by Tanith Lee
“Vetehinen,” Pihla says, though she can barely force the words past her cold-stiff lips. “I’ve come to make a bargain.” She does not sound confident. She sounds small, diminished; her resolve is beginning to rot and she’s afraid he’ll be able to smell it on her. She lifts her chin. “I’ve come to talk to you about Aino.”
In the near distance there is a sudden spark; a blue-green sunburst spills out overhead, a petrol trail slowly igniting. All around her, ripples of deep-sea phosphorescence illuminate this strange passage at last, and her terror evaporates along with the darkness. She laughs out loud, eyes wide with delight. The tunnel is not a tunnel at all but a chamber, a great vaulted hall wrought crudely in ice. With this new illumination she can see the steely glimmer of fish trapped inside the thick, glassy walls. And high above, at the very apex of this impossible ceiling, the aurora dances with slow, sinuous grace.
“Come closer, please.” Not a song, but a request. Pihla tears her gaze from the lights and sees, for the first time, the creature who sits cross-legged in the centre of the chamber.
His profile is cast in green: a sharp-edged emerald. He is a naked, sexless thing, fishbelly pale, his hair long and dark. A spattering of pearlescent scales freckle his thighs, increasing in number until, just below the sharp jut of his knees, his skin becomes entirely silver. He looks up at her approach, bringing his face into the light. Even to her naïve fourteen year old eye he is beautiful; as perfect and remote as a glacier. Lonely Vetehinen, who sings his sadness deep below the ice.
“I won’t let you take Aino away,” Pihla says, looking him square in the eye. She is not afraid any more, not of this sad, monstrous man. Not in this place. He may have beauty and song but she has warm flesh and hot blood. She has determination. She has to be brave for Aino. “She’s too young, and too sick. And anyway, Äiti needs her, because she’s lonely too.”
Vetehinen is still. His eyes are unblinking, dark slits in the raw marble of his skull.
“So I’ve come in her place.” She extends her hands, tips up her palms, half obscured by raggedy bandages, and still he stares; not consuming her with his gaze the way men sometimes do, greedy in their interest, but with something akin to wonder, as though she is a minor phenomenon. “I’ll keep you company. Forever, if you like. But I have one condition.” She holds his gaze. “You have to make Aino well again, as you told her you would. You have to promise me that. And then I’ll be yours.”
He smiles. His teeth are stubs of coral, small and sharp. “You could have refused,” he says. “It was a request, never an obligation. Why come to me? Why offer yourself?”
Pihla thinks of Äiti’s grey face, her dull eyes and drooping, defeated shoulders. She thinks of Aino wrapped in a blanket, Äiti smoothing her fever-damp hair from her forehead, and the guilt heavy inside of her. Her mother’s words in her head, over and over like a mantra: I would only have had one.
“Because I want my family to be happy,” she says, without hesitation. “And I only have myself to give in return.”
Vetehinen uncurls, getting slowly to his feet. He is taller than Pihla expected, his limbs almost unnaturally long. His body is smooth and featureless, the bleached bed of a dead ocean. His legs are frail, strung with wasted muscles as though he is not used to walking on dry land. As though it hurts him to do so. He opens his arms to her, and she goes to him.
Pihla watches wordlessly as he scoops both of her hands up in his, unwinding the bandages. The scabbed flesh of her knuckles peels away with the fabric; her skin wells with bright, fresh blood as he brings her fingers to his lips.
“Then I promise,” he tells her.
She gazes past him, at the aurora undulating overhead and the trapped fish glinting in the black ice like a constellation. At the way the sweeping arc of the roof is beginning to tremble as though under a terrible pressure.
“My name is Pihla,” she says.
The apex of the ceiling begins to bow. Thousands of hairline cracks shoot through the ice, making strange, crystalline music. Inside the walls, the fish are beginning to move. Vetehinen’s chamber is melting.
“Don’t be afraid,” Vetehinen tells her, and when he smiles he almost looks kind. “You won’t drown as long as you’re with me. I promise that, too.”
He folds his arms around her as the walls begin to disintegrate, showering bright shards the size of a man’s fist. Up close, she can see the individual strands of his hair, a glossy thicket of kelp streaming over his shoulders. His skin bears the warmth of smooth river rocks baked in the summer sun.
“Will you sing?” Pihla asks, pressing her cheek against his shoulder. “So that Aino knows I’m safe?”
