Issue December 2021

Table of Contents

Purchase Issue

Southside Gods

by Sarah Grey

January 22, 2021

Fantasy

This is his element: water.

* * *

Holloway has come to repair the Goodwins’ washer. It chokes and sputters and burps suds across the laundry room floor. 

Mrs. Goodwin apologizes for the mess, for the heat, for the mangy cat that glares from the shelves above. She offers him fresh iced tea. He accepts and hikes his jeans up, for her sake.

When she returns with the full glass, the floor is clean and dry, and the washer hums and churns like a hive of honeybees in spring.

Her eyes widen; her lipsticked mouth falls open in surprise. She tips him generously, and asks him if he can repair the air conditioner, too.

He cannot, he tells her. He blames it on his education, but HVAC is for the gods of wind.

“Oh,” she says. “That’s a pity. I haven’t been able to get ahold of anyone to fix it.”

* * *

This is his realm: from Oakview Avenue south to Jones Road, between 18th Street and 53rd.

Within these lands, he is every plumber in the directory; he is all search results for toilet repair and leaking faucet. He is the alpha and omega of pipes, a small god of irrigation.

He takes pride in his realm. Within it, the water is clean, and the elements are in balance.

Until now.

* * *

“I could recommend a repairman, one that specializes in–ah–home ventilation,” he tells Mrs. Goodwin.

“Could you? I’ve scoured the phone book. No answer, anywhere.” Her lips pucker in disapproval. “No one takes pride in their profession, these days.”

He excuses himself and steps outside. The August air is thick with dust, stagnant and broiling.

He dials the local god of wind.

The call goes to directly to voicemail, where “Ortega’s HVAC Servicing” promises prices that will blow the competition away.

* * *

This is his weapon: the 18-inch straight-handle pipe wrench. The body is ordinary aluminum, lightweight and solid. But the jaw, it is forged steel–part carbon, part fragments of iron scraped from the colossal trident of Poseidon himself.

But Poseidon, long may he rest, was a god of kings and conquerors. Holloway is a god of suburbs and slums, of working women and men.

* * *

Ortega lives at the west edge of the realm, in a ranch home with wind-shredded awnings.

His lights are off.

Holloway knocks twice, but loses patience. He slams his wrench through the paned-glass front door and lets himself inside.

The house is quiet, the air still. It is several long minutes before he finds Ortega in the closet.

Holloway has never seen a god weep. He’s humbled by the sight, by the realization that even Ortega has water within him. He’s never questioned the air in his own lungs.

He stares at Ortega. Ortega stares at the wall, and wipes his sleeve across his face.

* * *

These are his foes: mercury; unrestrained effluvium; herbicides, insecticides, fertilizers; second-hand oil that flows out of leaking filters and into the bedrock, into the soil, into the aquifers beneath.

* * *

“I’m done,” says Ortega.

“Suck it up,” says Holloway. “The Goodwins need AC. You wanna see an old couple cooked alive?”

“You see that sunset last night?” Ortega’s voice cracks.  “They said it was gorgeous–all pinks and oranges.  Hell, it was even on the news. You know what that was?  That was a sky full of pure filth, from all those factories, from all the millions of cars.  And they all thought it was divine.”

Holloway shrugs. “Clean it up.  Make it even more beautiful.  Blues and whites.”

Ortega shakes his head. “Too much.”

Holloway holds out a hand to help him up. Ortega accepts, reluctantly.

* * *

This is his ally: sweet, unfiltered rain.

* * *

When Ortega’s on his feet, Holloway lays a solid punch across his left cheekbone.

“Screw you!” shouts Ortega. “The hell you do that for?”

Holloway doesn’t answer. He throws another punch.

Outside, clouds roil.  A storm breaks. Raindrops fall heavy as stones onto the blocks between 18th and 53rd. The water scrubs the street clean, sweeps grime and leaves into storm sewers, feeds the summer-starved lawns and trees.

“Pull yourself together,” says Holloway.  “You’re a god.  Act like it.  Don’t complain.  Fight.”  He swings again.

Ortega spits blood into his hand, and glares. 

Outside, the wind picks up.

