Torn Between

They arrived at Deadmouth in the early hours, a black mark against summer breeze and lilac skies. Ocean waves attacked the cave. Thunder boiled beneath the water. When Scylla closed her eyes and breathed deep, the whole world smelled seafoam green. She leaned against the railing of The Nomad, chains rattling iron, and tried to relax her rage. This wasn’t home, but it was close. A single, piercing scream away. Beside her, Drake scowled with the half of his face that still worked. His fist squeezed knuckle-white around an iron pistol.

“Watch yourself, witch.”

Scylla cast him a bitter glare. She could almost taste his rage-sweat. Could almost feel the blood pumping through the vein on his forehead. Instead, her tongue burned with iron. The lock kept it quiet.

“You’ll die before you betray us again.”

Unable to talk, the sea sprite rattled her chains. The clink was musical. Waves crashed into The Nomad, listing with just a little more danger than was expected, and whirlpools formed around the hull. Scylla pointed a finger at one. It disappeared in a blink. She made a wish. Whirlpools made better wishes than shooting stars—they actually came true. One by one, Scylla vanished the dangers for her captor, untilthe pirate shiprested safe outside the cursed cave. Drake grunted a sound that may have been approval. He did not lower his gun.

“Good, but not good enough,” he said. “Not by a long shot.”

Scylla held up six fingers. The captain struck her with the butt of his weapon.

Drake was a harsh man with a soft background, the kind of boy that grows up never wanting yet always needing more. Eventually the thefts piled up so high it was either the seas or the noose. He choose piracy. In appearance, he stood tall, stone-faced and barrel-chested, dressed in black and covered in scar tissue. His knuckles were either white in restraint or stained red with blood. A fear aura draped his body like a wizard’s robe. His claim to strength was both in the magical and the mythical, though Scylla knew better. Four months ago, both halves of his face worked.

Four months ago, The Nomad carried a full crew. But 20 men had a strange way of becoming 14, and Scylla knew Deadmouth would claim the rest. Whirlpools granted wishes. Cursed caves contained cursed treasure. The sea sprite looked up. A small cloud hung softly in the sky. She was almost home.

Boots stomped as the rest of the crew filtered onto the hull. Like all pirates, they were a ragged bunch: hairy, broken, all kindness replaced with brute strength. A few moved like walking hangovers while most skulked like crows ready to rend. Those that didn’t carry guns kept swords or long knives, not capable of killing Scylla but sharp enough to cause pain. When the voyage began, they had taken turns, but now they gave the sea sprite a wide berth. It turned out, women and pirate ships made for ill luck. Rigging ropes became nooses, and dry decks slipped as if wet. Cooked food spoiled with poison. Scylla showed them her six fingers. When they cringed with fear, she grinned. It hurt to smile, burned with iron, but she couldn’t help herself. Not here, not when she was so close to freedom.

“Frhyftsyrz,” a skinny creature covered in coral jewelry sighed. He waved a wand. Scylla fell to her knees, wrists burning, her skin cracking apart. She wanted to scream but couldn’t. Her entire body felt like a ceramic bowl that had just been knocked from a counter.

The ship’s wizard jabbed a boney finger into the back of her neck. If the rest of the crew were crows, Roland was a cat. He liked to play with his food.

“You are not as close to freedom as you think you are,” he said. “Not here, not ever.”

Scylla tried to rise, but Drake put the barrel of his gun to the back of her head. It smoked against her skin. A whirlpool appeared beneath the ship, and after a nod from the wizard, Scylla made it vanish.

“I wish,” Roland said, his voice a whispered hiss. Scylla’s blood ran cold. “I wish for all your little wishes to come untrue, fae. Every. Single. One.”

Scylla screamed—at the world, at the injustice, at being so close to revenge yet so far away. They had captured her far from home, a small sprite with a big curse trying to flee the deaths that followed like a shadow. Even now she saw them, the possibilities. It was so easy to slip aboard a ship, to hit one’s head or plunge overboard for no reason. Bad weather. Bad health. One more could yet die. She looked out at the water, with its white crests and salt smell, and saw no more whirlpools. Then she looked up. The cloud was still there. They were safe to enter Deadmouth, but they were not safe to leave.

Dressed in grime-stained white, the sea sprite rose and brushed herself off. Her chains clinked. She was a small thing, no taller than Drake’s shoulder, skinny, with sickly-blonde hair and dark green eyes. Fish scales covered her body in patches of rash. She smelled like wet dog. But she had enough rage left to make them all scream, and soon, they would. Roland controlled the sea, but he did not control the clouds.

“Let’s go,” Drake ordered. “Get the boats loaded. Ropes, torches, bags. We have until sunset before the tides return in full. I want to be rich before then.”

What was left of the crew cheered. There was nothing in the cave to be afraid of, not when Drake held them so. Beside the captain, the wizard gazed with black eyes, his vision not on the present but the future.

Scylla needed to kill them both, but she only had enough magic left for one.

*

Roland threw her into the last boat with a rough hand and a muttered curse: “Arytigu.” Scylla felt her body go numb, turn to glass on the outside while her insides cracked with desert. He pushed; she fell. It was hard to instill fear when pain made her whimper like an injured animal. Roland was a dark wizard, more skeleton than man, with skin so thin she could see every blue, spidery vein in his body. Most of the crew said he was a dead thing brought back to life by his own magic, a Lich who kept his blood pumping with curses. Scylla thought it might be true. For their entire voyage, she never saw a death possibility around him. Not even during the big squall that had almost sunk the ship. Cursed, the man was uncursable.

Her teeth chattered against the lock in her mouth. With her tongue locked away, all she could do was rest against the floor and wait.

“You could at least look grateful,” Roland said. He nudged her with his boot. “To serve a king is an honor.”

“I am not a king yet,” Drake said from the bow. He used an oar to push their boat around a dangerous chunk of rock. The mouth of Deadmouth was filled with them, jagged teeth ready to chomp at any ship that got too close. The wind whistled with strange direction.

But with Scylla on board, the water obeyed. With the wizard on board, she obeyed.

“Not yet, but soon,” Roland said. “I see two paths, and one of them is you on a throne.”

Drake smiled, but only with half his face. “And the other?”

Roland shrugged. “Death is always the second path. It does not concern me.”

Even with a water sprite captive, it still took hours to navigate the jaws of Deadmouth. Tired, angry, the pirates beached upon a cracked bed of white sand. It scraped at the boats with a rattling sound, bone on bone, and the wind shifted to a colder temperature.

“Dysmf,” Roland said.

Scylla got up. Her body ached. A crest of water washed to the shore, and she stepped towards it. Drake stopped her with a point of his gun.

“No,” he hissed. “No. You do not get to enjoy this.”

“Look!” one of the crew called. “The … the color’s changed. It’s….”

The view of Deadmouth from The Nomad was a tapestry of sunrise, ocean green, and speckled rocks. The view from Deadmouth saw a land of black, white, and grey. Not a single speck of color could be seen from the cave entrance. The Nomad rested at anchor atop a grey ocean, its sails the proper black but its hull as monochrome as the water. The rocks, once mossy green and strange shades of brown, now stood dull white.

Roland stepped into the sea, his hands stretched out. He still held onto color.

“A trick!” His coral jewelry clacked together. He shrugged at the water, and because Scylla was his slave, the water obeyed. Then he pointed at the sky, at the little cloud that hadn’t been there an hour ago. “Cheap magic, and nothing more.”

“But the gold,” another of the crew tried to ask.

“Gold is gold,” Drake grunted. He turned to Scylla. “But not all treasure is gold, is it witch?”

Scylla stepped back. She watched the cloud drift closer. Fear overtook rage, not for herself but for the weather. Her chains clanked. The wizard was amiss, knew something he wasn’t supposed to.

“Good,” Drake said. He patted at his chest, where under his shirt, he held the key to her. “That’s more like it.

“Let’s go!”

Drake used his gun like a king’s scepter: He gestured and watched his kingdom obey. The crew marched, each carrying sacks and empty chests ripe for filling.

Roland sauntered behind, more spells on his lips. Scylla knew what he was doing. He was crafting another key.

*

Deadmouth widened the further they went, growing deeper, wider, and more desolate. Their torches burned with cold light. Soon, the sounds of the ocean faded away, replaced with a stagnant emptiness that skittered along the stalactites. Footsteps trudged along the ground. Though the cave was empty, the pirates kept their voices low, each taking his turn to glance up, at the jagged fang-shaped rocks reaching for them. They wanted to know why it felt like something evil was watching. No water dripped, but strange, cloud-like fog swirled along the ceiling. Scylla watched her captors breathe deep, drawing in stale air and letting out little puffs of moisture. She wished for the water. She needed water.

“How long,” one started to ask.

“Minutes,” Roland said. “No cave is this deep or wide. We are being tricked. I see through it, and now, so do you.”

The pirates nodded, but none relaxed. It didn’t feel like minutes, and the weight of the cave tricked the heart into thinking the place was a tomb. Iron burned against Scylla’s teeth. Iron burned at her wrists. When she stumbled, the butt of an iron pistol burned against her face.

“Move!” Drake ordered.

A scar-tissue of a man named Herch picked her up, only to shove her forward. Scylla tripped over a rock and landed hard. Everyone laughed when Roland told her to, “Dysmf,” and his magic forced her to her feet like a puppet.

“Out front,” Roland said. He waved her ahead. “You lead. Find all the rocks worth tripping over, so we don’t have to.”

Scylla moved to obey but a heavy hand grabbed her shoulder and yanked.

“No,” Drake said. The light from a torch caught his cheek, making it look sallow. Dead. “She stays next to me.”

Roland shrugged. “If you wish, your highness. But she is out of tricks. Six are dead, and six is all she can kill. She is harmless.”

“No one is harmless. Not here, not in this cave.”

Herch took the lead, a torch in one hand and a pistol in the other. Confidence kept his shoulders back, his head high, but the uneven ground made him walk with a slow, shuffling gait. Scylla saw possibilities swirl around him. He could trip on a rock and crack his skull open; he could blunder into a stalagmite, barely illuminated. She could make his pistol go off, blowing his hand apart and bleeding him dry before anyone could save him. All of these things would please her, but none would help her. No, she needed a wish. And if she could not get a wish, she needed to kill Drake. He had her key.

Because Roland was wrong and the captain was right, she was not out of tricks. She had one more left to play.

Her sister had the other.

*

The squall struck The Nomad with all the power of an angry God. The sky blinked from clear to storm-cloud black in an instant, and rain pelted the hull so hard it sounded like rocks beating against wood. Men ran for rigging ropes or cover depending on where they stood while Drake screamed orders no one could hear. Roland promised the captain a crown and a kingship, but the weather cared for neither. He was too mortal for that. Scylla watched them fight to survive, following the possibilities with her mind. Any one person could fall from the ship, get struck by lightning, snag against a rope. It was early in the voyage, and she had only killed two so far. She was hungry for more.

They deserved to suffer. Every. Last. One.

Scylla found her victim, but before she could take the sacrifice, make the man disappear in a puff of violence, the storm snapped a piece of rope. It whiplashed into the pirate hard enough to tear him in two. No one heard his bones break, his flesh rend, but they all saw the storm carry his torso over the railing. The rain washed the rest away.

Scylla ran for a better look, hoping to see a whirlpool where the body had fallen. She had wishes to make. Instead, she found dark waves and angry white foam. The ocean swallowed the body.

“I wish!” she screamed. “I wish they were all dead!”

She looked around, saw the possibilities through a haze of rainwater. The storm drenched her from head to toe, saturated her with so much water that despite Roland and his magic, she felt powerful. So many could die today, yet only four more by her hand. She began choosing targets.

But like all squalls, this one vanished as quickly as it appeared. A thousand possibilities shrunk to just a handful, and every set of eyes locked with hers. Scylla held up her hands in surrender, but to The Nomad, they were red with guilt. And blood.

Calm, kinglike despite bleeding from a fresh wound that made half his face look like exposed meat, Drake walked over to Scylla and shot her twice in the leg. The iron burrowed deep into bone. It would take four days of pain before she found the courage to pull the bullets free. By then, Roland had stolen her magic with curses, and all the pirates had threatened to throw her overboard.

She was bad luck. She was a witch. She had conjured the storm. She would kill again.

With the temperament of a pirate, Drake hauled Scylla to the deck and forced her down. Roland hissed with magic. From a deep pocket, he produced an iron lock.

“You are mine,” the wizard shouted, his arms moving, his jewelry clicking together with the pageantry of it all. “And now, all of the ocean is mine.”

Scylla screamed until she couldn’t.

*

From the outside, Deadmouth appeared a small, sharp thing unworthy of its many rumors and legends. Now deep within, the pirates began to reconsider. They weren’t exploring a cave but a chasm, one with cathedral-like ceilings and a thousand whispered riches. Jewels glimmered in the deeper stalagmites. When Roland touched them, they burst with color: sapphires, rubies, garnets, and strange, square-shaped hunks of metal made of rainbows. The gems came freely from their homes, and the pirates rushed them into their sacks and chests. Deadmouth contained enough treasure to buy Drake his kingdom and then some.

When the shiny rocks were claimed, Drake ordered them further in. Water dripped up ahead, and even the most cold-hearted pirate thought it sounded like gold.

“What is wonderful about the fey,” Roland said, giving Scylla a jab with his wand. “Is that they must follow rules. Tell me, why do you collect treasure?”

Scylla scowled.

“For pleasure? For fun?” The wizard shook his head. “Or is it because you are nothing more than dogs collecting bones?”

Spite made the sea sprite defiant, but magic kept her docile. Were it not for the lock in her mouth, she would have threatened the man first, and then spoke the truth second. Scylla wanted treasure to buy her way to womanhood, to shed her scales and her rage. Fae hated, and fae played, but they had holes for hearts. Only the desperate horded treasure, and Scylla knew desperation better than most. It was why she had left her home, why she had journeyed so far away with a promise, a hope, and one last contract.

Deadmouth ended in a sheer rock wall decorated with old paintings, tapestries, and anything else of value that could be hung. Fog swirled around the ground like snakes, coiling and twisting between mounds of gold. Even in the colorless world, it shined, radiated more wealth than a God could spend. Drake grabbed Scylla’s arm with painful fingers, only to let go.

“It’s more than I ever dreamed,” he whispered.

Roland shook his head. “A fancy, your highness, but I’ve stepped into your dreams. They are bigger than this.” He watched the fog with a hunter’s eyes, his hands flexing not with claws but spells. “We will make them bigger.”

“Is the key ready?”

“Yes.”

With a nod from their captain, the remaining pirates descended upon the golden horde, whooping, hollering, all fear forgotten. They moved as if invincible. Scylla watched them plunder. She hated them all the more.

“You,” Drake said, speaking more with his gun than his voice. “Make her appear.”

Scylla felt her skin crack with fear. She tried to shrug. Roland spat magic.

“Do it.”

Scylla shook her head. She tried to look confused and not terrified. Her gaze betrayed her. Drake followed it to the fog, and to the cloud hidden in the fog.

“We know, witch,” the pirate captain said. “And we know who she is, too.”

“Right on time,” Roland said. He reached into a deep pocket and pulled forth an iron key. “Just like we dreamed.”

The cloud grew in size, twisted bigger, brighter, until even the treasure-hungry pirates took notice. Gold fell from hands to plink against the ground, and heavy sacks slumped half full.

“Captain!” Herch called. “Captain, what’s that?”

“Treasure,” Drake said. “Worth more than every ounce of gold in this place.”

Charybdis grew in size, swirled and spun on strange axis, a tornado without rules. Scylla tried to scream at her, to run away, to leave before it was too late, but the lock kept her tongue swollen with pain. She stepped away. Her chains burned hot against her skin. Roland laughed. He held up his key with one hand, and then two fingers with the other. No possibilities swirled around him.

“Water and wind,” he said. “A kingdom that is the entire sea. All seven oceans.”

“Every ship that crosses my path will be torn between you two,” Drake said. “Except that’s not true. They’ll be torn between me.”

“You’ll make a good king,” Roland agreed. Then his face broke into a snarl. “Pnru! Grra Qsom smf pnru!”

Scylla dropped to the floor in convulsions, just as Charybdis made to strike. The spell struck the cloud and stopped it cold. A crack like glass breaking echoed throughout Deadmouth, and in the midst of that angry storm, a spirit fell to the ground. She landed in a heap, a thin, broken creature with malnourished limbs and white hair. Roland dug into the many pockets of his person and found a set of iron chains.

“We’ve learned,” he said.

“Do it,” Drake ordered.

Everyone gathered in close to watch. Charybdis stood on shaky legs, only for Roland to throw her to the ground. Scylla needed to kill him, but no possibilities formed. Herch shoved her into the ground. He could still die. The pirate next to him could still die. She watched them tear at her sister’s home, take the treasure that might one day buy freedom; she heard them threaten and promise and laugh.

Charybdis screamed in pain. “No!” she cried, her voice a starved sound. Roland grabbed her by the tongue. Drake shot her in the stomach.

Scylla hunted for deaths, the sacrifices that were her burden, but none would help her. Only Charybdis could sink full ships. She hungered, and hunger killed more than hate. It’s why Scylla could only take six. No, she needed a wish. Her hands dug into dirt, gold coins, and sharp rocks.

A possibility struck her then, just as Roland was clamping his iron prison around the air sprite. Scylla could harm herself—she could spend a death on her own blood. It would flow. It would twist into the ground, where it would disappear. The whirlpools at Deadmouth granted wishes. With shackled hands, she reached for a sharp rock.

“Good luck,” Herch whispered. He kicked her. No one paid them any mind. The ground was hard, and the scattered treasure made a makeshift basin. “You can’t stop a king.”

In a clumsy flash, Scylla jabbed the rock into her wrist. The possibility vanished. She was out of tricks. Pain dug deep, and blood flowed free, spilling into the ground. She begged it to obey her. Far away, crouched over her sister, Roland spun and waved with the coral pageantry of his magic. Scylla watched the movements. Her blood followed suit.

“Hey!” Herch called. Roland almost stopped what he was doing to see. Drake looked back in alarm.

“Watch her!” he barked.

Herch bent down, his knife flashing in the strange, colorless light, but it was too late. Scylla’s blood spun a single circle and vanished. To Deadmouth, it was a whirlpool. She made a wish.

“Charybdis,” she roared around the lock in her mouth. The words slurred, and the iron burned two of her teeth to pus. “I wish you could kill them!”

The fragile, starving girl vanished in a puff of tornado. An angry cloud formed in her wake, a twisting cyclone big enough to fill the entire cave. Pirates screamed. Shots rang out. Roland yelled magic words that didn’t work, and then a hand reached out from the center of the tornado and yanked. The wizard flew into its maw, into a swirl of angry clouds and sharp rocks that were teeth. Blood fell like rain.

Herch ran towards his king, his gun firing at the monster cloud, his sword flailing. Charybdis grabbed him next. They all watched him fly into the air, never to be seen again.

Panic overcame the remaining pirates, which made them all the easier to kill. If Scylla was an angry flood, then Charybdis was a revolted God. One by one, she picked the pirates up and devoured them, until all but Drake remained.

He tackled Scylla to the ground and put his iron pistol to her head.

“Do something!” he roared. “I command it.”

Scylla raged. She had her magic back, but she couldn’t kill him. The six deaths were spent. She could, however, hurt him. Make him scream. Make him wish he were dead until he was. She flailed with her sharp rock and caught the pirate captain in the arm. Blood spilled. Red. Iron. Water. She grabbed at the water within and yanked. Drake howled as a chalice of blood spun from his arm like thread from a ball of yarn. His gun fell to the ground.

With a delicate, cloud hand, Charybdis reached into Drake’s shirt and found his key. She handed it to Scylla.

“No!” Drake roared, but he was already being lifted off the ground, and into the tornado maw. The would-be king became food.

*

“Welcome back,” Charybdis said. She walked barefoot among the wreckage, her pale feet collecting cuts and leaving beige footprints. “I missed you.”

