The Best of Beneath Ceaseless Skies Online Magazine, Year One

by Beneath Ceaseless Skies

  The third lock shines regardless of how little light the room holds. I can reach it if I stand on my tiptoes. It is hollow and open at the bottom, wide and deep enough for my hand. Bright silver teeth line the lock. It will not open unless the pressure plates within are pressed just so, and, if they are not, the lock will take my hand as payment.

  ~ ~ ~

  It is near to night, now, and Father pats Stefan on the head, then sweeps Marta up in his big arms. She giggles, and wraps her arms around his neck. While she hugs him, his blue gaze drifts from me, to the third lock, and back.

  I move to the door and unlock the first lock.

  Father sets Marta down and her smile unravels at the edges like a split seam. Stefan scampers behind the chair.

  I unlock the second lock.

  Father lifts the wolf skull from the mantel and places it over his face. His eyes go from blue to yellow.

  He is broken and remade.

  Marta takes a step backward, and Father pads forward and licks her face.

  I stretch upwards, bite my lip, and carefully place my hand within the third lock. It responds, and I swing the door open.

  The bite of winter spins in and Father whirls on all fours to face the doorway. Beyond, the night is almost here. He barks, then shakes his pelt into place and trots out into the darkness. His tracks stand stark in the snow and the moonlight.

  I lock both him and the night away. Marta helps me pile wood on the fire, then goes about the tasks Mother taught her. The heat grows and presses the cold flat against the walls.

  All of us are hungry, but only Stefan opens the pantry to look. It is empty, but that doesn’t stop him from going back again, and once more before coming to sit in my lap. The fire makes the wood pop, and soon Stefan begins to snore, his head against my chest, and Marta comes to sit beside me. I sleep.

  The fire is only ash and ember when something awakens me. I roll Stefan’s sleeping form off me and sit up. Marta is sleeping as well. She’s used her doll as a pillow.

  There is something at the door. A wide slice of moonlight stretches in from outside, broken only by the wolf’s shadow. It smells us, snorts into the snow outside and whines, then throws itself at the door. Its howl stops short when more howls join it.

  The pack outside grows louder. Their claws rake the wood, and yellow eyes glare at me from outside, wolves with their faces pressed to the snow, ears against the ground. I hear them snarl amongst themselves, fighting to be nearest the door. They growl and snarl and scratch at the walls.

  Stefan, thankfully, snores through it, but Marta sobs and covers her face with her doll. I get up as quietly as I can and creep to the door. The second lock ticks quietly away, counting the hours to morning

  The wolves hit the door so hard I feel it in my stomach. They smell my nearness. They snap their teeth at the space beneath the door, their jaws spasming shut over and over just like the lock does on my hand, in my dreams.

  The locks hold strong.

  I stop trying to be quiet and trust in the locks. I bring more wood for the fire and Marta helps me stack it high in the hearth.

  The pitch of the wolves changes, outside. They are gone, as one, and their yips and barks move away from us, down the valley, and trail off into the night. They have tired of us, and are running something else to ground.

  Marta pulls her knees to her chest and rests her chin on her doll’s. “What do they want?”

  “Us,” I tell her, and lay my hand on Stefan’s forehead. “That pack out there wants in here. This isn’t anything more than a den, to them, and the way they deal with other packs is the same way they want to deal with us.”

  “Will they hurt Father?”

  “They might try, but that’s not what they want most of all. A wolf pack kills the rival’s cubs, Marta. They want in here, to be at us.”

  “Cubs?”

  I do not take my hand off Stefan, and Marta stops asking questions. I cannot sleep. Stefan doesn’t wake up during the night, and Marta drifts off now and again but whimpers and cries in her sleep, like a dog. Like a wolf cub.

  When the night fades and the light returns, Father does not come back to us. I wait, watching the second lock count the time away, and the light beneath the door grows stronger. Just inside the doorway there is a torn claw and curls of wood shavings amidst a spill of melting snow.

  I wait.

  When I can wait no longer I shake Marta awake. She looks at me with eyes dark with worry. I take her to the door, careful to let Stefan sleep, and show her how to open the lowest lock. I lock it, and she unlocks it for me. And again. Satisfied, I open the second, and stand on my toes and undo the third. Despite my worry, I cannot help but smile a little. For the first time, the third lock is as easy as the other two.

  “Marta,” I say, “throw only the lowest lock.”

  She nods.

