Anne is currently working on the third book in the Elise Sandburg crime-fiction series (Play Dead and Stay Dead) featuring a Savannah homicide detective who can’t shake the dark heritage left by her famous conjurer father.
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The human race had come a long way since its fledgling steps back on the hatching ground called Earth. They had conquered the cosmos, populating the surrounding moons, planets, star systems, and galaxies. Their potent genetics exploited every niche on land and underwater, in the skies and in space—in an infinite variety of form, size and purpose. So far had humankind come that most had forgotten their humble beginnings of millennia ago. Yet some remembered, kept hold of their heritage, and celebrated its original shape…
Lost, quiet, and alone amid the blackness of space, the vast cigar-shaped habitat Gaia-Prime carried on just as she had done for the last few thousand years: silent, majestic and self-contained. The hab orbited a gas giant in the Laland system, gliding among the planet’s waves of energy like a colossal whale feeding upon a bloom of plankton. A living museum to a long-lost past.
But Gaia-Prime was failing. An evil had found her. Some remnant of humanity, so twisted and changed as to be almost unrecognizable, had infected the corporeal organism of the hab and sought her destruction.
And the curators had long since forgotten their purpose…
i. The Fetishmen
A crimson blur in the increasing dusk. The Yore and his fetishmen hurried up the jungle path, pulling their worn red velvet robes together against a growing squall, their naked feet rhythmically padding, their chanting matching the cadence of their footsteps. A low, frightening dirge. Their stern faces were daubed with the bright blue of punishment, and each held a hefty wooden club engraved with the harsh angular runes of beating.
The Yore clutched at his emblem of office, a tightly wound whip, stained leathery brown by his own dried blood. A frantic wind, like an invisible giant hand, whipped at the sickly vegetation—angry, searching, desperate. Even here, where the once verdant rainforest grew untamed, the Dying showed itself in etiolated branches and yellowed leaves.
The Yore knew the island was failing. The community relied on him and his fetishmen to beat away the evil. How else will we survive? he thought. Only penance can save us now. The Dying is the result of debauchery, corruption and… witchery.
They emerged from the jungle onto a high jutting promontory—a rock knife thrust into a stark, worrying ocean. A hundred feet below, the sea surged, pebbles and shells chattering between each crash. Boundless waters surrounded them for league upon league. A churning, foam-covered blockade. Above, in the massive vaulted curve of the over-sky, lightning silently bloomed from behind distant black clouds, followed long seconds later by the sharp crack of thunder. The air was heavy with the threat of yet another storm. The Yore glared at the vast curve of the world, warping above and around to form a huge, perfect cylinder. It encircled the dark, elongated night-sun to meet itself high overhead.
Flaming torches danced in a coarse wind blowing steadily from the sea. A crowd waited in the fire-rimmed dimness: an emaciated, ill-looking group of people standing in a clearing hacked from the jungle many turns ago. Eyes protruding from gaunt faces regarded the arrival hungrily. They surrounded a prone, overweight young woman crouched on her knees. Arms outstretched. Fat wrists encircled by rope and tied to twin posts.
The Yore walked forward on stalk-like legs, the crowd parting to reveal the prisoner dressed in nothing more than a loose crushed-leather smock.
The island starves and she puts on weight… she is evil. He regarded her with the solemnity of his office, yet he found it difficult to control the swell of his emotions. I was bewitched by Tamina, as were many others, but I am no longer under her spell. She should not have dallied with me… I am The Yore!
Tamina raised her head, long blonde-streaked hair falling down to hide her eyes. A fleshy smile appearing upon a chubby beguiling face. Tears spilled in recognition. “Yore help Tam?” Her voice was childlike, quizzical. “Tell the nasty men to let Tam go. It hurts.”
The Yore raised his whip. “I have helped you enough, Tamina.” With a practiced flick of his wrist, the wicked leather lash uncurled.
Tamina pulled pathetically against the ropes and sagged. “Why Yore angry?” A gust of wind whipped at her hair, revealing twin emerald eyes sparkling in the growing dark.