“Yes,” Scylla said. Talking felt strange, painful. Everything was swollen. The word whistled through her missing teeth. “I am home.”

Charybdis held out her hands, and Scylla fell into the hug. She was too angry to weep, so she did not. She could hear her sister’s stomach growl.

“You’re not human.”

“No,” Scylla said. “No, it didn’t work. It wasn’t enough.”

The air sprite let go, stepped back so she could look around her plundered, stained home. It held enough treasure to buy the world. “Do you think there will ever be enough?”

Scylla shook her head.

“I am hungry,” the air sprite said. “So hungry.”

She fell to the ground in a heap, letting gravity find her resting spot. Gold trinkets cut her skin, but Charybdis didn’t care. She did not feel pain. Scylla joined her. She ran her fingers through a stain of blood and let her magic find the water in it, twisting it into little shapes. First she made Drake, then she made Roland. Then she drank the blood and hated.

“I’m still angry,” Scylla said.

“I know.”

“I wish I could drown the world.”

“I know.”

Charybdis reached for Scylla’s hand. Her grip was weak, starved, a child’s hand with a thousand corpses staining the fingernails. Scylla leaned into her sister and squeezed. She wished she could feel more than fear and rage, because deep down, she knew this was love.

“I’m still angry,” she whispered. She was too angry to weep.

“I know.” Charybdis said. “I know.”

Ov Worms and Dirt

“Go ahead, boy. Stick yer head in the grime.”

Eadwin looked at Brother Consul with a thousand pounds of fear in his eyes. His face paled to the color of old candle wax.

“It won’t bite,” the eldest monk encouraged. Over-sized robes draped his body, regal in shape but not color. They tied at the waist with old bailing twine. “Do it. It’s time.”

“But—”

“Please. Ya need to see this place as I see it. As we all do.”

He spoke with command, not the magic kind but earned respect. His voice held a kindness betrayed by the sour, worn-away gravel from decades of chronic cough. Eventually they’d all sound like him: bone weary, throat sore, and bored with life at the Monastery. Like him, their hair would fall out; like him, their limbs would grow thin and weak despite the daily labors of keeping the catacombs in operation.

Like him, they would all die.

Brother Consul’s bloated lips cracked into a half smile that promised nothing bad would truly happen. The grime was just another bit of boredom, in the end. A zombie routine. Like scrubbing the floors or keeping the furnaces fed.

“Okay,” Eadwin said. He coughed. Something tickled the back of his throat, but that was routine now, too. He looked into the grime.

It stilled as a pool of opaque grease. Magic swirled underneath, deep below the ground where the furnaces burned, but on top, the contents in the stone cauldron did not move. The grime was as smooth as fresh glass. It was hard to tell if it was brown, green, grey, or black. It smelled like stale dirt. Runes rimmed the cauldron, etched with a sloppy hand and filled with the tired glow of magic at its final fade.

“What … what should I say? What should I do?”

Brother Consul waved a cold hand. “We stopped with the rituals when the moon stopped moving.”

“I feel like I should say something.”

“Then say something.”

Eadwin looked the elder monk in the face. His living eyes locked with dead ones. A thousand pounds of fear passed through him. “I want,” he whispered. “I want to go back. To normal.”

Brother Consul leaned in close. His grin hardened into sorrow. “No, boy. No you don’t.”

The air in the large room hung about like a stale, mildewed curtain. Empty pews watched, each as stuck to the ground as the moon to the sky. Long ago, the Monastery had thrived, a home the size of a village, but now only four people kept it running. Three of them were zombies. One would become a zombie. Already Eadwin barely needed to eat. Soon, he wouldn’t need to breathe.

“What … what … should I do once I’m on the other side?”

Brother Consul nodded. His jaw clicked. He coughed, even though his lungs did not work. “Don’t look up.”

With his last truly human sigh, Eadwin stuck his head in the grime. The world went black.

*

Eadwin’s inner ear did a somersault, and his stomach flipped a circle to match. The cold, chill of death coiled around his face. It seeped into his ears, his noise, his mouth, killing his senses and giving him a drunken sway. He blinked; he coughed. Everything hazed with grime, like looking through a window so dirty it would be easier to break it than clean. Panic tried to strike him, sink its fangs into his soul, but the grime kept it at bay. Or maybe that was undeath. His heart slowed. His fingers grasped at the cauldron so hard they split open.

The Monastery was no longer empty.

Eadwin stood on shaky legs. He looked around the wide room, with its pews and aisles, and saw them—the ghosts. They cowered with fake form, their limbs thin and misshapen, the color of old yogurt. Their faces cried long, silent prayers. Many swayed from side to side, but none moved.

A hand gripped Eadwin’s shoulder. The touch was familiar, a dead friend’s comfort. Eadwin tried to find Brother Consul, to hold him and feel safe, but the grime did not care for balance or for living blood. Eadwin stumbled. He put one foot in front of the other. Momentum carried him into the ghosts.

The dead followed him with their misshapen, yogurt eyes. Little blue pinpricks glowed within their sockets. Eadwin fell, and they reached for him, strained against their bonds. They cried, and they begged, and he saw: Each ghost was chained to the floor. Ropes of flesh coiled around their ankles, locked in place with screws made of bone. One ghost shook his leg, and though Eadwin could not hear the chain rattle, he knew that it did. Dirt leaked from the links.

“Help us,” the ghosts prayed with silent screams. “Free us.”

“How?” Eadwin tried to shout in turn, but all his lungs could do was cough. Grime stained his teeth. He tasted blood.

A ghost leaned in, its hands outstretched. Eadwin reached for it. He needed help. The ghost’s fingernails were made of ooze.

“No!” a voice ordered from miles away.

Eadwin jerked back, but not before the ghost touched him. A burning pain erupted from the tips of his fingers, like he had stuck his hand the furnace. He tried to scream. He coughed up grime. He felt a hand on his shoulder, but this time it did not grip with kindness.

“Follow the dragons,” the ghost wailed. Its face almost looked alive. There was panic in it, and underneath that, a desperate hope. “Go! Go and see!”

Running, stumbling, Eadwin shouldered his way through the Monastery. He couldn’t see well, but his body knew the church. He had lived here for over a decade. Footsteps followed close behind. Shouts of, “Stop!” came with them.

The courtyard swarmed with prisoner spirits, hundreds—thousands—of ghosts stood chained to the floor with flesh and bone. As one they turned to look. Eadwin screamed. As one, they all pointed up, towards the sky. The grime distorted his vision, made everything swim with dirt, but Eadwin’s soul understood even if his eyes did not: The dead stayed stuck. There was no afterlife, no god to hear their prayers. Only chains. Only forever.

“Help!” Eadwin called.

Then he looked up.

Eadwin expected to see the sky, the moon in its place, the stars dull with sleep. Instead he found dirt. He was buried alive, trapped in a giant grave of tattered wood and black embers. The furnaces smelled like dirt. The ash smelled like dirt. Brother Consul smelled like dirt. Everything was dirt. Everything was—

The underground sky shifted. Eadwin coughed. Little bits of sand fell into his face as he watched his graveyard prison pulse, as if something big swam underneath. The ghosts prayed. A few covered their heads; their chains kept them from hiding. Eadwin waited. Someone grabbed him by the back of the head with rage strength. Brother Consul forced Eadwin to his knees. He tried to bend him down, to make him look at the ground, to make him close his eyes, but the dirt moved. Something lived inside. Eadwin needed to see it. The ghosts needed him to see it.

Dirt showered the ground. A head burst through. It was thick and pink, coiled ropes of scales and horns with a gaping circle of tentacle teeth. It wriggled down, as wide as a horse and ten times as long. It was a worm, the king of dirt and carrion, and from its back sprouted two, leather dragon wings.

It did not roar, but it did see.

*

The heat of the furnaces did not bother the zombies, but it did give them a more deathly aroma. Their dirt smell turned damp, the air thick. Eadwin coughed. Sweat streamed down his face as little rivers, tinged with grey like the water in the wells outside. Brother Alfric worked beside him, his dead hands diligent, his skin peeling like cracked paint from a wall. He tried to whistle as he worked, but his lungs were only capable of coughing, and his lips were too dry. Instead he made a series of strained, wind noises that almost carried a melody.

“There, there, ol’ lad,” he said after one chorus. “It’ll be okay. First time in the grime is always a bit of a shock.”

“Yeah,” Eadwin mumbled.

“The ghosts can’t hurt you.”

Brother Alfric had entered undeath short and round. Being a zombie kept him short, but without food or water, the roundness became slop. He carried his loose skin like a blanket. When he worked, he would drape it over his legs to help catch anything he might drop. Brother Alfric had clumsy hands.

Eadwin slit an envelope open. Without thinking, he threw the letter into the furnace. Its envelope evaporated into a little pile of ash. Another envelope appeared in its stead, and he repeated the process. The furnaces had to burn, and the letters were never ending.

“I looked up,” Eadwin said.

“Oh.” Brother Alfric dropped his letter opener. It landed blade first on his loose skin and parted it easier than the paper. “Oh. Well, you shouldn’t have done that.”

“No. Brother Consul was furious. Terrified, but furious.”

“Yes. But that’s his job. He runs the Monastery.” The wrinkled zombie pulled the knife from his skin and smiled. “He’ll forgive you, lad. That’s his job, too.”

“It’s dirt.” Eadwin hissed. “The sky!”

Brother Alfric shrugged. “It’s all dirt. That can’t hurt you, either, you know. Dirt.”

“But—”

“Did you pray?”

Eadwin nodded. “Yes. But there’s no moon, Alfric. Not in the grime. Only ghosts and dirt and—”

Brother Alfric chuckled. He leaned in close, and cupped a dead hand around Eadwin’s ear. “Can you keep a secret, lad?”

Eadwin nodded.

“We don’t pray to the moon anymore. Not since it got stuck.” Brother Alfric’s voice was like the wind, cold and empty. It tickled Eadwin’s face. “No, we pray to us, because only we can hear. But that’s enough. Did you feel better?”

“I think so.”

“Self control and self promises. That’s what it’s all about, lad. That and feeding these furnaces.”

Eadwin split another envelope. It evaporated; he tossed the letter into the fire. Another appeared. This was his duty for the day, and his penance for looking up. For seeing a secret he wasn’t ready to handle. The worms killed humans. The ghosts lied to humans. He wasn’t far enough into undeath to face either.

“Ya can’t trust a ghost,” Brother Consul had scolded. “You can pity them, for we must, but ya can’t trust them. They’ll kill you if they touch you.”

So Eadwin worked the furnaces all day, sweating grey water and burning little squares of paper until cuts covered his hands. The letters were an infinite source of fuel, and as long as the furnaces kept running, then everything would be okay. The Monastery still functioned. The worms stayed away. The The grime remained placid in its stone cauldron.

Eadwin grabbed another letter out of thin air. He cut open the envelope. He readied to throw the paper, but a pinprick of color caught his eye, a dark squiggle. The letters never had any writing on them. Thousands appeared every day by magic, addressed to the monks of the Monastery in various scrawls and foreign characters, but they were always blank. Empty.

“What?”

Eadwin looked around. Brother Alfric had waddled off a few hours ago, eager for his next round of chores, and the other monks were performing their duties. Chores ran nonstop at the Monastery. There were only four people left to take care of it, not even half a dozen to do a village’s worth of work each day. Feed the animals, tend the garden with its sick, little potatoes, clean. It was all dirt, after all. That meant lots of cleaning. Once Eadwin became a full zombie, he could work nonstop and not have to eat. It would help, but only a little. They still needed to keep food and water on hand in case someone else wandered out of the mist.

Feeling like he was breaking another rule, Eadwin folded the letter open. He expected blank parchment, or maybe a stain, but found thin, black text. It read, “Help me!”

“Help me,” Eadwin whispered.

The letter disappeared in a flash of blue magic. Another appeared. Eadwin slit it open and read that one, too, “Save me!”

“This can’t be,” he said, as the letter popped with little blue sparks.

Eadwin tore open more letters, not even bothering with his knife. Each contained a message for him: Help me. Save me. Please watch over my wife. God, protect my children. For my loving father. Help me. Save me. My flesh hurts me. Please. Please. Please. Please!

Something crashed up above, where the grime lay. Eadwin barely heard it. He found another letter. He opened it.

“Find me,” it read. “Stick your head in the grime, and find me. There’s still time.”

“What?”

But the letter disappeared before it could answer any other questions. Eadwin looked up. Brother Consul stood in the doorway, arms crossed under his thick monk robes, lips cracked. He’d been a zombie since the first day Eadwin showed up, but not the scary kind that wandered the outside world. He didn’t eat brains or rip flesh from bone with his bare hands. He smiled; he prayed. Sometimes he sang. He showed Eadwin how to clean their holy relics without scratching them, how to sew rips in clothing, how to open a letter and burn it to ash. Now though, he looked scary. His eyes were as dead as the ghosts in the grime, his teeth sharp. He glowered, and Eadwin shrank in his chair.

“Didn’t know you could read,” Brother Consul said.

Eadwin shook his head. “I can’t.”

“Oh?”

“We never owned books, when I was young. When I had a family.” Eadwin choked on the word. A decade had passed since then, but not a day had changed. The moon never moved. The trees had stopped growing. Ever since he was born, there had been more ash in the air than actual weather. “All we had was our farm.”

Brother Consul nodded. Kindness returned to him. “You’re a good farmer, boy. Never had potatoes so big until you showed up.”

“I—”

“Our horse has never been happier, either.” Brother Consul sat next to Eadwin and grabbed a letter from thin air. He tore it open with a loud rip. “Here. What’s it say?”

Eadwin took the paper with a shaking hand. His fingers were dry and bloody. It said, “Come quick, and bring a knife,” but Eadwin didn’t like how Brother Consul was watching him. He swallowed. Sweat dripped down his face. His armpits were soaked with it.

“It says, ‘Help me, please.’” Eadwin lied. “They all say something similar. The letters want help.”

Brother Consul tapped the paper once, and it burst into a little blue light. “Not the letters, boy. Ghosts.”

Another letter appeared. Eadwin opened it, but stopped before he could see the writing. He handed it to Brother Consul, who tossed it into the flames.

“We aren’t gods, Eadwin. We have no business reading other people’s prayers. Those are between the ghosts and the moon.” Brother Consul shrugged. “Or us and ourselves.”

More letters appeared. Eadwin watched them like he would a snake. Under the table, he worked his letter opener into the folds of his robes. He didn’t want to be a zombie. He wanted to go back to normal.

He was no longer afraid.

“Can’t we help them? The ghosts?”

“No.” Brother Consul stooped his dead shoulders. He smelled like dirt. His face crusted with flaking skin. “We aren’t gods, Eadwin. All we can do is garden. Garden, and not look up.”

Despite himself, Eadwin looked up.

*

With a tense hand, Brother Consul led Eadwin upstairs. It was time for supper. Because even though Eadwin believed he should fast as penance, the elder monk would not hear it. “Strength, boy,” he said in his dead voice. “You need it more than ever, now that you’ve had a look in the grime. Strength, and rest.” They wandered the empty halls to the kitchen. Most of the sconces on the walls were empty of all but dust. A few held candles, but they weren’t lit. Only Eadwin needed to eat. Sometimes Sister Burgwynn made herself food out of habit, but until he became a full-fledged zombie, the kitchens belonged to Eadwin.

“I will pray before I eat,” the young monk said.

“Good.”

“For guidance.”

“Oh?” Brother Consul didn’t have any eyebrows, but the skin above his eye lifted all the same. “Guidance for what, boy?”

Eadwin felt the letter opener in his palm. The blade wasn’t very sharp—he could squeeze it and not cut himself—but it parted zombie flesh with ease. Could it cut through chains, too?

“I’m not sure.” Eadwin shrugged, swallowed. Thoughts of life danced through his head. “What fell while I was feeding the furnaces?”

“Hmm?”

Eadwin looked up again, though they were no longer below the grime. The kitchens were in the back of the Monastery, out of the way so food could be delivered without bothering anyone. There were shelves and ovens and long, stone tables for cutting meat and vegetables, though Eadwin only ever used the corner of one. The rest was for the dirt.

“I heard something crash, earlier. I thought maybe Brother Alfric fell.”

“Alfric does do that a lot, don’t he?”

“Yeah.”

Brother Consul gave Eadwin a pat on the shoulder. He spoke in a commanding tone, but without magic. “Eat, and rest, boy. Undeath will be upon you soon.”

“Yes.”

“Our chores await.”

Brother Consul left along another path, his footsteps making little slip, slip noises as dead flesh left footprints in old dirt. Eadwin waited until he was out of sight and sound, and then turned for the church. His knuckles whitened around the knife hidden in the sleeves of his robe.

He needed to stick his head back in the grime.

He needed to free the ghosts.

He needed to stop the worm.

*

The church was dead empty but not empty of the dead. Eadwin could feel them all around, standing in their spots, leaking with yogurt-flesh and silent prayers. His eyes wandered the aisles. Something was different. He didn’t know what, only that things had changed. Instinct made him look up. He flinched, because there was a crack in the ceiling, as if something had fallen on it. But the only thing above the church was the moon.

“I think the moon will hear my prayers now,” Eadwin whispered.

A little bit of wind blew through the aisles, not strong enough to do anything but let Eadwin know it was there. It smelled like death, but underneath the death, it smelled green. The grime rested in its stone cauldron. Eadwin ran to it. Today, his chores meant something. Today, the stagnant could move.

Without a prayer or a magic word, Eadwin stuck his head in the grime. Like before, he spun a nauseous circle. The ground became ceiling; the ceiling became a dirt sky. Grease clouded his vision in cold streaks. He looked out at the church, at the cluttered ghosts, and they looked back with prayers on their misshapen lips. Each would become paper. Each paper would become flame.

Eadwin swayed forward. There were less ghosts than before. He wasn’t sure how he knew that, only that they seemed a little further apart. There was more room to walk. They reached for him, prayed for him, begged for him.

“Help us,” they wailed. “Save us!”

Eadwin didn’t know where to begin. He flashed his letter opener and almost dropped it. In the living world, it was a dull knife made for tearing paper, but in the grime, it was heavy and long, a proper sword. Both its edges gleamed with oily sharpness.

One ghost made a living motion with his arms, a “come here, quickly!” that Eadwin recognized. He ran as fast as the grime allowed.

“You must dig!” the ghost wailed. It pointed up. Eadwin followed.

Something had fallen on the church when he was feeding the furnaces, big enough to shake the building. In the living world, it had left a simple crack in the roof, but in the grime, it had struck a savage blow. There was now a hole in the ceiling. From the hole, leaked bodies. They hung in place, a pile of twisted corpses stuck like a stalactite to the dirt sky.

“You must free us,” the ghost said, “and then you must dig!”

“What? But the worms—”

“Follow the dragons!” The ghost grabbed Eadwin by the shoulders. Its yogurt-hands burned. Eadwin screamed. “That is my prayer. Bleed. Then hurry!”

The ghost disappeared in a flash of blue smoke. Another body oozed from the ceiling. Eadwin looked around, his heart barely beating, his eyes barely seeing. He waved his sword, stumbling more than walking, as he found the nearest ghost. He tried to get on his knees and fell. Somewhere outside the grime, his body hurt.

“Help us!” the ghosts all screamed.

“I will!”

Eadwin swung his sword at a chain. He expected it to part, to slice in two or burst with magic, but his sword hit flesh and bounced. The ghost reached for him. Eadwin cringed away.

“Help me!” the ghost begged.

“I’m trying!”

The grime did not care for quick movements. Each sword swing felt like it took minutes, and each clang burned through Eadwin’s wrists, arms, and shoulders. The ghosts touched him, their desperation burning with literal pain. Eadwin cried. His tears clogged with grime. He pounded his fist against the ground so hard he heard bone snap. Blood spilled on the floor. The ghosts wailed, and when Eadwin tried another swing, his sword worked. The chain parted, and the ghost disappeared. Its body appeared in the ceiling.

“Bleed, then hurry,” Eadwin said. His speech slurred as if he were drunk. Each word tasted of grime.

