Teeth, Long and Sharp: A Collection of Tales Sharp and Pointed
Page 11
It seemed like a good question. Even Burung Gagak might approve.
Because she’d told Havraní to, she listened, following the source of the noise. The way it bounced from tree to tree, it seemed to wrap around, coming from nowhere in particular and everywhere at once. But more from that way. Deeper in, well past the boulder where she’d found the first blood spatter. If they followed it, would they find Burung Gagak’s blood decorating the snow? Would they lose their own blood to the Thing?
Bad questions, that only sapped her confidence and made her want to return to the nest. She began to understand more about what made a good question. But still not how to find the right question.
“This way,” she said, and Havraní nodded, ready to follow. Such perfect trust, so unearned. Still Raven knew in her bones that, had she not led the way, Havraní would have done this on her own. The noise called to her equally and so Raven had no business telling her sister not to do what she herself had already done.
They flitted from tree to tree, silvery as the moonlight itself. Just as insubstantial. They could almost be invisible, like another kind of wind, a corvid wind, drifting through the canopy without stirring it.
And then the night shattered into a roar of shrieks and flames.
Orange burning terrible and bright.
Teeth, long, sharp and slashing, tearing her from the sky to tumble to the ground.
At the last moment, just before she hit the earth, braced for the agonizing impact, she closed her eyes and hoped for something. Some kind of answer to the question she hadn’t been wise enough to ask.
Except the impact never came.
Just as in her dream, except that she didn’t awake with a start the moment before she hit. Instead, her wings snapped open, wrenching her shoulder muscles, the light bones singing with strain—but they held, tumbling her upward in an insane spiral. The reverse of her fall.
Dimly, the noise of Havraní screaming her name along with vows of retribution, tilted through the moonlight-crazed shadows. All around them the noise of fur boiled and roared, confusing and disorienting.
But she glimpsed it at last.
A creature of shadow, there and gone, striping the snow like the trunks of old trees, the stippled bark of fallen logs. And fire gone silver. Like the fire that had burned the forest-before, leaving char and new trees behind. The outline of the Thing blurred, now a tree, now snow, now shadow, now bark.
But when it opened its mouth, releasing the terrible noise, it showed its teeth.
Like a hiding place of its own, a hollow in a moving thing, the cavern yawned wide—full of darkness and lined with teeth like icicles, though hot and full of flame.
She found her equilibrium just as a silver shape hurtled past her. Havraní. The younger female arrowed to confront the Thing, screeching her terrible rage. It reared up, impossibly large, with four feet instead of two, and used one to knock Havraní from the air. Her sister tumbled, black and silver shrieking, then rolled across the snow to lie broken and still, scattering droplets of blood behind her.
Raven understood then, how it worked with teeth and claws, with fur. And how the others had known they couldn’t fight it. Bitterly she regretted coming here. Too late she wanted to be back in the family bed, warm and comfortable, the noise of fur at a distance rather than so terrifyingly up close.
But all these thoughts stayed behind as she flung herself forward. The time for thinking had passed and only acting remained. The fur had its great head bent over Havraní, then moved, her wings trailing decorously from its mouth, blood black on the snow, dripping behind as it padded silently, all noise gone, its own kind of becoming.
Raven descended in fury, battering it about the eyes—for it had those like any of them—and ears, huge tufty things, then dove for Havraní, raking the fur’s beakless snout with her talons.
It roared its fur noise, but dropped Havraní, all black and no silver, a collapsed shape on the snow. Just as Raven’s twin brother had been, crumpled and no longer of the world of meadows and forests. Perhaps they’d play together in the new world—a hope for that burst from her heart, like so much invisible blood.
But the fur had taken its toll and would have no more. Sorrow for sorrow. One is found, but another lost. Balance is restored. She attacked.
The paw, the claws, they tried to swipe her from the air, but missed. She dove again, going for the eyes, that naked beakless face.
Teeth clattered, fur noise tremoring through the air like a blizzard wind that shook the snow from the old branches. Small birds sent up a cacophony of protest and Raven raked her claws into one of the shining eyes. Perhaps it would turn white and blind like Burung Gagak’s.
The teeth clamped onto her wing, crunching, but she caught hold of its fur and drove her beak for the other jeweled eye.
The noise thundered, lightning pain filling her and she tumbled, falling through the sky, through the snow, droplets of blood spattering around her.
When she hit the earth, she knew the dream had finally finished.
Lying next to her broken sister, she waited to find out what lay in the next world. At least that question would be answered, her curiosity at last satisfied.
The sun shone warm on her back, the heat a pleasure to her aching bones. Examining the pattern of stones, she nudged one with her toe. There. That brought balance to the cycle. The trick was to avoid the shiny stones and keep to the quiet ones. The sparkle only distracted from the bare truth.
In the quiet, one could hear what noise normally covered.
“Elder Raven?” A youngling—not of the year, but perhaps of the season before—hopped her way close, then paused deferentially.
Raven waited for the inevitable question.
