Itch: Nine Tales of Fantastic Worlds

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  Rysa could have moved into an apartment near campus. Started her own life. Mira was thankful she hadn’t.

  Her throat constricted. The skin under her fingers warmed. Her body did what it would do, her seer screaming Now! Do it now! She needs it now!

  Mira leaned forward and an iridescent glop fell from her mouth into the drink.

  Three, two, one…

  “Mom, I’m late!” Rysa’s pack thumped onto the hallway tile. In the kitchen door, she turned in a circle and tugged down her t-shirt, her dark auburn hair swishing around her face.

  Mira gripped the glass. In the juice, patterns, bright and swirling, playing over the glop’s surface. It dispersed, taking on the color of the juice, and vanished.

  The same footage playing all morning flashed onto the television: Shaky, grainy cell phone images. Young people laughing followed by three explosions arching across the far side of the mall—pop, pop.

  Boom.

  The voiceover thundered, full of the perfect resonances needed to ramp up horror in the minds of the viewers. “Fourteen dead. Thirty-nine remain missing. Chicago mayor Em—” Click.

  Rysa turned off the television as she stepped in front of the blank screen. “Mom, are you okay?”

  Mira held out the juice. What-is danced through the corridors of her mind, ignorant of the past and future, as it always was. How many times over her two millennia had she bent to the whims of her seer? Running from the ashes of Vesuvius, across the cold north of Europe, to this new world. Crossing this continent more times than she remembered.

  But it had saved her just as often. Maybe it meant to save her daughter, too. Rysa would drink and attend her classes as the iridescence spread through her blood. And then her Fate’s ability would activate.

  No matter what the future held.

  The little gold eagle of Mira’s bracelet clinked against the rim of the glass. “Drink it. You need your vitamins.”

  “Do your joints hurt again? Isn’t the new med helping?” Rysa touched Mira’s shoulder. Her lips thinned and her brow creased as concern darted through her green-gray eyes.

  “I’m fine. Drink.” Mira pressed the glass into her daughter’s palm.

  Rysa gulped down half the juice. Her face tightened, her eyes narrowing, as she watched Mira. “Don’t watch any more about the attack. It’s terrible and you don’t need that, okay? There’s nothing you can do.” One last gulp and she dropped the glass onto the counter. “I can stay home today if you need me.”

  Mira shook her head. “No, no. I’ll lie down. You go to class.” The words, fated to be said, fell from her mouth. The burning world flicked behind her eyes and she clamped them shut, hoping to force it back.

  “I’ll be home late. Gavin wants to have coffee.” Rysa waved her hand dismissively, her nose crinkling. “But if you need me, you text, okay?” Her long legs carried her toward the door.

  “I will.” Mira planned to rest, like she said.

  The Burners moved west. She didn’t need any sense of what-will-be to see their trajectory. They’d set more fires and eat more people. They’d kill in a random blaze of glory—the only predictable behavior the goddamned ghouls had.

  “Bye, Mom.” The door slammed. Rysa’s key clanked into the lock tumbler. The sound of metal-on-metal erupted through the house, hot and angry.

  Mira sat at the kitchen counter for a long moment and stared at the glass she’d handed Rysa. She’d never told her daughter what she was. Never explained about the Fates. Or about Burners or Shifters, either. She’d raised her as a normal. And Mira just sent her out the door, alone.

  Without a word.

  She wouldn’t call. Her seer jittered and jolted and stomped out demands that Mira prepare. Rysa will be fine.

  Mira blinked, her gaze darting to the bottle of Rysa’s attention meds next to the bananas, behind the glass in front of her. She’d distracted her daughter and Rysa forgot to take her pill this morning.

  Mira’s chest tightened. A lump sat just under her throat, a knot screaming she needed to pick up her damned phone and tell her daughter to come home. To say “I’m sorry, honey.” To make sure, like any real mother would, that her child was safe.

