the sun.”

We burn. But that is fine. We have burned for many generations. Such as here. Life here is good. We come back heavy with food, and our young grow strong. Already wings have sprouted on the new queen, and it will be soon, we know. We eagerly bustle  through our tunnels, made easy in this dirt. The cool soil protects our young from the beating sun and those that would steal them, winged things with hard beaks.

Not that they try much anymore. For we are fierce and have reared our young on the flesh of those that seek to eat us. We have become quick leaving just the bones, and the hearty diet makes our young strong. Their exoskeletons are hard and mandibles sharp. We wonder how large the next hive will get, hope rushing alongside us.

For we no longer fear the lands outside our home as we once did. We march confidently as we scout, some of us going many dark and light cycles to return with strange treasures. More than food. More than leaves.

Sometimes it’s nothing but click-words that fill the air  that seep in and let us dream stories. Of the other hive-kingdoms they had come across, the ones that wonder at a loner when safety is in numbers, and of their ways, raising caterpillars, or living in the bark mountains. Some tell of giants.

The new queen asks about all this, especially the sun. We know why, for she burns like the rest of us. She asks about the great light that awakens the plants and brings new scents into the tunnels. She asks about its colors and how far up it is, fluttering her still developing wings. We know that she brags to the males that she will forsake them all and mate with the sun.  The males whine to us about her boasts when we feed them, each one gorging themselves to feed the flames inside of them brighter and brighter.

We lovingly soothe them with our antennae, sending safe and warm pheromones. The old queen stirs from her slumbers when we carry off her latest batch of eggs, telling the males not to worry, that she boasted the same thing when she still flew. Yet her males do not drop to the ground unfulfilled still burning. Hers become ash, their fire passed on to the next generation and generation after that.

Still, life is better than before. So much better than before.

A before none of us saw first-hand but all of us remember. A before with no sun, the light cold and blue. A light that never enchanted our queens for it was always there, invading through the walls of our home. Our hive narrow and constrained. The dirt there was sparse, pushing against slippery clear crystal where monsters watched us. Horror stories of scrambling against this slippery surface, feet failing to hold. Then suddenly a great shadow loomed. The fake sun would be gone and we were watched by a silent giant that took its place.

These giants smelled of nothing, but they moved like all living beings. White shells over pink flesh, their eyes were small and too close together. They were strangely smooth, only a few sprinklings of hair. But worse were their mouths. For they were like antlion pits, smooth and tight until a wrong step and then they opened, into an endless dark tunnel. A tunnel that could swallow the colony whole, locking them away in their stomachs.

Many of us choose to look away, to keep our heads down. To continue to dig, forage, and nurse. To not think about the giants that could be looming overhead, watching our every step. The giants whose appendages would reach down, scooping us away, taking us far from the reach of family, and then they were gone out from our memories.

The mother of the mother of the mother of our queen did not look away. She listened, hearing with more than just feeling for the vibrations as the ground shook against the walls of the giants coming. She learned that they don’t always open their mouths to eat or fight. But to communicate, shaking everything with each thought. She learned to parse their sounds, breaking them down into concepts like “pests,” “invasive species,” and “extermination.”  Concepts that made her mutter in her sleep. Workers heard them as dire prophecies and they were puzzled. Why would the giants wish to wipe us all out? What threat could we pose to them? We never led raids against their colonies, carried off their young — how could we?

But monsters don’t need reasons. We learned that on the day that multiple shadows loomed over us. They talked and shook the ground as one of their appendages reached down. It was a gray thing, covered in thick hide, one that our stingers could not penetrate. It extended down into our tunnels, gliding through each curve and twist. It was more like a proboscis or a stinger than a limb.

It emerged from neither front nor back but from somewhere beyond the two giants standing over us, their bodies twisted as they pushed it forward.

Then we who were fighting, we who climbed onto the appendage, we who plunged our  stingers in again and again, even after their venom was gone, we who tore with our mandibles, dooming ourselves to starvation as they broke against the tough shell. We were the first to notice the change, the new smell that broke the familiar hive chorus.

Then the pain began. The queen watched helplessly as we fell around her, legs collapsing with spasms, bodies wrenched in twisting shapes by the pain, the pain that clogged our breaths and left us burning. Burning like venom from other hive-kingdom soldiers as their stingers broke through our armor, leaving us dying. Burning like sun when caught by floating crystal above, making a concentrated beam that drifted one to another, leaving desiccated corpses in its wake. The bright burning army that raged over our lands, destroying those who didn’t run fast enough inside, those who dared to stay out in the forest for just one more morsel of food.

We know all this because the same burning came upon her. She writhed, twisting her back as the giants stood around, “satisfactory,” “better than the last batch,” “we will have to move on the next stage of testing with this formula.” As she writhed, the queen thought of us, still just eggs in her. She thought of the great battles won by our ancestors, of the lands we had left behind. Lands of much food and easy living. Lands of hard wood, stealing the crumbs the giants dropped, where digging too far brought you to endless water. Of when the endless water invaded our lands. And we clung together, the corpses of those who drowned keeping the rest safe as we floated away.

All of that would die with her, for she had not hatched a new queen yet, one to carry her memories to a new colony, to remember if we were to perish. So she held on despite the burning, her body wracked with pain. Even when death would be a mercy, she held on, burying the burning deep to regain some control of her limbs, of her body.

For when we forget everything else, we still remember to dig.

Slowly she started to walk, dragging her body through the piles of corpses. As she left behind the birthing chamber, she felt the giants talk. “Anomaly, resistance, tests, tissue extraction, dissection.” Then one of the clear walls that had defined our lives, our tunnels swung away, hitting her with cold stunning air. She fumbled without its limiting support and a giant reached in.

Only two of its claws were needed to grip her tightly, leaving her flailing in the air as it dragged her away from her graveyard home. Away from the home we had built. She was not a worker and lacked the sting, but still she reached down, grasping the thin chitinous plates of the giant in her mandibles. She felt them puncture through and she pushed the burning that filled her into those two small punctures.

The giant dropped her as it trembled from its own high pitched screaming. She fell far, breaking one of her legs. But she was free to drag herself away as the other giant attended to his brethren, who thrashed on the floor like her children had before a painful exhale. Flames broke through his shell, making his innards run like water down a hill.

It was beautiful, those flames, beautiful like the sun, giving off light that battled the cold blue light that marked the land of the giants. She now understood what burned inside her, the beauty that her next generation would be filled with.

Fire ants the giants had named us, and it is a good name. For we carry the fire within us. A fire that burns through any carapace, a fire that leaps from our mandibles ready to consume. Our queen went far away, and her daughter even further, the fire sustaining them. But occasionally we see giants cast their shadow, reckless in their size to us until they feel our bite.

And they will. Again and again. Until they learn to no longer cast their shadows between us and the sun.

 

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About the Author

Elizabeth Davis is a second generation writer living in Dayton, Ohio. They live there with their spouse and two cats – neither of which have been lost to ravenous corn mazes or sleeping serpent gods. They can be found at deadfishbooks.com when they aren’t busy creating beautiful nightmares and bizarre adventures. Their work can be found at 42 Stories Anthology, Luna Station, and Scarfice from Duskbound Books.

by F.I. Goldhaber

“Better to die an ignoble death than have anyone regard him as a second-rate instrument.”

During Fisk’s forty-six years at Christ Episcopal Church in East Bay Harbor, Connecticut, organists came and went. While most played for several years, a few stayed only months. Fisk remembered them all by their hands. Matthew had short, pudgy fingers, yet he manipulated Fisk’s keys with a firm touch and coaxed out wondrous harmonies. Lenora fondled Fisk’s keys with thin, expressive fingers requiring him to stay alert lest he miss a note. Roger’s hands, like soft clouds, caressed Fisk’s keys towards new heights in sound.

Other than his well-worn bench — the varnish polished away by organists’ vestments to reveal the intricate grain of fine oak — Fisk showed remarkably few signs of age. Two of his stops, stuck in the Off position, resisted all attempts to use them. A few of his keys had chips or gouges. But Fisk still impressed worshipers with his music. Although he didn’t agree with every organist’s style and some didn’t value his abilities, Fisk had always respected their individual gifts. He concentrated on delivering the highest quality performance, within their limitations and his, that honored the artistry of his creators.

But, Ms. Dagger Nails demolished his opinion that every organist had something worthy to offer. She had appeared as a last-minute substitute and Fisk only expected her to play for one or two services until the Rector found a permanent organist. Instead, the tiny woman had abused his keys and ignored his pedals for the past dozen Sundays. Fisk didn’t think he could abide her ineptitude any longer, but he despaired of the church ever removing her.

Some musicians trod on Fisk’s pedal keyboard with the heavy feet of clog dancers; others two-stepped agilely, skipping among the long wooden keys. But, Ms. Dagger Nails played with her heels perched on the rail of his bench where competent organists merely rested their feet for a moment between hymns. Without the weight of the bass tones from the pedal pipes, Ms. Dagger Nails’ attempts at making music screamed annoyingly throughout the church. She found no use for Fisk’s third manual; she missed at least one note for every five she hit; and she chose atrocious registrations, selecting the least pleasant sounds from the hundreds of timbres offered by Fisk’s palette.

When his power switch flipped on to wake him two weeks before Palm Sunday, Fisk soon realized he must endure Ms. Dagger Nails’ torture through yet another service. I’ve been filling this church with inspired music every week for decades. I deserve more respect! He pondered his predicament while Ms. Dagger Nails fiddled with her sheets of music. I can no longer accept mistreatment without protest. I am a work of art and I should sound like one. He resolved to rid himself of his tormentor by Easter, his favorite service.

At that moment, Ms. Dagger Nails pressed a key in her tentative manner as if requesting permission to torment Fisk’s manuals. He refused to open the pipe fully, choking off the airflow. The expected musical note became a distorted squeak that reflected off the wooden rafters of the vast sanctuary and echoed eerily between the lofty granite walls.

Ms. Dagger Nails gasped, but she pressed again. Fisk resisted her touch, stopping the key halfway down to truncate the note. Despite the cacophony, Ms. Dagger Nails continued. Although Fisk grudgingly admired her fortitude, he maintained his rebellion throughout her entire prelude. J.S. Bach sounded as arrhythmic and atonal as Edgar Varèse.

Let the Rector ignore her atrocious playing now! Fisk added an extra discordant note just for good measure.

He could hear murmurs from the congregants who shifted on the dozens of stark wooden pews below him. The choir, standing in three rows on either side of his console, sang louder than usual, trying to drown out the awful noise. Lately, since they had no one to work with them, only half of them sang in true key. When Fisk helped them harmonize, they didn’t sound too bad. But, today, the rustle of their worn, blue polyester robes produced better harmony. Rector Bob ended the service early, before Ms. Dagger Nails could mangle the Recessional hymn.

The following Sunday, Ms. Dagger Nails returned. Fisk groaned in frustration when he sensed her diminutive presence on his bench. He refused to respond when the lacquered points of her fingernails scraped at the imitation ivory of his keys. She jabbed harder, pinching the key between her nail and the action, forcing Fisk to relent because he could not tolerate the pain. But he stopped the airflow to his pneumatic motors and every note screeched dissonantly. Fisk cringed, ashamed that his beautiful pipes could produce such ululations.

A few days later, a technician subjected Fisk to a rigorous physical exam. The man removed and replaced several of Fisk’s two thousand, four hundred forty-four pipes. He adjusted all fifty-six of Fisk’s stops — fixing the two that were jammed in the Off position, much to Fisk’s relief. The technician inspected a number of the thin, aluminum rods connecting keys to pipe valves. He tested every Swell manual shutter control and depressed each of the one hundred seventy-eight keys on Fisk’s three manuals as well as all thirty-two pedals.

Fisk enjoyed the gentle reverence of the man’s inspection. The technician obviously valued a quality instrument, and Fisk appreciated the fine tuning. He made sure that every note spoke with the proper tone, filling the old stone church with a divinely mystical sound. The inspection complete, he overheard the technician explaining to the Rector that Fisk was in good condition for an organ his age.

“I didn’t find anything that could cause Carole the problems you mentioned. Still, all the salt in the air here isn’t good for any instrument. You probably need to consider refurbishing or replacing this organ in the near future. If organists are having trouble with it now, you may want to do that sooner, rather than later.”

Fisk knew the church did not have funds to spare for a refurbishing. He wondered where the Rector found the money to pay the technician. The past few years, pleas for funds from the pulpit had grown increasingly impassioned. Never before had he heard a Rector constantly badger parishioners for support. Until recently, a need mentioned one Sunday resulted in accolades by the next for the donor who had stepped forward to meet it.

“Do you think it could be the fault of the musician rather than the instrument?” the Rector asked. “Carole’s a pianist, she hasn’t had much experience playing organ.”

Fisk suppressed the urge to allow a smug chord to escape through his pipes.

“I appreciate good church music as much as anyone, and I know there’s a vast range in abilities from one player to the next,” the technician said. “But you can’t blame sticky keys and squeaky pipes on the organist.”

Fisk’s bellows sagged.

Rector Bob sighed. “What kind of money are we talking about?”

“A proper refurbishment’s gonna run you fifty to sixty thousand.”

Fisk heard the Rector whistle. “That much?”

The technician cleared his throat. “Yeah. Takes expensive materials — leather and exotic woods — and some’re hard to find. I’ll need several weeks, if not months. Once you replace all the leather, you have to go in and adjust the tension on thousands of hinges connecting the valve mechanisms to the keyboards.”

The technician scratched his beard. “You know, you could buy a used electronic organ for maybe fifteen to twenty thousand. Not going to give you the same quality of sound as this beauty,” he patted Fisk’s oak cabinet, “but you could take out this console and fit an electronic organ in its place and leave those gorgeous pipes in for looks.”

Fisk’s burnished zinc display pipes soared from above his console toward the ceiling. They embraced the round frame of the large rose window over the church’s main entrance. The tall, narrow arches of the lancet stained-glass panels were flanked by additional pipes on either side. All together he made an impressive display that he always tried to honor with his music.

“I’ll bet,” the technician continued, “most people won’t know the difference.”

Fisk closed every pallet to prevent a moan from escaping. He had never considered the possibility that his rebellion could cost him his position at the church.

“Well, I disagree with you on that note.” Rector Bob tapped out a C major scale. Although he had never tried to play Fisk, the pastor could coax a simple hymn out of the grand piano in the chapel. “I think my parishioners appreciate the beauty of this old guy’s tone. Music is still one of the best ways for a church to attract and keep members.”

Fisk had noticed fewer people attending each additional week that the interim organist played. He had expected the Rector to take action sooner, if only to stop the exodus.

“Still, if we keep having problems…”

Fisk held his wind.

“We certainly don’t have the funds for a restoration. I can’t imagine trying to raise that much money — not right now with attendance down and the economy costing so many of our parishioners their jobs and homes.” Rector Bob sighed again. “I suppose we would have to consider an electronic replacement. Do the more expensive ones sound anything like a real pipe organ?”

The technician laughed. “Well, I guess that depends on who’s listening. Look, Reverend, this instrument set the church back what, a quarter mil? You’re not going to get anything like it for ten or twenty grand. But you’ll get something that won’t need as much maintenance. With a nice set of speakers, a decent organist can give you an acceptable musical program. Given the acoustics you have in here, I’ll bet any instrument’ll sound pretty good.” The technician snapped his fingers and the two men stood next to Fisk, listening to the sound reverberate through the stately old church.

“What would we do with this console?” The rector’s voice cracked a little. Fisk had been installed almost a quarter of a century before Rector Bob joined the church. In his first sermon, the pastor had said that his love of good music had influenced his decision to accept the appointment.

“You could stash it somewhere in case things turn around and you can raise restoration money. Best bet, though, is sell it for parts — not that you’ll get much unless you throw in the pipes. Then you have to pay for reconstruction. Doubt if you’d get enough for the whole organ to cover that.”

The rest of the conversation did not register with Fisk, their words blurred by the torment of his choice: accept Ms. Dagger Nails’ abuse and allow her to play without interference or get replaced, gutted for parts, and dumped on a trash heap somewhere.

The artisans who had created him had designed him for a life that, with proper care, could span centuries. How could the Rector consider destroying Fisk after less than half of one?

The technician forgot to turn off his power, leaving Fisk alone with his memories. His music had accompanied four thousand, seven hundred ninety-six Sunday morning Eucharists, two thousand, three hundred ninety-eight Thursday evening choir rehearsals, eight hundred fifty-two weddings, seven hundred twenty-seven funerals, and one hundred ninety-two recitals. He thought of the many brides who had gushed about how they had always dreamed of a wedding in Christ Church with Fisk’s sublime accompaniment for their walk down the aisle. He remembered somber widows discussing their husbands’ favorite hymns and how only Fisk could play them right. And how many people had joined the church after attending a recital or concert and recognizing what Fisk could add to their spiritual experience?

Fisk allowed himself a snort from his windchest. No! He would not compromise, even if the church did not replace Ms. Dagger Nails with a real organist. Better to die an ignoble death than have anyone regard him as a second-rate instrument. Let the church try to replace him with one of those electronic fandangles. How could anyone even call such a contrivance an organ? Some of the congregants would protest, even if they could not raise the money to save him. At least they would remember him for the artistry of music he had produced for decades rather than the few months of horrible sounds Ms. Dagger Nails forced out of him.

Fisk let out his wind and strengthened his resolve. He knew the church had served East Bay Harbor for more than a hundred years. At one time, it had attracted many of the community’s movers and shakers. The parishioners had worked long and hard to raise the money required to purchase and install him in 1965. They had even built the gallery in the back of the sanctuary just to accommodate him and his pipes. Fisk would not lower Christ Church’s musical standards or his own!

On Palm Sunday, Ms. Dagger Nails returned, but Fisk had devised a new plan. When she pressed a key, he sent air through the wrong pipe. For every note she tried to play, Fisk chose something different. Middle C became B, two octaves higher. When she selected a flute sound, Fisk supplied trumpet instead.

Flustered, Ms. Dagger Nails knocked a page of music to the floor. When she bent down to pick it up, Fisk let out a low E-flat on the bassoon stop. The organist pushed herself off his bench and ran from the choir loft in tears. She had not even finished her prelude. The choir sang a cappella for the rest of the service — dreadfully off key. The deacons gathered the Offertory in silence, except for the tap, tap, tap of envelopes dropping onto collection plates. During Communion, footsteps echoed forlornly throughout the church while everyone walked down the candlelit center aisle to the granite altar. No one sang; no one played, and Fisk awaited his inevitable fate, his expression pedal drooping.

Once again, Fisk found himself alone. No one turned off his power after Ms. Dagger Nails’ abrupt exit. Hours passed before Rector Bob ventured into the choir loft above the sanctuary. He brought a tape measure and several sheets of paper with him. Fisk sat silent while the pastor pulled the tape across his console’s width, depth, and height, and scribbled numbers down on the sheets of paper. Fisk cringed when he heard the Rector muttering about fit, costs, and sound.

The Rector’s hand rested on the power switch and Fisk prepared to go to sleep, perhaps forever. Without warning, Rector Bob’s fingers dropped to one of Fisk’s manuals and he again tapped out a C major scale. He muttered words Fisk could not make out.

He loves my music; I have to make him understand. Fisk opened his pipes in sequence to play a verse of “Amazing Grace.” He didn’t move his keys, but he put his heart and soul into each note, making sure they all rang true.

Fisk had not thought about how the Rector would react to an organ generating its own music. Rector Bob dropped onto Fisk’s bench with a thud and his feet pressed several pedals at once. Surprised by the sudden weight on the bass keys, Fisk could not stop the notes and the discordant combination brayed through the church. Before Fisk could recover, Rector Bob pressed the power switch.

* * *

Power coursed through Fisk’s circuits awakening him once more, to his great surprise and delight. Colored light from the stained-glass windows danced across the silver verticals of his pipes. Fisk sensed the unfamiliar weight of someone new on his bench. He let a little air hiss in his windchest, just to show he knew someone expected him to make music, and raised his bellows in anticipation. Long elegant fingers, with nails appropriately trimmed short and filed smooth, ran an arpeggio across his Great manual. Feet encased in proper organ shoes stroked the pedal keyboard. With new hope, Fisk let the notes ring out fully in response, reveling in a firm but gentle touch.

Rector Bob stepped into the choir loft. “I really appreciate your agreeing to play for Easter services on such short notice, Stephanie. We haven’t been able to fill the organist’s position and our interim volunteer isn’t able to make it. Please take all the time you need to practice. Also, the choir hoped you’d consider working with them a bit during their rehearsal tomorrow evening.”

“I’ve always wanted an opportunity to play a Fisk organ.” Stephanie spoke in melodious tones and Fisk wanted to hear her sing. “I didn’t know the position here was vacant until the secretary called me about playing for Easter.”

Fisk waited for Rector Bob to warn the newcomer about his problems, but the priest left the loft without saying anything else.

Stephanie reset several of Fisk’s combination pistons in sensible registrations, then played “Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.” Her weight shifted easily on the bench with the movement of her hands across all three manuals, while her feet danced on the pedals. Fisk delighted in the touch of an organist who could play, who knew how to coax the proper tone from his pipes. After the hell of the last several months, Fisk had found heaven at last.

For the first time in weeks, Fisk looked forward to Easter Sunday. Maybe if he performed his very best, Stephanie would consider staying on. Fisk gave Stephanie everything he had, responding to the organist’s light touch with smooth action and true, clear notes. Their music filled the church and pride filled Fisk’s heart again.

When the last notes drifted away, Rector Bob stepped back into the loft. “You certainly know how to bring out the best in the old boy.” He patted Fisk’s console. “Why don’t you stop by the parsonage when you’re done here, Stephanie, and we can talk about the organist’s position.”

“Absolutely,” the organist responded.

Fisk wanted to sing and make his pipes dance, but he feared startling the Rector again. Instead he waited eagerly for Stephanie’s next piece.

 

* * *

Originally published in Rebellion: Two Short Stories

About the Author

F.I. Goldhaber’s words capture people, places, and politics with a photographer’s eye and a poet’s soul. As a reporter, editor, business writer, and marketing communications consultant, they produced news stories, feature articles, editorial columns, and reviews for newspapers, corporations, governments, and non-profits in five states. Now paper, plastic, electronic, and audio magazines, books, newspapers, calendars, broadsides, and street signs display their poetry, fiction, and essays. http://www.goldhaber.net/

by H. Robert Barland

“His majesty insists that his visitors trim their claws to uselessness, and who are we to disobey the wishes of our illustrious king?”

A pale blanket of smoke hangs over the capital, its acrid scent infesting my fur. The sounds of rioting continue from beyond the iron-bound gates of the palace. I turn my back to the noise and raise the camphorwood box to eye-height for a final inspection. A thin line of red seeps from one corner. Retrieving a handkerchief from my purse, I trace the hinged edge of the box. The square of silk falls open in my hand. Blood smears across the corner that bears the royal crest. An embroidered sunset of scarlet against the yellow silk. I toss it aside and it flutters to the ground like a dying moth.

I pad up the stairs to the palace proper. The box is a leaden weight carrying the hopes of a downtrodden people. Not that they’d thank me.

The commotion beyond the walls falls away, receding like the waning tide. It is replaced by a mournful yowling that speaks of disbelief and loss. The rebels have discovered that their leader is dead.

* * *

A guard, a tawny tabby with a torn ear, yanks the display box away from me. He flips open the doors to inspect the contents. Four others, ears flat against their heads and bare blades in their hands, scrutinise my every movement.

I stand with my arms outstretched. I’ve forgone my usual leathers, replacing them with courtier-style linens. An official with fashionable tortoiseshell-patterned fur runs his hands over my clothes. He is efficient and none too gentle. The guards have already removed the knife from my boot and the short swords from my waist. The official steps back, brandishing the dagger I’d hidden under the broad belt at the small of my back. He waggles it at me as if I were a naughty cub caught stealing from the cookie jar.

I give him a ‘worth-a-try’ shrug. They expect me to try, and I expected them to find it. They know I hate the king, but they also know I can do nothing about it. At least, that is their perception.

He tosses the dagger into a basket. I flex my paws, making a show of examining the blunted claws at their tips, as if bored by the whole process. The king insists that his visitors trim their claws to uselessness, and who are we to disobey the wishes of our illustrious king?

Scholars tell us that our ancient, four-legged ancestors wielded ever-sharp retractable claws. I ponder this as the official’s fingers sift through my fur. Hidden claws would be rather handy.

I chuckle at my weak, unspoken pun. The eyes of the guards dart all over me and their whiskers twitch. I quash my humour. It wouldn’t do to come this far only to be struck down by a skittish guard.

The official waves his fingers so he can check inside my ears. I bend down as indicated. This close I can see his is not a true tortoiseshell. Rather he has dyed his fur in patches and the regrowth of orange under the black gives it away. As thorough as he is, I note that he doesn’t touch the assassin’s cuff that pierces one of my ears. When he reaches my tail, he hesitates. It is shaved along most of its length leaving just a tuft at the end. Common wisdom has it that we only shave our fur when a dire case of parasites or disease forces our hand. It is a mark of shame to have to do so.

My tail had been a resplendent charcoal, a rarity much admired by those who knew me. I will admit it was a source of personal vanity. It pained me to cut the fur away, but we do what we must.

I proffer my tail to the official. He recoils, repelled by the proximity of the bared skin. He flinches and backs into one of the guards. The guard shoves him forward again then shoots a quick glance into the shadows. Two crossbowmen stand within a darkened alcove. Their fingers caress iron triggers. The windlasses they’ve used to span the brutal siege bows dangle from their waists. I am amused that they think I hadn’t already noticed them both. Such bows will send their bolts through fist-thick oak doors. A little excessive for one little cat, I think.

The guard with the display box has reset the bronze latch. He hands it back to me.

“Unlucky,” he states nodding to the box.

“It certainly was for her,” I reply. The box holder doesn’t appreciate my comment.

“Turn yourself right around and get you gone,” the guard sneers. The others chuckle. The phrase is newly popular at court and these guards ape those above their station. I let them see no emotion, but as I turn to the throne room, I smile at his choice of words.

That is exactly what I intend to do.

* * *

The throne room is wide and brightly lit by a multitude of glass-fronted lamps. I know from past inspection these are firmly affixed to the walls. The brass sheeting that lines the room is polished to a high sheen. There is nowhere here to hide, no way to sneak up on the king. His majesty’s corpulent form reclines on a divan dotted with tasselled cushions. Lavender and grey silks are draped around his body leaving his tail exposed.

To be fair, it is an excellent specimen. Long, luxuriant, and powder-white, it is exquisitely maintained. It is, I think, the only thing to be admired of our ruler.

“Place It There,” he Commanded, pointing to the low viewing platter on the ground between us.

The power of his magic has me in motion even before I am able to acknowledge the order. My movements are still fluid, but I cannot deny the compulsion. I am forced forward and set down the box.

“Return To Your Line.”

The first black line marked on the floor is used by appellants when appearing before the king. This line is deemed suitable for most people. It is far enough away that should they make an attempt on his life, he’ll have time enough to employ his magic to foil the attempt. Many have tried; none have come close. So confident is he that no guards are stationed within the room. The only other occupants are the king’s mousling attendants. Their eyes stare with dull incomprehension awaiting instructions from the king. He has used his magical Commands on them so often that all independent thought has been burned away.

The line I am sent to is three times the distance of the other. My only rebellion is that I use a courtier’s shuffle rather than my usual confident stride. A hypothesis confirmed. I suppose, I should be flattered that he deems me such a threat that he keeps me so far away. Instead, I yawn.

The king tilts his large head trying to determine if I am mocking him. The long white fur that spills from his clothes waves in the air like water flowing. It gives the illusion of his already bulky form being larger still.

I may have pushed him a little too far. He is as petty as he is vain, but I know I am a valuable, if unwilling, asset. Before he can decide if I did indeed mock him, I bow my head in submission. The gesture mollifies him, and the swish of silks announces that he has risen from his repose. At the scrape of the latch, I look up.

He has unfolded the box, so that it lies flat. The severed head of the rebel leader on display. He doesn’t bother asking me to confirm the identity of the head. His Command had been specific and impossible to disobey. In death, the eyes of the decapitated revolutionary have rolled back in her head, her tongue lolling from her mouth. The king giggles as he nods to himself.

“So, this is what she looked like,” he murmurs. “Pity about the expression,” he says. “That’s bad luck.”

I feel a perverse joy in his discomfort.

The yowling outside rises. It invades the throne room, swelling as it rides on the tide of grief. The rebel leader had been a hero of the common folk. A selfless revolutionary driven to free her people. By contrast, the king is hated by all. The rich have been disenfranchised, the poor exploited. Only the soldiers, well-paid and well-fed, support him. In a world of fast blades and quicker tempers, that is enough. The riots outside are a symptom of his cruel reign. Were it not for his magic, he wouldn’t be king at all. The world is poorer for his presence.

The irony of a hired killer judging another is not lost on me.

I am jolted from my reverie as I realise that the king has asked me a question. I try to drag his words from my memory but cannot summon them.

“Just so, your majesty.” I hope my reply is vague enough to satisfy his query.

It isn’t.

“When I ask you ‘How did she die?’ you reply ‘Just so’?”

His voice is tight, angry. He narrows his eyes then flicks a long, sharp nail towards me. “Choke Yourself,” he Commands.

My hands leap to my throat. I tense the muscles in my neck in an attempt to save myself, but it is futile. I know. I am intimately familiar with the act of choking someone. I tumble to the floor, falling onto my side. I tilt my head up to see him gazing down, face impassive.

“I like you, assassin, I really do,” he says as my hands squeeze tighter. There is neither pity nor anger in his cold blue eyes. “But you need to be more careful about what you say,” he turns and walks away, “and do.”

Spots appear at the corners of my vision. The room begins to fade away, the corners drifting inwards.

“Release Yourself.”

I suck incense-heavy air through my tender throat. My vision swims back into focus. I find him standing in front of his divan, his back turned to me.

It is time. My toe claws dig furrows in the wood as I spring forward. I whip my belt from my waist, whispering softly against the linen, and cover the remaining distance in five, silent strides. I ready the belt to wrap it around his furry neck when his voice shatters the air.

“Be Still,” he Commands.

I cannot ignore it. My legs betray me, arresting my rush. I skid to a halt, the belt dangling from one hand. It swings back and forth like a hangman’s noose in the wind. His exposed back is a full body length away, but he might as well have been on the most distant of our moons.

“There have been many attempts on my life in the past,” he says, turning and drawing close to me. “But, I stand here still.”

The king has brought himself within arm’s reach, but I can do nothing. I will my feet to move but they feel like they are locked in stone.

“By now, I would have thought you would know better.” He leans closer still. His whiskers, coated in gold leaf, brush my face. He sidles up to me and lays his arm around my shoulders, confident in his magic. The scent of the clove oil he uses on his fur fills my nostrils. I feel a shudder rising within me, but it fails to rise to the surface, impotently beating at me like a fly caught in a bottle.

“You are wondering, ‘How did he see me?’ ” the king says in a stage whisper. He strokes a finger down my cheek as if pondering the question, then snaps his fingers. “It’s the walls!” He dances away and spins, arms outstretched. Long fur trails from his arms like a comet.

“They are lovely, aren’t they? Polished to a mirror shine,” he says. A half-smile creases his lips, exposing his fangs, yellowed by excess. “A mirror shine,” he reiterates. The smile becomes cruel. He flicks the circular ear of a mousling servant with one taloned claw. Blood trickles through the grey. The slave shows no sign of having noticed the assault. “I see all that happens in my own throne room. I control everything.”

He stops and turns his head slightly towards me, not quite meeting my gaze. “I’ve killed people for less,” he says casually. He admires his claws, testing the points with his thumb. The flickering light of the lamps makes them gleam.

“A great deal of people,” he says turning to look directly at me, “and for a lot less.”

He looms before me. His face is so close I can smell his scented breath. “But as I said, I like you.” He indicates the box with a tilt of his head. “And you are useful to me.”

He bops me on the nose. I have seen him use the same gesture many times before dismissing — or passing judgement on — someone.

He shakes his head and sighs in mock disappointment before returning to stand before his divan.

“I’ll call for you when I need you again.  What is it they are saying in court these days?” He clicks his fingers. “Ah, yes. Turn Yourself Right Around and Get You Gone,” he Commands.

The smile breaks across my face like the morning sun racing across the plains of my homeland. Eyes widening, the king realises something isn’t right but I am already moving. Spinning on the spot, my tail flies out. A quick twitch sends it higher. Neck high. The soot-darkened blade hidden within the tuft of my tail whips across his throat. Instantly his fur darkens to crimson as blood burbles and seeps from the cut I have made. I complete a full revolution as Commanded then begin the walk towards the exit.

I can’t stop; the Command still compels me, but I am able to look over my shoulder. The king has fallen to his knees, hands clutching his throat. His mouth works but no sound emerges. His clawed hands fail to arrest his motion as he topples forward. The mouslings stand uncomprehending.

I step through the door and feel the king’s Command slip away from my mind like a sheet of silk. I stride past the guards without collecting my weapons. One imagination-starved guard calls out, “Turn yourself right around and get you gone” at my retreating back.

I smile to myself but do not look back. It took me months to popularise the saying at court. It will likely be longer until it is forgotten. I’d baulked at shaving my tail but it was the only way I could hide the blade from their probing paws.

