“Do you have a cigarette?” I asked.
Anne never selected men who smoked, as she claimed it fouled the lungs. I took the cigarette and cradled it over the match he offered. “Could I have the matches?” I asked. “I’ll give you a franc for them.”
His eyebrows rose, but he made the exchange anyway and then went on his way.
I took a puff of the cigarette, and then dropped it and ground it under my shoe. I recalled why I’d quit smoking after the war; it dried me out. I had escaped the morphine as well, although that had been far more difficult. Surely I could overcome my need for Anne.
I would keep to my original plan, and wait until she trusted me and made me known to them. Or perhaps....
I lit one of the matches and watched its comforting glow fade in the waxing light. I thought of the lace curtains in the sitting room and the fragile fabric of the throws. They would burn quickly. Then the wallpaper would catch, sending flames up into the walls and the upper floors. The third floor with its rooms of globes would become an incinerator, stamping out all the small fragile lives therein. Nothing of Jeremy could be saved.
Goliarde I could find easily. Then I would have to hunt down the others, although I don’t know all their names.
Anne slept on the second floor, entangled in her silken sheets, looking deceptively angelic but smelling of lilies and musk. She would go as well. I thought of her swaying hips and those strawberry lips that spread her seed so judiciously.
My hands shook as I blew out the match. Tomorrow, perhaps.
Copyright © 2010 J. Kathleen Cheney
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J. Kathleen Cheney is a former teacher and has taught mathematics ranging from 7th grade to Calculus. Her works have been published in Fantasy Magazine, The Best of Jim Baen’s Universe 2, and Writers of the Future XXIV. Her website can be found at www.jkathleencheney.com.
Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies
AS BELOW, SO ABOVE
by Ferrett Steinmetz
Up at the shimmering edge of the sky, where the water met the air, Son spread his tentacles out beneath the terrible shadow of his father. They were waiting for the ships. Son felt the approaching heart-thrum bouncing off the coral-crusted hulls below as the ships crested the painwall.
Are you sure you should do this, Father? Son thought. He twisted his mantle around to gaze at the scarred stumps of his father’s tentacles. You’ve trained me well. There’d be no shame in letting me take this harvest.
My name, thought Two-Father, his beak clacking shut with the finality of a ship’s hull crunching into stone, is Two, formerly One. It is a name I earned, one murder at a time. And I will carry out the harvest until Dysmas decides I am no longer worthy. He flexed his tentacles experimentally, then added: Perhaps He already has.
Don’t say that, Father, thought Son. Dysmas could not ask for a worthier beast. He must heal you.
Two-Father’s great blue eye was clouded, his suckers cracked and shrunken. His remaining tentacles, once as nimble as a school of fish, were stiff and slow. It was the same disease that had struck One-Mother just before her end.
Son rippled uneasily in the water, trying to imagine what Two-Father had done to warrant such an affliction. He tried to envision life without Two-Father—no more chasing-games around the cavern-filled Ring that surrounded Dysmas’s great Spire, no more competitions of hunt-the-shark—and shuddered water, uneasily, from his gills.
Ah, Son, thought Two-Father, reaching down to stroke the sensitive tips of his feeling-tentacles across the Son’s head-fin. Dysmas has given me so many gifts. This pain is a small price to pay.
That was Two-Father’s way. Every day, he sang the hymns of praise to Dysmas, thanking the sky-father for his former wife, for the great feasts, for the beauty of the playgrounds of the Ring, for the strength and power of his wondrous Son.
Son sang, too, but secretly he prayed for Dysmas to forgive Two-Father—or at least tell them what Two-Father had done. Two-Father never missed a harvest, even though they came at all times these days, arriving without warning in greater and greater numbers. Why would Dysmas make him weak when he needed to be strong?
Worse, Son suspected he knew why. But how could he tell Two-Father?
My only regret, thought Two-Father, is that you have never met Him. If you did, you would understand everything. Now still yourself; the ships arrive.
