Upside Down

by Jaym Gates

  “Them mail smallclothes … maybe they’re magic …” the bandit with the cudgel whispered. “Why else would she be walking around, brazen as that?”

  “Maybe we should just —”

  While the bandits were distracted, Kes dove sideways toward the one with the crossbow and shouted “Angeli! Storm up!”

  Angeli may have been young, and small, and something of a coward, but it knew when to follow orders. The dragon leapt up, unfurling its wings with a mighty crack and a gust of air that sent two of the three bandits staggering and dropping their weapons. True, its wings weren’t much for flying, yet, but they made an impressive display.

  Kes knocked the crossbow upward as she rammed a shoulder into the bowman’s gut. His bolt shot off into the trees and he fell backward with a grunt. She wrenched the crossbow from his hands and whirled to deal with the other two, but they’d already taken to their heels. Their companion scrambled to do the same. She smacked the flat of her blade across his backside to hurry him on his way.

  Angeli bounded after them a way, snarling and blowing puffs of flame. “Yah! Run, cowards! Scared of a woman in mail smallclothes! Nyah!”

  “Enough, Angeli,” Kes said.

  “Aren’t you afraid they’ll come back?”

  “They may, but all the better reason to take our leave.”

  “Awww … but then you could run them through — or I could eat them!”

  “Curb your bloodlust, dragon. We’ve more important things to do than spit fools on their own swords. Withdrawal being the wiser course upon occasion — a strategy clearly unknown to the fathers of that lot.”

  Angeli did its best to rein in its enthusiasm, but was still bounding and puffing most of the way to High Tower.

  #

  The gate guards at High Tower were apparently cut from the same cloth as the bandits in the forest. They leered at Kes and one said, “What’s this? Come for a bit of sport on Assembly Day?”

  “Make mock at your own peril,” Kes said and pointed at Angeli. “I’ve a restive dragon and a sword as keen as my temper.”

  “But dressed as you are —”

  Angeli looked over her shoulder. “I wouldn’t say that if I were you. She beat three bandits in the forest for such talk.”

  The guards gave way. Kes and Angeli continued into the courtyard and through a gathering crowd. At the bottom of the tower’s wide stairs, another guard hailed them with a similar observation.

  “What ho! A dainty that comes unwrapped and ready to be served!”

  Kes rolled her eyes. “Turn a hand to such service, and your fist will never know another weapon.”

  “Oh, a spicy one! Surely such a clever tongue —”

  Angeli poked its head around Kes’s side and gave the guard a toothy smile. “Oh goody! She slew three bandits in the forest for better turns of phrase than yours. It was fun, but now I’m bored, and a little bloodshed is so entertaining!”

  The guard retired swiftly.

  Near the top of the tower yet another guard stopped them, as sure of his clever observation as all who’d come before him.

  “Oh, a wench with her own chain!”

  Kes leaned on her sword and sighed. “If you imagine yourself a wit, you’re only right by half.”

  “That’s bold for a woman in a —”

  “Oo,” Angeli said, looking over Kes’s shoulder. “We skewered and ate three bandits in the forest for less. But maybe you should chatter on, morsel — I think I could manage a bite of dessert by now.”

  This one also discovered silence and a pressing need to step aside.

  Kes and Angeli passed through the doors and onto the tower’s roof. The westering sun gilded the stones. A man stood at the north parapet, looking down on the assembly of people below. Golden light reflected off his armor and fair hair. The armor could have been better burnished, but it still glinted in the sun and, from any distance, he was an impressive sight.

  “Take it off,” Kes said.

  The man turned. “Why … Kes!” he said with a smile. “How delightful to see you! You look … perky.” He was a handsome beast, but it cut no ice with Kes.

  Kes raised her sword and narrowed her eyes. “Take off my armor.”

  “But you’re wearing so little,” the man objected and smirked.

  Kes growled and took a step closer. “Speak neither of your wit, nor of this travesty you left behind when you absconded, Ormand. Remove my armor,” she said, tapping the point of her sword against the breastplate. “The armor you stole from me.”

