“Please!” the man said, the word so heavy it was whispered.
“That’s all you have to say to me?” Vulshin Vy, both asked and demanded. “After what you did to me, what you turned me into it, that is all you have to say!”
The man began shaking his head so severely, it was surprising that it stayed attached to his neck.
“Explain yourself!” She demanded, her wings remaining spread. “You made me into this creature! Tell me why!” When he didn’t speak she continued, “What was it about Nasp that you hated so much? Who did you wrong?”
“No one,” the man begged. “I loved Nasp and the people there.”
“Then why?” Vulshin Vy snarled, those imaginary peanuts being crushed instead of chewed. “Why did you chose me to become a monster? Was it because I was a foreigner, that I had no loved ones within that city? Because I came from Kudanel, who cares about that stupid little island right?”
The next breath she took was a weak one, her voice becoming more frail than frightening as a tear descended down her face. It slid over several sapphire spots on her cheek, they had stayed in the same spots every since she had been transformed, they were like tears so terrible they could never be wiped away.
“They warned me about the mainland,” she cried, chewing on her lip and tasting the blood of other people that still stained her mouth. “Of the foreign customs and creatures, the cruelties mainlanders were capable of. But I didn’t believe them, until you chose me out of the crowd.”
She ran her hand over her face as if contemplating cutting into it, anything that allowed the pain out of her body. She was the now the one shaking her head and it only stilled when her eyes fell back on his.
“All I wanted was to get away from the boredom of my little island, to start a life a new, in a new city, in a new land. I just wanted to belong! I sacrificed or sold everything I had to come to the mainland!” It was then that she noticed the strands of hair that had fallen over her face, they were feathery and curled and ugly. In Kudanel only straight hair was considered attractive. The next breath she took was so strong that the strands moved away from her face as if fearing they would be torn apart.
“When I took my first step off the boat, there was a local who asked me if I came from Kudanel. I was worried he would taunt me about my accent, but when I spoke to him he smiled and said he found it sexy.” That meant a lot to her, considering Kudanel men found Kundanel accents annoying on women. “I didn’t know if everyone would be so kind and all I wanted was to fit in. So when I asked him why so many people seemed to be heading towards the center of Nasp and he told me they were off to see the Great Semmo I followed them. Even though I had no idea who you were or what you were capable of.”
She paused and that petrified him more than her tearing the steel door off its hinges ever did. “Come one, come all! See the Great Semmo, master of hypnotism!” Her words were a mimic of memory, she remembered seeing the salesman upon the rooftops shouting to everyone to go and see Semmo, the man who had done this to her, the man she had been chasing all this time, the man that was only feet away from her now.
“Why did you choose me?” she demanded again, her voice going from frail to frightening once more.
“Because,” Semmo stated quickly, “because you looked the most intrigued within the crowd,” he said these words as if he was being strangled, it was a decent impression, but nothing beat the real thing. She took a step closer to him, her hand half-reaching towards his neck, but she stopped herself.
“What?” she asked instead.
Semmo scurried onto his feet, keeping his back to the wall, anything to further the distance between them.
“I had been to Nasp dozens of times before that day, the people were becoming bored with my routine! I could see it in their eyes, but you held no such boredom. You seemed more intrigued than even the child at your side.”
Her eyes widened, but no longer in worry, they widened like a lioness who had just found their evening meal.
“You stood out compared to everyone else, that slight difference made the routine seem new again.”
“You’ve done this to other people,” she hissed, her hand pointing to her feathered chest.
“No! No! No one else!” Semmo pleaded.
“Than why did you do it to me?” Vulshin Vy whispered.
“I didn’t!” he beseeched, causing the colour in her eyes to become purple as she stamped her foot on the ground seemingly making the whole tower tremble with fear.
“Yes you did,” she said, the words spitting out of her mouth like knives out of scabbards.
“I didn’t!” he cried.
