How does he know?
The energy shivering along Sella’s nerves sputtered, waned like it had petrified beneath her skin. Theo’s fingers twined with hers, squeezed hopefully.
“He doesn’t yet.” Sella let their hold linger, even as the heat drained out of it. “But he will.”
♛
It had been five Tuesdays since Theo’s last session. Five Tuesdays for Sella to form and reform a plan. A plan to save Theo—to protect her as Sella had sworn to, though that promise had been stolen by some faceless, formless he. A he who did not even know Theo, who did not recognize that someone so rare longed for him. A he who would not bring Theo happiness or freedom—Sella had seen nothing of him in their sessions, so how could he?
Sometimes folks oughta get what they need.
Sella prepared this spell bag carefully, spooned the only bit of crab’s eye dust Miss Janus had sent with her onto a bed of fresh water lily petals and tied it with a double-loop of string. Then she pushed the whole thing into a burlap satchel, just in case.
She was standing outside—watching the colors bleed from the sky to the sea—when Theo arrived. The breeze tickled her curls, flickering like flames in the dying light.
Sella took her by the hand and led her into the caravan. They sat down and Theo opened her journal; the letters were slanted and a little frayed around the ends:
I want him to love me.
Sella nodded once and spread out her crystals and cards. She hemmed and hawed, wrung her hands and tapped out uneven rhythms on her knees—really made a show of it.
“These signs are obscured and contradicting.” Sella stacked her tarot in a pile and twisted her mouth, sympathetic. “I’m sorry.”
Theo pursed her lips in a tight white line; Sella watched the color fade from them. She blinked, quick against wet eyes, and smiled so small and sad that Sella nearly stretched across the table to smooth the pain off Theo’s cheeks.
“There is one other method.” Sella meant to sound hesitant, but it clawed out desperately. She tried to catch her breath. “But it can be dangerous, and the results are extreme.”
Theo leaned in immediately, shook her head, fierce and furious.
Sella rummaged through a drawer behind her, rooted around in it like she hadn’t already grabbed the satchel from inside.
“This is a testing potion.” Sella set the bag in Theo’s cupped palm. “It will determine if your desires are true or not. Boil no more than two pinches into a tea, and write your desire five times as you drink it. If your desire is true, you will feel elated, and what you want will soon come to pass. But if your desire is not true, you will feel ill. The slower and longer the illness, the falser the desire and the more urgently you must cut yourself from it. Is that something you can do? Something you truly want to know?”
A stone-heavy beat between them, then Theo closed a fist around the burlap.
“All right. But promise me”—Sella brushed her knuckles against Theo’s bare forearm before pulling away—“if you get sick, come back to me. I have some remedies to ease the effects, and we can keep working to find out what you truly need together.”
Theo patted Sella’s wrist like an adult would with a wide-eyed child, brusque and dismissive, and climbed out onto the pier full of confidence for this test. Sella wondered if it worked—if it could have worked—would this be their last goodbye?
Theo was halfway down the midway, cradled under the twinkle of fairy lights that hadn’t yet been dimmed out, when she stopped and turned back. She smiled bright and—caught in the sheen of the moon and the dancing of the carnival lights—it was almost blinding.
Sella traced the angles of Theo’s back until she faded into the shifting shadows outside the gates of the pier. The tide washed along the shore, left a briny sting in the air, and Sella let it fill her lungs to choking.
Most folks got want and need tangled, couldn’t get to the root and split them apart. Most folks spent their time looking for a little help, a nudge or two in the best direction from someone who knew better than them. And Sella—
She could do that.
About the Author
Leigh Hellman is a queer/asexual and genderqueer writer, originally from the western suburbs of Chicago, and a graduate of the MA Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago. After gaining the ever-lucrative BA in English, they spent five years living and teaching in South Korea before returning to their native Midwest.
Leigh’s short fiction and creative nonfiction work has been featured in Hippocampus Magazine, VIDA Review, and Fulbright Korea Infusion Magazine. Their critical and journalistic work has been featured in the American Book Review, the Gwangju News magazine, and the Windy City Times.