Eadwin went from ghost to ghost, hacking at the chains around their ankles. The stalactite of bodies thickened, grew stronger. It reminded Eadwin of a potato root. Arms and legs spidered in all directions, but the trunk, the tube of bodies, went straight for the grime. Whatever the this plant was, it was thirsty. For the first time in Monastery’s history, the grime bubbled.

Something shifted in the dirt. Eadwin looked up. There were dragons swimming above him.

“What are you doing, lad?” a voice called. It was distant, more echo than question. Eadwin flailed.

“Stop,” he shouted. He swung his sword in random directions. In the real world, it was just a dull knife. He wasn’t sure he could even cut himself with it.

Brother Alfric stopped.

“Now, now,” the zombie said. He broke into a coughing fit, and his body shook with the effort, though Eadwin could not see it. There was too much grime in the way. “Let’s just calm down, lad. Calm down and go back to our chores.”

“I have to help them!” Eadwin could barely hear his own voice. “The ghosts need my help.”

Alfric approached with quiet steps. His jowly flesh dangled from his body. It was filled with cuts and tears from his time spent in the furnaces. “Shouldn’t talk to ghosts,” he said. “Their words are for the moon, not us. We aren’t gods.”

“I can help them.”

“No you can’t.”

“Yes I can! We all can! It’s—”

Someone coughed behind Eadwin’s shoulder. He screamed, stumbled—swung. His letter opener gored Brother Alfric’s chest, and in the grime, his sword struck soul. Blue magic flashed so bright it reminded Eadwin of stories of the sun. Once upon a time, there had been one of those, an orb of light in the sky. It let things grow. It kept the zombies at bay. Maybe it even let prayers reach the moon.

“I’m sorry!” Eadwin cried as Brother Alfric sighed into death. His soul vanished, and his body appeared on the stalactite. “I didn’t mean to!”

“Help us!” another ghost cried. “Save us.”

Eadwin freed it from its chains. The nose of a worm burrowed through the dirt ceiling. Its tentacle mouth sniffed the air.

Just as Eadwin was saving another two ghosts, he heard a magic command. The word “Stop” struck his spine. His sword fell from his hands.

“No!”

Eadwin fell to the ground, searching. Grime covered his vision. His bloody hands left stains on the floor.

“Boy!” a voice roared. “Boy what have you done?”

A dead fist struck Eadwin in the face. It blackened his left eye and smeared the grime from it all in one go. His stomach doubled over as his inner ear tried to process being both in the grime and outside it. He coughed. His tongue tasted like stomach acid.

“Please,” Eadwin tried. His right hand was broken in two parts and bleeding from more cuts than he could count. Outside the grime, it hurt. Inside the grime, he didn’t care. “We can help them.”

Brother Consul gripped Eadwin with zombie hands. His claws burrowed into Eadwin’s skin, drawing blood and pain. With half his face hazed with grime, the monk looked like any other zombie that roamed the earth: dead, bloated, leaking fluids and bad smells. His breath smelled like ash, and his teeth sharpened into that of a wolf’s.

“Yer not a god, boy. You can’t help the dead.”

“But—”

Brother Consul shook Eadwin until blood leaked from his wounds. The zombie brought his face in close. His eyes were terrified, furious, and dead, all in one go.

“We’re all that’s left, keeping the world alive, boy. It should have died long ago. Do you want to die? Do you?”

Eadwin screamed. He heard more footsteps, though he couldn’t see them. The rest of the zombies had come. The ghosts cried for help.

“You’ll doom all the people in the mist, those still alive, and those not.”

“But we’re already doomed.”

“Not if the furnaces keep burning!”

A new voice coughed. Eadwin felt a hand on his shoulder, and then he saw the tip of a blade. Sister Burgwynn had his letter opener. She brought it to his throat.

“He’ll pray for us, if we let him,” she said. Everything about her was thick, hard, and acidic. “We can burn him forever.”

Eadwin looked up. Brother Consul slapped him with his claws, raking bloody lines in Eadwin’s face.

“Do not look up! They’ll see you!” The elder zombie coughed. “Quick. Grab a rag and wipe the rest off him, before the worms come.”

“We can help,” Eadwin whispered. Out of the corner of his grime eye, he saw something move. Something big, something with scales and dragon wings.

“You are not a god!”

“I don’t need to be a god to help,” Eadwin screamed. “What good is this church if—”

Sister Burgwynn cut him off with a scream. “Brother!” she roared, “Brother the grime is bubbling!”

“What?” The claws holding Eadwin up let go, and he fell to the ground.

With his good eye, Eadwin watched both zombies shuffle to the grime as fast as their dead legs allowed. They bent over the bowl. Brother Consul put his hands on the cauldron to brace himself, readied his head, and then crumpled to death. There was a glittering, silver rock in his skull. Sister Burgwynn had just enough time to look up, at a hole in the ceiling, before she, too, was struck. Eadwin followed her gaze and saw the moon overhead, stuck in place, and maybe just a little smaller. Explosions thundered in the distance. Big things landed with even bigger thuds.

With his grime eye, watched the dragon ooze in front of him. It was huge, the king of carrion. It arched up, rearing like a snake ready to bite with poison. Eadwin coughed. The worm struck. Brother Consul exploded into blue parts so small they didn’t even collect on the stalactite. It then swallowed Sister Burgwynn whole. She appeared next to Brother Alfric, and her foot dipped into the bubbling cauldron.

A thousand panes of glass cracked as every window in the Monastery shattered. Flesh chains burned with blue flame. The worm coiled towards the mountain of bodies, and as it slithered up, the bodies hardened into a stone road. Runes appeared in the stone, glowing faintly with magic at its final fade. The ghosts formed a line.

Eadwin struggled into a sitting position. The grime was mostly off him now, and he hurt worse than death. The worm dug its way into the dirt ceiling. The ghosts marched after it, following the dragon up, up, into the dead plane beyond. Each ghost looked to Eadwin before they began their march and thanked him. Their yogurt mouths smiled. Their voices no longer screamed.

The moon answered their prayers.

The Man Who Stole the Color Black

The taste of a tongue, the feeling of hands. The expectation of blood. Lilith embraced her wife for the last time, her eyes closed, her senses running faster than the colors around them. She felt so alive in a world that was so, so very dead. Soon she would be too.

Eve’s hands twisted through Lilith’s hair, desperate, grasping, trying to memorize each strand before it was too late. She used to have such gorgeous black hair, but now it was a sad, empty white. She moved her hands down, feeling her wife’s neck, her wife’s back. Both were sticky with sweat and sex. Lilith copied the movements. The spell wouldn’t work unless they were both ready, both willing. Humans had it wrong: It took two sacrifices to save the world.

They stood naked in their bedroom, Titan and Vampire, the walls once spring green now dripping into grey and fading into a floor that had turned to stone. Their bed swirled with unpleasant shades of red and brown, a large scab ready to be picked clean and thrown away. They cast no shadows.

Eve’s kiss became a bite, a quick touch of fang to tongue. Lilith accepted the pain and the taste of blood—the first drop must always be spilled for love. Magic flashed around their heads, a gold without shine, and outside, the yellow sun faded to beige. Tomorrow it would go out for good.

Lilith made herself relax as her wife’s hands moved to her shoulders, finding that blank spot that floated between her shoulder blades and spine. She shuddered, and her body broke into cold sweat. Everything was so cold now, so slow and without hope.

“Look at me,” Eve said. Her eyes were flush with green. All color had faded from her face and hair, except her eyes. Life still remained.

“Do it.”

Eve’s fingernails became claws, jagged points of grey and white. She reached into Lilith’s back, spilling blood that had the courtesy to run red. Death still remained too.

Lilith grimaced, and when she threatened to cry for the pain, Eve kissed her again. They kissed, and they suffered, and Eve dug. When she found her wife’s stolen spark of magic, she pulled. Blood erupted from Lilith’s back. Wings followed suit.

The feathers glistened wet, but underneath the crimson and pain, they were black.

*

Outside, the universe distorted with a hazy lilt that spoke of not just decay but confusion. It wasn’t time to for it to end. But God had done the unthinkable, had dug down to the very first building block of existence and yanked. Now the Four Spires of All and Nothing were falling. The Earth was a wasteland of salted dirt and cracked concrete, and space itself ebbed and flowed like an ocean. There were no stars anymore, just drops of pretty water.

Lilith watched them glitter like diamonds, knowing they would soon turn to ash.

“We were supposed to have more time,” she said. “A trillion more years together and more.”

The Titan and the Vampire stood side-by-side in the empty space between their front door and oblivion, fog on their breath and the past in their hearts. They had kept this garden together, a catalogue of every strange plant known to mankind—and many that had yet to be discovered. Acres of fruit trees with a rainbow harvest, bugs of every type and temperament, enough birds to sing even the Sirens deaf, a zoo of animals and fungi. All gone. In a six-day blink, their Eden had turned into a lifeless desert, windswept with dust and the occasional falling star.

Now heading for a drain. And at the bottom of the drain was a dragon.

Eve reached for her wife’s hand. Sometime between their bedroom and their front door, it had turned grey, but it was still warm, so she squeezed and put on a brave smile. “Time stood still for us. Would that everyone were so lucky.”

“Everyone is dead, love.”

“I know.” Eve leaned into her wife, savoring the warmth of her, feeling the tickle of a stray feather. Lilith’s wings were the last bit of black in the entire universe, the last of foundation. Without dark, there could be no light. Without light, there could be no life.

The fate of the universe would come down to a single feather.

“I know,” Eve repeated. “If I close my eyes, I can see the bodies. They stack like grains of sand in a desert.”

“I’m sorry.” Lilith sighed with her whole body, rolling her shoulders and her wings. She hadn’t flown in eons and was both excited and terrified of it.

“I will catalogue them all, if you succeed.” Eve let Lilith’s hand fall away. “I hope to use black ink.”

Now it was Lilith’s turn to smile. The universe was ending, and all she could think of was how embarrassing it would be if she tried to fly and fell. She would go kill God, and the only person that mattered in her life would think her a klutz.

“You could come with me,” Lilith tried. “Watch it all, and catalogue it. One more body for your book.”

“Two,” Eve said. Her voice broke. Lilith looked at her and saw that Eve had been crying this entire time. “There will be two. There has to be two, or it will not work.”

“Nope,” Lilith said. She bent to kiss her wife on the cheek. The salt burned the hole in her tongue. “That’s where you’re wrong, love. I won’t die. I’ll just transform. That’s all.”

“But—”

“Check your shadow tomorrow, when it’s back.” Lilith laughed. “You’ll see. I’ll find us our trillions of years. I promised, remember?”

Eve wiped at her eyes. Ash streaked down her face, around her mouth and down to her chin where it dripped, dripped, disappeared. “I will rebuild the garden.”

“You should leave it,” Lilith said. “Start fresh, somewhere with a better view.”

Eve shook her head. “I can’t.”

“He’ll be dead when I’m done with him. You’ll be able to leave.”

“I cannot break the rules, Lil’. I am not blessed.”

Lilith flexed her wings. Already the tips were beginning to grey, to turn to ash like everything else. She yearned to stay and talk, to hold her wife until the universe ended and let time itself burn to the ground, but she couldn’t. If Eve couldn’t break any rules, then Lilith couldn’t obey them. Titan and Vampire, Vampire and Titan. Lilith watched their garden sprawl as patches of dull rock and calcified bark. A bone here, a tooth there. Colors swirling into beige-brown because they didn’t know what else to do. All the green in the world remained in Eve’s eyes, and all the black in Lilith’s wings.

But God’s blood would run crimson.

“Go,” Eve said. “Before you cannot.”

“See you soon.”

“I lo—”

Lilith jumped, stretched her wings, and let the scattered winds take hold. She soared into the dead-galaxy sky. One flap, two, three, and then she was above the destruction, surveying it like a crow looking for something shiny. Their garden had gone flat over the last six days, everything crumbling into its base form. Dust stung her eyes. What few trees were left jutted from the ground like stalagmites. She had seen her fair share of death over the last ten thousand years and always thought it must be peaceful or dark, not flat and bland.

But maybe that wasn’t so surprising. This was God’s universe, after all.

As Lilith flew, chunks of the universe loosened from their foundation, floating as globes of dark blue and faded stars until they popped like bubbles. They left stains of nothing behind. Lilith passed through one and watched the black of her wings return it to normal. The feeling was warm, the smell cinnamon. It was wrong in its own way, because Eve was the one who gave life. Lilith just took it away. She liked the sensation though. It was a shame she had spent so much of her life destroying and fighting. It was a shame God had gotten it all so wrong.

Lilith checked her wings. Already bright spots of ash speckled her feathers. Time was short, maybe a day if she was lucky. A few hours if she was not.

The further Lilith flew from Eden, the more pockets of unreality she found. First the voids were bubbles, then they became ponds, until finally they were great lakes of pure emptiness. She worked her wings, the muscle memory thankfully never leaving her, and flew up, up, up until she was above one unmade lake and viewing the Earth not like a hawk but a cloud. Lilith floated on a pocket of warm air. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt truly tired.

“Just one of those last days, I guess,” she said to the wind. The breeze grabbed the words and took them, to whatever might still be left alive to listen. Lilith wasn’t hopeful.

With the sky an absolute mess, and with the sun trapped in an awkward state of setting and dying at the same time, Lilith had to use intuition to find due south. She had a day to make it to all Four Spires of All and Nothing. Thankfully each Spire had a portal. Finding one meant finding them all, and the southern was closest. Or Lilith was pretty sure it was. It had been a good five thousand years since she had paid Sebastian a visit.

She’d be happy to see him though! If he was still alive.

He would try to kill her, but one step at a time.

Lilith flew. It was easier to look on the dead planet when everything was so small it might as well not be real. More pockets of unreality opened up around her, and she plowed through the smaller ones, converting them back into real space for fractions of a second. The life she gave was quick to die. She looked at her wings, now a few feathers smaller than when she started, and hoped for Eve’s sake she could do better.

She had promised trillions of years, not trillions of fractions.

*

“Damn,” Lilith said. She rolled her shoulders which did not ache, but winced at the new muscles right below them. Flying hurt.

The state of the tower hurt more.

Once a proud pillar of creation, the southern tower of All and Nothing lay in ruin, an explosion of stone and glass that spread almost two miles in every direction. It looked like a black hole had gone off and then burned itself out before all the evidence could be sucked away. Each rock, each brick, was as smooth as glass but dull as beige-brown—eroded to the point of decay. Nothing cast a shadow. Lilith marched towards the center of the wreckage while dust roved around her feet, the closest thing to life she had seen since she left Eden.

“Sebastian!” she called. “Hey, Sebastian! I’m back!”

She didn’t expect an answer but was still disappointed when the Living Creature didn’t roar in threat.

“I still have your wings!”

The wind kicked more dust around her legs. A pocket of unreality formed, floated, popped. She titled a black feather into it and watched it repair. This time she smelled nutmeg.

When she tilted away, the unreality returned. It smelled like nothing.

“Fine,” Lilith said, the taunt more at herself than the dead guardian. “Guess I’ll just….” She sighed. She was too tired to think of something clever.

 It took a few more steps to find the center of the destruction, marked not with an X but a broken statue of a thinking monster. Sebastian had died like he lived, with a frown on his face and some kind of puzzle in his paws. His four remaining wings twisted around him like a blanket.

“Damn,” Lilith said. She surveyed what had once been the top floor of the tower. “Damn, damn, damn.”

The portal in the Southern Spire was destroyed. Her hope of reaching all four before the universe ended was gone. Even at her fastest, she couldn’t cover so many miles. Lilith checked her wings, which had once belonged to the dead thing in front of her, and hissed. In the span of landing and searching, they had shrunk by almost half. Instead of twenty four hours, she had maybe six. But leave it to God to not follow his own schedule. Too lazy to build for seven straight days, he did six and left the remainder to chance.

Lilith spat at the broken portal. Her saliva turned to ash before it hit the ground. “Dying sucks,” she said.

She wandered back to Sebastian, feeling some mix of sympathy and nostalgia for the Living Creature. They had met on a Sunday, but instead of resting, Lilith had wanted to gamble. Magic for magic; information for information. Lilith had lost. She had then stolen his wings because she was a sore loser.

“You were still faster than me, even without them,” she said to the broken statue. “But you had rules to follow, and I did not.” Lilith ran her hand down Sebastian’s lion-like face. “I’m sorry.”

She reached for the creature’s paws. Up close, the puzzle had tints of gold and aquamarine. Lilith hadn’t seen anything pretty since she left Eden, and she hadn’t stolen anything since she met Eve’s heart. With a shrug, she grabbed the object and pulled. Sebastian’s paws shattered. Lilith rubbed at the object until it was clean, or as clean as it could be on the last day of the universe.

“Oh!” Lilith smiled. “I guess you knew I was coming.”

It wasn’t a puzzle but a piece of a key. Or scepter. Or whatever the thing was that Lilith needed to kill God. She supposed it was truly a lance, because in his base form, God was a dragon and the best thing for killing dragons was a lance. Each of the four Living Creatures held a part. Sebastian carried the pommel. It was about as long as her forearm, made of twisted gold with a large, round sea-shell lump at the top. A swirl in the lump flashed blue, perhaps the only true blue left in the universe, and spines protected the swirl in awkward fits and starts. In a way, it was like a mace—though with less craft.

Lilith saw her reflection in the gold. Saw how pale and hallow she looked. The red in her eyes was gone, replaced with a grey that would soon become white. Her hair was white. Her dress was beige, even though yesterday it had been green. Eve liked green. She twitched her wings and watched a handful of feathers fall off. They turned to ash before they hit the ground.

“I look like shit,” Lilith said. She gave the mace a swing. “But so does God.” She chuckled. “It’ll be a fair fight.”

With a jump and a hefty push of her wings, Lilith resumed her quest, heading north and a little east, towards the drain. And the dragon. She struggled for every bit of height she could find, and with her wings more grey than black, she made sure to avoid all the pockets of unreality. She didn’t think she had it in her to create anymore.

The mace slowed her down. It was heavy and awkward because killing was heavy and awkward.

Lilith flew for about an hour, skimming above the ground like a hawk on the hunt. Her wings shed feathers, and the new muscles next to her shoulder blades screamed in pain. Sometimes the wind pushed her on, but mostly it blew in the opposite direction. Even the wind was smart enough to know to run away.

When something crimson caught Lilith’s eye, she took the excuse for a break. She landed in an awkward stumble, shedding feathers and tearing her dress. Her lungs burned. Her legs threatened to buckle. She approached the spot of red at a lilt, just happy to keep herself from falling over, the mace dangling from her right hand. She expected to find blood or worse. The spot was the size of her fist, maybe a little bigger, and the color of rubies at night. Confused, she bent over. She picked up a wine glass.

“Hello,” she said to the glass. She held it by the stem and rolled it in a shallow circle with her fingers. The wine sloshed but didn’t fall out. It smelled like strawberries. “You look familiar.”

It couldn’t look familiar though, because she had never seen a wine glass so thin or boring—like the fundamental idea of a wine glass. Thought without substance. She gave it a poke and chipped her fingernail. Inside the glass was a piece of red string, maybe four inches long.

“I know you,” Lilith said.

“Hello, Lilith,” the piece of string said. Its voice had a feminine, gravel sound to it. “It’s been awhile.”

“Lucifer?” Lilith held the glass close. The string didn’t look like Lucifer, but it did have a certain devilish quality to it. It could sew fire together. “Is that you?”

“Yes.”

“What are you doing in there?” Lilith gave the glass another swirl. “And why are you string?”

Lucifer chuckled, and Lilith heard the sound of someone sipping.

  “Dear, I am dying, just like everyone else. I’m just doing it in style.”

Lilith smirked. “That so?”

“It is so.”

“Can I have a sip?”

The string swirled into a knot. “No.”

“Okay.” Lilith put the glass to her lips and took a drink. The taste was blood and fruit, with just a little heat. She liked it, but if she had to pick a taste to drown in, it wouldn’t be this one. “I like dry wines.”

