by Peter Beagle
“Dammit, I can’t—”
“When I was upstairs, I heard a noise in the second-floor bedroom. I was surprised the door was locked, but not half as surprised as when I found a strange man in there.” Yolanda paused. “The blood on your shirt wasn’t from a deer, was it?”
Mary took a deep breath. “No. It’s wasn’t. The man in the bedroom is…my boyfriend Karl. He wrecked his bike, and I brought him here.”
“That boyfriend of yours is a real cutie. But he has an awful lot of stitches in him. I’m no doctor, but I think I can tell when a guy’s had his head sewn back on.
“So how come your boyfriend is still breathing when he should be in a morgue?”
“I’m…a healer. A white witch. That’s why William hired me. I could keep him alive when the doctors couldn’t.”Mary took another deep breath, trying to steady her nerves. “Last night, I had a vision that Karl had an accident. He was dead when I found him, so I brought him here to bring him back. Since then, I’ve had…bad premonitions. Something very evil is coming here, and I honestly don’t know what it is. I do know that if we don’t get out of here, it’s going to kill me and Karl, and probably you, too.”
Yolanda considered this information. “Maybe all this is happening because you helped Karl cheat Death?”
“No. I’ve done resurrections before, and nothing like this happened. Besides, by that logic, the spells I cast on William should’ve brought evil down on us, too. Heart failure is just as fatal as decapitation. Neither of the men in my life should be alive right now.”
Yolanda stared at Mary. “I knew of a Santeria witch woman once. She claimed she did white magic, too, but there was a blood price for everything she did. There was a balance. If she cured a cold, a chicken or a lizard had to die. If she helped someone stay alive, someone else had to die.”
“There has to be a balance, yes. You can’t generate magic out of nothing. Healing requires a lot of spiritual energy, and the easy way to get it is to take it from another life. But my mother taught me a better way: I can generate the energy myself, if I stay fit and eat right and all that good stuff.”
“So you don’t kill people?”
“Not unless they’re trying to kill me.”
Yolanda considered this, then pulled the key out of her pocket and tossed it to Mary. “Let’s get your boyfriend and get out of here. If something happens to the house…well, that’s why Mr. Barrington has insurance.”
After checking on Karl and replacing his I.V. bag, the two women went up to Mary’s bedroom. Mary quickly laced on her old hiking boots and threw a few changes of clothes and some toiletries into an overnight bag.
“We’ve got to be really careful with Karl.” Mary shook her head. “He shouldn’t be moved at all, but we have no choice. There’s an old wheelchair up in the attic. We can use that to take him out to the car.”
Mary left her bag on her dressing table and knelt down beside her bed. She reached under it and pulled out a battered steel case.
“First things first,” Mary said. “We’ve got to be able to defend ourselves.”
Mary undid the combination locks and opened the case. She pulled out a large revolver, flipped open the cylinder and checked the contents. Satisfied, she closed the cylinder and held the pistol out to Yolanda. “Here, take this. It’s loaded with consecrated silver bullets half-jacketed in cold iron. Ammunition against most anything, dead or alive.”
Yolanda stared at the gun as if it were a very large spider. “I have never fired a gun in my life.”
“It’s easy: just point the gun at the thing you want to kill and squeeze the trigger.” When Yolanda didn’t reach for the gun, Mary added, “Look, you’ve got to take it. It’s iron; I can’t have it on me, or it’ll screw up any spells I try to cast.”
Yolanda reluctantly took the pistol and stuck it in one of the deep side pockets of her apron.
Mary lifted an ancient silver-bladed bronze dagger in a red leather sheath from the case. It was an Irish priest’s scían, made sometime in the fourth century. She stuck the holy weapon in the waistband of her jeans under her pullover. “Please get the wheelchair, and I’ll prep Karl for the trip.”
Mary grabbed her overnight bag and hurried down the stairs. The aspirin had only blunted the pain in her head, and her stomach was growling unpleasantly. At least her overlong sleep had given her most of her energy back. Once they had Karl squared away at a motel someplace, she could order a pizza and cast a divination to figure out what the hell was causing her visions.