“Than why were you the only person in Nasp that I didn’t kill!”
The memory of that day was so monstrous that it became alive in his eyes. She could see herself transforming, the wings growing on her back, the feathers forcing their way through her skin. The purple polluting her eyes, the screams of the Nasp citizens as she slaughtered them. She moved towards him and now there was nowhere for him to step back to.
“One moment I am standing in the crowd, listening to the laugh of the little boy next to me. Then you called me on stage and with the boy’s encouragement I did so. The next thing I know I am holding the boy’s severed head as I sat perched upon a pile of bodies! You made me into this monster! No more games, no more tricks, no more hiding behind mercenary guards, you will tell me what you did to me and you will tell me now!”
The purple was faint in her eyes, but it remained within them, as her nose touched his. It took everything she had not to hammer her head through his face.
“I turned you into a chicken!” Semmo said quickly.
Upon hearing this her expression became like a mother’s who had just been spoken to by their daughter’s rapist.
“You what?” Vulshin Vy gasped.
“Well not literally,” Semmo explained in a quiet quivering voice. “You were just suppose to act like one.”
“Act like one?” Vulshin Vy asked, no longer blinking.
“Yes,” Semmo shrieked.
“Act like one? Act like one!” Vulshin Vy repeated over and over, her voice becoming more menacing and monstrous with every word.
“That’s all,” Semmo squeaked before her hand was upon his throat.
After that he began screaming and didn’t stop until his body squashed upon the ground outside the tower.
She had thrown him out the window and now was on her knees, doing everything in her power to keep control, to keep the purple from plummeting the green out of her eyes again. Her breaths were so intense that even the fire within the hearth flailed every time she exhaled, even though it was on the other side of the room. She had accomplished what she had come there for, Semmo had explained himself and for his actions he was exterminated. It was over, finally over.
She repeated that thought over and over again, like a wet cloth upon a flame, extinguishing the rage within. Soon she sat, wiping her hand over her mouth as if ridding it of a terrible taste. She could feel her wings widen in the way one stretches their leg to stifle stiffness. She stood up and took a long, low breath, one that didn’t make the flames dance. She moved to the window and closed her eyes, feeling the wind upon her face, it was as cool as it was calming. It was the first time since that dark day that the wind felt freeing, instead of frightening. She could now fly without having to think of finding Semmo, because his corpse couldn’t cause anymore harm.
That is when she opened her eyes and looked down upon the ground below, where his body lay motionless and mauled. He had fallen far and hard, so far that she couldn’t see if he was still breathing or not. It would not be long before more mercenaries came to the tower, his scream was louder than any of their burps or bellows. If he wasn’t outright dead there was a chance they could save him and it was a chance she couldn’t allow.
She descended out of the window, her wings wrapping themselves within the wind and ensuring she landed without harm. Her feet found ground
so close to his body that his blood began to blanket her toes. It was the first time since before the Nasp massacre that she was glad to see blood, solely because it was his. His head looked like hammered meat, save for one eye and she had seen enough corpses to know only the dead possessed such a stare. Semmo wouldn’t be making any more monsters. She closed her eyes and took another long low breath. The man accountable for the atrocities she had committed was well and truly dead. Finally it was over.
Or so it seemed, that was until a certain sound struck her ears, one that made her eyelids open and her whole body turn, “Bowk, Bowk, Bowk.” She gasped as if preparing to see a ghost or some other such supernatural thing. But she only saw creature-filled cages, stacked against the side of walls. But she was sure she had heard that sound, the sound that turned human flesh into worms and she was certain she hadn’t been the one to make it.
