Fiction River: Unnatural Worlds

by Fiction River

  Exhaustion slammed down on her and she swayed. The wind played with her hair, stronger now. Maybe a storm was blowing up.

  When she opened her eyes, Tu Shr had slid down on the dirt mound so his head was now close to Dao Ming’s.

  Lin Han clapped her hands. Tu Shr had surely accepted Dao Ming as a bride! Her sister had a husband, someone who would look after her and treat her with respect.

  Lin Han bowed low to the happy couple.

  Normally, what followed would be the wedding feast. But there wasn’t anyone else to celebrate.

  “I will eat for both of you later,” Lin Han promised as she picked up the figures, holding them together in the palms of her hands.

  “The goddess will look out for you and bless you always,” she promised as she opened her hands over the edge of the grave and let the figures tumble onto the paper coffin below.

  They landed on a bit of clean paper, not where every member of the family had dropped a handful of dirt.

  Lin Han gave them the acorn cup, and the ghost money as well.

  She didn’t know what to do with the vase. It didn’t belong in the grave. She couldn’t take it home: it was just one more thing of her sister’s that her family would deny.

  Instead, she planted it firmly at the head of the grave. Maybe when the younger son came back to get the dirt for the ancestors’ altar, he’d see the vase and use it instead. That way, both Dao Ming and Tu Shr would be venerated.

  After one last low bow, Lin Han turned away from the grave and started down the hill. She was too tired to skip or dance, though she knew she should—she was still part of a wedding procession.

  But her feet dragged on the earth and her tears started again. No one else would ever know what she’d done, how she’d taken care of her sister.

  Still. She’d finally managed to find her peace.

  Introduction to “The Witch’s House”

  In 2013, multiple World Fantasy Award winner Richard Bowes will publish two short story collections. A new novel, Dust Devil on a Quiet Street, will also appear, along with a reissue of his Lambda Award winning novel, Minions of the Moon.

  As he assembled the collection The Queen, the Cambion, and Seven Others, he received the invitation for Unnatural Worlds. The Queen, the Cambion, and Seven Others collects his modern Fairytales. He had finished a story for the Datlow/Windling dystopian anthology After. He writes, “When Kris Rusch invited me to contribute a story to Fiction River, combining these two themes seemed perfectly logical to me.”

  The result is a memorable story impossible to characterize.

  The Witch’s House

  Richard Bowes

  First Month

  All I know is I’m in a forest, staring past trees at this dirt road. I know I’m here forever waiting for travelers on the road to Avalon. They come by and I challenge them, ask for a password and when they don’t give it I go in their brains and kill them: simple as that. I can’t move, can’t think except about this and I’ve been here for fucking ever.

  Someone comes down the road and I recognize a kid called Nice from my old crew back in the city. The AK47 he carries won’t do any good against me. I go into his mind, look through his eyes and see him seeing me. I’m massive and metal, like a robot or a giant warrior in armor. I ask for a password, one we both know from back there.

  Nice and me were like brother and sister but now he doesn’t recognize me, is too scared to think. Twenty seconds ticks away without a response so I reach in and crush his heartbeat, rip the breath out of his lungs and watch him fall dead with blood running out of his mouth and nose.

  Before I can realize I’m a fifteen-year-old girl, a Mortal here in Fairyland, not a metal monster, another mind goes into my head like I went inside Nice’s in the dream.

  ‘The Soldier’s Malady,’ I get told mind to mind by the Witch of Avalon. Then I understand I had a nightmare, past horrors working their way into my dreams, making my brain run scams on me.

  The Witch being in my skull scares me. It means I let my guard down and that it’s possible she could have killed me just like I killed Nice in my dream. I remember how Nice actually died; have a heart crushing memory of him cut in two on the bank of the Hudson. It happened months ago in the wrecked city where I spent all my life until last month. I guess I still feel I should have been able to save him.

  But before I can even open my eyes, the Witch tells me ‘Rest easy. Sleep will follow.’ She rules here in the Forest of Avalon and I’m asleep before I know it.