The young one cocked her head at the pattern of stones, bemused by them. Too young and foolish to understand their significance. “What is the Thing in the forest?”
Raven smiled to herself. With her lame wing, she brushed a tuft of fur securely under an unremarkable stone.
“Ah, child,” she answered. “There are many things in the forest.”
About Jeffe Kennedy
Jeffe Kennedy is an award-winning author whose works include non-fiction, poetry, short fiction, and novels. She has been a Ucross Foundation Fellow, received the Wyoming Arts Council Fellowship for Poetry, and was awarded a Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Award. Her essays have appeared in many publications, including Redbook.
Her most recent works include a number of fiction series: the fantasy romance novels of A Covenant of Thorns; the contemporary BDSM novellas of the Facets of Passion, and an erotic contemporary serial novel, Master of the Opera. A fourth series, the fantasy trilogy The Twelve Kingdoms, hit the shelves starting in May 2014 and book 1, The Mark of the Tala, received a starred Library Journal review was nominated for the RT Book of the Year while the sequel, The Tears of the Rose was nominated for the RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Fantasy Romance of 2014 and the third book, The Talon of the Hawk, won the RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Fantasy Romance of 2015. Two more books will follow in this world, beginning with The Pages of the Mind May 2016. A fifth series, the erotic romance trilogy, Falling Under, started with Going Under, and was followed by Under His Touch and Under Contract.
She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with two Maine coon cats, plentiful free-range lizards and a very handsome Doctor of Oriental Medicine.
Jeffe can be found online at her website: JeffeKennedy.com, every Sunday at the popular SFF Seven blog, on Facebook, on Goodreads and pretty much constantly on Twitter @jeffekennedy. She is represented by Connor Goldsmith of Fuse Literary.
Titles by Jeffe Kennedy
CONTEMPORARY BDSM ROMANCES
FACETS OF PASSION
Sapphire
Platinum
Ruby
Five Golden Rings
FALLING UNDER
Going Under
Under His Touch
Under Contract
CONTEMPORARY EROTIC ROMANCES
The Devil's Doorbell Anthology
EROTIC PARANORMAL
MASTER OF THE OPERA E-SERIAL
Master of the Opera, Act 1: Passionate Overture
Master of the Opera, Act 2: Ghost Aria
Master of the Opera, Act 3: Phantom Serenade
Master of the Opera, Act 4: Dark Interlude
Master of the Opera, Act 5: A Haunting Duet
Master of the Opera, Act 6: Crescendo
Master of the Opera
BLOOD CURRENCY
Feeding the Vampire
Hunting the Siren
BDSM FAIRYTALE ROMANCE
Petals and Thorns
FANTASY ROMANCE
A COVENANT OF THORNS
Rogue’s Pawn
Rogue’s Possession
Rogue’s Paradise
THE TWELVE KINGDOMS
Negotiation
The Mark of the Tala
The Tears of the Rose
The Talon of the Hawk
Heart's Blood
THE UNCHARTED REALMS
The Pages of the Mind
The Edge of the Blade (Coming January 2017)
OTHER WORKS
Birdwoman
Hopeful Monsters
VENETRIX
by Antioch Grey
A merchant and a poet come to the City, seeking justice for the murder of a relative, and if justice cannot be found, they will have revenge. They collude with vampires, negotiate with mermaids, share ale and meat pies with gargoyles and navigate the prisons, waterways and court system of a city ruled by a Master possessing long life and even longer teeth.
The City will make your fortune, or it will kill you, but it will always change you.
To my parents and writers’ group, whose encouragement made this all possible.
VENETRIX
Venetrix some called her, others the Pearl. Those who lived there called it the City, for there was none other in the world, only pale shadows.
Venetrix was the name given on the maps, painted in golden curly letters next to a full-breasted mermaid with bright blond hair and her mouth curved in a tempting half smile.
The Pearl is what those who sail there call it, those who have picked their way through the shifting shallows marked by wooden piles to see her rise up through unnatural veiling mists. They know that behind the lips of the mermaid lie long sharp teeth, and that the City, too, will try to eat you.
Soft, younger sons given to poetry are sent there by their brothers. They either return, cured of poesy forever, dissolved into incoherence and starved of words to describe the Pearl’s beauties and perils, or they stay forever to learn the true name of the City, its language, and the secret of the Twelve Sleepers.
The mermaids call it ‘the place where foolish animals buy oyster shit and who we must remember not to eat even if they fall in the water or are annoying and stare at our chests unless they cheat us on price and then we can have a bite oh yes’ and shrug and eat oysters spiced with pepper and dream of meat.
The City will make your fortune, or it will kill you, but it will always change you.
There are two ways to arrive at the Pearl. The first, on the full of the tide, sails fluttering proudly, putting on a brave show. For those with something to hide, there is the dead of the night with only flickering torches to pick out the way across the lagoon and pale eyes watching from the water.
Habilus was a captain of twenty years standing with an aversion to risk and to the dark. A short blocky man, he had hands as large as shovels, and wore a rough woven shirt over leather trousers patched in different colours.