* * *

This is his mission: to guard, to keep safe, to keep pure.  To keep taps running and brooks flowing.  To unleash the rain, to roar with the wind, to chase the lightning and wash through the bones of the earth.

Within his narrow realm, to cleanse.

* * *

The storm shatters windows and tears down tree branches and doesn’t relent, not for a moment, until long after daylight has fled.

But the sunrise is clear as fine crystal and crisp as fresh laundry. The Goodwins’ cat gnaws the wet grass, then scurries up a tree. The leaves shiver in a clean breeze.

Mrs. Goodwin watches her cat climb. It’s well enough he’s slipped outside, she tells her husband, since the AC technician will be here soon–yes, the one the plumber recommended.

His name’s Ortega. 

He’s promised the repairs will be quick as the wind.

###

© 2013, 2021 Sarah Grey

Originally published in Intergalactic Medicine Show, September 2013. Reprinted here with permission of the author.

Leave a Reply

The Shoe Shopper

by Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar

April 16, 2021

Literary

Aziz Bhai slows down his bicycle, swivels his head to read the vinyl boards hanging above the shops in the bazaar. Though there are several narrow shoe stores in a row, I know he’s looking for my shop “Modern Footwear.” He’s a loyal customer. Motorcycles and cars beep and blare at him as if they own the road, which they do given the diminishing number of bicyclers in the city.

He gets off the black bicycle, lifts it up to its stand, secures the rear wheel to the mudguard with a chained lock, and walks into my shop. The two-wheeler is coated with dust, the tires have little tread left, the rubber on the pedals is worn as thin as paper.

I know the man well. He’s become a friend over the years. He has a distinct laughter, which starts with giggles, graduates to snorts, and transforms into uncontrollable hiccups. He walks swiftly but, today, I notice reluctance in his steps, sluggishness in his sprightly gait. Must be the malaise from the afternoon heat.

“Salaam, Aziz Bhai,” I stop arranging shoes by their color in the glass display and turn the air cooler on as he enters. When there are no customers, I sit under the ceiling fan to save on electricity expenses.

“Salaam,” he replies without looking at me, wipes his brow with his linen kurta sleeve. His beard is more gray than black; his shoulders are stooped. He appears shorter and older than I remember.

“How are you, old man?” I nudge his humor, expect him to retort, to say he’s still young, fathering kids, to burst into his brand of laughter. He says nothing and lowers himself onto the thin-cushioned bench meant for customers.

Any other time I’d have offered him water but today is the last day of Ramadan. There are still four hours till sunset. Tomorrow is Eid, the festival of breaking the fast, which marks the end of the month-long Ramadan. Tomorrow, I’ll stay home with my family, dress up in new clothes and shoes and feast on delicacies.

“What can I get you today, Bhai?” I ask. He pulls out neatly folded sheets of paper, one by one, from his left pocket and straightens them on his thigh.

I know the drill. Every year, the day before Eid, Aziz Bhai visits my shop to purchase shoes for his kids—two boys and two girls, aged between five and eleven. Since he cannot get four kids on his bicycle for shopping, he traces their feet on paper, cuts it out into rectangles, and labels them before starting his journey to the city.

Last year, I asked him why he pedaled eight kilometers through dusty roads, under the summer sun, while fasting from dawn to dusk, why he risked riding amid automobiles in the city, to purchase shoes, why he couldn’t buy them from the village market.

“I want my kids to wear shoes like my landowner’s kids’,” he replied, gazing outside, “not rubber slippers like mine, so they can aspire to be like them, so they can lead respectable and comfortable lives like them.”

I stand on a stool to pull out the latest trending kids’ footwear from the shelves stacked high for Eid customers. Tonight, after sunset, is when most families will come out for shopping.

“Sizes, Aziz Bhai?” I stretch out my palm. He gives me the first rectangular piece of paper, sighing as if the movement hurts his arm.

I dust a tan, slip-on shoe and place it in his lap. He doesn’t match its size with the imprint, so I do it, and make a salesman pitch about how the shoe is going out of stock and how I saved one pair, just for him. He doesn’t tell me I’m a liar, unlike other times.