Two-Father twitched with eagerness. Son knew he would have launched himself at the ships immediately were it not for the billowing mesh of the painwall. Not even Two-Father could bear to approach that agony—not that he would, for Dysmas had marked the edge of the world with a net and Dysmas was never to be questioned.
Son froze at the approach of the ships, trying to untangle the jumble of heart-hums that drummed against his skin. There were five of them. Once that would have been a large pack, but these days the ships came in such droves that five was nearly a respite. As the pack crested the netting of the painwall, they split off and away from Two-Father, circling around towards the Spire above the sky. The crops, scuttling across the flattened tops of the ships like pink parasites, must have seen Two-Father’s shadow in the water.
Son looked up and realized with horror that Two-Father’s skin was still a mottled pink, still marked with the black fist that Dysmas had tattooed into his flesh. Two-Father’s ability to shift colors had left him.
I’ll take the three, thought Two-Father, jetting off towards the first pack. That left the remaining two ships for Son to crack.
Stay low to avoid their fire-jelly, Father! Son rocketed towards the hull of the two ships, heard the hiss of harpoons plunging into the waters. ‘Ware their nets, their axes!
I taught you to harvest, Son, Two-Father assured him. I know my lessons.
But Son wasn’t sure. The ships now not only came in greater numbers, but they were unpredictable, evolving new defenses. Son squeezed billows of black ink around the ship to mask his approach, remembering what Two-Father had told him: Always curl your tentacles around the front, never in the back where the whirling tail-blades lie. Never rest your tips on the deck, lest they chop off the ends of your sensing-limbs. And should you brush against a long, thin tube of metal, draw away quickly before it squirts fire.
Every day, though, there were new lessons to be learned. New ships brought new weapons, and Two-Father did not learn quickly.
Son positioned himself under the ship, spreading his tentacles out to caress the hull’s curve. Barbed harpoons showered down from above, hooked deep into his flesh, tugged cruelly. He ignored the pain to stroke the curved hull with his long sensor-limbs, seeking the ship’s heart-hum.
Two-Father believed in brute strength. He could afford to. He dwarfed the ships, could pull them apart four at a time. But Son was smaller, barely wide enough to stretch around a hull. He’d had to learn cunning.
He swept the thin tips of his feeler-limbs across the ship’s barnacle-crusted skin, triangulating the vibrating—
His tentacles blazed with pain.
Son keened and came uncoiled, fell away in a slack-limbed tangle. He retreated; the anguish lessened but did not abate. Agony radiated out from the ship in jagged pulses.
That’s the painwall, Son thought, cringing in terror. These ships are like touching the painwall.
He attempted to master his quivering tentacles, but they shrank away of their own volition. He’d never seen a painwall ship before. It was the worst thing he’d felt.
It’s another test, Son! called Two-Father, grasping two ships between his vast tentacles—but Son saw Two-Father’s suckers blackening. Dysmas wants to see if we are worthy!
Son cared not a whit about Dysmas. But if there was any chance that Dysmas might find his father worthy, and possibly heal him....
Son pressed his tentacles to the painship.
His suckers burned. Before, the water had been safe; the ships could only create fire up above the sky, and though the blisters wer
e horrid when they sprayed their fire-jelly on your tentacles, you could avoid it if you were quick.
Son forced himself against the fire.
He squeezed one of his smashing-limbs into a ball and punched down through the top deck. He clamped his beak against the pain as he rummaged around in the interior. He forced his tentacles through the stairways, out through the caverns filled with the small-boned crops inside, each clutching fire-tubes. He was hunting for the ship’s heart.
And there it was, a thumping thing with a white-hot canister of steam at the center. He wrapped his seeking-limb around the heart. The creak of torn metal filled the water as he hauled it up by the roots.
The pain ebbed. The water tasted of ink and oil.
There were tiny cries and yells from the crops still within the ship. They buried axes into his tentacles. He smashed them against the walls, then slithered his limb out. The ship was dead, floating dumbly above the sky. He could shuck the tiny specks of meat out at his leisure.