  It chimed at the touch, startling Ormand. He cleared his throat and said, “But it fits me so well, it couldn’t possibly be your armor.”

  “Adaptability and perseverance are the nature of a woman’s plate,” Kes said. “And it’s the nature of men like you to think someone else’s pride always looks better on them.”

  “But you’re a girl! You don’t need armor! Men are the ones who go out and fight!” Ormand objected.

  Kes scoffed. “Say rather, it’s vainglorious men who go out and pick fights and women who are left to defend themselves with what weapon comes to hand.” She shifted the point of her sword from his chest to the gap between the tassets that hung down from the breastplate to his thighs. “Now, off with it, or I’ll unmake a man of you and let Angeli loose to finish off the rest — and you well know what a mess that will be.”

  Angeli spread its wings and stretched upward so the sun shone through their membranes, scarlet as blood. “Ah, a skirmish! I knew I’d come in handy, though you always say I’m so inconvenient. Inconvenient this!” it added, with a well-aimed puff of flame.

  Ormand yelped as the blast warmed his hindparts. Then he scrambled to remove the stolen armor before the dragon — or the lady — could take further offense.

  The crowd below muttered and gabbled. Ormand blushed, but kept his mouth shut until he stood in nothing but his smallclothes. The pile of Kes’s armor lay between them on the stones.

  “Well, there,” Ormand spat. “You’ve made a mockery of me and left me bare besides.”

  “If that were mockery, it’s you who’ve made it of yourself,” said Kes. “While I’ve come all this way covered in naught but a wisp of mail and the aegis of my wits.”

  Ormand started to say something and Angeli snorted a stream of warning smoke in his direction. The man stepped back and glowered at Kes. “Fine for you. But what am I to wear, now?”

  Kes took off the paltry mail, donned her armor, and tossed the tiny woven-chain garments to Ormand. “You may have these back. I’m certain they’ll offer all the protection you need, as they have withstood so many barbs already.”

  Ormand slumped and sat down against the nearest crenellation, digging his naked toes into the cracks in the floor. His mouth turned down in chagrin and he cast his glance anywhere but at Kes and Angeli. “Small comfort,” he muttered.

  “It is what you make of it,” said Kes. She sheathed her sword and started back toward the stairs with the dragon in her wake. The plate, now on its proper owner, shone bright and golden in the sun.

  “Pretty,” Angeli said. “It fits so well. But I think you were just as fearsome in the other stuff.”

  “Of a certainty,” said Kes. “But this is warmer. Though I think the draft I felt before was as much from holes in wit and common courtesy as the gaps between the rings.”

  They went down the stairs and across the courtyard. A few of the crowd murmured or whispered, but not a single lascivious comment was foist their way. They stepped out the gate and onto the road again in peace.

  Angeli looked around and grinned. “Can we go teach those bandits a lesson in manners, now?”

  Kes tried a disapproving frown, but it broke into a laugh. “Perhaps next month.”

  Swan Song

  Michelle Lyons-McFarland

  “A KING was once hunting in a great wood, and he hunted the game so eagerly that none of his courtiers could follow him. When evening came on he stood still and looked
round him, and he saw that he had quite lost himself. He sought a way out, but could find none. Then he saw an old woman with a shaking head coming towards him; but she was a witch.”

  — The Brothers Grimm, “The Six Swans”

  Witch’s get, they said. Demon spawn. I was made, not born, the progeny of my mother’s congress with the Morning Star. A fair story, is it not? A tale to frighten away even the bravest woodsman. Well, whether or not you or I would believe such tales, they kept us quite to ourselves, my mother and I.

  As for myself, I cannot swear to the truth of my origins. I asked my mother about my sire from time to time during the days of my innocence, but she never would answer. I wondered who I might resemble among the villagers ... perhaps it was the cooper, or perhaps the baker. Or perhaps yet, the priest who reportedly said prayers for our souls at Mass, the one with dark eyes like a river under a silver moon. If there was such a resemblance, I could never discern it. I found it more comfortable, or at least more likely, to imagine my mother under the rough hands of the smith, sheathing his metal, or against the soft skin of the priest even as he swore his contrition, than I did to believe that my mother held the power to tame the rod of Satan himself. There are some thoughts even I dare not entertain.

