by Tay LaRoi
“Not—not on purpose? Then what was it supposed to do?” I asked, flabbergasted.
“It was supposed to turn things back, recreate a better time—wake things up around here!”
“Wake. Things. Up.” I repeated slowly, thinking of Pearl and the others dragging themselves through the night, unable to sleep, stuck in that awful in-between place.
“To help! I wanted to do something to help with the hard times we’re stuck in. This was supposed to help. You can understand that, can’t you, Cissy?” he begged.
I sighed. As much as I still wanted to punch him for the trouble he’d caused, he wasn’t some mustache-twirling villain in a film, tying some girl to the railroad tracks just for a laugh. Whatever he was doing, he didn’t have an evil intent.
“I just wanted to make things better,” he pleaded.
“Well, it didn’t, so now we got to undo this tangle—” I started, but he cut me off.
“It should have worked,” he ranted, suddenly angry. “It’s so simple. Even the littlest children in the schoolhouse around here could tell you coal is the result of plants being pressed down with enough weight and time to make the rocks we dig up today. Turn back the clock and the coal becomes plants again.”
“Plants,” I repeated, my voice flat and dull. “This was all just to turn some rocks into plants?” I felt like I’d just been gut-punched, shocked to be hit by something so unexpected after everything I had worried about and anticipated. I had expected a monster but had been presented with a mouse.
“Why does everyone spend so much time digging coal to begin with? To eat! So skip over the work and danger and bosses and bad wages and go straight to what we need—food! Turn these rocky hills into fields upon abundant fields, crammed full of wheat and corn, dense orchards bursting with ripe fruit, meadows thick with grass carpets to feed all manner of animals, then we’d be able to harvest enough to have everyone sit down to a table groaning with food each night, with enough left over to sell to everyone in the dust bowls out west. We’d all be fat and happy and destroy those mine bosses in the process! People would be so grateful, they’d bow to me! They’d see I should be in charge because I can do anything!”
Maybe a mad mouse, I amended to myself. He looked like he was ready to start foaming at the mouth. “But if all the coal in the ground suddenly sprouted up back into trees and plants and all, what about the people living on top of that?” I asked, as reasonably as I could. “Wouldn’t a forest appearing overnight do some damage?”
He shrugged. “There’d be some that get inconvenienced—”
“Inconvenienced?” I shrieked at him, feeling my own temper snap like kindling. “People are crawling out of their graves because of your meddling, and you want to cause even more damage, and you prattle about a little inconvenience?”
“I said I was sorry about what’s happened to the folks in the cemetery,” he exclaimed, exasperated, as if my objections were just peevish nagging. “I’m going to fix this. Then I’m going to get it right this time.”
“Oh no, you are not,” I told him. “We get the dead back to their proper rest, and then, no more magic.”
“Who died and made you king of everything?” he sneered at me.
“Listen, you’re just a kid—” I started to tell him, which was a mistake, because he lost all helplessness in his eyes and blazed at me, angry as a wild boar.
“I am more powerful than you can possibly imagine!” he thundered. He sounded like he’d rehearsed this, and as angry as he was to be belittled, he was also obviously pleased at the chance to trot out his planned speech, like a politician on Election Day. “I have the power to change things completely! I can create an entirely new way of life for all around, and it can be a good life or a bad life, so they had better appreciate me!”
Unfortunately for him, his voice cracked on ‘appreciate’ which did take some of the force out of him. It was hard to be taken seriously as the potential new magical dictator of the world when your voice was still breaking.
“I’m sorry to do this,” I told him, lifting my hands, hating myself for having to take something away from him, but you didn’t leave a loaded pistol in the hands of a baby, however much they might squall when you took their toy away.
“Do what?” he asked, haughty again. “What can you possibly do, Cissy? You’re just the preacher’s dau—” he broke off, because on the word ‘daughter’ I’d placed my hands on his chest and imagined ripping the magic straight out of him.
“I’m not his daughter,” I growled. Sweat broke out on my forehead. If last time had felt like pulling a weed, this felt like I was wrestling with a stump, a stubborn, old half-rotted tree trunk with spread-out gnarled roots in the middle of a field, blocking all attempts to plow. Worse, the poor goat had wanted the curse gone, but I could feel Ernest fighting back, trying to keep the magic in. It was going to be a tug-of-war to the bitter end.
The gloves glowed as I settled my feet, taking a firm stance. Ernest glared at me, hatred twisting his face into something ugly and feral.
“How dare you?” he hissed. He could have broken away, which was what I was afraid of, not liking the idea of running him down and somehow holding him in place while I wrenched the magic out of him, but, I realized belatedly, this was actually the harder option; he was fighting back, meeting me with the same imagined pulling we had both somehow made real on some level. And he wasn’t just trying to stop me. He was doing his best to tug back, to somehow make the magic Death had loaned me a part of his own.
And I realized with terrifying certainty that if I didn’t succeed, he was going to utterly destroy me—mind, body, and soul—and be more powerful than when he started. I pushed back against him and threw my mind open as wide as possible, to see-not-see the magic in him. It was a vein of gold running through him everywhere, with a tangled lump centered in his chest, sitting on his heart, and I could feel it laughing at me.