Will that convince you, Dysmas? he wondered, gulping down a few wriggling crops to regain his strength. Then he sucked in fouled water and exhaled it, jetting over to the sister ship. It crackled to life, flooding him with burning torture, but he wrestled it to one side and toppled it over it into the water.
He heard another keen. Two-Father was screaming.
Two-Father never screamed.
Through bloodied water Son saw him, still struggling to crush the two ships in his limbs. Between the agony of the painships and Two-Father’s dreadful affliction, he hadn’t the strength to crumple their hulls—and now he was caught between both ships. The third ship was backing into him, ramming its whirling tail-blades into his flesh.
One-Mother had died the same way: a weakness that led to slaughter.
Son crested his mantle above the sky and roared. The crops on the ships turned to look at him, their light flesh turning even paler. Then he rushed at the blade-ship that was carving his father to pieces, flung himself above the sky and into the void, landed on the deck with a strength he’d never believed possible. He lashed out with his limbs in all directions. The painships stung him deep, but he felt nothing but rage.
We beat your challenges! he screamed. We suffer for Dysmas! We deserve peace!
His fury would have done One-Mother proud.
When he was done, the three ships were jagged chunks. The sky-border was dotted with struggling crops, churning the water beneath them, hoping to swim their way to Dysmas’s lair. The ship-wreckage bubbled its way down into the black water to clank against the coral below. The bottom of the Ring was lined with layers of old ships, proof of the fierce years of devotion that Two-Father (and, once, One-Mother) had given to Dysmas.
Why would Dysmas blight a beast so faithful and constant?
Son’s gills sucked in the sour scent of his father’s blood. Are you all right? he asked, knowing that Two-Father wasn’t; three more of his tentacles were stumps now.
And there was a ragged, cavernous gash that corkscrewed through the center of Dysmas’s mark. Bits of his father pulsed within it.
We must—we must—we must harvest, said Two-Father, woozily scooping up a few remaining crops and swirling them around. Find the still-living crops. Devour them. Let not a one set foot upon Dysmas’s shore.
Son wanted to argue, but there was no use. He ate the waves clean.
* * *
Did I ever tell you how you were hatched, Son? said Two-Father, curling against the protective walls of the coral caves. I can’t remember....
Son groomed his father’s exposed skin, using the delicate tips of his seeking-limbs to pluck the harpoons from his father’s wrinkled flesh. The cave was his gift to him, carefully assembled from the bulwarks of harvested ships, crushed into a canopy to make a fine and dark resting place.
Son had heard the tale of his own birth a thousand times before—but he never tired of it.
No, Father, he said, tugging an axe from his father’s skin. Tell me.
Two-Father’s cloudy blue eye grew cloudier. Son felt him sinking back against the coral, as if to sleep, and anticipated he would slumber—but instead, Two-Father thought at him in a low, happy tone.
Your mother, thought Two-Father, ruled me with tentacles of iron. I was One, the first, before she arrived and made me Two. She was monolithic, a beast fit to end the world, and it was only because of Dysmas’s mark that she did not devour me.
I remember, Father, thought Son. Son had never liked One-Mother. She was so large she could have gulped him down without chewing—and she’d tried to. Son had no mark of Dysmas to protect him from her endless hunger, and it was only thanks to Two-Father’s constant interventions that he had not wound up in mother’s gullet.
What? thought Two-Father. Oh, yes, of course you do. But she came to me one day and said, ‘I have eggs. You will fertilize them.’ And so I did, spraying my life-essence around her, and she drank of it, and squatted her first clutch of eggs on the black sand.
Soon, a miracle arrived—a ship that sailed under the edge of the sky! We knew a miracle of Dysmas because it bore Dysmas’s mark upon it: the black fist. So One-Mother could not eat it—though she certainly longed to! Two-Father clacked his beak in weak amusement. And Dysmas’s ship searched out that clutch of eggs, and squirted His own life-essence upon it—a jelly so potent it stung our eyes and swelled shut our squirting-valves.
The next day, all the eggs were dead. Not a one of them was strong enough.