They are pleased as punch to be publishing their first novel, the new adult speculative fiction work Orbit, with Snowy Wings Publishing in September 2018.
Leigh is a strong advocate for full-day breakfast menus, all varieties of dark chocolate, building a wardrobe based primarily on bad puns, and bathing in the tears of their enemies.
Books by Leigh Hellman:
Orbit
The Forest of Carterhaugh
a retelling of Tam Lin
♛
KARISSA LAUREL
Janae shuffled into her room and eased onto her bed—her balance could be a little wonky when she was tired. She tied her purple-streaked hair into a messy knot, revealing a band of puckered skin stretching from her temple to her jaw, and hiked her pants cuff over her knee. The skin beneath her prosthesis’s socket had been itching most of the afternoon, and the relief of removing her electronic leg nearly brought tears to her eyes.
She rubbed the weary muscle in her thigh as her gaze swept over the shelf of trophies and medals hanging above her desk. Golden figurines of runners adorned the tops and faces of awards she’d won as the fastest sprinter on her middle and high school track teams. A year had passed since the accident, and her parents and doctors said it might be possible for her to compete again with the right training and therapy. But while they imagined her preparing for the Paralympics, or even being the next on the short list of amputees to run in the Olympics since Pistorius broke that glass ceiling twenty years before, Janae had already given her competitive streak a new outlet.
Relieved and itch-free, she fluffed her pillows and shifted into a more comfortable position. She closed her eyes and tapped the VRGameWatch™ latched around her wrist. The nanobots roosting in her nervous system responded to the watch’s programming, drawing her into a vivid hallucination that stimulated each of her five senses, and she sank into a dazzling rainbow of light and color.
Moments later, her avatar, an athletic young woman with lavender hair and violet eyes, stood in an ancient forest of moss-cloaked trees. A curving sword hung in a scabbard at her hip, and she wore knives in sheaths strapped to her forearms and around her thigh.
Golden light filtered from above, shining warmly on the sea of giant ferns surrounding her. Her green tunic blended into the scenery, discouraging the casual observer from noticing her. A cool breeze stirred, carrying the sharp scent of decaying leaves and damp earth. She drew her hood over her bright hair and crouched, further concealing herself among the swaying fern fronds.
“Lady Janet?” asked a familiar voice, one that was young and male. A hint of a southern twang mingled with his slight Spanish lilt. “Are you here?”
After their last quest, Janae had promised to meet her long-time questing partner, Thomás, here in the Primeval Wood. Her heartbeat quickened with the thrill of his presence. Although their relationship existed solely in the Forest of Carterhaugh’s virtual reality, few people felt as real to Janae as Thomás did. Reflexively, she pressed a hand over her racing heart. “TamLin,” she answered, naming Thomás’s avatar. “I’m here.”
“Your location beacon’s turned off. I can’t see you.”
Lady Janet stood and raised a hand overhead, waving until she caught TamLin’s eye. Thomás’s avatar was a
tall, handsome knight with russet skin and dark hair hanging to his shoulders that shimmered like an ocean at night. When they quested together, he and Lady Janet made a striking pair.
“I scouted ahead already, and it looks like we’re alone,” Janae said.
“That’s why I picked this spot. I wanted to talk to you in private.”
“What about?”
“I think it’s finally time to go after Queen Mab’s treasure.”
A thrill raced up Janae’s spine, excitement tingling in her nerves. “What about the Wild Hunt next weekend? You sure you want to undertake two huge quests back to back?”
“We’ve been training for months, and we’re as good now as we’re ever going to get. At some point, we have to stop procrastinating and put practice into action.”
Janae huffed. “I agree, but if Mab’s treasure isn’t just myth, where do we even start looking?”
“You know what the rumors say.” TamLin stepped around Lady Janet and parted the nearest ferns, making a path through Primeval Wood.