Lucifer uncoiled. “I told you—”

“What are you going to do?” Lilith laughed. “Kill me?” She gestured to the landscape around them, flat and dead. “Get in line, hun.”

Lucifer sipped, and when the pause in the conversation grew too long, Lilith took another herself. The wine burned at the hole in her tongue, the one Eve gave her that morning.

“Why are you a piece of string?”

“To slow my death.” Lucifer swirled about until the tip of his string was poking out of the glass. It reminded Lilith of talking to a mermaid half submerged. “I was a mile in length two days ago. Now I am a few inches, but I’ll be the last thing alive before the universe ends.”

Lilith hefted her mace. “Not if I can help it. Where’s God?”

“Gone.”

Lilith blinked. “Beg pardon?”

God left a lifetime ago, Lilith, right after he made you and Eve. He took with him a few angels, and he took Adam, and he left.” Lucifer dunked back into his glass. He drank. “I don’t know where they went. I’m not sure they do, either.”

A pocket of unreality bloomed in front of Lilith, big enough to drive a chariot into. She thought of tossing Lucifer in but instead stepped away. She did, however, take another sip of wine.

“So what happened?”

Lucifer sighed in the way he always did when he had to give bad news that he did not cause. “It was a human,” he said. “A doctor, or a philosopher. Maybe both.”

“A human?”

“Yes.”

“But how could a human steal a color?”

Lucifer bent in half, the string equivalent to a shrug. “How do humans do anything? I tried to stop him, but I can only tempt in the two directions. He didn’t seem to care.”

Lilith brought the wine glass close. She exhaled deep, though instead of heat and fog, the glass chilled. Lucifer wiggled in his string form.

“What can I do to a human?” she asked, almost begged. “I don’t have any human weapons. I don’t—”

Now it was Lucifer’s turn to laugh. “Dear,” he said. “The great thing about humans is anything can be a weapon if you hit them hard enough.”

*

Lilith flew until she couldn’t. Then she ran. The drain was ahead, marked by a new tower, a misshapen, bent smokestack that blocked out the sky. Not that the sky was much to look at anymore. The sun was now a beige spot with no light or heat, and unreality drowned the rest. No more stars, no more colors, just nothing. The universe was turning into a flat, blank page that could not be written on.

The smokestack was white as bone but had started its life as a dark shade of brushed steel. Lilith approached the door, also made of steel, and jiggled the handle. It was locked, but she had never met a door she couldn’t open. She used her shoulder.

Inside, she saw shadows.

“Hello,” she called. She gripped her God-killing mace and stepped inside.

The gold of her weapon drank at the fear and strangeness of the place, turning it from bizarre to boring. It was a science lab of some kind. Instruments too big for practicality covered walls and open floor space, and jars of stuff threatened to fall off shelves. There were notepads, computers, pens, and a half-eaten apple that was as beige as the sun outside. Lilith saw blood too, some human, some less than. There was a mop in one corner, but it looked like it had never been touched. The whole place stank of electricity and strange chemicals.

“Hello!” Lilith’s voice boomed. She flexed what was left of her wings, just a few feathers but each one as black as midnight. “Human, you home?”

“Yes, yes,” a voice called from somewhere deeper in the lab. It sounded husky yet energetic. “If you’re here to tempt me again, you might as well just go away.”

“I’m here to kill you.”

“Oh.” Something crashed to the floor and exploded in a shower of metal-on-metal. “Well, then you best come in and do it quickly. We only have about an hour left.” Another something fell, this one a dull thunk. “Or a few minutes.”

Lilith followed the sounds, through the lab and its library of scribbles and toys. The next room was smaller than the first, reeking of blood and brimstone. There was a portal on one wall, sucking and snuffling because it was a drain, and a man in front of it. He turned to give Lilith a nod. She judged him to be in his 30s but with the stooped back of a 60 year old and the wrinkles of someone even older. Black smudges rimmed his eyes. He wore a white lab coat and held some kind of wand or metal stick. Lilith couldn’t tell if it was a weapon.

“You’re prettier than the last angel,” he said.

“I’m not an angel.”

“Oh.” He used his stick to point at a dissection table, where a circular creature lay pinned down and ripped open. Half its hundred eyes were missing. “That’s good. Not much to them on the inside, you know?”

“I do.”

“So what are you?”

Lilith eyed up the human. He didn’t seem all that dangerous, but then, they never did. “A vampire.”

The human’s eyes went wide. “Indeed? Well, splendid. The end of the universe brings out all types.”

Lilith approached. “Who are you?”

The man frowned. “Forgive me,” and he looked truly distraught. “My name is Doctor D. I forget what the D stands for though. Used to know, but some things aren’t what they used to be.”

“Nope.”

“Are you here to stop me, Miss? To kill an old man and end his life’s work?”

Lilith scowled. “You aren’t as old as you pretend to be.”

Doctor D waved his stick. Now that Lilith was closer, she saw that it wasn’t a wand but a simple piece of metal. Good for pointing and poking. “I feel old. Felt old all my life. Docs call it a rare disease. One of those ‘born with’ types. I’ll live another year, maybe two if I’m lucky.”

“You won’t live through the hour,” Lilith said. “The universe is almost gone.”

Now Doctor D smiled. “This one is almost gone, but not the next. Or the next.”

The doctor turned his back on Lilith to reach behind some cabinet or cart. He yanked out a little cage, a fitting home for a rat. Inside was a blob of amorphous sable, jiggling and cold. Doctor D passed his hand over it, and the blob turned into a series of pointed spikes. It was blacker than the deepest reaches of space.

“You know what this is?” he asked.

“Black.”

“Yes, but it’s also my way out of here. It’ll become a tunnel.” He poked at his empty portal with his stick. “With this, I’ll travel to the next universe. And then the one after that.”

Lilith stepped closer. She gripped her mace so tight her knuckles where white, though they had been that color all morning. “And then what?” she hissed. “You’ll destroy another universe, and then what?”

Doctor D blinked. His smile turned into a puzzled frown. “Why, I’ll find God of course. He walks in a straight line.”

“What?”

The doctor tripped over to a white board covered in more punctuation marks than numbers or letters. He had no color, but he had a smell and a spark. Ambition, knowledge, fear. He wasn’t the Seven Deadly Sins, but he was related to them. Their cousin, perhaps. Because he was a human, and that meant he was free of rules and bound to make every foolish mistake possible before he died.

“We are in his footprint,” Doctor D said. “God walks, and each step is a universe. A bit of water in a bit of mud, but no drop is ever just a bit of water.” Doctor D turned back to Lilith. His expression was a sad shrug. “Do you ever feel small?”

Lilith twitched the last few feathers of her wings. She eyed the human. Her brain told her to lie, but her tongue burned with truth: “I used to feel small. Then I met someone who made me feel normal.”

“Ah.” Doctor D nodded. “Yes. Yes. Love. Very nice. I used to have a dog….” He shook his head. “Can’t follow a dog though. I can follow God.”

Lilith cocked an eyebrow. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Honestly.”

“The biggest things move the slowest,” Doctor D said. He tapped at a specific part of his equations. “Like how it’s so hard to catch a dragonfly. We lumber. So does God. He’s only four or five universes away. It takes him a few billion years to make one step.”

“Lucifer said he was gone,” Lilith said. She eyed the doctor’s math, and then she eyed the doctor. “Guess I never thought to look.”

“Too many rules,” Doctor D agreed. “But I’ll find him. And you can come with, if you’d like.”

Lilith shook her head. “Why do you want to find him?”

“Because,” Doctor D’s face contorted into a mix of fury and sorrow. The wrinkles in him deepened into thick crevices of black. “Because I’m supposed to have a choice, but I do not. I want to know why. I want to know why he can break the rules and I cannot.”

“You have—”

“I do not!” Doctor D roared. “I was born so sick I should be dead. A once-in-ten-thousand years disease! That’s not a choice! That’s not how the rules go!” His shoulders slumped, and for an instant, he looked three times his age, a skeleton with thin skin and a ghost that didn’t know how to leave. “I should never have outlived my dog.”

Lilith stepped closer. She felt her wings shriveling, felt the cold weight of the mace in her hand. A trillion years promised, thrown away because bad things happened for no good reason. And because humans did what humans always do.

“You still had a choice,” she said. “No one else could do this but you.”

Doctor D smiled. Lucifer would have blushed at the pride. “No. No choice. I was supposed to have a choice, because that’s in the rules. Humans have choice. It’s what separates us from the Celestial.” He shrugged. “It’s why you cannot kill me, even with that club of yours. Rules. Order. Non—”

“I can kill you,” Lilith interrupted. “I am not Celestial.”

Doctor D’s eyes went wide. His mouth fell open. “Oh.”

“I’m a vampire. I haven’t been Celestial since the sixth day.”

“Then….”

Lilith approached, lifted her mace, and swung. Doctor D collapsed in a pool of his own blood. Like the rest of him, it ran beige.

*

Eve gasped, and the breath was warm. It had color. She opened her eyes to a brilliance of it, a swarming, teeming, disorder of all things life. Her eyes shined with green.

She burst into tears, because that meant her wife was dead.

Beneath her, her shadow waved.

Moonflowers

The witch’s apprentice always dreamed of going to the moon—of blasting off in a rocket with NASA talking into her ear and the entire world cheering her on! Of seeing the Earth so small she could hold it in her space-suited hands. She’d touch the flag, and she’d leave her own footprint in the lunar dust. One small step for Willow Jones, one giant leap for Willow Jones!

She did not want to go.

“Ms. Briar,” She said, speaking around her thumbnail. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“But—”

“Girl. How many times have I told you to stop chewing your damned fingernails?” Briar Gravesbane snapped. “You know they’re good for spells.”

Willow jerked her hands behind her back. “Sorry.”

Briar gave her student a glare. She was an elder witch of moderate regard, fluent in deathspeak and on good terms with every gargoyle in the Midwest. In appearance, she stood just under six feet, still had a head of black hair despite years of intense magical practice, and a pair of hazel eyes that glowed in the dark. She kept her robes utilitarian-black with a brown leather belt but enjoyed the occasional purple earring.

Willow found her impossibly frightening on most days. Including this one.

“If you want to learn to be a witch—”

“I do!” Willow said. Or at least, she thought she did.

“Then you have to learn how to bleed a bit.”

Willow tried to hold in a yelp, but her mouth betrayed her. It was good at that sort of thing.

“You can’t learn everything through books, my dear.” Briar gave Willow a poke on the forehead. “A spell isn’t mastered until it is cast.”

“Yes ma’am.” Willow looked at her feet. Pink tennis shoes poked out from underneath her witch’s robe, which was embroidered with star charts along the sleeves and hem. Willow loved astronomy. She had planned on going to the University of Chicago to study it, like her mother. Then she accidentally turned the family cat into a duck, and well, here she was.

Briar let out a sigh, one torn between friendly and frustrated. “You can take Petunia with you.”

Instead of relief, Willow found more despair.

“I thought I had to go alone.”

“You do, but the moon has a fondness for pets. She will not mind.”

“Oh.” Willow brightened. “Then can I take Duke?”

“No.”

“But—”

“You are not taking our conduit goat to the moon!” Briar held out her hand, snapped her fingers, and just like that, a large vampire bat hung from her arm. It yawned wide, showing all its needle-sharp teeth. “Petunia,” Briar said to her familiar, “Willow is going to the moon to pick flowers. They are in bloom tonight. You will help her.”

“Great,” the bat said. He stretched his wings, which measured longer than Willow’s forearm, and snorted through his pig-like snout. “Just great.”

“You will behave,” Briar ordered.

“Always do.”

“And you will be respectful.”

“Always am.”

Briar shook her head. “And if you lie to me again, I’ll turn you into a rat.”

“He already is one,” Willow said. Then her eyes went wide and she put her hands over her mouth. She had not meant to say that out loud.

Petunia shot Willow a dirty look, which came extra menacing given he looked like an angry dog with wings, but Briar only laughed.

“Keep her honest, Petunia. And on task.”

The vampire bat grinned. “Gladly, boss. Gladly.”

Willow turned her attention back to her shoes. It was going to be a very long night.

“Let’s go,” Petunia said.

He dropped from Briar’s arm and flapped over to Willow, where he latched onto the hood of her robe. Despite his large size, he wasn’t very heavy—just awkward.

 With no skip to her step, Willow made her way through Briar’s tower, passed the cauldron room and into her own. She grabbed her bag, not leather but nylon and purchased at a department store, and she grabbed her phone.

Willow kept a clean room, one free of spiders save the two Briar had made her bewitch during her first week of training. Hexi and Gon settled in the eastern corner, where they spun important events into their web so she wouldn’t forget. It was like having a calendar but harder to read. Thankfully her phone had an app for that. Her walls were lined with bookshelves, each stuffed with textbooks on magic or trashy romance novels, which were their own kind of magic.

She kept her astronomy textbooks under the bed. Briar didn’t care much for the sciences.

“Hmm,” she said. She gave her bag a quick shuffle, thought it much too light for this kind of journey, and stuffed it full with camping supplies. It fit nicely next to a very worn, creased copy of Foundations of Astronomy, which she carried everywhere. Basic Spells for Beginner Witches by Wolfe Naxxrimus also found its way in.

“Why don’t you pack your bed while you’re at it,” Petunia muttered.

“I want to be prepared.”

“Then dump the books and hit the kitchen.”

“I will never dump books.”

The kitchen, however, was a good idea. Willow rounded her way down the circular stairs of Briar’s tower, waving to a mop that never stopped mopping, and a dust rag that never stopped dusting. 

Willow packed a sensible midnight snack of ham, cheese, and mustard, while Petunia demanded a blood apple. “Or I’ll take yours!” were his exact words, which Willow knew to be true based on first-hand experience with the bloodsucker. He had complained about the taste the entire time, too.

“Ready,” Petunia said instead of asked.

“I think so….”

“Stop thinkin’ and start doin’. We could have been there by now!”

The bat was wrong, but Willow knew not to argue.

Through the kitchen door led to an entryway, which opened into a front yard of blue, green, and turquoise moss. Flowers for every pollinating creature in the tri-state area grew around the perimeter, as did enough mushrooms to feed a small town. Willow had books on all of them, though they were less interesting than the view of the sky. Briar’s tower was far enough from civilization that she could easily see the dusty trail of the Milky Way. Willow knew all the brightest stars by name.

“Quit stalling!” Petunia ordered. “You think you’re the only witch going to pick flowers tonight? There won’t be any left.”

Willow snorted. “There are no flowers on the moon.”

“Wrong.”

“Fine.” Willow sighed. “There are no flowers on the non-magical side of the moon. Happy?”

“No.”

Well, that made two of them. Willow wanted to go to the moon with all her heart, but not this part of it, and not this way. Defeated, nervous, and maybe even a little sick, she marched along a mossy path. Petunia switched from human words to echolocation to better guide them, and though Willow knew the way, she let the bat lead. It was easier.

Soon bat and witch’s apprentice were at Briar’s pond which held Briar’s boat. It was a little ferry, made of tar-stained oak and a little longer than the kitchen door. A lantern dangled from a pole on its bow. The boat itself rested on a pond no bigger than Willow’s bedroom, scum-green in color and home to one very large bullfrog named Tony.

The boat, unassuming to most, would sail them to the moon.

“Okay,” Willow said. She took one ginger step into the ferry. It rocked beneath her weight but did not capsize or burst into flames. “I can do this.”

“Well we aren’t dead yet,” Petunia said.

Willow sat, and Petunia crawled from her hood and bat-walked to the lantern so he could hang from it. The night waited, ready for a bit of fire and a bit of trickery. Getting to the moon required a balancing act of sneaking yet asking for an invitation. The Moon had to know, but the Earth could not. One wrong move, and they’d come crashing down.

“Step one,” Willow said. She pulled out her textbook and flipped to an ear-marked page.

“Is one you can skip,” Petunia said. “The Moon knows this boat.”

Willow’s eyes went wide. “I have to ask for permission first.”

“Eh. It’s more fun when you don’t, honestly.”

“I’m going to tell Ms. Briar you gave me bad advice.”

Petunia grinned, showing all his teeth. “I’m going to tell her water is wet.”

Willow crossed her arms.

“Fine.” Petunia let out a little bat sigh. “If you screw this up, then the Earth knows right away, and we go nowhere. If you ask once we leave the planet, then you still get your permission without all the hassle. It’s easier.”

“It’s not right.”

“All the better.”

It was bad advice, but Willow did as she was told. She skipped over to step two. Light the lantern, say the words. Willow reached into her bag for a book of matches. Witches had a godlike control of fire, but technology made the simple stuff easier. She lit a match, leaned up, and stoked the lantern to life. Its flame burned blue.

“Finally,” Petunia said. “Now screw up the words so we can go home.”

Willow scowled. She skimmed her book, making sure to really memorize the spell, took in a deep breath, and spoke the arcane language that would thin the universe around them. The green water stilled, deepened, and then gently faded into black. The forest followed suit, the trees disappearing into hidden mist, the clouds fading away. Soon all Willow could see was the night sky, brilliant with diamond sparkles. She wished she had a telescope.

The Milky Way trail vanished first, and then the stars went out one by one. The moon disappeared in a brilliant blink, as if someone suddenly drew the blinds closed. Soon the only light in the universe was the one dangling from their little ferry, pale blue and very small.

“Wow,” Willow whispered.

Petunia echolocated a few chirps. “Yup. We’re off Earth.”

“It’s amazing.”

“Is it?” The bat snorted. “I can’t see anything.”

“That’s why it’s amazing.”

Willow worked through the final steps, twisting the dark pond into a bridge. All bodies of water ran to the moon if you knew the right words.

“There,” Willow said after her final incantation. The boat lurched. “We can start sailing now.”

“Still plenty of time for you to kill us.”

Willow sat, cross legged and wide eyed, and Petunia chirped on and off beside her.

Magic ticked in odd increments, meaning the twenty minutes it would take to get to the moon would feel more like two hours. Bathed in a tiny blue light, Willow watched the empty space around her until the sheer majesty of it wore off. Space needed stars. It needed asteroids and nebula and pulsars and black holes and planets. Magic space was a childish imitation of the real thing. Willow reached for her phone. That lasted all of twenty minutes before Youtube stalled out. Well, it was still better to have it than not.

“Smile,” she said to Petunia.

“Never.”

Willow took a picture of the vampire bat against a starless backdrop. He looked much more handsome when he was almost impossible to see.

“Let’s eat,” he said.

“We have to ask for permission first,” Willow argued. “We can do that now.”

Petunia snorted, and Willow readjusted the book on her lap. She tried to find her page, but she could barely see the tip of her finger in all the dark, let alone read the words. The light from their lantern just wasn’t strong enough. Thankfully, she packed a flashlight.

“Do you ever cast spells?” Petunia asked, squinting away. “Like, ever?”

“When I need to.”

“You’re a bad witch.”

“I’m practical,” Willow argued. Though she felt like a bad witch. Today, yesterday, last month, it didn’t matter. Magic would always be too weird and too scary.

She found her passage and gave it a once-over. It didn’t make much sense, and taken at face value, required items she did not have. Briar never mentioned needing a bell. Willow sighed. She had to wake the moon up, charm its children—whatever that meant—and then kindly ask if it was okay to step foot on her garden. She was to use lunar speak, which she did not know.

“Petunia,” Willow asked. “Do you have a bell?”

“No.”

“Do you know how to charm the moon’s children?”

The bat flapped over to Willow’s pack and stuck his nose in. He found his apple and yanked it out with an unhelpful grin. “The moon doesn’t have children.”

Willow bit back a frustrated sob. “Okay. Well do you speak lunar speak?”

“Doesn’t exist.” Petunia bit into his snack and sucked. Blood squirted onto his pig-snout. “You know, we wouldn’t have to go through all that if we did this before we left.”

“I hate you,” Willow snapped. She didn’t even feel bad about it, either.

Petunia shrugged his little bat shoulders. “Well that won’t get you to the moon.”