  We lived alone in our small cottage, my mother and I. She would go out gathering, buying what we needed from the village or foraging it from the woods, then bringing it home. Some of it was for food, some for our own care, and some was for my lessons. She took care to educate me in her ways: what were the best plants for bringing on (or stopping) a woman’s courses, what will lower a fever of the body, what brings sleep to restless souls. I went with her when I could, but once my eighth summer had come and went, she forbade me to go any further than the edge of the clearing in front of our house. She said I would not be safe out there in a world filled with predators all hungry for little girls to consume. Whether she was right to keep me thus confined, I cannot say. My experience of the world since, however, tells me she may not have been wrong.

  In any case, between my lessons and my chores, I had little time to mourn my fate. I learned to spin and weave and sew at an early age. Between my mother and myself, we kept not only ourselves clothed, but a good portion of the village as well. From stockings to shirts, we traded for wool and gathered flax ourselves. Baskets were made in the summer, along with enough food to keep us through the long winters.

  Sometimes the villagers would come, in ones or twos, to ask my mother for charms or potions or cures. “An’ will ye risk the damnation of your soul, then,” she would ask them, “that you would go against the will of the priest’s god?” A few blanched and shook their heads, leaving with silence or curses, depending on their nature. Most, though, merely swallowed and nodded as she gave them whatever they asked for. I was to stay silent and still through these sessions in our shared bedroom while they shared the main room, but no door is so solid that one cannot spy through its cracks. She smiled as she gave it to them, taking the gold and silver and copper from their hands.

  It was thus we spent many years. So we might have lived until the end of our days, although my mother doubtless had other plans. “You’re like unto a woman grown,” she said to me one day, “with charms set to snare any man.”

  “I don’t want to snare a man, Mother. I’m content to stay with you,” I said.

  She laughed at that. “Your mouth says so, but those dark eyes say something else entirely. No, a husband you must have and raise both our fortunes. I’ll not see you wither here in the shadows. The price I paid for you was too dear.”

  I protested, but my words sounded weak even to me. She laughed and shook her head, refusing to say anything more.

  A few days later, she set me to work making the finest cloth I had ever spun. A brew of honeysuckle and rose, henbane and hyacinth, milkweed and mint tinted the yarn. Words were said over the cloth as I wove it — I’ll not bore you with them, save it was no Lord’s Prayer. Bits of shroud, too, and nightshade, and poppies and passionflowers ... oh, it was a rare tea. I would not drink it, though, if I were you — not one drop.

  When it was done, it was fine as silk and smooth as a petal. From that cloth I sewed a gown according to my mother’s instruction. It was fitting for a peasant girl, but no priest would have let me enter chapel wearing it. It draped as though I’d nothing on beneath, and yet it showed nothing improper. It was a bewitching combination, a lure to trap an unwary lord. This was my mother’s gift to me: my apprenticeship was complete.

  Once I finished the dress, my mother began spending more time away from the cottage. I had learned from her the skills of simples and potions as well as charms for the gullible or hopeful, and so our income continued unabated. If the villagers were surprised to see me out from behind the bedroom door, no one said anything about it. Even the priest came once; he looked at me with his dark eyes and refused to drink the tea I offered him. He asked after my mother, offered to pray on our behalf, and then left before she returned. I never saw him again.

  Summer curled in on itself, turning thoughtful, and changed into autumn. The gown stayed in a chest and waited for its time to come. Hunting horns sounded through the forest and wood smoke drifted on the breeze, full of promise and warning in one. My mother was gone even more, sometimes days at a time. When she returned, she would have brambles and burrs on her skirts and leaves in her hair, as though she had been rolling about on the ground. “He’ll come, don’t you worry,” was all she would say.