“300 rupees,” I read the price sticker on the box and wait for a rebuke, an accusation of selling shoes at unreasonable prices on Eid.

He simply nods and keeps the pair aside, doesn’t ask for more styles or colors.

Number two and three are girls’ leather sandals in cream and black. He doesn’t bend the shoes or tug at the buckles to ensure strength and quality, stacks the boxes on the boy’s shoes.

“350 rupees each for the girls’ pairs,” I say. “The best shoes in town, Aziz Bhai!”

He is quiet. This is uncharacteristic of this man, my friend. I’m worried.

“Aziz Bhai, are the prices okay? You okay?” I want him to start his usual bargaining routine where he first asks for a loyalty discount, then, without waiting for my response, strikes out the sticker prices and marks them lower by at least 50 rupees.

“Yes, all good,” he says, running his hand over his beard.

I discount the prices as I prepare his bill.

Three pairs sold to Aziz Bhai within ten minutes. This is a record. I ask for the last foot trace, the number four. Furrows form on Aziz Bhai’s forehead. He adds up the three prices on the bill, pays the full amount, picks up his three boxes, and hurries outside.

I watch as he ties the shoeboxes to the bicycle carrier with a rope, slowly, tentatively. I want to stop him, to look in his right pocket, to find the missing footprint, to throw the fourth pair in for free.

The Ecology of the Engineered Oyster

by Andrew Kozma

May 7, 2021

Science Fiction

We strapped the breathing jellies to our faces and walked into the thick soup of the sea, each step forward a slog until our legs breached the thinner water beneath. Above us, the flare clock tolled, so bright the seascape blanched translucent for a moment, so loud the water pulsed down to the sea floor, both sound and light designed to quiet the oysters. The guards on the shore were dark shadows, barring our way out. In fifteen minutes the jellies would disintegrate, and either we or the oysters would be dead. Some of us thought our predicament only fitting—a just payment for our crimes. But I didn’t want to die.

Twenty yards from shore, the ground fell from under our feet and the difference in water pressures sucked us under, our jellies dragging a coat of slime which made the underwater world softer, friendlier. Wiping the slime away revealed the sharp edges of it all, from the broken bottles blanketing the sand to the blunt-nosed plecos. Their sucker mouths had been genetically modified with grinding bone to take on the oysters, but they’d settled for easier prey like the poison-spined sea urchins. The edges of our breathing jellies were already blackening, but they lasted longer than rubber or plastic. We had fourteen minutes.

Swimming to the underwater city was grueling. Even with oil protecting our bodies from the corrosive water and masking our scent, we were intruders. Plecos head-butted us, then gnawed our bodies tentatively. Joseph spasmed as one snipped a few of his toes with a quick bite. The other plecos disappeared into the sudden blossoming cloud of blood. We swam between the lazy tentacles of a dying mega-octopus, another of our failed solutions, its organs slowly being crushed by its ever-expanding body. The underwater city was just beyond, concrete towers designed to look like coral now furred in oysters. The oysters looked harmless, despite the spiky edges of their shells. We had eleven minutes.

We each carried a belt of resonators, each resonator looking like the cap to a plastic bottle. Painstakingly, we spread out across the length of the nearest building, keeping our distance from the oysters. Rotting bodies and broken skeletons littered the seabed under the oysters. The oysters strained the water of almost all life, so the dead decomposed in slow motion. Some bodies were undoubtedly from attempts to control the oysters after they first spread four years ago. Designed to resist pollution and predators for sustainable farming, they ended up invasive themselves, pushing most other living things out. The ocean lit up with another burst from the flare clock, the oysters’ black shadows like rows upon rows of uneven teeth. We had ten minutes.

It was slow, the unraveling of the resonators. Practice drills in salt pools hadn’t prepared us for the buffeting currents which swept us uncomfortably close to the oysters with every pulling out of the tide. The strings of resonators had to be connected to be the most effective, but the connecting was slow and dangerous. At one end of the line, Hubert was swept into the oysters, only narrowly avoiding their sharp tips with a frantic pull on the resonators connecting him to Ijeoma, next in line. The resonators hummed, vibrations blurring the water around them until they shook apart into a dark slurry which fogged the water with the massaging of the currents. Annette cut herself free before her resonators detonated, but she was left motionless, her eyes seeping from her head. Together, she and I’d worked on the oyster’s filtration capabilities. Hermann shook me, pointed at the resonators in my hand, still unconnected. We had seven minutes.