Liquid spills from the cracks in the walls, a thousand tiny waterfalls streaming from high above. The ceiling groans, echoing loud in the chamber; her muscles tense with sudden fear, though she does not want to be afraid. She wants to trust Vetehinen. And then, faintly at first, rising above the cacophony of shifting, shattering ice, he begins to sing. Not melancholy, now, but euphoric: a song of joy, emanating from the very core of him. Vetehinen shields her frail human body with his own, enveloping her in a cocoon of skin and bone and jubilant music. She wonders if Aino can hear him, safe and warm in her bed. She wonders if Aino understands.
The waters of the lake finally burst through the walls, filling her mouth, her nose. She chokes, fighting and thrashing, her last breath burning inside her chest. Pihla feels Vetehinen’s hands either side of her face, gentle; she sees him through the murky water, a beautiful monster, inciting her to breathe. His mouth forms silent words. She understands perfectly: I promise.
Pihla opens her mouth. Fills her lungs with lake water. She does not drown.
Also available from NewCon Press:
Myth-Understandings
An anthology themed on communication, featuring fifteen stories of science fiction, fantasy, and dark fantasy written by some of the finest authors of genre fiction around… all of whom happen to be women.
Cover art by Anne Sudworth
Introduction – Ian Whates
Myth
Owl Speak – Storm Constantine
Seaborne – Kari Sperring
And Their Blood Will Be Prescient to Fire – Freda Warrington
Do You See? – Sarah Pinborough (Winner of the 2009 British Fantasy Award)
Queen of the Sunlit Shore – Liz Williams
Heart Song – Kim Lakin-Smith
The Grass Princess – Gwyneth Jones
Understandings
Tales from the Big dark: Found in the Translation – Pat Cadigan
TouchMe™: Keeping in Touch – Heather Bradshaw
We Shelter – Leigh Kennedy
Dinosaur – Deborah J. Miller
Further Orders – Elisabeth Priest
Tollhouse – Claire Weaver
Body of Evidence – Justina Robson
The Ecologist and the Avon Lady – Tricia Sullivan
Dark Currents
Edited by Ian Whates
A dazzling blend of science fiction, fantasy, dark fantasy and horror: a set of stories that traverses genre boundaries, linked only by their common inspiration. Take a deep breath and prepare to immerse yourself in these deep, dark currents…
Cover art by Ben Baldwin
Contents:
Introduction by Ian Whates
The Fall of Lady Sealight – Adrian Tchaikovsky
The Age of Entitlement – Adam Nevill
Electrify Me – Tricia Sullivan
Alternate Currents – Rod Rees
The Barricade – Nina Allan
Things that Are Here Now – Andrew Hook
Loose Connections – Finn Clarke
Sleepless in R’lyeh – Lavie Tidhar
Damnation Seize my Soul – Jan Edwards
Home – Emma Coleman
A Change in the Weather – Rebecca J Payne
Bells Ringing Under the Sea – Sophia McDougall
In Tauris – Una McCormack
The Bleeding Man – Aliette de Bodard
George – V.C. Linde
A Decade of Science Fiction by Women
An eBook only retrospective anthology gathering together the best science fiction stories written by women authors that NewCon have published during our first 10 years. Our early titles were never issued as eBooks, so many of these stories appear here in digital format for the first time.
Introduction by Ian Whates
Tales from the Big Dark: Among Strangers – Pat Cadigan
The Killing Fields – Kim Lakin-Smith
TouchMeTM: Keeping in Touch – Heather Bradshaw
The Disappeared – Sarah Singleton
Collateral Damage – Jaine Fenn
War Without End – Una McCormack
Unaccounted – Lauren Beukes
Electrify Me – Tricia Sullivan
Higher Up – Nina Allan
The Honey Trap – Ruth EJ Booth
Body of Evidence – Justina Robson
The Worldmaker – Rachel Armstrong
The Crepuscular Hunter – EJ Swift
A Season – Rebecca J Payne
www.newconpress.co.uk
New for 2016:
Azanian Bridges
A novel by
Nick Wood
Cover art by Vincent Sammy
A stunning novel set in an alternative South Africa where apartheid still holds sway.
Sibisuso Mchunu, a young amaZulu studying to become a teacher, falls foul of the system after seeing a friend killed during a protest march. Referred to well-meaning white clinical psychologist Martin van Deventer, Sibisuso learns of a device that may offer hope to a suppressed people, but the security services are after it too. He is soon out of his depth, caught up in the deadly struggle for freedom, with no choice but to see it through.
“A very good novel indeed; the emotional intelligence is as high as its political insightfulness – the whole is compelling and moving... horrifically believable and real.” – Adam Roberts
“Vivid, pacy, quietly furious, beautifully observed, with an ending that liberates and lacerates in equal measure.” – Stephanie Saulter
Look out for Azanian Bridges, released April 2016.