  Her seer dropped an image into her mind: A beast stretched on the edges of a corn field somewhere in Wisconsin, then vanished, mimicking the stalks and the dirt and the sky.

  The Dracos moved north to intercept the damned ghouls.

  She’d never told Rysa about dragons, either.

  Everything in Mira’s stomach came up in one violent retch. Her breakfast, her coffee, the pain meds she’d taken before she’d tuned into the violence on the screen, forced their way into her throat. She bolted across the kitchen to the sink.

  The water ran down the drain in a static circle as she rinsed her mouth, held in place by universal forces she didn’t understand.

  She let this happen. She let Rysa go.

  Once, when Mira was a child, her father had given her and her brother and sister a task. A chore, he’d said, by the stream behind their villa. They were to follow his instructions exactly, no matter what happened.

  No matter who got hurt. “You will do as I say,” he’d said. No one argued with Father. Her triad were children of the First Fate. They had a duty to the what-was-is-will-be.

  She’d nodded, a good child.

  The next day she lay on her bed as gray as stone, as the medicus splinted her broken arm. Her father watched from the door, his eyes hidden in shadow.

  “Why?” she’d asked. He’d seen her fall. He knew what would happen.

  He held his black-as-midnight gladius, his talisman, in his hand. “No one is as bound by fate as the Fates themselves.” He sheathed the blade and the sound filled every corner and room of their villa. “Always remember that, daughter.”

  She remembered. Mira of the Jani Prime was bound, as was her daughter, Rysa Torres. Fate bound them both to the what-was-is-will-be and Mira was powerless to stop the approaching hellstorm.

  Mira pushed away from the sink in her suburban Minnesota home. She might be bound, but that did not mean she would go to her fate unprepared. The news crews did a fine job delineating the path of the Burners. They would appear shortly.

  She would find her blade.

  Maybe, her seer wanted her to send Rysa away. Maybe, Mira reacted the way she did in the what-is because her behavior offered Rysa some unseen protection.

  Maybe.

  Maybe luck would buffer Rysa. And maybe, just maybe, her daughter would find a weapon of her own. A weapon as strong as beautiful as the dragons….

  ~ ~ ~

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  Thank you!

  ~ ~ ~

  Turn the page for the first chapter of Games of Fate, book one of the Fate – Fire – Shifter – Dragon series…

  Games of Fate Chapter One

  Rysa’s attention deficit meds weren’t in her backpack. She fished through the lint under her laptop, catching only a pen and the corner of her wallet. Wads of paper and a few stray coins filled the bag’s recesses, but her pills were nowhere to be found.

  If she was going to dig in her bag without getting too many stares, one of the back tables in the Continuing Education Building’s basement coffee shop was a good place to do it. The café had bright, warm lighting and a bright, earthy scent, and was fairly secluded.

  Not that she trusted herself to be thorough. No meds equaled a super-sized portion of “flighty” and a bottomless cup of “hyperactive.” The headache ratcheting from her eyebrows, over her scalp, and to the base of her auburn ponytail wasn’t h
elping, either.

  She dug her hand into her stupid pack again even though she knew she was wasting her time.

  Her friend Gavin sat on the other side of the table tapping a pencil against an assignment. They’d known each other since her freshman year and he’d long been more accommodating with her attention issues than most of her other friends, probably because he wanted to become a doctor. She was, after all, good “patience with a patient” practice.

  Still hoping to find her meds, Rysa pulled a notebook out of her bag and slapped it harder against the table than she meant to. The table wobbled, a loud clunk popping from its uneven feet.

  Gavin’s hand jerked up and he leaned back.

  Do you want help with your chemistry or not? he signed, his hands moving through the American Sign Language with quick precision. He wore hearing aids, but they signed, too.

  “Yes.” Rysa looked directly at him so he could read her lips clearly, knowing full well she’d also narrowed her eyes, even though she didn’t mean to. Her head throbbed and was adding an edge to her already annoying issues.

