As I approached the solitary peak, I began to make out more details about the objects that surrounded it. The remains of ships, trapped and then crushed by the ice, jutted out of the snow like tombstones. One had the name Terror emblazoned on a greening copper plate on its stern. Another wreck was so old that it was nothing more than a skeleton reaching for the sky. It was here, in this wooden rib cage that I found the woman.
She was an Inuit, of the Netsilik tribe or perhaps the Iglulik, and had a wide face and dark, stringy black hair. Her features were familiar to me, and I was reminded of Zahra and Inez.
She’d bundled herself in seal skins and blankets of caribou fur, and lay against a ship beam. A small blackened depression in the ice showed where she’d made a fire that had burned relatively recently. I freed her arm from the blankets and felt for a pulse. I was rewarded by a faint fluttering in her wrist. That in itself was a marvel. How had she gotten here? I looked back at the Terror. Time is a peculiar beast in the Arctic. The cold preserves everything, so you begin to think of all things as old. But could that shipwreck be new? The winter ice had only moved in three months ago. Perhaps that was when it was trapped.
Her fingers and toes were black and had the texture of coal, but under my touch, I was able to massage life back into them. I used my power to aid in my treatment, increasing the odds of her survival: raising her core temperature, strengthening the muscles of her heart and lungs.
When I looked up, her eyes were open. “You have scars,” she said.
I tried to smile reassuringly, thinking she was hallucinating. “You’ll be okay.”
Her eyes closed again. “So will you,” she said. Suddenly I wanted more than anything in the world for her to live.
The sun hung low on the horizon and the wind howled across the ice. As much as I’d helped, she could not survive another night outside. I had two choices. Either I could continue on to the mountain peak and confront the Trickster, or I could take her to the Terror in the hopes that the shattered hull still contained some usable supplies.
I lifted her in my arms, blankets and all, and made for the shipwreck.
The Terror had once been a three-masted schooner, but ice had weighed down her rigging and made her masts brittle. Her sails had been torn down by the wind – or possibly by survivors – and lay on the deck in piles. Icicles dangled from the railings and what rigging remained far above us. Ice crystals twinkled from every surface.
The ship was large enough to have a small forecastle and a larger aftercastle at its stern. I gambled that the forecastle would be used for storage and carried the woman to the aftercastle. The door was sealed shut by ice, but a few hard kicks loosened it, and it finally swung open. The darkness inside was impenetrable, but my eyes quickly adjusted. A narrow staircase went below decks and, following it, I quickly found the ship’s mess.
I lowered the woman gently to the deck nearby, and then went to find some way to light a fire. There was a sandbox in the centre of the cook’s room – the closest you’d get to an oven aboard a wooden ship – and firewood nearby. I stacked kindling and then firewood on the sand and found a box of matches in a cupboard. I used a little divine power to make sure they’d catch and soon had a small fire going. There was a window nearby, which I opened carefully to avoid shattering it. I didn’t want the smoke to end up suffocating her.
When I returned, the woman’s lips were blue and her cheeks were dark with the first signs of frostbite. I cursed myself for forgetting how cold it was in the ship’s interior. I carried her to the fire and placed her as close to it as I dared.
She was so small and fragile and close to death. My power was limited but I was determined to use whatever I could to save her. To me, saving this one life would be a start to undoing the damage I’d done to the Aztecs. I’d be filling my fish pond again.
I sat nearby, watching her for hours before I too closed my eyes.
Later that night I came awake and did not know why. I lay in the darkness for some time. At last, I heard the same sound that had awoken me. It was a dull whisper.
Give her to us.
I rose cautiously and drew my whalebone knife. The whisper had been close, and though my eyes were adjusted to the dark, the light of the fire cast many shadows.
I remained perfectly still as the silence drew out.