“Help me!”

“No.” Petunia took his apple and flew back to the lantern. “Help yourself. It’s what a good witch would do, not use a flashlight or matches.”

Willow stood. The ferry rocked, and Petunia shrieked about until he regained his footing. Her hands turned into fists. She didn’t need magic for that little transformation. She didn’t need magic to throttle the bat, either. She took a step towards him.

“Spells works better than threats,” Petunia said. “You want my help? Conjure a chime.”

Willow eyed the bat. She didn’t trust him, but as she looked out at empty void, she knew they were running out of time. Fake space was shifting back into real space. She could see stars again, faint but getting brighter. Arcturus showed up first, bright red despite being 37 trillion light years away. That meant the big dipper would appear next.

“Fine,” Willow said. “But I’m doing this my way.”

“Whatever gets us killed faster so we can go home.”

Willow reached passed her book and snagged her phone. It had no bars, which made sense. They were over 230,000 miles away from the nearest satellite. She didn’t need to make a call though, just access the ringtone.

It only took a few swipes with her thumb to get her phone chiming like a bell.

The effect was instantaneous. One second they were surrounded by thick void and faint stars; the next they were trapped in a swarm of lights with teeth. Willow sucked in a breath. Each light was the size of her thumbnail with teeth just as long. They buzzed around her head and into her hair. When she swiped at one, it turned to dust.

“Petunia,” Willow hissed. “Help!”

Petunia threw out a few chirps and nodded. “Lunar flies. Nothing to worry about.”

“Make them go away!”

“Can’t.” Petunia swatted one away with his wing. “They’ll follow us the rest of the way. They want to get back to the moon, not be stuck out here.”

Willow did her best to sit still, and the swarm of moon bugs settled around the ferry. Most perched away from her, but a few decided her shoulders and hair were the best places to rest. Up close, they were more tooth than body, and then more wing than tooth. There had to be at least a hundred of them, and if they all decided they were hungry, Willow wasn’t sure she could fight them off.

“Now what?” Willow asked.

“They’ll be fine,” Petunia said. “Briar likes to sing to them, when they show up. She’s a good singer, you know.”

“I did not.”

 Willow couldn’t sing, but she could read. Slowly, doing her best not to upset the swarm of flying teeth, she reached into her bag and pulled out her copy of Foundations of Astronomy. A few flies twitched at the page flips, and another six or seven flew over to Willow’s knees for a better look, but most kept still.

“Okay,” Willow said. She turned to the chapter on the moon, not her favorite, but fitting given the circumstances. “Who wants to learn?”

“What are you doing?” Petunia barked.

“Pretending this makes sense.”

Confined to a boat no bigger than a door, and trapped with a swarm of biting moon bugs and the rudest bat in the entire Midwest, Willow read from her astronomy book. She explained the basics of gravitational forces, and she explained the tides. When she got to the hypothesis that the moon originated as a chunk of rock from Earth during the planet’s formation, the lunar flies buzzed in place, almost like a cat purring.

All the while, real space thickened around them. More stars twinkled in the sky until they were all Willow could see. The Milky Way stretched across the heavens, brilliant with color and light. Willow blinked and found she was crying.

“I love you mom,” she mouthed.

When the moon reappeared, it wasn’t the silver-white sphere Willow watched every night but a clear piece of quartz dotted with cloud formations. Pinks and purples glinted along the surface in wide patches, not craters but gardens. Willow looked into her textbook. It showed the real moon, the one her mother would point at at night and go, “We went there, you know. Once upon a time, like a fairy tale but real. We did the impossible, and you can too.”

Last year the impossible had involved mundane things, like schoolwork and softball and learning to live with one parent. Now the impossible was conjured fire and a goat that spoke with demons. And spiders and plates that washed themselves but sometimes broke if you were rude to them, and checking the front porch for fairies, or making sure not to wash your hands with bewitched water because that would glue them together.

It had all seemed a gift at the time. Something to be excited for, to carry a heritage that liked to skip multiple generations at a time because magic was crafty that way. Willow had jumped at the opportunity. Because with a bit of magic and a bit of regular technology, maybe the real impossible things were possible.

“I want to go home,” Willow said. She didn’t mean to, but she wasn’t going to take the words back, either.

Something within the moon pulsed, not a light or a sound but a vibration that was a mix of both. It fogged Willow’s glasses, and it sent the lunar flies buzzing with excitement. Willow stood, and the flies formed a cloud around the lantern. Petunia dropped from it and flew to Willow’s back, where he latched onto her robe.

“She asked why,” Petunia said. “I think she’s bored.”

Willow stared at the moon that wasn’t a moon. Feeling very small and very foolish, she gave it a wave. She used to do that a lot when she was a kid, and her mother would blow kisses. Then she died. Now Willow only waved at the moon when she thought no one was looking.

“Hi,” Willow said. “I’m supposed to pick flowers tonight, but you’re not supposed to have flowers.”

It wasn’t lunar speak, but the moon rumbled in response and Petunia translated. If Willow really concentrated, she could understand bits and pieces. It was like listening to gravity. Or maybe the tides. It almost made sense—but only almost.

“Who are you to say I’m not allowed to have flowers?” the moon asked. It spoke with no emotion. The flies around the boat buzzed and hummed.

“I don’t…,” Willow tried. It was like talking to Briar when she got angry. All she wanted to do was say the right thing so she could go back to her room and read. Everything made more sense when it was written down. Even spells could pretend to be logic and reasoning when they were penned in ink and not hand gestures with fake words.

“You sure don’t,” Petunia muttered.

“I miss when the things that scared me made sense,” Willow said. “That’s all.”

The moon rumbled again, and now they were close enough for Willow to see crystalline cities. A dragon the size of a lake soared over one. The buildings were pointed like teeth, the courtyards as flat as ice rinks. It was beautiful, but it wasn’t the moon. It wasn’t what Willow saw when she looked through a telescope.

“The things that scare you will never truly make sense,” the moon said. “Not on my world, nor on yours. That is the nature of fear.”

“But—”

“You are allowed to live in more than one world, young witch. If you choose.”

The ferry, guided by a blue lantern and a swarm of lights with teeth, eased towards a patch of pink lunar surface. It was a garden, and it was filled with flowers. Human-like creatures walked through rows, picking the best and brightest, while witches of all shape and size marched behind in a respectful distance. The caretakers—the lunar dryads—stood tall, at least seven feet or more, and were made of melted rock and white bark. Vines shrouded their heads as hair, and flowers grew from their eyebrows. They wore long, flowing dresses that shimmered like rainbows.

“It’s all so beautiful,” Willow said. “But it’s wrong. There should be craters. Just craters and rocks.”

“Magic’s more fun when it’s wrong,” Petunia said. “But you got us here without killing us, so I guess that’s something.”

“Thanks,” Willow mumbled.

“You’re still a bad witch.”

“I know.”

“You may enter,” the moon rumbled. “And you may harvest.”

Willow stepped from Briar’s boat onto an alien world. It was one small step for Willow Jones, but no giant leaps. The ground was soft with mushrooms and moss, and the air was warm like a bright summer’s day. Instead of finding one dream, Willow marched into another. At least the stars made sense. She found Arcturus, and from there, she spotted the big dipper.

“I don’t know what I’m looking for,” Willow said. “But the stars look amazing from here.”

“Flowers,” Petunia said. “Big ones, too. They make the best wine.”

“But I hope I know it when I find it.”

A lunar dryad came to greet them. It offered a bow, and Willow bowed back. Petunia chuckled to himself. Apparently witches didn’t bow to dryads. At least, good witches didn’t. But Willow wasn’t one of them.

She followed the dryad, one eye on the ground, another on the sky. She kept her copy of Foundations of Astronomy close to her chest. 

Fishing for Ghosts

“Who’s a good boy? You are! Yes you are!” I whisper into the lure. It’s a homemade hook, a bit of joy mixed with a bit of glass that looks sort of like a stuffed squirrel at a distance. The joy is pink; the glass is sharper than a silver bullet. I attach it to my tip down and let the rod do its thing. I then repeat this process with a second tip down, though I bait this lure with, “I love you, yes I do! Yes I do!”

I say the words in an exaggerated voice. I’ve never met a dog that didn’t love that voice.

Their ghosts love that voice, too.

The rest is a game of waiting. It’s peaceful waiting though. The aether laps beneath my feet, and the graveyard earth shifts in pleasant ways. It smells like autumn and feels like spider webs. My rods dangle from their bramble puppets, each weighted with just the right amount of exorcise to tip down and snag a biting ghost. It’s more engineering than magic, but it is magic. Anything that does 90% of the work without help is magic, at least in my opinion.

My shack is a haphazard warm. There is beer—of course—and there is a little radio spitting static and the voices that live just beneath the static. It’s a home-made structure, mostly built of grainy wooden planks decorated with knotholes. Nothing special, but it keeps the frost at bay. Bent nails pockmark the walls, acting as cheap hooks for jars and tools that threaten to fall but only threaten. Nothing actually falls in my shack. Spirits drift up, but never down.

Well, some drift down, but I don’t fish for those anymore.

I only have the two tip downs, so for my third grave, I use a bog-standard fishing pole. It’s also homemade, a gift from dear-ol’ dad. May you rest in peace, pops.

“I’ll love you forever, little man,” I whisper into my final lure. A little piece of my heart breaks away and attaches to the glass point. It glistens red like a drop of blood.

The fishing pole is a brackish piece of corpsewood, yellow at the bottom like a femur but bleach-white everywhere else. Well, except the very middle. That bit’s made of stainless steel from when I first broke it some thirty five years ago. Caught me a nasty haunt, one of them drift-down types. “Never again!” I said, but time and beer have a way of making “never again” turn into “eh what the heck?” which is why there are two pieces of stainless steel holding pop’s old fishing pole together.

He’d shake his head and sigh. Goddamn do I miss him.

I cast, and my lure plips through the dirt, and into the aether. The smell of apples cuts through my shack before turning back into old leaves. I smile, because that’s how you know its prime dog season. They like to play in the leaves. Like to chase after squirrels and bark at birds and get in the way when it’s time to set the table. Always a good scrap or two for the dogs during autumn. It’s the best time to grill in the backyard.

Static hisses through the radio. The dead grumble, and Her flute leads them on. It’s a faint sound, the melody so distorted that it’s less a song and more a part of the wind. She’s far, and as long as She’s far, I’m safe.

So I settle back, place my rod within reach, and pop a beer. I close my eyes and let the sounds of the aether do their thing. I’m in no rush. I’m much too alive for that.

*

A tip down jingles with a catch, and I set my rod aside to yank the bramble puppet up. Hooked, line, and sinker is a wriggling dog snout, fluorescent purple and yipping loud enough to wake the rest of the dead. It’s eyeless and more ooze than form, like turned yogurt stuck to the bottom of a quart, but I can make out enough details to know it was a Yorkshire terrier. I smudge its jaws aside to work the lure out of its mouth. Once free, its little barks turn into whines, which are quieter yet more annoying.

“Oh hush you,” I say. It does not hush. They never do.

In my cooler, next to the beer, is a round-bottom flask. Its neck is about an inch in diameter, but it bottoms out to something closer to six inches. It’s clear, heavy, and sound proof. I bring the complaining ghost to the edge, and it sucks the little Yorkie in without a second thought. Perfect fishing silence returns to my shack.

I add more bait to the tip down, set it back up, and return to my spot, my dad’s fishing pole between my legs and a beer to my right. The radio spits more static. Her flute is almost impossible to hear.

*

It takes another beer before my tip downs jingle, one right after the other. I plod over to them, yanking first a well-worn mutt with a blue glow, then a golden retriever with an orange shine. Both are prime catches, the kind of dogs with easy attitudes and wagging tails. Neither fights back as I bring them to my flask. The Yorkie tries to escape, but he’s too small to get out, and with the other two, they form a makeshift pack. Three is always better than one when it comes to dogs.

The goal is thirteen. It’s a prime number, and one that distills down to the perfect mason jar. The kind us backwater moonshiners call our, “special elixir.” We can thank the Morrison Sisters for that. What kind of moonshine depends on the dogs—Happy dogs skew towards rum while bitter little ankle-biters like the Yorki make a good whiskey. Real big dogs ferment into scotch. A mix of anything and everything blends into a kind of flavorless vodka, which I enjoy with orange juice on Sunday mornings. Praise God. One of these days I’ll figure out how to make brandy.

Not today though.

*

Something yanks at my pole with enough force to tear it from my hands.

“Jesus Fuck!”

I manage to catch it before it falls into the aether. The handle is death-cold, and whatever’s got hold tears back and forth like a wolf trying to break a deer’s neck. I pull, and it pulls right back, almost putting me off balance. Dirt flies everywhere. My beer falls to the ground with a thunk and a glub-glub noise. Half my trinkets crash to the ground, and one of my tip downs tips right the hell over. The radio spits static mixed with bad flute.

“Fuckin’ fuck!”

Panic takes hold, because this feels like one of them drift-down type spirits. Somethin’ real bad, like a bear or a mountain lion. Or worse, a human. My skin threatens to crawl off as I reach for a knife. The ground cracks apart. I can hear the aether twisting like a tornado, a violent swirl sucking at all life. Dirt spills in, and the smell is mold. I’ve never fallen into the aether before. Not sure anyone has and lived to tell the tale. It’s cold and black, and the dirt that sits between this world and the next doesn’t like to be disturbed. It wants to close in, wants to become a still grave. It wants me to scream and drown and die, and then it wants Her to find what’s left.

Before I can cut the line, it slackens. Everything stops with it. The fear, the screams, even the hope. My beer dribbles its last while my radio cuts out.

“Easy now,” I whisper. “Easy now.”

My dad’s old fishing pole jerks in my hand.

I slide the knife up, ready to cut the line and whatever bad spirit has hold, and find myself giving the reel a gentle wind instead. Just a few turns. The gears click like rattling teeth. Whatever I’ve caught doesn’t fight back, so I keep going. Up and up, with just a little play here and there. Sometimes the big dogs fight a bit—not the wolves, but the German Shepherds and Rottweiler’s. Once caught a Husky that threw a real howling fit, so bad it almost knocked the shack over. Most dogs are good, worth a pet and a smile, but not all. The bad dogs bite, and the spirits they distill into bite as well.

“Come on,” I say, and already I can tell the ghost is at the edge, ready to spill over. My heart quickens. I mouth a quick prayer.

I yank up not a dog but a crow.

“What in the hell?”

It’s a dark ghost, like if black could glow, and it doesn’t ooze or droop but spirits around with wings that rotate like a windmill. It caws as it flies, loud bleats that dig into my ears, through my skull, and into my forehead. Little headaches explode behind my eyes. I stumble around, one hand on my pole, another flailing with the knife. I can see my lure in the crow’s mouth, not snagged but bitten. The ghost took hold on its own. It can let go at any time.

I cut the line. The magic fades from the string in a burst of silver. Now it’s just fabric and glass.

Instead of dropping the lure and returning to the afterlife, the crow flutters to the tallest corner of my shack. It finds an empty nail and perches. Or rather, it hovers right above it. Ghosts can’t stand, but this one floats and hops like if it were alive. It gives my lure another playful yank, and the line swishes into the wall. It doesn’t even make a sound.

“Caw!” the ghost shrieks. Pain follows.

“No,” I say. I point at the hole. “Go back down there.”

“Caw!”

I stare at the crow. It stares back. Even as a ghost, it holds its form, with piercing green eyes and wings so dark they shimmer. Most ghosts don’t get so lucky. Most fade as soon as they die, turning into clumps of jelly. Dogs lose their tails and eyes first, then their ears and paws. Rodents jumble into puddles so fast it’s almost scary, yet they retain their noses and whiskers for a long, long time. Deer shrink. A deer ghost will look like a Christmas tree ornament for years before it melts into something that’s more antler than form, and even the doe grow a few points in death. Birds tend to look like eggs made of runny yogurt. Taste like it too.

Cats reincarnate like the cheating bastards that they are.

Humans—but I shake that thought away. I don’t fish for drift-down ghosts no more.

The crow makes like its preening its feathers, which is a strange sight as its beak is more thought than shape. Its feathers ooze around it, through it.

“Caw!” it shrieks when I raise my knife. Pain blossoms behind my eyes.

“You’re supposed to be dead!” I say.

“Caw!”

I look into my cooler. There are two beers left, and my flask, which is nowhere near its thirteen ghosts. If the crow won’t go back to hell, maybe it’ll distill into a spirit or two. I don’t like mixing animals—never been a fan of what the kids call a WOP—but I don’t trust this ghost as far as I can throw it. It smells like a drift-down type.

“Nice and easy,” I say. I pocket the knife and hold my hands out. The crow jerks its head in a way that could pass as a nod. I, meanwhile, stand there like a scarecrow. I look like one too, with faded jeans and a torn sweatshirt over an old button-up. I smell a bit better though. Fishing clothes last longer than farm decorations, but only a little.

“Nice. And. Easy.”

The crow lets me reach into the cooler without screaming more headaches at me. It’s wary though, alert and thinking in ways ghosts aren’t. I snag the flask, and because I’ve earned it, I reach for another beer too.

“Not sure if I should drink you,” I say to the crow. “Not supposed to catch your types, whatever you are.”

“Caw,” the crow says, but it isn’t a shriek. The headache it sends my way is light. The ghost hops from one nail to another. One of its eyes changes colors from green to blue. “Caw.”

“Shut up.”

I pop my beer. It hisses, and the crow darts towards it. I offer my own headache-inducing yelp. The ghost flaps around my hand with its windmill feathers, a freezing ball of jelly and claws sharp as needles. I bat at it while I try to run and hide. Every tap with its beak, every brush of its wings, causes my shirt to freeze and crack. Beer spills down my sleeve, and what doesn’t turn into blonde ice drips onto my pants.

“Fuck!”

“Caw!”

I drop the beer to put my hands over my ears. The crow flaps a circle around the shack, kicking up dirt and knocking my second tip down over. The lights turn off, on, off, on. And then the ghost heads for my beer. It pecks at it. When that doesn’t work, it tries to stand on it, though it can’t because it’s a ghost.

“Caw!”  It screams. It looks at me, all huddled on the ground and feeling like I just lost a fight. My arms hurt. My head pounds. I’m bleeding, though I’m not sure from where. “Caw?”

I’ll be goddamned. It sounds like a question.

“What?”

The crow rubs its head against the beer bottle. Instead of moving the glass, it drifts through it, turning it to ice.

“Caw?”

“You can’t be serious.”

It takes a bit of will, but I stand and brush myself off. The crow watches me with eyes that keep changing color. Blue and green then blue and orange then red and white then teal and purple. One minute it looks like a living bird, the next a ghost orb, the kind you’d see at a cemetery. I check myself for cuts and bruises and find half a dozen, but nothing I can’t fix. Ain’t the first time a ghost bit me.

The crow waits patiently for me to regain my senses, and when it sees that I am ready, it offers another chirp. This one doesn’t hurt.

“You can’t have any,” I say. I shake my head. “Sorry. Ghosts don’t eat or drink. That’s for the living. You should know that.”

“Caw?”

The crow oozes at the bottle. When that doesn’t work, it floats around it, approaching the glass from every direction. The glass doesn’t budge though. An angry ghost can knock things over and make stuff move, but a confused one can’t do nothin’ more than be confused. Or sad. Or dead. The crow blinks. It is crying.

“You gotta go back,” I say. My voice trembles. I’ve been fishin’ for ghosts for decades. Learned it from my father who learned it from his. You can do a lot with a ghost, though we always just drank ‘em. Kick back, relax, and as long as you mind Her, what more could anyone want on a Sunday morning? Then once you’re done, head to church to purify. God forgives the sorry. Then wink and do it again next week.

But seeing this crow sulk around my beer bottle makes me feel worse than dirt. Worse than the aether, which churns beneath the dirt, smelling like autumn leaves and feeling like spider webs.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” I tell it. It flutters to my chair. If I sat down, it would be at my shoulder. I bet it used to sit on its owners shoulder when it was alive, and they’d share a beer and a story. I bet someone loved it once. I bet someone loved it forev—

“I’LL LOVE YOU FOREVER, LITTLE MAN.”