She marched behind him and didn’t ask where they were going—she suspected she already knew. “They say her court is somewhere beneath Bannau Brycheiniog in the Black Mountains, and the entrance must be close to Cribyn Peak, based on the number of guards and fortifications positioned there. But no one’s ever survived long enough to verify if it’s true.”
TamLin’s path brought them closer to the edge of the woods. He stopped in the shadow of a giant tree and peered at the green hills rolling out before them. A warm breeze stirred his hair, and Lady Janet’s fingers twitched, reacting to Janae’s subconscious urge to touch him. “That’s what everyone else says,” Thomás said. “But what do you say?”
Janae had spent months researching and investigating the FoC forums and chatrooms dedicated solely to discussing Queen Mab’s supposed treasure, but no one could quite agree where it was, or even what it was. The most common theory was FoC’s designers had created an extension to the game, and only those who found Mab’s court and claimed her treasure would be granted access to the new world.
Janae, however, was skeptical. “I think that even if we could manage to defeat Mab’s hoards and find an entrance into her court, there’s a chance it’s just a red herring—that the treasure doesn’t even exist.” She wasn’t as interested in the treasure as she was in fighting the battle it would take to win it, but Thomás wouldn’t understand that. For him, it was always about the prize. For her, playing FoC was about the blood-pumping, heart-racing adventure, and going after Mab’s treasure would be the biggest thrill of all. “But what do you think, TamLin?”
“I, um...” Thomás must have given in to the urge to fidget because TamLin was shifting from foot to foot and rubbing the back of his neck. “I spent some time this weekend getting a backdoor look at Cribyn Peak’s code. I couldn’t decipher very much before I got kicked out, but the little bit I saw gave me reason to think it’s not just rumors. There’s really something there.”
“‘Backdoor look’?” Janae coughed a derisive sound in her throat. “You hacked in?”
“Just for a minute.”
“You could be permanently banned for that.” Janae’s quailed at the thought of losing her only link to Thomás. For the last six months, he’d been urging her to connect with him outside the game, but she’d always demurred. No matter her feelings for him, she trusted very few people enough to let them into her real-world life.
It’s safer that way, she thought. Experience had taught her that people could only hurt her if she let them get close. And, when she did, many reacted badly when confronted with her prosthetic leg and burn scars. If Thomás turned out to be one of those people, one of the ones who shunned her, she wasn’t sure her heart could bear it.
Lady Janet brushed past TamLin, stepping out of the forest’s shadows into the late-afternoon sunlight. A quick check of FoC’s map revealed there was at least a twenty-mile march from Primeval Wood to the Black Mountains. The game’s internal clock suggested they wouldn’t get there before nightfall. Unless... “I’ve got a few gryphon feathers left from our Aerie Quest.” Janae scrolled through her menu of stored magic items and, moments later, two glowing white feathers appeared in Lady Janet’s fist. “If you’re serious about this, then we’d better use them if you want to get to Cribyn Peak before the sun goes down.”
“Of course I’m serious about this.” TamLin snatched a feather and chanted an incantation code. Magic sparkles swirled around him, giving him the illusion of having grown a pair of wings. In an instant, Lady Janet had her own shimmering wings, and after a few false starts, the pair shot into the sky, soaring toward the dark mountain range in the distance.
“Race you,” Janae said as Lady Janet surged into the lead. When it came to running, riding virtual horses, or flying, Janae didn’t care which way they traveled as long as the wind was racing past her, tugging at her hair as her pulse pounded in her ears. “Last one to the Black Mountains has to hunt and cook our supper.”
♛
As the last rays of virtual sunlight sank behind the Black Mountains, TamLin and Lady Janet rested together in an open meadow at the base of Bannau Brycheiniog, a tall ridge covered in rocks and grass and not much else. They huddled close to their small campfire. Smoke stung her eyes, and the flavor of charred meat clung to her tongue as they feasted on ciwiyar, a chicken-like creature TamLin had been forced to catch and cook after losing their race.
“This quest could take a while,” Thomás said. “After we revive our energy stores, you want to keep going?”
“Sure. I can stay up late. My parents are out having their date night.”