At last one of the shadows moved. A thin rail of a man wrapped in plaid blankets stood at the door. His face was so gaunt that I could see every dip and bulge of his skull. His skin was like parchment and I could see his teeth clearly outlined through his cheeks. He wore the uniform of a sailing man – a dark blue pea coat and grey cotton pants. He was barefoot and his toes were black and twisted things. It was a wonder he could walk at all.
“Give her to us,” he hissed.
I glanced down at the woman. Her eyes were open, and she glanced from him to me. There was fear there, but also strength.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Ernest,” he said. He took a shambling step into the room. “I’m hungry.”
It was those simple words that made me look again at his coat. The blue velvety material had begun to glow. This thing was Wetiko’s creature.
“You can’t have her,” I said, and I was startled by the strength of my convictions. I had lost everything, but I wasn’t about to lose her, this anonymous woman about whom I knew next to nothing.
“We’ll share her with you,” the shambling mariner offered. “There is enough for both of us.”
“No.”
It paused, its thin lips pulled into a hideous expression of surprise. Then it scowled. “Then. You. Die.”
Blue fire erupted from its coat and leaped up its neck. Its pupils were aflame and each of the pathetic hairs on its nearly bald skull burned. It launched itself at me with the kind of speed only Wetiko could muster. Out of desperation, I grabbed the burning jacket and used the creature’s momentum to spin it towards the window. Glass exploded outwards and the mariner-thing rolled onto the deck outside.
“Don’t go,” said the woman.
“I’ve got to stop him now, before he comes back,” I told her. I climbed out of the window, wary of a surprise attack.
The creature was nowhere to be seen.
I trod carefully on the slippery deck, placing one foot and waiting until I had a sure grip before continuing. I spotted circular pools of melted ice on the deck that led to the forecastle and made my way towards the ship’s bow.
The iron handle on the door had been melted and a pool of water glimmered under the doorsill. I placed my hand carefully on the melted latch and used a little power to increase the odds of it retaining enough structural integrity to open. Before I could depress the handle, the creature struck.
The door bulged and then gave way as it pushed bodily through the brittle wood. My knife was knocked out of my hands and slid across the deck. Blue fire enveloped me, searing my skin. Strong fingers grabbed my wrists and pain shot up my arms. I could smell my own flesh roasting.
I marshalled what little strength I had to fall backwards. As soon as my back hit the deck I kicked out with both legs and caught the creature square in the chest. It hit the wall of the forecastle with a hideous crack and crumpled.
I scrambled for my whalebone knife, then skidded back towards the creature. It seemed unable to rise, as if my blow had broken its spine. At that moment I felt something that I hadn’t felt for centuries. It was victory.
“I saved her,” I told it, though I knew it was beyond understanding.
Suddenly, it chuckled a deep throaty chuckle. Its fist flashed upwards, barely missing me. Then it came down hard on the wooden deck and the whole ship shook. It was only by chance that I looked up and saw the danger.
The blow had loosened the constellation of icicles that hung on the rigging above. I flung up my hands, and exerted all the power I had left to manipulate my odds of survival. Icicles the size of my arm crashed into the deck, one or two impacting hard enough the shatter deck
boards and remain quivering upright. But I was unharmed.
I confronted the skeleton again, but it wasn’t looking at me. I turned.
The woman had come on deck to help me, and my magic hadn’t protected her. She lay crumpled on the deck. There was a drumming in my ears and my vision dissolved at its edges. With a scream, I ripped a nearby icicle out of the deck and plunged it into the chest of the flaming skeleton. I heard a sickening crack and the flame winked out. Its life was extinguished with the fire.
I raced across the deck, dreading what I would find. Her body was broken and shattered. I knelt at her side, and though I used every scrap of power I had, there are no odds that can be adjusted to bring back the dead. I saw again the look that Inez had given me before she died. Before she’d killed herself in front of me so that I might learn the price of selfishness. And now, by protecting myself, I’d allowed this woman to be killed.