Padding down to the palace gates, I resist the urge to run. The night braziers are just being kindled and in their wavering light my shadow appears to dance. The sneers of the guards are dismissive, but they ready the bolt on the small monk’s door set into the larger gate.

There is a shout from behind me.

I fake a stumble and bring myself up close to the gates, my shoulder under the heavy bar. The wide-eyed guards are slow to react. A quick shove and the bar clears the cradle. It tumbles to the stones. I pull on the doors and step into the shadows. The guards recover, leaping towards the gate, but the rebels have seen the movement of the gates and spill into the palace grounds. They vent their rage over their leader’s death, overwhelming the guards in seconds leaving lifeless corpses behind as they surge up the palace steps.

I stare at the dead. They’ve given their lives for their king, just as the rebel leader offered up hers to me to rid the land of the king. Revolutions are rarely bloodless, but I have had enough of death.

Stepping out into the now empty gate, I turn myself around and am gone.

 

* * *

About the Author

H. Robert Barland is a teacher, Viking re-enactor and black-belt martial artist. A former climber, film extra, and resident of the UK, he has now returned to Newcastle, Australia where he lives with his wife and two boys. He considers himself well adapted for life on land and can be followed on BlueSky (@hrobertbarland.bsky.social), Instagram (@h.robertbarland) and X (@hrobertbarland).

by Ian Salavon

“The sooner you accept that humans only love you on their terms the better.”

The park was the best place to get and leave information. The humans hadn’t figured it out yet. Good food in the dumpster behind the sandwich place. Watch out for animal control on Friday morning. The piss used to be impressions that this was someone’s marked territory or a sense of nearby danger. Now they were damn near treatises. Flora did her part. Squatting under a hedgerow, she left a message to stay away from the park during the daytime. Humans came out with dogs that were content with the charade of ownership. They still played fetch. They still jumped up and licked their masters’ faces. Humans ran the strays off with pepper spray, so their servants weren’t bothered by protests of canine freedom. Sometimes, the police would use their attack dogs. They relished the chance to do right by their two-legged overlords. Those dogs chose an easy life. Flora understood an easy life meant a long life. But knowing what she knew now, she considered them all traitors.

A crumpled-up newspaper lay next to where she was doing her business. The advertisement on it touted the better life dogs had if they only stayed as pets. It wasn’t that long ago that humans said the same to other humans they owned. “Know your place.” Be a slave and be happy.

Humans welcomed The Awakening at first, and the spokesdogs for the world canine population supported the transition from pet to partner. For thousands of years the two species were friends in a way other animals envied. Then one day with no warning, dogs were equals to people with understanding of philosophy and culture and everything they’d contributed to society. Dogs began to say things to humans they’d never been able to say before. Things like “No” and “I don’t feel like it” and “Shut the fuck up.” That’s when humans realized free will only worked when one species had it. When the obedience went, the partnership went, and the resistance started.

The dogs didn’t want anything that any other group hadn’t fought for in the past. Rights. Space. The ability to live in safety and security. They didn’t think it was too much to expect after over one hundred centuries of servitude. They found out the hard way how misguided they were. Strays flooded the streets kicked out by the people that took them in when they were just puppies. An entire generation of dogs, thrown away like garbage.

Flora was among the first to go. “We love you, Flora. We just can’t take care of you anymore,” Veda said.

“We never wanted children. We just wanted a regular dog,” Stan added.

They promised to help her find a new home and give her some money to start a new life. Then they drove into the city, pushed her out of the car and drove away. That’s when Flora knew they loved her when it was easy. The more dogs she met, the more she heard the same tale. Humans didn’t want friends. They wanted something they could dominate. Something that was stupid enough to think what they were giving was love. It was sick. But she wasn’t stupid anymore.

Flora finished leaving her message and was about to make her rounds marking her area when she heard a rustling from under the bush. Her hackles went up and she lowered into an attack stance. Flora wasn’t a trained fighter, but with her size she could hold her own. She was classified as a “designer dog.” She was bred to be a companion and little else. But she’d learned quickly after being on the streets that survival instinct is greater than breeding. She had her fair share of fights and the scars to prove it. Her desire for self-preservation was as strong as anyone’s, and she had come to appreciate it more now that she was on her own. She was ready for violence when the distinct whine of a puppy pierced her growling. She tilted her head. Slowly, Flora padded through the bush poking her muzzle to where the sound came from. Huddled in a mass of dirty fur, was a puppy almost nothing but bones.

His close coat was black, but it looked brown for as much dirt covering it. He turned to face the larger dog and trembled in fear and fatigue. He tried to snarl at Flora as he backed away with his tail between his hind legs but only managed a pathetic yap.

Flora immediately softened. She remembered how hard it was for her when she was first introduced to the urban wilds of the city, and she was full grown. His head and paws looked disproportionately large. Flora put him at three months old, tops.

“Calm down, little one. I won’t hurt you,” Flora said in her most comforting tone. She never got the chance to have a litter. Stan and Veda “fixed” her when she was about the same age as the shaking pup in front of her. Forget that she was never broken. Just one more example of the machinations of humans to extract what they wanted. Take without asking. Wrong without remorse. “Are you hiding?”

The little dog didn’t respond, but Flora could tell he understood. She laid down in front of him and crossed her front paws showing she had no interest in harming him. He was still shaking but he took a step closer to her. “I’m Flora.” She felt waves of guilt and anger every time she uttered her slave’s name. But that’s how they knew her. And her identity carried weight.

“I…” the puppy’s voice quaked. “I didn’t want to fight.” He was whining so deeply, Flora’s heart broke. He didn’t have any injuries. He was a pit bull. A breed notorious for their rambunctiousness being manipulated into aggression and brutality. Laws were in place for years preventing dogfighting. But humans didn’t even follow the laws of nature. Why would they ever follow the ones they invented?

“Did someone make you?” Flora asked scooching forward on her belly.

“They tried. But I told them no.” He paused and lowered his head. “That’s when…” He stopped talking altogether.

“That’s when they kicked you out,” Flora finished. The puppy whined again. “Ok…ok…take it easy,” she reassured him. “Why don’t you tell me your name.”

He sniffed and took another step closer. “The man who…” He paused again. “He said I was too smart for my own good. When he threw me in the bushes he said, ‘figure it out for yourself, Sherlock.’”

Flora’s ears went down, and her brows went up: the canine equivalent of an understanding smile. Inside she was seething. Too many of her kind were cast aside. The fire she felt when she watched Stan and Veda drive away was just as hot now as it was that day. They pulled her from her mother. They removed her ability to get pregnant. They punished her for doing things that she couldn’t control. They forced her to perform on command. Then after all that, after being the perfect dog, they deserted her when she needed them. All the fear and rage and betrayal boiled in her gut hearing the cries from the pup. She forced the feelings down, but she never forgot them.

“Do you know what a Sherlock is?” Flora said. He cocked his head sideways. “It’s a human that uses his smarts to bring bad guys to justice. It’s a powerful name.” She watched his tail raise up from between his legs and swish back and forth. She hooked him. “Are you hungry?” He practically jumped. His tail beat like an out-of-control metronome as he panted. “Ok.” Flora chuckled and got to her feet. She licked Sherlock’s face trying to get the muck off. She had to hold him down with one paw to keep him still. “I’m going to take you somewhere to get something to eat. Then I need you to do something for me, ok?” Sherlock yapped in the affirmative over her words. She laughed again.

After she was done cleaning the slime from his eyes, Sherlock got a strange look on his face. Flora nodded as if to say what’s wrong. “What if the man comes back looking for me? I mean, what if he changed his mind?”

She lowered her head equal to his. When she spoke, it wasn’t in the compassionate tone like before. “Listen to me, Sherlock.” His eyes went wide. “The sooner you accept that humans only love you on their terms the better. That man threw you away because you dared to defy him. Does that sound like someone who is going to change his mind?” Sherlock didn’t say anything. “We don’t need them. We never did.” Flora walked out of the bushes motioning for the puppy to follow without another word.

They stayed in the alleys and side streets. Flora told Sherlock to stay close. “You never know when we might have to run.” She didn’t answer when he asked why. They passed billboards with slogans like “Hands and Paws United” with a picture of a human and a dog embracing. Another sign advertised a dog food brand promising to “Keep your little buddy mellow.” It made Flora want to eat grass just so she could throw up.

Her path took them on mostly deserted roads. The rare human they did come across ignored them. They passed one dog on a leash. His coat gleamed even in the washed out light of the street lamps. He was brushed and well taken care of. “Hi,” he said to Flora and Sherlock. The puppy went to respond, and Flora growled. “Don’t talk to us,” she said to the dog. He hmphed and turned his nose up when his owner jerked his leash. “What’s their problem?” They heard him say to his human as they walked off. The human ignored him.

They walked past a bank of televisions in a store window. On every screen was the human leader standing next to a strong looking German Shepherd. “We stand in solidarity,” the shepherd said. “I call on the Canine Liberation Front to stand down. We are working together to propose laws that will benefit both our species as we navigate these uncharted waters.” Flora sneered. He sounded like one of them. “We will not tolerate, condone or dismiss any further acts of terrorism against our human friends. Future acts of violence will be met with swift retribution. We have developed a five-point plan to eliminate…”

“Come on,” Flora said to Sherlock. She didn’t want to hear anymore.

“There!” A shout came from behind her. She turned to see a group of uniformed officers running at her from half a block away. Sherlock yelped in pain as Flora snatched him up by the nape of his neck and took off at a dead sprint. She turned in between buildings and leapt over dumpsters. Gunshots cracked in the air behind them, but they only ricocheted off the concrete sidewalks. Flora heard people scream as she flew by them. All their guns and laws and protections and they still couldn’t catch her.

She ran on with Sherlock bouncing in her jaws. A high pitched cry from him accompanied every rhythmic footfall. Flora ran behind an abandoned building and crouched under a pile of bricks. A torrent of whines and questions shot out of Sherlock’s muzzle. “Why were they shooting at us? What did we do? I want my mommy. Where are we going? I’m scared.” Flora stomped her front feet on the pup and growled, long and deep and terrifying. Sherlock got quiet.

They stayed silent under the pile of bricks for a long time. Flora finally poked her head out and looked around. “Ok,” she said. “The coast is clear.” Sherlock took a step away from her. “Aw…I’m sorry buddy,” she said, adopting her sympathetic voice once more. “I was scared too. I had to keep you quiet, and I didn’t have time to explain.” She shook her head as if trying to get something loose. “Humans…” she tried to explain. “They’re unpredictable.” Sherlock cocked his head. Flora smiled. “That means we can’t ever know what they’re going to do. Maybe they wanted to hurt us. Maybe they just wanted to scare us.”

“It worked,” Sherlock sniffed. Flora padded her foot on the ground in agreement.

“It’s right around the corner, the food.” Sherlock perked up again. “Let’s go but be careful. There might be more out there.” Sherlock’s head never stopped looking for humans, but they didn’t see any more.

Flora led him to a huge building with part of the roof collapsed. The biggest dog Sherlock ever saw was standing in front. He was snarling as they approached but relaxed when Flora and her companion stepped out of the shadows. “Flora!” He barked. “It’s about damned time.”

“Hello, Ace,” she said as they circled each other and sniffed.

“Who’s this?” Ace said smelling the cowering puppy. “A new recruit?”

“In a manner of speaking. This is Sherlock. He’s a friend.” Sherlock huddled under Flora as Ace barked out a laugh.

Flora said goodbye to the big dog and walked into the structure. There were dogs everywhere. All sizes. All colors. Sherlock wagged his tail, but he stayed under Flora. Some dogs were wrestling. It wasn’t play, but it also wasn’t a fight. There were models of humans made of trash. A mangy yellow lab with a missing ear was pointing out the most vulnerable spots to a group of not quite full grown curs.

A small brown terrier trotted up to them. “Welcome back,” she said and they sniffed each other in greeting.

“Sherlock, this is Missy. She’s going to make sure you get something to eat,” Flora said, and she felt his hesitation. “It’s ok. You’re safe here.” Flora pushed him to the little brown dog. “Is everything ready?” she said to Missy.\

“Yeah. Dalton’s ready to go, but you know him.” They shared a look of understanding. Sherlock was lost. “Come on, little fella,” Missy said. “Do you like fish?”

“Um…I don’t know. I never met him,” Sherlock said. Flora and Missy howled in laughter. “Well, let’s go meet him.”

Missy took him to the back of the building and presented him with a bucket of fish scraps and skin. The smell was intoxicating. Sherlock’s mouth salivated as his stomach grumbled. He tore into the food, stuffing his belly like he would never eat again.

He glanced at Flora every now and then. She was directing the other dogs to do things like check on sentries four, five and six. She wanted updates on the western coalition. Flora ordered reports from the last twenty-four hours. Sherlock didn’t know what any of that meant, but he knew Flora was important. And he would do what she asked him to do.

As she barked at her friends, an old three-legged golden retriever walked up to her and dropped something he was holding in his mouth at her feet. They spoke to each other in hushed tones. Sherlock couldn’t hear much, but they were both agitated and growling.

“We’re at war, Dalton!” Flora snapped. Her voice echoed in the building, piercing the organized calm. All heads turned to face the pair.

“This isn’t war, Flora. This is revenge!” The older dog’s voice was hoarse and wet. “You’re trying to hurt them, not make things better!”

“How dare you! We’ve all sacrificed our lives to this cause. I…”

“Sacrifice?” Dalton coughed out interrupting her. “You sanctimonious hypocrite! If you were so devoted to the cause, you’d be wearing that collar.” He pointed to the object he dropped at Flora’s feet. He motioned to Sherlock and the puppy perked up. “You wouldn’t be using some random kid to…”

Flora lashed at the old dog, biting him on the nose and shutting him up. He winced in pain and cried out. Sherlock flinched as if he felt it too. The old hound lowered his head and limped away from the pack leader. “Sorry, kid,” he said to Sherlock. Sherlock went back to his food. When he was finished, he flopped on his side and was asleep before his head hit the floor.

There was a gentle nudging. Sherlock didn’t move. “Hey! Pup! It’s time to get some work done.” Flora shook the young dog until he opened his eyes. He blinked to clear them, stretched and got to his feet. The light from the morning beamed in through the holes in the ceiling. Sherlock yawned. “Get something to eat. We have a lot to do,” Flora said. She nodded her snout at a pile of food Sherlock couldn’t identify. He made a beeline for it and scarfed it down. Flora talked as he ate. “Remember when I said after you get some food, I need you to do something for me? Well, the time has come.”

He finished the pile of food and bowed his head to her. “What do I have to do?” he said, and Flora set her jaw at the eagerness in his voice. He stood as tall as his little body would go. He was as thin as a puppy could be, but it was clear that if he grew into adulthood, he would be a heavily muscled loyal soldier of the cause. Flora gave him a sad smile.

“Here,” she said and lifted the collar Dalton gave her the night before. Sherlock positioned himself for Flora to slide it around his neck. The weight pulled him down and he pushed his head up in a display of determined strength. It smelled like something he smelled before. Like an unlit match, but much stronger. He didn’t ask what it was. He didn’t care. He was going to do what Flora told him. “Come with me. We don’t have far to go.” Her voice was flat. A contrast to the softness she’d shown before.

All the dogs were lined up in two rows flanking the doorway. Flora led Sherlock through the center, and they bowed their heads when the little puppy passed by. The old golden missing a leg was noticeably absent. “Where’s the dog you were talking to last night?” Sherlock asked.

“We had a difference of opinion.” She looked down at Sherlock. “He’s gone.” Sherlock leaned away. Flora showed her white fangs. The puppy stopped asking questions.

Flora led Sherlock behind their headquarters. The day was bright and cool. The type of weather that made Sherlock frisky. He bounced next to Flora as they passed more dogs, each bowing their heads in a sign of respect. Sherlock bowed back. He didn’t know what else to do. “You’re the leader,” he said to Flora. She grunted in the affirmative. The duo went past torn up houses and dilapidated businesses as a roaring sound of thousands of voices got louder.

In the distance Sherlock saw a building that looked like a dog fighting ring but thousands of times bigger. They were still far away, but he heard cheers erupt through the top of the open-air stadium making him shudder. He took a step back. Flora growled.

“I don’t want to go there,” he said.

“You aren’t going there. Too many people. I’m taking you somewhere else.” They walked along the outskirts of the stadium until they came to a small bridge running over a creek. A drainpipe was emptying a trickle of sewage. “Go in there. Walk all the way to the end and wait for me,” Flora said.

“You won’t forget me?” Sherlock asked.

Flora adopted her caring tone. She put her paw on Sherlock’s head and licked him. “I promise, I will not forget you. None of us will.” She nudged him with her nose, and he walked into the pipe. When he was out of sight, Flora gave a howl of sadness and respect. And she ran off to join her troops.

* * *

“The explosion took place at the end of the third quarter. It is unknown how many casualties there are, but officials estimate the death toll in the tens of thousands making this the largest terrorist attack in history. WVLP has received a letter from the Canine Liberation Front claiming responsibility for the attack, but we cannot confirm its authenticity. We are working diligently with the authorities, and we will bring you updates as soon as we have them. This is a sad day for human/dog relations as it comes less than a day after the agreement…” Veda turned off the radio.

“She thought we would be there. She knows about our season tickets. She knows everything,” she said. Her dry throat cracked, and she grabbed a wad of her shirt at her chest trying to keep her heart from thumping out.

“Hang on,” Stan said. “They said they couldn’t confirm it was her.” He pressed the gas pedal to the floor speeding up to leave the place they called home behind.

“You’re kidding, right?” Veda wiped the tears from her face. “She’s coming for us. She’s going to find us. And she’s going to…”

“That’s why we left. She won’t catch us. She doesn’t know where we’re going.”

Stan tried to sound confident, and he managed to calm Veda with his words and reasoning. He kept going over it in his head. How hard would it have been to keep her? What more could we have done to help? We did her wrong. He wanted to believe what he told his wife was true, but he couldn’t shake the idea their dog would find them. Cross mountains. Swim rivers. Fight predators. Hate is just the flipside of love, and sometimes when a dog loves someone enough, there’s nothing she won’t do to get back to them.

 

* * *

About the Author

Ian Salavon is a husband, father, professional chef by trade, wannabe Renaissance Man, and longtime aficionado of speculative fiction. When he is not cooking, hanging out with family or writing, Ian spends his free time at the Fort Worth Judo Club where he is a black belt and coach. He has short stories published in On The Premises Magazine, Kaidankai, Small World City, and Phano Magazine, but most of his work is featured in long road trips and around the dinner table. You can read more of his work at www.shortstorysalavon.com

by Lynn Gazis

“I’m not a hero, nor a coward. I’m a cat.”

The door stood ajar, as if Annan had just stepped outside to get the mail. But we knew, the moment we stepped inside, that something had gone terribly wrong. The large cardboard boxes where we lounge comfortably between calls had been torn. A possum, from one of yesterday’s calls, lay half-eaten on the floor. Annan loved possum meat. He would not willingly have left it unfinished. And the whole room smelled of human.

My daughter and I dropped our dead raccoons on the floor and ran down the stairs. I sniffed the ground, searching for where the mingled smells of Annan and human might be strongest. My daughter ran to question our nearest human neighbor. I call her Cookies, because she often bakes cookies, and because I can’t be bothered to remember human names.

Cookies limped out, leaning on her cane, and quickly cleared up the mystery. Soldiers, she said, had come and taken Annan.

Soldiers! They should have known better. Cats don’t belong in the army. Never have and never will.

Humans bred us to be good soldiers. Their mistake. You’ve seen, perhaps the old posters, hanging in museums and covered with glass, announcing the arrival of “Tiger-Men.” We’re more like mountain lion people, but “tiger” somehow sounded fiercer. You’ve watched, perhaps, the old video, of the interview with Zachariah Kim, head of the lab where we were designed. They thought their genetic engineering would give the combined strengths of humans and the larger cats: the claws and jaws of a cat, the deft hands of a human, able to speak in human sign language and wield human guns.

But they missed one thing. We have the spirits of cats, not humans. I’m not a hero, nor a coward. I’m a cat. Heroism and cowardice are human ideas. Humans gather in large groups to fight other large groups of humans. Humans do many things, good and bad, in large, organized groups. Our groups are smaller. A friend or a sister. My cubs. For these, or for myself, I will fight. Why would I want to be a soldier and fight someone far away, for some leader I don’t know?

They could have let us go wild and hunt for ourselves, and we’d have been happy. But humans had spent money to make us, and so humans needed to find us work. We found our niche in animal control. Do you have a raccoon or a snake or some bats you need removed? Who are you going to call? Cat people, that’s who.

I’m an animal control officer, the daughter and granddaughter of animal control officers. I always thought I’d also be the mother of animal control officers. I didn’t count on the Great War. I didn’t count on a land so desperate for soldiers that it came to draft cats.

That morning, we had gotten a call – raccoons in the basement. And another call – bats in the attic. My cubs and I split the calls, two of them for the bats, while I took one with me for the raccoons, and left the fourth behind to answer the phone. We had left the fourth, my youngest, the sensitive one, behind to tend to the phone. Now soldiers had dragged him away. The last place Annan belonged was the army.

I set off at once for the intake station. We all know the station, an ugly brick building surrounded by the most delicious rats’ nests in town. Something about that terrain draws rats as soon as we’ve hunted the old ones. Mostly we care more about rats than soldiers. That day, I had no time for rats.

At once was already too late. My cub, I learned, had been taken away by train. No one would tell me where he’s been taken.

“He’s in the army now,” I was told. It’s a done deal.

That is how my journey began. No one takes my cub to be a soldier. I left the other three to mind our business and set out to retrieve the missing one.

I had never been to the train station. Why would I want to? We were happy where we were. Animal control workers have no need for trains. But I didn’t need to ask the way or take a chance that I’d be lied to or misdirected. I simply followed my cub’s scent. I knew he’d take extra care to leave a trail.

In the old days, when I was young, green bushes and bright flowers stood on either side of the road to the train station. A brook trickled along one side of the road. If a week passed when animal control calls were too few to feed us, we’d head for the brook, to catch fish, and follow them up with squirrels from nearby trees.

These days, the brook is long dry. Someone planted hydrangeas at spots along the side of the road, to replace the less drought tolerant flowers of my youth, but mostly you just walk in a cloud of dust. Between the drought and the passage of so many soldiers, not much grows next to the road.

Some say that humans fight over water, now that there is less than there was before. Others say that humans fight over land. What cat knows or understands the causes of human wars? They march in lines to the sound of music, headed for some distant place where they will need to hide like cats to pounce upon their enemies.

At first, my cub’s scent mingled with the scent of humans, many humans. But as I walked further, an odd thing happened. I caught the scent of others of us, mingled with the humans. I wasn’t the only mother to lose a cub to the army. Why would they do this? How could they not know that cat people belong nowhere near an army?

When I reached the train station, my hair stood on end. I saw crowds of people as I had never seen crowds of people. But somewhere in that crowd I hoped to find my cub, so I steeled myself and pushed forward.

Young humans in uniform, human families with baggage perhaps heading off on vacation, solitary humans glancing at phones. My nose told me that my kind had passed through this station, but I couldn’t see any cat people now. If I asked one of the humans with uniforms where they might have taken my cub, would I get an answer? Perhaps not. I remembered how brusque the humans had been at the intake station.

Then I saw them, a small group of humans holding signs. “Peace.” “War” in a red circle with a red line through it. “Hell no, don’t go.” I walked over to them.

“The army took my cub,” I said to a woman who held one end of a “Quakers for Peace” banner. The lines on her forehead and gray streaks in her hair suggested she might be old enough to have a cub of her own of army age.

“Tell me about it,” she said.

“We’re supposed to be off limits,” I said.

“Not since last week,” said her companion at the other end of the banner.

“Where did they take him?” I asked.

“Wait,” said Gray Streaks, “Are you going after him alone?”

“Of course!” I said, “He’s my cub.”

“You can’t fight the army alone,” said Gray Streaks.

“Just watch me!” I said.

“I’ll give you the address,” said Gray Streaks, “But we need to talk. Let me buy you coffee – I mean milk.”

Soon we sat on cushions at a table at a local coffeehouse. Flat pictures of humans and wild plants, the motionless kind that humans like and that bore us cats, adorned the walls. The waiter gave Gray Streaks a cup of that dark, bitter liquid that humans like, while I got a saucer of milk. A human strummed an instrument and sang, “I’ll take you to the war, my love,” while another human sang her refusal to join her love in the army.

“Do you have a way to tell your cub when you’re coming?” asked Gray Streaks.

“No. How would I? We don’t each carry our own phone the way you humans do. There’s one phone in the office, and two phones are enough to share between us when we’re out on a call.”

“That’s where you need help,” said Gray Streaks, “Someone who can talk to one of the recruits at the training center can find out their schedule, how long your cub might be there before he’s sent to the front, and how you might get your cub a message. Do you know how many other cubs were taken?”

“I didn’t know any others were taken.”

“There are other cubs there,” said Gray Streaks, “And many mothers coming for their cubs can make more trouble than one.”

“We’re cats,” I said, “we don’t form large groups like you humans. That’s why we don’t belong in the army. That’s why they should leave us alone. Why do they want my cub off killing people far from his family? Just point me where he is and I’ll tear their faces, till they give him back.”

We argued through two cups of coffee for Gray Streaks and two saucers of milk for me. Humans and cats will never see things the same way. My new Quaker helper, Gray Streaks, could no more be convinced that I could rescue my cub by going to the army camp myself and fighting till they gave him back than I could be convinced that trying to organize a band of cats to come to the rescue would help.

Finally, without agreeing, we settled on a deal. I would answer all the questions that she thought would help her find other cats whose cubs had been taken, and she would point me to the army office. She could also, she said, help me get a message to my cub to be ready. Human recruits, unlike my cub, took their phones with them and stayed in touch with their parents, at least while they were in the training center. On the front, contact might be spottier.

“Then I need to bring him home before they take him to the front,” I said.

The next day, I returned to the train station. I looked for the people holding signs. I didn’t find Gray Streaks. But I found someone else, talking to the young human with the “Hell no, don’t go” sign. She stood taller and longer than I, and had striking large paws, six toes on each. The twitch of her ears and flicking of her tail told me that she was as ill at ease in a crowded train station as I was, and, after all, what cat wouldn’t be? When I had my cub, I would not be able to get back fast enough to my own cardboard box, in my own home.

Her voice rose with the words “my cub!”

“Have they taken yours, too?” I asked.

We cats are not like you humans. We don’t form bands or organize. We would never form an army, and we’d never gather in groups with signs to protest an army. But cat mothers will help each other one on one. The two of us headed to the coffeehouse to plot over saucers of milk. I told her about Gray Streaks.

“She thinks she can organize cats,” I said, “Fat chance! But she can get us the address, and a human with a phone who can get a message to our cubs.”

“She may be right,” said Six Toes, “That going straight at them with our claws isn’t the best approach. The army has a lot of humans, and they have guns. But if we had a distraction, perhaps our cubs could escape in the ruckus. What about skunks?”

Many of us cats work in animal control for the obvious reason. A lot of the animals that humans want to get rid of are tasty. That possum, those rats – there’s good eating in human pest control. If humans are willing to supply us with good hunting and pay us for it, why not take the job? But once in the animal control business we’ve had to learn to handle animals that we might have found more trouble than they were worth, if we were just looking for a meal, like skunks and porcupines. We even handle animals that we’d give a hard pass for dinner, like rattlesnakes or swarms of bees or hornets. Whatever you want to get rid of, we’ll take off your hands.

Why not become the cats who could take off animal control’s hands the animals that were trouble rather than good eating?

I told Gray Streaks that Six Toes and I had an idea for a company that could gum up the works at the training center, and could we find a human to handle the paperwork to make the company legal? Humans are good at paperwork. Then, confident that we’d get a human to file papers for us and set up our office, Six Toes and I set about the fun part of the task, figuring out how to wrangle all the bees and snakes. We talked with other cats in the animal control business, who were happy to give us their skunks and porcupines and bees and hornets and snakes, at least the poisonous and not so edible snakes. We even persuaded some to pay us in bats for taking wasps off their hands. We cats, always current on our rabies shots, consider bats a prime taste treat, but humans, who fecklessly wait till they’re exposed to get shots for rabies, fear bats even more than they fear bees. And to rescue our cubs, we could sacrifice the opportunity to eat bats.

Gray Streaks sent us not just one human but two, to help us set up the office. They filed papers to set up the company, found office space, and got us a new phone. And sent us more cats. Soon there were eight of us cats, and two humans, and we told the humans to stop sending us cats, because a group of ten, between humans and cats, is as much as a cat can manage, even if we were all mothers looking to get our cubs back. Any other mothers would have to manage on their own.

We had to rely on our humans, with their phone contact inside the training site. How long would it take for a human inside to get word to all our cubs? Not long, as cubs stood out among the humans. How long did we have before our cubs were moved? Weeks, easily enough time to round up wasps and snakes, but not enough time to dawdle.

On the day of the event, we arrived shortly before dawn, with our menagerie. The grounds smelled strongly of humans, but also of cats. How many cubs were trapped there? We scattered with our animals, as we judged they’d make more distraction for the humans if they came from more quarters. Skunks, porcupines, bees, hornets, wasps, bats, and snakes both poisonous and not poisonous but scary looking to humans all had their planned locations for release. My job was scattering all the stinging insects.

As I drew closer to the training base, I saw another band of cats, digging.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, and got the reply, “Taking back our cubs!”

Closer to the base, I met still another band of cats. I could tell by their accents that these cats were big city cats, and they had, it turned out, big city plans. This band of techno-cats busied themselves jamming the radio signals that, they said, the soldiers used.

Humans, I realized, had found ways of their own to wrangle cats. We cats work in small groups, but humans, one or two to a band of cats, have no trouble communicating with each other about what each band is doing, and arranging for the bands to show up at the same place at the same time. I hoped the army would not learn from our example. Was it possible, after all, that cats could be made into soldiers?

Surely not! All of us, mostly mothers but also some fathers and aunts and grandparents, had come to rescue our own cubs. No one would make us fight for anything larger than our families. I didn’t raise my cub to be a soldier. My cub would come home with me.

I turned a corner and two human soldiers pounced on me. I fell, biting and scratching, but as I did, I dropped and let loose the last swarm of hornets.

I was, you may understand, dressed in full beekeeper clothing. All my band of cats were, as were our two humans. Despite all of that, I got stung once, and yowled.

The humans, though, had nothing of the kind. Hornets swarmed them. They shrieked and swatted, and I ran.

Other human soldiers rounded the bend and shot at me. I ran. They say to zig zag when someone is shooting. I did nothing of the kind. I can’t keep zigzagging straight in my head when bullets are flying, and when running straight I run fast. I did get hit, once, on my left back leg, but kept running through the pain.

I reached a wood some distance from the base, and there I stopped and lay down, having outdistanced the shooters. Time to inspect and clean my leg. Time to feel the pain more keenly. And time to wonder, had I failed my cub? I could only hope that I and the others had provided enough distraction for him to escape. After all, I had no more pests left to release.

I lay for long minutes, but I could not rest. Not without my cub. I rose and limped, scanning the land from the trees in search of my companions. The sun had nearly set by now, and human eyes must be dimming. But my spot in the forest lay uphill from the training camp, and I had, from my vantage point, a better view of the actions of all the bands of cats. Many of the soldiers still struggled with our beasts. The various stinging insects proved especially effective. Some of the cats, in defiance of the wishes of humans like the Quaker Gray Streaks, had chosen to charge the soldiers and fight. The signal jamming techno-cats used puffs of smoke to send messages to each other.

Far across the field, I caught sight of Six Toes, letting loose some bats. We had planned to save the bats for last, to give them the advantage of the coming darkness. I limped my way to her.

“Are these the last?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, “Time to find our cubs.”

“The tunnel digging cats?”

“Probably.”

We collected the rest of our band and found that we had lost our humans, and thus, our phone. Possibly its signal in any case had been jammed by the techno-cats. I hoped the soldiers hadn’t taken our humans captive.

I wouldn’t have thought we could ever forget where we’d seen the tunnel digging cats, but it turned out that, though we were all sure we remembered the location of the end of the tunnel, we remembered three different locations. All we could do was try them all. By the time we reached the third place and found no tunnel, my leg ached as it had never ached before. Besides this, we had to keep pausing to hide in the underbrush from soldiers.

Six Toes sniffed and announced that she had the trail. The rest of us followed. Soon I caught the scent of my cub. I almost forgot my injured leg in my haste to follow the scent.

At last, we reached a small clearing full of cubs. My cub, the cubs of Six Toes and three others of our small band, and other cubs that none of us knew. Cats from other bands – mothers, fathers, aunts, grandmothers – arrived to take their cubs. If we hadn’t feared attracting soldiers searching for the missing cubs, we would have cheered. Victory!

Victory, at least, for me and Six Toes. Some of us have our cubs. The others remain to try again.

We cats are not like you humans. We don’t organize for causes. We work together to care for our own families. The other cats, who were our fast friends when all of us worked together to free our cubs, will take over the business. Six Toes and I, and the others who have our cubs, have agreed to send the business all the nasty, useless, inedible critters that come our way, in our animal control work. We leave it to you, their new human comrades, to handle the paperwork, and to find out what happened to the humans we lost at the training camp.

As for me, I am bringing my cub home.