“Take your witch’s gaze off me.”
“But, Yor—”
“No one has eyes like yours, Tamina. They shine and entice with an unnatural hue; an obvious sign of evil, and these are evil days. The sun is erratic, the air colder, and our crops fail whilst sinister shapes wing increasingly in the skies. Curse these storms. We are besieged by them.” Black clouds, heavy and threatening, formed overhead. Lightning forked between sea and sky while the growing wind whipped mercilessly. Drops of rain landed heavily on the dense vegetation surrounding their feet. A thudding, forbidding drumbeat.
The crowd jeered and shouted, their expressions twisted into ugly masks of hatred.
The Yore’s head twitched from side to side, teeth gritted in determination, his long silver hair whipped by the breeze. They want blood… and I will give it to them.
“I cannot protect you any longer, Tamina. You reek of sin. Evil lives in your bones, thrives within your wanton flesh and… glows from those witch’s eyes.”
“They all hate Tam,” she said. “No one talks to Tam anymore. Except when Tam goes to them. At night. Tam gets so lonely when Yore is not with her.”
“Loneliness? Is that what you call it?”
“Tam misses her so much.”
“Your sister?” asked Yore, a sarcastic edge to his voice.
“She went away such a long time ago. My poor, poor Prim.”
The Yore shook his head. “You had no sister, no siblings. This ‘Prim’ of yours is pure make-believe and mischief.”
“Don’t say that!” Tamina screamed. “Don’t ever say that.”
“The words you weave are evil. They twist and confuse.”
A crack like a rifle shot—and the whip bit into Tamina. A red, bleeding welt raised itself upon her naked shoulder. Another crack, and another. Tamina shuddered, her mouth hanging open in a spasm of silent pain. When sound did reach her lips, it escaped as a keening whine.
“We have all indulged you and your errant ways for too long, Tamina. Even I, the Yore, was seduced by your childlike manner—trapped, as it is, in the body of a temptress. I was deluded enough to think you cared for me, that I could change you. I was a fool. You not only betrayed me, but the whole island.”
The Yore’s red robes swayed in the rising breeze. The others huddled together for warmth, their faces eager, relishing the punishment to come.
“You are not as dim-witted as you pretend. You are a witch. It is you causing us so much woe. And…” The chief fetishman’s eyes closed. “…witches must be punished.” He made a gesture with his free hand.
The fetishmen approached, their clubs raised, their blue-painted faces impassive, their eyes full of righteousness.
“Beat her and blind her,” the Yore barked. “Then… throw her into the sea.”
The drumming thud of raindrops increased to a raging torrent.
“No,” Tamina yelped, finally able to speak, her pain turning the sound into a strangulated whisper. “Tam love Yore!”
The Yore bowed his head, unable to watch. In that moment, the storm smashed directly into the promontory. Twin bolts of lightning, exploding in flashes of white searing light, shattered trees on the edge of the clearing. A powerful gust of wind lifted the fetishmen aloft, then hurled them to the ground. Others blew over as if they were made of tin. Tamina flung herself face down into the dense grass. Like a child tr
ying to hide from a monster.
Knocked on his back, the Yore stared into the squall, straining through the pounding rain that sought to dash out his astounded eyes. An enormous bird plummeted toward him, like one of the many tits that visited his garden in the good times, but hundreds of times larger. Blue and yellow banded feathers matted by rain, a bright red beak open as if in pain. The creature was pursued by odd shapes of wet leather, gyrating within the storm, twisting and turning as if they were a part of the swirls and eddies themselves. They shrieked together. Death given voice.
The bird flung out a desperate wing and dived. Huge clawed feet swept past Yore’s face, heading toward Tamina—then grasped at the ropes that bound her, sliced through them, and carried her aloft. Another shriek and the monsters of leather attacked, entangling the bird’s wings. The ropes slipped through its enormous claws and Tamina fell back to the ground. One more crack of blinding lightning—and the bird and its pursuers were gone. Lost to the storm.