I let out a scream that the world has never heard before or since. I screamed with all my heart and soul. I screamed out seven thousand years of torment and agony. I screamed for the Aztec nation, and for all those I’d let die through my actions. For hundreds of miles the ocean ice cracked like thunder, but even that noise could not drown out my scream. In Siberia, a volcano exploded. In Brazil, birds fell from the sky.
When I was spent, I fell silent and knelt on the deck of the Terror as it slowly began to sink.
Soon, I felt a presence.
A hand reached down and cupped my chin, lifting it slightly.
The Trickster knelt before me. He reached up and removed his raven mask, revealing Penarddun at long last. Physically, he was little changed from his days at Brodgar’s Ness, but his eyes were deep and his face serene.
“It’s okay,” he said, and gathered me into a long hug.
When he pulled away, I stared at him and at the mask like a blind man who has just been given the gift of sight. I did not understand what I was seeing.
“Do you remember the night when Hox the Younger landed his army on the beach?” he asked me calmly.
I nodded.
“I asked you why you couldn’t use your power to save us, and you said ‘better that some lives be lost here that many more might be saved later on.’ When I questioned that statement, you told me to return to the Ness and meditate on the meaning of it.”
He took up the mask from where he’d left it on the deck and turned it over in his hands. “I did meditate on it. I meditated all that night and into the next day. And I came to the conclusion that what you said might be right, but that it was wrong to ask a sacrifice if one has never experienced loss oneself.
“Our lives might not seem like much to a god, but they are our most precious possessions,” he continued. “Because you are immortal, you can never die. How can you then know how much value we place on them? I wanted you to learn. I needed you to understand how precious life was before you made the decision to gamble it away. Perhaps you were right all along and it is better to lose a few lives now in order to save many others later on, but that decision should only be made by someone who knows what is at stake.”
He traced the lines of the mask one more time, longingly, and then held it out to me. I didn’t even have to take it from him. It flew to me of its own volition as soon as I reached for it. I felt its power flow into me.
“You once asked me how I’d managed to steal the mask,” said Penarddun evenly. “You told us that ‘only one who was pure of heart could pick it up’. My heart was pure. I only wanted to use the mask’s power to help you learn something that you needed to learn, and when that was accomplished, I would give it back. And here we are.”
I put on the mask and I was once again complete.
Except that things were not quite the same. I felt both weaker and stronger than I’d been before this all began. Penarddun had accomplished his task. He’d broken me as a god.
I rose, but he remained on his knees. His head was bowed. I knew he expected me to punish him, but I’d had enough of death.
“Rise, Penarddun.”
He rose quickly and stood before me. “What would you have of me, my lord?”
I considered his question carefully. Everything had changed. Wetiko had used the power he’d received from the destruction of the Aztecs to maintain his hold on the world. Penarddun had chosen Emissaries to fight for control of the age, as was his duty, but his lack of experience in performing those duties had allowed Wetiko to manipulate his choices.
“A lot has passed in seven thousand years,” I said. Then I grinned sheepishly. “I need help catching up.”
Penarddun’s face broke into a broad grin. “No problem. I kept a diary. Pretty little book with a leather cover. I had a feeling it might be important one day.”
With the Fires Out
by William Wood
The desert night was cold. Ellis dragged his feet toward the old saloon where oil light flickered through dusty windows. From inside came the clink of glass, a woman's laughter, the screech of a bird. All strange but inviting.
He pushed through the door. The place reeked of rotting timbers and rich earth. The hint of flowers brought to mind a vase spilling over with the colours of spring somewhere in the night he'd left behind.
"Might I trouble you folks for a place to wait out the night?"
"That could be a long wait, child." The woman's island accent was strong and tinged with laughter. A buckhorn chandelier hung low over a table, partially obscuring her. A man sat at the table, his back half-turned to the door. He was familiar but Ellis couldn't say why. Black hair hung long beneath the flat brim of his hat and silver glinted from a holstered gun. The chandelier's light crept outward from the table but revealed no more than a worn plank floor stretching into shadow. "Lost are you?"
"Yes, ma'am," answered Ellis.
