Uncanny Magazine Issue 37

by Lynne M. Thomas

  The Demon King said, “Look. Just for you.”

  Juana turned. Out over the water was the hurricane’s wall. A roiling mass of suspended darkness, bearing down, the herald of death itself.

  Juana’s throat closed. “No.” The memory raft was back, buoying her up just long enough to take her out where the current could catch her and drag her to the bottom.

  The Demon King said, “Look at this flea trap. Hard to believe it’s still here. Now look closer.”

  Out in the waves, between the hurricane and the motel’s tiny share of beach, there was an overturned car. The low tide washed over its helpless upturned tires.

  The Demon King said, “And there you are. You’re not a witch, you little idiot, you’re just a ghost.”

  That was it, that was the weak drowning tug Juana had felt on her heart, the pull to the east. It wasn’t the old family motel, it was the place she died.

  You have to catch me first, Juana thought and bolted down the beach. Except she got two steps before something grabbed her ankle and she slammed face-first into the ground. “What the fuck?” she yelled, and scrambled around. It was an anchor chain, locked around her ankle, the other end attached to the motel’s wooden pier. “You have to be kidding me,” she snarled up at him. “This is what you got? Man, evil is going downhill! At least I expected some imagination.”

  The Demon King sneered down at her. “I didn’t come up with this, you little fool, you did.”

  “Stop saying ‘little’, you asshole!” Juana shoved to her feet in a flurry of sand and threw all her weight against the chain. It didn’t budge. He had anchored her to her family motel, come the fuck on. “Wow, symbolism,” Juana said through gritted teeth.

  The hurricane wall drew closer, swamped the overturned car as the water rose over Juana’s knees. A figure stepped out of it. A shape and a face that made Juana freeze inside.

  Her mother reached for her. “You left us, baby.”

  This was wrong, all wrong, it was a trick, but part of her just wouldn’t believe that. She shouted, “You’re not my mom! And I didn’t leave!”

  “You left your family…”

  Oh, that was so unfair. This wasn’t her mother, this was the Demon King’s vision of her mother, but the power it had over her turned her heart to rock. “You liar, I did not, I died!”

  Yeah, she had died. Just like the Ghost Bride, and Mr. Benson, and the Conquistador and the nun and her drowned children. Just like everybody else on this doomed barrier island, breaking the hurricane wind so the mainland had half a chance of survival. It would be the first to slip beneath the rising waters on the last day, when the ice burned, leaving only this ghost image behind. But somewhere in time it existed, somewhere it had been a place to live and work and play and die at the edge of the ocean, and Juana had been part of it, like her mother before her. And then the hurricane came, the fourth one of the season, raging in like the end of everything.

  She breathed out, owning it. “Yeah, that’s me under the car. I died. When they called the evacuation, I stayed. I wanted to take care of the motel after the storm was over. It’s a crappy old motel but my mom loved it. I always wanted to fix it up, just never could get the money to do more than keep it running. I didn’t want to give up on it. I was supposed to go to the civil defense hurricane bunker with the others who were staying, but I was boarding up the windows and there was so much to do, and I left too late. I was so nervous I took the shortest way, along the seawall, and then my car was in the water and then…”

  The Demon King said, “On the social media they’re saying what they always say, you’re a stupid cunt who should have left earlier.”

  Insult to injury, how fucking unfair. “Come on, I was going to the hurricane bunker! I had a fucking job to do first!”

  “And the funniest part? That roach motel of yours is still standing. The global warming’s changed all the hurricanes and this one came in at a weird angle. It drowned the back of the island and the west end, but didn’t do shit to the east. If you’d stayed put, you’d have got your feet wet but that’s all. You’d have lived. If you can call that living.”

  She spat at the Demon King, poison witch’s spit. Then the hurricane wall struck and the Demon King vanished in the cyclone of water.

  The sand settled and Juana and the motel were underwater, surrounded by confused fish. The specter that wasn’t her mother still stood there, stretching out insubstantial hands toward her.