Cautiously she crept towards the cages, looking at the various kinds of creatures, one species per cage. She saw animals that were of the same breed as the furry four-legged thing, whose ruckus had alerted the guards to her presence. They meowed at her, but she paid them little attention. She was more interested in the parchment placed upon the cage, a list of names all in a descending line of different languages. She could only read one of the words, ‘cats’. But it wasn’t hard to believe the other words said the same thing, just in different tongues. So these creatures were called cats, what use that information was to her she didn’t know. In another cage she saw small fur covered animals with leathery wings. She didn’t need to see their name written on the piece of parchment stuck on the cage, she knew they were bats. They filled the coastal caves of Kudanel.
But when she saw what was written on the parchment of the next cage over she froze, the breaths she took were so cold, mist was sure to move within them at any moment. Chickens, was the word that labeled the cage and no matter how many times she blinked that word didn’t change. She knelt down carefully the way an arachnophobia sufferer does when searching for a spider. She looked inside the cage and saw bobble-headed birds, feathery and fat. “Bowk, Bowk, Bowk.” The chilling chorus crippled her down to her very core. These were the creatures that had made the sound and they were in a cage labeled chickens.
Something was very wrong here, these creatures couldn’t kill a puppy let alone a person, so why were they labeled chickens? Frantically her eyes moved across the other cages, looking at all the other labels. Every creature she had heard of before, rabbit, lizard, pig, bat were all correctly labeled.
Which had to mean, these creatures were indeed chickens.
Voices not spoken from mouths but memory filled her head. Each spoke as if chewing on peanuts, you must be careful of the mainland Vulshin Vy, one said.
There are many terrifying creatures there, another added.
None more terrifying than the chicken, it is the size of a man and can peck through plate armor. If you try to stab it, its wings will eat whatever you tried to stab it with. Its feet are capable of crushing both skull and steel. Its wings are powerful enough to make winds that can slice a grown man in half. If it bobs its head back and forth while staring at you, your flesh shall turn to worms! If it sees blood, its eyes turn purple and it will not stop until it has killed everything it lays its eyes upon! But most of all be careful of the sound it makes, Bowk, Bowk, Bowk. That sound will make you commit suicide.
The voices swam in her head like sharks within the sea, yet none of them were as loud or as goring as the sounds from that cage.
“Bowk, Bowk, Bowk,” the bobble-headed birds continued their chorus, as she watched their heads move back and forth. She looked down at her arms and hands, not a single worm could be seen wriggling through her bloodstained skin. She stood up straight, as if doing so would somehow get her away from the burden of the revelation but it didn’t.
She realized then, that her Kudanel kin had lied to her all along, chickens weren’t massacring monsters they were in fact these bobble-headed birds. Her fellow Kudenelians had filled her with fear in order to battle the boredom of their little island. It was why people like her took what Kudanel sailors said about the mainland so seriously, because their stories were always more interesting than what Kudenal had to offer. Such sailors liked the attention they were given because of this and thus it only made sense that some of their stories, would be just that, stories, not the truth. Even in that moment she couldn’t blame them for lying, for the truth was sometimes a terrible thing.
Like right then when she looked over at the corpse of Semmo and truly realized what had happened. He had hypnotized her, he had made her act like a chicken, but there was no way for him to know what she thought a chicken acted like. He wasn’t to blame for her actions or her transformation anymore than the sailors were, there was no possible way they could have known what would happen, that a misinterpretation of what a chicken was would make her into a monster.
It was in that morbid moment, as the realization ravaged her that the stars found the moon and its light leered down upon her, its casting both cruel and cold. For it illuminated the blood upon her, blood that didn’t belong there, blood that never should’ve been shed. Blood that she couldn’t blame Semmo or anyone else for shedding.
And that was the problem she knew exactly what had happened, she knew what she had done. She knew what children’s blood tasted like, the scream mothers make when their babies are butchered before them. She knew how much blood it took to paint whole city walls crimson. She knew now no one else was responsible for such atrocities.
She knew all these terrible things just as well as she knew many mercenaries had arrived on the scene. She turned to face their formation, they had come in force and they had come prepared, protected by a phalanx of spears as archers assembled behind them. She could see many cultures within their ranks and while most wouldn’t understand her if she spoke, they all understood that she was a monster. Though accidentally created, a monster was still a monster.