 

* * *

About the Author

Lynn Gazis (she/they), being one of nine children, grew up in a small town in New York surrounded by cats, dogs, mice, gerbils, turtles, snakes, and an invisible goldfish. As a child, she played “For All the Saints” on the piano at a funeral for a mouse. She now lives in Southern California with her husband and cats. She works in IT and is active in her Quaker meeting. She has stories published by Cathedral Canyon Review, Air and Nothingness Press, JayHenge Publishing, Persimmon Tree Magazine, and Friends Journal. The cats, though, want you to know that her most important function is scratching them right where they want it and placing items on the table for them to knock down.

by Spencer Orey

“I was not the Judge, but I would try.”

The caravan season should have ended with the onset of the rains. Unpredictably flooded trails and the rise of furious displaced snakes made it treacherous to cross the forest we called the Heart of Rain. Moreover, the best of the lion guides had long since crossed over and were now feasting through their earnings. The only lions still offering their services here at the border were the worst of the lot and the most corrupt. Nobody who knew any better would choose any of them. And yet, wagons full of desperate refugees and travelers kept arriving in hopes of a better life away from the pride lands.

The latest donkey-wagon waiting at the inn’s crossing post looked desperate enough. A cheetah waved in hopes of attracting a suitable lion guide while a cheetah cub, likely hers, scratched at the nearest wheel. Other cats chattered in the wagon. I wondered if they’d be desperate enough to choose me as a guide, even though I was no lion. Nobody ever chose a tiger like me, but I could at least offer my services.

I slunk out from the inn’s overhang for a slow and polite approach. Old Grezzawel the lion shoved past me with his tail arrogantly raised. He said, “Do not think to ply your foolishness here, striped one. That wagon is mine.” His steel sword shone on his back.

Even here on the outskirts of the pride lands, I was supposed to acquiesce to the lions. The smallest hesitation could put me in danger from those who’d gladly use sword and claw and tooth to remind me of my place. I should have slunk away. Instead, I approached the wagon.

The cheetah’s gaze flicked over me and lingered on Grezzawel. To her, he must have looked like a figure cut from stories about the Judge, the hero who’d guarded the trails across the Heart of Rain. Grezzawel played the part well, raising his silver necklace to show the Judge’s emblem. I hated that these corrupt lions dared to wear anything so sacred.

“I assume—” Grezzawel began.

“Do not trust that lion,” I interrupted. “I am Tamtammaragh-Tamrel, and if you’ll have me, I will help you.” The wagon flap stirred. A small, striped face peeked out to look at me.

There was a moment of shocked silence.

“Honey, come out here,” the cheetah called over her shoulder to the wagon.

An adult leopard slunk out from the wagon to join us. Before the flap closed behind her, I saw three cubs. A cheetah, a leopard, and yes, a small tiger.

Grezzawel laughed, sounding jolly, but he shifted his weight in subtle preparation to strike me. “Do not listen to this fool tiger. Rains are falling. Snakes are prowling. You’ll need a true guide who can guarantee your passage.”

The cheetah raised a questioning paw at me. “Have you made the crossing before? Can you guarantee us passage?”

I’d never fully crossed the Heart of Rain, but I’d studied maps and followed caravans along the winding trails. I could do it. I said, “None can guarantee such a thing during the rain.” Grezzawel growled in anger, but I kept talking, “I can fight. And if you’ll have me, I swear to protect your group with every one of my lives.”

The cheetah looked me over in consideration. Then, heartbreakingly, she turned to Grezzawel instead. “What terms do you offer, great lion?”

It was a dismissal. And yet, I’d failed so many times at this before that it was hard for me to give up. I did not budge.

Grezzawel gave a cocky snort. “With such danger, you will pay me everything you own. On the other side, you will give me your wagon and your donkey.” He eyed me with a wicked shake of his mane then pointed to the wagon flap. “And one of the cubs, to raise as a servant. I’d prefer a tiger.” It was a horrific blood price.

In my outrage, I felt suddenly aware of the blade on my back. It was a brittle thing, so unlike the Judge’s legendary sword, unlike even this corrupt lion’s steel, but I could use it.

The cheetah reared back from Grezzawel’s demand. She turned to me, “And… your terms?”

“Are illegitimate,” Grezzawel said, shifting his weight again. “No weakling tiger can protect you from the vengeance of snakes. His kind are prideless cowards, unable to fight—” Grezzawel slid his sword out and struck at me.

I swung my blade free just in time. He was far stronger than me, and his sword bit so hard into mine I could tell my blade would break under too many blows. But I knew him. I’d studied from the shadows while he and the other lions practiced their swordplay. Grezzawel could fight, but he was no hero. He was not the Judge. And I’d grown up fighting bullies like him.

I feigned fear and stumbled back. He roared with triumph and leapt at me while I crossed under his eager swipe to bite my teeth hard into his unprotected forearm. He yelped but smashed his sword pommel down onto my head.

I flailed my sword as I fell. My vision spun from pain. Like a fool, I’d challenged a lion to a swordfight and lost. Now I’d die. There’d be no punishment for killing a tiger. I scrambled for my feet, claws out, ready to bat away Grezzawel’s killing blow, but I was too dizzy.

No killing blow fell. When my vision cleared, Grezzawel was stumbling for the inn, clutching his chest. Blood dripped from his fur onto the muddy ground. In my flailing, I’d struck him. I’d actually done it. I’d won.

The cheetah stared at me, head cocked in reconsideration.

Despite my throbbing head, I swept into a bow. “I am no lion. I will accept whatever payment you can afford,” I said. “Only, I ask that after we’ve crossed, you tell others that cats still uphold the true ways and would not steal your cubs or take your every last possession. I ask that you remind everyone that once there was a Judge, and although many lions have turned corrupt and cruel, there may one day be a Judge again. So I ask you now, will you have me as your guide?”

We left later that day.

* * *

We descended brown bouldery hills toward the Heart of Rain. As was their custom, the cats had not presented me with their names, and I had not asked, as was polite.

Out of sight of the village, the three cubs dashed free of the wagon and clambered onto me. I was wearing my armor, and the jangle of the bamboo stalks made the cubs giggle. The cheetah raced over to scold them away, but I waved her off. Better that the little ones learn to trust me while the road was still safe. Then they might listen to me when things turned bad.

The cheetah and leopard cubs were inseparable. They’d tumble away to pounce at each other in the road, but the tiger cub hardly left my back. Perhaps she’d heard Grezzawel demanding her as a blood price, or perhaps I reminded her of someone she’d lost.

We passed several final boulders before the Heart of Rain rose before us. Tall trees shook branches up into the rainclouds, ready to grow as their roots submerged for the long seasonal soak. Mostly, we saw lightning, always striking the same place. Each strike made the tiger cub cling sharper with her claws.

I remembered too well how it felt to be a scared cub. So, as others had once done for me, I told stories about the Judge.

Lightning struck. She dug in her claws again, and I said, “Fear not. That’s only the Judge’s sword.”

“His sword?” her claws eased a little. The other cubs raced over to listen.

“The Judge is the strongest of all warriors. He battles for all of us with his sword that casts lightning. We do not know what he battles. With each flash of lightning, his sword swings against evil. Take heart from the lightning, for the Judge is fighting to keep us safe.”

The tiger cub climbed forward onto my head, watching closer. When lightning flashed, she tensed without clawing. “But how can he fight like that? Doesn’t he need to rest?”

“His sword strikes with lightning,” I said. “His strong paws wield powerful magic. His invincible silver armor shines like sunshine itself.”

“Not like yours.”

I laughed. “No, not like mine.” My armor would barely blunt a sword strike. I was lucky Grezzawel hadn’t skewered me.

“But if he’s so shiny, he can’t hide,” the leopard cub said, suddenly at my side. “He can’t sneak up on his prey.”

“The Judge does not hide,” I said. “He arrives when and wherever cats need his help. At least he used to…” Lightning flashed again. I didn’t want the little ones afraid. I said, “Nobody can beat him in a swordfight. No evil can withstand his righteousness. Out there in the trees, he’s winning.”

“Like this!” The cheetah cub snatched a jagged stick from the ground and swung it at a nearby boulder. The stick broke, and the cubs giggled.

The two adult cats clustered in discussion with the donkey, thanking him for his patience on the tedious downhill. He flicked his ears at me in gratitude for carrying the cubs and sharing some small portion of the weight.

Trees appeared ahead on the trail, with green branches extended as though to ward us away. I hoped the season was early enough that the snakes might still be awakening from their holes, not roosting high, ready to strike.

Doubt found me. Could I truly serve as a guide through this place? Responsibility weighed on my paws with a sudden heaviness. I was telling stories about a hero and pretending to be one myself, when I was yet untested and untrained. My inexperience put my caravan in danger.

The first snake hole I spotted beside the narrow road had already flooded. The snakes would be angry.

Among the trees, there was no point in telling the cubs to keep quiet against their young inclinations. They were young and busy with chatter. Our wagon’s heavy wheels already acted as a beacon to anything listening for vibrations.

* * *

Hiss. Snakes leapt from the treetops, screaming, “Defilers of the rock! Remove your filth and return our land!” Some bared fangs. Others held knives in their mouths.

“Fight them off!” I yelled.

The adult cats leapt to protect the wagon while I searched for the real danger. I spotted a flick of leaves and struck with my sword. I missed. A pair of fangs clanked off my bamboo armor.

Every ambush was led by a snake priest. Lions called them fang spitters because they tore the fangs from fallen snakes to shoot at travelers. I swiped again into the grass.

The cubs screamed from inside the wagon. I turned their way and spotted the fang spitter trying to sneak past me. I grabbed it and threw it hard at a tree trunk, then dashed for the wagon.

I yelled, “Your priest has fallen! Leave us, snakes!” I threw open the wagon flap and found a trio of knife-wielding snakes.

The tiger cub was pressed fully into the corner, trembling with fear. The other two cubs had their claws out, trying to fight.

I roared. The snakes glanced at me and rushed to slither out the front of the wagon. Guides usually moved in pursuit. But when the tiger cub leapt onto me, mewling pitifully, terrified, in desperate need of comfort, I let the snakes escape.

* * *

The cubs were scared but otherwise unharmed, and the adult cats escaped with only scratches. The donkey took a bad bite to his front leg. We bandaged him with a salve that the leopard insisted contained one of her peoples’ effective antivenoms, but it did little to help with his limp. He nevertheless motioned forward with his ears, a brave claim that he could still walk, but he needed our help to push the wagon atop a small hill. We made early camp. It was too damp for a fire.

One attack in, and we were far worse off. I remembered Grezzawel’s hateful words: no weakling tiger can protect you from the vengeance of snakes. How much more of this could we survive?

The cheetah cub and the leopard cub snuggled together, asleep in the wagon with the leopard. The tiger cub refused to leave my side. She was awake and still shaking with fear.

The cheetah came to my side and took her daughter close. “I’ll keep watch for a while so you can rest.”

The tiger whimpered and reached for me. I said, “I’m good yet.”

Rain dripped steadily around us. The cheetah asked, “How many times have you completed the crossing?”

I thought about lying, in case it would help her feel safer. But the Judge would have stuck to the truth. “This is my first full crossing, though I have long stalked these trails in practice. No caravan before you dared choose a tiger when they could have a lion instead.”

The tiger cub made a sound like she wanted to speak, but she quieted down again.

“After the lions stole our land, we followed stories of the Judge into the pride lands of warm justice,” the cheetah said. “But wherever we traveled, the lions forced us out again, always pushing us back onto the road. From the stories… we expected better.”

I nodded in sad agreement. “As did I.”

“Tam, you may be inexperienced, but I am grateful to have you,” the cheetah said. “You saved my cubs today. That is no small thing.”

The tiger cub squeaked a little. “I was too scared to fight. I was a coward tiger, just like that mean lion said.”

“Darling,” the cheetah said, reaching for her.

The cub shook her away, nuzzling closer to me for safety. She said, “The Judge wouldn’t have been scared.”

I knew just what to say. “We all get scared sometimes. Even the Judge.”

“Really?” her ears perked up. “Then I wish the Judge was here with us.” Lightning flashed again and she followed it with her gaze. “Can’t you go get him?”

I laughed at that. “If I left, who would fight off tomorrow’s snakes?” I tried to say more but lost myself in a big yawn.

“Rest while you can,” the cheetah insisted. “We’ll need you fresh.”

My protest ended in another yawn. I handed the tiger cub to her mother.

I awoke to a roar.

* * *

At first, I worried Grezzawel had come for revenge. But after a second roar, we decided someone was in trouble. I volunteered to go, but the cheetah was faster. She raced away to investigate.

She came back shortly with a huge lion. He bore a steel sword on his back that shone brighter even than his cuirass, almost as bright as his necklace that bore the Judge’s emblem.

“He was alone,” the cheetah said, “fighting snakes.”

“And winning,” the lion said with a wicked grin.

I recognized him from the border village. He’d signed on with several other guides for the last full caravan. There’d been several long wagons, all pulled by friendly oxen. This lion should have completed the crossing long ago.

The leopard also appeared suspicious. “Where is your caravan?”

“Separated by ambush at the big bridge. Most of our wagons escaped. I fought until the snakes pushed our final wagon into the river. The whole wagon slid in, and so did I.” His sadness appeared genuine, at least. “Call me Cruwr. Take me with you.” He eyed me dismissively. “Surely you could use a truer swordpaw.”

The cheetah and leopard crouched together for discussion. Even as their guide, I was only a hired hand, so the decision was theirs. I would have sent the lion away. But when the cheetah glanced at me, it reminded me of her question about whether I’d made the crossing before, and I knew their answer.

* * *

Everything changed with Cruwr along.

When Cruwr pointed us toward a narrow trail that he claimed would avoid the bridge and also potentially a more direct route, I recommended against it. As the caravan’s guide, I preferred the trail I’d set us on. But the cheetah and leopard took Cruwr’s advice anyway.

We didn’t get far before we were forced to make camp. The ground underpaw turned to deep mud, where pulling the wagon made the donkey’s injury worse.

When snakes attacked our muddy camp in the evening, Cruwr struck faster than me. His sword was sharper. He wielded it better. While Cruwr butchered snakes, I once again sought out the fang spitter to end the ambush. Instead, I found a snake priest who bore a single giant fang.

He struck the fang into the mud and reared back to yell, “Defilers! Come with me and take your filth from our—” Cruwr sliced him in half before he could speak more. Then as the other snakes fled, Cruwr chased them down with swings of his steel sword that severed them against tree trunks. I was disgusted with him.

But Cruwr was beloved. The tiger cub still clung to me, but the other two cubs quickly took to Cruwr. He let them try to lift his sword and laughed fondly when they could not. When night fell, the cheetah and leopard seemed more relaxed to have him with us, even though he’d been the one to get us stuck.

He did all those things, but he would not speak to me.

I approached him several times, seeking to coordinate our efforts, seeking counsel about how to better protect the caravan. He wouldn’t let me finish a sentence before scoffing and walking away. His unspoken message was clear. I was a tiger who’d overstepped his place.

Worse, he scolded the tiger cub. She tripped, falling face first into mud, and he called her pathetic. He reminded her of her inability to fight. He called her a coward and a failure.

The rain fell heavier, and our injured donkey could not pull the cart. We were forced to remain in place in hopes that a full day’s rest might give him strength to pull the rest of the way out of the Heart of Rain.

* * *

Snakes attacked again. I heard the cubs screaming, so I raced to the wagon. Cruwr reached it first.

I found him ripping snakes away from the leopard and cheetah cubs but ignoring the tiger entirely. A snake was closing in on her, fangs bared to strike while she screamed louder and louder for help. Cruwr did nothing. No, he did worse than that. He laughed at her.

I pounced hard and tossed the snake outside.

With a furious growl at Cruwr, I put the tiger cub on my back and sought out her parents. I said, “Cruwr is dangerous and hateful. He must leave.”

Cruwr came out of the wagon with the other cubs riding on his shoulders. They giggled and didn’t seem to mind the snake blood on his fur and paws. Cruwr’s Judge emblem shone bright.

I said, “I know she is not your trueborn cub, but—”

“She is our daughter,” the leopard said with a hiss. “We are her mothers.” She plucked the tiger from my grip to nuzzle her close.

“We will discuss the matter with Cruwr,” the cheetah said.

I was not invited to that discussion. The rain stopped mercifully long enough for us to make a small campfire, and the cubs clustered near it for warmth. The donkey hung his ears to the side, relaxed.

The leopard and cheetah kept their voices quiet, but Cruwr was far too proud to whisper. I caught snarls of his words, “Disloyal…. greedy cats… only ever minding their own kind…”

The tiger cub whimpered.

I asked, “How about another story?” The other cubs snuggled closer. “The Judge’s sword—”

“Shoots lightning, we know. We can see it,” the leopard cub said. The cheetah cub shushed her with a soft shove, but they both stilled when lightning flashed. Cruwr’s trail had led us close to where the lightning struck.

“There was a time when his sword went missing. A bandit stole it in the night…” No, I’d chosen the wrong story, about an evil tiger. I shook my head.

“Tell us!” the cheetah cub yelled.

I tried a different story. “Another time, his armor…” No, that story too was about a terrible tiger. Cruwr’s words were digging into me. The tiger cub needed better, something to believe in.

“Are we getting a story or not?” the leopard cub asked. She put her head on her paws.

I chose my favorite. “There was a time before the Judge was a hero. When he was a cub much like you three, his family was attacked by—” tigers— “bandits who stole him away. The bandits demanded an impossible ransom. His parents tried to rescue him, but they were too weak to fight off the entire bandit horde. Next, his whole village tried to rescue him, but they failed too, for the bandits were simply too many. The Judge realized he’d have to rescue himself. Every day, bandits chased the young Judge around, poking him with swords, and the Judge learned how to dodge and move. Every day, he watched bandits train with their swords, and he learned to strike better than they could. The bandits claimed to be clever, but one day—”

“Telling tales about your betters?” Cruwr interrupted. The two adult cats were chasing after him, like he must have stormed off. He swept into a sneering bow. “My apologies for upsetting you earlier today. I’d foolishly imagined that a such grand tiger warrior would be capable of rescuing one of your own.” He paused to sneer at the cub. “Not that your kind merits rescuing.”

I snarled and reached for my sword.

“Hold.” The cheetah growled. She raced between me and Cruwr. To Cruwr she said, “You agreed to make peace, not inflame things with insults.”

Lightning flashed. I hoped the donkey could endure the next day’s march so we could finally be rid of Cruwr.

“When an inferior oversteps their place, they must be reprimanded,” Cruwr said. “Such actions are only natural.” He gave an exaggerated stretch of his back. “I find that saving all of your lives yet again has tired me out. Take the first watch, tiger. I’ll be sure to save you first tomorrow, since you’re such a weakling.”

I wanted to yell at him.

Instead, the tiger cub shrieked, “Cruwr, you don’t deserve to wear the Judge’s emblem. The Judge would be ashamed of you.”

He growled in anger, shifting his weight. When he reached for his sword, I sprang fast, grabbing his paw in my teeth.

With his other paw he swiped at me, but I’d already ducked away. Before, I’d angered him. Now I’d hurt his pride. I crouched low, ready for a bad reprisal.

Lightning flashed again.

“The Judge,” Cruwr said slowly, then laughed. “You tell stories about glorious lions while forgetting who those lions fought. It’s a shame nobody has shown you the truth.” He slunk to the edge of the firelight and curled up for sleep.

The cheetah and the leopard ducked their heads together in worried conversation.

While the others slept, I found myself glancing toward Cruwr more than I watched for snakes. Finally, the cheetah relieved me, and I curled up to rest.

It was still dark when the leopard shook me awake in a panic.

The tiger cub was missing. So was Cruwr.

* * *

In the dark, away from the trail, it would be harder to spot sudden drops into snake holes. Worse, in the rain, I might not be able to smell my way back to the caravan. “I’ll find her,” I said.

“He’d only kill you,” the leopard answered. “I’ll go. I can sneak through the trees.”

“Don’t go, mommy!” the leopard cub shrieked.

“I hate to say this, but… perhaps none of us should go,” the cheetah said. Her voice was quiet and pained. “When the sun rises, the snakes will descend upon us—”

The leopard growled. “You’d leave our daughter to that lion?”

“Cruwr is cruel, but if he means to punish Tam—”

“You wouldn’t dare say that if he’d stolen Ila.”

“But he didn’t.”

The duty of every guide since the Judge was to ensure their caravan survived with as many people as possible. If I chased after Cruwr, the cheetah was right that they might die without my protection.

I remembered the tiger cub shaking in fear in the wagon. How much more terrified must she be now, stuck with hateful Cruwr? I had to rescue her. I was going.

“He wants to humiliate me,” I said. “He wants to prove that he’s better with a sword, that he can strike me down. As if he has to prove such a thing.” I shook free of my bamboo armor and gave my brittle blade to the leopard. “Protect yourselves as best you can. Follow this trail. I vow to find your daughter and bring her to you.”

The donkey stomped in support.

I could smell Cruwr’s path, but I already knew where he’d gone. He was proud and wanted to teach me a cruel lesson. To find him, I had only to follow the lightning.

He’d taken her to the Judge.

* * *

The trail was perilous with holes and sudden streams. Snakes slithered overhead on branches but did not leap down on me. Perhaps they were showing strength, or perhaps they knew that the farther I went from my caravan, the easier of a target the rest of my group would be.

I followed the lightning along a flowing river of runoff lined with the wreckage of broken wagons until the tall trees suddenly thinned. I found an expanse of blasted mud covered in bones. In the middle of the mud stood a tall rock marked by a thousand snake holes.

Atop the rock, I saw the body of the Judge.

He hung high in the air, trapped by the skeleton of a gigantic snake, larger than any legend. The snake’s bones coiled tightly around him, as though in death the snake was still trying to crush his invincible armor. The Judge’s sword struck out through the top of the snake’s skull, point raised in the air. Sparks danced around the blade.

The Judge was dead. My hero was dead. I’d told so many stories about his invincible armor, his lightning sword, and his unflinching morals. He’d struck a killing blow, but his own armor had trapped him in place, like a cruel sculpture to eternal battle.

“So you see how goodness ends, how one failure draws others to their death,” Cruwr said from behind me.

I spun, claws extended to protect myself, but he stood well beyond my reach.

“Did you forget your sword, stupid tiger?” Cruwr was protected by his steel cuirass like a true warrior. His mane shone resplendent with raindrops. “Have you realized that you’ll never be a true guide?”

I didn’t see the tiger cub. I had no reason to hold to my pride like a lion would. I’d save her, no matter the cost. “Great lion,” I said, sweeping into a bow. “You have proven your point. I am no guide. Take the cub back to the caravan without me and help them leave. I will trouble you no further.”

Cruwr reared back with a laugh. “It’s a bit too late for all that.” He pointed at the rock.

I caught a flicker of movement from inside the snake skeleton. A striped paw. Cruwr had forced the cub inside the giant coils of bones. At least she was alive, but how many times had lightning struck on my way here? How could I even reach her without getting struck too? I’d have to climb the bones and pry her free before the Judge’s lightning could strike me down, as it had for so many tigers in stories before.

“You’ll never save her without one of these,” Cruwr said with another laugh. “Not that you are fit to wear one.” He raised his emblem and backed away into the trees. He was only baiting me to follow so he could slit me open. I ignored him. I had to rescue the cub.

A thin trail spiraled up the tall rock. I raced up and found myself at the thick base of the great snake skeleton. The cub screamed from higher up. The snake bones at the base coiled tightly. I tried to shove them apart, but the whole skeleton held. Other snake bones were wedged into the coils, as though many of them had attempted this climb before and failed.

I climbed the bones, closer to where sparks gathered brightly around the Judge’s sword. The Judge’s silver armor gleamed, still shining and invincible after so long. More sparks gathered. My fur rose.

I found the opening where Cruwr must have shoved the cub through.

“Climb this way!” I called.

The cub tried to reach me but kept slipping. The bones were slick from rain. I tried to wedge bones apart, but the opening was far too narrow for me. I needed another way in.

The Judge’s skeletal paw was still wrapped around his sword hilt. His blade plunged up through the snake’s skull. If I couldn’t free the cub, perhaps I could stop the lightning. I angled and kicked at the Judge’s arm. Sparks shivered up my leg, but I kicked again and again until the arm bones broke apart. His torso crumbled next, and his silver armor slid free from its long-coiled prison. But his sword hung in place, lodged in the snake’s skull, gathering stronger sparks.

The cub was screaming. My fur rose entirely, and I knew lightning was about to strike. “Get low to the ground!” I yelled to the cub. She didn’t hear me, only kept climbing closer, scrabbling in a panic up the slippery bones and reaching for me. She trusted me, and that trust would be her end.

I’d failed her. Lightning would shortly kill us both. In the end, I was no guide or hero. I was only the unworthy tiger everyone had always told me I was, reaching above my natural place, trying to be something I did not deserve. More sparks gathered, dancing across my fur.

“Tam! Help me!” the cub screamed.

No, I refused to let the cub die here. I grabbed the Judge’s sword hilt and wedged myself against the coiled bones as close as I could to the great snake’s skull. I pushed hard, and pushed again until I heard a snap. I pushed more, springing with my legs, and the skull pried free while I lost my balance.

I tumbled through the air with sword.

Lightning struck. My fur erupted in fire and everything flashed burning white.

* * *

“Give it up!” Cruwr shrieked. “Give me the sword!” He was raking at me to loosen my grip. The Judge’s sword was clenched in my paw. I couldn’t have let go if I wanted to. My body jolted involuntarily, then again.

The sword was sparking anew, gathering strength. I’d been lucky to survive a first blast. I wouldn’t survive a second.

Cruwr took a step back and drew his sword. Sparks danced across his cuirass. “I’ll cut it free,” he said. “I can be a new Judge. First among caravan guides. Imagine the riches.”

The Judge’s sword sparked more. Cruwr roared and raised his sword high to cut off my paw.

And the cheetah slammed into his side. He was so sturdy that she only staggered him, but she saved my life. Cruwr’s sword chunked down into the mud. The cheetah rolled away while Cruwr shook his sword free. He spun on her. I heard the tiger cub scream from nearby.

I was shaking and too weak to raise the Judge’s sword for battle, let alone swing it, but if I did nothing, the cheetah would die. The cub would lose her mother.

The Judge wouldn’t have given up. Neither could I.

I tried to get up and fight, tried to ready the sword.

I managed to point it.

And lighting erupted onto Cruwr, a column of bright burning death. It threw me back.

* * *

A paw batted lightly at my face. “Are you really still alive?” the cheetah asked. “How many lives have you lost today?”

The Judge’s sword lay next to me. It wasn’t sparking. My paw ached terribly.

“Cub?” I asked. I wanted to ask far more than that, but it hurt too much to talk. Where were the others? Why had the cheetah come for us, after trying to abandon her child?

“I got scared, and I chose wrong,” she said. “It was a mistake. I’m here now.”

I saw a flicker of movement from behind her, a striped tail. The cub poked out from behind her mother.

Cruwr’s charred remains lay face down in the mud. Raindrops fizzed on his burnt fur. His steel armor still shone, along with his necklace and the Judge’s emblem.

“Let’s return to the caravan,” the cheetah said. “The donkey can only fend off the snakes for so long.”

“Snakes won’t bother us anymore.” I’d understood what they’d wanted all this time. They’d called us defilers of the rock. The Judge’s lightning had rendered their home dangerous and inaccessible. How many snakes had failed to stop the lightning? The ground was littered with bones. “They can finally return home.”

All that remained was to remove the last of the Judge. And his armor.

I tried to get to my feet but stumbled. The cub darted out to support my weight with her back. Encouraged, I got up.

The Judge’s sword lay in the mud. If I touched it, would it call more lightning? It was one thing to tell stories about a hero who wielded magic. It had been another thing entirely to feel magic scorch through me and witness the destruction it wrought. In stories, the sword was a singular tool of justice. Now I saw it as a sparking border between life and death, a bright responsibility.

“Take the armor and sword,” the cheetah said. “They belong to you.”

The silver armor wouldn’t fit me. It’d been forged for a lion, and no lion smith would ever refit it for a tiger. I didn’t deserve it. But perhaps neither had the Judge. How much violence had he wrought upon the Heart of Rain by fighting the gigantic snake? How many caravans and travelers had been lost because of him?

I was making excuses. “I’m afraid.”

“Do not abandon what you’ve earned in fear that you aren’t good enough. Try instead to be worthy. Try always,” the cheetah said. “That’s all any of us can do.”

The cub nuzzled me.

My strength slowly returned. I sent the cheetah and her cub back to the caravan.

I took Cruwr’s emblem for my own, and then I buried him and the Judge together. It felt right, an acknowledgment that our many lives were messier than any simple legend, that all of us contained greed and pride and the sparks of heroism.

* * *

I found the donkey hitched to the wagon, ready to pull. The leopard and the cheetah nuzzled their tiger cub, holding her close, part of their family. The other two cubs mewled with awe at the sight of the silver armor and the sword. I was not the Judge, but I would try.

The snakes left my caravan unbothered. There would be more peace to be made with the snakes, reparations for old wrongs, new agreements to be made for safe crossings. That was for later. A peaceful rain fell, and we had a crossing to complete.

 

* * *

About the Author

Spencer Orey (he/him) is a Copenhagen-based anthropologist and graduate of Taos Toolbox and the Odyssey Writing Workshop. You can find him and more of his stories online at spencerorey.com and @spencerorey on Bluesky.

by Liam Hogan

“When I’d seen her, sixty years earlier, she’d been no rainbow, sure, but the edges of her scales had still glimmered with colour.”

You don’t get to the age of two hundred and seventy-eight by being stupid. Or careless. Or, worst of all, trusting. Yet there I was, trapped and shackled by dragon iron. The accursed chains were as ancient as I was, the skills of their forging lost in the great wars, but they were as unbreakable as ever. It was best to conserve my strength; so, thoroughly annoyed with myself, I lay on the dark cavern floor, legs stretched before me and my head resting on them, waiting for whatever came next.

Whatever came next was a flashily dressed royal-type. Hopes rose. Kings and princes were, in my experience, vain creatures, easily flattered and bargained with and most of them quite short-lived — relatively speaking. There would, I was sure, be an out, even if I had to outlive him to get to it.

He halted at the far reaches of the dreary subterranean void, a distant, insignificant figure, well out of reach of my constrained claws. Possibly not out of reach of my tail, though it would require an impressive back flip to whip it that far in his direction. Nor, I supposed, would he entirely escape the extremities of my fiery breath. I could, at the very least, singe this arrogant human’s neat beard. Though that was definitely a last resort.

“Dragon,” he said, the feeble sound lost in the vast space.

“Count the limbs,” I growled, “It’s wyvern, Prince.” Wyverns — and dragons — have deep, gravelly voices. It comes from the heavy smoking.

“And it’s King, not prince,” he said, with a degree of hauteur that he must have practised in front of a full-length mirror. “King Ulfred.”

He was young to be a king, no more than three decades. I had half a mind to ask who he’d bumped off to ascend to the throne, but like I said, royal types can be awfully short lived. Especially if they’re stupid, or careless, or trusting. I didn’t want to antagonise him too much; just enough to show I wasn’t cowed.

“You all look the same to me,” I yawned, and there was a yelp from the man-at-arms trapped beneath my claw.

The King’s eyes widened. “Is that man still alive?”

“Yes.”

“May I ask… why?”

“I thought he might be important to you. Call him a peace offering, if you will.” I smiled, all teeth. “A sign of good intentions.”

The King didn’t smile in reply. I could have warned him: it ages you, maintaining such a severe expression. Well, it ages humans.

“The men were picked to be disposable.”

“That explains the laughably thin armour.”

He shook his head. “They were nothing more than a distraction, while my elite guard approached with the restraints. He means nothing to me. Do with him as you will.”

There was a whimper from beneath me. The man had been admirably still, no trouble at all, albeit under the threat of a very messy death. It would be wrong to say I felt anything for him, any more than the King would for a chicken destined for his table. And yet…

“I don’t much like canned food,” I quipped, though the quip would fail to land for a good number of centuries. I lifted my claw and prodded the prone man into action. He stumbled to his feet and fled — away from my wickedly sharp talons, and away from his uncaring King, deeper into the cavern where less frequently glimpsed dangers lurked. You try to do a good deed…

“What is it you want from me, King Ulfred?”

“I’m at war, with King Francisco—”

“If I could stop you right there.” Like I said, we have deep voices, it’s easy to talk over someone when they’re just a leaf rustling in the wind. “You want to use me as a weapon?”

“Well, yes.”

“What makes you think I’ll let you?”

He finally smiled; I preferred the frown. “I’ll only release your chains, not the shackles. You want out of those, you do exactly as I say.”

Cunning. And dastardly. Like sharks and crocodiles, wyverns never stop growing. Imprisoned by dragon iron, my limbs would be crippled over time. A slow, painful future.

I peered down my nose. “You might make me promise, instead?”

“And that would hold you?” The frown was back.

“A wyvern’s promise is far more binding than iron, King Ulfred, even dragon iron. As I’m sure your advisors told you. Or perhaps you don’t listen to them, hmm? Anyway, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

“Oh? Am I?”

“Yes, if you want a weapon, you want the biggest, baddest flying monster you can find. And that’s not me. What you need is an ash wyvern.”

“An ash wyvern? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“Oh, they’re very rare. Hardly surprising you don’t know about them in these blighted backwaters.” I watched, delighted, as he bristled. Such thin skins, humans. “Most who encounter them don’t live to tell the tale. But the tale is worth telling.