  When I do wake up and open my eyes it’s dark, with dawn light just starting. My mattress is on a hardwood floor. Looking around, I make out the bark that’s one whole side of the room. The Oak of Ware is part of the Witch’s house. Or the house is part of the Oak.

  Almost a month ago Kailen and Evalyn, two Fey officers escorted me here through worlds full of wrecked war machinery and down forest paths guarded by things like a giant with eight eyes so he could see in all four directions. The giant stood with a club and asked who went there. When I asked the Fey how far I was from New York, I got told, ‘Many spells and more miles than you can imagine.’

  In the predawn I find myself automatically inhaling and exhaling in a rhythm the Witch taught me. The six senses: smell, touch, taste, hearing, sight, telepathy each get exercised. With every breath I feel the shield I’ve built around my mind. Anyone trying to bust into my head sees an image: a brick wall like the ones in my wrecked city and they bounce off it.

  In the same way, crazy stuff inside my head like the Soldier’s Malady should stay inside. Last night, obviously, all this broke down. The Witch entered my mind without my even knowing she was going to do it. And before that the horrors my mind produced got out.

  Here in the forest, there’s no one but the Witch to notice. Back in the city it would have spread terror in friend and enemy, adult and child. Back in the city I was the only telepath. Fairyland, though, is full of us.

  All I can hope is that keeping my shield in place pleases the Witch, makes up a little for my guard coming down last night. Making her happy is my only ticket back to New York as far as I know. I’m here for three months training. What happens if she’s not pleased I don’t want to think about.

  Minerva the owl flies in one window and out the other. The Witch’s familiar is going to roost. At the same moment I sense the Witch of Avalon reaching out and catch her question on my shield, ‘Are you awake, my dear Real?’ And I tell her I am.

  The owl needs to sleep, I need to sleep but the Witch never seems to. Getting up, I catch the smell of tea down in the kitchen. I wash myself and put on this long T-shirt they call a shift. That’s pretty much all I get to wear these days. My clothes and everything else got taken away the night I arrived. They gave me sandals but they’re out on the porch.

  On the sideboard in the kitchen, there’s a slab of bread and jam and a pot of the Witch’s tea. No sign of her. The Witch of Avalon is everywhere and nowhere and makes sure I never forget it.

  When they brought me here almost four weeks ago I was in bad shape. The only thing I knew how to do with my telepathy was to kill people. Back then I didn’t know how to block an enemy from my mind or communicate mentally with anyone else except by force. The Witch told me I was a danger to myself and others, though she smiled as she did.

  Now I’ve developed this mental shield that mostly keeps others out and keeps what I don’t want anyone to know I’m thinking inside. Before she taught me all that, the Witch found out every last thing I had inside me. Maybe some of that makes her kind of distant and unsure about me now. Or maybe that’s just how she is.

  But she controls my fate and I make sure she doesn’t catch just how much I hate the touch of her mind first thing in the morning like this. Because maybe that would mean I don’t get back to my city, bad as it is, to my girlfriend Dare and to my life.

  The Fey who found me, crazed and exhausted, fighting to save my crew, my people, said they’d take care of things while I wa
s gone. But they told me I had to get fixed up. There was no choice involved.

  So I eat the bread, swallow the tea which I always want to drink and walk barefoot onto the big wooden porch with its roof and tables and chairs. Birds sing and dart through the air. A rabbit runs across the grass. I look around for Phil, this baby faun the Witch has as a pet. I wanted to kill him at first. Now I kind of miss him when he’s not around.

  Tall trees surround the house. A breeze makes their leaves shimmer and catch the light. And suddenly there’s this mutilated body on the grass. A woman, caught and butchered, her breasts cut off, her crotch slashed open. She was someone I was supposed to protect back in my city.

  Automatically I reach out to find the one who did it, wanting to get in his head, grab his heart and brain and tear them apart. Birds screech in the trees, fly away. Small animals run in the bushes.