The poncho she wore swallowed her, folding up and over her head into a hood concealing her face. A parrot stood on the table, its scraggly feathers looking half-plucked, half-singed. One eye, as big as his own, scrutinized him with intelligence.
"Dead is done," squawked the bird. "Dead is dust."
Ellis took a step back toward the door.
The gunman laughed. "Where you going, amigo? Back out there?"
His pursuers were a day or more behind him but suddenly the prospect of standing before this table and these three sets of eyes filled Ellis with the urge to push on into the darkness.
Silver glinted as the gunman's hand flashed to the butt of his pistol. Frost formed in Ellis' gut. He'd never loose his own before the gunman took him down. "I don’t want trouble, mister."
A smile flickered across the gunman's lips, briefly exposing teeth resembling a wolf's more than a man's.
"That's your answer to everything, Wetiko," said the woman, chiding the gunman. An emaciated hand reached from the folds of her poncho and pointed at Ellis. "But you, child, what's your answer?"
"My answer?"
"Dead is done, dead is dust," said the bird.
The smell of flowers he'd noticed on entering grew sickly sweet. A chain creaked from the shadows and Ellis remembered a porch swing, barely wide enough for two, rocking gently in the breeze. Ellis shook his head to clear it. He had to get out of this place – to move on. Stopping had been a mistake. If he drew his gun fast enough – showed his skill – they might just let him leave without a fight.
"Time to let that old thinking go," said the woman.
"Wh-what – ” A shudder passed through Ellis, bringing the memory of blood pooled at the foot of a hand-made table, its surface worn from use. Both chairs sat on the same side, one toppled over.
His thoughts were a jumble. Where was his sharpness? His warrior aptitude, the general had called it – that quality any military man needed to push through the distractions suffered by common folk?
"I've been waiting on you ever since that scuffle down south," rumbled the gunman. "Took your own sweet time getting here."
Did the gunman, this Wetiko, know about the
war? If so, did he also know about Emma?
"Dead is done, dead is dust."
I'm mad, thought Ellis. Stark, raving –
"You're not crazy, child," said the woman. "You're here because you showed promise to Wetiko."
Ellis's head pounded. "Who are you people?"
"Three sit at the table," said the gunman.
"When one has to go, child, a proxy is called."
"And since I aim to leave for a spell..." The gunman pushed back from the table.
The woman held up a hand, long fingers splayed like the legs of a spider.
"I believe this is my call," growled the gunman, but he remained seated.
This Wetiko bore a strong resemblance to the tall lanky fellow who always seemed to be just beyond the edge of each battle. Never completely out of sight. "I don't understand. What answer do you want from me?"
The room flooded with light – the darkness beyond the door replaced by the midday sun. Men on horses rode by, voices gruff and determined.
A man burst in. Ellis saw the star on his chest and drew his pistol without thinking. Instantly, cold iron pressed into his neck from Wetiko's own piece. Out of the corner of his eye, Ellis could see the gunman's razor teeth bared.
The lawman peered around the room, gaze lingering nowhere. Striding within inches of the table, he stopped. "I got nothing," he shouted to the men in the posse and vanished back through the door.
And, as quickly as it had come, the sunlight was gone.
"It's like he didn't even see us," stammered Ellis, slowly lowering his pistol as Wetiko did the same.
"Dead is done," said the bird. "Dead is dust."
Ellis' head throbbed. A good military man had to know himself, his situation, and his resources. and reach his objectives by any means possible. Ellis knew he was more than just good. Still this saloon defied any attempt at reason. He could think of only one explanation. "Am I dead?"
"No, child. But then, you're not exactly alive."
Green eyes glimmered from the shadows of the hood and Ellis could feel the woman's gaze like a warm breeze. Looking away, into the shadows, two worlds played out. One, the world of this damnable table. The other, his beloved Emma. Only she now lay dead.
The Book of the Emissaries: An Animism Short Fiction Anthology Page 19