  She rubbed her forehead. “Sorry.”

  She did need his help. This close to finals, if she didn’t figure out her assignments, she’d fail another class. The University would kick her out. She knew it.

  Gavin’s shoulders slumped and he crossed his arms—his way of giving her the silent treatment. He’d frowned about twenty minutes into the first problem when it became clear that helping her would take all night.

  But how was she supposed to focus on homework without her attention meds? One more dip into the bag produced only a crumpled five dollar bill. She dropped it next to her notebooks.

  Gavin scowled this time, his gaze following her hand as it dipped into the bag again.

  It’s not like he always understood his class work. She’d helped him with Human and Environmental Policies last semester. He’d been a chore, no matter how much she tried.

  Did I mess up your evening? she signed, her hands working as fast as his through the ASL. She scraped her stuff into her bag and plopped it onto the floor next to her feet.

  “Were you sexting with that sophomore again?” she asked. This time she didn’t look at him. His hearing aids worked just fine.

  Gavin sighed, his expression flat. He usually had the laidback calm of someone who’d just finished a good workout. Women found it charming. The boy had more contacts in his phone than the University had numbers in its database.

  Gavin’s pointer finger twitched as he pointed at her bag next to her feet. Isn’t it a little late to be popping stim meds?

  The headache flared, a semi-nauseating ping that made her bump the table. Her calculator slipped off a book, jarring her chai. A splash plopped onto her Chemistry Principles syllabus.

  Steam rose off the course description as if she’d dropped acid on it, not hot tea.

  A yellow stain spread across the syllabus and her attention snapped to the paper. The liquid ate away the words and they bled onto the tabletop, destroyed by her impulsiveness. She blotted at them, blinking.

  “Rysa?” Gavin signed something, too. She didn’t catch it.

  He sniffed and the titanium in his ears flickered with the light from the television behind her head. She’d sat with her back to the little café’s screen for a reason. News crawls and no meds didn’t mix well.

  This morning, when she’d come down to the kitchen, her mom had been watching the news. A suburban Chicago mall exploded last night.

  Later, on the drive to campus, the radio announcers had been on and on about big fires in several of the towns along Interstate 94, between Chicago and Minneapolis.

  At school, pundits had infested the news channels blaring in the student unions, bobbing their heads and pushing up their glasses, ranting about terrorists or gas leaks or 911 calls that may or may not have indicated a suicide bomb—

  “I’m sure you left your meds at home.” Gavin leaned back as he spoke.

  Rysa usually didn’t get this flustered. Or this… distracted. Must be the headache, she thought.

  Why don’t you breathe so you can drive home? Gavin signed.

  Breathe? Her syllabus disintegrated on the table, ruined by a splash of hot and random, much like her academic career. She stared at it even though she didn’t want to. Her mind hyper-focused on the one perfect representation of her time at the U and it wasn’t going to let it go.

  “You should talk to Disability Services.” His chair groaned as he shifted around again.

  A new rainbow of reflections danced across his hearing aids and her attention honed in on the brilliance in his ears. She stared like a deer caught in headlights.

  Gavin’s gaze jerked up to the screen behind her.

  The images must have changed.

  Rysa closed her eyes, refusing to turn around and be caught by the news. She’d spent her last class staring out the window toward the east, her anxiety creeping up for no obvious reason.

  Whatever stalked the states east felt like it was about to burst from the horizon and scorch all of campus—and her in particular. The effort it took not to freak out was what probably triggered the headache, and was as big a contributor to her inattention as anything else.

  Today was not a good day to forget her meds.

  Gavin said something again. Her face scrunched up as she tried to parse it.

  “Rysa, did you hear me?”

  He’d said something about Disability Services.

  What are they going to do? she signed back. Follow me around and nag me all day?

  They’d turned her down for a translator position when she applied last year even though she’d aced the exam and had no hearing difficulties of her own. Her damned ADHD reared its head during the interview.