Her stomach growled again, loudly. God, she was so hungry! If she didn’t get more food soon, she’d lose what little concentration she had left. Mary dropped her bag beside Karl’s bedroom door on the second floor landing and headed down to the kitchen.
As she was hunting for a Powerbar in the pantry, the back door opened.
“Who’s there?” she called, putting a hand on the hilt of her dagger.
“It’s just me, dear.” William Barrington stepped out of the darkened entry hall into the light from the kitchen. He looked alert and cheerful, despite his long flight. “I’d have called to let you know I was returning early, but that would have spoiled the surprise. Please meet Nala, my new nurse.”
A tall, beautiful model in a tailored green suit stepped up beside William. Her silken auburn hair cascaded down over her shoulders, and her eyes—Mary blinked, and did a double-take.
The woman’s lovely high cheeks, pouting lips and green eyes seemed transparent, and behind the beautiful mask of a face Mary could just barely see the visage of something ugly and gray, something with skin that writhed and eyes like molten lead.
“I met Nala in Mexico City a few months ago,” William said. “I appreciate all you’ve done, but the fact is, it’s not enough. Nala can give me eternal youth. I’ve got to say her magical skills are quite impressive. Did you know she can pull a man’s guts out through his mouth, and keep him alive indefinitely? She can also make the dumb son-of-a-bitch who’s been fucking my wife wreck his motorcycle. Neat, huh?”
Mary’s stomach dropped as she remembered her visions.
“But you can’t be young again and remain William Barrington, can you?” she said. “So you have to become someone else. I get it. You planned to have her magic Karl’s bones and teeth to look like yours, then kill me and burn the place down.”
She took a step toward him. “The police would find the skeletons and think we’d both died in a freak fire. And then you’d take over the identity of whoever inherits the estate and the insurance money.”
She paused, trying to remember the latest rewrite of his will. “It’s your nephew George, isn’t it? You’re gonna kill him and Rita. Damn you, those kids just got married.”
“You’re a sharp girl; I always liked that about you.” William’s expression didn’t change.
Mary swallowed nervously, trying hard not to look at Nala. “You didn’t have to do this. I could’ve made you young again, and arranged a new life for you—”
“Bullshit.” His eyes gleamed with fury. “How am I supposed to trust you after you’ve cheated on me? Do you think I can’t smell that bastard’s stink on you?”
“The only stink you’re smelling is coming from your new girlfriend. Christ, she’s not even human! The only eternal life you’re gonna get out of this is the one she’s booked you in Hell.”
He smiled thinly. “I doubt I’ll die to see it anytime soon. So be sure to send me a postcard when you get there.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Mary saw Yolanda creeping down the stairs with the gun in her hands.
“This is taking too long,” Nala announced. She had a voice like a nestful of copperheads sliding through the strings of a bass violin. “I need to get on with the boyfriend’s transformation if we’re going to be finished by dawn.”
“Right,” William said. “Kill her.”
Nala hissed and made a grasping gesture with her left had. Mary gasped as invisible claws raked her innards an
d closed around her heart. Her whole body began to shake. She tried to speak a protective charm, but her tongue was paralyzed. She could only emit a thin moan as the agony became unbearable—
Fire flashed from the muzzle of Yolanda’s revolver. The twin Magnum booms were deafening. Two bullets exploded through Nala’s belly, leaving behind raw, saucer-sized craters that oozed black ichor.
The spectral claws abruptly released Mary. Nala roared, enraged and in pain, and turned on Yolanda. The demoness raised her hands and made a sharp push in the air.
An invisible force slammed into Yolanda’s chest. She was flung backward into the stairs. Mary heard the crack of bone against wood. Yolanda bounced forward and tumbled down to the ground floor like a rag doll.
Mary was already whispering an incantation as she drew the silver dagger. She tackled the demoness, pinning her arms to the tile floor.
