Burly Tales

by Steve Berman

  For whatever was fighting would come for them next. It felt giant. Monstrous. As tall as trees and strong as fire. It fought and growled until all Shiro could smell was blood.

  Then, silence. Then, the two of them close together, hearts racing.

  They didn’t dare come out. Not for hours. Not until the sun pressed against the crack in the wardrobe and Shiro could finally see Crow with the sliver of light. His face was that of a bird’s, the beak pointed straight, trying to look outside. For hours, they sat there.

  His entire body hurt to move, but Shiro opened the door, carefully.

  The prayer room was a ruin.

  Claw marks covered nearly every surface. Half the walls were torn down. Blood painted the floor.

  Shiro would never know what the Goblin Rat looked like, truly, because she was a mess of shredded red skin and white bones. There was nothing left but remnants and the corpses of the torn monks, their bellies emptied of slaughtered rats.

  Shiro stood with the tengu leaning against him, surveying the wreckage.

  “But what creature could—?”

  “Your cats,” Crow said, gesturing at the walls.

  And there, Shiro’s cats of ink and blood looked down upon them lazily. They were still paintings, but not in their original poses. They grinned, rat fur matted in their mouths, blood staining their incisors.

  He felt a faint purring vibrating out from the walls, but the cats did not move. They remained perpetually happy from their feast.

  Shiro’s cats had saved them.

  He and Crow waited for somebody to come, but of course nobody would. The monks had fled months ago. Nobody stopped by a haunted monastery. When the birds and animals returned to the woods, they were alone. Not a single rat was left scurrying alive.

  “It seems you’ve finally won your territory,” Shiro said.

  Crow sat on the engawa with his back to him. There was no re-growing the stumps where his wings once were. No more silent movement or flight. He couldn’t walk without stumbling, but that would heal. They both knew that, with so many scars, he was no longer a tengu. That he would never roam the skies again.

  Crow did not weep. He seemed both destroyed and relieved.

  Shiro sat beside him.

  They looked out at the forest.

  “I can’t hold a territory, not anymore,” Crow said. “I could barely protect myself once the Goblin Rat took my wings. I didn’t want you to see me like that. I still don’t. Those wings were my pride.”

  “Maybe you could protect a smaller range. Here with me.”

  Crow blinked a moment. “This monastery?”

  Shiro lifted his arms. “This monastery abandoned to the woods. I’ll be its keeper, but you are its protector. We’ll root out any remaining rats together, if there are any. Help out the town.”

  “The monks won’t come back?”

  “Not if we lie and say it’s cursed.”

  “And when something bigger and stronger comes to claim this area as their own? What will we do then?”

  “Then we’ll kill them or we’ll die. But we will die on land that we’ve made sacred. Do you think that’s so bad?”

  Crow laughed, his neck feathers ruffling outward. He shook his head. “No, it’s not the worst thing.”

  “There’s one stipulation though.”

  “And what is that, Shiro?”

  “Once you heal, I plan to kidnap you.”

  Crow cocked his head. “Do you, now?”

  “Yes. I’ll tie you up and throw you over the back of a horse, then leave you by the seaside. Then you’ll have to spend days wandering around to try and find me.”

  “And what will happen when I do find you?”

  Shiro leaned close and took Crow’s hands in his own. “Of course, I’ll attack.”

  Heft

  Mark Ward

  Those thin men, skeletons

  in tight flesh. They say you’ve

  put on weight since

  the whole ‘new clothes’ affair—

  but at least there’s no more pretence.

  They were sure of your

  shame, but instead you revelled

  in how your body moved, let those

  knights aspire to tautness—

  you installed mirrors, had seconds,

  took to walking around the palace

  naked and gloriously feckless.

  I had left home, being the youngest

  and having eaten them out of it, I found

  a job as a footman; yours.

  You liked to inspect us yourself

  (which caused a whisper) when

  company was coming—

  some queen and her stable of princesses

  to dangle under your nose. That day,

  you wore a robe, just about.

  My uniform didn’t fit and I bulged

  out of it, embarrassed. We didn’t speak

  but a week later, one arrived,

  tailor-made. The others noticed and

  the first footman told me to go and

  say thank you.

  At your room, the maid said you were

  in the library. Asleep naked in a chair,

  your book had slid down, covering

  nothing—you awoke and stared at me,

  still half-asleep, before realizing your body

  had woken too. You were embarrassed,

  something no one had seen you be since

  that day the whole town laughed at you,

  not for your body but your gullibility.

  You had swooned over the tailor, you later told me,

  his barrel-chest, his measuring tape covering every

  inch of you. You wanted it to be true.

  Now, you reached for a robe and covered yourself,

  abashed. I’m sorry for interrupting, Sire. And you

  laughed, smiled. You didn’t. Jones, isn’t it?

  I instinctively straightened up. Yes, Sire. And you

  didn’t speak for a long minute. I’m glad to see that

  your new attire suits you well. I wanted you

  to be comfortable in it, a handsome man like yourself.

  The next day, dressed, you sat and spoke with me,

  about small things, palace life, everything.