  His jaw tightened. Pulling ninety-ninth percentile on all three parts of the GRE will only get you so far with grad school admissions.

  She pressed on her forehead again. School, the fires—and to make things worse, her mom’s obvious pain this morning before she left the house—all combined to make the perfect Storm Rysa.

  At breakfast, her mother had held out a glass of orange juice, her hand shaking and her joints swollen and red. Rysa downed the juice in three gulps, more to keep her mom from worrying than because she wanted it.

  The juice had distracted her, which was why she’d forgotten her meds. They were probably on the kitchen counter between the empty glass and her mom’s prescription pain killers.

  “I’m going home.” She needed to get away from all the campus television screens. The blinking made her squint.

  Gavin touched her wrist. “I just want to make sure you’re alright before you go off to graduate school. I can’t help you with your courses if I’m in Boston and you’re somewhere in the Rockies.”

  She stared at his fingers until he let go. Her head throbbed in short, intense pulses and his exasperation wasn’t making it better. She reached for her damned bag again. Maybe she had some acetaminophen. At least it would take the edge off the pain for the drive home.

  Get some sleep. That helps, Gavin signed.

  She pressed her temple. Her head felt as if every muscle on her scalp was about to fight-club her sinuses.

  The pain hadn’t been this bad a moment ago. The war raging inside her skull flared into her vision. The coffee shop’s lights blasted down as if she sat under a hot spotlight. The slick counters glinted as if fire popped off their surfaces. The scent of coffee filled her nose with a bitterness that made her sneeze and the smell of scones coated her tongue with gag-worthy sweetness.

  In one sudden moment all the chaos about school and the world and her mom fell away.

  Nausea rushed in.

  Her mouth opened. Blades of blinding light stabbed behind her left eye. Terrible, hideous light coming out of nowhere and burning like she’d looked directly at the sun.

  “What the hell?” she gasped. A real gasp, one that, in a split second, forced air all the way down into the base of h
er lungs. Her hands clutched her forehead.

  This wasn’t withdrawal symptoms because she missed her meds. Her brain just exploded. She was going to keel over in this little coffee shop under the Continuing Education Building and that would be the end of everything and she’d die.

  Spots appeared in front of her eyes and floated like wiggly balloons between her and Gavin. They churned, full of heat and glare and fire, each one its own burning, liquid universe. The spots didn’t look real but she knew if she reached out, if she touched one, it would ignite and she would feel it burn her hand.

  One of the weird, liquidy fire spots ruptured. Her nose filled with an acid stench so overpowering she stopped breathing.

  I’m having an aneurism, she thought. She must be having an aneurism. Only an aneurism explained hallucinations she could smell and feel.

  “Gavin…” She choked out the whisper. Her gut mirrored the pain behind her left eye, squirming with an infestation of the fire bubbles. Her hallucinations burst in her stomach and ate her flesh. She’d have retched but the muscles of her belly and chest wouldn’t move. They wouldn’t respond.

  Gavin stood up and pointed at the screen behind her head. He hadn’t noticed her panic. “A gas station in Stillwater exploded!”

  Half an hour from campus. Her chair fell over when she turned toward the screen. The seatback scraped against the concrete floor and a nauseating metallic screech filled the coffee shop. The sound rasped against her ears, solid and seemingly touchable, like the spots.

  Gavin stared at the screen behind her head. The freshman server behind the counter stared at her.

  “What’s happening?” Rysa’s lips formed the words, but no vocalizations left her throat.

  Gavin’s gaze jumped from the screen to her and his face blanched. He shouted at the freshman. His mouth moved but she didn’t understand.

  He seemed to yell something about calling 911.

  Gavin, the freshman who stared at her with terror-filled eyes, the coffee shop’s now grating halogen lighting, the darkening evening outside, all spun as if the planet got on a carnival ride and left her standing alone in the void.