“With the power of the Goddess I cast thee, foul creature, from this house and from this living plane!” Mary shouted.
She grabbed the shrieking demoness by the hair and carved into her neck until she felt the metal grinding against bone. She whispered the ancient Gaelic words of banishment into Nala’s ear.
“Immee gys Niurin!” she finished with a shout.
Mary gave a hard yank, and heard a wet popping. She wrapped both arms beneath Nala’s chin and yanked again, hard as she could. Nala’s head tore free.
The decapitated demoness shuddered, then fell limp. Her flesh and bones smoked, collapsed and disintegrated as if her body had been little more than a shell of flash paper. In seconds, there was nothing left but a sulphurous stink and a film of ash on the floor and on Mary’s jeans.
William was still standing there, dumbfounded. “What—what have you done?” he finally stammered. “I already gave up my soul. Oh God. What the fuck is going to happen to me now?”
Mary stood up. “You’re going to Hell, asshole.”
She slugged him in the jaw with everything she had left. He tumbled backward and fell flat on his back, unconscious.
Mary looked around. Yolanda lay in an unmoving heap at the bottom of the staircase. Mary’s stomach sank. She hurried to the housekeeper’s side and gently rolled her over. Her neck was broken, and her eyes stared out at nothing. Mary couldn’t find a pulse.
Tears welled in her eyes. “Goddammit, I don’t have anything left. I can’t help her. Unless…”
Mary stared at her husband.
“What I’ve given, I can take away.”
She dragged him over to Yolanda’s corpse, washed her hands, and began.
Three weeks later, the first snow of the winter fell. Mary finished her conversation with the coroner and hung up the phone. She cinched her thick terrycloth robe tighter, wiggled her feet back into her bunny slippers and padded into the library.
Yolanda and Karl were reading on a quilt they’d spread beside the roaring fireplace.
“Well, looks like you two are feeling better,” Mary said.
“Yes, much better,” Yolanda replied. “Was that the coroner?”
“Yep.”
“What did he say?”
“That Mr. William Barrington the Third died of natural causes. Namely, arteriosclerosis and coronary failure due to a long life of smoking and drinking and being a general heartless prick. The police are no longer interested in anything that may or may not have happened here last month. And so William’s estate will officially become mine once the paperwork is sorted out.”
“So what happens now?” Karl asked.
Mary sat down beside him and gave him a playful pinch. “What happens now is that you are going to give me a foot rub. A very long foot rub, because I am beat.”
She lay back on the quilt and closed her eyes. “But please, be gentle. I’m in mourning.”
Solstice Maiden
by
Anna Kashina
The crowd by the village well watched in silence as my guards and I rode up to the house at the end of the muddy street. The chipped, moss-covered logs of its walls lay unevenly, as if placed by a drunken builder. The man and woman standing in the doorway eyed me sullenly. As I stopped my horse in front of their broken fence, their silence made me wonder if force was going to be necessary after all. Then the man turned and pulled somebody from the darkness beyond the doorway. A girl.
“Mistress, this is my youngest daughter, Alyona. Sixteen, this past week. She will make a fine Sacrifice.” His voice wavered, and I heard sobs in the depth of the house, followed by hushing, and then silence.
I nodded, surveying my quarry. She wore a baggy linen dress, her head covered by a dirt-gray knitted scarf. Her pale face was swollen with tears as she eyed me from underneath her long eyelashes.
“Remove your scarf,” I ordered.
Her fingers trembled as she hastened to obey, revealing a mass of dark blond hair. She had pulled it all back into a tight braid, and tucked it into her dress—a hairstyle that came in handy during housework. What showed of her braid, though, looked thick enough to promise a fine display, if combed and arranged properly. I leaned forward in the saddle to take a closer look at her face. She would have been pretty if her face wasn’t so puffed up from crying. Instinct told me she was a virgin, as the villagers must believe her to be. My servants would check, of course. But so far, so good.