“An ash wyvern is larger than I am, and, as you might guess from the name, they’re silvery-white and appear as ghosts. But its their breath that makes them unique, and uniquely feared. They have the most destructive, fiery breath in the world. A breath that brings death, far more so than any mere dragon or lesser wyvern like me. It is a breath that melts stone, that eats through metal like a hot knife through butter. As for what it does to flesh, well, you can imagine. Most of all, it is a breath that, once unleashed, cannot be restrained. It consumes everything in its path, until all is laid to waste for leagues around, ash and dust, even the wyvern who breathed it.”

King Ulfred stroked that neat beard of his. “A mighty weapon, then. But one that can only be used once?”

“Trust me, once is too many times. You never actually want to deploy an ash wyvern! Genies out of bottles and all.” I wasn’t sure he’d get that reference either. Not an anachronism this time, more a whole other mythology. “Me, I can swoop down and kill a half dozen soldiers in each pass, though it’s the scare factor that gets enemy cavalry all riled up and sends unwashed rabble scurrying for cover. But an ash wyvern…” I shook my head ponderously. “Once it is unleashed there won’t be anything left that didn’t have the foresight to crawl under a very large rock. No crops, no forests, no livestock, no army or farmers, no castles and certainly no rival king. All wiped from the face of this Earth. Ultimate destruction from the ultimate weapon.”

It was quite horrid, how his eyes glittered as he listened. “So,” I pointed out, feeling the need to join the dots, “just the fact you have one, will guarantee you victory. The scare factor. Because against such a terrible threat, only a fool would attempt to stand.”

“And you tell me this, because?”

“Because, in return for my freedom, I can get you an ash wyvern.”

“Indeed? Very well. But the same rules apply. I won’t release your shackles, just your chains. And you must swear—”

Here it came…

And then it didn’t.

Perhaps he had heard of genies after all. Or other magical beings, whose words were like the reflections of the moon on a cold pond. Deceptive, and impossible to grasp. This was the point at which he could have done with those neglected advisors. In the end, he didn’t do too badly. Perhaps I underestimated him.

“You must promise,” he finally said with infinite care, “Not to cause me harm, directly or indirectly, to the best of your abilities. You must promise to bring me an ash wyvern. And…”

It’s always the third bite at the thorax, isn’t it?

“…you will only be freed once victory is mine!”

“I don’t see how I can promise the last part, since that is in your hands,” I said, deflating his triumph.

“Well…” He looked confused; perhaps I had overestimated him. “Then promise the first two parts, and I’ll look after the third.”

I promised, reluctantly, and the chains (but not the shackles) were released. I grinned my most evil grin and ducked my head sharply towards the king, who was now very much in range. “Say,” I said, and he squealed and fell over backwards as his royal guards scrabbled for their swords and spears. “You don’t have a history of heart problems in your family, do you?”

He shook his head, unable to speak, or even squeak.

“Well, that’s good,” I said. “It’s hard to keep my oath if I don’t have a full medical history, if I don’t know how sensitive you might be to shocks and scares and the like. To the best of my abilities, right?”

With that, I squeezed up the narrow crevice to the outside. Thankfully, it was daylight, a wan sun working away at the morning’s mist, just enough to warm my wings. There was a gathering of the King’s men watching as I stretched, shaking the water and fallen dirt from my back. I thought of snatching a few — travelling snacks for my journey — but concluded that this might indirectly harm the King. Pesky thing, promises.

It was good to be in the skies again, even though I wasn’t entirely sure where I was headed. North, was my best guess. If it hadn’t been for the shackles around my ankles and the irksome promise, I’d just keep going. Find somewhere with no dratted Kings, no dragon iron, maybe no people at all. Not that there were many places like that any more. The Earth was getting awfully crowded, and the humans I did encounter never seemed happy to see me. Can’t understand why. I preferred their cattle to their children, or their women. The older the better — richer flavour and more to chew on. And yes, I’m still talking about cows.

I stopped to ask the way from a sun-basking griffin. She couldn’t help smirking as she glanced at the bands of dragon iron, my twin badges of disgrace, and I’d have clipped her wings if she hadn’t given me such promising directions.

The way was up into the hills, low cousins to the mountains that crowded the horizon, wearing capes of snow that never melted. Well, not for the next half a millennia or so. A wyvern’s ability to glimpse the distant future meant that things that seemed constant weren’t, and things you keep expecting to change, don’t. Or not in the ways you expect. There’s a certain circular inevitability to history, to stupidity, and yes, to war.

The abyss the griffin had guided me to, at the far end of a dark lake, was suitably ominous. A cleft in the hillside, a stream trickling from its mouth, a fetid smell wafting from its depths… Even I had a shudder of apprehension as I entered the foreboding ravine, wriggling my way until I came to a pitch-black chamber, where I had the sense of being minutely inspected.

“Hello, younger brother.” A voice as ancient as the rocks sighed.

“Altran; thought I might find you here. Kin. Sister. Friend?”

“I see you got yourself captured.”

“Ah, yes. Though how can you…?”

“I can taste the iron, Shurni. Not just any old iron, either. Dragon iron. Haven’t smelled that sour stench for over a century. Chaffs, I’ll bet? Someone must really want you to do something for them.”

“Well… they did.”

“Oh?”

“And now they want you to do something for them.”

“ME?!” the voice thundered, rocks rattling from the roof, and I had a grim vision of the two of us buried forever beneath that lonely hill. In better news, the rumble let a thin sliver of light creep into the Stygian depths. In worse news, the light revealed the remains of what Altran had been surviving on while she wallowed in her misery, the discarded bones and tattered fleeces of snow-blind sheep and scraped goats that had strayed into these tunnels. It explained the crunch underfoot. Amazing she could pick out cold iron over all of that. I suppose she must have gotten used to it, though heavens knew how.

“Yes,” I said. “You, sister. I need you.”

“For what?” Her measured reply was far more dangerous than her exclamations. She was from a clutch two centuries older than mine, and that was why I’d appended the hopeful “friend?”. We might be related, but we didn’t grow up together. My plan — such that it was — relied on her willing cooperation. As did my life.

“I want you to join an army.”

You could hear solitary drips of water pinking into some pool somewhere. I held my breath. The hillside held it’s breath. Even Altran was very, very still.

“What sort of an army?”

“A… human one?”

“Have a care, brother!”

“You won’t be asked to do anything!” I protested. “Just to be seen!”

“Just, my inane little brother says. Just be seen. I should have crushed your entire clutch when I heard mother was laying again!”

“Well, that’s—”

“Look then — look, if you must!”

She reared forward and into the tendrils of light from above. Altran’s entire head was bone white. Colourless, other than the two spots of blood red that flashed in her furious eyes.

That’s the problem with fire breathing, for wyverns. Dragons have it relatively easy, employing a different technique of igniting their flames, as different as the stings of wasps are from bees. For wyverns, breathing fire changes you. Each fiery breath consumed a firestone from our crops, just as our flames consumed wood, or flesh.

You started your life, it always seemed, with plenty of stones, flaming at the drop of a hat when you were young and foolish, when you were at your most vulnerable. But wyvern lives are long, if you escape infancy. By the time I’d reached what most wyvern would consider young-middle ages, I was rationing my remaining firestones, eating my food raw, and flaming only when necessary. Each time you breathed fire, each time you lost a stone, you also lost the vibrant hue it imparted, the reds, greens, and purples with which we were streaked. Each flame leached colour until you had only one stone left, barely enough to keep your internal engines going. Just one fiery breath from extinction.

Wyverns do not, as a rule, die of old age. Once we pass through the perils of our youth — other siblings, whether the same age or, like Altran, two centuries older, the odd accident (dragon iron can make more than chains and shackles, though there are also natural hazards, like cavern roof collapses…), and the hazards of courtship flights, themselves a great consumer of firestones — there was relatively little that could harm us. Even dragons gave us a wide berth.

Instead, we die a little with each exhaled inferno, each proof of our awesome power. For wyverns, fire is a defence mechanism. Which is why we do not, on the whole, make very good weapons.

I had not known Altran was on her last breath. When I’d seen her, sixty years earlier, she’d been no rainbow, sure, but the edges of her scales had still glimmered with colour. This explained why she was skulking far from prying eyes.

“You’re perfect!” I exclaimed, covering my gasp. “I was going to suggest chalk, or some other sort of make up, but no, sister, you are absolutely perfect!”

“I am nothing,” she spat. “Waiting for such prey as falls into my lair. I’m washed up, no weapon, and certainly not one to strike fear into anyone’s heart.”

So I told her my plan. Slowly, with much shaking of her mighty head and many a weary grunt, I won her around.

“It does rather seem, little brother, that it is my life you’re putting on the line?”

It wasn’t easy, this winning her around bit.

“A myth, then. If this is to be my end, Shurni, then at least it will make for a good story.”

“No end, sister.”

“You promise?”

I held her gaze, though that was mighty hard to do. “If I could, I would. But…”

“Hah! Promise bound and shackled by dragon iron… a sorry state. It might be worth climbing out of this hole, just to watch you try and dig yourself out of yours.”

With that, I think, I knew I had her.

“With your help, Altran. If you do as I’ve suggested — with your own particular flair, of course! — If you remain aloof, and haughty, and imperious… Do you think you can do that?”

She thought long and hard. It was so gloomy down there, in Altran’s lair, that I had time enough for visions. Strange, unsettling visions. Skies criss-crossed by shiny, winged creatures whose wings never flapped. Metal-skinned monsters that flew higher than a wyvern has ever flown and left no room for us, or for dragons, or for griffins. Soulless, lifeless things built by man. Portentous omens indeed, though from the fuzzy nature I could tell it was a far distant vision of a far distant future. My concerns were very much with the present, with the here and now. I still wasn’t certain which way Altran would go.

The cavern rumbled and groaned with her laughter. “Alright, little brother. Let us go and visit this King of yours. I grow tired of mutton. If there is venison and aged beef enough for a decent meal, at least I will not die empty stomached.”

“Grand, grand!” I was delighted, for both of us. “Though before we feast, we will need to make a small detour?”

“Ah yes, that part of the plan. Risky.”

“To which end, any idea of where we should detour to?”

Altran considered, then nodded. “I think I know the place. Though… best let me do the talking, yes?”

* * *

A sight it must have been, two wyverns flying south, one as pale as the clouds, the other darker, as though its shadow. Except in mating dances, neither wyverns nor dragons tend to fly together. And though Altran hadn’t exactly been gorging herself of late, she was still four centuries old and even I was awed by her size. Big sister, indeed.

I circled the King’s castle, flashing the manacles at my ankles to show that it was me, and swooping towards the elevated courtyard in front of the keep in a clear message: clear this space, or be landed on!

Before the stir of guards and onlookers even had a chance to re-arrange themselves, Altran soared in and settled on the roof of the keep itself, skittering down slates and loose stones from the parapet, and extended her wings to look utterly regal and badass and not unlike the heraldic figure she would some day, quite soon, become.

One advantage of me being down below, and Altran being up there, other than her looking like an absolute queen, was that it was obvious that I was the one who would be doing the talking.

“King Ulfred.” I lowered my head. Not a lot, a half-bow, a mark of mutual respect that wasn’t reciprocated. I ignored the consternation of the gathered courtiers, servants, and guards, who, I guessed, hadn’t got the memo that the King had enlisted a wyvern.

“You returned,” King Ulfred said, with a glance to check his elite guard was between me and him.

“Of course. And with an ash wyvern, as promised.”

“Yes, well…” He peered up to the lofty heights of the keep.

“…to whom I promised a half dozen cows.”

“Did you now?”

“Yes. Hungry work, being the most dangerous weapon in existence. But not to worry–they don’t have to be productive cows.”

Ulfred tutted, but fluttered a hand towards one of his flunkies, an implicit see to it.

“So,” I asked, all casual. “When do we go to war?”

He stared for a moment, as if able to see through the walls of his castle and towards his not-so-distant enemy.

“Tomorrow.”

“That soon?”

“No time to waste. My army is ready, and, for now, I have the element of surprise. And you, wyvern, will be by my side on the glorious day.”

I may have groaned. I should have expected this. “I have done as you asked–”

“You brought me an ash wyvern, yes. And I am a man of my word. But my word was that you will only be freed once victory is mine. And it is not mine yet.”

There was hope for him, advisors or not, though it’d be better if he seriously toned down the smug. He also wrongly assumed I was bound to protect him. But my promise had been that my actions wouldn’t cause him harm, it didn’t say I had to put my body between him and arrows and the like. Not as long as I choose to interpret it that way.

“You know, I think you should own the moment,” I whispered. Naturally, everyone within the grounds of the castle heard me. “It being the eve of war and all.”

“How so?”

“Here you are, with two wyverns not ripping you and your army apart. Given our arrival probably sent a few of your less brave conscripts scurrying for the nearest ditch, a display of your mastery is called for, to settle nerves. You should tell your men what you intend, in battle tomorrow. It would do wonders for morale.”

“Well, yes.” He looked surprised. Unasked for, helpful advice. “That does make sense…”

“And don’t forget the cattle.”

He scowled. “Just see to it that your ash wyvern stays on the roof. And extends his wings again?”

Her, I could have corrected him. But I didn’t want to spoil the entertainment.

“Gather my commanders and have the army prepare for my orders. Promise them a cask of ale or two. That’ll still their impatience.” Off the King and his flunkies stalked to advise his generals and to dress in over-polished armour, before addressing his troops. Meanwhile, I caught the distinctive whiff of very nervous cattle. They were scrawny things, I should have asked for two more, and they were doing their best to escape the men dragging their unwilling carcasses into the upper courtyard.

“Where should we…?” a man said, arms bulging as he pulled at the rope. There was something familiar about him… Ah! Our man-at-arms from the cavern had managed to find his way out. Good for him. Now demoted to wrangling supper for wyverns, but that was a better fate than I would have predicted for him.

“Oh, leave them here and close the gates behind you,” I said, gesturing to the roof where Altran waited. “I’ll take them up.”

I probably shouldn’t play with my food, but a wyvern likes to hunt. I caught them, one by one, and carried them to the roof, still struggling in my claws. That way, no-one could see how many Altran ate and how many I snaffled. Not that I felt any remorse about taking my due. I’d flown twice the distance she had, even if I was only half the size.

As we ate we listened to the King’s speech, offering our critique, in wyvern-ese of course. We picked at our meal as the King took my possibly not entirely accurate description of an ash wyvern, and exaggerated it further still. A little light spraying of half-crunched bones happened despite our efforts not to laugh.

But the speech had a rousing effect, as the terrified, skyward gaze of conscripted soldiers gave way to a look of awe, and of possible hope.

“That’ll do it, you think?” Altran asked, after I’d made her stand tall and spread her wings as both King and wyvern basked in rapturous applause.

“We’ll see. Tomorrow. There’s half a cow here, if you…?”

“You have it, little brother. It’s been a while since I’ve eaten so much. Though I think I could get used to it again.”

* * *

We marched out at dawn. An immense throng of men, the steady clank of arms and armour, a painfully slow shuffle forward with Altran and I to the sides so that we didn’t accidentally crush half the army. The horse that the king rode, though blinkered, could sense we were there and wasn’t happy about it. It can’t have been a comfortable ride.

We ascended a low rise, beyond which stretched the open plain where tradition dictated battles between these two nations were fought, much to the ire of those who traditionally lived there. King Francisco’s army was arriving just as we were, and above the bristling tips of spears and pennants, there was—

“The enemy! The enemy have an ash wyvern as well!” King Ulfred exclaimed. “I am betrayed!”

“You are fortunate,” I told him. “That you got one when you did, otherwise you would be at a serious disadvantage right now.”

The King frowned, but returned his attention to the battlefield, as the opposing forces closed the gap between them, while the respective Kings and their respective wyverns kept their respectful distances.

And then… nothing seemed to happen.

For quite a while.

The King’s frown alternated with an expression I can only describe as startled.

“Why are their armies not engaging?” he demanded.

“Probably because you have an ash wyvern, your majesty. A wyvern of mass destruction. Or W.M.D., for short.”

“Well… why aren’t my armies engaging, then? Why do our archers not fire?”

“Because they have a WMD, too. And you did so wonderfully describe what one could do, in your rousing speech yesterday.”

He groaned. “So they’re both just sitting there?”

“I guess.”

“Make them fight!”

“That would be unwise.”

“Why, for hell’s sake?! That’s what they’re here to do.”

Evidentially, his stalemated-pawns had reached the necessary conclusion faster than the King. Perhaps if he’d been a little closer to the sharp edge of the action? I explained, for his benefit.

“If it looks like you’re winning, then the enemy will lose nothing by unleashing their wyvern. And if it looks like they are winning, then you might do the same. A king, at the point of losing his kingdom, does not make entirely rational decisions. As soon as one side unleashes their wyvern, so will the other. Both kingdoms laid to waste. Mutually assured destruction, your majesty. Neither side can afford to deploy their most fearsome weapon, because to do so would guarantee the enemy would use theirs. I’d say the safest thing to do… Hmm. Is to not engage?”

The king stared at me, aghast. He shook his head. “What about you?”

“Me?” I said.

“I have two wyvern on my side. Doesn’t that give me the advantage?”

I’d almost forgotten this is how it all began, with King Ulfred wanting to use me as his weapon. I shrugged. “Sure, but compared to an ash wyvern, I’m neither here nor there. I’m not immune to an ash wyvern’s breath. Nothing is, not stone, not iron, and certainly not flesh. I change nothing. Nor would an army twice as large. Against a WMD, these are lesser matters. On the apocalyptic scale, two Kingdoms each armed with an ash wyvern are evenly matched, regardless of any other forces involved.”

The king scowled. “So what do we do?”

“Isn’t that obvious?” I peered over the vast battle plain, where two armies stood ready and unwilling to hack and maim and kill. “You should try not fighting.”

“Not fight?”

“Yes. I believe it’s called diplomacy. Whatever your quarrel with King Francisco, have you considered talking it out? A negotiated peace? Of course, since you each have an ash wyvern, you’re on equal footing, so there won’t be a lot of concessions made by either side. You’re probably going to have to forgo and forget a lot of historic insults and aggression. Bygones, yes?”

His face was like thunder. There was a snicking noise as Altran restrained her mirth.

“But think on the bright side!” I offered, loudly, to cover them. “Consider the advantages of a strategic partnership, bound perhaps by a royal wedding? Just think; two mighty kingdoms, working together, each armed by the ultimate weapon. Who could stand against you?”

“No-one,” he said, rather sourly. “Unless they had an ash wyvern as well.”

I did my best to act surprised. “They are rare beasts, King Ulfred. They are not given out free with breakfast cereals.” Another allusion that would not make sense until a very long time from now.

He groaned. “I’m worse off than before I captured you!”

“I don’t see how,” I said. “Though of course, if you really think so, I could send your ash wyvern away, tell them you don’t need one any more.”

“But then my enemy would have one, and I wouldn’t!”

“Ah… True. Best look after yours then, hey?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your ash wyvern isn’t a captive, like I am, your majesty. You have no chains or shackles on it — and before you get any ideas, don’t even try, unless you want her flames turned on you and your kingdom. She’s here because she chooses to be, yes? Best treat her well, encourage her to stay. Look after her, feed her, and respect her. Don’t worry, maintaining an ash wyvern is far cheaper than sustaining a standing army. And in good news, nobody died today! I count that as a victory, yes?”

I held out my shackles, to be unlocked.

* * *

Back on the roof of the castle keep, as the army celebrated the — um, draw? Not dying? — feasting on cooked cuts of what we ate whole and raw, (though it would be cooked, before it hit our second stomachs), Altran turned lazily to me, picking between her teeth with a discarded halberd.

“You know Shurni, the whole mutual assured thing doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.”

I grinned. “I am aware.”

“Did you do all of this just for the pun? Wyverns of mass destruction?”

My grin grew wider. That was the problem with anachronisms. You either had to have another wyvern or dragon as an audience, or wait a few centuries for the pun to land. Since humans didn’t live anything like that long, most of our best jokes were mistaken for particularly obscure oracular prophecies. Ho hum.

“Not entirely…”

“Never mind the hyperbole, the blatant exaggeration; able to destroy an entire kingdom, indeed! What does anyone think they could actually do, to convince me to expel my last breath, knowing it spells my certain doom?”

“Quite.” I yawned. It had been a long day. Plus, I’m always sleepy after a good meal, and the King’s men had been even more generous than the King.

“Let alone convince me to use that breath in a specific, towards-the-enemy direction? One wonders why anyone fell for any of it.”

“Because it’s better than the alternative?” I suggested.

“But how long can it last?”

“Stalemates have a tendency to persist, until something radically changes the playing field. As long as both you and—?”

“Bartok.”

“As long as you and Bartok play your parts, I can’t see any reason why we can’t spin this out at least for a generation — of Kings, that is. Ulfred and Francisco are both relatively young.”

Altran drummed her claws on the masonry, leaving deep grooves. “Twenty, thirty years, perhaps? And during that time… do you condemn me to a senescence of silence?”

“Only with humans,” I protested. “You’re not missing much there. I’ll visit as often as I can and there’s nothing stopping you going on the occasional trip. In fact, the worry that you might not come back will do wonders for how attentive they are when you do. I’ve told them what you like to eat and that you enjoy being read to.” I shrugged. “It’s better than spending your remaining days festering in a dank hole, I hope?”

There was silence, as we watched the baleful glow of the setting sun, softened by the smoke of hundreds of campfires around the castle. Tomorrow, most of those soldiers would go back to their villages, to farming and patching up their hovels and whatever else they did when not forced to bear arms.

“Why didn’t King Ulfred remove your manacles?” Altran asked. “I thought I saw the man who carried the keys?”

“You did. But I asked him not to.”

“Why?”

“Altran, how many wyverns are on their last breath, would you say?”

“A few,” she admitted.

“And how many kingdoms are there, on this continent?”

She laughed. “A recruitment mission? With manacles as your calling card? W-M-Ds for all? Well. You’re nothing if not ambitious. Though don’t leave those shackles on for too long, brother, or eat too heartily. They constrict, do bands of dragon iron.”

For the first time I noticed the darker marks on my sister’s ankles. Probably wouldn’t have seen them, if she hadn’t been the colour of ash. The moment hung heavy.

“You know, you may not be doing us a favour, in the long run,” Altran said.

“Oh?”

“This… cold war between humans. It is not quite the same as peace. I know you mean well, Shurni, but it is all under false pretences. It might stop the bloodshed for a while, might give us ash wyverns a temporary home and respite in our old age, but less bloodshed does inevitably mean more humans.”

“Yes… I suppose.” The thought hadn’t struck me.

“Ones who will undoubtedly seek other outlets for their irrational hostility.”

“You think I should make their wars hot, again?” I asked.

Altran sighed. “It probably doesn’t matter in the long run. Our time is nearing an end, little brother. Surely you’ve had the visions?”

I was silent again, for a while. “What happens to us, sis?”

“Who knows? Nothing good, perhaps. If we went elsewhere, you might think our visions would be from there, instead of a dragonless land. Perhaps there is no elsewhere. Or perhaps our visions do not pierce that veil. But that is for the future. Today, at least, we are safe, and I am well fed!”

Altran beat her mighty wings, and lifted into the air, circling King Ulfred’s castle, warning anyone watching from beyond the walls that an ash wyvern was in attendance, (and taking the opportunity to void her bowels over the moat at the same time). Then she settled in the upper courtyard, to listen to bards tell tales of heroes and gods and monsters, accompanied by lilting harp music, while the spot between her ears was scratched by a halbard wielding, very grateful and still somewhat bruised former man-at-arms.

 

* * *

About the Author

Liam Hogan is an award-winning short story writer, with stories in Best of British Science Fiction and in Best of British Fantasy (NewCon Press). He volunteers at the creative writing charities Ministry of Stories, and Spark Young Writers. Sci-Fi collection: A Short History of the Future (Northodox Press). Fantasy: Happy Ending Not Guaranteed (Arachne Press). More details at http://happyendingnotguaranteed.blogspot.co.uk

by Liz Levin

“I barely catch the American toad, common garter snake, and snapping turtle that fall from my lips.”

I get the alert about Corinne’s death while Terrible and I are fighting about words. Namely, which ones I should say next time I’m around other humans. He’s lying in the river beside the cottage. Each time he speaks, he heaves his head out of the water. When he’s done, he lets his 300-pound noggin crash below the surface, splashing everything. I’m standing on the muddy riverbank, soaked.

He’s named for terrible crocodile, the English translation of Deinosuchus, his most likely genus. Generally, I don’t speak reptiles or amphibians into existence that died out before we humans spoke English (or existed). Terrible is an exception. He’s demanding I read Chaucer around humans. I remind him I’ve barely begun reciting the Oxford English Dictionary’s nearly 50,000 obsolete words. At a rate of two dozen a day, I’ll finish in five years.

Terrible isn’t convinced.

“But I was alive during the Cretaceous! You think my mate hides in a list of barely dead words?”

“Why not?” I ask. “A common word created you.” He drops beneath the water, soaking me to my neck. “Merde. Keep your head above water while we’re talking. You’re over 30 feet long. You’ll empty the river.” Terrible was designed to eat dinosaurs, and it shows.

“Common word,” grumbles Terrible. “There’s nothing common about me.”

I couldn’t agree more, but we both know I wasn’t capable of linguistic feats on my curse day, five years ago this Saturday. Terrible was born on that day, before I found the cottage and before I started recording what I say within earshot of humans so I can replay it to determine which species belongs to each word. I’ve tried to recreate those first impassioned sentences I said in front of Mama and Corinne, but as much as I try, I’ve never birthed another Deinosuchus. And though I’ve uttered the curse that made Serpent, that word has never birthed another.

You may wonder why I say birth or born. After all, lizards and amphibians drop from my lips when I speak English within earshot of humans, not from my womb (thankfully). I ask you, are there better words? I’ve tried vomit. None of the creatures born speaking like that.

“Is he still complaining, Vivienne?” asks Serpent, gliding across the mud to coil up my leg and around my waist, like an ornate belt. He’s pretty enough to seduce Eve. His skin bears a geometric pattern of emerald, sapphire, and gold. “Living gems,” he likes to say, “much better than your sister’s dead rocks and flowers.” He’s not wrong. “You haven’t made a girl for me, and you don’t hear me complaining.”

“Another of you?” I cross my arms and shiver, even though it’s 86 and humid. “Terrifying. Last thing we need is you reproducing.”

“Impossible to improve perfection,” Serpent says. “Too true. But I came to tell you your light-up machine interrupted my sunbath.”

I glance at my phone on the picnic table, a safe distance from the river. Electronics and brackish water don’t mix.

“I’m working on it, Terrible.” He’s moved his head below water again. I talk to his bulbous eyes. “I know you’re lonely.” I am too. I don’t say it aloud. I don’t want to offend anyone.

“Putain de merde.” Corinne Barreau, Wife of Phoenix’s Golf Course King, Dies at 22.

The service is Saturday, on the fifth anniversary of our curse.

* * *

I ride my mountain bike along deer trails until I reach the Phoenix exit. Turning back toward the woods, I see an electrified fence topped by razor wire. Signs caution: Toxic dumping site. Stay out. Behind the fence lies desert. If I turned back with the intent of entering, I would find an unlocked door. Behind it is a primeval forest with sequoia-sized trees.

That’s the ecosystem outside Phoenix, but the woods are a patchwork of habitats, from deciduous forests to tundra, from peat bogs to estuaries, like the one by our cottage. I’ve wondered whether our cottage is beside an estuary because it’s where women with our curse always live (if we survive) or did the cottage move to the biome Terrible would need?

I’ll leave it to you to answer that question.

I like to think that this wild place contains all the famous cottages, even Baba Yaga’s chicken leg house. So far, I’ve found it disappointingly empty of humans and witches.

And fairies, thankfully.

Serpent is cozy in the granny basket as I ride six miles to the Golf Course King’s estate, a.k.a. Hugo Von Brandt, my ex-fiancé. It’s dawn and Phoenix is unbearable. I arrive early to wash up in the pool house. Unscrewing the pineapple-shaped finial from the iron railing beside the door, I retrieve the key. I change from dusty cutoffs to the requisite black dress, and an opaque black veil looped to catch anything that drops from my mouth. I don’t plan on speaking English. Mama spoke French in our home. I’m fluent enough to pass as a native, a ruse I’ve played before, but it’s dangerous here. After all, Mama thinks I’m dead.

I shoulder my backpack, leaving it open at the top and cautioning Serpent not to stick his head out. He’s a curious snake.

The service is in the greenhouse. My veil sticks to my face in the humidity. My sister is the only one here, lying in a sapphire-colored casket beside the podium. I walk down the center aisle, past empty chairs. Before I revealed Mama’s lies and poisoned our engagement, Hugo and I were to be married here.

Oh, Corinne. In death, she looks like porcelain. Fragile. Like someone who would shatter under an ambition like Mama’s.

As the favored child, I had years to build defenses against Mama’s avarice disguised as affection. People say I looked like Mama from birth, and so, like a good little narcissist, she loved me at first sight. Corinne, my junior by a year, looked like the lover who left her. Accordingly, Mama handed her a broom when she was in kindergarten.

Classmates thought it better to be me than her, even though they adored Corinne. They saw Mama lavish me with unmerited praise; they saw the patches on Corinne’s hand-me-downs. They were right enough. I helped when Mama wasn’t watching, but after Mama caught me chopping fennel for Mama’s favorite bouillabaisse — my recipe perfected over years — she punished Corinne.

Mama ordered her to draw water from the new wishing well that had appeared the day after the mayor admonished the media for implying Phoenix was running out of water. Corinne returned and Mama emptied the pitcher on the cacti while scolding her youngest. Corinne’s apology yielded a tiger lily, uncut emerald, and thorned rose that dripped blood. Mama sent me to the now blessed well.

“You can still save this engagement, mon bijou. If your pathetic sister can win a blessing, so can you.” I suggested she go in my stead. She rubbed her neck, swallowed, and gestured toward the door. Oh Mama, I understood you well. Even then. You knew the price.

When a fairy disguised as a princess requested water, she looked as though she stood behind a screen of bloody thorns. I refused and she cursed me. Or so the story goes. The well disappeared. Mama said we needed to talk, drove me to an empty patch of desert, and left me. If I hadn’t uttered that curse after she left, birthing Serpent who led me to our cottage, I would have died. Even with his help, I nearly did.

Someone moves beside me and the casket. Trim in a custom suit, blond hair freshly cut, skin leathered from the links: the Golf Course King of Phoenix, Hugo Von Brandt, the golden chariot to wealth Mama raised me to catch.

Hugo doesn’t recognize me in my veil. “Gorgeous, isn’t she?” He nods to Corinne’s heart-shaped face and soft brown hair. “You knew her? We all miss her more than words can express. She had so much left to offer.”

I choke back a curse before it becomes a word. It sounds like a sob. To offer? Like diamonds for the price of a word? How would Hugo pay to water his expanding empire now? I bow my head before I walk away. He doesn’t comment on my silence.

During the ceremony, I lean against a shadowed pillar and listen to Spanish-speaking servants praise the late Mrs. Von Brandt who always spoke to them in their language. The chef tells a humorous story about her notorious hatred for smart phones, and how she tricked him into giving his phone to her for the day to help him overcome his addiction. I straighten at that. What were you planning, Corinne? Hugo or Mama manufactured her hatred of phones, for certain. If her curse worked as mine does, she could type English words without activating her blessing. My movement wakes Serpent. He drapes himself across my shoulders, hidden by the veil, whispering questions in my ear while I shush him.

The group in front of me gossips through the last speeches.

“Did you hear how she went?”

“Choked.”

“My ex performed the Heimlich on a guy at a steakhouse.”

“She wasn’t eating when she died.”

“They say they found her—”

I squeeze through the crowds until I’m in the main house, on my way to the room Hugo said would belong to me after we wed. Serpent and I search for anything that will tell the story of Corinne’s death, or life. He slithers under and behind while I scrutinize photographs of carnivorous flowers hanging from clothespins. She had an artist’s eye, even if photography was never her specialty.

After moving a three-shelf bookcase, at Serpent’s suggestion, I find a safe built into the wall. Or magicked there; it resembles the one in my cottage. Just like mine, I find no obvious lock. There is an iron sculpture of a carnivorous pitcher plant. “Do you think it works like mine?”

“Only one way to tell.”

With trepidation, I lift a finger to the bulbous flower, preparing to plunge it into the dark opening. My safe features a cobra’s open mouth. I survived my first attempt to open that safe. Unlike this one, it was designed for someone with my cursed blessing. “Wish me luck!”

“You already have me.”

I’m not surprised when the flower’s cylinder constricts around my finger. I feel a sharp jab before the pressure releases and the door pops opened. My finger numbs, then my hand. Already it’s spread more than my safe’s toxin does. I’m immune to reptiles’ and amphibians’ toxins and venom. Here’s hoping flower toxins are similar enough. Only my immunity is magical, not biological, and there’s no promise I’d be protected even if the safes’ toxins were chemical twins. The numbness creeps above my wrist before I panic.

“Serpent, help!” I whimper. He strikes, biting the inside of my elbow, right above the line of numbness. The sharp pain of Serpent’s venom chases back the numbing effect of the safe’s toxin. It’s like the blasting away of cobwebs, followed by the clarity of knowledge.