“This isn’t funny,” I growled and pulled harder. All my energy and concentration narrowed to that point where his magic was centered. I held on like a steel trap and pulled with everything I had. There was a long moment that lasted for an eternity, and then it started to come loose.
By this point, Ernest was just screaming, not able to pull back on me anymore, and I realized I was screaming too. There was an awful wrenching noise, as if I’d dragged a sheet of metal over a bed of rusty nails, and suddenly the awful lump of veins was writhing in my hands and Ernest was trying to claw it back.
“Be gone!” I yelled, booming the words out with borrowed authority, and it keened shrilly in my head as I sent it out of existence.
Ernest screamed louder and something about him came all undone, as if he couldn’t hold himself together without that awful magic inside him anymore. He disintegrated into dirty ash and was gone.
I tumbled to the ground, exhausted, arms and legs shaking with spent energy. There was no sense of triumph. I was exhausted, and worse than that, heartbroken that I had destroyed someone who could have changed the world for the better, if he had just been able to think of anyone besides himself.
Marie came out of hiding. “Now I’ve seen everything! I wish there was some way we could show that one on stage! One hears about all the special effects they’re doing out in Hollywood, but I don’t think even they could replicate something like that!”
I looked at her, opened my mouth, and then shut it when I was unable to think of anything to say. I looked back down at my hands, surprised to see the gloves were still there. I had thought they would go once I’d taken care of that magic. I looked around and saw the undead were still there. Pearl gave me a weak smile. Ernest and his magical doing might be gone, but his mess still had to be cleaned up. “Typical man,” I muttered. “Leave a mess behind and just expect a woman will clean it up.”
“Actually, I have an idea about that,” said Marie. “I’ve been thinking about how to help the dead finally rest, and I think I might have something. I’ll be right back.
Meet me in the cemetery.” And she took off before I could ask any questions.
I walked back to the cemetery, slowly, as Pearl stumbled along next to me. We reached her grave and waited.
“She’s pretty,” commented Pearl in a voice that wasn’t just dry from death.
“Jealous?” I asked.
“Tired,” she replied.
“I think Marie will be able to help. I hope. I’m fresh out of ideas.”
Pearl looked at me. “Promise me. Promise you’ll live after. After this.” She smiled sadly. “No moping.”
I smiled back, blinking back a few tears. “No moping,” I promised her.
Not too long later, Marie came huffing back, lugging what looked like a large suitcase, and a bulky handbag slung over one shoulder. “Our props master, Peter Fields, probably thinks I’ve been drinking absinthe, but he didn’t ask too many questions when I demanded he get this out.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“A portable gramophone, perfect for the theater troupe on the move that can’t afford an orchestra.” She opened the case to reveal one side containing the main record-playing section, the other encasing the trumpet, and I could see the crank sticking out of the side. With easy blasphemy, she set the case up on a large gravestone, sturdy enough to hold it, and whipped out a record from the handbag.
“You’re going to play some music?”
“I got the idea from a cartoon I saw at the pictures a while back. A dance to gather everyone together and then exhaust them enough to go to sleep permanently.”
“What music did you pick?” I asked, curious.
“It’s called ‘Danse Macabre.’ Get ready.”
Marie began cranking away, getting the gramophone started. She gave another hard crank and haunting music began spilling out. As the first few notes played, spaced apart like footsteps walking down a hallway, the restless nightwalkers began shambling out of the forest back to the cemetery.
“Okay, we’ve got their attention,” murmured Marie as the music began to build. “Now you’ve got to get things going, or it’s going to be the most awkward party round here.” She bit her lip and then gave up holding back a smile. “A good hostess doesn’t want her party to be dead.”
“Hiss and boo on bad puns,” I told her but smiled as well, surprised we could joke at a time like this. I turned to look at Pearl, who stood by her grave, her wedding dress rippling slightly at the hem as she shifted her weight, restless. Waiting for me to do what had to be done.
I walked up to her and bowed. She curtseyed, and we slid into each other’s arms and began to waltz to the eerie music. We started in a tight circle by her gravestone. Then, as the violins began to play faster, we spun in a larger circle, taking in more and more of the graveyard as our dance floor.
The music reached a crescendo and then slowed. We broke apart to each grab new dance partners. As the music built up again, we spun them around for a circuit, depositing our partners with two new partners for them and picking out two new ones for ourselves. A ripple effect spread throughout the group until soon the entire graveyard was filled with the waltzing undead, spinning a graceful circle through the graves.
Pearl and I traded off partners and met in the middle of the circle, dancing together again, a circle within a circle.
The song quieted to a single violin producing mournful notes, and the undead were stumbling towards their graves, looking sleepy, some actually rubbing their eyes and yawning. It was working! I watched as the dead began to crawl back into their graves, looking like they were all finally going to get the rest they deserved. My eyes met Pearl’s, and the smile died on my lips as I fully realized what this meant for her, for me, for us.
The song played on, and while the other dancers looked like they were starting to flag, Pearl danced faster, her face more alive than even before she’d died, looking more and more like her old self before the sickness took her. The grey-green tint to her skin was now a glowing pink, her skin stretched smooth all over her, her hair was full again, and her eyes were sparkling with life.