The resonators connected, we slipped the belts from our waists and drifted closer to the oysters. They were packed together like crystals, oysters sprouting from oysters, clustered into branches and swirls and cacti and geodes, the shells a rusty black carved through with iridescence. The black was the same as that spreading over our breathing jellies. In the Arctic, there were rafts of this same black, some as big as city blocks, some the size of small towns, barren but expectant, as if waiting for their population to move in. We were at the source, the original oysters. The flare clock flashed again. We had five minutes.

The oysters slowly began to pivot, angling themselves towards us. If we didn’t finish soon, we’d envy the quick deaths of the others. Slowly, we sidled up to the oysters, holding the line of resonators centimeters away from the shells, waiting until we were ready affix them at the same time. The flare clock flashed four minutes, then three, and it was only in those bursts of light we noticed the tiny black pearls in the ocean around us. The oysters were already seeding the water. Our breathing jellies twitched as the inner layers began to die. We had two minutes.

As one, we pushed the resonators against the oysters, the devices clamping on with tiny claws. The detonation was automated from this point on. We threw ourselves back through the water, through the tentacles, around the sated plecos that dumbly watched our desperate swimming, even as Hermann crusted over with black pearls and Shayan burst apart with an eruption of oysters as their breathing jelly failed. The sea flashed the flare clock’s final tolling, and we felt the thud and collapse through the water as the resonators began a chain reaction which would, hopefully, eliminate these oysters and clear the city, freeing this bit of ocean for farming again. And we would be free, too, our criminal pasts forgiven.

My body thrummed with downslope of adrenaline. I threw my blackened breathing jelly to the ground and knelt beside it, thankful for the sand biting into my skin. We were alive. Our minutes were done. The air smelled as bright and clean as the rising sun.

Leave a Reply

Art of War

by Mira Jiang

August 13, 2021

Literary

The lock-step of soldiers struck the cracked dark cobbles, a bounding rhythm in time to the beats of Liwei’s heart.

A line of people slumped by the entrance to his house. The half-light obscured their faces in shadow, yet he knew their figures even in death.

Mama. Baba. Uncle. Old Bingwen.

“Ge-Ge,” his sister whined beside him. “I want to go home.”

He tightened his grip around her arm. “Hush.”

“But I left Mei-Mei on my bed.”

Liwei forced a smile. “Mama has your bear, Qi-Qi. She’ll give it to you once we meet up again. Right now, we get to go on an adventure, just the two of us.”

His sister tried to peek around the corner, but he held her tight. She would scream if she saw the bodies. They couldn’t afford to draw attention with soldiers close by.

“Hey,” he said softly. “Did you hear when Hao-An recited the entire San Zi Jing? Everyone in the market was talking about it.”

Qi-Qi folded her arms. “I can do that.”

“Maybe, but he did it with his eyes closed. I bet you can’t come close.”

“Can so.”

“I won’t believe you unless you prove it.”

“Well.” She stared at her feet. “I don’t know all of San Zi Jing, but I can recite other stuff.”

“Show me. I don’t think I could even manage something like that.” Liwei took a deep breath. “Here, I’ll carry you while you do it.”

Qi-Qi clapped her hands in delight and jumped onto his back.

“Eyes closed and whisper,” he said. “Otherwise it’s cheating.”

Turning down an alleyway, he gave into the temptation to look back at his home. Blood trickled along the cracks in a scarlet lattice. Flames ate away at the foundation, and men laughed as they flicked matches onto the blaze.

Shame chased away his fear. With Baba and Uncle gone, he was the man of the family. He should protect their homes, fight off the soldiers, and die with honor.

Instead, he bolted in the opposite direction.

“The art of war is of vital importance to the state.” Qi-Qi’s voice rang with an airy solemnity.

Polished boots flashed through a crack between the fence and the wall. Liwei held his breath, waiting for them to pass.