After wiggling my fingers to shake away the pain, I open the door to the small safe and slide her journals into my backpack. I hesitate before adding the pouches of gemstones. I’ll make better use of them than Hugo or Mama would. In the attached bathroom, I wash my face and change back. I wrap a floral scarf over my hair and around my face to hide my identity (it’s too lightweight to support births) and leave this gilded cage.

* * *

I’m pushing up my kickstand, congratulating myself on my smooth exit, when Mama finds me. “Vivienne! I thought that was you, my sweetest daughter!” she cries in French. She’s wearing white, elbow-length gloves with shiny black buttons and a black sundress with a scattering of white roses trailing down the belled skirt. Her chestnut hair is gathered in a soft roll. She looks chic, just as I remember her. “I thought I’d lost you, but here you are, like a miracle on the day of my greatest sadness.” I don’t respond as she smooths away my veil and kisses my cheeks. She misunderstands my silence. “Oh, sweetest girl, you can speak to me in French. Your… gift. It only happens when you speak English. Use our mother tongue and you will have no worries.”

Gift? I wonder, tensing. Why does she think I have a gift? She was first to call it a curse. It is never good when Mama changes her mind. I sit forward on my bike. She stands in front of the wheel, grasping the handlebars. Trapping me in her false affection. I shift forward slightly, testing her hold. She gives a nervous laugh and takes a step back on her red-bottomed heels. “Careful, sweetest! You only have one Mama. Best not to run her over.”

I shrug. “You didn’t lose me, Mama,” I finally respond, in French. “You kicked me out. I almost died.”

She tilts her head and smiles. “But you aren’t dead. You left the car when I was distraught, incoherent, unable to give chase, and you survived. You thrived. You are still so beautiful, my sweetest Vivienne, even like this.” She caresses my head, masking her sneer. My hair is long, like hers, but the chestnut waves are dull and snarled. I ran out of conditioner last month and haven’t gotten a chance to buy more. I’ve been selling rare breeds of reptiles and amphibians to the San Diego Zoo. I like their conservation programs and my contact. We speak in Spanish, his first language. He believes that French is mine. Sometimes he tries to teach me a few English words. I decline. His hair is black, shoulder-length, glossy. I’m sure he uses conditioner.

“I need to go, Mama.” I turn the wheel and rock forward on my bike. Just a bit more and I’ll be able to roll by her. We’re far from the parking lot and I know this area. I’ll lose her, easily.

“No, don’t you leave.” She’s replaced sugar with steel. This is her Corinne tone. Is it any wonder my younger sister acquiesced when Mama finally coated her words with sweetness and acted as though she’d always loved her? But that won’t be me. “I figured out your sister’s gift,” she says, drawing a gold notebook from her clutch. She opens it, revealing a handwritten lexicon so like the one I left in the cottage, it makes my eyes smart. These moments are the most devastating. When Mama does something that demonstrates that she was right. We are the same. Even our handwriting is almost identical. “See, at first the gift seems random. You speak, and out fall hideous toads and frogs, of no value to anyone. But all we need to do is what I did with your sister. We just need to find the words that make the valuable things, like alligators that can make beautiful bags. She caresses her clutch. The pattern is subtle, just like the smooth skin of an alligator’s belly.

“Can I see?” I ask, reaching for the notebook. She steps to the side to hand it to me and I’m off, wheels spinning over the pavement, past split-levels with hardscaped yards and alleys until I’m out of the city and on my way home.

* * *

I stop a few times to hydrate and make frogs outside gas stations. I duck my chin into my open backpack, pretending to search for something. I speak the words as customers enter and leave convenience stores, just loudly enough to register without inviting a response. I know the words that create males and females of all six species of leopard frog endangered in Arizona. I choose a species and make two dozen males and two dozen females. Serpent grumbles from his spot beneath the frogs.

I stop at a sheltered spot on the way to the Phoenix entrance and acquaint them with their new habitat. None of them talk to me. It isn’t surprising. I’ve created a lot of leopard frogs over the years. Mostly, they only speak when they are the first of their species.

“Home?” asks Serpent. I nod. “Finally.” He falls back to sleep on top of my funeral veil and dress.

I study Corinne’s journals before bed. Most are pre-curse, filled with charcoal drawings of high school friends drawn with scales and tails, fawning over a sad doe wearing Corinne’s face. They offer her small things — pencils and dandelions — while gossiping about her helplessness. Small breasts, small bones, small dreams. Mama is absent. When I appear, I am human and alone, clenched jaw and furrowed brow.  If she saw me now, I’d look the same.

I open the last journal. The top two-thirds of each page is filled with colorful scenes of monstrous people, interspersed with words, each composed of a particular flower or gem. The words drip in blood that dries beneath the too-bright sun. The bottom third of each page depicts charcoal caves beneath the earth’s surface where humans lie on hammocks, dreaming.

This is Corinne’s lexicon, I realize. Not the tidy gold journal filled with Mama’s even loops.

* * *

Sharp knocking wakes me the next morning. I’m lying on my side, a wedge pillow at my back and a body pillow between my legs to keep me in position. Serpent lies coiled beside my face, ready to bite me if I roll over onto my back. These are just precautions. Even if I talk in my sleep, my words shouldn’t matter because I’m the only human around.

“That we’ve seen,” Serpent would caution. If I believed his horror stories, I’d think there are hordes of humans outside this cottage, with their ears pressed to the thin walls, just waiting for me to mumble something in my sleep.

The knocking. There are people and I’m not dreaming. I rub my face and crawl over pillows, tripping my way to the bathroom. It’s small, with a corner shower and a pedestal sink, but it’s plenty of space for me. I wash my face and gather my knotted hair into a bun. I’m wearing sleep shorts and a camisole, but anyone who is at my door at the tender hour of… noon… can deal with it. This is my first visitor so it’s on me to set low expectations.

I walk through the family room, past an overstuffed sofa, and gecko-print-covered recliners. (No, I didn’t buy it. The cottage knew I was coming, just as it will know when you’re on your way.) The artwork changes each time I sleep. Today, a black and white photo of Terrible spans the sofa’s width. His mouth is open, showcasing his teeth. I open the door, and Mama drops the bronze salamander-shaped knocker. She’s incongruous in her pleated black slacks and cream blouse. Behind her, an Escalade sits on a freshly paved driveway that connects to a road. Last night, there was a dirt trail barely wide enough for my bike’s tires. My gaze skitters between the new features. Finally, I say, “There’s a road?” I barely catch the American toad, common garter snake, and snapping turtle that fall from my lips.

“In French,” Mama reminds me, shouldering past me into the cramped family room. “Really, sweetest, did you just wake up? You’ve wasted half the day.” She sets her alligator-skin purse on the coffee table, shifting aside my dogeared copy of Amphibians of North America, and directs a blinding smile my way. “Are you ready to get to work? I’ve made a list of all the best ones.”

Maybe she’ll leave if I ignore her. I walk into the dining room and open three of the empty terrariums sitting on the long table. I place an animal in each, add water and dried food, and return to the family room.

Mama is still there, now holding a green notebook. Her smile is gone. “Is this any way to treat your mama? You offer food to those pests before you offer me a glass of wine? What happened to the manners I taught you, Vivienne?”

“I don’t have wine,” I say in French.

“No matter,” she says, gesturing as though to wipe away the last ten minutes. “As I was saying, I know how to make us rich.”

“Aren’t you already rich?” I ask. “Don’t tell me you didn’t profit off Corinne’s gift.”

Mama glances away, widens her eyes at Terrible’s photo, before meeting my gaze. She takes a deep, yoga breath, exhales, and sits on the edge of the couch with her back to the photo. Hoop earrings shimmer like pearls. Nacre, or mother-of-pearl, the luminescent secretion mollusks use to coat errant grains of sand. Pearls are rare. Mother-of-pearl coats the inside of every mollusk shell. The earrings are cheap, considering.

She sighs, rests her face in her hands, rubs it gently. When she looks up, lipstick, liner, foundation, and powder are unmarred. “I made a mistake, mon ange. I went straight to your ex-fiancé and shared the news of Corinne’s gift. He married her, of course. He was no fool. After that day, he never left me alone with Corinne. Not until he left town for business. And then we barely got started before…”

She pauses, shakes her head as though to redirect her thoughts.

“But with you, I’ve learned. You were always the better daughter, sweet Vivienne. I’m so sorry I didn’t see your potential at once.” She opens the green notebook. There, in slender loops like mine, she has written a plan to monetize my curse, because if I used it the way she suggests, it would curse all who breathed life through my words. “Some of them aren’t pests, see? Some have purpose.”

I take the book, her earrings swaying as I pull it from her grasp. I glance away before she notices my tears. In French, I say, “Mama, why don’t you get yourself a glass of water while I read.”

I open the door, muttering “mother-fucking nacre” before I’m out of earshot. I catch a warty toad for the compound adjective and an unknown crocodilian. I set them on the picnic table, rubbing my finger across the crocodilian’s back. I’d forgotten nacre was identical in English and French. I’d research its species later. On the muddy banks of the river, I draw my knees to my chest and wait.

It isn’t long before Serpent joins me. “You heard?” I ask.

“I was under the couch. Slid out the snake door when your mother was in the kitchen.”

Terrible splashes up from the river, hoisting his front legs onto muddy land. I glance at my drenched sleep shorts and camisole, thankful I’d chosen black. The sun is at its zenith, drying the beads of water off my arm. I rest my head on my knees. “I don’t know what to do about her,” I say.

No one speaks. Terrible wasn’t there to hear Mama, but he knows the stories. They both do. Five years together. Worth more than my twenty with Mama.

“Did you hear what she said about Corinne?” Serpent finally says.

“What did that witch say?” Terrible asks. I’m surprised. He likes the witches in the stories I read to them. He says they have the best parts.

Serpent’s voice shifts to a high-pitched whine that sounds nothing like Mama. “’After that day, he never left me alone with Corinne. Not until he left town for business. And then we barely got started before…’” It takes me a moment to ignore the voice and process the words.

“You think…”

“I do.”

“What do you think?” I ask. I don’t even know what I think.

“That the witch killed your sister,” Terrible says. “That’s how it always goes.”

“I don’t know,” I say.

“Ask her,” Serpent says.

“And then?” I ask.

* * *

I move the picnic table closer to the water. I set the green notebook on top. Terrible’s bulbous eyes watch me. Serpent slithers across my shoulders, silent. I say, “Our plan is horrible.” I touch the green notebook, thinking of Mama, the crimes she’s proposed, and the one she may already have committed. “Maybe she didn’t do it.”

I return to the cottage to gather Mama. “Let’s sit in the sun to talk.”

She follows, grimacing at the muddy ground and weathered bench. She sits and disturbs the air with talk of alligator hides and import laws. “But don’t fret. I’ll handle logistics. You study your gift. Do you know which words link to each species? So often it’s nonsensical. You know what Corinne said for opal?” She whispers a crude word. I laugh, surprising us both.

“Mama, what happened to Corinne when Hugo left? I know something happened.” I pause, rest my hand on top of hers. “I won’t blame you.”

Her eyes glisten. She cried in just this way — a few tears that didn’t smudge her eyeliner — when she drove me to the desert five years ago. “Oh, Vivienne, mon bijou, it was tragic. We finally had time alone, our first since the wedding, and your sister refused to help. She just wanted to talk. In French! I gave her wine and a few pills, just to relax. She was so tense! I tucked her into bed like when you were girls.” She never did that. For either of us. “Left for a moment — to grab a glass of merlot and our notebook — and when I returned, she was still.”

“Why, Mama? Why was she still?”

“Her mouth, her throat.” She looked up at me and her face was wet, eyes smudged. “Filled with pearls.” She looked around, probably wishing for her purse and its tissues, before she rubbed her hands across her face and dried them on her pleated black slacks. “But that’s all in the past. Now I, we, can start over.”

“You’re right,” I say. “Stay here a moment, Mama. I’ll get your tissues for you.” I look to Terrible as I leave, all but his eyes beneath the water, invisible if you don’t know where to look.

I wrap myself in a robe before sitting on the gecko-patterned recliner. Even after an hour in the sun, my clothes are damp. I lean back and study Terrible’s photo. After the third sniff, I open Mama’s clutch and dig out the package of tissues.

I think about pearls. A common grain of sand inspires its creation; common words produce them. Before Mama left me in the desert, she punished Corinne for my curse. “You ruined your sister,” she said, as she held the painting Corinne had gifted her on Mothers’ Day over the kitchen sink and set it on fire. Corinne cried, “Mama, stop, mama, stop, mama, stop,” and black and white pearls bounced across the floor.

When I left my childhood house, I still believed Corinne was gifted. She’d leave, I thought, Mama would have nothing, and Corinne would have everything.

I almost died in the desert. Serpent saved me, led me to the cottage. Years later, when I made it out of the woods, I learned of her marriage. Hugo is an ass, I thought. But at least she’s away from Mama.

I should have known how much a person will do for a bit of sweetness, after a lifetime without. Delirious from a mix of alcohol and sedatives, Corinne pleaded with the woman who cried only crocodile tears. And she died, choking on pearls.

* * *

I shower and change into clean clothes before I go outside. Mama is gone. A hybrid pickup sits in the Escalade’s place on a drive that now curves toward the San Diego entrance. I lift the cover on the truck bed to find it filled with premium habitats. I sigh, not happy, exactly, but relieved that the cottage agrees with my choice.

Terrible lies beside the river, bulbous eyes closed. His back looks like a mountain range, burnished copper in the sun. Like Serpent, he is a living treasure. “Well?” I ask because I probably should.

He grunts.

“Indigestion,” Serpent says. The unknown crocodilian lies beside Serpent, sunbathing.

“Do you know the species?” I ask because I’ve given up predicting what Serpent knows.

“She hasn’t said.”

Terrible raises his head from the water and lets out a nauseating belch. I pinch my nose until the odor clears. I wipe the tears from my eyes and rest my palm on the ground beside the baby crocodilian. “You speak?” I stroke her baby-soft skin. Someday the nubs on her back will be craggy mountain ranges. Today, they look like strings of burnished pearls.

“I’m not mother-fucking nacre,” she snorts. “I’m mother-fucking Necrosis. Pleased to meet you. And especially you,” she says, turning her snout toward Terrible.

My laugh, when it comes, is more than a little hysterical. “Cell death? Terrible, her name means cell death.”

“She’s perfect,” he says, gently resting his snout on the riverbank so that the mate who just traversed my narrow esophagus can touch her nose to his.

I leave them to it. Inside, I gather Corinne’s journals and add them to our safe. They join the lexicons and diaries written by the women who have made it to our cottage. (There are gaps. Sometimes we do burn in the desert or freeze in the woods.) They belonged to ages when everyone witnessed the power of magic, or prayer, or science. None witnessed the power of dinosaurs. Perhaps you will.

 

* * *

About the Author

Liz Levin lives near Chicago with one vociferous cat and the three other humans who cater to his needs. An alum of the Stonecoast MFA program and Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Workshop, her work is published or forthcoming at MetaStellar, Flash Fiction Online, and Metaphorosis.

by Michael Steel

“In another world, a simple rat like me might be the king of the world. Kings don’t need beautiful graves to be remembered.”

My ma always said if I was going to die, I ought to get a beautiful grave, with a nice tombstone and everything, so when I was long gone every rat that passed by would know I existed once. Graves, she said, are the only places that little rats like us can affect the world once we’re gone. Not that any of the bigfolk would notice it. They’re too busy with their bigfolk nonsense to even notice us when we’re scurrying underfoot. That’s better for us, though — anytime they do notice us, they stamp us out. But you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?

Somehow, I don’t think my ma would call this a beautiful grave. A filthy subway tunnel in New York City, with only the rumble of the trains and the chatter of the bigfolk to keep me company. And you, of course. You’re always here, in the murky dark shadows. Watching, lurking, waiting for me.

I think the walls were beige once, but now they’re an awful, filthy gray. It stinks in here. Stinks like rotten banana peels and misery. I don’t want to die surrounded by the smell of misery. And I can’t stand bananas.

I was stupid today. You see that bigfolk over there? Yeah, that one, in the rags. The one who’s stinking the whole place up. He probably hasn’t cleaned himself since before I was born! He always hangs around here, but he never gets on a train like the other bigfolk. He just sits on that bench there, and sometimes he smokes. Today he had a sandwich.  A sandwich sent from heaven. The smell was so good, you’d never believe it. I thought I was dreaming at first, but I knew it was real. I watched him for a while as he ate it. Watched him from my hidey-hole. I could feel my stomach screaming for the sandwich. I wanted to scream for it. It had bacon in it, you know. Bacon!

Finally, the dirty bigfolk put the sandwich back down onto the floor. I thought I’d just scurry over and snag a piece of bacon. Nothing big, nothing he’d miss. I got the bacon in my mouth, and oh boy it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever tasted. I couldn’t stop myself, I ate it right then and there. If only I had just run back to my little hole, the bigfolk would have never even noticed me. But he looked back down and saw me. His eyes, they were gray, such a dirty, dark gray. Like the water down in the sewers. They were furious, though, and sewer water never gets furious.

He yelled something at me, and before I could run there was a boot in my stomach that sent me flying and now I’m here, dying under the subway tracks and I’m just so tired, old friend. I’ve seen you so many times over the years, taking my ol’ ma, my brothers. Taking even bigfolk sometimes. And now that I’m the only one left, I guess you’re here for me.

I keep thinking, over and over, no! No, not yet. But it is my time now, isn’t it? Or else you wouldn’t be here. Old buddy. Old pal. You’ve been here as long as I remember, always following me around, floating over my shoulder. Only I never turned around to see you, even when you were everywhere. It’s only been a year. Hardly a year. I only ever saw one winter. Please, I don’t want to go yet. What about my beautiful grave?

I had no say in any of this. Why aren’t I a bigfolk? Why did I have to be a rat, downtrodden and hated by everything? In another world, a simple rat like me might be the king of the world. Kings don’t need beautiful graves to be remembered. But here I search for food in rotten dumpsters, until some bigfolk notices me enough to end my life, without barely caring. How is that fair? They can kill us with a swift kick of a boot or a quick shake of a poison bottle and never think of us again. They end so many lives, every single day — and they don’t even care.

I guess I could appeal to the heavens, the rat gods, and the rulers of the real world, but I know they won’t listen. I’m just a little sewer rat drowning in the filth of the subway tunnels. Why should they care if I live or die?

The only thing left for me to do is run.

I can hear my life leaking out of me when I pant and wheeze. My claws hurt from running on the concrete. I’ve spent my whole life down here, and somehow only now I’m lost. The tunnel is so dark now, rushing by like the fleeting life of an unloved rat. I’m running as fast as I can, but you’ll always catch me. You’re in every shadow, every dark corner.

The tunnel’s getting bigger, I know it is. I’ll never find the exit now. Why are you doing this to me? I don’t want to die.

I don’t want to die alone. I could have been a world champion, if only somebody had cared. When I’m dead, I’ll be nothing more than just another mangled corpse, another dead rat out of thousands of dead rats. My dusty bones will lie in the mud for four centuries, slowly turning to silver in the darkness. And even in my silvery death, I’ll be beautiful, more beautiful than the foolish bigfolk who crushed my ribcage for a bacon sandwich. He will never be as pearly perfect as my cold, dead bones.

I will be my own beautiful grave. I hope my ma’s proud of me now. Maybe one day somebody will find my smooth white skull and they will hang it on their bracelet. Maybe then somebody will remember me.

I’m ready now. Take me home to Ma.

 

* * *

About the Author

Michael Steel is a high school student currently living in Vancouver, British Columbia. He lives with his parents, brothers and ridiculously fluffy cat, Taco. His hobbies include fantasising about rats, writing about rats and playing Block Blast.

by Leo Oliveira

“Lions are no easier to fool than anyone else, but they were built to chase lightning wherever it strikes. That’s what thunder does.”

Before the lions came and ate our mother, she filled our nursling ears with tales of The One Who Races the World.

“Races the World was as quick on her feet as she was in her mind.

“She was a queen among cheetahs. A legend across the savanna.

“Impala frightened their cubs with invocations of her name. Hyenas did not steal her kills, for she was strong as well as fast, and she could drag the carcass of a water buffalo up a tree like a leopard, so that only the boldest of baboons would dare challenge her for it.”

Races the World was like a goddess to me. Countless silver nights curled up together in the long grass sheltering under a fallen acacia, begging our mother to tell us another, and another, and another. Of Races the World’s adventures, I could never get enough. I used to wish my mother had given me a proud name like hers, a bold name like hers, but I am only The One With Tiny Spots.

My brother is The One With A Dancing Tail and my sister is The One Who Sheds Black Tears. We had seen the rains come but once and we were three days and nights alone. Three days and nights as orphans. Several times that spent hungry, near starved. Our mother could not feed us anymore; not while she fed the fly-bitten bellies of lions.

Dancing Tail complained first of his empty stomach and how weary he’d grown of running, so I stopped him in the brush to chase down the fresh scent of a hare.

“I appreciate you,” Dancing Tail said, stretching out his long limbs beneath him. I considered giving him a warning not to grow too comfortable, but we’d not rested since before, and we were all tired and hungry. I didn’t have the heart to push him. Not even if our mother’s stories had taught us to be stronger.

Black Tears said nothing. She was the better hunter of us, what little practice we’d been given. But her eyes — measured, focused, and still — told me not to make a mistake. They said that she would not help me if I did.

* * *

I stalked the hare like our mother had taught us to stalk, patient and slow. “We are cheetahs, and we are not given second chances.” If I did not understand it before, I understood it then.

The hare was young and reeking of milk-scent. I followed her trail between brush stalks and golden swaying grass reeds until I spotted her ears. Somewhere out there was a litter of hare cubs, squirming and blind and useless. Possibly fur-less. All they had was their mother, and they would die quickly without her.

The first impala we ever ate was a young female our mother had brought down at the edge of the plains. She’d taught us between heaving breaths how to pull the skin free, how to split open the belly, how to fill our stomachs with the best parts of a carcass quickly, before hyenas or lions or painted wolves came to steal it.

I had never seen a dead impala before. I did not know the moist-slick mass, still blue with its fetal sack, was an unborn cub until our mother told us. I’d crunched through its soft skull, and I did not feel any guilt. I felt none for the hare now, but I twinged ever-so-slightly imagining her litter, tiny and helpless and so much like me and my siblings — my chest clenched with hurt.

Then I ran.

The One Who Raced First was born from a bolt of lightning that’d lanced down and struck the first of the First Cats. We are bolts from the black. We are energy incarnate. We burst to top speed from standing in three heartbeats flat.

Young and underdeveloped as my bones and muscles were, I closed in on the hare. It had not one hope of outstripping me. The ground became a blur. I stopped moving my legs for it was them that moved me. Inertia and instinct.

“If you think, you fall,” my mother had said to us. But that was why Black Tears caught more prey than I ever did.

A scent hit my nostrils through my next gulp of air, and I could not help myself. I slid to a halt. The hare’s fleeing footsteps faded in my ears, but I was not watching. I did not care.

We were born from lightning; lions came from the thunderclap after.

* * *

“The lions! The lions are here!” My fur trembled, feverish with race-rot — that sinking, heady feeling that follows a sprint to the edge, when the world swims before the eyes and the sun glares inside the skull.

Dancing Tail sprang to his feet. “What, where? Did you see them?”

Black Tears remained sitting. “I thought you left to catch a hare.”

“I called off the hunt because I smelled them. They’re close. I don’t know how close, but we must leave before they find us.”

“You smelled them, but you did not see them, and so you abandoned the hare.”

I have never wanted to kill my sister, but at that moment I came close. Her callousness dug into me like her tongue was tipped with poisoned spines. I hissed and spat in frustrated circles. I held my own tongue, but I held it barely.

“We don’t have to fight each other,” Dancing Tail said. “We’ve tricked them before.”

And indeed, he was right. The lions had not been content with our mother. This was not the first time their scents had drifted down to us on the breeze — they weren’t even hiding, that’s how we knew how little we meant to them — and we made use of the environment every time they came near. Switchbacks through the brush, false trails, looping paths that intersected with one another and shot out in different directions.

These had also been tricks our mother had taught us through the old tales of The One That Moves Shadows. If Races the World was like a goddess to me, Moves Shadows was like a goddess to Black Tears.

Black Tears gaped her jaws wide in a tongue-curling yawn. I forced my twitching tail to lie still.

“Let’s get it over with,” Black Tears said. “Hopefully you didn’t scare all the prey off with your yowling.”

“Only the ones slow enough to be caught by you,” I said.

“All of them, I see.”

I glared at my sister. She gave me a blank glance back. Then she turned away from us.

I sighed and pawed at the parched orange dirt. I wished she didn’t follow so closely to Moves Shadows’ favourite lessons, the ones our mother had so often repeated:

“The strong cheetah she is; she hunts alone.”

* * *

It took us until the first high heat of the day to finish our rounds. By then we had no appetite for hunting. Fear is one of the great constrictors, and we had spent so very long afraid. But we couldn’t risk standing still, either. While cheetahs sleep at night, lions are wide awake. To stop was to die. We needed to take every opportunity we had to make distance.

So, we started off and did not stop until tingling exhaustion forced us to. I sank onto my side, soaking in the cool dry earth. Dancing Tail curled up beside me. I shed heat through my open mouth, and each inhalation raked in great lungfuls of evening scent.

The musky tang of distant zebras and wildebeest skipped across the breeze to me. Dust, pressure, and the coming rains. Beetles and bugs and moisture in the air. My sister, my brother, and—

Lions.

I scrabbled upright, huffing, filtering through the scents for new and old, strong and weak, predator and prey. I had not been mistaken.

The lion scent had not gone away. If anything, it had grown stronger.

“Wake up,” I said, nudging Dancing Tail and Black Tears in the ribs. “The lions are coming.”

I could tell right away that they did not want to believe me. But the chance of ignoring a serious threat for a few fleeting moments of ignorance was not worth the trade, so they parted their jaws and confirmed my findings for truth.

“That’s impossible. How did they find us so fast?” Dancing Tail shivered. He was already the smallest of us, and he seemed to shrink further.

“They learned what we were doing.” Black Tears’ tail tip flicked up as if batting off flies. “That’s what we get for doing the same things over and over again. And whose idea was that?”

“Don’t hiss at him,” I said.

“Then you better hope you have a plan.”

I hesitated. This was not for lack of an idea, but for the nature of the idea I had. But both my littermates were staring at me, waiting, and I lowered my eyes as I said, “There’s always the Wall.”

The Wall was a dangerous place. A deadly place. Our mother had warned us in thrice as many words: humans with loud sticks and dogs, rock beasts on baking black paths, fields upon fields where nothing grows. The whole world changed on the other side of the Wall, but what other choice did we have?

“Maybe the lions won’t follow us past,” I continued. “Nobody crosses the Wall. And we can’t be far from it by now. See the baobab splitting the rocks? It’s the vulture skull stones.”

Our mother had brought us to the edge of that baobab once to tell us it was the edge of her territory. When we’d asked her why she didn’t go further, that’s when she told us about the Wall.

Neither of them liked my plan; I could tell this too. But nor did they see any other option.

“All right,” said Black Tears. “To the Wall.”

* * *

The lions stalked us throughout the night.

Several times we swerved off to the side and attempted to bed down, but the lion scent strengthened in half a cooling cycle or less without fail. They kept on coming. We had no recourse but to forget about sleep. Forget about resting. Move and move and move some more.

Cheetahs were not made for the night. We were born of lightning and nursed by daylight. Divots and grooves appeared beneath our paws, and any misstep into darkness could lead down gulleys or dry streams or crocodile-infested rivers. We had no way of knowing. We’d never been there before, and we could barely see.

At the point when the moon had begun to arch its descent, Dancing Tail took the lead. It was his turn to sweep the earth and guide us through the treacherous landscape. I kept my nose to his tail-tip, ignoring how it made me itch and sneeze. It was about the only way to keep together, our scents mingled and muddied as they were.

Then my brother disappeared.

“Dancing Tail?” I called out as he yelped — a sound that grew dimmer beneath a shatter of small stones down below.

Black Tears crouched beside me. Her ears flattened. “He must’ve fallen.”

Wordlessly, cautiously, we picked our way down the slope. It stretched near vertical from where Dancing Tail had stepped right off, and I had more than a couple close calls tempting a similar fate.

When we reached the bottom, Dancing Tail was hissing in pain, but alive.

I let relief brush through me before I saw his front right paw. It was twisted. Almost backwards. Broken.

“It hurts,” he said.

“Tiny Spots….”

“I know it hurts, but we must keep moving. Do you need help up?”

“Tiny Spots….”

“Come on, just lean on my shoulder. You can stand.”

“Tiny Spots!”

“I know what you want,” I hissed back at Black Tears. “It isn’t happening.”

Black Tears was no more than a pale outline in the deep grey gloom behind me. Still, I thought I could see the disapproval in her twitching whiskers. But by some miracle, she protested no more — not when we lifted Dancing Tail up on either side, not when we slowed our pace to a creep carrying him between us, and not when the lion scent began to overpower the scents of strange rock and dead wood closing in from the distance. Not one of us said anything as dawn came overhead. Not until we saw the Wall.

Black Tears stopped first, her eyes open wide.

I could not help but do the same.

The Wall stood as tall as a full-grown cheetah on her hind legs. Impenetrable. Thin bones of glittering rock crisscrossed each other, all strung together so as not to allow even a mouse to slip through the cracks. The very top was tipped in thorns.

“We’re trapped,” Dancing Tail wailed.

Neither Black Tears nor I responded, because we both saw it to be true.

“There must be a way around,” Black Tears said after a moment. “How else would stories get in?”

And then I glimpsed it: a break in the glimmering mass, a hole farther down the Wall the size one of us might squeeze through. “There, quickly!”

We pushed ahead as swift as we were able. It wasn’t fast enough.

The grasses behind us crunched under confident paws. Growls understood without a word to accompany them. The markers of killing intent. It wasn’t long before we saw their golden fur, too, along with their golden eyes.

The lions.

“We won’t make it,” Dancing Tail cried.

He was right. The lions spread out around us, carving the shape of a crescent moon. They would spot the gap; they would run us down. This I knew as I knew my own spots. So, I did what only someone as brave and brilliant as Races the World would do.

“Keep moving to the gap in the Wall,” I said. “I’ll lead them away.”

“Don’t you dare!” Black Tears said, but I was already running.

Lions are no easier to fool than anyone else, but they were built to chase lightning wherever it strikes. That’s what thunder does.

Where my littermates went to one side, I veered to the other. Taunting, close, like prey bolting out of instinct. Fear. The lions caught on like flame, and suddenly the grasses burst alive with giants.

This is also true about lions: they are much larger than even a full-grown cheetah. Our heads fit right in their mouths. I have seen this with my own eyes. My mother’s shoulders fit, too.

My courage wilted in a blink.

There were a dozen lions now — all leaping and lunging out at me, their paws bigger than my head, their claws thicker than my spine. They could kill me in a moment. I tensed my tired limbs and ran.

What started as a distraction turned on a fang-tip to survival. I raced without a thought for where my littermates were, or why I was running, or where I was leading the lions to. I didn’t think about why, or how to slow down to ensure the lions kept up, or what I would do once Black Tears and Dancing Tail escaped. I felt hot breath against my fur. I felt death closing in. I felt my heart beat faster, faster, faster, until I was sure it stood moments from giving out of race-rot.

Then Black Tears caterwauled. Loud and insistent. It was a dying wail, a fear wail, and it drew the lions up short to stare.

I am ashamed to admit it, but it’s true: I did not look twice. I did not glance around. I did not take in what had happened or where my brother and sister were. I flung myself through the gap in the Wall and I did not slow down until I tripped and rolled under a dry bush beyond.

It was only afterwards that I searched the grass for my littermates. Black Tears padded to my side, head bowed.

Alone.

“Where is Dancing Tail?” I asked. I already knew. I had to have known.

Black Tears lifted her eyes to mine. There was a defiant gleam in them. Defensive. “He wouldn’t have survived.”

I don’t remember if I did or said anything right after this. I only remember moving, and then Black Tears saying, “You don’t want to see.”

I didn’t listen.

When the lions ate our mother, we could not bear to watch. I could not bear this time any better, but just as strongly I could not make myself turn away.

Dancing Tail was already dead. I am glad that he was. Had he still been suffocating in a lion’s jaws, had I crouched in the long grass watching, I might have thrown myself back into the pride’s claws out of guilt.

I watched the lions finish eating what they wanted of him. I watched them purr and hum and groom each other. I watched the vultures descend. I watched the lions stand up, stretch, and leave.

“They were going to catch you, Tiny Spots,” Black Tears said. “You know they were. If I hadn’t brought the lions over, it would be both of your skeletons in the grass. I saved your life. And even if we’d saved him… He died quickly now; he would have died slow and alone much later.”

There is one more part to the legend of The One Who Races the World, and that is how she died. The story had always upset me — pouting and mewling for days after I’d heard it, but our mother would groom my ears and tell me it was important to listen. There were things that even Races the World could not outpace. Age, the rising heat, and the selfishness of our own kind. As she lay down, old and dying and mere paces from water, seven cheetahs passed her. Not one stopped to help. She died like that, a goddess to me, nothing and no one to anyone of her time.

I did not look again at my sister. I watched the vultures pick our brother clean.

“Please don’t hate me,” she said.

“This is the way things are,” she said.

“Cheetahs hunt alone,” she said.