She didn’t disagree with such sentiment.
She walked forward, stopping only when the cages were large enough on either wall that the passage between them was quite narrow. As the archers unleashed their volley she could feel her wings trying to spread, but there simply wasn’t enough room between the cages for them to reach around and shield her. Meaning she could see the arrows clearly as they descended. All the while her ears were filled with the “Bowk, Bowk, Bowk,” of the chickens. In that moment, one thing about the story seemed true, hearing them clucking did make her feel suicidal.
THE END.
WHITE BONE by Celine Low
The king rode hard and fast into the mountains, his wrath splendid, like the wrath of gods. Beneath his stallion’s hooves even the mountain cowered before him, submitting to the storm of his rage, trembling like the breast of a woman shrinking back in fear.
The king was a hunter, and he was there to hunt.
Bowling and arrows pressed satisfyingly down over his shoulder, the quiver alone as heavy as a young child. And yet, it was the weight of the queen’s insult that burdened him instead, the sting of it spurring his insides like a whip.
You call yourself a man, a king! Coward! You cannot even …
He shook his head, shaking her voice off like summer flies. The queen was a bitter, jealous woman. He would not heed her words.
Up to the summit he rode, where the beast was rumoured to nest. Of the myriad who had entered the forested mountains to investigate, only a handful had emerged alive, reporting a creature that left no tracks, and moved too quickly for even eyes to catch. For close to a decade he had been harangued with complaints of woodcutters and shepherds disappearing in the mountains, the bones of them and their flock scattered about both the mountain’s thickets and its grassy plains, flesh cleanly gnawed off. The beast did not seem too picky about its choice of meat.
Rapacious creature though it was, the king was determined that by the end of the next day it would be roasting on a pit, a giant fowl—for a b
ird it must be, to leave no tracks—to pay in blood the families of the victims it had snatched.
So the king charged forward, neither stopping to rest nor take stock of his surroundings. He knew this mountain, was familiar with the way. Emerald fingers reached out to him as he passed, gentle fronds trembling for a touch, all ignored. Green lattices arched above him, trailing leafy threads like a lady’s jewelled hair; these he also saw not. He saw not the thick carpets of rust and sienna, laid out before him to cushion his way; he smelled not the perfumed mists of pine; and even the wide fields of wild roselle, blushing with their incarnadined lips open and waiting, swept by unnoticed; for the king counted only his distance travelled, and his eyes were ever upward as he pondered only on the steps he would take to reach the peak.
He had traversed this mountain before, many times, when it had still been safe. Near the peak of the mountain where he was headed was housed the bones of his ancestors, burnt now to ash. It was theree he had been crowned, in the invisible presence of his ancestors, and it was there he had held his weddings, with the smoky incense of their blessings wafting like spirits over him and his brides.
He had crowned his damned queen there.
Heels drove hard into his mount’s sides. His steed panted, sweat pooling beneath its straps. He gritted his teeth.
There had been a period of time when he had come almost every month, to head his imperial hunts. After all, what was a king who was not a warrior, a hunter? If his men bowed to him at all, it was not only because he could run a country; it was because he could, so the poets sing, kill the Cloud Tiger with his bare hands, and pierce the heart of a sparrow from its flock without waste of a single shaft.
The hunts had been grand, a cyclone of hooves ravishing the mountain, with hawks and falcons and even lions and leopards racing at their heels. It had given the men great satisfaction to command these animals. A hawk at the arm of a man symbolised his mastery of nature. But try as they might, those hunts had accomplished nothing; they could not find the beast. They had scoured the mountain in search for it, but the beast, as if scared away by the noise, seemed to have vanished sagaciously into the thin mist-clouded air, and neither the king nor his men had encountered even the faintest shard of bone nor whiff of blood the locals so frequently reported.
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