Could this be war? This was nothing like Sun-Tzu promised.

And what was the state? Was it the party of men who diddle with pens in the capital? Or was it the land around him now, covered in ash and blood?

“It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin.”

Screams reverberated through the dirt-streaked shops where he used to nab food from vendor stalls. Beads spilled from a splintered basket, rolling every which way on the cobblestone. If the war was meant to save the people, why was it slaughtering them instead?

These were the streets Liwei had walked all his life, the places where paper dragons chased lanterns and firecrackers rained on children racing through the night. Now, the memories were going up in flame.

His feet struck the stone. Qi-Qi pressed warmly against his back. He couldn’t afford to think about the hands that had packed rolls into the handkerchiefs weighing heavy in his pockets, the arms that had encircled his shoulders, or the lips that had pressed tearfully against his forehead.

He couldn’t bear to picture them lying before the porch where he had played dice with his uncle, where Qi-Qi’s doodles and his own elegant landscapes were now disappearing under the flames.

No, if he looked back, then he was lost.

Fires burned through the streets, their smoke rising to join the cries of the town. Liwei added his own silent voice to the chorus.

Old Bingwen. Uncle. Baba. Mama.

“When you penetrate deeply into a country, it is serious ground,” Qi-Qi whispered. “When there is no place of refuge at all, it is desperate ground.”

The paved roads of the town gave way to dog tail weeds tickling his ankles. Biplanes whirred with the rat-tat of machine guns.

Between the cover of the buildings and a copse of trees lay an empty field, six hundred meters of space where projectiles could rain from overhead.

“So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and strike at what is weak.”

The Japanese had bypassed the strongholds of the east and hit farmers in the undefended countryside, knowing full well no heroes would come rushing to the rescue.

Perhaps Liwei’s village might have stood a chance back when there was honor in combat. But swords had turned to guns. Conflicts of skill became a competition of who could pack the most firepower into a lumbering barrel. Battle had turned to massacre.

The art of war—he suspected Sun-Tzu had been mocking them with the title. If war was an art, its canvas was painted in the blood of people who fell prey to its jaws.

A child’s cap lay by the wayside, the yellow stars stained russet in a mockery of the flag in the center of town. Liwei set his sister down and hugged her to his chest.

Red-orange tongues licked along burning buildings, keeping pace with scorched clouds stretching across the winter sky. The sun burst across the heavens in a gash of radiant light.

Qi-Qi trembled. “W-When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard.”

To stay was to burn. To flee was to die. The enemy had left them no escape, and Liwei was tired of running when the end result was the same.

“We’ll be with Mama and Baba soon,” he murmured to Qi-Qi. “It’s going to be alright.”

As the flames roared, Liwei buried his face in his sister’s hair and dreamed of family dinners by the fireside.

The Songs Her Mother Used to Sing

by Aimee Ogden

August 20, 2021

Fantasy

Marigold Henry was twenty-three when she made her first child, from deer entrails and kitchen scraps.

Brian provided the entrails. She’d known he was supposed to contribute to the process. Marigold’s mother hadn’t told her much, but she’d gotten that far. Usually when blood-slicked plastic bags came home from Brian’s hunting trips, he’d throw the unwanted cuttings into the yard and shoot coyotes creeping in after sundown. This time, he’d left the deflated bag beside the door for Marigold to find. He’d always said, even back in school, that he’d wanted children.

The baby she shaped was soft; she stuffed it with sawdust from Brian’s workshop for solidity. But she didn’t think she’d done it quite right. It only wriggled obscenely, a rubbery sack without top or bottom. Marigold ransacked her memories, the things her mother must have told her about childrearing, but came up empty-handed. You never listen, her mother always said. Marigold had learned too late that she was right. Sometimes silences spoke more than words.

The baby never cried. Brian was so proud, told his friends what a good baby it was, so easy. Marigold thought babies should cry. While Brian worked a shift, Marigold took the kitchen shears and carved a crooked mouth, seamed up the ragged edges, and set them with pearls from the necklace she’d worn for her wedding (false ones, but good enough for a starter set).