I straightened in the saddle, turning to look at the frightened faces all around me. The silence was almost palpable. I could feel their anxiety upon me as I turned to my guards and said: “Very well. Bring her along.”
Amidst suppressed sighs of relief I turned my horse and left the village.
It is a tale, old as time, true as life. Every Solstice, a maiden must die to appease the god of the crops, to keep hunger out of our simple kingdom. And I, the Mistress of the Solstice, must be the one to sacrifice her. On that night, every one of our subjects gathers around a bonfire, consumed by the power of love. Of lust, really, for no love could possibly bloom for one night and fade into nothingness, like the elusive fern flower the shier couples pretend to seek when they wander into the woods. The rest hold an orgy right at the bonfire glade, and I, the Mistress of the Solstice, must preside over this feast of love and lust and sacrifice without letting it touch me with its vile clutches. I must be free of love, or everything will turn to doom.
Doom followed me that day as I rode out onto the palace plaza. He blocked my way—a slim young man with straw-colored hair, freckles, cornflower-blue eyes, and a smile of wonder that made him look daft as he stood in front of my horse, gaping.
A fool, really.
He didn’t move as I rode up to him, so I was forced to pull my horse to a stop.
“You’re in my way.”
His smile widened, his eyes wistful as he stared. “You’re so beautiful.”
I swallowed. I had been told this many times by men much more impressive than him. And yet, these simple words never made me feel like this.
They never made me feel.
It was his eyes, I realized. Their cornflower blue held a warmth, a mischievous vigor I had never seen before.
I forced my gaze away, over the frozen crowd of onlookers, toward my guards.
“Get him out of my way,” I ordered, urging my horse on.
As I rode, I heard a whiplash and gasps behind me, but I never turned to look.
I am Marya, daughter of Tzar Kashchey the Immortal.
People call him Kashchey the Undead. Not true. He does have a Death, at least one. It dwells on the tip of a needle, just like the legends say. Breaking this needle is the only thing that could kill my father, but he’d taken precautions to make sure it would never happen. He made the needle sturdy, so that no mortal hands could possibly break it. And, he made it look ordinary, like other sewing needles. No mortal could possibly tell them apart. The needle is quite safe, sitting among the others in my sewing box, in my room. My father trusts me, his only living daughter, with his own Death.
Legends depict Kashchey as a withered old ma
n, a walking corpse, but what is the fun of being immortal if you have to spend eternity in such a miserable form? He looks young and handsome, a dark man whose charms leave no woman unfeeling. Not until he tires of them.
It is rumored that my mother had been one of them, the most beautiful woman in the world, a victim of his dark passions. It is rumored that she loved him more than life and that he betrayed her. I don’t know and I don’t care. I am the Mistress of the Solstice and I know no love. We are two of a kind, my father and I.
My room greeted me with its soothing calmness. Stepping quietly not to wake Raven, asleep on his perch, I walked straight to my Mirror.
“Show me the most beautiful woman in the world.”
A stillness enfolded me as the Mirror settled into our familiar game. Its gray mist thinned, revealing my own face. I knew I would see myself, and I could have simply asked the Mirror to show my reflection, but what fun would that be?
I smiled, and my face in the Mirror smiled back at me.
“Show me my thoughts.”
My face disappeared. The gray mist wavered beneath the smooth surface of the glass, and then…
I found myself staring into a pair of blue eyes, a freckled face bearing that idiotic child-like smile as if he had just encountered a miracle. The boy from the plaza.
I drew back from the Mirror, nearly falling over. “Stop!” I shouted, and his face faded into the gray mist. Raven shrieked on his perch, trying to get my attention, but I could see nothing except the cornflower eyes, could hear nothing except the words he had uttered so stupidly back on the plaza. You’re so beautiful…
“How dare he,” I whispered. “How dare he tell me I am beautiful!”
“Because you are, Marya,” Raven said quietly. “The most beautiful woman in the world.”
I swallowed, forcing the trembling out of my clenched hands, forcing the memory of his caressing gaze out of my head. I must—remain—free. I will. Whatever the cost.