  Within a few weeks, our visits were twice daily.

  You asked if I would be happy to spend my time with you

  as your personal footman. You stared at the ground,

  nervous I would say no. I’d really like that but there’s

  just one thing. You sighed, regretting saying anything.

  The clothes you’ve been wearing have got to go.

  You smiled but said, I can’t, not around you. I undid your buttons,

  your breeches and kissed you, embracing your heft. I stripped too

  and brought us to the mirror to see us in our finery.

  El Muerto’s Godson

  Evey Brett

  I DO NOT REMEMBER THE night my father took me out onto the road, though I heard the tale many times as I grew. The tall saguaro cacti watched like sentinels and the desert air was damp with the threat of rain. Owls and coyotes made an uneasy chorus while my father held me against his chest, full of despair.

  “Thirteen,” he muttered. “Twelve children I can handle, but thirteen is too many! I already work day and night just to put bread on the table. No, no, this one must go; I will give him to the first godfather I can find.”

  We were out on the road for some time when there came a man on a white horse, his jacket embroidered with fine silver thread and inlaid with pearls. In the moonlight, he sparkled so brilliantly he might have been one of the stars come to earth.

  “Please, sir,” my father said, “I love my child, but I have twelve others to feed. Can you find it in your heart to be a padrino to this one?”

  The man gazed down at me with nothing but love in his expression. “I would be honored to do as you ask, señor. I will hold this child at his christenin
g and see that he is happy upon the earth.”

  Something in the words made my father wary. “Who are you?”

  “I am the master of the heavens,” he said. “The creator of all.”

  “Then I change my mind,” my father said stubbornly, and gripped me hard enough that I squirmed. “You reward the rich while leaving the poor to starve.”

  And so saying, my father turned his back and continued down the road.

  A second horse came thundering up, this one sleek and wild with a hide as red as blood. The caballero astride him was handsome and dashing in a short coat of black studded with crimson jewels. My father repeated his plea, and this man said, “Of course I will take your child. I will shower him with gifts and riches, the likes of which you cannot imagine.”

  This, too, raised my father’s suspicions. “Who are you?”

  “El Diablo,” he said with a grin that lit a fire in his eyes.

  My father hugged me close. “Then I do not choose you, for you are a liar and a deceiver.”

  El Diablo just laughed, and rode away as madly as he’d come. My father stood stiffly on the road, anger mixing with misery. He could not keep me, yet he was losing hope of finding me a suitable guardian.

  And then, so stealthily we did not hear him approach until he was upon us, came a third man. He wore gray, such a dusty, light color that he was nearly lost in the night. His steed was a sturdy, dappled gelding that reminded me of my father’s plow horse.

  “I will take your child,” he said in a voice that rasped like dead leaves. “I am El Muerto. In my eyes, all are equal, and he who has me as a friend lacks for nothing.”

  At this, my father’s hope rekindled once more. “Then I choose you, for you make no distinction between rich and poor. The christening will be Sunday at noon; will you come?”

  “I will,” said El Muerto, and he kept his promise.

  The adobe church was tiny, barely large enough to fit my family along with the priest. If any wondered who my strange padrino was, they did not ask.

  Afterwards, my padrino cradled me in his arm and carried me outside. As he did, the storms broke, bringing the life-giving rain to the desert and giving me a baptism of a different sort.

  And thus I began my apprenticeship.

  “FOR EVERY LIFE, THERE IS a death,” was the first lesson I was taught. “And for every death, a life.”

  My padrino would take me out into the desert and show me everything, from hawks and coyotes preying on hares to buzzards and maggots feasting on the corpses. I saw snakes eating lizards, and once, a kingsnake battled with a rattlesnake, twisting and writhing until it managed to swallow the rattler whole.

  I witnessed births as well, from the summer rains bringing forth seedlings and drawing toads from their year-long slumber to mate and find puddles in which to lay eggs that would become toads in a matter of days. Doves and woodpeckers tended their young in their nests. Sometimes the babies lived to fly. Sometimes a falcon or snake got them first.

  Never a harsh word did my padrino speak, and never did I fear him. Life and death were one, an endless cycle that he worked to keep in balance with some algorithm that I did not yet understand, but assumed that one day I would.

  Later on, he took me with him to sickbeds where doctors worked to heal their patients. Sometimes they managed; often, they didn’t. As I grew, I had a keen sense of awareness. I had but to glance at a person to know what ailed them, and if they might live or die. The strange thing was, none of those near death did anything about it.

  “Padrino,” I asked one day, “don’t they know they’re going to die? Can’t they feel it?”

  He shook his head. “Few are so aware. When you’re of age I will teach you, more about it. For now, just watch and listen and learn.”

  So I did.

  Over the years my childish fascination grew to keen understanding. And while my mind changed and adapted, so did my body. I began to have lurid dreams, and while the resulting reactions did not frighten me, I found them disconcerting. I was a man, after all. I’d seen animals rut and create a new life.

  But I was also different, and not just because El Muerto was my godfather.

