The imp said, “Mek!” and flapped out of the library. After a few moments, the imp returned, wings laboring to keep it aloft while it carried the staff.
Morna reached out and took the staff. It was light in her hands, though she didn’t really feel it. Like the outer walls and glass bottle, it resisted her passing through it. She didn’t feel wood grain, just a force pushing back against her hands.
But if the staff was still in the castle, Morna wondered what had become of the wizard who had left her to starve. “Mek, where did you find this?”
Mek flapped off, and she followed in its wake. She found she couldn’t walk through the walls while holding the staff, so she had to navigate the castle through the actual doors. When she caught up with Mek, the imp sat next to the bottom of a flight of stairs.
She looked around for some obvious sign of why the staff was at this location but found nothing. “Mek, where’s your master?”
The imp flew off again and led her to a small courtyard with a midden heap. Mek sat next to it and looked up at her expectantly. At one point, the midden was probably used for whatever food scraps the wizard had left behind. Now it was the place where the boy lay. There wasn’t much left after the Empress had gotten hold of him, but what remained was left to compost.
It only took a moment of poking with the staff before an old skull tumbled into sight, part of it crushed inward.
Her own body was in her doorless tower cell, where Mek couldn’t get to it. But if the wizard had fallen down the stairs and smashed his brains against the landing, it was another mess for Mek to tidy up.
Morna stared at the skull long into the night. As the eastern sky began to lighten, she turned and headed back inside. She needed to understand the staff.
~*~
For several months, the staff brought her peace. But such security was fleeting.
When the spookmongers arrived, Morna was prepared. With some experimentation, she had learned to open and close the hidden doors that could only be accessed with the staff, including the entry into her “doorless” tower cell. She was still unwilling to enter the room where her remains lay, though it pained Mek to have a room the imp couldn’t clean. She woke the stone sentinels that used brute force to repel invaders and the enchantments that harmed or repelled mortals.
Under the advice of the Empress, Morna made certain that none of the spookmongers remained in the castle walls. Those who ran in terror from the defenses were allowed to flee. Those who died were dumped outside of the walls in case they themselves came back as ghosts. Morna didn’t want to spend her unlife trapped in the castle with someone who had tried to capture and sell her.
She remained vigilant, but she felt safer than she had since before she died. She watched the horizon for new intruders and read the old wizard’s books. She wanted to understand what it meant to be a ghost, and how she might move beyond that state, and she studied diligently on the castle walls. In time, she worked her way up to turning the pages of the books with her spectral hands instead of fumbling with the tip of the staff to do so.
And then the wizard returned.
He stood across the blasted heath, flanked by men she recognized as spookmongers she had chased off. His hair was different from when she last saw him, but she knew his face. Even in death, it haunted her.
Morna didn’t want to abandon the wall, afraid the wizard would sneak up on her, but she needed advice more. So she fled to the library.
“I believe I suggested he had such a thing.” The Empress of Teeth did not look up from her book.
“Can he get in without the staff?” she asked.
The Empress shifted back in the circle and regarded Morna. “Most likely. He created all the enchantments in here. I doubt his plans for immortality would leave him locked out of his own home.”
“Do you think the guardians would still attack him?” she asked.
“He’s had a few apprentices try to kill him by taking control of the staff, but it seems the more physical threats will not harm their master.”
“And I guess Mek is in the same category?”
“Essentially.”
Morna’s shoulders drooped. “Then what can I do?”
The Empress drifted around the circle, a habit Morna recognized as one the Empress used when deep in contemplation.
Morna paced as well, hoping for some sort of insight but hoping even more that the Empress had a better suggestion. The princess poked at the bottle on the work table until Mek flew over and glared at her. “What about the screaming madness?”
The Empress paused. “What? No. It is dangerous to normal humans but easily corralled by the wizard.”
The pacing resumed. After a long time, the Empress simply said, “The best I can think of is that the apprentices were inexperienced in using the staff. You have used it for some time now and may be able to outthink the wizard.”
This left Morna with little hope, but it was all she had.
~*~
In the end, it was hopeless.
When the night rose and she manifested, Morna heard men’s voices in the castle. She drifted through the walls and found the wizard speaking with the spookmongers in the library. He held the staff in his hand, and the other men were preparing their ghost-catching boxes.
In the circle, the Empress roiled in anger. Morna was not certain if it was because of the wizard’s return or that the Empress’s book had been taken away.
One of the spookmongers spotted her and called out, “There she is, lads!”
Morna fled, slipping through the walls as quickly as she could. She tried to think of some place to hide, but in her fear, she couldn’t think of anything.
She fled through one of the spookmongers before realizing what she had done. Soon, all she saw were spookmongers. Every wall she passed through put her on a path with another spookmonger with another crank box. She zigged and zagged through the walls, trying to evade them, until finally she was penned in a corner of the castle, which she couldn’t pass through.
Pain and nausea overwhelmed her, and soon there was only darkness. She no longer had a sense of her limbs or her body, her spectral form instead reduced to a small but intense cramped muscle. Straining against her prison, she tried to reach out with what were once her hands and legs. She moved, but not enough to provide any relief from her pain.