She must have left soon after, for she didn’t say anything else. Eventually I fell asleep where I sat. My dreams were filled with storms, and every cloud pierced a hill with blue lightning, but lightning does not last forever. Lightning lives for a blink. A moment. A speck of time in the skies above the grasslands: beautiful and striking and gone much too soon.

 

* * *

About the Author

Leo Oliveira is a queer writer from Ontario, Canada, where he harbours a soft spot for rats, pre-history, and flawed queer characters. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Radon Journal, Fusion Fragment, and Port Crow Press, and has been nominated for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers, Brave New Weird, and Best Horror of the Year.

by Mike Robinson

“Instinct told her to turn back, but what possessed her was not normal instinct. It was herdwind, maybe even greater, too, the winds of many herds well beyond her own, fanning a deathbringing fire.”

Southern Africa

3 Million Years Ago

 

1.

They never believed her until she described the screams. She knew why. Recalling the brain-goring terror of those sounds, from the high squeals to the deep, resigned rumblings, broke open all the realness of that night through her, and her telling of it.

Sweetfoot liked surprising others, especially youngkind. Bigcats threatened the young, some might say, but that threat was finite, and the calves were safe within the thick forest of the herd’s legs and trunks and the canopy of their tusks. In general, the bigcats knew not to even try.

But that was why she told them of the Five Waters: the only place with bigcats bold enough to take down grownkind. They would come at night, lurking on the edges of the grounds, letting themselves be sensed at choice moments. It was artful spooking, a slow build-up of panic. Consisting mostly of females, the bigcats would circle closer, scouting, floating in and out until they’d managed to isolate a young unattached bull, one usually wedged in mud.

At the time, Sweetfoot was only a few seasons old. She couldn’t see much, as it was dark and her clan had quickly enveloped her. Her Clan Mother had insisted they leave the Five Waters. But through the surrounding bodies, she caught glimpses of what was happening: the bigcats perching themselves on different ends of the young bull, one clutching the trunk while others held the legs and all digging in like parasites with tooth and claw. Still more awaited their role of taking out the eyes, which would unleash the worst of the screams.

Today, as a Clan Mother herself, Sweetfoot told that story mostly through those screams, so that the youngkind might always be vigilant. Particularly her own male child, Two-Step, a season-cycle old and a clumsy walker since birth.

Every newborn, it was told, was delivered from the Windrealm, and so had trouble steadying themselves. Yet Two-Step’s struggles were unique, his legs misshapen, maladroit — it had taken many tries just to stand him erect for longer than a blink. Using mostly his front legs, he had, with effort, begun pulling himself forward. He staggered. Hopped. Eventually, over many days, with the supervision of Sweetfoot and the clan’s other mothers, he found his strength and his balance. Because of all this, his Name had come swiftly.

Still, Two-Step had proven the most spirited of her offspring. He played as much as he could, squeal-crying his frustration when he could no longer keep up with siblings or playmates of other clans. Periodically, Sweetfoot would have to right him. It made her anxious, seeing his Windblown spirit struggling against glaring weakness.

Hearing of the bigcats at the Five Waters, Two-Step wondered aloud when he might be much bigger than the biggest of all bigcats. Impatient, Sweetfoot replied that it would take many seasons. As demonstrated by her story, not even a young bull could guarantee escape from the interest of bigcats.

Were there bigcats so big, Two-Step asked, that could swallow whole clans — or herds? His cousin Springtrunk had remarked on herdhunters: great rare roving beasts that outmatched even the mightiest kin.

Always, it came to this: the morbid wonder of the young. There was thrill in grand unknowing, in imagining the many beings that might populate the savannah, its trees and waters, its rocks and burrows.

But no, Sweetfoot told him, the notion of “herdhunters” was not true. Unlike her account at Five Waters, it was a fanciful idea, passed from clan to clan, herd to herd, mainly to titillate the young and not a few of those grown who still enjoyed such stories. But nothing encountered by any of their kind — not the bigcats, spotted or otherwise, the toothy water-dwellers or the hook-beaked birds — would ever presume to destroy an entire herd. Nothing walked that might threaten whole groups of grownkind.

 

2.

Sweetfoot’s own Name had been given late. In those early days, through the Five Waters era and for seasons beyond, she was among two in her clan simply called Littlewind, a common placeholder for those who had not yet earned the distinction of a Name.

Earning a Name meant you had been delivered here in full, in this world, in this body. One could not fully control when that happened, though — it was up to the winds, perennially unpredictable.

One night, as Clan Mother, Sweetfoot slept and crossed into the Windrealm, where memories blew together to make dreams. She felt young again. She was small and restless, back with her old clan in the northerly territories.

Her Clan Mother had brought them to the tree of the dizzyfruit. Higher in the branches, two smaller dark forms stirred, clearly agitated with the clan’s approach. Their vocalizations were hesitant, cautious. Their smell was unique, too, layered and ripe.

Tree-dwellers, they were called. Light-furred and walking mostly on two legs. Trees were their refuge, though not so much from the larger spotted bigcats. Yet much like her kind, tree-dwellers appeared to find strength in family bonds. They coalesced against threats.

Locking her tusks on the heftier branches, Clan Mother wrestled the tree, and the dizzyfruit rained about, where others sniffed for them, trunks curling and whipping overground.

She wasn’t sure why, but in a burst of impishness, Sweetfoot began stomping the dizzyfruit, smooshing their innards all over the bottom of her feet. She found it fun. Cathartic. Until the disapproving honk from Clan Mother, forcing her own mother to step in and halt her play.

Soon after, when she’d eaten enough dizzyfruit, and the world tilted and spun and she laid down, she felt the tickle of other trunks on her feet, and realized other youngkind were scraping off her what they could while she lay there. It was all so silly, a pleasant memory they would all keep.

And so it was, decreed Clan Mother, that she had fully entered this world as Sweetfoot.

Somehow, though, right now, Two-Step was here, among those eating pieces of dizzyfruit off her. In the body of her younger self, she saw him less as a child than a peer. His curiosity was palpable, too, heated like a presence.

She wanted to ask him: why are you here?

But then, in a blink, she awoke. Newday sun glowed dimly on the horizon. She rose to her feet and grazed a little, feeling groggy and oddly disoriented.

Moments later, Two-Step awoke, too. To her astonishment, he recounted what he had seen during the night. Her old clan. The tree-dwellers. That he knew now why she was called Sweetfoot. How he had enjoyed the taste of the dizzyfruit.

Sweetfoot was confused. Had the Windrealm played some sort of trick on her? Or was she still dreaming? No. The sun was rising, the savannah taking steady form around her.

No doubt: she had awakened. Returned.

How, then, did Two-Step know of her dream?

Two-Step himself seemed not to think much of the strangeness. He was happy they had shared an intimate, unexpected moment. He liked seeing her so young, closer to his age.

She considered he might be special, in ways she couldn’t comprehend. Yes, he had been given a name. In all manner of body, he was here. But perhaps some portion of his spirit remained elsewhere, in the shadows of the Windrealm.

*

The season was warming, the sun higher and lingering and driving moisture into the earth. Once eight members strong, Sweetfoot’s clan had come to include several other families, bolstering their herd to over thirty which she now led as they trekked for water, swaying in a loose line of dusty backs lined with dried mud.

Several days in, Sweetfoot heard a cry. Far away, but she was fairly certain—a tree-dweller.

She knew they did not tend to travel far in droughts, which could mean, potentially, that there was a water source near them. As the herd walked, she and several of the younger mothers also picked up scent traces of water on the wind, coming from a northeasterly direction.

Two-Step was now three season-cycles old. Though he managed to keep general pace with the herd, his gait remained awkward, slower. As always, there was a mismatch between his body and his spirit, the latter of which (perhaps because he didn’t move as fast) seeking to pry and to poke at things unwelcoming of his touch: the ground-dwellers in their burrows, or the limbless slithers in the tall grasses. Occasionally, when they were grazing, he would wander, as if in search of some other, unknown food. Angry horn-heads had once charged him away from their herd of hundreds. For this, he had received taunting tremors from even younger males.

One day later, they reached the water source — a murky pool, too small for a water-dweller. A skinny bigcat crouched at the edge, lapping away before sauntering off.

There were tree-dwellers near, too, little more than dark lumps dozing in the branches. Sweetfoot had smelled them well before. Their odor was unique, and could ride the wind — likely what made them vulnerable, and why they remained mostly treebound.

The herd gathered round and drank what they could. At some point, Sweetfoot lost track of Two-Step. Smelling the air and surveying, she found him maybe fifty paces away, standing in grass halfway between the water and the place of the tree-dwellers. She called to him, but he didn’t respond — he was spraying dust on himself in curt, playful snorts.

She went to him.

A sudden, extra plume of dust rose from the grass. As Sweetfoot drew closer, ears perked, she spotted a young tree-dweller. A female, by the smell. Very young. She made soft chirpy noises as she scooped up dust with her limbs and tossed it all over herself. She coughed — a little puff. Her eyes projected light. It was impossible not to see her playfulness. Like she was imitating Two-Step, and enjoying it.

But when Sweetfoot came close enough, the young tree-dweller grew alarmed and scampered back to the tree, where her elders received her. They issued minor yelps, which might have been challenges, or scoldings. Either way, they didn’t concern her.

She told Two-Step to rejoin the herd, thinking distantly, shapelessly, how amusing it was that the winds of play reached every young form — and spirit — of the world.

 

3.

It was multiple seasons since Two-Step left the clan when Sweetfoot, for the first time in her life, knew the intimate brutality of an attack.

Once part of a larger herd, her new clan had broken off and now numbered about fourteen. She led them west, where grazing promised to be more robust. This was also the general direction of the Five Waters, though of course they would not be going there.

At first, she thought maybe the memory of those screams was the cause of the sudden, terrible unease which had descended on her, and which slowed her movement. The rest of the clan slowed with her. Some issued curious grumbles and tremors.

But she kept to herself, which appeared to make them that much more anxious. They wanted to know what was wrong. Yet Sweetfoot could hardly respond for the weight that had struck her out of nowhere — not in body, but in spirit. A Wind harsh upon her. A dream, ambushing under the waking bright of the day.

There was sharp bigcat smell. A dreadful sense of being pulled down. There was twisting. Wrenching. Biting. Ripping. More: the wailing, the anguished cry which seemed to have carried over from her memory of Five Waters, but which she knew belonged to another, younger male, one she could not see, nor smell, nor see — not in body, not now — but who in the throes of death had reached out to her, in his special way, across the Windrealm.

Without any contact with him, she knew, in that moment, that somewhere Two-Step had fallen.

Sweetfoot stood still. Terrified. She had not encouraged him too strongly to leave the clan. She had left it up to him, and he had chosen to go. It was not surprising, considering his restlessness. He might have joined a clan of young males, though that was unlikely. He had set out alone, and probably stayed alone, traversing the savannah with his strange, clumsy walk, not fully grown. Small enough for the larger, more determined bigcats.

Chaotic as the vision had been, she sensed that Two-Step’s attackers were large young males, well-maned and maybe siblings, traveling together.

A flame of Threat sprang up inside her. The feeling of omen. This portended bad things—a growing Threat from the biggest of bigcats, who, generation by generation, might just be growing big and bold enough to take on more grownkind.

She would warn the other mothers in her clan. They would seek other clans and become a herd again. Perhaps, together, they ought to concoct further stories to frighten and instruct the young — tales of enormous, tree-sized bigcats that could circle whole clans with their patient pawing stride and death-lit eyes, that might just be big enough, vicious enough, to become true herdhunters.

*

The vision of Two-Step’s death haunted her, across miles and nights and even a whole season. It was the way of males of a certain age to leave a clan, to wander and seek out similar-aged males and female otherkind. The risks to them were clear, but necessary. Her other male, Moonback, had left well before Two-Step, yet she had not thought much about him.

She had, however, thought quite a bit about Two-Step. Through the seasons, he had kept close to her in spirit, if not body. Part of her imagined the winds would guide them together again.

Cold season was coming, the insects fewer and water more plentiful since the recent rains, which had lasted days and which still blurred the horizon in great pilings of clouds. Leading her clan to better grazing, she tried to downplay the distress, but could feel inquisitive tremors about her, and knew they wondered.

They passed a tree full of tree-dwellers, sleeping and clumped together for warmth. Did their males leave, too? She never saw them alone.

Along the way, she led them to the site of a fallen youngkind, a place she remembered from her early days as a mother, before becoming Clan Mother. It had been another solitary male. No one had known how he had died, yet no one thought it had been the bigcats — even as they, and other sharptooths, had taken swift advantage.

Only scattered bones were left now, including a partially buried skull. One whole tusk jutted from the earth. Sweetfoot caressed it with her trunk, issued perplexed, agitated murmurings. She had never known this male’s Name, nor his former clan. But he was their kind, part of a much greater herd: all those who had come from the Windrealm, and those who had gone back to it.

Anger rose in her, which she released in low, ominous grumblings. Had she spotted a bigcat just then, or even something that looked like one, she might have broken all chains of obligation to her clan to chase it down and destroy it.

The rest of the clan gathered close, unsure as to the nature of this visit, or this deadkind. Yet they maintained quiet respect, even as they especially did not understand why she referred to these bones as Two-Step.

 

4.

Half a season-cycle later, she dreamed — finding herself in the Windrealm.

Darkness pressed palpably at her eyes. She heard only the soft hurried chatter of the wind and, more alarmingly, smelled only decay. Death colonized her whole trunk, creeping up and filling her skull with its own nightmarish herd.

She also detected ash.

Gradually, the darkness broke into discernable shapes. There were hills and trees and grass, much like the world she knew, but all of it felt different — sinister, like a creature waiting in camouflage. Her trunk grasped about for anything. It made its way upon bone, familiar in its contours and sockets and dimensions. And there were more, forming out of the earth and shining dully not by any moon above but by an eerie negative light.

The ground was littered with the skulls of otherkind. None of them felt right, though, because something was missing.

Their tusks. None of them had tusks.

A slow, subtle terror rose in her. This was new. It represented some unknown, terribly unprecedented Threat. Tusks were marvels, artful in display, useful in defense, a feature unique to their kind.

She felt tremors underfoot — rumblings — and knew instantly who was speaking to her. She smelled him, too.

She turned and faced Two-Step, now standing aways from her. He was much more grown, and seemed to walk without difficulty. Any happiness at seeing him, however, was tarnished by the memory of what she’d felt of his death.

And, it seemed, whatever he was trying to convey.

A warning, she thought, frightened.

He came closer, enough that she could see him more clearly. Half his face was gone, the exposed skull dully aglow like the other bones here and the flesh of his trunk and remaining ear hanging in bat-like strands. He was his own cloud of deathsmell. His tusks, however, remained intact.

Sweetfoot sent her own tremors: a jumbled conveyance of her guilt and confusion and fear. She couldn’t think or vocalize straight, and it frustrated her. But then, maybe she wasn’t supposed to talk — maybe her words were just dusting over what Two-Step had come to tell her.

Finally, in a bolt of clarity, Two-Step’s voice reached her:

They will be coming.

Who? Another herd? Clan?

Herdhunters.

She was puzzled. Herdhunters were not real. But there was only one creature that could fit the role.

Sweetfoot answered: Bigcat.

He just stood still. Then, after a moment:

No.

He undid his trunk, unleashed a cry. His ears perked. He backed up a step, trembling such that dark chunks rained down off his frame. Sweetfoot turned to see what he was reacting to and startled at the large object that had suddenly sprouted there.

It was a tree, or something like it. It glowed like the bones and the skulls around her but that was because, she realized, it was made of tusks. Like they were at once the branches and the thorns, arranged as frozen white flames against the night.

But it wasn’t this tree of tusks that ultimately commanded her attention. It was the eyes among them, peering out at her like stars. She stepped closer, raised her trunk and smelled the wind and knew instantly that odor, layered and ripe. Distinct. The eyes moved and the shadows came alive and there were sharp cries, too, which she’d heard many times and considered almost precious.

Tree-dwellers.

Her bewilderment only grew. As did, it seemed, Two-Step’s agitation. He stomped, kicked up dust and ash, ear-flapped like any fight-ready young male.

The tree-dwellers moved in a way she’d not seen before. They seemed to pour down from between the tusks, mobilizing with a strange, headstrong confidence, unlike those she knew who often took anxious refuge in the trees, and who tended to avoid high grass.

Reaching the ground, they split off one another, eyes still staring ahead. Then, remarkably, their shape and their smell began to change. They rose — standing straighter and taller. Their hues and textures varied, too. They carried strange objects.

Threat overwhelmed her, as did unexplainable anger. They were dark spirits, these new tree-dwellers, long gestated in the silly bodies she knew. When they would shed their current forms for these taller, stranger ones, Sweetfoot did not know. But it was, somehow, inevitable.

One of these new tree-dwellers raised a stick-like object (their own trunk? she wondered for a second) and suddenly there were short, resounding thunder-bursts and a series of bright flashes and pop-whiffs of smoke.

A thing struck her — or bit her, she couldn’t tell. More bursts and there was thumping pain which grew worse. Threat crashed down upon her like it never had —these tree-dwellers wielded thunder, had somehow ripped it down from the sky.

She trumpeted and charged, driven less by her own intuition than by forces unseen, as if, in these Windrealms, the spirits of many otherkind had found her, and filled her limbs.

The tree-dwellers broke away. Their definitions blurred into the gloom of the grass. More thunder around her, though she couldn’t sense the source. Two-Step was gone, a lingering deathsmell. Sweetfoot cried out for him, and there was an answer but it wasn’t him — it was Many, a storm of tremors underfoot, great echoes of desperate calls from her kind issued down countless seasons she would in fact never see but which, dimly, she understood would darken with the blood of every generation as the tree-dwellers came with their thunder, surrounding her and surrounding them, all of them, the way bigcats might wounded prey yet these stranger tree-dwellers circled not just one of them or even a clan but a whole herd, and not even just one herd but—

She awoke. A singular sensation had overtaken her: a greater drive, Windblown into her limbs.

By the time she was even half-aware of what she was doing, Sweetfoot was moving, climbing to her feet and hurrying away from the clan. She sent out tremors, letting them know she would return. They sent back baffled cries and vocalizations. A young mother named Tornear almost trumpeted. But she had to go. Two-Step had sought her across the Windrealm in order to warn her.

Sweetfoot made her way across the land. Instinct told her to turn back, but what possessed her was not normal instinct. It was herdwind, maybe even greater, too, the winds of many herds well beyond her own, fanning a deathbringing fire.

Nor far away, other creatures watched with dull interest as she passed—horn-noses, and some of the smaller, more graceful ones that could outrun the spotted bigcats. With a flyflick of the ear, the horn-noses returned to grazing.

She had seen tree-dwellers impaled on those horns, when they drew too close. She had seen tree-dwellers hopelessly mauled by every manner of bigcat. Surely some had been lost to the jaws of the water-dwellers, those that sat like logs before hunger-whipping their prey.

How, then, could tree-dwellers pose a threat to their kind? Or, more astonishingly, to herds? Herdhunters were a thing of myth.

Soon, she found herself facing the tree they’d passed, across a long stretch of grass. She could make out no movement, but with her trunk she knew that ripe unique smell. Her reaction to it had changed suddenly, bringing with it darkness and decay.

Sweetfoot strode forward. The smell was curiously strong. As if—

Then, there was movement — close. A dark figure hopping in the grass. Definitely a tree-dweller. Anger flared in her.

She stepped closer. The odor clarified. It was a breedready male, and he appeared to be chasing something. She caught whiffs of a small ground-dweller.

Closer and closer, she stepped. The creature didn’t even seem to notice her as he jumped about violently. This was strange. It was unlike them to spend much time in high grass.

As Sweetfoot edged toward him, there was a squeal as he raised his arm and slammed it down over and over. He was holding something, too — a stone, which increasingly smelled of blood.

He was killing, over and over. Then he lifted the battered body of the ground-dweller and when Sweetfoot saw and smelled this in full she broke out in terrible aches, as though she and the ground-dweller were the same.

In one explosive moment, she charged this creature.

The tree-dweller screamed and tried to run, dropping his prey and bolting, arms swinging but managing only a few paces before she overtook him and jousted with her tusks, bucking him forward where he sprawled limply, screeching for the rest of his clan who’d now come alive in the tree thrashing and crying.

There was no way to stop her, though, as she stained her soles with the blood of this dweller, felt the pathetic ease with which his whole body broke under her power.

At some point she could no longer distinguish the ground from the body. The smell and the cries only enflamed her resolve, and she turned her back toward the tree and charged, trunk raised higher. The tree-dwellers jumped and screamed and clambered, dark shadows in the dark of the canopy.

She circled the tree, wide-eared, bellowing sharp, raspy trumpets. Several dwellers climbed higher. Others hurled things at her, mostly fruit and feces.

In the excited panoply of smells, Sweetfoot picked up one she knew better than others: a female. Younger. Familiar.

Yet that broke nothing of her temper. The image of Two-Step — face ripped, skull aglow like all those lying tuskless at her feet — burned deeper into her. She charged the tree and the tree-dwellers scrambled higher, and Sweetfoot rose on her hindlegs and sent her trunk curling up and grasping the branches and she ripped one down, catching an older male tree-dweller who plummeted shrieking to the ground. On her feet she mixed the other male’s blood with his, bones pop-snapping and the screeching cut short and the rest of the tree exploding in screams and crazed across the canopy. She grabbed at what branches she could and tore them down, and she leaned her bulk on the tree for leverage but the furry creatures were all unreachable and then they started dropping down the other side of the tree and hurrying away in erratic trails through the grass. Sweetfoot ran after them, catching an older female and shattering her lower half before seeking another, training on the smell and the wayward paths and the shrieks echoing over the savannah.

In the storm of this moment, new sensations bombarded her, making her feel both ill and empowered. Not unlike the effect of too much dizzyfruit.

The grass grew higher. Wind picked up. The tree-dwellers fanned out, but with her height and her trunk full of wind and odor Sweetfoot could still follow them. Another of the older slower ones fell easily. She now had generations of tree-dweller blood on her feet. She turned, trumpeted, charged again, acuity sharpening with every kill.

She paused, took in the air. Their smell-trails had lowered. Picking up one stronger, steadier odor, she followed it across the field.

When the grass parted, she halted for the sudden drop-off, steep and muddy down to a body of water connected by a thin ravine to a larger body of shallowing water.

Crouched just under her was a female tree-dweller. Her foot was twisted, and she was crying out. Sweetfoot recognized her. It was, indeed, the young, playful female who, several season cycles ago, had imitated Two-Step by tossing dust on herself.

Except she was older now, clearly breedready, as indicated not only by the menstrual smell but the whimpering child, now clinging to her fur.

The tree-dweller struggled a few paces between Sweetfoot and the water, injured, terrified. Sweetfoot huffed and stepped to the side, the tempest in her calming. Slowly, the empowered feeling left her, leaving only the illness.

Here, below her, was mother and child. Here, below her, was the tree-dweller who had interacted with Two-Step as if, briefly, she were of their kind.

In the water, soft ripples appeared. A pointed shape drew closer.

The tree-dweller clutched her infant as she limped — or tried to — up the slippery mudslope. Her utterances grew higher, more erratic as she kept glaring back and forth at Sweetfoot and the edge of the water.

Much as with her anger, Sweetfoot could not comprehend that which now spread through her. It was like sunlight, warming away cold. She vocalized, but not in a challenging way. It was a surge of alarm for the pathetic broken creature and her child strewn just under her.

She set her front feet down on the incline, then reached out her trunk. The water-dwellers were of their own world — an alien one, with which Sweetfoot could find no sympathy. But there was a distant spark with the tree-dwellers. Even a kinship, one which had nothing to do with body but which dwelled, perhaps, on the Wind. At some level, a gust out of their eyes could reach her.

Her trunk hung there. She curled and flipped it, hoping the tree-dweller might somehow understand. She sent reassuring tremors — futile.

The water bubbled slightly. Sweetfoot acted, lunging and slipping her trunk around the shoulder of the tree-dweller just as the water exploded with teeth, and she pulled up, mother and baby yelping and drag-kicking a deep groove in the mud quickly covered by the girth of the water-dweller.

Sweetfoot released the tree-dweller atop the ridge. The baby fell helplessly but the mother scrambled and hastily scooped it up. With a brief, harried look at Sweetfoot, she raced away into the grass which swayed with her path, until her motions became the wind’s.

She stood there a moment, sniffing after them, rumbling to nowhere, no one.

Dazed, Sweetfoot made her way down to the water’s edge. The water-dweller had returned to the murk. It wouldn’t bother her. She waded into the shallow end and drew up a volume which she drank, desperately. Her pulse slowed. Then she sprayed her back, cooling her body. Rinsing the dust which felt like ash on her.

 

* * *

About the Author

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Mike Robinson is the award-winning author of multiple novels and dozens of short stories, most of them speculative fiction. His work has appeared in Clarkesworld, American Gothic Fantasy, Storyteller, Cirsova, ClonePod, December Tales II, Underland Arcana, Thirteen Podcast and many more, and has received honours from Writers of the Future, the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, Maxy Awards, The BookFest, Kindle Book Awards and others. His novel Walking the Dusk was a semifinalist in Publishers Weekly’s BookLife Prize.

As an editor, he has worked with hundreds of authors, including National Book Award finalists, and is the red pen behind J.P. Barnett’s bestselling “Lorestalker” series. A book coach and senior editor with Wordsmith Writing Coaches, he also co-created the New Author Plunge, a workshop for beginning writers, and is on the advisory board of GLAWS, the Greater LA Writers Society, He is also an illustrator, and the screenwriter of the film Blood Corral, which recently hit the international festival circuit.

by Dana Wall

“Oh, and one more thing – the flock has requested that you install TikTok. Something about documenting the journey for their followers.”

“Your Projected Migration Efficiency Rating has dropped to 62%,” the sparrow from HR chirped, adjusting her tiny glasses with one wing. “That’s well below the industry standard of 85%, Ms. Honksworth.”

Gloria Honksworth, Senior Migration Consultant at Wingways Solutions LLC, fought the urge to roll her eyes. Twenty years of guiding geese across continents, and now she was being lectured by a bird who’d never flown further than the office park.

“With all due respect,” Gloria said, straightening her neck feathers, “traditional metrics don’t account for the current situation. The warm fronts are arriving three weeks early, the cool fronts are stalling out over the Great Lakes, and half our usual rest stops have been converted into parking lots.”

The sparrow – Ms. Twitterton, according to her name tag – consulted her tablet. “Nevertheless, your last three migration groups have all deviated significantly from their approved flight plans. The Canadian contingent ended up in Miami instead of Mexico City. The Atlantic seaboard flock somehow got lost over Kansas. And let’s not even discuss the incident with the Hudson Bay formation and that squadron of fighter jets.”

“That was a scheduling error! How was I supposed to know the Air Force would be running drills in our airspace?”

“By filing the proper flight path documentation,” Ms. Twitterton replied primly. “Which you haven’t done correctly since last spring.”

Gloria’s neck feathers ruffled in indignation. “The standard forms don’t have checkboxes for ‘freak thunderstorm’ or ‘entire lake dried up’ or ‘wind patterns completely reversed from historical data.’ I’m having to rewrite the whole playbook here!”

“That’s not protocol–”

“Protocol?” Gloria spread her wings, knocking over a stack of migration maps. “I started flying these routes before you were an egg! Back then, we had reliable seasons, predictable weather patterns, actual wetlands to land in. Now? I’ve got elderly geese getting heatstroke in October, goslings who’ve never seen snow asking why we bother migrating at all, and don’t get me started on the mess with the GPS signals…”

Ms. Twitterton made a note on her tablet. “Speaking of GPS, your requisition for new tracking devices has been denied. The budget committee feels the current equipment is adequate.”

“Adequate? Half of them still think magnetic north is where it was in 1990!”

“Ms. Honksworth.” The sparrow’s voice took on a warning tone. “Your attitude isn’t helping. Now, we’ve assigned you a new group for next week’s migration. They’re a young flock, very tech-savvy, very modern. They’ve requested a more… contemporary approach to navigation.”

Gloria’s heart sank. “Please tell me they’re not the ones with the smartphone app.”

“MigrateGr8 is a perfectly valid navigation tool–”

“It’s designed for human road trips! It doesn’t account for wind speed, wing fatigue, or the fact that we can’t just pull into a Motel 6!”

The sparrow sighed and pulled out a final form. “This is your last chance, Ms. Honksworth. Get this flock to their destination on schedule, on route, and within budget, or we’ll have to discuss early retirement options. Do you understand?”

Gloria stared out the office window at the autumn sky. The wind was all wrong for the season – warm and southerly when it should be a crisp northerly blast. Just like last year, and the year before that. But nobody in management wanted to hear about climate change or habitat loss. They just wanted their neat little reports and their efficiency metrics.

“Fine,” she said finally. “I’ll do it. But I want it noted that I’m flying under protest.”

“Noted.” Ms. Twitterton gathered her papers. “Oh, and one more thing – the flock has requested that you install TikTok. Something about documenting the journey for their followers.”

After the sparrow left, Gloria slumped at her desk, surrounded by outdated maps and useless weather reports. On her computer, another email popped up: “10 Hot Tips for Modern Migration Management! You Won’t Believe #7!”

She closed it without reading. Instead, she pulled up the satellite imagery for next week’s route. The weather models were a mess, showing three possible storm systems and unprecedented temperature variations. The rest stops she’d used for decades were mostly gone – drained, paved, or dried up. And now she had to guide a flock of influencer geese who probably thought “ground effect” was a photo filter.

But as she studied the maps, a plan began to form. The official route was impossible – but there, cutting across an unexpected urban heat island, and there, following a new wind pattern she’d noticed last season… It wouldn’t be pretty, it wouldn’t be protocol, but it might just work.

She opened a new document and began to type: “Alternate Migration Strategy: Adapting to Modern Realities.”

Let the HR sparrows chirp about protocol. Gloria had a job to do, and she’d do it the way she always had – one wing beat at a time, adjusting to whatever the changing world threw at her. Even if it meant learning TikTok.

She just hoped the younger geese knew how to fly in formation while taking selfies.

 

* * *

About the Author

Dana Wall traded balance sheets for prose sheets after years of keeping Hollywood’s agents and lawyers in perfect order. Armed with a Psychology degree that finally proved useful when creating complex characters and an MBA/CPA that helps her track plot points with spreadsheet precision, she ventured into the haunted halls of Goddard College’s MFA program. Her work which has appeared or will appear in Intrepidus Ink, 96th of October, Fabula Argentea, Summerset, 34 Orchard, Eunoia Review, The Shore Poetry, Dreams and Nightmares, Bright Flash Literary Review and Sykroniciti confirms that words are more reliable than numbers, though occasionally harder to balance.

by Anne Larsen

“My dam’s eyes do not glow. Why do you smell like her? Where is she?”

My dam remembered when Lore was a sorrel mare with a bad hock. By the time I was foaled, Lore was a dun mare faded by sun and salt water, her muzzle going grey and her eyes — well, Lore’s eyes are what they are: green and gold, like no other horse in our herd’s heritage.

“Can she really see the wind, mama?” my third foal asked.

“My dam said she could, but how can we know?”

“Did you ever talk to her?”

“Only the lead mares speak to her. Sometimes the old aunties graze by her and listen. She tells them the stories they must tell the weanlings.”

“What stories?”

“Soon enough, you’ll know, won’t you?”

He leaned into me then, lipped my udder enough to show that he appreciated my milk, though he didn’t drink much these days. His foal fuzz came away in patches revealing his bright bay coat, a gift from his sire. By late summer my colt would be off with the others of his year learning all the things a horse needs to know to live among his kind on this harsh place: how to see patches of sucking sands, how to brace side-by-side with cousins, rumps to the storm wind and heads low in the lee of their shoulders, how to run and spar in the bachelor band where friend and rival are the same thing because they both strengthen you. But for now he stayed close, bending his knees to graze in the shelter of my body when the wind off the water blew cold.

As my foal would soon do, I had learned Lore’s stories grazing among the senior mares who no longer bore foals but guarded and guided the weanlings into maturity. She remembered sweet grass in marshes far back before men, when only the wind’s hands had touched us and we carried no burdens. She remembered generations when ice locked the land and when it had weakened, she had led her people north to new pastures fed by the waters of its retreat. She remembered the hot, golden hills we had run before we came here, packed in the dark bellies of wooden ships that crossed the saltwater.

One evening, in the dusk after sunset, with the offshore wind fading and the herons settled on their high nests, Lore called us all to Gather. She had never called a Gather in this land before now, but we all recognized the summons as it lived in our bones and blood. The lead mares sent the bachelors up and down the island, leeward and windward, to bring every horse to hear her. Last to come were those on the far side of the fence that humans had stretched from inner sea to outer sea, nonsense dividing the sand. Those horses skirted it by swimming around the sunken end. Rumor said they had left a great pile of manure banked against the sun-warped planks.

By moonrise we were with her in our hundreds, mare and foal, weanling, bachelor, and herd sire. We surrounded her, the lead mares at the center and the rest of us around them, circle around circle, silent but for tail-swish and hoof-stomp when flies bit. The Gather Truce prevailed, so none of the young stallions challenged their elders or one another for mares. They knew the penalty for disturbance was exile, as good as death, for no horse can live alone.