  “I did call it living,” Juana said and gave the chain another tug. The storm can’t hurt you, she reminded herself. You’re dead already. Dead under her car, the hermit crabs nibbling. No, don’t think about that.

  “You’re a witch,” she said stubbornly. She braced herself and pulled harder. If dying in the Queen had given the demon a foothold there, then had dying in the ocean given Juana power over it?

  No, not power over it. But it had made her part of it. Part of this place. And for all the Demon King had died in the Queen, he wasn’t part of it. You had to love this place with all your heart or hate it with all your soul, preferably both, to be a real part of the magic.

  The memory fragments boiled up and together again, not a rickety raft this time, but a boat, a trawler, a ferry, a cruise ship. Rage growing in her chest, Juana said, “And my mom would never have wanted me to die here like this.”

  Her mother’s image flickered and solidified. She said, “Go back to college, baby.”

  Juana stared, shocked almost back to life. She choked on an unexpected sob. “Okay, now that’s really my mom.”

  Her mother didn’t respond, this was like a recording out of her memory, not a real ghost. Her mother had died in a hospital on the Mainland, she wasn’t here. Where she was now, Juana didn’t know. Maybe flying like a witch over Hispaniola. The image said, “I only want you to take this on if you love it, and how will you know if you love it if you can’t leave?”

  Yes, she remembered her mother saying this now. Juana should have listened to her, hindsight was always 2020. If you love something let it go, it’ll still be here somewhere, like the bathhouses and the diners and the Ferris wheels.

  And everything suddenly made sense, clear as a bell. Her witch power, and how to use it.

  “I’ll leave, Mama,” Juana said. She kicked her foot, and the chain dissolved into broken shells. “But first I need to take out the trash.”

  She slogged her way up slope out of the waves, where the sailboat patiently waited for her, its bow jammed into a sand drift.

  The boat flew Juana right up to the penthouse’s stone balustrade and she jumped down onto the balcony. She flung the French doors open and stomped right into the big reception room. It was dark and light all at once, the gleam of the crystal chandeliers and the polished wood muted, the sick smell of rotting roses, the gold everywhere like a dragon’s hoard. But instead of an awesome scaly fiery dragon, there was just this asshole.

  He stood with the Ghost Bride in the center of the marquetry floor, glaring at her.

  “What the hell are you doing back? Get out, you dirty bitch!”

  The high-ceilinged room was packed with souls but they were gray-shrouded, faceless.

  Juana ignored it all and walked straight up to the Ghost Bride. She said, “Do you want this? Or do you want the man you jumped out the window for?” She pointed with her thumb. “’Cause that sure ain’t him.”

  The Ghost Bride growled. She tossed her bouquet down. Juana backed away but didn’t stop talking. “He didn’t leave you, did you think he left you? That’s not how these stories go, not here. He died in the storm, babe, like I did.”

  She stopped and let the Ghost Bride loom over her. This close the smell of camphor and dying flowers was overwhelming. The Demon King was yelling but Juana used witch power and tuned him out, like pressing down the volume button on the TV remote. She said, “It’s so dangerous out there, you don’t even know. You’re stressed and you’re scared and you try to go the way you always go, the shortes
t way, and it was a mistake. It should have been a five-minute drive, straight down the seawall to the city hurricane bunker in the old World War II gun emplacement under the Waves Resort. My God, it was a mistake. I left too late and the storm got me. And your man made a mistake, too, babe. Was he a sea captain? Or just a young guy with a sailboat?”

  The Ghost Bride’s expression changed, the skin half of her face sinking with dismay.

  The last piece of the puzzle. Juana said, “It was a sailboat, like the one that brought me here?”

  The Ghost Bride’s hollow gaze went to the doors, the boat riding the wind outside. “Yeah,” Juana said, “that’s a coincidence, huh, this happening to you and that boat finding me and bringing me here. You know you made a mistake, too, lady, even more dumb than mine.”