The voice is flutes and death and infinity all rolled in one. I am trapped in the aether, and it is trapped around me. Everything is cold. Everything is tornadoes and drowning. I scream a soundless sound, and I blink a lightless blink. Up and down merge together while the crow caws headaches into my skull. Some part of me curses for not fixing the radio, for not listening for Her, but the rest turns into panic. The rest falls.

The rest dies.

“THAT WAS YOUR TRAP. THAT WAS YOUR LIE.”

She appears in front of me. Her face is a patchwork of skin sewn together with pink thread. There is no light in her eyes. Her hair flows around her face like weeds, and her nose threatens to fall off. Only her lips are complete, contorted into the most gorgeous frown I have ever seen. She could kiss the life from an angel. The rest of her shimmers in and out of existence as flutes play terrible sounds around us.

I cannot see her army of the dead, but I can feel it. I know it is there, and I know I am doomed to become part of it.

“YOU PREY, AND NOW YOU ARE PREY.”

“I’m sorry.”

“YOU ARE NOT.”

“I—”

“YOU ARE NOT!” Her voice is a rage so thick it could end the universe.

“Caw!”

A headache rips through my head. For a split second, I can see the inside of my shack. It’s hazy and dark, and the ghost of a crow rests near my head, staring into my face with eyes that burn bright with red fever.

“YOU DID NOT LOVE HIM FOREVER, AND YOU ARE NOT LOVED FOREVER.”

I’m crying. I have no form, and I have no voice, but I am crying. She’s lying to me. Her song is lying to me. I did love him, and I am sorry. Everything else is gone, but those two things are not.

“YOU WILL NOT FIND HIM HERE! YOU WILL NEVER SEE HIM EVER AGAIN!”

“Please.”

“Caw!”

The world returns. The ghost is screaming at me. My mouth tastes like copper. I try to raise my hand, but it’s heavy with sleep. My shack reeks of autumn. I can hear flutes outside.

“I—”

“THE DEAD MARCH, BUT YOU WILL CRAWL. THE BETRAYERS CRAWL.”

“No,” I plead. I am a ball of sobs and excuses, and my voice is a whisper. “I did love him. I still do.”

“LIAR!”

“Caw!”

I’m sitting with a knife in one hand and a trowel in the other. They’re both bad blades, one made of bone and coffin wood, the other glass and empty words. They’re strong magic though, the kinds of things that let me go searching for ghosts. Because there’s one ghost I want to find, one I’d do anything to see again, even if just for a moment.

“HE SCREAMS AT WHAT YOU DID TO HIM. YOU WERE THERE, AND HE REMEMBERS. EVEN NOW HE REMEMBERS. HE DOES NOT LOVE YOU, NOT ANYMORE.”

“He was sick,” I say. And he was sick. His kidneys were so busted he could hardly control himself, and he growled if you touched his belly. We had to keep him outside that last month. We had to do a lot of things we didn’t want to. But I miss him. It’s why I use that spell when I go fishing. Because maybe he’ll bite hold, and maybe I can tell him I’m sorry.

“YOU GREW SICK OF HIM.”

“No!”

“Caw!”

I’m standing in my shack, one foot on the ground, the other in the aether. Pain explodes through my head. I’m bleeding from my ears. The crow hovers at my shoulder, flapping and cawing and sending waves of cold death through my body. Everything hurts. My fingers are white with frostbite. I’m holding my knife in one hand and pressing its blade into my wrist. All I need is a little more pressure, and I can go back. I can tell Her she’s wrong. I can—

“Caw!”

“Stop.” The word is a whisper.

“Caw!”

I look at the crow. It has three eyes now, each as red as blood. Its form shifts. Its beak melts into a mouth, one filled with fangs.

“Help me,” I say.

“Say it,” the crow says. Its voice is feminine and far away, and I understand what I’ve caught and what I’ve done. “Say the spell.”

“You’re a witch’s familiar.”

“Caw!” The crow shrieks a headache at me, and I press my knife into my wrist. Blood spills. “Say her words! Make her come here! Tell me you love me because I miss her like you miss your dog.”

Through tears I do as the ghost asks: “I love you forever, little man.” My voice cracks, and I fall to the ground.

I look into the aether, and for the first time, I see my own reflection in it. I’m tired and hurt, with sixty years of wrinkles swimming through my face. I was thirty when I put Bailey down. He was eight. Only eight. The good died young, and I stayed living and searching, fishing and drinking. I am dirt, and the best I can manage is sorry.

The crow caws a headache. I grip my knife. It’s a different color in the aether, black instead of silver. The dirt shifts beneath me. It wants to close up, it wants to cover bodies.

“Goodbye,” the ghost says. It hops from my shoulder to the ground. It shakes its head and raises its wings. “When you said her words, you looked like her.”

I let the knife go. It hits the dirt, sinks, and is no more.

“I didn’t mean to,” I say.

“And when you said you were sorry, I believed you.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“If I see your companion, I will let him know. I think he will believe you, too.”

“His name was Bailey.”

The crow nods. “I will find him.”

The crow’s mouth disappears, replaced with a black beak. It blinks its third eye away. It’s a ghost, and it’s dead, and I watch it fly back to Her. The graveyard earth shifts and pours until the hole to hell is no more.

My radio spits static.

Why Cats are Good at Jumping

The event of the century brought out the best and worst in everyone. Humans made a mess of things of course, but even the trees and insects grew rowdy with their questions and line-pushing. Birds of every species blocked out the sun, trolls got drunk on fairy wine, and fairy’s got drunk on all the flowers that uprooted themselves to make the long trek to Illinois. The state swelled with magic…. And noise…. And refuse. Meanwhile, not a single garbage can in the Midwestern hemisphere went un-raided by bears, raccoons, or orks, who are quite fond of bread crusts but not the bread itself.

Humans and elves built the stadium, with the elves working half as hard but taking twice the credit. Neither party was actually allowed inside. The Titans had had enough of elves and humans to last an infinity.

 There were dragons too (with and without wings), goblins, dogs, weeds, spiders, gnomes, dwarves, a half-dozen centaurs dressed in fancy suits, a swarm of fourth-generation mayflies who couldn’t understand why everyone was so goddamn excited, two naga who looked hopelessly out of place, and a mermaid in a wheelchair being pushed around by an emperor penguin. His name was Slippy.

There were no cats. Cats were banned from the entire state.

They know what they did.

Correction.

There was one cat. His name was Chesh, and his ears were so flat against his tabby-stripped head he looked like a baby seal. Orange fur covered him from nose to tail, complete with brown stripes and sock-white paws. His eyes were blue. He wore a blue bandana around his neck, which had the effect of making him look like a handsome little man, and also let him carry a permanent marker. A silverback gorilla smoking a joint was kind enough to help him with that.

“Not supposed to be here,” the gorilla said.

“Just want to ask a question,” Chesh replied while giving his front paw a lick. “Just the one. That’s all.”

The gorilla snorted. “You’ll take more than that. I’ve met a few cats in my day.”

“I’m not—”

A shadow fell over Chesh, one with big leaves and even bigger branches. His  tail floofed into something resembling a traffic cone. An oak tree stumbled at him, not looking where it was going and swinging its squirrel-laden branches like swords. Chesh jumped onto the tree; the gorilla stumbled back a few steps.

“Excuse me,” the tree bellowed in its slow language. The squirrels cursed and threw rocks.

“Hey!” the gorilla said. “Get to the back of the line!”

“I didn’t mean too.” The tree waved its branches. Before Chesh could blink, a maple tree cut in line. It was also filled with squirrels.

The gorilla roared so loud a dwarf spilled his beer.

“Fuck yer both!” the dwarf demanded, his shirt soaked through with drink. He dropped his stein and put up his hands. “And fuck yer mothers!”

“Well I never!” the oak gasped.

It should be noted that there were no weapons allowed in or around the stadium, a rule enforced as staunchly as the no-cat one, which is to say quite well but not with absolute perfection. If only a dozen people died during a Titan visit, well, that would be fantastic. The typical death count for an event of the century landed in the quadruple digits—the leading cause of death being dehydration.

Regardless, the dwarf had nothing to swing but his fists. These proved ineffective against a tree.

Chesh scampered to the newly-arrived maple, dodging a nest of hornets and an apple who claimed to be poisoned. He had places to be and Titans to meet. This close, the stadium took up most of the horizon, flourished with vines and flower patterns courtesy of the elves. Chesh knew that if he got closer, he’d see murals dedicated to each of the Titans. He also knew that the Titan he wanted to see would be somewhere in the middle.

Mistress Gravity was the most important, so of course she got to be the center of attention.

The closer Chesh got, the more the crowd cramped together, everyone and everything fighting for a better look. Cameras flashed and food wrappers wrinkled the ground. Flyers with “No Cats Allowed!” floated in the breeze. Chesh did his best to prowl through it all, his head low, his belly even lower, but at some point in the evening—and it was apt to happen—someone noticed him.

“Cat!” a voice screamed, possibly a gryphon’s.

“Where?” everyone said, shouted, roared, and otherwise panicked at once.

“Over here!” a grasshopper called. He chirped his wings.

“Shut up!” Chesh pleaded. “I’m just—”

“He’s right here!”

A wolf stepped on the grasshopper, her nose to the ground. Chesh ran. Flies buzzed in his ears, and fairies followed overhead, their wings lighting like glow sticks. Chesh howled for them to please go away. Humans tried to grab him, and elves tried to be-spell him. A little girl in a black dress with a pink sash gave a high-pitched cry of “Kitty!” and reached, her arms already mid hug.

Her mother smacked her on the hands and scolded, “No honey. Cats have germs.”

A dragon cocked an eyebrow.

A gnome turned himself invisible.

“One of you lot just cast a spell!” a man wearing a very shiny black tie demanded. He looked like the sort of person who made demands all day every day and got very sour when they were not met. “Turn him to ice or whatever!”

An elf made to do just that, his fingers already wiggling, when the grasshopper-squishing wolf bumped into him. The elf said the wrong word, slipped, and transformed the demanding man into a ceramic swan.

“Oops.” His voice sounded like air escaping a balloon.

Chesh leaped the newly-made lawn ornament, his tail spinning like a tornado to keep him balanced. He landed on the ground, darted left, right, and then ran smack-dab into an outstretched hand. Claws grabbed him by the bandanna. They lifted. Chesh gave a mew, his ears back, his tail curved between his legs. His permanent marker fell to the ground.

“You’re not supposed to be here!” the woman hissed. Her teeth were pointed like a vampire’s. “You’ll chase them away.”

Chesh gulped. Or he tried to. The bandanna was choking little stars behind his eyes.

“Paid too much for this spot to be cheated by a thief.”

The crowd stepped just a bit closer at that. Even the moon grew bigger in the sky, eager for a look. The Titans would soon be here, but until they showed up, there was still a hierarchy. Elves and humans stood at the top, mountains of power, and cats wandered somewhere near the bottom. They belonged with the raccoons and dogs and trolls. The strange woman gave Chesh another shake, her lips mumbling both curse words and magic. Flames shuffled behind her teeth.

Then the bandanna ripped.

Her spell made a popping flash above Chesh’s head, one that would have burned him into something so inedible even a goblin would have turned down the meal. Instead, it blinded everyone within eyesight and sent a dragon into a coughing fit. A gunshot split the air. A woman with more sense than most bellowed, “George you put that fucking thing away right now!”

“But—”

Chesh was already running when he hit the ground. Everyone tried to grab him at once, which led to a collision of body parts, mostly heads bonking into other heads, and the spilling of more drinks. The vampire woman cursed, not a real but a bad word, and the dragon coughed a wad of sticky spit onto her back. She fell over. Chesh decided to leave his marker and bandanna. His life was worth more than an autograph.

He still wanted to meet Mistress Gravity though.

Instead of running away, he continued on, causing mayhem with each step. Witches cackled and orks gnashed their teeth. A snake asked him if he’d like some help, but Chesh didn’t trust the rattling sound behind the offer. Best not to risk it. The closer he got to the stadium, the wilder the humans and elves became, fighting each other over the best spots and swapping money for trinkets neither were supposed to own. It wouldn’t be the event of the century if at least one elf didn’t wander back to his home with a pipe bomb or can opener.

The Titans arrived around the time Chesh was trying to navigate a dragon, one whose wings were attached to his arms. He had a stubby neck and was reaching for a better look when Chesh stepped on his tail. The dragon spun about, Chesh went flying, and then the air froze in place. The moon blinked. Every law binding nature to Earth wavered, and if you wished upon a star at this very second, your wish would come true.

There were no shooting stars. Chesh wished everyone would stop trying to kill him.

Nothing happened.

The great titan Conservation arrived first, appearing as a spinning symbol that no one could quite make out. Sometimes they looked like an infinity; sometimes they looked like a series of interconnected loops. Lighting crackled inside their shifting shapes, and everyone clapped—even those that didn’t understand the laws of conservation.

Chesh dodged the dragon by running between his back legs and jumping onto a pine tree adorned with Christmas ornaments.

Thermodynamics appeared next, arriving as three burning wings without a body, head, or legs. More people clapped. The dwarves went wild. One reached over the velvet rope for a handshake, and when he melted his finger down to the bone, smiled so wide he looked like he might cry. It was a story for his kids and his kid’s kids!

Chesh leapt off the pine tree, scattering a handful of glass orbs to the floor, and ran across the back of an alligator. The gator paid him no mind.

Photonics appeared third, and in her usual manor, disappeared soon after. She was a shy Titan.

Gravity came after her, wearing the guise of a bipedal creature draped in a dress blacker than space itself. She did not walk but floated, and every thing that looked at her hovered off the ground. This proved quite useful to Chesh, who was too small to see her but quite good at running under feet. He bolted towards the stadium while everyone clapped, cheered, drank, or did bumps of coke.

“Mistress!” he mewed, his tail high. He wished he had time to give himself a quick bath so he could look his best. “Mistress! Over here!”

Someone shouted, “Stop that cat!” Someone else shouted, “Look! It’s Radiation!” No one was sure what to do, so everyone tried a little bit of everything. Fireworks lit up the sky.

“Mistress Gravity!” Chesh called. The stadium was right there! He could see the velvet rope, magically enhanced so no one could hop over it.

Unless you were a cat.

Chesh made the impossible leap as hands, claws, and in the case of one wolf, a jaw filled with teeth, reached for him. He landed panting, his eyes huge pools of black, his tail just a little poofy. Still, he felt dignified.

“Mistress Gravity!”

“Hello? What is this?” Chesh let out a purr. She was right there! The hem of her dress jerked like clean bed sheets, perfect for playing with, and though her hands were just a little too long to be human, they looked like they gave good pets. Her face was the color of concrete at night, but her eyes sparkled like rainbows. A river of hair swirled around her face.

“Mistress Gravity! I made it!” Chesh chirped. The crowd around him glowered. An elf pulled out a ceremonial sword, not sharp at all, but heavy enough to club a small creature to death.

The Titan knelt, though her body never touched the ground. Rocks and pieces of grass floated around her knees. “Little one, you’re not supposed to be here.”

“Can I have your autograph?”

“Excuse me?” Her voice was soft like the warmest blanket yet powerful enough to hold planets in their orbits. Everything about her was beautiful.

Chesh swished his tail. “I brought a bandanna and a marker because I wanted an autograph. I’m a big fan.” He hunkered low. “But I lost them.”

Another Titan arrived, this one to do with chemistry, but Chesh didn’t care. He only wanted this moment to last just a bit longer. He had worked so hard to get here.

“Little one,” Mistress Gravity said, her tone both amused and annoyed. She waved her hand, and Chesh floated towards her. “You’re … You’re ….” She gave Chesh’s cheek bone a rub. “Too cute for your own good, I suppose.”

“I—”

“But you’re not supposed to be here.” She looked him over. “The last time a cat got too close, he stole something from me.” She smiled. Her smile was warm. “You wouldn’t do that to me, would you?”

“Can you make it so when I knock stuff off the counter, it falls faster?”

Mistress Gravity laughed. “No.”

“Oh.”

“And I cannot make it so you fall softer or jump higher or fly.”

Chesh swished his tail. He didn’t mean to. Honestly, he didn’t, but he also didn’t like being told no. “Why not?”

“Because you cats already do those things.” She set him down. “My laws barely apply to you already.”

Another Titan arrived. The crowd behaved like a crowd. Chesh reached up and rubbed at Mistress Gravity’s legs, marking her with his scent. She offered him one last pet.

“I’m sorry about your marker. But you do have to go.”

“Thank you.”

Mistress Gravity smiled. “For what?”

But Chesh was already walking away, a newer spring in his step, his paws just a little lighter than they were before. He couldn’t help himself. He was a cat.

A Dragon’s Treasure

There are only two good reasons for an adventurer to kill a dragon, and while Rig doesn’t fancy himself a good adventurer, he respects the trade enough to follow the rules. He even has a copy of the handbook! He cannot read said copy of the handbook, which was penned over three hundred years ago by Sir Clemonce E. F. Telken (Slayer of Roth the Mighty, six-times Tourney Champ for seven years in a row (one year had to be skipped due to every horse coming down with a rash), Medallion Winner, and author of the best-selling The Adventurer’s Handbook: How to Avoid Troll Tolls).

Per Sir Telken, the only two good reasons to kill a dragon are:

1. To stop it from terrorizing the good people of Lottingham
2. To take its treasure

Now, the only dragon within walking distance is a medium-sized beast named Libre, a green wyrm not known for her terror, murder, fire, or fiendery. However it is said that all dragons hoard treasure like a pig mud, and Rig knows a thing or two about pigs. His father was a farmer; his grandfather was a farmer. Rig meanwhile, is a butcher. He fancies himself quite good with a cleaver too, and when you get right down it, a halberd is just a long cleaver with a better handle. Pigs, meanwhile, are very easy to rob. If a dragon is like a pig, then there isn’t a more suited man for the task than Rig Greenhill!

And it is the perfect day for an adventure. The sky is a pure, cloudless blue, and the trees are all aquiver with green. The temperature is warm—but not too warm. Why, even the road has a perfect layer of dust atop it. The birds chirp. The crickets sing. Rig hums along with them, an old lullaby his mother used to sing back when he was a babe. It’s the only song he knows that doesn’t involve drinking, whoring, or both.

“The drinking and whoring can come tomorrow.”

He grins to the open road. His halberd wavers with his stride, a little heavy when strapped across the back, but handsome too. It cost him his ass, but once he has the dragon’s treasure, he plans on buying another.

It should be noted that what adventurers consider “walking distance” and what butchers consider “walking distance” are two very different lengths. It takes Rig six hours to find the weedy trail that leads to Libre’s meadow and another two to cross it. By this point he is tired, hungry, and cold. He reaches into his pack for a skin of beer. He did not think to bring water.

“Boy howdy, Rig,” Rig says to no one. “You sure screwed this one up.”

The sky is still cloudless, but the blue of it has darkened. A breeze blows from the north, just chilly enough to make Rig scowl. Somewhere in the distance, a coyote laughs.

“Screwed this one up real big,” he says.

Footsore and ready for more beer, Rig finds a comfortable patch of grass. He opens his copy of The Adventurer’s Handbook. The words snake about the pages like bugs, and a few jump out: Pig, fire, the, dragon, cook, troll, and some others. He can’t string a sentence together to save his life, but he can admire the pictures and make educated guesses.

“Should start a fire and cook a troll,” he says.

Rig looks around. There are twigs and grasses aplenty, and he knows how to make a fire. He doesn’t see any trolls though. He’s never had one, and isn’t sure they’d taste very good besides. Maybe it’s for the smell? To drive his spirits high! Or to drive the local wildlife away. The last thing he needs is for a band of coyotes to come sniffing around.

Well, that’s what the halberd is for.