  When I look at the grass again, there’s no body. It’s the Soldier’s Malady, a twisted memory of home. I want to scream but I take some deep breaths and don’t. This time the dream stayed inside my head.

  I go over to the table on the porch where there’s a viaculum. It’s this device they have in the Fairy Kingdom where you control a story with your thoughts. This is how the Fey teach their children. And some of them feel I must be a long lost relative.

  Nothing can distract me while I’m using the viaculum. The first couple of weeks I took part in stories about Fairy princes, and princesses and witches. I was supposed to learn some moral but the real point was learning how to use all six senses.

  I got frustrated, lost my temper all the time, tried to tear the heads off characters I hated, kept having to stop and start over when I lost track of what I was doing. Now the stories are more adult, more complicated but I’ve learned stuff.

  So I stand as tall as I get, which isn’t very, on the porch. I’m aware of the growing morning light, the noise of the birds, the smell of the woods, the tea I can still taste and the feel of the floorboards on my feet.

  It’s taken many hours of patience and practice to get all my senses working like this. But that’s how you make the game go forward. When the usual five senses are engaged, I let my mind scan around me; touch the flitter brains of birds, the deep throb of old trees, the way a hive of bees is kind of like one brain. I don’t encounter the Witch. But I think she’s got ways of concealing herself from me.

  I say the spell I was taught and move my hands like I should. It seems stupid but if I don’t do it just right nothing happens. This morning I do the ritual and a voice in my head says, ‘Lady Enigma in Dragon Country.’

  That’s the game and I’m Lady Enigma, an advisor/ operative sent by the Queen beneath the Hill to investigate goings on in Claysmoran, a province way-gone in the backwoods of Fairyland. For the first week or so, I had trouble operating this story, keeping all my senses alert, watching for clues from the characters. And I’d had trouble controlling my temper.

  The story picks up where I left off. The nobility of the province are celebrating our hunt for the Giant White Wolf and her pups. Back home in my lawless, wrecked America I saw lots of people die and some of them were kids closer to me than brothers or sisters could ever have been. I myself have killed quite a few individuals and all of them deserved it as far as I know.

  All that and having the viaculum repeatedly close down as I lost touch with various senses made me impatient and anxious to finish things off.

  We finally cornered the huge fiendish beast, whose mind was hard to get hold of, after I’d seen her snap our dogs’ spines and cripple horses. And I tore into her as she ran at me, whipped her head back and broke her neck. She was defending her pups, which would have grown to be red-eyed monsters but were still big innocent beasts who whimpered in terror as we snuffed the life out of them. I figured I needed to show I can handle stuff like this if I’m going to get out of here and back home

  The celebration takes place in the High Sheriff’s castle. I taste the wine, feel the warmth of the fire, smell the perfume, listen to the stupid conversation around me and catch sight of myself in a mirror. Lady Enigma, emissary of the Queen, is tall, fair, maybe twenty-five, instead of small, dark and turning sixteen this fall the way I actually am. She flickers because of all the Glamour she uses.

  Trying to keep my mental probe gentle so it doesn’t get noticed, I slide among these backwoods half-breed Fey aristocrats, dressed up in ratty old uniforms and hunting outfits. They’re all red faced with wine and Fairy Dust. I pick up mental images of the pups as they died and wonder if maybe it was a mistake.

  The Sheriff’s big ass is stuck in front of the fireplace with tiny fire sprite faces peeking out of the flames behind him. Magic’s so common here that you hardly notice it.

  Speaking aloud because some of this gang’s telepathy’s not so good, he says, “Well Lady Enigma, I hope your report to the Palace will be favorable.”

  Before I can say anything a no-tune whistling back on the Witch’s porch makes my concentration wobble and starts to pull me out of the viaculum. A quick glance to the side shows me Phil the Faun, half-goat, half-human kid blowing on a pipe and dancing on the porch with his little hooves, looking for my attention.

  Phil is part pet, part pest and I need to get rid of him and stay focused on Lady Enigma. If I really go into his mind I’ll find myself blocked by an image of the Witch and her grey wand.