“My mom’s working second shift, so I figure we can keep going until midnight at least. Sound good to you?”
“Sounds great.” Lady Janet stood, scattered the coals, and stamped out their fire. “Let’s get moving.”
TamLin rose beside her as she checked FoC’s map and compass feature. Then she pointed south. “If we keep heading that way, following the base of this ridge, we should expect to run into some of the Queen’s Knightmares in another half-mile or so.”
“Looks like there’s another questing band close by.” TamLin pointed at several glowing beacons on his map. “They’ve already engaged with Mab’s knights. You want to join them?”
Lady Janet drew her sword from its sheath. “You have to ask?”
After activating their enhanced night-vision spells, the two crept along the base of the mountain range. As predicted, they soon came upon the second questing team’s camp, and whatever their numbers had been at the start of their adventure, now only two remained. Their avatars’ life-force indicators were flashing, warning that they were in dire need of rest and food. “You’ll never get past Mab’s guard,” said a tall, stocky character with green skin calling himself Little_John0902. His companion, a slim gray elf, lay silently by their small fire. “They’re expert fighters, and they’re flanked by a pack of Dire Wolves the size of horses. There were eight of us, and now you see what’s left. You can’t make a dent in them. It’s hopeless.”
Impatient to begin and eager to fight, Janae burned with excitement. Maybe she was often slow and ungainly in real life, but in the Forest of Carterhaugh, she was a warrior goddess—fast, strong, and brutal. She also had a lot of pent-up anger to pour out on Mab’s soldiers. They had no idea what was coming for them. “Maybe you can’t make a dent in them.” Lady Janet twirled her sword like a baton. “But I’m not ready to give up so easily.”
The big green warrior faced her. “Lady Janet? I’ve heard of you. Heard you can fight.”
“I can pretend to be humble about it if it makes you feel better.”
He chuckled. “No, have at them, if you want. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Any tips?” Thomás asked as TamLin drew his own weapon, a long rapier that could bleed a man to death in a couple of quick jabs. Other than herself, Thomás was the best fighter Janae had come across in all her
time on FoC, and there was no one else she’d rather have at her side when facing Mab’s soldiers.
“Run,” Little John said. “But if you aren’t willing to take that advice, then devastation spells were the only thing that slowed them down, but you can’t throw them fast enough to keep up with their swords and teeth.” He chuckled sadly. “The two of you won’t last a minute.”
That’s where he’s wrong, Janae thought. I might be the best hand-to-hand fighter, but no one casts faster than Thomás. She suspected his ability with spells had something to do with his ability to hack computer code, but she’d never asked him because she didn’t really want to know. More than a few gamers used black market cheat codes to improve performance. Janae had earned her abilities and weapons through hard work, determination, and skill, and she was proud of it, but if Thomás had enhanced TamLin with the equivalent of computerized steroids, she wasn’t going look the proverbial gift horse in the mouth.
“Well, if we die, we’ll come find you, and you can say you told us so.” But Janae didn’t plan on dying. Not today, anyway. Lady Janet touched her forehead in a salute and marched away, heading into the darkness beyond Little John’s camp, and TamLin followed her.
“Maybe we should wait and see if we can form a bigger band,” Thomás said.
“Getting cold feet? You knew how fortified this area was before you suggested we go on this mission.”
“It’s starting to feel a little suicidal.”
“So, if we die, we come back later with reinforcements.”
“It could take us weeks to recover and recruit a team, and we’ve got the Wild Hunt coming up soon.”
Lady Janet paused. “This was your idea, remember? If you don’t want to do this, say so. Otherwise, get your best spells and weapons ready because I’m not going down without giving it everything I’ve got.”
TamLin squeezed Lady Janet’s shoulder, and Janae reveled in his touch, even if it was merely an effect from nanobots engaging with her nervous system. Players often patted each other’s backs, shook hands, and hugged on occasion, but TamLin’s touch was something special. She wondered if Thomás felt the same thrill when Lady Janet touched him.
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