  The Ghost Bride’s gaze dropped to her again. But it was less hollow this time, a gleam growing in the skull-side eye socket. Juana hoped it meant something good and pushed onward. “He didn’t come back because he was probably dead, and it’s not like he could help that, right? And if he did mean to leave you, you know, so what? Saved you the trouble of dumping him when you found out he was a bastard. Whichever, it’s no reason to chain yourself to the storm.” She took a deep breath, because this part was still hard to say. “We’re here because we’re dead, but we don’t have to be ghosts. We can be witches, baby. You got to own your power.”

  The Ghost Bride whispered, “Own my power?”

  “Your power. You’re the heart, honey. The queen of the Queen. This is the fortress of the barrier island, the last wall before the rising water, and you’re the key in its lock.”

  The Demon King pushed forward between them, shouldered the Ghost Bride aside, and shoved Juana with a clammy hand. It broke through her power, and his voice rang out again, loud and harsh. “You don’t know how to kill me!”

  Juana laughed. “You’re already dead, just like us. We just need to get you out of here.” Outside the wind rose, that freight train howl, the hurricane’s death knell. “The storm will do the rest.”

  She looked at the Ghost Bride. “What do you say? We get rid of him, you can redecorate. Reopen the bar, have tea and cake on the garden terrace like the rich white ladies club every Tuesday. Swim in the pool, it’s the best one in town, it’s got a waterfall and a hot tub. Let all the others in again, where they belong, where they’ve always been, and have the best costume party ever.”

  The Demon King grinned at her with gold teeth. “She wants a wedding.”

  “That was a long time ago. Things change.” Juana didn’t take her gaze off that gleaming eye socket. “Rescue yourself, queen. Start with ‘no’.”

  The Ghost Bride turned to the Demon King, lifted her veil, and said, “No.”

  The storm hit the windows like an out of control semi. Juana grabbed the Demon King by the lapels and slung him toward it. But he grabbed onto her forearms and they both staggered out the doors. The rough hand of the storm grabbed them and snatched them off the balcony.

  The Demon King’s grip dug into Juana’s skin but the storm ripped him off her like a Band-Aid. Through the gray light she watched him tumble away out to sea until he was just a black dot on the horizon. It tried to do the same to her, but Juana laughed at it. “You already killed me,” she shouted. “You can’t do worse than that!”

  The storm howled in fury and flung her straight down toward the ground.

  It shattered Juana like a glass, and it took her bits a while to come back together. She lay on hot sand, feeling it soak into her drowned bones, until she could stand up, dust herself off, and walk back to the castle.

  This time she went straight up the drive, to the hotel’s porte cochere. Two bellmen smiled and opened the big doors for her, and Mr. Benson waited there. He said, “No outside food or drink,” and winked at her.

  She saluted him and walked past.

  The lobby and the terrace and bar were brimming with people, talking, dancing, the Sunday Buffet and a hundred or so weddings all happening at once.

  She stepped on a rag and looked down to see a discarded cloth rope. The drowned kids ran and screamed on the green lawn outside the open terrace doors, chasing tennis balls and playing with someone’s excited yappy dog. The nun sat on the silk upholstery at one of the tea tables, a china cup and saucer in her hand.

  The Ghost Bride stood at the reception check-in counter and Juana went to stand in front of her. She grinned. “Good save, lady.”

  The Ghost Bride was smiling with the flesh half of her face. She said, “Stay? Please?”

  It was tempting. But this was a refuge, a shelter for people who were exhausted and done, spit out by the storm. Juana was just getting started. “I can’t, babe. Witches got to witch.”

  The Bride’s veiled head dipped. “Then visit.”

  Juana took a petal from one of her white roses. “That I can do.”

  She walked outside through the open doors. The sailboat was waiting for her on the lawn.

  (Editors’ Note: “The Salt Witch” is read by Erika Ensign on the Uncanny Magazine Podcast, Episode 37B.)

  © 2020 Martha Wells

  Martha Wells has been an SF/F writer since her first fantasy novel was published in 1993, and her work includes The Books of the Raksura series, The Death of the Necromancer, the Ile-Rien trilogy, The Murderbot Diaries series, media tie-ins for Star Wars, Stargate: Atlantis, and Magic: the Gathering, as well as short fiction, YA novels, and nonfiction. She has won a Nebula Award, two Hugo Awards, two Locus Awards, and her work has appeared on the Philip K. Dick Award ballot, the BSFA Award ballot, the USA Today Bestseller List, and the New York Times Bestseller List.