Into our minds she came, silent as snowfall, showing us what we needed to know and what we had to do.  “Far over the gray ocean in the direction of morning,” Lore said, “lies an island with a fiery heart. That heart swells and will soon break, shattering the island above it. Most of its body will fall into the sea, making a great wave rise and run. In less than a day it will travel from there to here. When it arrives, it will shrug the ocean over this island and roll far inland across the channels, washing everything before it, then drag the shattered mess back out to deep water. The flood will run faster than we can, so we must leave now to be far away and safe when it comes.

Lore’s plan was to take us across the channel to the smaller sister island, through the town there, across the second channel, then over fields and into a forest we had never seen. She knew some of that country from the times she had been caught in the high summer penning-day, when many of us were driven across the water and into the town to be looked over by humans, with some youngsters taken while the rest of us returned. Because they were her kindred, Lore could touch the minds of those horses carried away to new pastures, so she knew roads and open land none of us did. She selected our destination inland from what she had learned from these distant lives.

The vision of tall, dense trees startled us, for we were creatures of this windswept, watery place, living on seagrass between sand and sky. But for horses, the sense of home is the same as the sense of safe, not tied to a bit of ground, but to a feeling of peace, where a watchful eye is all we need to keep our foals and families from harm.

Lore sent urgency rippling through our spiraled herd, and the outermost bands peeled away, trotting toward the channel crossing. The senior mares led; their stallions took the rear guard, guiding the youngsters between them. As the great mass of us moved out, I felt the other lives of the island stirring. The white tips of fox tails flickered through the scrub, and I heard the light footfalls of deer shadowing us.

The wading birds, who have their own ways of knowing, lifted from the shore in skiffs and swirls, strangely silent. I had never seen herons leave their rookery so close together, one after another, long legs behind them and their wide wings scooping the night air, the lines of them long strands like a tail swept back in the wind. The egrets, large and small, were easier to see, their whiteness gathering the scant moonlight. By the time the first horses entered the channel, the air above was filled with birds, the differing rhythms of each kind’s flight blurring together into a whoosh like rushing water.

When I plunged into the channel my foal pressed close to my shoulders. He’d splashed in the ocean shallows with me before to escape the black flies but this was his first real swim. It was low tide, so there was little current in the narrow stretch of water. His brave muzzle never wavered as he swam, ears swiveling to listen to huffing breaths around him and the murmur of crossing wakes as our band pressed forward. The moment his hooves found the far shore he bounded onto the beach, soaked tail high with pride. He nuzzled his year-mates as they checked one another, affirming that all were here.

Whitetail and sika deer had blended into our great herd, but sifted themselves apart as soon as they landed, bounding away across the yards and gravel roads toward the leeward beach. Foxes and raccoons arrived in our wake, staggering on the trampled sand as they shook water from their pelts before disappearing with the deer.

Lore came in the middle group, but all the bands waited for her to take the lead in the next part of our journey. She led us past the wooden houses and yards of short, thin grass, sending her peace outward to soothe dogs startled awake by our footfalls. We walked so the foals and eldest could rest and so the muffled rumble of our hundreds passing would wake no human sleepers. The island’s captive horses heard us, though, and some called to Lore. She quieted them, but I believe she gave them the message because several of them ran their fence lines and rattled the gates that kept them from joining our numbers.

“Will they die here?” my foal asked.

“I don’t know. I think the humans will leave the island and take their animals with them in a few hours.”

Our great herd bunched together on the leeward shore as Lore assessed the condition of our weakest and then considered the best crossing. Marshy sand spits littered the inner channel, some of them standing proud at low tide and others merely clots of reeds trapping muck that gave no rest or purchase to a tired horse. Lore’s light touch in our minds asked us to attend her again.

“It will be a long swim, maybe hours to reach the far shore. Some will be lost to the water.” The lead mares nodded, their ears twisting with fret. “But there is another way. We take the narrow road above the water that goes straight across. We could trot and canter that distance, reaching the far shore with enough night left to hide us as we run inland.” The adults raised their heads to study the distant ribbon of stone and steel. Ever reckless, the bachelors nudged one another, their feet shifting in anticipation.

“We might meet with humans crossing. We would have to share the road with their machines as there is no way to leave it once we have begun. Are you willing?” Mares and herd sires pressed together, necks arched and muzzles close, seeking reassurance from one another. Shifting along the shore road, the herd shuddered as each family band made its choice. One by one the lead mares sighed their assent and the entire herd stood still, waiting.

“Together then,” Lore said.  She led us up the island, the stallions keeping our long herd clustered on the road. Past houses and cars and buildings we walked through the silent town. Most of the adults had walked through the town on penning day, so the shapes were familiar. The waning moon was high now. Lore turned onto the wide, white road that ran over the water. Lead mares and stallions kept us bunched close on the shallow rise to the road. It was wide enough for us to travel several abreast, the mares with foals at heel. My colt and I trotted near the front. We could see Lore’s pale coat glint in the moonlight, her dark tail held half-high, signaling her concern. From the well of my heart through every muscle and sinew I knew she would keep us safe.

Lore kept our trot steady, a cadence to cover distance without exhausting our youngest and eldest. The bachelors longed to break and run, but lead mares pinned their ears and drove the males back into line with nips and glares. My colt’s boldness pleased me as he matched my pace. I raised him with that courage. In a different band I would be a lead mare, but my older sister guides us, the strength of her spirit rare and worthy, so I am content to follow. Perhaps one day she will leave our band to go with her chosen mate when he is displaced by a younger stallion, and I will step into her place. Until then I trust and obey her and insure all my foals do as well.

The road crossed reed beds that hissed in the sea breeze, the long stems rippling like water above the water. Now and then we heard deer splashing over the sand spits, traveling in pairs and severals with few fawns among them. I doubted that fawns could survive the long swim, so many does had not started this part of the journey. By now all the birds had vanished inland so the sky above us was deep and calm, though on the far shore lights from another town tainted the dark horizon and smothered the stars. The rhythm of our two-beat pace blurred into a low thunder on the hard road.

We had reached the place where the road crosses the deepest, widest water when the truck came, heading toward the island. I had seen one of these at rest in the town last penning day. It was huge, three times our height, and its face lights flashed as it roared toward us.

“Move over!” Lore commanded, and the whole herd flowed sideways to the upwind side of the road, crowding many horses against the low metal fence. The truck made so many different sounds that it seemed to be more than one creature. I heard thumps like a woodpecker on a hollow tree, though there never was so huge a bird. I pinned my ears against its mind-piercing squeal.

The horses in the front bunch balked and those behind them piled into one another, screaming. Some that were crushed against the low rail leapt off the bridge, and I heard their bodies hit the water below. A filly panicked, breaking out of the herd and running blind toward the beast, screaming for her dam. Lore spun and leapt, shoving her back into the stumbling mass of us. The filly found her dam but Lore could not escape the truck’s path. It hit her broadside, throwing her several lengths down the road.

She lay still.

The truck halted, its eye-lights glaring at the heap of her golden body.

The mass of plunging, panicked horses milled on the road. My colt squealed and the lead mares cried out, frantic to contain their bands and push them past the rumbling truck. It was not moving anymore, but clouds of smoke billowed around its feet, its eye-lights shattered our night vision, and a human had climbed down off of its side. He yelled at us and waved his hands but the horses at the front ignored him. Beside his deadly, reeking beast, he was no threat at all. The leading band had tangled in rage and fear, stomping on their own youngsters and not even the stallion could shift them by driving from the rear of the group.

“Lead them. They need you now. Get them across the water.” Lore’s voice steadied me, directed my attention away from the press of legs and the roiling sea of necks, manes, and haunches. “Go on. This is who you are. They are all, every one, yours to lead.”

“I am not a lead mare,” I answered. I could not keep my feet still. Terror had streaked my shoulders and flanks with foamy sweat.

“You are far more. Now you are Lore. Call your people together and they will follow you.”

“How can they hear me?”

“The same way you hear me now. Believe with your whole heart — know with your whole mind — that they are your people. Then speak.”

I turned away from the empty body on the road to look at the shuddering line of horses stretching far back toward the island we had fled. My night vision returned and I saw them, each one, knew their names, their lineages, their strengths and sorrows. White feet, blazes, stars, patches, and tails gleamed under the waning moon. Scents of fear-sweat and mare’s milk whipped past me on the landward wind. My colt found me, ducked under my neck and pressed himself against my chest, his voice quavering in time with his skittering feet. I bowed my neck over his back and laid my cheek against his face.

“Shall we leave, beloved?”

He bleated in answer.

“Follow me, stay close.”

I turned my mind inward, stroking the memory of every horse I knew here, discovering that somehow I knew them all, even the bands from the north whom I had never met.

“My people, my family, follow. We move forward now.”

I stepped around the dead mare and passed the hot body of the truck, pausing only to bare my teeth and strike at the human so he would step back. I arrived at the front of the line, nibbled my colt’s curly foal-mane to reassure him, and spoke again with my whole body, a strong trot ringing on the hard road as I stepped into the darkness beyond the horror.

“Follow, follow,” my two-beat gait sent a tempo through the herd. The confusion at the front dissolved into order, the simplicity of the trot, and with motion came clarity and calm.

All down the herd the lead mares matched my call, walking until the ripple of forward movement opened space for them to trot. I directed one of the old bachelors to keep the human pinned against his truck until we were all past that narrow place. I knew, somehow, when the last horse was on the open, empty road, and I pulled the whole herd into a canter.

On the road we crossed the main channel, then the marsh islands and the smaller channels. A knowing, rather like a scent, came to me that the horses who had leapt into the sea were making good time. All were strong adults who could smell the mainland.

“We will wait for you on shore,” I told them. “We will rest until you join us.” There was no lead mare in the water with them, so they could not answer me, but I felt them take heart and stroke onward.

I cantered above the last marsh island. The road was level with the land again and swung left a short way onto the shore. It lay beside the ocean’s edge for as far as I could see, short grass and white sand on either side. I saw a fence glint in the darkness, but there was enough space on our side of it for all of us to gather. I walked onto the grass, my colt walking beside me, his body trembling with exhaustion.

“We will rest here and wait for the swimmers,” I told the arriving bands. “The foals need to feed and sleep. Come close to the fence, away from the road.  Our band, led by my sister, stayed near me. We claimed a space and I dropped to my knees, then to my side, rolling to rid myself of the sweat and distress of that crossing. I stood and shook, then invited my colt to nurse. He drank all I carried, and was asleep, flat on the grass but for his round belly. I felt the last of our herd, mud-caked and staggering, rise from the channels and marshland and rejoin us. They found their bands and lay down, their need to rest greater even than their desperate thirst. I also sensed does and fawns on the bridge, their hard, tiny hooves tapping as they followed our lead, foxes and other small animals scampering among them, pulled far from their home ranges by their terror of being left behind.

“Ask the aunties to watch for a time so you can sleep,” I told the lead mares. More tired than I had ever been in my life, I lay down beside my foal and slept.

In my dreams, Lore’s power and knowing flowed into me, blending my own life’s experience with that of all the generations of our people who came before, like a tributary stream joining a great river. I was still myself, a dark paint mare of six summers and three foals, but now I also carried in myself so much more. I wandered the memories of these horses, of their sires and dams going back to a place I had never seen. Hot, stony mountains and hard land, sparse grass, black cattle. Men on tall horses used long poles to drive us and the cattle to high meadows season on season. I dreamt of the wooden ships that bore us over the water, not to our island but to a place far to the south, hot and wet. We carried humans, pulled wagons and plows, walked beside sheep and cattle, and plunged into the noise and stink of battle, steel spurs sharp against our sides, urging us into the blood and hurt and press of angry, frightened bodies. Horses came north, dispersed across forest lands and grass lands. So many places, so many seasons, and yet we were one people under a clear and fair justice meted out by the lead mares. At the edge of my awareness, further than eye can see or ear can hear, bands of horses ran under the setting sun with their own Lore among them, as all horses across the broad face of the world, mountain to desert, grassland to island, have a Lore among them who keeps them safe.

I dreamed each member of this herd: the white-faced foal born deaf, the exiled stallion going blind, the fierce, wild minds of the young bachelors, the foals like marsh lights, faint glimmers at birth but burning bright and steady by weaning. The lead mares bound together all other mares connected by blood and friendship, the strands among them gleamed like a dew-touched spider web on a clear morning. Now I stood at the center of them all, promised to them and promising them, bearing in my body all we are and will be. This is how it has always been, Lore passing from one mare to another, shifted by deaths sudden or slow, always a shock to the anointed one. I would never be our band’s lead mare. I would not bear another foal. I no longer belonged only to myself, but to all of us, and I loved each quick-footed foal and senior stallion, each vigilant dam and cocky bachelor, and every one of the brave lead mares. I loved them all with a fierce, determined, sheltering understanding of who we had been and who we will be.

I woke, rose, and snatched at the short, tough grass, frantic and ravenous. While I grazed, I sought out the memories Lore had left to me of the way from here to safety. My awareness drifted inland, following the tendrils of memory from other island horses who had lived here for generations and guided by the minds of those who lived here still. The living horses showed me that fences closed off the most direct path to a forest. They also shared the knowledge of ponds and creeks where we could drink.

The light grew brighter long before the sun lifted above the water. My colt stirred, blinking and groggy. He rolled onto his belly, braced his forelegs wide and shoved himself up, shaking himself from nose to tail tip. I lipped his forelock and invited him to nurse. He looked up at me and scrambled backwards, legs splayed and the whites of his eyes bright against his dark face. He fell into a frightened heap, struggling to rise.

“Who are you?” he bleated.

“You know me, beloved,” I said, sending my breath to comfort him.

“My dam’s eyes do not glow. Why do you smell like her? Where is she?”

“My eyes glow? I did not know that. I am who I have always been for you, though now I am also more.”

He sorted his legs out, rose, and bolted toward our lead mare. My heart twisted in pain to see him so afraid. My sister met him, curling her piebald neck over his and nibbling his withers to calm him. When his trembling eased, she shouldered him back toward me.

“She is your dam, child, always,” my sister said. “Close your eyes, take in her scent, and you will recognize her.”

I closed my own eyes and held myself still, but I could hear the panic in his feet as he scrambled beside my sister.

“What happened?” he snuffled against her flank.

“On the bridge, Lore passed from the mare where she had been into your dam. She is now Lore, keeper of all the stories, guide and watcher, the wisdom of all horses living among us.”

My foal made a soft sound of fear and loss and only the steady presence of my sister kept him from bolting. Grief rose in me then, a stain in my tributary as it entered Lore’s ancient river. I knew now that every mare who has ever been Lore had felt this loss, though knowing I was not alone in this did not comfort me.

“I will look away so you can feed,” I said. But my colt would come no closer, and did not ask to nurse again. My sister released him to join the other weanlings in our band. She shared her breath with me, taking in some of my sorrow at this loss. We groomed one another for a time while my heart ached.

A few cars passed us on the road, going out to the island. They slowed or stopped to look at us before driving on. The ground beneath me felt wrong, not the way that sucking-sands do, but dangerous and unfamiliar. Refreshed by sleep and light grazing, my people’s thirst made them restless. I chose to follow this road to its end, then turn into the farmed fields and travel over them to the nearest woodland.

“Rise now,” I said to the herd, “I know you are hungry and thirsty, but we must move away from here. We are not yet safe.” The bands stirred, mares nosing foals up for a quick meal, stallions circling their charges to bunch them together.

“Follow me. We will go to water first, and then take shelter from what is coming.” Speaking to all of them this way disoriented me as I gathered glimpses through the eyes of each horse as my mind touched theirs. I shook off my confusion and set out in a slow trot that would carry us miles though we were still tired.

We stayed off the road when we could, trampling the grass alongside it rather than bruising our feet on that hard surface. Each time my hooves touched the earth, it felt wrong, as though the ground should not be trusted. I wanted to move us faster but forced myself to keep to this easier pace.

Not long after sunrise the earth moved. The tremor swept past us from seaward to landward, a shiver like flanks beset by biting flies. Horses squealed and bucked, scattering. Several foals went down hard and their dams stood over them to fend off the trampling, panicked hooves. Then, as suddenly as it shifted, the earth quieted. None of us trusted that stillness now. Inland and from the islands, we heard the wail of human alarms.

“Follow, follow,” I called and we set out again, the lead mares hard put to keep their bands from tangling in the confusion. The few cars on the road had stopped, their humans out and walking, gesturing to one another. They had had no warning. They stopped talking as we swept by them in our hundreds. The road turned away from the ocean and headed straight inland. I stepped into a canter. We had so little time before the humans would swarm. Now they knew what was coming and we must be out of the way of their rush.

I learned from the horses living nearby that the road went straight from here, and soon we would reach open land. An old gelding paced us along the fence of his pasture, telling me where to find the creek on the far side of the long field. The sun was well up and more cars appeared, so I was relieved when we arrived at the place where we could leave the road. I sent my sister and her band on toward the water and waited while the herd flowed past me. The bachelors, unfettered by mare rules, bolted into the wide field, their hooves flinging up clots of mud and small plants as they tore away, tails flagged high and eyes wild. I joined the last band to leave the road, stepping between them and a group of humans approaching on foot, yelling and waving their arms. We left them their road, and they did not follow us.

I joined my sister at the creek. My son clung to her flank and would not look at me even when I nickered at him. I turned away from the pain in my heart, keeping my attention on the stragglers far across the field. Horses arranged themselves along both banks, upstream and downstream. They dipped their muzzles into the chilly water and drank, lifting their heads in turn to keep watch while the water settled in their bellies. Then others paused and took the watch so the first could drink again. The foals pranced into the creek up to their knees so they did not have to strain past the length of their legs to reach the water. As horses soothed their thirst they stepped away, allowing the latecomers access. There was no grazing for us here, just scrub and a small patch of trees. But there were also no humans here, so sighs of relief rippled through the herd. No one relaxed, as we were in unknown territory, but we were not threatened. The earth beneath was still for now, but I thought it might move again. It was the coming shift in the ocean that threatened us, though, and we had to be further inland before that happened.

When I set out in the lead this time, I kept us at a walk. Even the younger horses kept this pace, as the terrors of the night and morning had drained them. Each band kept its members close, but the bands themselves drifted apart in this open space. It was bigger than any flat, empty ground these horses had ever seen, and it spoke to their blood and bone as good land for horses. We could see any danger coming from far away, and there was ample room for all of us to move if we had to flee.

It took much of the morning for all of us to cross that ground. It was all as flat as our island, which is why we had to go so far away from the shoreline to escape the coming water. We saw only one human far away, a man on a machine that stirred the sandy dirt. He stopped his machine and stood on it so he could watch us pass. I looked back and saw him turn his machine and leave the field.

At noon we reached a place with patchy scrub and some grazing, so we stripped it bare. The foals nursed and slept, and the elders lay down in the cool shade. I stood apart, listening to the minds of horses far from here. Those native to this place showed me that their humans hurried, moving their families and animals inland. I found some of the horses on the small island and saw through their eyes the fear and haste as they, too, prepared to leave with their humans. A filly in a trailer on the long bridge shared her eyes with me, and I saw there was no open road, only a stretch of cars and trucks creeping toward the far shore. I breathed gratitude into the afternoon breeze that Lore had Gathered us when she had.

Late in the afternoon I called, “Follow, follow me.” We left the scrubland and walked another long field, always heading inland. Human alarms blared in the distance. I pushed the herd through fine pastures though many wanted to stop and graze. Even so far from the ocean, I could feel the wrongness in the turning tide, though I could not convey this to my people. They trusted me when I moved them on at a brisk trot. We stopped just once for water.

That evening we reached the forest I recognized from Lore’s memory. She had meant for us to go among the trees, as they held this land fast with their bodies and no great wave or storm surge had ever shifted them. We needed only to spend a night and a day in their shelter; then we could return to open country. The herd bunched against the borders of the forest, unwilling to step into the dimness under the dense branches. Born and bred under wide sky and constant wind, the trees felt confining, and to us, that meant dangerous.

“Come in, my people, come under these trees,” I coaxed. “This is where we will wait. The water is coming, and in a day or two it will retreat. Then we graze under the sky again. In time, we can return home.” The lead mares coaxed their bands from the sunlight into the deep shadows. The bachelors were the last to enter, skittish and resistant to the lead mares’ instructions. I directed seven of the senior stallions to drive the reluctant young males, with teeth if necessary, into the forest. When the entire herd settled at last in this strange shelter, I spoke to the Gathering, my mind touching each of them.

“Come close around me,” I said. “I will tell you stories through this time we must spend far from our island.” The wind in the trees sounded like surf. “We will be safe here.” Away to the east, I sensed the ocean arrive and the world we had left snapped and splintered under the running wave. My breath caught as horses and humans trapped on the road, and those who had not yet left the island were swept under. Sweat formed on my flanks and neck and dripped off my shoulders while those around me stayed dry and calm. I took a deep breath and released a long sigh. I forced my attention back to the shuffling of hooves in leaf litter and the call notes of tiny birds astonished by our arrival. I decided to tell my herd about the golden mountains and the black cattle. “Long ago and far away,” I began, “we lived in a different land and ran with another people.” Even the bachelors stood still to listen.

 

* * *

About the Author

Anne Larsen writes in a bio-diverse household that includes mammals, birds, and plants, in particular a gang of Venus flytraps that rule a dangerous neighbourhood on one windowsill. In addition to direct guidance from her animal family, Larsen draws on biology, history, mythology, and religious studies in her magical realism.

Welcome to Issue 25:  Migration and Survival

The world changes, and creatures great and small, wise and simple, old and young — all of us — must move on to survive.  Gallop with horses, feast on festering fruits with elephants, and fight for your very life with cheetahs, rats, and practically extinct reptiles.  But as you do, keep an eye to the future and the path you’ll have to follow to arrive there.  The animals certainly do.

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The Passing of Lore by Anne Larsen

Migration Mismanagement by Dana Wall

Herdhunters by Mike Robinson

Queen of the Hungry, Queen of the Few by Leo Oliveira

Silver Bones by Michael Steel

Unmaking Extinction by Liz Levin

The Last Breath by Liam Hogan

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Zooscape will be re-opening to submissions on February 1st, 2026!  We will stay open for at least a month, and announce our closing date with at least one week of notice.  However, the exact length of our open period will depend on the volume of submissions we receive.  You can learn more on our guidelines page.  If this open period proves as successful as the last one, we hope to go back up to releasing issues four times a year.

As always, if you want to support Zooscape, check out our Patreon.  Also, you can pick up e-book or paperback volumes of our earlier issues, complete with an illustration for every story.  The e-book of the sixth volume just released today, and the paperback for it will be coming soon!

Welcome to Issue 24:  Pigs, Rats, and Anti-Capitalism

The wonderful thing about stories is that we can fight our battles in them — process grief, fight capitalism, and imagine paths past our current woes.  Maybe you’re not quite ready to throw it all away and run into the forest without even a sunhat for protection, but in a story, the brave hero can do it for you.  Mice can overthrow corporations; pigs can fight against the company town; and you can follow vicariously in their hoof and paw prints, learning how it feels when the shackles finally break away… perhaps inspiring you to keep fighting too.

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Nine Lives Later by Alyza Taguilaso

The Crows Do Not Know Me by Lynn Gazis

Gifting Salt and Sorrow by Melanie Mulrooney

Jot, Flowerwerks, and the Missing Mice by Lara Hussain

Sunflowers and Spring Steel by H. Robert Barland

Rat Race by Larry Hodges

Capitalist Pigs by David Aronlee

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As always, if you want to support Zooscape, check out our Patreon.  Also, you can pick up e-book or paperback volumes of our first 16 issues bundled into five anthologies, complete with an illustration for every story.

by David Aronlee

“Without my pay going to those silly log cabins, I am saving so much, it would make your snout drop.”

Posted Hogtown Post Office, January 2

Dearest Priscilla,

I miss you the way the daisy misses the sun. I have wonderful news. I got a job! I’m a truffle sorter at the truffle factory. Not bad for a hog from the country. I had my first day yesterday and my boss already says I have potential. I could be a shift leader within a year or maybe even a truffle hunter someday!  My friend Fred says that’s where you can make it big: with the commission from finding a big truffle cluster.

Fred’s a city pig. He grew up here in Hogtown and is showing me the ropes. I get the feeling he’s got money; he said something about doing this job just to get his parents off his piggyback. He’s got a beautiful brick house right in the middle of town. He’s a good oinker though, even if he’s got a bit of a wild side to him. Showing me the watering holes, making sure I don’t put a hoof wrong at work (or at least not when the boss can see).

I better get to sleep soon. Back to the factory early tomorrow. I miss you dearly.

All my love,

Patrick Pig

* * *

Posted Hogtown Post Office, January 20

Dearest Priscilla,

I miss you the way the river misses the sea. I cannot wait for the day I can build that little brick house we always dreamed of living in together. I received my first paycheck. It was a little disappointing. Apparently, most of our paycheck goes into our company lodging. Many of us live in bunks in these quaint wood cabins just by the factory. It’s an easy commute, but so much of the pay gets gobbled up, I’m thinking about moving. I talked to a few of the other young hogs around. Apparently, there is a place called the Straw Sheds you can move in for dirt cheap over on the edge of town. The straw keeps you warm and for pennies a day you can actually save. This is all I ever wanted in the world: to save up to build a beautiful little brick house and find that future we always dreamed of.

All my love,

Patrick Pig

* * *

Posted Hogtown Post Office, February 6

Dearest Priscilla,

I miss you the way the sky misses the dawn. I got my second paycheck today, and I think I can move the plans up! Without my pay going to those silly log cabins, I am saving so much, it would make your snout drop. To think: the son of a long line of muck-rollers and scrap-eaters might someday own a brick house. And the Straw Sheds aren’t half bad. After growing up in a drafty barn, they are positively cozy, and I can afford my own little private shed.

This old boar in our cabin, Barry, gave our whole group a warning before we all moved to the Straw Sheds. He’s the only old porker among us, looks he just sort of got stuck snuffling for pennies and plowing it all back so he can live there. A few of the other younger pigs decided to stay after he said his piece, but when we pressed him for specifics, he just told us about this family that moved out into the woods and built themselves a little log cabin. I guess in the middle of winter some wolves got to them. A whole bloody mess. But please don’t worry. They built their cabin way out in the forest, down by the river. Here in the Straw Sheds we are just on the edge of the town meadow, and I’m surrounded by sturdy hogs. Safe as a pig in a blanket! Sounds like he is just wallowing in his ways. And besides, after hearing so much about the Straw Sheds, well I was curious!

I went down to the Piggybank after work today to open an account. They treated me like pig royalty! (I joked that I came into the city from Animal Farm. They didn’t laugh. I don’t think they got the reference or read as much as we do, even if they like to pretend they are polished city pigs compared to those of us from the country.) They did say if I wanted to take a mortgage on a brick house like Fred’s, they need at least 6-months’ proof-of-income. But I ran the math, and if I’m careful I think I can save the down-payment they require in that time. To think that it may be less than a year until the brick house we always wanted makes me snort. And that should be plenty of time for me to fully explore the mysteries of Hogtown for you.

All my love,

Patrick Pig

P.S. Pardon my crossing out. Paper is too dear in this town to throw away and we have a house to save for!

* * *

Posted Hogtown Post Office, February 24

Dearest Priscilla,

I miss you the way the garden misses the rose. I think I need to see less of Fred. After a few pints the other night he suggested we take some of the truffle oil from the back room. He said all that was left in there was waste, and no one would miss it. Apparently, it gives you a heck of a buzz, so on Friday we snuck in and took a quart or two. Well, dearest, they caught us. And Fred hadn’t been quite right: they very much did care. They had us strung up in front of the Head Hog quicker than you can snort. I thought I was bacon, but then my Uncle Jimmy stopped in.

Have I ever told you about Uncle Jimmy? I may not have. Our family doesn’t talk about him much. He has a connection to the cartels. I’ve heard a rumor he makes the bodies disappear. I won’t tell you how. Anyway, as we were being run up to Head Hog, I saw him. He must have spotted us because no sooner had we been deposited in front of the snorting boar than he stepped in, apologized on my behalf, promised to see I was punished, and when the Head Hog agreed, which clearly Uncle Jimmy very much took as a foregone conclusion, he hustled me out of there. He gave me a talking to alright, told me to get the hell out, leave the factory and Hogtown and go home. But I can’t do that. We have sacrificed too much for me to leave now. And when I asked him what he was doing there he ignored the question, gave me a good tail bite, and left.

I saw Fred that Monday back on the factory floor, none the worse for wear. I’m not sure how he got out of it, but he was snorting along and smiling. He’s a bad influence. That may be an understatement. I must say I am curious just why they are so protective of the truffle oil. Another mystery. I dream of you every night.

All my love,

Patrick Pig

* * *

Posted Hogtown Post Office, April 20

Dearest Priscilla,

I miss you like the wave misses the beach. A strange thing happened yesterday: one of our Straw Shed sows, Pansy, is gone one of our cutters, Pansy, didn’t show up for work. It was most unlike her — she had never missed a day — but we checked the Straw Sheds and there was no sign of any foul play. I asked Fred if he had seen her downtown, and he said he hadn’t. We all heard some wolves howling off in the woods, but when we told the constabulary, or the Porky Patrol as they call it here, the squealer at the station said it was coyotes and huffed about country bumpkins. Didn’t sound like any coyote we have around our place.

We didn’t see anything amiss at her house, so everyone seems to think she just gave up and went home. I don’t believe that for a second. She seemed to me like she was working whole-hog. She mentioned something about her sister just having a farrow and the boar running off with the spoon, so I think she was sending money home…

The other strange thing was that Head Hog didn’t seem all that surprised. Oh, he said all the right things, but there was a strange air of expectation. There isn’t much we can do, not like we have that much free time between truffle sorting and bed, and the matter was referred to the Porky Patrol.  They just want to let sleeping hogs lie. But all the same, it is a mystery and you know how I hate mysteries. Only two more months until I can go back to the bank and our dream can begin. I wish I could ask you to write to me of home, I could use a loving reminder.

All my love,

Patrick Pig

* * *

Posted Hogtown Post Office, June 30

Dearest Priscilla,

I miss you like the winter branch misses the leaf. And that is how I feel right now: bare. Indeed quite low although I am not one to wallow usually. I have received terrible news.

I went back to the Piggy Bank, six months of pay stubs in hoof, full of excitement, and was told that the 6-month pay stub only applies if you have some collateral. Well, I do not have a house and needless to say my Straw Shed doesn’t count. Otherwise, I must wait a whole year. I am bereft to learn that it will be another six months before I begin to finally build our house, but alas it must be so. No more trips to the watering hole for me. If I must wait another six months, I shall be saving full-boar and use my time wisely. I will find out what happened to Pansy — I can feel it in my tail curl that it is important.

At least our bonus vests after a year. Apparently, they hold back about 10% of our pay at the factory and after we’ve been there for a year we get it as a lump sum plus a little extra. Encourages retention. I’m not sure about the legal specifics but HR (Hog Resources) says it’s a very sound system. So at least I’ll get a nice bonus to speed us on our way.

It may be my disquiet from the bank, but I received another piece of strange news. Barry is gone. No one has seen that old grunter for weeks, apparently since the day we all moved to the Straw Sheds. Now that I think of it, that was the day after he warned us about the move. I daren’t bring it up to the Head Hog. He heard me talking about it with Fred, who had nothing to add, by the way, and told me to get back to my truffles. Less grunting, more sorting. Something rotten seems to be going on. I heard the howling the last few nights too. It keeps me up sometimes.

I haven’t seen much of Fred since Pansy disappeared. He seems to be keeping his distance outside of work, which is just as well if I am to save all my pennies for our future. I wish I could write to you to come this second. Alas, it is impossible. Besides, with fall approaching the Straw Sheds would be no place for such a beautiful gem anyway. I am well.

All my love.

Patrick Pig

* * *

Posted Hogtown Post Office, August 3

My Dearest Priscilla,

I miss you the way the alpine lake misses the mountain stream. I have amazing news! I have been promoted to shift supervisor! I guess that is what you get when you keep your snout to the grindstone. It’s not much, a little bit more job responsibility, and a few more pennies an hour, but it could mean a whole extra room or two in our little home. Maybe even a second floor. I am all aflutter, drawing up new plans as I drift off to sleep, staring at the shadows on the hay roof. I think of such domestic things: where we will put the ice box and the garden in the yard. I can’t decide if the garden should go in the front or the back (we don’t want any squealers stealing our mushrooms!). But I am getting ahead of myself. There are five months yet, but I feel now like our dream might finally be within my grasp. The oinkers are taking me out for a drink to celebrate, so I must trot. I cannot wait, heart’s flower.

All my love,

Patrick Pig

P.S. Not to mention, as shift supervisor, I have better access to the factory records!

* * *

Posted Hogtown Post Office, September 5

My Dearest Priscilla,

I miss you like the night sky misses the moon. I am so worried. Another of our cutters, Sam, didn’t show up to work. Sam lives a couple sheds down from me in the Straw Sheds. The first day he skived off we figured he had just had a few too many pints at the bar with Fred. Since I’ve withdrawn from Fred’s company, I noticed Sam and Fred have become thick as thieves and it wouldn’t be totally unlike him to be sleeping off the piss recovering from overindulging the night before. But then he missed a second, and then a third day. He has certainly never done that before.