  But I can plant in his empty little head the sight of this great hairy, winged monster swooping down. Phil sees it and runs away bleating and crying. The figures in the viaculum waver but I run through my six senses and they stabilize. I don’t have to start over again.

  It takes a lot of patience and concentration to get everything inside my head working right. Only the fact I’ve got to learn how to do this if I’m going to get back to my own world makes me hang in.

  When it feels like I’ve done enough with Lady Enigma in Dragon Country for the morning, I perform the ritual that stops it. And I step away from the viaculum wondering if the way I’d handled the pups had been as wise as it seemed.

  Phil is snuffling and I see him standing a ways off glaring at me. He’s figured out I sent the black, hairy thing. A couple of weeks ago I’d have been happy to kill him; now he seems like the only friend I have in this place.

  He can’t be let indoors because he’s not housebroken.

  Since the Witch isn’t around I go in the kitchen and get him a couple of these ginger cookies he goes for and grab one for myself.

  First he won’t take them, backs away from me rolling his eyes and stamping his hooves. But I hold them out and he grabs them with his human hands. Once he’s shoving them in his mouth he lets me scratch his head between his horns, which he likes.

  Pretty soon he forgets how I scared him and he’s skipping on his animal legs with his little boy parts bouncing around, pretending to butt me with his tiny horns. This maybe is what it’s like to have a kid, a thing I’m not going to do, or a baby brother which my mother didn’t do. I realize he’s probably the nearest thing to that I’ll ever know.

  I’m thinking about this when out of nowhere there’s a sheet of flames and voices inside it screaming with laughter. Except Phil doesn’t notice and nothing’s burning. It’s something from the Witch’s mind and she uses it to smash the brick wall defense I built in my head, gets inside me and I have to try and throw her out. Maybe she’s doing this to teach me. But half the time I feel inches away from death.

  Second Month

  After weeks of being Lady Enigma it seems like I’ve got a certain feel for the rhythms of the game. I’m not in control but as I travel in the service of the Queen I know there will always be times when I’m in a crowd with dozens of other minds around me and things happening at the sides of my vision. I’ve cut way down on the violence. I notice if I stay calm the story does too.

  This one morning I’m standing on the porch, patting Phil’s furry head, remembering the taste of the Witch’s tea, smelling blossoms, seeing the light
, hearing birds, feeling this hum which I realize is somehow the mind of the trees.

  At the same time Lady Enigma is using her senses in the grand salon in the Palace of Prince Oberon. I have to stay aware of the room, overhear the servants whispering gossip, sip the wine and recognize something bitter there.

  I smell a dozen different perfumes, catch the glances of women and men above their decorated fans. Thoughts, messages fly through the air: most of them pretty stupid.

  “Bouquets of kisses for one so angry!”

  “The Chancellor of Dreams will hear of this!”

  Once in a while one catches my attention.

  “A Queen has reasons and her reasons have reasons.”

  “Not an enigma so much as an empty vessel.”

  Was that last about me? Was the first? Was I intended to catch the thought?

  Images fly too: A male Fey in full silken court dress but with the head of a cat. Clouds part and a chariot bearing a naked child and pulled by three winged horses flies toward a tower made of roses.

  Then I catch for a second, someone in the room seeing a pair of eyes so old and smart and cruel that they chill me. Those eyes scan the salon of this ornate palace in this rich province.

  I’ve learned to probe minds lightly. Around here even some of the servants have a bit of telepathy. I notice a butler who, like me, obviously caught a glimpse of the eyes. I watch as he turns slightly and steals a glance at a slender, young noble. This man, whose name is Lord Robin, stares at a mural. I follow the gaze and see a floor-to-ceiling portrait of a dragon with glittering blue and gold scales, wings furled, head raised.

  The eyes move but Lord Robin does not react. My guess is that the first time he saw them move he was surprised enough not to conceal his reaction. This time he looks then turns away. But it has got to be important—dragons are in this adventure’s title after all.