by Jeff Ayers
“You’re telling me you got nothing to say abou’ tha’?” Harald pointed with a sausage-like digit toward the black crater near the center of the courtyard. “You managed to sleep through whatever did it?”
“It wasn’t sleep, was it? Ahhh…” Egg had clenched his jaw in irritation, and more pain shot through him. “I was hit. Hard, by one of the biggest blokes you ever saw. Weird, too. I was looking right at him, but I never seen him move before it was too late.” He idly rubbed his jaw. “Never seen a guy that size move that fast, neither.”
“Heh,” Harald said, hitching up the heavy belt that was sagging below his belly line, “you’d be surprised by what a large fella can do in a pinch. We’re a surprisin’ lot, eh?”
Egg rolled his eyes.
When Harald’s laughing died down, he cleared his throat. He tensed up a bit and lowered his tones. “So, you don’t know anythin’ about who’s in the pit?”
Egg shook his head and walked over to the crater. Harald followed with slow and heavy steps. The thinner man crouched at the edge of the crater, a place where the earth seemed to have been scooped away by a shallow but immense spoon. Within was nothing but charred black dirt and two skeletal sets of remains. One set—the one opposite from where Egg was crouched—was a crumpled mess of bones. It looked like someone had emptied the contents of an ossuary with all the care and respect one might have when emptying a chamber pot, and then set it on fire.
The closer set of remains was much more organized. Someone with his back to the center of the charred crater had been blasted outward. The dead man was lying on what had been his stomach, arms out wide like a bird taking flight. The skull was turned sideways, half-buried into the blackened dirt. The mouth was open in a silent scream, trying to swallow the earth closing in on its face.
“I don’t mind telling yeh, Egg, this is abou’ th’ worst thing I ever seen. Gruesome, it is.”
There was a patch on the man’s back where his skin had not burned, despite the fact that his back had borne the brunt of whatever fiery end he’d met. On this patch of skin between the shoulder blades was a tattoo; in the waning light and with their hesitation to get near the bodies, they hadn’t looked too closely at it. They knew, at least, that it was a feather design.
“Yeah. Gruesome and strange. The lieutenant is bringin’ in some snoop-for-hire to try to figure this out. Says the rich people got spooked by the craziness.”
“Hmph.” Harald crossed his arms and glowered at the pit. “Magic did this, no question. Far’s I’m concerned, we’d be a lot better off if they just outlawed wizards ’n’ such. Or hired more of ’em for the Guard. Or both.” He cleared his sinuses and spit heavily on the ground nearby. “Anythin’ that can do somethin’ like this is too dangerous, it is.”
“Not gonna happen, mate,” Egg said, standing up and grimacing as the rush of blood hit his head. He could feel one of his teeth grinding against its fellows. “Most of the ones we know about live right here in the big job; ain’t no way they’ll let the Baron outlaw magic. Augh, this toof!” In a desperate bid to rid himself of the pain, he’d reached into his mouth and found the offending molar. It wiggled freely at his touch. There was nothing much connecting it to anything anymore. He pulled, and out it came, though it split in two in his palm. “You think a priest’ll put this back in?” He spat—as he’d expected, the saliva was an upsetting shade of red—and turned the split tooth over in his palm.
“Yeah, if you’re gonna make a ‘donation’ to the poor box, I’m sure.” Harald looked around and leaned toward Egg. “Listen, let’s go see now? They don’t need us ’ere, and that’ll only get worse the longer yeh stay away from the healers.”
Egg dithered, but gave in when the throbbing in his head returned. “Yeah, let’s go.” The two Guards left their post.
If the Guards had stayed, they would have seen the tattoo on the dead man’s back turn a deep red and felt the pull of the wind toward the body. If Egg had paid attention to where his spit had flown, he’d have felt a pang of guilt: it had landed on the nearby dead man’s open mouth. Egg was not a very pious man, but he was superstitious. He would have considered the offense to the dead a great portent of ill luck. Further, if the light had been better and the two had been less skittish about approaching the body, they might have noticed something even more upsetting about the nearby corpse than his undamaged and once-again-dormant tattoo: an elongated incisor, from which a drop of Egg’s bloody saliva now hung.
