And as he pondered this, he became aware of a hum against his skin. Ships. Two, three, seven, nine—
—too many to count.
Son raised his eye up above the edge of the sky, and saw an armada of approaching ships, as numerous as fish in a shoal. The air above them roiled with smoke and steam, filled with great gray canopied things that floated towards Dysmas’s Spire.
A huge whoop filled the seas, an endless cry that never stopped for breath, and Son realized that it was coming from the Spire. Lights flashed across the Spire’s face. Soaring-beasts shot from the caves, shrieking defiance, and zoomed up towards the canopy ships.
Son could barely think for all the conflicting heart-hums thumping against his skin now, coming at him from all sides, at least a hundred ships from every direction. Two-Father tugged at his tentacles.
This is it, said Two-Father eagerly. Our greatest test. We shall prevail!
They didn’t.
* * *
Two-Father lay, torn as a shredded sail, across piles of freshly-broken ships.
Why? he asked. Why did I not die?
Son cowered below the edge of the sky, unable to look away. The edge was on fire now, ablaze in wavering hues of orange and black. They had cracked so many ships that the water was coated with slick ship-blood, and the collapse at the end of the battle had ignited the world.
Everything was lost.
Son floated in circles around the Ring, unsure what to do. He should have been in agony, thanks to four severed limbs and a host of bleeding wounds, but he was cushioned by a numb shock of disbelief. Two-Father and Son had crushed painships until their tentacles ached, hurled fireships at mineships, dragged netships below water—
—and still the ships had come, their tubes shooting hot death.
Son had ducked below water to avoid the pain of those tubes. Two-Father had roared defiance at the ships, daring them to spray him with fire, mustering his strength to smash all who opposed him into twists of metal.
Yet they were only two. Son had looked back and seen piles of ships aground on the beach. Tiny crops ran up toward Dysmas’s Spire, clutching small fire-tubes in their hands. Two-Father rushed to the border of the beach and slapped the ships into the mud, bellowing for Dysmas’s forgiveness as he tried to destroy the intruders on the shore.
They fought until Son saw the fullest horror of the day: Dysmas’s Spire, tumbling down in an avalanche of glass and steel.
Two-Father went as limp as seaweed. Son had dragged him down under the water for safety, just as the sky burst into a consuming flame.
I did this, thought Son. I lost my faith, and now it’s destroyed us.
Two-Father bubbled blood from a thousand holes, waiting for death.
* * *
After the apocalypse came the hunt.
The ships dropped metal globes from the sky, globes that burned and burst. They scoured the face of the Ring, criss-crossing in such numbers that it was impossible to surface. Son rammed himself against the anguish of the painwalls, frantic for escape—but there was none.
Let me die! Two-Father thought, struggling to flutter up to the ships. Let Dysmas’s wrath destroy me and end it! But he was weak, so weak. Son could tug him back into the protective canopy of their caves.
After the hunt came the famine.
Once the ships had passed, there were no more harvests. Son hunted through the remains of the Ring, crunching shoals of silver fish to bring them back to his father, but it wasn’t enough to satiate his hunger.
Two-Father refused to eat. Instead, he was eaten. Tiny fish nibbled at the rotting flesh that trailed from his fresh stumps, eroded his body. His limbs withered and withdrew.
Two-Father forgot where he was.
Dysmas made me. His thoughts sounded faint, like echoes. He brought me to life into a tank with a thousand brothers and sisters. He was so huge, He could lift me up on the metal palm of His black fist, and He said you have all your brothers and sisters and there is only one way to find who will serve Me. I want the strongest. The rest will be food. Go. And so I ate and ate and ate, and felt a thousand brethren shrieking in my mind and I hid when I was too tired to fight and I was oh so scared, and when I was done and devoured them all He said I was beautiful and He made me the sea and the painwalls and a potent wife to remind me of my place and that is when Dysmas made me He brought me to life into a tank with a thousand brothers and sisters....
Occasionally he’d stare straight up at the sky and murmur, My Son. My beautiful, powerful Son. But he did not respond when Son spoke.