The islanders, fetishmen included, ran in panic toward the path that would take them away from the promontory. Tamina stumbled to her feet, her face a mask of confusion.
The Yore flicked his whip. She will not escape. The lash found Tamina’s heel, tripping her. He grabbed her around the waist and dragged her to the precipice, ignoring the rain, the wind, and the deafening squall.
“No, Yore. No. Tam love you.”
“You do not know the meaning of the word…”
Tamina hung above the abyss for the briefest of seconds, her disbelieving eyes staring into his. Shock, horror and betrayal crossed her features as she scrabbled at him. And then she fell.
ii. The Lady in the Glass
A thump, and Tamina slammed face down upon a treacherous ledge, arms and legs flailing over the drop. A powerful updraft pinned her to the overhang long enough for her to scramble backward. She hunched, perching dangerously. Frightened, sobbing and drenched. Rain streamed down in an ever-increasing deluge, battering weak ferns and grasses clinging desperately to the exposed rock shelf. Angry seas crashed and thundered.
“Yore!” she shouted against the squall. “Yore! Help Tam!” Why he done this? Why he so angry?
Hours passed as she huddled there. Sodden. Too frightened to move. Her muscles cramping. Hoping above hope for a rescue that never came. A steady torrent brought mud to her ledge, seeking to dislodge her, the wind jamming her backward—the elements fighting one another for the prize of her soul. She hung on, her despairing tears hidden by the squall, her stricken face occasionally illuminated by flashes of lightning.
As dawn approached—the long, immense tube of the elongated sun flickering and glowing into slow, reddened life—Tamina became aware of a rumble beneath her feet. The sound grew in volume, drowning out the wind and the constant battering of rain. Terrifying her. With a deafening crack, her ledge and half the cliff side dropped in one huge landslip. Tamina fell too. An unwilling passenger riding upon the falling promontory. The slide stopped with a jolt, throwing her backwards, rocks and debris tumbling around her. The ledge cracking and crumbling. A flash of lightning revealed a small cavern opened by the collapse. Dancing like a spider, Tamina scuttled into the sudden cave, throwing herself through the entrance.
…And that was how Tamina met the Lady in the Glass.
iii. Rider on the Storm
Barefoot, wearing her single smock of mud-stained leather, her wrists red from the where the ropes had tied her, Tamina puttered along the ravaged shoreline: a high curved storm beach thrown up by last night’s tempest. She had walked a long way from the collapsed promontory to arrive here. An isolated bay—her special place. Gentle waves lapped with a soothing slap, their anger having abated. Thin lizards, each the size of a child’s hand, danced between the flotsam and jetsam searching for shrimp pools and stranded fish, while lone crabs, their shells bright red and their eyes protruding on long stalks, hunted and scuttled.
The sun stretched into the distance, its glow sickly, diminished. Tam didn’t remember much about her childhood, but she knew the light was different now. Colder. A pale reflection of itself. She shivered as she searched for her shack. The weak huddle of branches and palm leaves was no more—lost to the squall. The coast was ravaged. The seas had come inland, destroying everything before them.
Tamina was safe here, where the giant stone heads towered, staring silently toward the deep blue of never-ending ocean. They had easily resisted the ravaging storm. The islanders would not come to this place, frightened of the “faces that stole souls.”
Long, long faces, long, long ears, and silly big chins. Always frowning. Tam’s only friends…
A stab of grief and she stumbled.
Yore tried to kill Tam.
Tears welled in her flashing eyes of deepest green.
Why?
“No one likes Tam. No one. Tam better on her own!” she shouted, sitting down to rest against her favorite stone head. Smaller than the others, its features crude in comparison. Tamina often felt he was shunned by the other faces.
They never smiled.
“Tam will stay here with you. You take care of Tam now.”
He is just rock. She understood that. But if he come alive? Tam would make the nasty islanders pay. More tears filled her eyes. Tam only wanted to love them. To be with them. To be with Yore.