The baby did cry, after that, forever using the mouth she’d given it to squall for food, bruising her with its newfound bite. Brian despised the crying. He disappeared for long stretches to the garage, where an engine’s full-throated song drowned out the sobbing.

Marigold’s mother must have shown her how to be in the world, to be part of it. If she could remember what her mother had done–but she could not.

She remembered Sunday school, though. If clay had been good enough for God, it was good enough for Marigold. From backyard mud she shaped a proper face onto the formless mass. With her thumbs, she pressed indentations for two tiny eyes. The clay hardened in the sun, but it was fragile. It flaked when she added eyes in the robin’s-egg blue left over from the front door.

Seeing the world didn’t help the child understand it. Now it wailed whenever it lost sight of Marigold, and oh, the reach of its vision was so narrow, the walls of Marigold’s world squeezing tight. It was summer now and they slept together, the baby and Marigold, on the porch with the mosquitos so they didn’t disturb Brian.

Years ago, for their honeymoon, Brian had taken her to Florida. They’d played mini-golf and sipped Coronas on the beach. Marigold still had the shells she’d sifted from the sands. She gave the baby two, for ears, so she could sing the songs her mother had always sung to her. But when her lips brushed the pink-sheened curl of those ears, she could muster no music. She had nothing to say, and now nothing to sing, and so sometimes she yelled instead, hollow empty words that sent the dogs cowering beneath the bed like on stormy August nights.

When she could gather the strength, Marigold went out. She took the baby to the library, the playground, the supermarket. This, she sensed, was what she was supposed to do. She met other mothers, other infants. Sometimes, if she felt very brave, and sometimes, if she felt very small and afraid, she asked these women how they did it.

Other women, with insomnia’s livid bruises about their eyes, said it was a matter of instinct, motherhood came as naturally as breath to the lungs, or blood to a wound. Other women, with gouges in the flesh of their shoulders and arms where tiny teeth had torn, said she should give more of herself to her child. Other women, tired, heart-bruised, smiling, said she was doing fine. These women were the worst of all.

When her mother planned a visit, Marigold wept with relief to have answers within reach at last. But when she arrived, there was no time for questions. Her mother hated the dogs; their barking would upset the baby. She didn’t like the nursery; too bright. She ran her fingers over the baby’s gums and wondered why Marigold had used pearls, of all things. Buttons had been good enough for her–for Marigold’s grandmother, too. And good meat for the baby’s heart? Extravagant. Wasteful.

Marigold put her hand on her chest, over the place where, when she was small, her mother had cut her open and drawn in a heart with black felt-tip marker. She waited for the storm to subside; she’d weathered worse. And when she found the space to ask at last: could her mother sing a lullaby, like she’d sung to her own daughter? Marigold’s mother hummed a bit of Johnny’s Theme and excused herself to the porch for a cigarette.

Marigold’s hopes broke wide open; all her questions flew away. She stayed with the baby, who bit at her shirt as viciously as ever. She had nothing left to ask, nothing to say, not even to shout.

Her mother left after a long airless week, and Marigold took out the kitchen shears again.

She didn’t take them to the baby’s tender flesh this time. Hunched over the sink, she cut herself open and found her quivering heart.

The muscle was strong, twitching fast beneath her fingers. So much more than the simple, symmetrical shape her mother had given her to start with. The rest she’d grown herself, over many years. It didn’t even fit in her palm anymore. So much more than it had been; enough, she thought, to share.

The shears shook as she sliced a piece free: not too much, not more than a little one could bear. With a good sharp knife she cut it up and muddled it with milk and she sang to the baby, feeding her the pieces, encouraging her to chew.

Beneath Her Sweet Roots

by Sylvia Heike

September 24, 2021

Fantasy

Beneath the roots of the honeyglow tree, a small creature dreams. Not the cold, empty sleep of winter, only a nap on a warm autumn day. His bed, a nest of moss and grass, has been fortified with yellow leaves, and there he lies, curled like a vine, hugging his thick silvery tail. His nose snuffles and his mouth twitches as he dreams of fruit.

With a yawn, he unfurls, skitters along a tunnel and emerges into the light. Nose up, he sniffs the air. There’s a change in the wind. A new scent, cold and sweet, mixing with distant wood smoke. It makes the trees shiver.