Son ran in circles around the Ring, anywhere to be away from Two-Father. He looked up at the empty hole where Dysmas’s tower used to be. He scoured the Spire’s ruins, sifting through the mud and metal beams for signs of divinity. There was nothing. Only more machinery, just like the ships he pulled apart; only more rooms filled with the bloated husks of tiny crops and the tattered bodies of the soaring-beasts.
He slapped his limbs upon the beach, half-expecting a painwall to drop from above and strike him down. Nothing did. All he saw were bizarre beasts lying on the ground, massive things with only four limbs and ripping tusks and scaled skin. They were clearly dead, surrounded by smashed crops in sprays of blood.
Had Dysmas created these beasts, too? What did it all mean?
And then Son felt a fury boiling within him like the heart of a ship.
There is no Dysmas! he screamed. There is no being in the sky watching us, there is no guilt, there is no reason to be kept here!
The painwall flexed—but held. It mocked him. The ships had come from somewhere. Hadn’t they? Or did the black waters beyond fade into oblivion, and this was all that there was in all the world, a tiny abandoned speck floating in a sea of nothing, with two dying beasts trapped within?
If there was a Dysmas, He was surely mad. If Son could wrap his limbs around Him, he would squeeze an explanation from Him. Why had this lunatic power used them so poorly?
After the famine came more famine. And despair. And emptiness.
But not death. Not yet.
* * *
Two-Father’s skin had shrunk, tugging his tentacles inwards. Two-Father wanted to die, but his great heart refused to stop beating. His body was so huge that when it had to start devouring itself, it had vast stores to draw upon.
I tried I tried I tried I tried I tried—
Son could not shut his father’s voice out. It chased him around the Ring, around to the other end of the stunted rock that had once been a Spire. Son flattened himself against the painwall over and over, suckering himself to the strands with a fierce gratitude: Dysmas was wonderful, Dysmas was horrible, Dysmas had given him this great pain to blot out greater pains.
With a crackling hum, the painwall stopped emanating anguish.
Son looked at his limbs in disbelief, wondering what was happening. He plucked at the netting. Nothing. No pain.
Another hum danced, faint but unmistakable, across the surface of his skin.
A ship. Coming from the shore.
It took Son a moment to home in on the noise, because ships never went out. They went in, and he harvested them. This reverse direction baffled him—but he dashed off after it regardless, hungry to see something new.
It was a very small, battered ship—not sleek, like the other ships, but a hull raw with fractures, as though this new, small ship had been cobbled together from scraps.
Painted crudely on its side, lacking the elegant grace of Two-Father’s bold, clean mark, was a black fist.
Son froze. What was this? Should he crack the ship? Let it sail away? Commit the unforgivable sin of destroying one of Dysmas’s Chosen?
He poked his head above the edge of the sky. Atop the boat was a tiny crop, clad in a black skin over pink wrinkled skin, wild white hair waving in the wind. The crop seemed oddly confident, his back straight as he sailed towards the painwall, exposing his teeth to the edge of the sky as though he owned it.
The crop�
��s right hand, however, was not made of flesh. It was made of metal, grafted onto the end of the arm.
A black hand.
It could be him.
It must be him.
Son reached out and brought the ship to a halt. The world did not end. Instead, the crop stumbled and fell. It pressed the ship’s console and made mouth-noises into a small gray wand, and Son shivered as a new voice boomed in his head:
GOOD MERCY! YOU POOR THING. HOW IN THE WORLD DID YOU SURVIVE?
The voice was loud, so much louder than the tiny creature upon the ship. It sounded so surprisingly kind that Son couldn’t think of anything to say.
It reached out to stroke the tips of his tentacles. YOU BEAR MANY SCARS, HERE, YES—LIKE ME. THEY TRIED TO KILL US BOTH, YOU SEE. THEY THINK WE’RE ABOMINATIONS. BUT WE CAN SHOW THEM BETTER, CAN’T WE?