The spookmongers laughed and chatted unintelligibly and seemed happy with themselves while she suffered.
For a moment, her prison contracted, and the pain of her existence intensified. Then it relaxed. It contracted again, more forcefully, and then relaxed. She could shift slightly, the boundaries of her existence not as rigid as they once were.
The spookmongers argued in the distance. Voices became more heated.
Morna pushed out again, and something snapped. Wood splintered, and metal banged against metal. One person screamed in pain, while others screamed in terror.
As she reformed her spectral body, she found herself, on the threshold of the main gate the shattered remains of one of the boxes scattered around her. One man, the one who had captured her in the end, lay on the ground and writhed in pain. Pieces of the box pierced his torso, while his hands and face carried huge lacerations.
The others backed away from her, making warding signs against evil.
“She broke the trap,” one said. “I ain’t never seen a ghost break the trap.”
“The wizard tricked us,” another said. “This ain’t a ghost. You saw those demons he had. She must be another demon. He’s having a laugh at us. He said he wanted help with the ghost here, but it was all to torture us.”
Morna said, “Yes. I am a demon.”
The spookmongers jolted with surprise at the sound of her voice, taking steps away from her.
“And if you linger here,” she said, “I am allowed to feed on you.”
The spookmongers fled, pausing only to pick up their injured friend. Out across the blasted heath they ran, not looking back.
Morna pushed her hand up against the open air, and felt the wards that kept her in. She assumed they had prevented her from being removed from the castle. It left her wondering what kept her in the box.
The trap lay in broken pieces around her. Most of it was lacquered wood and brass gears. But there were also pieces of crystal and a metal she couldn’t identify. She reached down and picked up a piece of it.
It was a jagged shard, with an oily sheen and symbols painted on it. Touching it, she knew this was what she had been inside of. Warded, like the walls and the bottle and the Empress’s circle. And under enough strain, it had shattered with great force.
She looked at the metal and then up at the castle. Then she headed in.
The wizard was in the library at the work table, looking at a book and frowning. His staff rested against the shelves behind him. The Empress regarded Morna as she drifted in but said nothing. The wizard did not notice the princess’s arrival.
Morna delicately set her metal shard near the door, then slipped out of the room to come back in through the wall behind the wizard. She didn’t enter all the way but passed through enough to watch him. When she felt certain he wouldn’t look back, she came into the room, picked up the staff, and shot through the door with it.
The wizard grunted in alarm, but by the time he got to his feet, Morna had used the staff to seal the door. Up the stairs she fled, to her old tower cell. She used the staff to open an entrance to the sealed room, slipped inside, and closed it behind her.
She avoided looking at her remains, left the staff against the wall, and flitted back down to the library. When she arrived, the wizard was cursing loudly and feeling along the door with his hands. She slipped over to where she had left her metal shard and picked it up. He turned at the sound of metal scraping on the wooden shelf.
“Hello child,” the wizard said. “You’ve been busy, haven’t you?”
Morna’s fear pushed back against her anger, and her sorrow got tangled in between. She tightened her grip on the metal, hesitating to strike out at him.
“I might owe you an apology for letting you die. That wasn’t part of the plan.”
Morna spat back, “You owe me an apology for abducting me in the first place.”
The wizard frowned. “That was just a mercantile matter, not negligence. The supplies needed for my work cost, well, a king’s ransom. But braining myself on the stairs and neglecting to manage my possessions—”
Morna’s anger pushed past her fear, and she slashed out at the wizard’s face with her jagged shard.
He staggered back in disbelief, clutching at his bloodied face. Only then did his expression show that he understood the trouble he faced. The wizard shot a look at the door, widened his eyes, then cast his glance about the room. He scampered away from Morna, snatching up a bag of something from his work table and backing into the corner next to his writing desk. As she drifted closer, he scattered a powder in front of himself.
From the circle, the Empress chuckled.
When Morna reached the wizard, she couldn’t cross the line of powder.
The wizard laughed hysterically. “It seems we’ve reached a dead end, princess. Perhaps we can negotiate a different option than your bloody vengeance? I could create a new body for you. Or steal one. We could give you a fresh new body, a fresh new life.”
Morna ignored the wizard. She didn’t need his help, she needed her revenge. Kneeling near the powder that formed the wall in front of her, she found she couldn’t get her hand near it, but the shard of metal was a different. It proved very simple to scrape the powder away with her crude tool.
The wizard began a droning chant, causing Morna to slide backward as though an invisible wall pushed her away. Desperate, she flung the shard of metal at the wizard and struck his forehead. Blood flowed from the gash, but he maintained his incantation.
She grabbed the bottle of screaming madness on the work table. She felt bad destroying another bottle, but Mek wasn’t there to tell her “mek.” The barrier halted even the motion of her throw, much like how the trap had been stopped by the castle wards.
But that had also caused the trap to explode.
“I’m sorry for what I’m about to do, screaming madness.” She pushed the bottle up against the barrier and continued pushing as hard as she could. Inside the bottle, the invisible wall pressed the yellow smoke into a thick mass at the end of the bottle.