He climbs the honeyglow tree, all the way to the highest branches, but finds no clusters of fruit, only golden leaves.

* * *

He spends most of the light-hours of each day looking for food. Unlike the squirrels zooming past with fat acorns in their mouths who bury food for winter, the small creature eats all he can find. Berries and mushrooms, the core of an apple dropped by a crow. All is well in his world as long as his belly’s full.

* * *

Yet another darkness descends. The small creature shifts in his nest, hungry for summer fruit, hungry for anything at all. His eyes are pinched tight, his sleep ragged and light.

A gentle wind swirls around the honeyglow tree, plays with the branches and moves on.

Dreams come—comforting, strange. The warmth of sun against golden bark. The scent of summer days. Secret underground chambers bursting with fruit.

He relaxes, lets go of his tail.

Dreams won’t fill his belly, but it’s the only way the tree knows how to speak.

Ever since the furry one made his home beneath her, she has warded off nightmares and scared off foxes venturing too close to his trail. It’s a kindness, but hardly unearned. All summer he fed on her golden fruit, freeing her branches from its weight. Sitting on her shoulder, he licked his sticky paws for hours, not letting a single drop go to waste.

He thinks of her as home, but through the sugar of her fruit, she lives inside him too.

* * *

The nights grow more biting. The small creature’s hunger grows until it’s bigger than him, bigger than the dreams floating inside his head. He sniffs, nose close to the ground, travels a circle around the honeyglow tree.

Something smells sweet like summer. He digs, nose and paws dirty in the soil. The smell in his nostrils intensifies. He sees it. A thin, golden fruit buried in the soil. No, not a fruit—a root. His mouth waters. He sticks his nose down, inhales, almost faints from the heavenly scent.

A little nibble won’t hurt, he tells himself. There are many more, a whole network twisting and curling underground. And so he sinks his teeth into the sweet, sweet root.

A flash of lightning against black skies flickers through his mind. A cold, dark feeling like an echo of winter. He jumps back, eyes wide with fear, heart racing down a dark tunnel.

He looks up. The sky is blue, not a drop of rain on his nose or a cloud in sight. And the invisible beast of hunger still growls in his belly, unsatisfied.

He takes another bite, and another. The roots are sweet and hearty, good work for his teeth. There’s no lightning this time, nothing to stop him.

* * *

The small creature, his belly fat and round, should be sleeping, but something dark at the back of his mind keeps him from rest. He goes outside one last time.

He crouches in the sea of golden leaves, making a small and terrible sound. Beneath the leaves lies destruction, tunnels upon tunnels where he gorged on the tree’s sweet, sweet roots. He snuggles against the base of the tree, against the cool bark, closes his eyes, and waits.

The tree stays silent, sharing no more image-feelings. Her naked shadow falls over her very last leaves.

* * *

The small creature curls into his nest for the last time before spring. Bundled tight, he hugs his round belly and thick silvery tail. More than foxes, he fears the nightmares that may come.

His world becomes soft and black as he falls somewhere deep. Between here and there, everything slows and cools. His heart, his breath, the flow of blood through his veins, finer than the finest roots.

There, he stops, so close to the border of death that, if not careful, he might slip over to the other side.

A voice slices through his black, empty sleep. It creaks, “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“I didn’t mean to,” the small creature squeaks, imagining dark snakelike roots dragging him away. “But I was so hungry.”

“I know you were, and though it hurt, I wanted you to eat.”

“I filled my belly with your roots. I killed you.”

“Everything you took was freely given. My branches are old and brittle, and would not survive the coming snow. I knew this winter would be my last.”

The image conjured by his fears changes, begins to fill with light. The roots, turning golden, don’t pull him away. They push back and protect, keep him from slipping away.

The tree whispers, “Now sleep till spring, my little friend, and let me dream for you.”

 

Originally published in The Mad River (January 2019). Reprinted here by permission of the author.

Comments

Leave a Reply

The Dog Who Buried the Sea

by Andy Oldfield

November 5, 2021

Fantasy

Gather now nestlings and feather-kin, settle your wings and listen, lest this tale should be forgotten in the cold dark days to come.