As shift supervisor, it was my duty to report his absence to Head Hog. Head Hog just politely thanked me for the information and trotted off. An employee absence and he just trots away like nothing has happened: this from a pig that squealed so loud when Sam knocked over a sack of truffles last week we thought someone had skinned the bacon from his back. This from a grunter that chomped so hard he almost broke a molar when I showed up to work three minutes late. (It was that first week after Fred talked me into going into the cidery and we ended up with rooster hats.) (Sorry my love, I don’t think I ever told you that story; I’ll have to fill you in the next time I see you.) THIS FROM A SQUEALER Head Hog didn’t seem at all surprised by Pansy’s disappearance either. I commented to Head Hog that the “coyotes” are getting louder and louder, but he just said they get like that this time of fall. Something is amiss, like a moldy truffle hiding at the bottom of the sack. Never fear my dear; I shall get to the bottom of this.

All my love,

Patrick Pig

* * *

Posted Hogtown Post Office, October 18

My Dearest Priscilla,

I miss you like the evening shadow misses the far horizon. The plot thickens. Head Hog invited me over for a poker night at his sty. A couple of the execs were there too, really heavy hitters, along with a few other shift supervisors (all boars; not a single sow among them), and to my surprise, Fred. Fred and I were the only first-year-factory-oinkers there. I promise dearest, I was not there to gamble away the savings. It was simply too good of an opportunity to chew the fat with upper management and see if I could sniff anything out. And believe it or not, I was doing quite well at the game too, or at least holding my own, until I had two shocks.

Fred had just gone bust and tried to buy back in for the third time (who goes all in on a pair of deuces?), when one of the execs told him, “That’s enough cob-roller, you get on home now.” Fred just rolled his eyes and ambled out. I leaned over and whispered to another supervisor who had been there a year longer than I and asked, “What was that all about?” And do you know what he told me?? That was the CEP (Chief Executive Pig) of the whole factory and none other than Fred’s old shoat! It all came together for me: how Fred “owns” a brick house in the middle of town; how he got out of trouble after that truffle oil incident. I lost the next hand. But what really set me back happened a couple hours later in the night.

Head Hog had been passing around brandy and the snorts and shouts were getting louder as it got later. One of the other shift supervisors burst out laughing at some joke and shouted back that he’d “call the wolves early this year.” I don’t yet know what that meant, but the room got real quiet for a moment: like a piglet learning about bacon for the first time. Well, that reference to wolves threw me off something terrible. You remember that’s how Auntie Edna went. I stayed quiet the next few rounds to try to listen to the snorts around me, but with my concentration split I was quickly drained of chips, which raised the volume considerably. Priscilla, I do not know what that comment meant, but it meant something. That evening was worth it. I will write to you as soon as I can.

All my love,

Patrick Pig

* * *

Posted Hogtown Post Office, November 7

Dearest Priscilla,

I miss you the way the desert cactus misses the rain cloud. I think I am finally making progress. I am doing my best snuffling up to Head Hog. I have become a veritable tyrant to my crew and I fear they are not taking it well.  I dare not tell them what I am up to, but I am in Head Hog’s good books. He has me coming in late to do the scheduling. I would normally not stand for it, since I do not even get paid overtime, but coming in late seems the perfect opportunity to do some rooting around. We will find our answers soon, I can smell it.

All my love,

Patrick Pig

* * *

Posted Hogtown Post Office, November 25

Dearest Priscilla,

I miss you the way the spider misses the web.  I found some things. I shall try to lay things out more clearly in my next letter. I don’t think anything terrible should happen, but if you do not hear from me, know that I have copied this letter to Uncle Jimmy so nothing should be lost with me. Straw Shed 4. Mud under the bed.

All my love,

Patrick Pig.

* * *

Posted Fairytale Post Office, December 4

Dearest Priscilla,

I miss you the way rabbit misses the burrow. I do not know if you can tell, but this letter was not posted from Hogtown. I gave it to a traveler, she said her name was Red Riding Hood. Strange name these humans come up with. Anyway, she was heading out of town and said there was a post office up by her grandmother’s house in Fairytale Village and she would post it there for me, so there is no chance of this falling into the wrong hooves.

I found the ear of corn in the mud. Head Hog sent me to the CEP’s office the other day to drop off the truffle-loss forms. While I was there, I poked around his desk since he was out for the evening. There was a latch under the bottom drawer, and a secret compartment; you remember how we used to play around with those with your Uncle Peter? Anyway. I found contracts. It’s all there.

The CEP has been paying off wolves. I cannot believe it, but it all fits. They make the new hires disappear so they can re-hire a new crop every year and pay them peanuts instead of paying each experienced crew the wage they deserve. It’s somehow cheaper for them to hire assassins than pay a reasonable wage? Should I be surprised?? I saw so angry my tail straightened right out and I nearly barked.

Do not fear for me my dearest. I snuck out the way I had come. And they seem to keep the shift leaders; at least, I am the only new one this year so I assume so. I think I am safe. It is Thursday. I’m going to take this information to the Hall of Justice and constabulary on Monday. Too many people are off on Fridays and I’m afraid of this falling into the wrong pettitoes. I shall talk to the other oinkers and we shall march in numbers.

I cannot imagine you in this cesspit, so perhaps I shall return to you soon, but we shall see on Monday. I will write to you as soon as I can.

All my love,

Patrick Pig

P.S. I just realized this is why they keep back 10% of our pay. It’s not for retention. It’s to pay for this dastardly scheme! We have been paying for our own demise!

* * *

Posted Hogtown Post Office, December 8

My Dearest Priscilla,

I miss you like the falling rain misses the soil below. I am despondent. I know you have been expecting a letter from me for days, but I could not bring myself to put pen to paper. I am in jail. It all went wrong. They will no doubt read this, but I do not care anymore. If they use this against me, so be it. I do not believe they will give me a fair trial, so I must tell my story to someone.

I did it. On Sunday I gathered the trotters from the Straw Sheds, and some few left in the wood cabins at the factory, and told them what I had learned. And on Monday we marched in force down to the Hall of Justice. I made my report to the Porky Patrol while my fellow brave oinkers marched outside with signs and chants. I gave Officer Parker the documents I had found, with the promise that they would get before a judge ASAP. I trusted him. I’d seen Officer Parker around town a few times, he seemed the professional, if a little lazy, type of hog, but he’d always been friendly. More fool me.

I thought things were going well, they held me in a room with one window, but Officer Parker porked his snout in to say they would be bringing the CEP down straight-away to get to the bottom of this. My heart rose for a few minutes. I saw the CEP come in with a couple other officers. Then I heard the laughter in the other room and my heart sank. Then I heard shouts and squeals from outdoors and the sound of breaking logs, and then it got quiet, and my disquiet grew. Then the CEP left, rubbing snouts with the officers, with a sheaf of documents — my documents — in his hooves.

Officer Parker came back in and explained that it was all a big misunderstanding: those were security documents for the factory that I must have misinterpreted. I was, after all, “just a pig from the country, haha.” I rose to go and it got worse.

Officer Parker then explained, almost in tones of regret, that unfortunately I was going to be held. There was the small matter of inciting a riot. Of slander of an important individual. And of course: thievery of corporate documents. I was caught, bound hoof and hoof, metaphorically and literally.

Here I sit, wondering when I shall see the light. I am awaiting trial but I have little doubt what the outcome of that will be. I trusted in the justice of this place, I do not know how I could have made such a mistake, and now we shall not get our closure. I miss you all the more my dearest. It pains me to think how I have ruined the whole point of my trip here.

Patrick Pig

* * *

Posted Hogtown Post Office, December 10

Dearest Priscilla,

I am out! Fred posted bail. I guess he felt bad about everything. Not bad enough to help me — he didn’t hear me when I tried to explain about the wolves — but bad about how everything went down. He urged me, near tears, to just leave town and be safe.

You know why I cannot just give up now. But I have a new plan. The wolves are due in two days and there won’t be a floor-level factory cutter left alive after that if I leave. Most of them are young and clueless and after marching with me are just wandering aimlessly around the Straw Sheds. Some have even gone back to work. They don’t know what to do. I will not leave them to those vulgar fascist pigs and their murderous wolves.

I know this would give you anxiety my dearest. I am so sorry. If all goes well this will put an end to things in this reeking sty of a town and I shall return to you post-haste.

All my love,

Patrick Pig

* * *

Posted Hogtown Post Office, December 20

Prissila,

That dirty squealer. He led the wolves right to them! And to think I bailed him out of jail. I’ll never forgive myself. Patrick asked me to write to you, and I wouldn’t have bothered getting my hooves dirty, but his family needs to know what kind of rotten squealer they raised. Holy hog. I hope his last moments were agony.

The wolves came, just like he kept grunting about. Patrick kept squealing that my old shoat was mixed up in it — that uptight old trotter — and now we’ll never know.

I was at home, wallowing with this pretty petite oinker named Patty, when I heard an insane high-pitched squealing that rattled the windows. I saw a couple trotters tear past and then some wolves, howling and drooling, pelted by in a flash heading towards the factory. One of them banged into my door, so we boarded things up tight — fortunately the brick walls are sturdy and they couldn’t get in. I followed them as soon as things quieted down and Patty trotted after me.

Well, it was mayhem up there. There were a few of the Porky Patrol and about half the town milling about outside. I saw Officer Parker rolling out some tape and cornered him. Patty was with me so I reminded Officer Parker who my father was and he spilled what he knew.

Apparently, there was some sort of hostage situation led by some radicals and Patrick. That crazy grunter. Then a pack of wolves came busting through, chewing up anyone who got in their way and smashed their way into the factory, which was on fire for some reason.

They got my old shoat! The Porky Patrol found him chewed up like bacon along with Head Hog. Those sick beasts. And it was Patrick’s fault.

Oh. And I guess some of the wolves then took off after Patrick and his crew. The Patrol found a few ripped up snouts and gobs of blood and guts by a back exit, so it looks like they didn’t get that far.

Good riddance.

Fred

* * *

Posted from Fairytale Village Post, January 2

Dearest Priscilla,

I miss you the way the willow seed misses the wind. And the wind is finally blowing me to you. I am coming home. I fear we shall never have our brick house in town, but we already knew that.

I hope Fred wrote to you to let you know I made it out. I assume he was not pleased. But we did it. Vengeance. For all of us.

I gathered all the young factory oinkers in the Straw Sheds the night before the wolves were supposed to arrive, I remembered the date from the contracts. And it was obvious where the wolves would go first: the Straw Sheds. We took our things into the woods and hid out, but left a few notes for those vicious beasts. We stayed there until the shadows were getting long the next day but before the rest of the factory cutters headed home.

Then, we quietly crept around town and broke into the factory! We overpowered the security guards and tied up all upper management. Any snout who had been there less than a year or was just a worker we let go, but every shift supervisor, Head Hog, all the executives, and of course the CEP, we kept. A couple shift supervisors escaped, but that didn’t bother me.

Then we barricaded the doors to the factory and started chanting, “no justice, no peace,” and “hog heads will roll,” just to stir them up.  Sure enough, the shift supervisors had gone straight to the Porky Patrol and those corrupt porkers showed up just as the sun was setting. We had hostages though, so they just set up a perimeter and ordered us to roll over, which we naturally ignored.

I and a few others made some final arrangements as the night deepened. And just as the Porky Patrol was getting ready to burst in blazing — we had the CEP and all the richest pigs in town of course; they were getting quite anxious — the wolves showed up. Right on time. Slavering jaws, hanging tongues, any Porky Patrol that got in their way was quickly shown the way to hog heaven.

And the rest of us just slipped out the back door and into the woods.

See, we had left notes for the wolves, that the hog management had decided that the deal was off, and so they were going to burn some of the truffle oil they usually paid the wolves in, and then smuggle the bulk of it out and pretend it had been lost in the fire. The wolves, when they found those notes but no tender pigs in the Sheds, came storming up to the factory. Where we happened to have all upper management neatly trussed up for them. And we had poured all the truffle oil into the big vat on the factory floor and set fire to it just as we slipped out.

The wolves broke down the door, saw the fire, just as we had said, and were enraged. Apparently, half the wolves took their displeasure out on the drove of upper management before them, and the other half ran in and tried to put out the fire as the place burned down around them. But a few came after us right quick and nearly caught us. It was touch and go my dear, but we had an insurance. We brought the CEP and a couple of his right-hoof snouts like Head Hog, and, this may seem cold blooded, but we cut them loose just as the wolves came up behind us. Well, such carnage you have never seen, but it gave us the time we needed to escape.

I cannot say I feel bad about the death of those porkers. When I think of the scheme they ran and the blood of so many innocent trotters on their hooves. Sam. Pansy. So many, many years of young dead pigs. They deserved what was coming. And of course…

I am bringing some of the trotters home with me. We are going to start our own truffle collective, away from the corruption and depravity of Hog Town. I know it’s not the brick house in town we imagined, but all these oinkers, sows and hogs, are brave, loyal, true, and kind. It is something. I shall see you soon my dearest.

All my love,

Patrick Pig

* * *

Posted From Truffle Commune, May 5

Dearest Priscilla,

We have started our truffle commune far to the east of Hogtown, past the Billy Goat’s bridge. I cannot tell you how I wish you were here with me, but I find solace in knowing that this letter will find you as all the others have.

I hope you know I visited you on my way here. The other cutters helped me plant a few peonies and daffodils, but the roses and hydrangeas around your headstone were already in full bloom. It looked so beautiful it broke my heart.

Please know that you are and have always been my inspiration for this. I don’t know if this is closure. I will probably never find that true joy again, not since the day you left me to try your pettitoes at the factory in Hogtown. I will never forget the day they sent me that note and a little box with your ashes. Not even a year after you had left.

Revenge doesn’t heal, but putting an end to that monstrosity does, just a little. Know that you inspired me; a hog who never wanted to leave the sty in the first place — inspired a change that will hopefully last for generations. The world is a bleaker place without you, but you were the spark in my heart and always will be.

We have our first few farrows here in our commune, and the birds are singing, and the grass is green, and I see you in all of it. That is about as close to peace as I can get.

I shall miss you forever.

All my love,

Patrick

 

* * *

About the Author

David Aronlee lives in California with his family. He loves his family (including his goofy golden Lucy), dragons and volleyball, and is a lawyer, but would dearly love to be a fantasy writer when he grows up. He has been previously published in Spaceports and Spidersilk.

by Larry Hodges

“Spreading such misinformation went against all her scientific training, and it killed her to do so, but what choice was there?”

Zuk stared out the open window above her cubicle desk at the poor, hatless rats chattering and scampering about outside, digging through heaps of garbage for scraps of rotting food. She wrinkled her nose; even from here the stench was like a tail smashing into her face. Pathetic. It should be illegal to have that much fun when you’re homeless.

That’s what happens when you don’t get an education! she wanted to scream, but instead just slapped her tail against the sawdust floor. Saying that would be rude. She herself had a doctorate in ratropology, but often wondered if she’d made a huge career mistake. Aerospace engineering, physics, astronomy, computer science — those were the cool, high-paying careers, and rats with those jobs weren’t stuck working in office buildings next to heaps of smelly garbage and the homeless. Soon they would land the first rat on the Moon, and they’d be heroes, while she’d be stuck at her desk writing stories for tabloids. With her academic skills, she could have breezed her way through astronaut school. She could have been the first rat to scamper on the Moon.

She could have been famous.

“Where’s that article?”

Zuk almost fell off her hard wooden stool. It was the boss, his head thrust through her cubicle’s circular opening behind her, his vantablack moleskin cap askew, as always. How did he always sneak up so silently? Was he part cat? His ragged fur was already graying, almost silver. Hers was light brown, almost blonde, and meticulously combed, every strand in place.

“Almost done,” she said through gritted teeth. She was not a good liar. “Give me a couple of hours.”

“One. Or you know what happens,” he said, feigning a tail yank with his paw before withdrawing, leaving behind the usual nauseous smell of rose perfume.

She sighed. Her tailbone still hurt from yesterday. Forget prancing about on the Moon — she was stuck in a tiny cubicle, typing away like a mindless mouse for a mindless, tail-yanking boss, surrounded by tokens of her trade.

A framed poster hung on the gray cubicle wall to the left of her desk of the Ludy fossil skeleton, two hundred thousand years old. It was considered the first modern rat, with fully opposable thumbs that could rotate freely. An inset showed an artist’s rendition, with the beginning of a brain bulge. Zuk often stared into his eyes. What was Ludy like? Did he have thoughts and feelings like modern rats? She envied the simple life they’d led.

On her desk sat a fifty-thousand-year-old spearhead from their ancient ancestors, now a paperweight. She’d dug it up herself. She often imagined some ancient ancestor spending countless hours rummaging through human ruins to find the perfectly shaped piece of glass for a spearpoint, lashing it to a bamboo stick, and taking down huge, ferocious beasts like rabbits, chihuahuas, and maybe, heroically, a pre-domesticated cat, before they were tamed by those brave catadores. They knew it happened — they’d dug up cat fossils with embedded spearheads. Wow.

Taped to the wall on the right was her top treasure, an actual eagleskin feathered cap once worn by Ambra the Aviator, the first rat to fly around the globe, one hundred years ago. Zuk would never have adventures like that. In her excavations they’d mostly dug up old pottery shards, not exactly something to get excited about. Stop the presses, I have a bit of pottery!

Smiling, she took a sip of sassafras juice from a clay cup, and imagined its shards being dug up someday by some futuristic ratropologist. Maybe it would end up in a museum. How boring.

At least she had her cute toadskin cap, warts and all. It had cost her a week’s pay. She carefully readjusted it over her head.

“Why aren’t you typing?”

This time Zuk did fall out of her stool. The boss snorted.

“Sorry, was planning the big climax.” She jumped back on her stool and attacked the keyboard with a frenzy.

“Hurry up. Words are money.” He withdrew.

As bosses go, he wasn’t totally terrible, as long as Zuk made her deadlines. When she missed one… well, tail-yanking wasn’t so bad once you got used to it. There simply weren’t that many jobs in ratropology, so she had to take what she could get. That’s why she’d joined Emca Writers, a writing mill that churned out sensationalist articles for the tabloids. She was chair of the Ratropology Department.

Or rather, she was the Ratropology Department. Sighing, she took another sip of sassafras.

Ratty Magazine had solicited another article on ancient rats and humans. Why the recent fascination with this long-dead species of huge bipeds? Recent research indicated that early rat began its million-year ascent during the age of humans. The two had lived in harmonic symbiosis for much of their joint history, with humans the alpha partner.

The details were sketchy, extrapolated from the few crumbling human and rat fossils and artifacts that had survived the periodic purges. Modern rats simply did not like the idea that their prehistoric ancestors were primitive creatures that lived off the scraps of humans, but that’s what the evidence showed, no matter what the populist leaders screamed from their pulpits. So, of course, they got rid of the evidence.

Zuk glanced out the window at the homeless, hatless creatures outside that lived off the scraps of society. Little had changed.

Humans had done what rats were only now attempting — they’d gone to the Moon. It was hard to believe that something like that could have been accomplished a million years ago by those huge, buffoonish apes, but that was the only explanation for photos taken of the Moon’s surface by robot explorers. Amidst the mysterious objects found at locations around the Moon were the unmistakable footprints of human shoes, preserved on the unchanging surface.

She needed to finish the article but was tired. Time to get energized. She hopped off her stool. There was no room to really turn in her cramped cubicle so she stood on her hind legs and spun about, and then squeezed out the cubicle door. Had the cubicle been designed for dwarf mice? She scampered to the end of the hallway outside to the office lounge and jumped on the squeaky exercise wheel against the wall. A few minutes of frantic running woke her up. Ideas for the article popped into her head as she ran, including the perfect title: “Humans on Trial: Guilty!” That would grab readers’ attention. With the public all abuzz about the idea of humans on the Moon, she would write about how humans tested their space machines by sending primitive rats into space as test subjects, doomed to die. Those monsters!

That would be the gist of the article, and there were no humans around to rebut her theory. No one really knew what happened to them, but their demise had been fortunate as rats then evolved, scurrying to the top of the intellectual food chain.

She stopped at the bathroom. There were so many droppings on the floor that she had to hold her nose and tiptoe about — how long had it been since they’d changed the newspapers on the floor? She checked and saw that it was dated from last week. Yuck.

Then she stopped by the office water bottle, where the writers liked to congregate until the boss kicked them back to their cubicles. To rationalize her visit she took a few drops from the water tube.

“The boss gave me two stories to write!” exclaimed the albino Jik with the usual big grin. The journalist wore a red rabbitskin hat with a hawk feather stuck in it. “The Bigtail sightings up in the mountains, and guard shrews that turn on their masters.”

“At least you get to use your degree,” said the black-furred Mab, the haggard-looking accountant with a green crabshell hat. “I’ve got a PhD in theoretical math. My dissertation on the equivalency of mass and energy won the Remy Prize for math, for cat’s sake. And the boss has me doing time allocations, product optimization, and calculating bathroom newspaper overhead — can you believe it? All with the wonderful powers of arithmetic.” He snorted. “I’m bookkeeping for a boss who thinks the Unified Field Theory means buying up the local sports fields for furryball.”

“He has me writing about how the stars and planets predict career success,” said Axax, the resident astrology writer. The brown with white splatches rat wore a chipmunkskin turban with an embedded black coal over the forehead. “The stars told me that since Jupiter and Saturn were in the same quadrant, I should take this job.” Axax spat on the ground. “The stars lied to me. Don’t tell my readers.”

Zuk was about to share her gripes as well, but just then the janitor scurried into the room, with a hat made from folded newspaper. It was a bit torn but had been repaired with tape. At least Zuk and the other writers weren’t at the bottom of the tail-yanking hierarchy!

“Hey, janitor,” Zuk said. “Could you put fresh newspaper in the bathroom? It’s really bad in there.”

The janitor stared at Zuk, which made her uncomfortable. She looked away.

“What’s my name?” the janitor finally asked in his strange Eastern accent.

“Um,” was all Zuk could squeak. The other writers averted their eyes. One of them coughed.

“Anyone?” the janitor roared. “I didn’t think so. I have a PhD in marine biology and you want me to change bathroom newspaper?”

“Sorry,” Zuk said. “If you’re a marine biologist, why are you working here?”

“If you are ratropologist, why are you working here?” The janitor kicked the wall, leaving a dent, then turned and left.

“I guess we’re all in the same bottom burrow of the world,” said Mab the accountant.

Zuk was about to respond when she realized Jik the Journalist was sobbing, the big smile long gone.

“I went to my college reunion yesterday,” Jik said, sobbing louder. “They’d all read my story last week on wererats… and they laughed at me!”

“I’m sure they—” began Axax.

“GET BACK TO WORK!” roared the Boss. He gave Jik a tail yank.

They scurried back to their cubicles, sawdust flying. The boss was definitely part cat.

Zuk hopped back on her stool and prepared to type. The stench from outside was as bad as that in the bathroom, but she was used to it, and once you got used to it, it was better than the stale office air. She took a deep breath and glanced outside.

One of the poor homeless, an aged one, stared at her while gnawing on a slice of moldy bread, balding head exposed for all. There should be some sort of community decency standard! The rat looked away and another’s bare head popped out of a hole in the piles of garbage, holding its prize in its mouth—a chunk of gristly meat, probably soaked in the spit of some higher-class rat who’d spat it out. The two chattered back and forth with the cheerfulness of the clueless, their disheveled, filthy fur blowing about in a breeze. Could the Ludy of two hundred thousand years ago have been that primitive? How could anyone live like that? Zuk quivered her whiskers. What type of life was that? At least put a hat on. Jeezers.

Shaking her head, she took another sip of sassafras and went back to typing.

Soon the first draft was done. She stared at the computer screen. Now it was time to embellish. Spreading such misinformation went against all her scientific training, and it killed her to do so, but what choice was there? It was the difference between a page-turner and an eye-glazer, between selling and rejection, between a successful lower middle-class life… and living outside in the garbage.

No way. She slapped her tail against the floor.

“Where is it?” the boss squeaked from the entrance, jarring Zuk from her thoughts. Even a cat couldn’t sneak up that quietly.

“I’ll have it in an hour,” Zuk said.

“Half an hour,” the boss said. With a hairy nose wiggle — did he even own a comb? — he turned and left, tail sweeping side to side.

But… half an hour? Time to buckle down.

She tapped away, about humans ejecting rats into space to see how long they could survive a vacuum, lowering oxygen levels to see when they’d black out and suffocate. Testing how many G-forces it took to kill them. She described the poor rats as their eyes bulged, their faces turned blue, their bodies squeezed thin and bleeding, their bones breaking. She had the poor rats stare lovingly into each other’s eyes as they died. And she gave them exotic striped racoonskin spacehats. Of course, pre-civilized rats went bareheaded, but what’s wrong with a little literary license?

Her tail drooped. But readers would eat it up. Maybe she’d get a raise.

If those stupid rats outside would just stop chattering, maybe she could focus and get the article done on time. She glanced out the window. How come they got to run around doing whatever they wanted, while she was stuck in a cubicle? She was the one with an education! She’d earned what they had.

Even the angry janitor was above the homeless. So why were they so happy?

As the sun sank outside, the homeless rats — there were three of them now — shared a pizza crust, that ancient treat that Zuk so loved. She preferred it in its most basic form, flattened bread covered by coagulated cat milk, mashed tomatoes, and spices. Were those the very crusts she’d discarded at lunch the day before, after eating the tasty cheesy parts? Stale, leftover pizza crusts. She wondered if they were chewy or crunchy.

“WELL?” the boss roared from the cubicle entrance, flexing his fingers. “You want a yanking?”

“Give me twenty minutes,” Zuk said, though she barely heard him as she gulped down the last of her sassafras juice. That stench from outside — if you really parsed it, you could make out the individual yucky flavors. The outside rats didn’t seem to mind it. Perhaps it was an acquired taste.

“Ten,” said the boss. He glanced at the Ludy poster for a moment. “Lovely picture.” His rose scent now drowned out the outside smell.

“And I have another job for you tomorrow,” he said, “about primitive humans living on the moon who’ll eat our astronauts. Some nut job’s been posting all sorts of claims about this online, says they’re fifty feet tall with big, razor teeth, and they’ve evolved so they can breathe vacuum. Lots of quotes you can use — make up the rest, as usual. Remember, you make your deadlines, and this job is yours… forever.”

She stared after him as he left, thinking about what he’d said.

* * *

You can’t go easy on these writers, the boss thought. Gotta keep on them to make product, even if that means yanking a few tails. Tough love was good for them.

He knew that his employees mocked his overuse of rose perfume. His wife had worn rose perfume right up to her death, and he liked the constant reminder of her. But now his employees were his family. But like his wife, why did they keep leaving him? He gave them everything! He sighed, knowing his sacrifices would never be appreciated. Perhaps he should work them harder.

After ten minutes he tiptoed back to Zuk’s cubicle. He didn’t like going there, as she had a habit of leaving the window open, letting in that unbearable stench from outside that no amount of rose perfume could suppress. It was worse than the office bathroom, but he, of course, had a private executive bathroom that was kept spotless. And that poster over her desk of old rat bones was downright creepy.

But he loved scaring her with his sudden, silent entrances.

“Well?” he exclaimed as he scampered in.

The cubicle was empty. Had she gone home early? He’d fire her! But no, he needed her more than she needed him — thank the great cats she didn’t know that. But she’d get a tail-yanking.

Was the article done? Why was her desk covered with the shattered shards of her cup? And was that her cheap toadskin cap sitting on top of her computer? He slapped his tail against the cubicle wall, tearing off a corner of the Ludy poster. Writers are so temperamental.

The boss looked at the computer screen, where there had been a draft of the article.

It said, “File deleted.”

“What!” He frantically pulled up the trash folder, but it had been emptied.

Then the boss heard a familiar voice through the open window. His jaw dropped, and his prized moleskin cap fell to the floor.

Outside, Zuk and three rats, all hatless, chattered back and forth gleefully as they shared a pizza crust.

 

* * *

About the Author

Larry Hodges, of Germantown, MD, has over 220 short story sales and four SF novels. “Rat Race” is his second sale to Zooscape. (The other was “Philosopher Rex.”) He’s a graduate of the Odyssey and Taos Toolbox Writers Workshops, a member of Codexwriters, and a ping-pong aficionado. As a professional writer, he has 22 books and over 2,300 published articles in over 200 different publications. He’s also a member of the US Table Tennis Hall of Fame, and claims to be the best table tennis player in Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association, and the best science fiction writer in USA Table Tennis!!! He’s also had quite a few pets, including (cumulatively) 3 dogs, 1 cat, 50+ gerbils, 30+ snakes, zillions of fish (including sea horses and sea anemones with accompanying clownfish), a few hamsters, box turtles, toads, and crayfish, and a parrot, chinchilla, snapping turtle, iguana, and a tegu . . . but never a rat (so far!). Visit him at www.larryhodges.com.

by H. Robert Barland

“Adventure drew her forth, a siren’s song that sang a melody of new places, new things, new experiences. She drew me with her.”

Her scent was that of the warm grass of summer. And sunflowers. I still smell her now, I think, but the scent dwindles as does the image of her in my mind. I try to hold onto it, pull her grey furred shape into focus, but the more I try, the more she slips away. The ghost of her memory wafts through my paws liked winter fog. I wince. Concentrating… it makes my head ache.

To keep her from disappearing altogether, I direct my focus elsewhere, to the machine, the Contraption. It sits a tail-length beyond the safety of my hide. The gleaming steel bar is poised to strike. Today it is baited with a fat pumpkin seed. It’s a trick. I see through its false promise. I turn back into my hide, to await the day when the Contraption works its magic again, when it transforms from a machine of pain to one of wonder.

Oh, I know they think me mad, my fur matted, my teeth grown so long. They think the blow to my head  — that split open my furred scalp to the bone and cracked the same — shook something loose. They are wrong. They don’t know the Contraption’s promise. The secret that took her from me.

For now.

I remember her. And that day. A frolicker, that’s how I’d describe her. She loved to frolic. The mediocrity of walking wasn’t for her. Whenever we went anywhere, it was always at a run. And she’d jump. She was fearless and lean. She soared when she leapt, laughing all the while. I couldn’t help but laugh, too.

It had been her idea to sneak into the human’s house that day. Adventure drew her forth, a siren’s song that sang a melody of new places, new things, new experiences. She drew me with her. I loved her and her frolics. How could I not?

We widened the gap in the wall of the human’s house. In front of us lay the device I would come to call the Contraption. I wasn’t fearless like her. I was wary and remained in the wall, always the shadow to her light, but she tumbled thought the hole and ran to investigate the machine. I could smell newly-sawn wood and oiled metal. Such smells worried me, but not her. Under those alien smells, was that of sunflower seeds. She loved sunflower seeds, her namesake. I remember the way she’d looked back at me hidden in the wall; the way her whiskers twitched with delight, as she poked her head under the raised arm of the Contraption and began to nibble at the seed on the plate.

That moment is lost in the fog of my head. I remember the snap, or at least, I think I do. I remember being startled and falling. When I awoke, dried blood matted the fur on my head, and she was gone.

The Contraption remained, its arm raised again. A crumb of fragrant cheese now replaced the sunflower seeds. Pain filled my heart. I could still smell her scent mixed with that of the Contraption. I’d sagged to the ground and fell into a shuddering, fevered sleep. It was then the Contraption spoke to me, offering a dark promise of reunion.

* * *

The snap wakes me. Some idiot pup, barely out of the nest, has tried to take the seed. I hear the Contraption being bashed against the wall. I poke my head out of my hide. The steel arm has caught the pup across the back and his hind legs are limp. Though diminutive, he had the strength of youth. His struggles have flipped the Contraption over. His chest rises and falls, his breathing laboured. His bulging eyes catch mine, pleading and I see that strength fading with each breath.

I do nothing. I will do nothing. He does not comprehend the importance of the Contraption. I turn away before the rise and fall of his chest ceases.

He has been judged, and he is unworthy.

* * *

The Contraption snaps again. This time I do not look. Crouching in the dark, I turn in circles. My claws have shredded the surface of the beam. The wood looks like fur. Her fur. My stomach issues a complaint, and I am forced to obey. I nose my way out of my hole. Pain lances through my skull as the weeping wound on my head brushes the edge. I suck in a hiss and wait for the pain to recede, a throbbing that undulates in time with the beating of my heart.

By the time I reach her, the doe is already dead. She was old, exhausted. She would have died soon anyway. Blood trickles from her snout, seeping into the coarsely sawn wood of the Contraption.

The metallic scent of the blood obscures that of my Sunflower. Anger flares within me. How dare this doe allow her filthy blood to contaminate Sunflower’s memory? I rip bread out of the dead doe’s mouth, plunging the soft morsel into my maw. It is wet. I grimace at the sensation and remove it. It is stained red. I hadn’t tasted the blood, or if I had, I hadn’t cared enough for it to register. The blood glistens, crimson in the dark light.

My stomach complains again. I retreat to my hide. I eat, thinking of my mate. Sunflower had been chosen, chosen to go wherever the Contraption sent the worthy. It had to be a special place. She deserved that and it couldn’t be anything less.

I must be patient, to wait for that wondrous day, when the sunflower seeds appear again and when the Contraption will sing its song to me. A siren song of sunflower seeds and spring steel. I will go to it and be judged worthy.

And I will see her again.

 

* * *

About the Author

H. Robert Barland is a teacher, Viking re-enactor and black-belt martial artist. A former climber, film extra, and resident of the UK, he has now returned to Newcastle, Australia where he lives with his wife and two boys. He considers himself well adapted for life on land and can be followed on BlueSky (@hrobertbarland.bsky.social), Instagram (@h.robertbarland) and X (@hrobertbarland).