Morna gave up hope that her mad scheme would work, but then there was a crack, and she lost her perception. As she coalesced back into awareness, the wizard stumbled, bloody and wounded, while trying to fend off the yellow miasma that shrieked around him.
She snatched up her metal shard again and charged the wizard, slashing at him and trying to herd him back toward the circle. The madness drifted off to scream elsewhere.
“Do you think me a fool?” he asked, raising his injured hands to protect his face from Morna’s attacks. “Do you think I’d be so dumb as to cross over into the summoning circle?”
“I think you’re out of options,” Morna said. “I am tireless, and you’re bleeding a lot. How do you think this is going to end?”
“I won’t have my soul devoured by that demon. You may as well strike me down. Just know that this is not the en—”
Morna struck him down.
“Mek!” the tiny imp said as it came into the room. It dithered for a moment, surveying the mess, before it descended upon the broken glass to begin tidying.
“That was exciting,” the Empress said. “I can get back to reading now.”
Morna had never felt so tired in all her death. “Is that really your biggest concern?”
“I care about you in my own way, Princess,” the Empress replied. “Though I will need to wait for Mek to finish tidying up before it will get me another book. I imagine the wizard’s soul was snatched back to his hidden artifact, and he’ll be back again in a few years.”
“Hopefully I won’t be here by then,” Morna said.
“Have you puzzled out a route past the wards?” the Empress asked.
“They stop spiritual entities. Not people. If I can create a body for myself, I could leave here. And there are presumably all the ingredients I would need in this castle.”
“An interesting idea,” the Empress said.
“I could make two bodies, if you wanted to come with me. See far off libraries.”
The Empress smiled with a million teeth visible.
~***~
Jeremy Zimmerman is a teller of tales who dislikes cute euphemisms for writing like “teller of tales.” He is the author of the young adult superhero book, Kensei and its sequel, The Love of Danger. In his copious spare time he is the co-editor of Mad Scientist Journal. He lives in Seattle with a herd of cats and his lovely wife (and fellow author) Dawn Vogel. Visit him online at www.bolthy.com.
BALANCING THE SCALES
FROG AND ESTHER JONES
Tertia’s throat felt dry and scratchy as the cart evacuating her father, mother, two sisters, and all of the Scipiones family’s wealth, rattled out of the courtyard. The Gallic barbarians had already overtaken and slaughtered the militia, and they would soon fall upon the city, plundering Rome. According to her father, as the third and least of his children, Tertia must stay and face the barbarians. Tertia thought it unlikely they’d spare one apparently worthless eleven-year-old.
Her eyes burned like coals, full of pain and resentment. Father’s clear repudiation of her as he evacuated everything—everyone—else to the Capitoline stung at her like wasps. But her pride wouldn’t let her cry. She crouched down where she stood and hid her eyes against her thighs as the wagon creaked away, unwilling to watch her family abandon her.
When she could no longer hear the cart, Tertia opened her eyes. She and the remaining servants stared at each other blankly. Father left no instructions for any of them. One of the servants started looting food and easily carried household items, and the rest followed in a mad rush to flee. Ther
e was no way Tertia could halt the thievery and she snatched bread, cheese, and a small jug of water for herself. She fastened her small bundle of spoils around her neck with twine. Then the servants escaped from the house, leaving nothing but a quiet shell that had, minutes ago, been home.
Despite her father’s words of impending catastrophe, in the short time that passed, not one invader had yet shown up to tear down walls. Tertia looked around the deserted courtyard she’d known her whole life and felt tears well up. Whether she willed it or no, her breath came in fits and sobs, and Tertia could not stop shaking. Father said she would die today. She took a deep breath, trying to find space in her head to think.
Far in the distance she heard crashing. Then strange chanting mixed with screams fell faintly on her ears. She began to poke about the courtyard, looking for something to do the job properly with; better to die fighting than to meekly accept whatever the barbarians had in store for her.
Tertia found her mother’s weaving rod, sturdy and sharply pointed, next to a pile of discarded work, and hefted it experimentally. It only extended her reach a little, but it would have to do. As the crashing and yelling became louder and more distinct, Tertia crept behind one of the tall pantry bins, squeezing herself into the crevice between it and the wall. Acrid smoke began to tinge the air and fill Tertia with dread. She waited, her knuckles white from gripping the weaving rod, as the ruckus grew slowly louder.
A shadow fell across the threshold of the house, snatching her attention away from the gated courtyard entrance. A tall, willowy woman, her short-cropped hair wreathed with laurel leaves, sauntered out from inside the hearth’s doorway.
The woman raised her arms above her head, stretching. “Whew, it feels so good to be free of all those kill-joys! I thought they would never release their grip on me.” Her voice was low-pitched and totally relaxed, at great odds with the dissonant chaos threatening to envelope the courtyard.
Tertia hiccupped in shock, gawking. The embroidered tunic the stranger wore ended at her knees, its edges embellished with grapes and fig leaves. The woman’s feet were bare and scarred. She had come out of Tertia’s home as if she owned it, but Tertia had never seen her before. The clamor in the distance moved inexorably louder; now Tertia could hear stomping from many feet and the clanking of metal, along with chanting and terrified human or animal screams.
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