The next year, your mother once again commanded me to mate. And once again, Dysmas’s ship emerged to fertilize the eggs. And once again, they all hardened and cracked and the tides carried them out beyond the painwall.
But the year after that? Dysmas’s ship came—and out of thousands of eggs, you alone were the full heir to His power. One-Mother longed to swallow you, but I told her that if she ate you, she must then devour me, and did she have the strength to swallow so much of Dysmas’s power?
She did not. And so you were hatched, and beloved, and the scion of three beasts, each greater than the last. Isn’t that a fine thing?
Son ran his tongue nervously around the rasp of his beak. It is, Father. It surely is.
But every time his father told him that story, Son wondered: was Dysmas trying to meld His potency with the eggs, or had Dysmas tried to kill him? Dysmas had given him no mark. Dysmas had never spoken to him.
He tried to tell himself that Dysmas didn’t exist, was just a figment of Two-Father’s imagination. Yet something had tattooed that fist upon his father’s skin. And so the thought stuck in his mind like a sliver of hull lodged in his beak:
Two-Father was dying for the sin of Son’s existence.
* * *
At Two-Father’s insistence, Son still patrolled the Ring in an endless hunt for ships, squeezing himself tight into crevices for amusement, but it wasn’t much fun without Two-Father. The Ring encircled Dysmas’s Spire, bordered by the painwalls. No matter where Son swum within the Ring, when he looked up through the rippling edge of the sky, he could see Dysmas’s Spire reaching towards the clouds—a twisted spike of steel and rock.
The outline of a great black fist had been carved into its surface.
The Spire was never silent; it rumbled, and clanked, and bubbled so loudly Son could hear the tremors in the water. Occasionally great beasts shot out from the caves to soar high above the shimmering border, spreading out sail-shaped, fluttering limbs to dart between the clouds. Their beaks shrieked loud caws.
Two-Father said that the soaring-things were guardian beasts that lived above the edge of the sky, created by Dysmas to protect His land above the sky just as He had created them to live below it. And that made sense, because occasionally slow-moving oval-canopied things approached from far beyond the painwalls, firing loud concussive blasts, and the soaring-beasts ripped them to shreds.
Sometimes, Son waved his tentacles at the soaring-beasts and thought at them. But all they did was make those useless cawing
sounds. It was like when he’d held the crops in his seeking-limbs, beaming thought-waves of greeting at them, and all they too had done was make shrill cries.
Two-Father said that each beast communicated in secret patterns—except for Dysmas, who could speak to all. Son supposed that Two-Father would know; after all, he had been in Dysmas’s Spire, once. Son had never been at all.
The Ring stretched out and down from the sandy beaches that emanated out from Dysmas’s Spire, all the way out to the fluttering fence of painwalls that marked the edge of the world.
Son had tugged at the painwall once, to test its strength. That was the only time Two-Father had hurt him.
You do not broach His borders! Two-Father had screamed, squeezing Son so tight he almost burst. Should anyone lay one bit of flesh upon the beaches of Dysmas’s Spire, the world will end! Should we break the painwall, the world will end! He told me true! Do you want to leave this sacred duty? Shall I tell One-Mother to treat you like any other fish?
No, Father! Son had cried. Don’t let One-Mother devour me!
But One-Mother was dead. And Two-Father rested within a cave made from the metal skin of their conquests, regaining his strength.
What if Son were to touch the beach?
Dysmas had forbidden it. Yet Son’s tentacles stretched out of their own volition. He kept pulling them back, one by one, but his limbs had minds of their own. They wanted to brush the shore. To test it.
What would just one touch do? Would Dysmas appear, raining death upon him? Would the world shimmer and fade?
Or worse, would nothing at all happen, and Son would have proof that Two-Father was mad?
Dysmas, he thought, if you exist, I dare You to stop me. He bunched himself up in preparation for judgment, and slithered the tip of his smallest tentacle out to brush against the beach.
Nothing happened.
Son clacked his beak in surprised amusement. There was his tentacle, buried in warm sand. Dysmas, he thought with satisfaction, was just an illusion.
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