In the end, Rig finishes his beer, pees into a bush, and continues on. His map says Libre’s Hollow is just ahead.

Libre’s Hollow lives in Libre’s Gulch, an unnatural chunk of land carved by dragon magic and spite. Rocks bounce about, slippery with dust, and small bushes grow here and there, nettle-covered and bored. At the end, not a cave but more a hut, is Libre’s home. It too is not natural. It is, however, pleasant to look upon, softly rounded and lit with yellow dots of faerie fire. Its mouth—its door—is inviting. In fact, it is downright cozy. It reminds Rig of his grandfather’s farm, of sneaking out of the house at night when he was a child to watch the stars and wonder what might live on the moon.

“Hmm,” Rig says to himself. This is his thinking sound, which has lost him more arguments than won and generally puts him on the bad side of an idea. “Hmm, hmm.”

Because Rig would be the first to admit he isn’t known for having deep thoughts. He’s not a wizard or an intellectual. He has one now though, and that thought is this: All the dragons in the old tales can talk, and it isn’t right to kill something that can talk. Not without the law saying it’s okay. Libre isn’t a wanted lizard. She’s never terrorized nobody as far as Rig knows.

He opens his Adventurer’s Handbook and flips to page 12. Telken is quite clear on his two rules. Rig can’t read most of the writing, but “Kill” he does know. “Treasure” as well.

“Hmm,” he says again. “Hmm, hmm.”

What ultimately pushes Rig into Libre’s home isn’t the complexity of law but the ice in the wind and the sharpness in the rocks. He is too tired to walk back up the hill. Thus, his only option is to enter the dreaded lair before him, slay the dragon, and take her treasure.

He at least has the decency to feel like a damn fool for it, because he is.

The temperature warms the closer he gets, until he’s through the door and standing in front of what feels like a blazing fire. The aches in his shoulders lesson, and either his vision adjusts to the night, or the cave is bright with yellow lights, because everything is easy to see. It’s a soft place, with a dirt-covered floor and smooth walls that swoop up to a ceiling filled with little torches. They don’t flicker like normal torches but stay constant, almost like the sun itself.

Shelves are everywhere. Wooden, smooth, and chewed about the edges from use, they cover every wall Rig can see, and all the walls he cannot. More act as furniture, if furniture was measured in rows and not chairs or stools. The shelves are about a wagon’s width apart. Each is twice as tall as Rig and many times longer. They do not contain treasure.

They contain books.

Anxiety plays at Rig’s heels. Anger does too, though that emotion is a few steps behind, where it belongs. The thing about dragons is that they aren’t small. Libre is a medium-sized one as far as magical lizards go, but she is still bigger than three oxen in a row and weighs twice as much. Her jaws are capable of snapping said oxen with a single bite. If Rig were to stand on his tiptoes, stretch his arms all the way up, he still wouldn’t be able to grab a book from the highest shelf. There are no ladders or stools to stand on, because Libre doesn’t need them.

Yet what comes out of his mouth isn’t a whimper but a curse, “There ain’t no damn treasure here!”

The book—his, not Libre’s—says dragons collect treasure. Rig can’t read the words between “dragon” or “treasure,” but he isn’t a complete buffoon. He knows what he knows! There’s supposed to be gold and gems and magical artifacts, not … not books! Not a single thing worth taking glimmers in the room. There isn’t even a chair to sit on.

Rig sighs. He marches to the closest shelf and puts his back against it. It’s sturdy enough, and warm enough, and he slides down until he’s sitting on the floor. His halberd falls from his back. The blacksmith promised him it was a good weapon, the perfect tool for a daring adventure.

“Damn thing’s not even good for a walking stick,” Rig says.

Believe it or not, there is a chapter in The Adventurer’s Handbook: How to Avoid Troll Tolls about not falling asleep in a dragon’s cave. It’s actually quite common for weary adventurers to plop down for a sit, doze off, and wake up to being devoured. Dragon magic exudes tranquility as a byproduct of their collecting and shaping. They feel at home in their homes, and thus, everyone that enters also feels at home. It makes them exceptional dinner party hosts, with the caveat that the dinner is typically the guest.

It should be no surprise then that when Rig wakes up, he is not alone. Two reptile orbs stare at him from behind a muzzle of emerald scales and sharp teeth the size of kitchen knives. Libre’s head is a head larger than Rig, and her body is many times that, snaking out behind her and supporting thousands of pounds of muscle and scaly hide. Spikes run across the spine of her back. A pair of green wings fold about her flank like leathery covers. She is the most beautiful and most terrifying thing Rig has ever seen in his life.

She also looks absolutely nothing like a pig.

“Hello human,” Libre says. Her voice is gruffer than a callous, yet quiet too. “What are you doing in my home?”

Rig gulps.

“And why have you brought that wicked looking weapon with you?”

Rig gulps again. He doesn’t know what else to do.

“Yet,” and here Libre sniffs. “You have a book with you. I can smell it on your person.” Her dragon snout breaks into a toothy smile that flashes with fire and brimstone. “It is well read. The spine is bent, and the pages are earmarked. I can smell your fingerprints on it.”

“It’s not right to kill something that can talk,” Rig yelps. The words come out like a squeak. “Not unless the law says so.”

Libre cocks her head. Her tongue snakes out of her mouth, and she wipes her eye with it.  “Sometimes the law is wrong, human.” The dragon leans back on her haunches, peering at Rig not like a lizard but a great jungle cat. He sees her exposed belly and thinks for just a moment about using his halberd. It won’t work though. Her scales are too thick, and his arms are like noodles.

And it wouldn’t be right besides.

“More often,” the dragon continues, “I think, the law is wrong. But are you a philosopher? Or a scholar? I have a great many books that might interest you.”

Rig shakes his head.

“Historian?”

“No,” Rig gulps.

The dragon scratches at her chin. “Do you like fiction? I mostly have fiction, if I’m being honest. I love the romances, even if half the people that show up here are knights thinking I have gold.”

“I,” Rig blushes, and Libre narrows her eyes. He tries to find more words, but they spit about his feet, useless. Instead he hums the lullaby his mother used to sing him. It lets him see her face, and he’d rather look at her than the dragon about to eat him.

“Hmm,” Libre says. She motions with one clawed hand for Rig to follow. And then she’s gone, slither-walking down a row of books. Her tail swishes behind her, its tip a giant, boney spike.

Rig follows her. He doesn’t know what else to do.

He leaves his halberd on the floor.

“I have songbooks down here … somewhere.” The dragon’s head darts this way and that, and she sniffs more than she looks. Her tongue dances along one shelf, tasting the claw marks on it. “Yes. This way.”

“I,” Rig tries, but the thought leaves him. He hums the lullaby again.

The dragon nods. “I recognize it. It’s a Rabe, composed about four hundred years ago, I expect. She liked that kind of soft trill.”

Libre leads, and Rig follows, and soon they’re deep within her lair, lost as far as Rig can tell, and still with no treasure to be found. At some point, Libre stops by a shelf, rears herself up, and plucks a pair of thick glasses from behind a dusty book. The rims are made of copper with little flowers along the sides. She balances them on her snout and looks through them crosseyed.

“I can’t read sheet music without help. Had a wizard make these about a century ago now.”

“You can read music?” Rig asks. He only ever heard it played or sang. Mostly off key.

“Of course, human.” She cocks her head. “Are you not a musician?”

“No.”

“No matter. This way.”

They travel one more shelf over, where the books are a much taller. Telken would advise any would-be adventurer in this situation to take notes, to find all the little details for survival and use them without mercy. Telken would also demand you slay the dragon. Rig does none of these things, because Rig cannot read.

He wishes he could though. It’s the first time he’s ever wished that.

Libre is massive and sharp, yet she browses her books with the delicate hand of a jeweler, careful not to tear or mark any of them.

“Here,” she says after a few more minutes of sniffing, poking, and prodding. “Carianne Rabe. This is her complete works.” Libre hands the book to Rig. It’s thinner than most, yet heavier than it looks. The cover is a vibrant, blue leather that smells strongly of dye despite its age.

“She’s best known for her Symphony on Magic, a rousing piece on the wonders of alchemy.” Libre smiles. “If you know how to listen. But she also composed many lullabies too. Yours is in there, somewhere.”

Speechless, Rig opens the book. He expects to find more insect-like words shifting across the page and instead sees lines, dots, and more lines. There are numbers too, the kind he knows from coins and from counting on his fingers. It’s almost like a map.

“This is how music is written?”

“Yes, human. It is.”

“Huh.”

Rig hands the book back, and while Libre flips through it, he once again hums his mother’s lullaby. The dragon nods a few times, finds her page, and then flips back and forth between it and the next one.

Finally she says, “It’s this one. ‘Rising Star, Falling Star.’ You’ve been humming a mix of the first and fourth verses. There’s quite a bit more than that.”

“Wow!”

“Where did you hear it?”

For the first time since entering the dragon’s home, Rig smiles. “My mother. She used to sing it to me.”

With careful claws, Libre puts the book back on her shelf. “Very good. She had good taste. You could learn the rest, if you want.”

Rig almost jumps. “You think so?” He never really thought he could learn much of anything. Butchering? Sure. Adventuring? Clearly not. He’s weaponless in front of a dragon and too afraid to do anything but listen to her. Telken would be furious.

As if she’s reading his mind, the dragon asks “So, what book do you have on you?” Her eyes sparkle.

Shame drags Rig’s attention to his feet at that. He knows nothing of books, only that whatever he has can’t be very good in comparison to everything around him. Libre clicks her tongue against her fangs, and Rig reaches into his pack and brings out the Adventuring Handbook. He hands it over, and even though it’s no good, Libre is careful when she picks it up.

“Ah,” she says as soon as she sees the title. “It’s this one.”

“Sorry,” Rig mumbles.

“Human,” Libre sighs. “How many words do you know?”

Rig blushes so hard even his feet turn red.

“And are some of those words, ‘treasure,’ ‘dragon,’ ‘and hunt?’”

“I don’t know ‘hunt.’”

“What about ‘kill?’”

Rig nods. He squeezes his hands into fists.

There is so much human disappointment in the way Libre moves that Rig is reminded of his grandparents. She plucks her glasses from her snout and drums at the ground with her claws, digging little trenches into the dirt. She glares, not like a monster but like his grandmother when she would catch him sneaking out at night to look at the moon and stars and think, on rare occasions, of doing something bigger than living his life in Lottingham.

She wasn’t allowed to have big dreams, so why should he?

“Well,” Libre says, “At least you know more words than the last human.”

Rig gulps.

“And I liked your mother’s rendition of ‘Rising Star, Falling Star.’”

“Are you gonna let me live?” Rig shakes as he asks the question. The dragon gives him his book back, and he clutches it so hard he almost drops it.

Libre replaces her glasses. “Yes human, I am. I let most humans live that wander in here.”

“Oh.” Relief floods Rig. He even manages another smile.

“I don’t want blood on my books.”

Rig drops his book at that. He’s too stiff to bend over to grab it, so Libre does it for him.

“It’s a bad book with bad advice,” she says. “But it is a book. Take care of it, please.”

“Is it treasure?”

Libre nods. “Yes. All books are treasure. Even the bad ones.” Libre holds up a claw. “Gold can buy you much, human, but it cannot buy you empathy. It cannot clean your soul. Those are for books and songs and love.”

“I wish I could read.”

“Good.” Libre smiles, and it is a genuine smile, one that reaches her eyes. Brimstone flashes behind her teeth. “The world needs more scholars and historians, not adventurers.”

Libre motions for Rig to step aside, and he does. She walks, and he follows, and soon they are at the entrance to her home. Light shines through. The sun is high, and the soft chirping of birds and crickets swirls about. He stops to grab his halberd.

“I will not teach you to read,” Libre says. “But if you learn, you may come back. My home is a library, not a hoard.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I only ask that you treat them like treasure.”

Rig nods. He can do that.

“Farewell, human. And next time you decide to go on an adventure, may you take a quill instead of a sword. It will do the world more good.”

With that, Libre retreats into her home. Rig dusts himself off, stretches, and begins the long trek back to Lottingham. He is hungry, and he is thirsty, and his pockets are poorer than when he started, but he has a story to tell now.

He’s excited to share it.

Life on Venus

Editor’s Note: this was cowritten by Nezumi of the Resetera writer’s group and myself

“Well. You’re her pet. How do you plan on cleaning this up?” Jupiter asked, scowling his way through the question.

They were standing in front of a pissed-off dragon, its mound of treasure, and a pile of ash that was once human. Smoke puffed from the dragon’s nose as it snuffled into its glittering pile like a hog mud. It flared its tiny wings in an effort to look bigger and pawed at the ground with sharp hooves. Clypeus knew the only reason it hadn’t attacked yet was because it recognized him.

The golem sighed. Every muscle in his body hurt for no other reason than to spite him. One of Venus’ little “jokes”. He kicked at the pile of ash on the ground, and in a blink, conjured a breeze to take it away.

“The dragon did—”

“The dragon should not exist!” Jupiter roared. He pointed one furious finger at the beast. “You need to stop it! And then you need to stop her!”

“I cannot.”

“I am the king of Gods! You will do as I say!”

Clypeus shook his head. “She is the king of me.”

Jupiter turned his fury on the golem. The statues did him both right and wrong. His flesh bulged and glistened, yet it looked more like marble than skin. Even his giant mane of hair was as immovable as mountains. His height too, was right, the god towering over the golem by at least a head. The wrongness was one of tone. The statues depicted a deity with power and empathy. Jupiter had power, but empathy was for those beneath him.

“Kill it.”

Clypeus flinched. He considered pleading with Jupiter for the creature’s life but knew better. He approached the dragon. He  hated killing, but he was a tool. Tools obeyed the hands that owned them. He could not disappoint Jupiter or Venus, so he cursed back tears as the sky turned dark. Lightning erupted from his spear. The dragon crumpled onto its treasure pile, blood staining the gold.

“I should be protecting you, not them,” Clypeus whispered.

“Oh?” Jupiter mused. “And what does she gain from this?

A shrug, another sigh. “Humans like their fairy tales. They are … powerful.”

Jupiter snorted. “If that’s her plan, then she’s wasting my time and yours. It will take more than a few dragons and stolen trinkets to power her way back to Earth.”

“She considers it a challenge.”

“So be it,” Jupiter snapped. “If war is what she wants, then war is what she gets. And make no mistake: I will not be merciful this time.”

Clypeus considered arguing this, but tools were not made for arguing.

The king of Gods let his fury fall, and underneath was disdain. “There’s some other beast of hers terrorizing the shores of Caria. Go kill it.”

Jupiter vanished from sight.

*

Clypeus walked over to what remained of the dragon. He gently placed his hand on the dead creature’s head and extinguished the body. It deteriorated before his eyes, the flesh falling to the ground and fizzling out of existence. All that remained were rancid fumes and a small gem glistening green in the warm sun.

“I’m sorry,” Clypeus murmured. He bent down to pick up the jewel.

With the tip of his spear, he drew a pair of crossing lines in the dirt and topped that with a circle. Without sparing his surroundings another thought, he thrust his spear into the circle. He closed his eyes.

When Clypeus opened his eyes, he was no longer on Earth. The ground burned hot enough to melt the feet of any human and most gods, and the air pressure threatened equal demise. Clypeus, however, was neither human nor god so all he felt was a warm tingle as he walked towards a purple glowing dome that rose from the ground not far away. 

A large shadow fell over Clypeus and he glanced up to see a skywhale soaring through the atmosphere, diving in and out of the acidic overcast that blanketed the sky from horizon to horizon, its mouth wide open as it sifted the clouds for microscopic prey.

Clypeus smiled as he spotted a smaller one, gliding in the shadow of the first, clinging as close as possible. At least here their children could thrive.

He reached the dome and stepped through the protective barrier as if it didn’t exist. 

The shift in temperature and pressure was immediate, but Clypeus’s body adjusted just as swiftly.

*

Venus lounged on a blanket in a midst of alien plantlife and small, mythical creatures. Her hair was a messy tangle that looked nothing like the gentle waves she sported on portraits back on Earth. Her face may have been considered pretty once, but just like Jupiter’s, now lacked the necessary empathy to invoke any feelings of love.

“Well?” she asked.

Clypeus retrieved the Gem Seed from his pouch and tossed it to her. 

“Jupiter,” was all he said. There was nothing else he could have done.

“Did someone witness the killing?” she asked eagerly.

Clypeus shook his head. “There was a human male, but the dragon killed him.”

Venus cursed. “Well, that was a waste of time.”

She tossed the Seed over her shoulder, where it passed through the barrier and vanished.

She reached into her disheveled robe for a pouch with Ceres’ crest embroidered on it. “Let’s see. There must be something useful in here…” She pulled out another Gem Seed, this one glittering bright orange, and walked over to a small table that held an assortment of instruments. 

Clypeus stared at the point where the gem had exited the barrier. “I had hoped you might consider reawakening it.”

Venus turned in surprise. “Excuse me?”

“The dragon. I had hoped you might want to revive it. To join its older brothers outside.”

“Absolutely not.” Venus turned back to her work station.

“But….”

“In retrospect, I think giving you a tongue, was a bad idea. Maybe I should remove it?”

Clypeus fell silent at the threat and let her continue her work.

He closed his eyes and in his mind journeyed over the scorching plains and volcanic hills of Venus’s surface. They had been empty and barren upon his first awakening, but now skywhales roamed the skies, dragons populated the lakes of molten metal, and herds of unicorns traversed the planes, drilling into the ground with their horns in search of minerals. Slowly but surely he and Venus had turned this place into a home, if only it would have been enough for her. 

“Time for you to do your thing,” Venus’s voice pulled him from his thoughts.

She held out the Gem Seed, now engraved with various symbols and phrases. It pulsed with a bright, powerful light. Clypeus carefully cupped it in his bulky hands. He could feel the tiny spark of life beating inside, eager to grow. Eager to be alive. He brought the Seed to his face and very gently and carefully breathed into it, calling forth the power inside him to imbue protection. Their child would need it to survive.

“Good,” Venus said when he was finished. “Now take this to Earth and plant it in a forest, but make sure there is some civilization nearby. And when you are done I need you take a look at the seed in Caria. I want to know its progress.”

Clypeus froze.

“Did you not hear me??” Venus inquired as she noticed his hesitation.

“Jupiter also told me to go to Caria,” he said. He wished he could lie to her.

“Oh, well, better hurry then.” Venus smiled in a way Clypeus did not like.

*

Clypeus weaved his way through Caria, passed a thousand fishmongers and ten thousand smells, none to his taste. He did not need to eat. He would not dine on flesh if he did. He was a protector, the mightiest tool in the pantheon. He could stop flaming swords, thunderbolts, and even Pluto’s deathly touch. He was made to protect, not kill.

Yet he carried a spear, and soon he would murder another of his children.

If Caria was besieged by some great threat, however, it did not show it. Children played and adults worked, and the poor were herded out of sight by peacekeepers adorned with gold helmets. No one spoke of sea monsters, dead fish, or ruined boats. Clypeus found this strange, as most of Venus’s water creatures tended to be grotesque. For every skywhale there were six krakens or sea serpents. He expected cries for help.

By the time he reached the shore, the sun was beginning to set, spilling purple and orange across the sky. Large, white sails dotted the landscape like pointed rocks. People milled about, many pointing, and Clypeus followed their arms to a dark spot in the water. He recognized it at once.

“No,” he whispered. “No. Not this. I cannot do this.”

Because there were no oceans on Venus the creature lived in the air, gliding through the acidic skies feasting on tiny plantlife. Its face was long and sad, its eyes intelligent. Its tail could crush Neptune’s biggest boats. At night, it sang to its children in loud, long breaths that sounded like wind whistling through a keyhole. Clypeus watched the skywhale breach the surface and spray ocean water a mile into the air. Those on the shore clapped.

“They are not dangerous,” Clypeus said in defiance to his orders. “This is not a dragon! No harm will come from it!”