His ship had stood off from the Pearl through the long watches of the night, despite the arguments of his passengers that they were wasting precious trading time. “I’ll go no further until I can see where I am going, and that’s that. Anyone who wants to get there sooner can take a small boat and row themselves there. But if I were you, I’d take a good long look at them things watching you, wonder when last they got fed, and think twice.”
“You’re just holding out for a higher fee,” a man called out. He had the sort of face that painters used to show the emptiness of a merchant’s soul: hard faced with short hair and a nose that squatted on his face, and dark sober clothes that spoke of understated wealth. “I paid for passage, and passage is what I shall have.”
“And you will. In the morning.” Habilus shook his head. “Or if you go now, I’ll have the remainder of your passage price now.”
“Half on boarding, half on getting to the Pearl,” the merchant said flatly. “I have urgent business that cannot wait.”
“Half on leaving the ship,” Habilus said. “That was what was agreed. And if you choose to risk your life against my advice, that’s your business. But I’ll not be risking my fee along with it.”
The merchant hesitated.
“Oh do try, Cousin Martis. It would be very convenient if you were to get yourself killed in a senseless accident. Just one less competitor.” A tall man spoke from the shadows of the deck, his long dark hair streaming free and his voluminous red cloak fluttering in the wind.
Martis snarled wordlessly and made towards the railings, to be stopped by a hand on his arm.
“Think, and do not rush into things,” said the tall man urgently but quietly. He raised his voice to add, “In fact, I’d be so grateful I could write an ode to commemorate your death. Do you want to be a warning against greed? Or shall I paint you as some sort of hero? They’re generally brave and stupid, and I suppose if one squints, venturing across perilous waters against all advice is brave. It’s certainly stupid.”
Martis shrugged off the man’s grip. “What would you know of it, Alair?”
“I read. I’m famous for it, actually. You should try it sometime. I can lend you a copy of one of my collection of poems; see if you think my talent is worthy to celebrate your sacrifice. Though being dead might overshadow the honour of an elegiac ode from my own fair hand.”
“Posturing wastrel,” Martis snarled.
“Just so.” Alair waved a languid hand in the direction of the Pearl, squatting on the horizon. “And you’re a greedy idiot with a soul too small to appreciate the beauty of the first sight of the City, painted gold by the dawn, its reflection dancing in the deep blue of the sea, though I suspect it will be more of a murky brown, but we will pass over that as unworthy of our attention.”
Martis made a strange noise, half fury, half amusement. “It’s that pretty is it?”
“So I am told. So pretty that my meagre words cannot do it justice.”
“It’s not often I hear you admit you’ve been outfaced by something.” Martis glared at the horizon, then at his cousin, before conceding the point with a shrug. “Oh very well, I’ll wait and watch the dawn with you.”
“Excellent. And to sweeten the pot, we’ll round it off with the best breakfast money can buy.”
“Who’s buying?”
“I will. After all, I have to thank you for depriving my blessed father of the joy he would have taken in breaking the news of your death to yours.”
Martis scowled and flapped his hand as if waving away an annoying fly. “You win. Breakfast it is. It’s rare enough for you to put your hand in your pocket that it’s worth the wait.”
The sun rose a few hours later to the right of the City, illuminating it with warm shafts of light that picked out a roof here, a statue there, or a flash of indistinct colour that might be a woman’s dress or some brocade curtain.
A haze round the Pearl turned the view into a delicate watercolour: a smear of orange melting into blue-grey sea, the bluer sky above, with a line of wooden posts making a hard line of the water-road towards the city-island on the horizon.
Habilus coaxed his ship to life, shouting and swearing at his sailors who moved swiftly and surely round the boat to loosen ropes, hoist the sails, and raise the anchor. The ship slowly inched into the channel marked by the posts, keeping hard to the left and leaving room on th
e right for other ships to pass on their journey out from the Pearl.
A smaller boat was picking its way across the lagoon, stirring a gentle swell which lapped at their ship, and a cool breeze ruffled the passengers’ hair, lifting it from their necks with friendly fingers that soothed away some of their travel stiffness.
As the ship grew closer to the City, Habilus ordered the sails reefed. Momentum carried the ship forward for a while, and then it slowed to a halt.
“Ready the long ropes,” Habilus shouted.
Two sailors ran to the prow. One took up the end of a long coil of rope, leaning over the handrail, with the other holding onto his waist.
“Eyes closed, lads. Eyes closed.” Habilus moved to the side of the ship, looking forward with eyes half shut against the sun.
“What’s happening,” Martis asked. “Why have we stopped?”
“The docks are leeward,” Habilus said. “They say it’s to keep our scent from the Sleepers, but it’s also a way to gouge us for pilot’s fees.”
“That, and it’s hard to attack into the wind,” Alair murmured.
Martis threw him a surprised look. “You really have been reading, haven’t you?”
“It’s useful, knowing things,” Alair replied. “I do like knowing things.”
“What are we waiting for?” Martis asked, peering down at the sea.