  The Span of His Wrist

  by Lee Mandelo

  From behind the desk-cum-checkout counter, Lucy said, “I’m sure you’ll find some good pieces. The family was super eager to clear the estate or I wouldn’t have been able to snatch the whole lot, and I’ll give you a deal, because obviously I overshot.”

  Hangers scraped on metal as Katrin sifted through the items on the opposite side of the rack. A scrum of colors and textures and cuts tussled for attention, crammed into every possible centimeter of the consignment shop. Charlie ached to give each of those discarded pieces a glancing brush of recognition before time and circumstance separated them all from one another.

  “Thanks, darling,” he said from the corner of his mouth.

  “Just look at this place, it’s a mess,” Lucy continued in a personable drone.

  He swept his thumb over the shoulder seam of a crème blazer with peach trim. An impression flitted through his curious fingertips while he stroked the lining at the pinned waistline, wafting across his mind’s eye like dust and perfume: a mistaken acquisition that survived one mediocre dinner engagement then got parked in the corner of a closet. The Gucci tag might attract a purchaser but the piece itself had no real life.

  Katrin’s inspection routine involved squinting, picking at hems and sequins, testing for pulls and pilling. As for Charlie’s approach—he said it was holistic when customers asked, women from the suburbs with fat pocketbooks crooning over the vibe of his Northside storefront. His eye, Katrin insisted, was impeccable.

  Though he agreed that his taste was refined and particular, that was a matter of practice. Charlie relied on more than simple taste to curate his pieces. He flexed his feet in his slides (Balenciaga, candy red) and the prior owner’s worn-in divots prickled his toes with remnant summer pleasure, the extravagance of a gift from a doting, mature lover. While the average customer didn’t possess his skill for eavesdropping on the whispered histories loitering within his hand-me-down selections, the effect worked on them regardless. Subtle and permanent as the scent of smoke, the lingering memories were friendly ghosts.

  He moved forward to handle another piece on the rack, buoyed along on the shoes’ reliable borrowed affection, then touched the next, and the next, all zeroes. The phone rang. Lucy answered it—“Hello? Hi Jan, what’s up,”—with the cordless
tucked against her shoulder while she got up to prop the door, letting in a breeze that rushed off the distant lake.

  Katrin said, “Did you check out that room Davey’s renting?”

  “No,” Charlie said.

  “I’m sure he’d be a good roommate.”

  “Katie,” he groaned. “He’s best friends with Annie, and Annie is still Rich’s best girlfriend. There’s no way. Just absolutely no way, okay?”

  “Okay, okay,” she said. The next hanger clattered.

  “It’s not like I’ve got the money, anyway,” he muttered.

  “Cissy, it’s been two months. When’re you going to get out in the world again?”

  “Yeah, it’s barely been two months, so give me some room to work.”

  Silence returned between them as he continued to sort his touch across mild old memories attached to mild old clothes rather than dealing with the unpredictable present. Katrin lifted up a shimmering grey evening gown with miniscule pearl detailing on the shoulder caps.

  “This one?” she asked.

  Charlie stood tiptoe to reach across, the bare strip of belly between his low-slung slacks and high-cut blouse pressed onto the jumbled murmuring fabrics. The gown was butter-soft, purring with satisfaction in the afternoon sun like a happy cat; he nodded and plopped back onto his heels. Someone would whisk it to a fresh home within the month, without knowing precisely why it caught their attention. Katrin draped it over her arm.

  She’d let the matter of Davey’s spare room drop but it stung regardless, nettles at the root of Charlie’s tongue. Rich had found an apartment over in Edgewater that Lucas told him had a big, bright living room and built-in bookshelves. Boring steady income could do that for a guy. Charlie slept on a futon in his storeroom and brushed his teeth in the employee bathroom.