Remember the Bone Man and the Bone Dog. Remember the gifts that come unexpected. And always remember that those good days may come again, when the beaks of jackdaw, chough and rook, of magpie, jay, crow and raven never go hungry.

In the days of your grandmother’s grandmother and grandfather’s grandfather the winter snows fell deep, bitter and long. Ice and wind stole our food and our lives. Badger and fox claimed our dead, and we grew weaker and fewer.

Hope shrank and shrivelled, like our bellies. Until, one day in the nest-houses of men and women, a strange man and his dog came to live. The man and dog were as one it seemed. The man was young and lean, the dog was even younger and leaner. Soulmates. Nestmates. And they never chased us from the land around their home.

The man fed himself and his dog on succulent meat cut from the bone. And afterwards, instead of locking the remains inside a bin, like so many of their kind, the Bone Man gave them to us.

Into the bushes, he threw us food. On to the grass, on to the rooftop. Gristle, bone, sinew, cartilage, skin and flesh. Such sweet stuff, the stuff of which corvids dream. The stuff of life, scattered freely. We ate, they watched. When the Bone Dog watched we could eat with no fear of cat or fox stealing us or our food.

We grew strong and winter died instead of us. When the warmth returned many chicks hatched to see the sun. And still the Bone Man and Dog showered us with blessings. We grew strong, though there were many beaks to feed.

And so it went. Summer after winter after summer.

Although the Bone Dog grew bonier, and the Bone Man began to limp, they still shared their bounty. But one day the Bone Dog lay down and never rose again. The Bone Man sat alone in his garden. Jackdaws hopped around his feet and brought him gifts of feather and stone, but his eyes were dark and wet and empty.

Through his sadness, he still fed us. And then, a new Bone Dog, just like the old one, came into his life and the light in the Bone Man’s eyes returned and all was good. But nothing stands still. As the Bone Dog grew older, the Bone Man grew stiffer and slower until he knew his time under the sun was almost done.

One morning, in the cool dawn light, he scattered our breakfasts and said goodbye. He went down to the sea with the Bone Dog and climbed into a boat and rowed out to the faerie isles that wink in and out of being. With Bone Dog by his side, he lay down on the glimmering shore and closed his eyes to this world. The waves began to embrace him, but Bone Dog knew what to do and began to dig, long bony legs and sharp claws throwing enchanted sand over the Bone Man’s cooling body. Soon, Bone Dog had raised a small mound.

We were watching. We knew that Bone Dog’s efforts would be in vain, as soon enough the faerie isle would slip back into the sea. And so we helped. Hundreds of us took sand by the beak-full from the dunes of the mainland and flew out to the faerie isle. We dropped it and Bone Dog piled it on the Bone Man’s body.

Sand, grass, twig, stone. The sky was black for three days and nights as jackdaw, chough, rook, magpie, jay, crow and raven carried their loads. The Bone Dog buried the sea and turned a faerie isle into a solid one.

When the Bone Man was safely hidden, the Dog Who Buried The Sea lay down exhausted and we stood by him as he slept. He dreamt happy dreams of when the Bone Man and Bone Dog were young. We joined his dreams with our own. Good times.

The Bone Dog woke and knew there was one last task. He looked at us and we nodded. He began to dig one more time, a Bone Dog sized tunnel into the heart of the island where the Bone Man lay. And as the Bone Dog disappeared from this world, we filled in the tunnel so he and the Bone Man could rest, safe, together.

Remember fledglings. Things come and they go. Round in circles: rain, shine, wind, snow. Light and dark. Egg and bone.

One day, when we need them most, the Bone Man and the Bone Dog will return.

Keep watching. From roof and tree, from chimney and bush, from rock and aerial, from forest and field, from cliff and dune, keep your eyes and hearts sharp.

Be ready to rejoice anew when the Bone Man and Bone Dog wake and cast their offerings to the sky.

###

© 2021 Andy Oldfield

Join the 
Community

Support

Become a member of our Patreon community

Support

Subscribe

Subscribe via Weightless Books

Subscribe

Submit a Story

Submit your story using our Submittable portal

Submit a Story