Are—are you Dysmas? Son asked.
The crop bared its teeth at him. OF COURSE I AM, it said, tenderly. YOU MUST HAVE BEEN SO LONELY DOWN THERE, TO FORGET ABOUT ME. ALL THINGS SHOULD KNOW THEIR GOD WHEN IT SPEAKS TO THEM.
Son felt suddenly afraid. Who’s trying to kill us?
EVERYONE, Dysmas said, his voice lowered to a whisper. EVERYONE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD. THE IDEA THAT A MAN CAN CREATE LIFE ON HIS OWN, WITH NO HELP FROM NATURE? THAT ALL THEIR ESSENCE CAN BE RECREATED IN A VAT? OH, IT DRIVES THEM MAD. I’VE BEEN HOUNDED FROM ONE END OF THE EARTH TO ANOTHER.
WHEN THEY LOOK AT YOU, LITTLE ONE, THEY DO NOT SEE THE GLEAMING LUSTER OF YOUR SKIN OR A SHIMMERING GOLDEN EYE—THEY SEE A MURDEROUS BEAST. AND THEY SEE ME AS THE MADMAN WHO BROUGHT YOU INTO EXISTENCE. BUT WE KNOW BETTER, DON’T WE?
Dysmas kept stroking Son’s tentacles, seeming to draw strength from them. It was a gentle touch—almost the way Son had plucked hull-splinters from Two-Father’s flesh.
IT’S KISMET THAT WE MEET, LITTLE ONE. I NEED A GUARDIAN, AT LEAST UNTIL I CAN REBUILD, AND YOU NEED A GOD. COME ALONG.
The boat started off. Part of Son wanted to chase after it, exhilarated to have a purpose—but he could not leave without knowing.
What about Two-Father?
TWO-FATH—? OH, THAT’S RIGHT, THERE WERE TWO OF YOU. HE’S SERVED HIS PURPOSE. LEAVE HIM BEHIND. The boat chugged forward merrily.
Son wrapped his tentacles around the ship to stop it. How could Two-Father be so easily forgotten? He was strong. He was faithful. Why did You—you—make his eyes bad? Why did you weaken his limbs?
Dysmas reached out to stroke Son’s tentacles again, but Son realized it wasn’t like his own touch on Two-Father at all. Son plucked cutlasses from Two-Father’s skin to soothe him. Dysmas’s touch felt like he was stroking something he owned.
YOU POOR, IGNORANT THING. I FORGOT YOU AREN’T CAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING. I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING; YOUR FRIEND JUST GOT OLD, BEAST. THAT’S WHAT HAPPENS IN TIME TO ALL OF US: YOU GET WEAK, YOU FAIL, YOU DIE.
So heal him.
I CAN’T. AND THERE’S NO SENSE IN WASTING TIME TRYING. IF HE’S AS WEAK AS YOU SAY, HE CAN’T PROTECT ME—AND I NEED PROTECTION. EVERYTHING DIES; AT LEAST HIS DEATH HAD A PURPOSE.
What purpose?
HE KEPT ME ALIVE.
Son felt an incandescent rage. His tentacles slapped the water.
What about the beauty of the encoralled caves we created? What of all the songs we sung—the chasing-games we played, the stories we shared? Is all of that just so much wreckage, if we can’t keep you alive?
I—I’M PROUD THAT MY CREATIONS CAN ALSO CREATE. BUT YOUR ULTIMATE DUTY IS TO ME....
And what makes you better than Two-Father?
WHY, I CREATED HIM.
Dysmas said it with confusion, as though he’d never thought another answer would be needed. But Son thought of Two-Father, who had stood up against One-Mother’s terrible anger only once in his life—to protect Son.
Everything Two-Father had ever done, right or not, was meant to protect Son.
Creating us doesn’t mean we owe you. It means you owe us.
Dysmas looked warily at the tentacles rising around him, then pressed one thin finger against a hidden stud in his metal hand.