The golem sat. He was more metal and leather than flesh, yet he could feel the sand. It ground into his joints and tickled between his toes. He dropped his spear so he could scoop handfuls and let them fall between his fingers. There was a beauty to Earth he had never gotten to experience before Venus granted him life, one that even its most powerful deities didn’t understand. 

The night passed. The stars twinkled in the heavens, and the moon approached its end horizon, ready to nap for another day. Clypeus grabbed his spear, though he would not use it this night. Jupiter could not make him kill a whale.

And then a group of people marched onto the beach, each clad in red robes. One lit a candle. The others carried red flowers. They fanned out as a unit, a song for Venus loud on their lips. When they walked into the water, the whale sang back. Clypeus watched them bow and pray.

“Oh,” he said.

It all made sense—until it didn’t. Clypeus had seen several rituals in honor to Venus, with their honey, candles, and destruction of a single coin, yet half of these men unsheathed weapons. Those armed moved back towards the shore and formed a small defensive perimeter while those in the water continued to sing. The whale sprayed more ocean into the sky.

Clypeus stood. He could not be killed by mortals, at least not easily, so he approached the armed men without worry, his spear in his hands though the tip pointed towards the sand.

“Who are you?” a woman called. She eyed Clypeus’s weapon and readied her own, though she held it like someone new to the weapon. “Don’t come any closer!”

“What are you doing here?”

“They said you would come,” she gasped. “That you’ll murder this creature.” 

Though he could not blush, guilt drove his posture. Clypeus shook his head, and the woman did not believe him.

“Who told you this?” he asked.

The woman quivered. “She did. A prophet, one dressed in red. She…” but the woman trailed off, bracing for the attack that would immortalize her name.

Clypeus nodded. He tried to control the rage simmering below the surface, tried to prevent bolts of lightning from striking every idiot on this beach. Except he was the only idiot. Venus was playing him, and Jupiter was playing him. It was all so stupid. Yet it was elegant too. If fairytales held power, then martyrdom held godhood.

“I will not kill you,” Clypeus said. “Nor will I kill the child of Venus.”

No more, the golem vowed. He was done with his masters. He turned to walk away, his spear death-gripped in his molded hands. Halfway up the beach, it occurred to the golem what he had just done. He had made a decision. And if he made one, that meant that he could make more.

The whale sang, and the ocean whisked his footprints away.

*

“What an unexpected visitor.”

Jupiter lounged on his throne in a way that would not be fit for any human king, let alone the King of Gods, but he seemed not to care, and neither did the gathering of lesser Gods that filled his hall with the laugher. Jupiter’s festive merriment was eternal.

Clypeus bowed his head and hoped that Jupiter was too self absorbed to notice his nervousness.

“My King. I have reconsidered your past request.”

Jupiter lifted an eyebrow. “Have you now? A pleasant surprise. So did you do as I asked and put an end to that nuisance of a woman?”

Clypeus braced himself for what he had to do next.

“No. As I told you I cannot do that. As you are the King of me here on Earth she is the Queen of me in her domain, and I must do her wish as I must do yours down here. However….”

Clypeus paused for dramatic effect and indeed Jupiter leaned closer.

“There is nothing keeping me from transporting you into her domain, and once you are there, I would have to do your bidding as much as hers.”

Jupiter considered that for a moment. “And you would choose me? In that instant?”

“I was your shield first.” Clypeus fell to one knee. “I’m begging you, my king, free me from her.”

Head bent low, Clypeus waited for a few agonizing moments, before the sound of Jupiter’s rustling robes made him look up.

“Bring me to her,” the God demanded.

Clypeus got up and, with the tip of his spear, drew the symbol of Venus.

*

The rapid journey through space took its toll even on the King of Gods as Jupiter threatened to fall when they arrived in the middle of the protective dome.

“Finally!” Venus shouted. “What has happened? I’ve been waiting–”

She stopped her head-long rush when she saw Jupiter standing beside Clypeus. Rage swept over her face. “How dare you!”

Jupiter pointed at Venus. “You’re little games stop now. I should have put you to death immediately instead of granting you the mercy of exile.”  A bundle of lightning appeared in his fist.

Venus threw her head back and laughed. “Mercy? Don’t you dare talk about mercy. I’ve seen the kind of mercy you have granted in the past. And you.” She turned to Clypeus. “So this is how you thank me for the gift I gave you?”

The golem answered not with words but with the protective barrier. He was a shield, a tool to keep people safe. It was why Venus stole him above all the other trinkets she needed to survive on her namesake planet. But Clypeus was no longer just a shield; by giving him life she had also given choice. The barrier’s purple glow dimmed, and the change in hue brought with it a change in temperature.

Sweat broke out from Jupiter’s skin and his beard started to smolder. Blisters exploded on his skin.

“What is this!” he roared in fear and anger. He rounded on Clypeus, lightning in his hands. “Stop this! Do as I tell you. I’m your God, you have to follow my word!”

“No.”

The king of Gods cast the lightning, and thunder shook the dome. Clypeus did not even blink. He had been forged to protect everyone from everything, even Jupiter’s wrath. It was ironic in a way that deep down even the Gods knew that they could not be trusted. 

On the other side of the dome, Venus burned and laughed. Flames covered her entire body. Clypeus walked over to her, unnoticed, as her eyes had already melted away. Unperturbed by the flames he grabbed the magic pouch with the Seed Gems before he turned his back towards both Gods and stepped away.

Only the faintest hint of purple remained of the barrier as Clypeus stepped through it. He turned around and eyed the two Gods writhing on the ground as their powers drew out their demise.

He watched for a few more seconds, then shook his head.

“No more killing,” he murmured to himself and with a wave of his hand the barrier began to strengthen once more. He turned away from the dome. The Gods would recover and maybe in time they would see the error of their ways. Maybe they wouldn’t. Clypeus didn’t care. Above him the acid storms roared and the skywhales sang. 

Mud Blossoms

The irony of ugly creatures making others beautiful was not lost on Paras, though one he did resent. He considered himself an ugly creature. Most of the other insects did, too. And humans! He never met a human who didn’t scowl because they thought they saw a butterfly only to discover a moth. “Don’t catch that one,” the children would say. “It’s just a dumb moth.” Then they’d swing their little nets and catch the biggest cicada they could find, giggle, and take pictures. Everyone wanted to remember the giant cicadas.

Paras flapped his powdery wings, which were brown and white, and he twitched his fuzzy antennae, which looked like wilted leaves. A soft wind bristled the fur on his body. He struggled to climb, his wings not suited for the rising thermals, his six hands weighed down with a single glimmer seed. His fat, compound eyes saw a thousand fractal images, most of ugly creatures bathing cute animals in little hot springs. The images stretched up, and Paras flapped all the harder. The lowest pools required more seeds, and Paras could only carry the one. That meant he had to go all the way to the top. That’s where the cheap pools were.

The Chīsana Bagu Spa lived hidden in the side of a small waterfall. Rocky terraces formed off-kilter steps, each one big enough for a bath, a desk, and a Chippa. Thick moss covered the steps like carpet, and small creatures eased themselves into or rested in baths of crystal-clear water. Steam rose in gentle wisps, carrying with it the sweet smells of lavender, mint, and flowers. Paras saw cicadas and grasshoppers, tiny mice and even smaller birds. He looked for moths and found butterflies. He looked for ugly creatures, but other than a mole cricket, only counted the Chippa. If he got closer, he’d see his own reflection. It took an hour for Paras to find empty pools. He was near the top of the terrace now, with the waterfall burbling and chuckling at him. A few Chippas waved, but he ignored them. He called it pride—he flew this far, he might as well reach the top!—but knew shame drove him further. He only had the one seed and didn’t want to barter, and he didn’t want other, cuter creatures to see him here. No, best go all the way up. No self-respecting insect or bird would use the topmost pools.

Paras sighed.

He watched a gorgeous blue butterfly with white spots step out of her bath. She stretched her wings to dry them in the sun, their white spots glowing like little suns. The Chippa clapped his little hands, and she twitched her antennae. A grasshopper from a pool over waved at her. The Chippa bowed his gross, little head.

Paras sighed again.

By the time Paras reached the topmost pool, the sun was starting to set and many of the creatures below were turning into little specs on the horizon. Even from far away, they shimmered. Sweet smells hung in the air.

Paras landed at the top pool. His wings ached, and his legs did too. He dropped the glimmer seed with a tiny thunk and watched it threaten to roll away.

“No!” he shouted.

“There, there,” the Chippa running this bath said. He bent down and picked up the seed. In his hand, it looked like a mote of light crossed with the color purple. “We won’t let it get away, will we?”

“Thanks,” Paras said. Just being by the pool made him feel better. Steam rolled over his fuzzy body, hot and warm. It eased the aches from his joints and made his compound eyes heavy with sleep. His antennae drooped. “I only have the one.”

“One is plenty!” the Chippa grinned. “And it’s a good seed, too. Very ripe. Very nice.”

To Paras, the Chippa looked like a cross between a salamander and a turtle. And maybe a bird. Its limbs were thin and slimy like a salamander’s, but its torso was bulky like a turtle’s. A shell covered most of its back, though it left room for wings. The wings, like the rest of its body, were green, though they didn’t look big enough to fly with. A yellow beak covered most of the Chippa’s face. Yet the creature’s most striking feature was its tail. It ended in a flower. Paras had seen all sorts of tails with all sorts of flowers below, most cherry blossom, but this particular Chippa’s was white with little specs of pink.

The Chippa walked over to his desk and set the seed aside. He picked up a brush made out of thin grasses held to a stick with gossamer.

“We’ll start with a good brushing, and then I’ll have you step into the bath. You’ll—”

“Hey!” a voice called from above. Paras looked up. A second Chippa glared down, her hands on her hips. If the first Chippa was ugly, the second one was hideous. Mud crusted her body, turning it chunky and dull brown. Her shell was equally dirty, as her were wings. Her tail had no flower. “You there. Come up here!”

“Doro!” the first Chippa roared. “Go away. No one likes you.”

Doro humphed. “Says the plum creature. Ume, your pool smells like old-people fruit, and everyone knows it.”

“Go stick your head in mud!”

“Your head is mud!”

Ume waved her brush like a sword. “Come say that to my face!”

“Okay.” Doro said, happy for the invite. She made to hop down, but Ume shrieked so loud Paras fluttered into the air.

“If you put even one soggy footprint on my terrace,” Ume roared. “I will throw you off this cliff and laugh as you smash into the rocks below!”

Doro shook her head. “That’s not a very pretty thing to say.”

“You’re not pretty!”

“Well neither are you!”

Ume turned to Paras. “I’m sorry. Please, let’s just begin. She’ll stop once we start.”

Paras looked at the two Chippa. He didn’t know what to do. None of the others fought or argued when he flew by, so why were these two? Was it because he was a moth?

“Maybe I should go,” he said. His antennae drooped. What could this Ume do with a brush that he hadn’t already tried? “You can keep the seed, if you want.” It was too heavy to carry back down.

“Wait!” both Chippa said at once.

“Please,” Ume said. “I really can help you.”

“As can I,” Doro said.

“No you can’t.” Paras shook his head. “I’m just a moth, and I’ll always be a moth. Dunno why I even came here.”

The two Chippa shared a look. It was either confusion or pity, and Paras wanted neither. He turned to fly away, hoping the ride down would be easier than the ride up.

“Wait,” the Chippa said again. Doro reached out an inviting hand. “Come here, please.”

“I gave Ume the seed.”

Doro waved that away. “I don’t care. Just fly up here.”

Sighing, the moth pumped his black-and-white wings until he was staring at a joke of a bath. Doro didn’t have a real step to carve her business in, so she used a chunk of land. Instead of shiny rock and soft moss, she had dirt. Instead of a clean pool of warm water, she had a bubbling soup of mud. Her entire area looked like one bad sneeze away from flooding.

“This way,” she said, motioning to an almost-clean surface. She held her own brush, but while Ume’s looked professional, Doro’s looked home-made by someone with no real skills. It would either prickle or fall apart when she used it. “I can uh….” She shrugged.

Ume poked his head up, his wings fluttering a storm to keep him aloft. “Told you, Doro. No one wants to bathe in mud.”

“I do,” she said, somewhat bitterly. She crossed her arms and looked into her bath. “It’s fun.”

“No one comes here to have fun,” Ume scolded. “Creatures come here to relax and feel refreshed. They come here to feel better.”

“Well,” Doro said. “Do you feel better, little moth?”

“No.” Paras wanted to leave, but the flight made him tired. Still, he could flutter across the stream and find a nice branch to wait out the night. He’d have to go soon though, or the owls would be out, and they could spot him from a mile away. His wings fooled the dumb day birds, but nothing fooled the owls.

“I can make you feel better.”

“No you can’t,” Paras and Ume said together.

“Yes I can!”

“Can you make me a butterfly?” Paras asked. He shook his antennae in embarrassment. “Nevermind. I’m going to go now. You can keep the seed.”

Paras took to the sky while the two Chippa burst into an argument. Doro hit Ume, and then Ume kicked Doro. Doro fell into her mud puddle and splashed Ume, who was so appalled she slipped and fell back into her own pool. Water splashed everywhere, and then another half dozen Chippa ran to join the argument.

Doro laughed.

Paras sighed.

He found himself a nice tree branch to call home, one with budding leaves that while not quite as big as his wings, would still hide him from the owls and other night-time creatures. He did his customary check for spiders, folded his wings tight against his back, and lowered his antennae. He told himself tomorrow would be better, but he knew it wouldn’t be. He’d still be an ugly moth. Everyone said the Chīsana Bagu Spa could work magic because the little demons that ran it were magic. They even took magic seeds as payment! But either they weren’t magic or magic had limits.

When Paras first heard of the hot spring, he wondered how many moths traveled there to become butterflies. He then wondered why no one had ever told him this before. Now he wondered why he was so stupid.

“Ugly and stupid,” he whispered. “Good job, Paras. And you’re poor, too.” That glimmer seed had been hard to get.

The trees rustled, and Paras stood. Fear raced along his antennae. It was too dark to fly. He could make it out of the tree line, but then the owls would get him. He turned around and flashed his wings, hoping the big eyes on them would scare whatever was coming. Usually that worked.

“You’re not ugly,” a voice whispered back. Paras almost jumped. “No one’s really ugly, really. ‘Cept Chippas. We’re gross.”

“Why are you here?” Paras asked.

Doro reached out her hand. “Come on. The good thing about my spa is it still works at night. Mud holds its heat a lot longer than water.”

“I don’t want to,” Paras said. “I just want to sleep.”

“Mud makes for a great bed, too.” Doro grinned. Her beak was chipped in two places, turning her smile into something awkward. Yet it held its own charm. None of the other Chippa smiled like Doro did.

Paras flew into her hand.

“Best part about my spa is it’s owl free. No spiders, either!” Doro began to climb down the tree one-handed.

“Do the other baths have owls or spiders?”

“Well, no.” Doro grabbed a stiff branch, lowered herself down, and then dropped the rest of the way. She landed with a light thud that seemed an earthquake to Paras. He fluttered. “Sorry!” Doro said. “Er, don’t handle many moths.”

Doro set off for the water, her body more than capable of cutting through the current. She kept Paras aloft and talked as she swam.

“Don’t handle many of anything, really. No one comes this high, and when they do, Ume usually takes them. He’s so smug about it, too. Like he’s better than all of us even though he’s terrified of a little dirt. All the Chippa are. They get worse the lower down you go, too.”

“That’s where all the pretty animals are,” Paras said. “The birds and butterflies.”

“Yeah. Pretty stupid.” Doro laughed at her own joke. “I once saw Kessho faint at his own reflection! Thought his eyebrow was mold after he spent an hour trying to dye it blue.”

Despite himself, Paras laughed. “I once tried to dye my wings blue. It went about as well.”

“Yeah?”

Paras nodded with his antennae. “Couldn’t fly. The dye was too heavy, so I had to scamper along the trees looking for food until it rained. Thankfully no one saw me.”

Doro laughed, but then she tsked tsked. “You got too much lovely brown in your wings to go blue. What you need is to warm it up a bit. Make it like honey.”

“How do I do that?”

“Mud!”

Positive that was nonsense but in too deep to back out, Paras let the Chippa take him to her bath. A sliver of moon illuminated it, though it didn’t look much nicer at night. Her tools were still impromptu and ready to fall apart, and the mud was still mud. Paras looked at his wings. Would they really benefit from more brown? All the butterflies boasted orange and blue and purple and indigo. Brown was … well, brown.

Doro set Paras down. “Alright you. Scamper on in. It’ll feel great. Promise.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m a professional! Of course I’m sure.”

“I don’t—”

“Just do it. Please?”

Deciding this really was more for her sake than his, Paras scurried into the mud. It stuck to his legs and body, the hairs attracting it like a magnet. He shook his antennae in revulsion and wiggled his abdomen too. Yet to her credit, it was still warm. Pleasantly so. Steam shifted off it, finding just enough moonlight to glow and sway. None of the other pools could boast that.

“Well?” the Chippa asked. “How do you feel?”

“Uh,” Paras said. He rested his eyes. The mud didn’t smother him but offered instead a gentle hug. He relaxed, and he felt it seep deeper into his fur. “Good,” he decided. “It’s nice.”

Doro grinned.

Paras let himself relax while Doro busied herself with her makeshift desk. She pulled out little pieces of cucumber and berries and other odds and ends which looked strange but smelled quite nice. She cut and smushed the lot together and dumped it into the mudbath. At first Paras wondered if she was making some kind of strange mud soup—the Chippa lived in mud, maybe she ate it too—but figured if she was going to eat him, she’d have done so already.

While she poured salt into the bath, Paras drifted off to sleep.

He woke a few minutes later to Ume shouting, “What are you doing!”

“Ssh!” Doro hissed. “He’s relaxing.”

“In mud!”

“Exactly! It’s what he needs.”

Ume shook his head. “You can’t turn him into a butterfly with mud.”

“And you can’t turn him into a butterfly with your fancy brushes and plum water! No one can! He’s a moth.”

Paras felt his antennae droop, though he wasn’t sure how far they made it. Caked in mud, he could barely lift them.

“Out,” Ume hissed. “You need to leave. Every Chippa here wants you and your filth gone. You’re not helping anyone.”

“I’m helping Paras!”

“Are you?”

Paras crawled out of the mud bath, the dirt mixture sticking to every part of his body. He could barely move, though Ume had the decency to not laugh at him. Doro grinned, but at this point, he was used to her grin. It wasn’t mean.

“Watch,” Doro said. She grabbed a pad of moss sprinkled with mint leaves and a little vial of water. Slowly, gently, she began to wipe the mud from Paras’s wings. When they were free of the dirt, he stretched them wide. They had never felt so soft and light before. Like he could fly for miles.

Ume gasped. Paras did too. The mud had enriched the brown on his wings until they practically glowed in the dark. His antennae, which normally looked like dead leaves, felt like bronze horns. He fluttered into the air with more confidence than he had ever had in his life.

“I feel … I feel amazing!”

“See,” Doro said.

“Wow,” Ume said. “He’s gorgeous.”

“He always was,” Doro said.

Ume made to argue that point, but before he could open his mouth, Doro shoved him into her mud pool. Ume shrieked, and Doro laughed. She then jumped in herself. Mud splashed everywhere, some raining down to the baths below. Paras heard more shouts and howls as other Chippa woke up to the horrors of dirt.

Paras laughed until his antennae hurt.

When the commotion was over, most of the Chippa threatening violence but not having the heart to deliver it, Doro dragged Ume out of her pool. The poor Chippa looked like he had wrestled a mudslide and lost. Even his eyelashes were coated with dirt.

“Come on,” Doro said. “We’ll wash you off in the stream, and you’ll feel good as new.”

Ume sputtered half a dozen words before he coughed up a stream of mud. “Why?” he managed.

Doro rolled her eyes and flicked the end of her flowerless tail at Ume’s nose. “Because I’m a lotus flower Chippa. I know I’m pretty, and I know come summer, I’ll bloom and be even prettier. One day, the rest of you will realize that too. I just hope it’s sooner than later.”