As the dead were subsumed back into the earth, I was confident they wouldn’t go nightwalking again. But Pearl kept dancing with me, and we twirled through the graves, both determined to keep going.
As the song came to a finish, Pearl circled her arms around me and we kissed. We kissed goodbye, tearful and heartfelt, our lips pressed against each other, breathing each other in. She smelled like spring in full bloom, the scent of decay completely gone, as if she was alive again. I wanted the moment to go on and on, but Pearl broke from the kiss to step away from me, holding me at arm’s length.
The color began to drain out of her. She faded like sun bleaching dye from fabric. She became a pale-grey statue looking at me with a wobbly smile as if she knew something that made her happy and sad at the same time. Then her solid form began to drift apart like a cloud tumbling in the sky, and she was a girl made of ash now, not stone, and then even the greys started to fade, and I could see through the Pearl-shaped cloud she had become. The ash turned to smoke as her see-through body wavered and dissipated as the smoke blew away in a predawn breeze. She was less than smoke now, she was part of the air, impossible to see or touch anymore.
“Pearl!” I cried out.
But Pearl was gone.
I sank to my knees in the graveyard, morning sunlight beginning to creep over everything, the golden-pink light cheerful and optimistic, making the pain in my heart that much harder to bear as a day as glorious as any in God’s creation began, life happily continuing for everyone and everything else. The gloves evaporated from my hands, their job done.
A touch on my shoulder. “You did it,” said Marie, her voice gentle and reassuring. “They can all sleep now. Because of you.”
“But not Pearl.” I could feel tears in the corner of my eyes and furiously tried to blink them away.
“Remember, they say magic has to come from somewhere,” said Marie. “I reckon she took every scrap of natural magic she had in her—that would have returned to the earth to make flowers and grass and such while she slept the true sleep of death—and used it to have that one last kiss with you.”
I sighed, reverently touching my fingertips to my lips. Pearl had paid such an enormous price to say goodbye. “I can’t stay here.”
I didn’t realize I’d spoken the thought out loud until Marie said, “You could come with me. Us. The theatre troupe.”
I stared at her, not sure how to respond.
“We’re going westward,” she went on, “to make sure folks from all parts get to see at least one Shakespeare performance in their lives. We’re going to keep heading west until we see the Pacific, maybe see about getting gigs in the movie studios.”
“But I’m not an actress,” I told her.
“I was actually wondering about asking you to come on as our costume maker,” said Marie. “Your work is a far sight better than anything me or anyone else in the troupe are able to do. Having a full-time seamstress with us, especially backstage during performances, would save us from quite a lot of trouble. Pay isn’t riches, but I personally guarantee you’d draw a wage each week, meals and boarding included, even if that boarding might mean the occasional seat on a train.”
I looked at her and smiled, and for the first time in a while, I was able to imagine what the future might look like.
Three days later, I got on a train with Marie, all my worldly possessions stuffed into one valise, taking just the “Dove in the Window” quilt along with my sewing supplies. I had left a brief note on the kitchen table before I snuck out before dawn.
As the train chugged out of the station, heading west, I sat next to Marie, surrounded by the laughing, talking, singing, squabbling troupe, all determined to make the trip part rehearsal, part party. They filled the whole car, and while there were some empty seats, other passengers took a peek in at the madness and promptly found a different car to sit in. It was my first train ride, and I was dazzled by the sigh
t of the landscape flashing by outside the window. Marie squeezed my hand. I turned to look at her.
“It might be wrong, but I’m glad the train left before Cousin Martha could show up and tell me how many sins I committed just by saying yes to coming with you.”
Marie’s eyes widened and her lips curved up into a delighted smile, “As Romeo said, ‘Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged! Give me my sin again.’!”
And I leaned forward and kissed her.
About Kara Race-Moore
Kara Race-Moore studied history at Simmons College as an excuse to read about the soap opera lives of British royals. Although the Tudors will always be a favorite time period, she loves to read about all times and places and especially loves the turbulent period of the 1930s because so much began in that period that would have repercussions for decades.
She worked in educational publishing, casting the molds for future generations’ minds, but has since moved into the more civilized world of litigation. For a day job, working with lawyers has the benefits of paying the bills and never running the risk of becoming dull or repetitive.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kara.racemoore
Bottom of the River
Samantha Kate
Anja knew to stay away from the river.
Her mother and father had warned her about it since she was a child. She was never to step foot in its muddy waters, for the moment she did, the waves would swell up and consume her, drowning her amid the rocks and rotting logs on its floor. Anja was never told why this would happen, only that it was certain.
But on some days, Anja preferred the thought of that bitter end to another day spent with her parents.
The three of them lived in the largest house in the village, near the edge of the Black Forest. Her father had once been a farmer, Anja was told, but never had she seen him toil in the fields. Their family possessed enough gold, silver, and jewels to pay for all their material needs and much more; their wardrobes overflowed with silk dresses and long buttoned coats, and servants always bustled about the kitchen, preparing enough sauerbraten and boiled potatoes for a family three times their size.