The mouth of the dead man closed, turning up dirt and coming together in a soft click. The red spittle disappeared between its teeth.
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Thinklings Books started out when three speculative-fiction-loving professional editors—Jeannie Ingraham, Deborah Natelson, and Sarah Awa—got together and formed a writing group. We called ourselves the Thinklings, in honor of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien’s group, the Inklings.
Over time, we found ourselves agonizing more and more about how messed up the publishing industry had become. Why couldn’t good books get published? Why were so many bad books published just because their authors had big Twitter followings? We wished there were something we could do about the problem . . . and then we realized there was.
As a developmental editor, a substantive/line editor, and a proofreader, the three of us knew good writing when we saw it—and we knew how to make it even better. We had a lot of experience walking our clients through the publishing process—both traditional and self-publish—and we had contacts with marketing and design experts. We had some amazing unpublished books lined up and ready for production. We had, in fact, everything we needed to make a great publishing company. All that was left was to actually do it.
So we’re doing it.
Spectacular Reads. Every Time.
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Honestly, I probably shouldn't be having so much fun.
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One bite on her hand…a million problems.
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All Melanie wanted was to get a boyfriend and graduate college. Now she has to deal with agonizing monthly transformations, a secret organization stalking her, friends and enemies trying to discover her secret, and hunters looming on the horizon.
Hunter’s Moon by Sarah M. Awa
The Narrative must be obeyed.
Everyone in the Taskmaster’s Realm knows how the story goes: the boy of destiny goes on a quest, defeats the dark lord, and gets the swooning princess. It’s a great story, if you happen to be a knight or a wizard or a hero. But it’s pretty odious if you’re Ordinary: a barmaid who has to inflate her bosom and have her backside pinched, a homely prince who can’t buckle his swash because his face doesn’t fit, or a soldier who gets killed over and over and over again just to progress the plot.
Fodder of Humble Village is one of those soldiers, and, frankly, he’s sick and tired of getting speared, decapitated, and disembowelled so the good guys can look glorious. In fact, he’s not going to take it anymore.
No matter what The Narrative tries to make him do.
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Immeasurable imagination. Unmitigated magic. Spectacular style.
The clockwork man is crafted, to begin with—commissioned by that terrible tyrant Time to serve as her slave for all eternity. His brain boasts balance wheels and
torsion springs; he can wind himself up with a key in his side; and, most importantly, his gyroscopic tourbillon heart glimmers with pure diamond.
He is a living being and he is art, and he refuses to remain a slave forever. He therefore slips through Time’s fingers as the Sands of Time slip through the cracks of reality (at least, when the time cats aren’t using them as a litter box).
Among astounding adventures, despite harrowing hardships, and in between escaping interfering enchanters, the clockwork man seeks his imagination, his purpose, and his name.
The Land of the Purple Ring by Deborah J. Natelson
Technology Hates Janet
After she accidentally smashes a floatcar through City Hall, the bureautopia sentences Janet to captaining the starship S.S. Turkey and its misfit crew. Her mission: to boldly rescue a prisoner from the one corner of the universe colder than her ex-boyfriend’s heart—Pluto. Which, aside from not even being a real planet, is the one place in the universe where chocolate is illegal.
In between studying The Space-Faring Moron’s Guide to Common Science Fiction Plot Devices, falling for a rival captain’s boyfriend, and avoiding unnecessary time travel, Janet has a chance to save two worlds…or doom them to permanent chocolatelessness.
The Cosmic Turkey by Laura Ruth Loomis
About the Author
Jeff Ayers is an author and avid reader of fantasy and science fiction stories. He began playing with the idea of writing a book way back in middle school, and has been practicing ever since. He is an English teacher living in northwest Arkansas (Go, Razorbacks!) with his wife, two kids, and two dogs, all of whom he loves very dearly.