  He was old beyond measure, and if he ever felt a young man’s stirrings, he had forgotten them long ago. When I overcame my embarrassment enough to ask him, he said nothing but took me with him on one of his nightly journeys, making sure no one saw us.

  I witnessed girls laughing and flirting with boys who tumbled them in the hay. There were the working women of the pueblo, the ones who gave themselves to the soldiers in exchange for money. Other men beat their wives into submission, caring little for their protests in the bedroom. And, thankfully, there were the married couples who were truly in love, and treated each other tenderly when they offered up their bodies.

  And last, we came upon a pair of vaqueros alone guarding a herd of cattle. They were both naked, entwined on a saddle blanket and rutting the way I’d seen a stallion do with a mare; thrusting and grunting and making odd moaning noises.

  My heart skipped, and I felt a strange tingling within me that had not happened with the other couples. Longing stirred, and with it, my cock.

  Cheeks flaming, I turned away so my padrino could not see the result of my excitement. Even so, he must have noticed, because he said, “There are many kinds of love.”

  Feeling mollified that he thought me neither strange nor unnatural, I asked, “Have you ever loved anyone so?”

  He was silent for a long, long time before he said, “Once.”

  But no matter my pleading, he would not say more. I wondered who he might have loved, and who could have loved El Muerto.

  A FEW NIGHTS LATER, HE took me on another journey, this time to a secluded grotto at the base of the black mountains. There was a pool there, fed by water bubbling up through the earth. Around its edge grew an herb I’d never before seen; it had small, pointed leaves and sported tiny white flowers.

  “What I show you is our secret, and to be used in our work and only as I bid you. Do you understand?”

  I nodded, wondering what this was. My padrino was rarely so grave. “I do.”

  He plucked a few sprigs of the herb. “With this, the hierba vida, I give you the gift that is your destiny. You will be a curandero, a healer. And when you are called to a patient’s bedside, I will be there. If I am at the head of the bed, you may give the patient this herb and they will be well. If I am at the foot, you will say that all remedies are in vain, and the patient cannot be saved. And beware of using the hierba vida against my wishes lest ill befall you.”

  “Sí, Padrino.” Never before had I gone against my guardian; I could not dream of anything that would make me do so.

  He taught me how to prepare the hierba vida, by drying it then crushing it into a fine powder that could be mixed with either water or wine. A sip or two would be sufficient. Under his supervision, I prepared a batch and kept it in a small gourd that served as a flask. I ached to try it, to see what would happen, but I knew better than to disobey my padrino.

  He found me a hut at the edge of the pueblo, one with just enough room for myself, my medicines, and a patient, who was not long in coming. The pueblo had a physician trained in Madrid, but many either could not afford him or were too shy to ask such a well-dressed man for help.

  My first was a shy little girl who simply held out her reddened hand, which I guessed had been burned in a fire. This I did not need my padrino for; I knew well enough which medicaments would heal without resorting to the hierba vida. So I tended her wound and bade her be more careful around the cookfire. She mumbled something in thanks and handed me a pretty green stone she must have found while out playing. I smiled and set it on a shelf so I could be reminded of my first patient.

  Soon after, a man about my age arrived at my door, breathless. “It’s my wife. She just gave birth, but she’s ill. And so hot ....”

  I grabbed the gourd of hierba vida and followed him through the pueblo until we
reached a small adobe house. Inside, a basket with a swaddled infant sat beside a bed on which a young woman twisted and thrashed, face covered in sweat. To my relief, my padrino stood at the head of the bed.

  My hand shook as I held the gourd to the woman’s lips. She batted at me and refused to drink; I bade the husband to hold her arms while I steadied her head and trickled the medicine down her throat.

  I waited for one long breath. Two. And I began to fear that I had done something wrong in preparing the herb, or worse, that my padrino had lied to me about its efficacy.

  Then, with a gasp so sudden and loud that I jumped, she went limp and relaxed into a normal sleep. I put a hand on her forehead. The fever had broken.

  “It’s a miracle,” the husband said, and kissed me on the cheek. I was pleased; more than pleased. I checked the infant over as a precaution, and was soon certain that both mother and child would be well and healthy.

  My next patient, however, was not so fortunate.

  “Please come, señor,” said the young farmer twisting his straw hat in his hands. “It’s my brother. There’s been a terrible accident.”

  There was no time to saddle my own horse, so I clung to him as we rode, ending up at a farmstead. I saw the blood trailing from the field and into the house, and thought if my patient were still alive it would be a miracle.

  The family had gathered around his bed, weeping. My patient was young, not even sixteen.

  I peeled away the cloths pressed against the grievous scythe wound in his leg and knew, even before I saw my padrino standing at the foot of the bed, he would die.

  “Send for a priest,” I told the brother. “There is nothing I or anyone can do for him.”

  The brother ran, and the priest arrived mere moments before my patient succumbed to his injury. I snuck out, pained and aggrieved.

  Even though I had acted rightly, the loss stung. The hierba vida could have staunched the blood and saved him.

  “It was his time,” my padrino said, and I did not argue, however much my pride stung. “For every life that goes, another takes its place.”