I BEG TO DIFFER. WITHOUT ME, YOU WOULD BE NOTHING—AND YOU CAN BE NOTHING AGAIN SOON ENOUGH. NOW, I’D HATE TO SLAY SUCH A BEAUTIFUL BEAST AS YOURSELF—BUT WITH A TOUCH, I CAN GRANT DEATH TO ANYTHING I’VE CREATED.
SO LEAVE YOUR FRIEND BEHIND AND FOLLOW ME—I PROMISE YOUR SERVICE WILL BRING YOU EVEN GREATER JOYS THAN ALL YOU HAVE EXPERIENCED HERE. UNLESS, OF COURSE, YOU’D LIKE TO SEE WHAT LIES BEYOND THE VEIL.
Yes, thought Son, clacking his beak. I would.
Frowning, Dysmas mashed the button on his palm. Puzzled, he pushed it again.
WHY DOESN’T IT—
For the first time, Dysmas looked—really looked—at Son. Had he finally noticed that Son had no mark upon him? Dysmas’s face went wide, and his mouth opened up like all the other crops Son had devoured, and Son took a deep pleasure in speaking to his God for the last time.
You didn’t create Me, said Son, plucking him high off the deck. So what do I owe you?
Dysmas screamed. It was satisfyingly small.
* * *
The tides shoved Two-Father around now. The water that spilled in and out of his gills was barely enough to stir mud. Son floated directly above his cataracted eye.
...Son?
I brought you a gift, Father, Son thought.
I need no gifts.
You need this one, thought Son. Feel.
Using the finest of his sensor-limbs, he tapped Dysmas’s metal fist against his father’s skin.
What is that?
Son held the fist before his father’s eye. It was so tiny. This is Dysmas’s fist. I met Him. He gave it to me.
Two-Father clacked his beak. What did he....
He told me.... Son forced fresh water through his gills. He told me that you had done well. That your time here is complete. And if you—if you let go, you will go to a land full of easy crops and gigantic mothers and, and an even greater Spire to protect.
But.... That hand is so small, Son. Dysmas is huge....
Was huge, thought Son to himself. When you were a baby.
Son brushed his tentacles across his father’s tattered fin. That is how large you will be, he thought. In the new world, you will dwarf Dysmas, dwarf One-Mother, dwarf everything. You will be—be the world, Father. You will be everything.
Ah, said Two-Father. It was a small sound packed with a lifetime of hope.
And he died.
* * *
Son stayed until Two-Father was gone. He held his vigil as the fish attacked Two-Father’s corpse, and the corpse became scraps, and the scraps became a haze. It was silly, for he was starving and there was a world of fresh crops out there—but he couldn’t leave while his father was still there.
You were the world, Father, he thought, stirring the waters where the last of his father floated. Father broke apart, indistinguishable from the sea.
Son crushed the fist. Then he squirmed over the edge of the painwall and disappeared, going beyond the edge of the world to a place where no one knew.
Copyright © 2010 Ferrett Steinmetz
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After twenty years of wandering desolate as a writer, Ferrett Steinmetz attended Clarion in 2008 and was rejuvenated. In the two years since then, he’s sold stories to Asimov’s (twice!), GUD, Shimmer, and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, among others, and otherwise has a marvelous collection of extremely kind rejection letters. He lives in Cleveland with his wife, a well-worn copy of Rock Band, and a friendly ghost. Visit him online at theferrett.livejournal.com.
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COVER ART
“Fantasy Gate,” by Wolfgang Wachelhofer
Wolfgang Wachelhofer is an Austrian graphic artist and web designer who has a deep passion for surreal art. Most of his inspiration comes from the rich and colorful cultures of Brazil, where he lived for four years. He has done a lot of work for
various clients for which he has earned a high reputation for his uniqueness. View more of his art in his online galleries.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
ISSN: 1946-1046
Published by Firkin Press,
a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization
Copyright © 2010 Firkin Press
This file is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 U.S. license. You may copy and share the file so long as you retain the attribution to the authors, but you may not sell it and you may not alter it or partition it or transcribe it.
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