She lay back and let her weary gaze travel from the curving horizon to stare at the Above Land. It was beyond her imagination, so immense, so beautiful. Tantalizing and unreachable. A vast continent straddled the sun, visible on either side of its hazy glare, covered in delicate clouds like tufts of white hair. The air swirled magically—an inviting gossamer veil flowing across coastlines and vast inner lands.
Tam want to go there. Away from here, Tam hate here.
She wondered, as she had often done, who lived on that continent, what kind of life those people led, and if they, too, on days like these, would stare at her small island high above in the vast ocean on the roof of their sky. Her eyes followed the long sun stretching into the distance, finally ending in a mountain of white facing its faraway twin across the immeasurable expanse of the world. The white crept forward with every passing turn. Yore told her it was ice—water, but cold enough to become brittle and hard. Ice scared him. She couldn’t understand why.
Beautiful ice. Special. Everything scares Yore. Even Tam’s green eyes. Silly man. Silly stupid Yore.
Tamina was born with eyes of the purest evil; or so everyone told her. No amount of punishment from her long-dead mother could hide their hue. Maybe Tam is a witch? Maybe Tam summons storms, speaks to winds, and tells the sun what to do?
Unbidden and serene, the calming face of the Lady came into her mind. Tamina had spent the latter part of the storm gazing into her strong, noble face, bathed in an unnatural light that shone from the cave walls. A pale-skinned beauty, her hair a riot of shiny red curls, trapped within a block of clear crystal. Who was she? Where she come from? Her expression had been one of calm blissful acceptance. A gentle smile upon full lips. As if her captivity was no punishment at all.
She must be prisoner. Why she in the glass, unable to speak or move? They punished her for being nice. For prettiness and goodness. The islanders punish everything and everyone.
Tamina could have stayed there, forever gazing into the soothing visage of the Lady in the Glass, but hunger finally forced her out of hiding. She’d gingerly made her way through what remained of the collapsed promontory to examine the storm-changed landscape. The sea had retreated to a distant splash of white foam, exposing a long beach. The avalanche of rock sat high above that. Elevated somehow. Slabs of broken stone tossed aside by some leviathan of the deep.
An annoyed chirrup brought Tamina back to her senses. She sat up from the pebble beach to find a couple of lizards regarding her with their peculiar earnest faces upon heads that twitched impatiently.
“All right,” she said in resignation, jumping to her feet and wincing at the pain where Yore’s whip h
ad branded her. “Tam hungry too. Let’s see what Tam finds.” After weaving a crude basket from a windblown palm leaf, she trotted back to the shoreline and waded ankle-deep into the sea. Behind her, more lizards gathered, dancing across the pebbles in anticipation, their chirruping rising to a crescendo.
Silly things.
Within seconds, silvery minnows began leaping into Tamina’s basket. “So tinsy-tiny. Nice for breakf—”
A shout in the distance, and Tamina froze. Angry voices carried on a cool breeze. Tamina ran back to the stone head, throwing her basket aside, the host of hungry lizards hissing and fighting one another for the still-twitching fish.
More voices, coming from the far headland at the end of her secluded beach. Tamina spied a cluster of islanders, some of them dressed in the gaudy colors of the fetishmen, heading to the other side of the island.
Where they going? They searching for Tam? Why they always angry?
Used to sneaking and creeping around—mostly at night between the huts and houses of the islanders—Tamina stole carefully through the limp jungle ravaged by both the colder climate and last night’s awful storm. The seas had reached inland. The mess of trees and rotting seaweed gave her more cover than normal. She crossed the spine of the island and dropped down to the opposite shoreline, making her way to a stinking pile of trunks close to where the islanders stood. Her breath caught in her throat: lying on the storm beach was a most magnificent creature. White and red feathers, wet and tangled, pepper-flecked wings and enormous claws.
No horrid sea monster… but a giant bird.
Even with its muscular, yellow-banded neck obviously broken, she could envisage how proud and strong this creature must have been in life.
The islanders crowded together, full of fear, the same tired talk of storm-summoning and demons. And, as usual, they blamed Tamina.
From the Indie Side Page 16