  The sun rose later and later, although chores never waited. It was a crisp, dark mid-autumn morning when I rose from bed and stoked the fire. Mother had only just returned a few hours before, stumbling in from the frost and cold in the middle of the night, heat steaming from her skin. When I came back inside from my chores with firewood and goat’s milk, she was awake and pouring tea for us both. “Drink up,” she said, “and let’s see what the day will bring.”

  The cup was heavy and fragrant, with mint and angelica and rosemary. We both drank in silence, honoring the steam and the fire and the day at hand. Neither of us made a sound until Mother finished her cup. She looked down at the bits of leaf, turning it this way and that before frowning and setting it aside.

  “Anything?” I asked.

  “Not to speak of. Now read yours,” she said.

  I drank the last of the tea and turned the cup, looking for hints of the future. “A crown ... a ladder ... and an arch of stars above.”

  She took it from my hands before I knew what she’d done. “Speak ye truly?” She stared into the cup for some moments, as though she would stare through it into the hours to come. “An axe ... the arch is over an axe.”

  “Is it? Are you sure?”

  She spared me only a glance, but that was answer enough. “A swan there is as well, with a shirt above.”

  “That ... that makes no sense.”

  “Read the bad with the good, aye? It’ll not pass by just because you refuse to see it.” She sat the cup aside by hers. “Still ...” She looked down at the cup again. “Take out your fine gown, girl. This is the day.”

  The morning passed with unaccustomed speed. I bathed myself with care and twined my hair with the last of the sweet William, arranging it with care. As I put on my gown, I heard the door open and close. When I came out, arrayed as finely as I had ever been, my mother was gone.

  I spent the day almost as a fine lady would, doing little that would risk the enchantments on the gown. I spun yarn in the morning, made simples in the afternoon, and sewed finework on a shirt as the sun sank lower, throwing gold and violet across the sky. Supper was bubbling over the fire when the door opened — a gust of cold wind made the shadows dance against the wall.

  I looked up, startled. A withered crone stood there in the doorway, wrapped in a threadbare cloak with the dark trailing in behind. I would have sworn this woman was a stranger to me, with her stark white hair and dried apple cheeks. She laid her finger across her lips, though, and then I knew:
it was my mother transformed.

  She stepped aside to reveal the man standing behind her. He was richly if plainly dressed, all fine wool and hunting leathers lined with thick fur. A heavy embroidered cloak hung from his shoulders and a plain circlet of gold glinted from amidst the dark waves of his hair. He blinked against the sudden light, raising his arm to shield his eyes against the fire. My mother moved to the side of the fireplace, her cloak deepening the shadows around her so that nothing stood between he and I.

  I took a deep breath, willing my voice steady. “Welcome, my lord,” I said.

  He lowered his arm then and looked at me, and his eyes grew wide. He opened his mouth — a wide, pleasing mouth, it seemed — and said, “Well met, lady. I beg your hospitality. Your mother ...” He turned his head as if to look for her, but his eyes never left me. “I rode with the hunt today but lost my way in the chase. She offered me shelter for the night.”

  I inclined my head, careful not to let the blossoms fall. “Be welcome then, my lord, and warm yourself. These nights can bring a chill.”

  He nodded, pale despite the fire’s ruddy glow, and sat at the table before the fire. I rose from my work and served dinner to all three of us. His cloak I laid by the fire to dry, then poured him a cup of ale to go with his supper.

  I kept my own eyes lowered except for the occasional glance, but I felt his gaze constantly upon me. When I brought him his food, I saw a hunger in his gaze that had not been there before. It was no food that he hungered for, though; he watched my hips and breasts as I moved as a man who has not had water for days eyes a newly discovered spring. There was something in his expression, though ... some glimmer of knowledge whenever his eyes met mine of the trap in which he found himself. He shuddered when he looked upon me even as his body roused at even the barest brush of our hands. He would not hold my gaze, but his eyes were constantly drawn back to me, would he will it or no. There would be no escape.