  Father is not far from home. I find him in the briar, naked, his eyes rolling in his head and drool freezing at his lips. He doesn’t move as I push my way through the bramble to him. My clothes tear, here and there, making more work for poor Marta when I return.

  His hands are empty, and I feel a coldness inside that matches the winter around me. He has lost the wolf skull, and I have to fight the urge to yell or cry or despair. We will starve if Father cannot hunt.

  When I am near enough, Father grabs my wrist. His skin burns bright with fever. I lead him back to the door, and Marta quickly unlocks the door and pulls it open. I see in her face how Father and I must look, my face scratched and bleeding, clothes torn; Father naked and more bloody and not even shivering, despite the cold.

  I take him to the chair in front of the fire, and Marta covers him in blankets. He watches us, and then his gaze goes to the door I’d forgotten to close. I rush over and throw all three locks like I’ve been doing it all my life. Father watches, eyes full of what I hope is pride.

  “I hunger,” says my Father, voice rough from the night.

  Marta has been busy, and fetches a bowl of gruel, but Father throws the bowl across the room.

  “Boy.”

  I stand, and Marta shrinks behind me.

  “Boy, go to my kill and fetch me meat.” His voice softens, becoming more like the Father we know. “The night was long and the hunt a hard one. The girl’s meal is not enough. My strength is gone, and I need the kill.”

  I nod. “Where is it, Father?”

  “Beyond the valley, in the stand of pines nearest the river. I was hard pressed, last night. I am sure the wolves have been at it. Bring me what they have left. It will have to be enough.”

  One, two, three, I unlock the door. Father’s eyes gleam at me, watching as I work at the door. He nods to himself and smiles when I turn back to face him.

  “I won’t be long,” I say, and wrap my cloak tight around me as I push out into the wind.

  The valley is hardly worthy of the name. I have only my Father’s wolf prints for company as I trudge through the snow. The wind picks up. It makes my cloak snap, and now and then the noise of it grows to a howl. I walk on and on, through the valley and to the pines. When I hear the rush of water muffled by ice, I know the river is nearby.

  Father is right. The wolves have been at the kill. Their tracks are everywhere. Split bones and frozen blood have been scattered in a wide circle around the carcass. The wolves have done so much damage that the kill is nothing recognizable, now, just a lump of meat and muscle that is beginning to ice up.

  I cut free what I can and wrap it in my cloak. The wind no longer sounds like wolves. I am warm, even without the cloak.

  When I return, the door stands open. The winter and the wolves are everywhere, within. I cannot bring myself to enter.

  A big gray wolf stands on the table, and it growls at me. The cloak and the kill fall from my hands, and I pull my knife from my belt. Yellow eyes glare at me from two different corners, and three of the wolves fight over what is left of Stefan. His blood is bright, as bright as Marta’s. She lies, open and empt
y, beside my Father, who rises from the chair and turns to me. One of the wolves has her doll in its jaws.

  The thing in Father smiles, wide, showing too many teeth. It howls, and the other wolves howl too. It reaches up with Father’s hands, hands that will soon be paws, and takes my Father’s skull away from its face.

  And its eyes go from deepest blue to pale yellow.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Christopher Green’s fiction has appeared in or is forthcoming in Nossa Morte, The Edge of Propinquity, and the anthology Dreaming Again. “Father’s Kill” won the 2009 Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Short Story. He lives with his wife and their two perpetually muddy Labradors in Geelong, Australia.

  THIEVES OF SILENCE

  Holly Phillips

  CLIMB THE WOODSHED ROOF, jump for the eaves, hot pain like copper wires in shoulders and wrists. Swing up, no time for a breather, and climb again. Blind leap into the dark.

  The windswept blackness was streaked with snow, the first storm of winter. Zel sliced through the air the way the wind sliced through her sweater, but when she landed on the Bodils’ turret roof, bruised and breathless, she felt nothing but the warm flush of survival. She let herself slide until her feet lodged in the narrow stone gutter and began working her way around the curve toward the main roof of the house.

  Old man Bodil, Gannet had said, is weak and confused. He wouldn’t notice if you carted out half his treasury under his nose. If it weren’t for those ice maiden daughters of his, I’d marry him and smother him with his pillow on our wedding night.

  The thought of Gannet in bed with that withered old man wasn’t a picture in Zel’s mind. She was too occupied with keeping herself alive. It was more of a physical thing, a grip of revulsion in her gut she would do almost anything to relieve. As if this cold that burned her face and deadened her hands could be called relief. But it was, it would be, if Zel could only ensure that Gannet never had to sink so low.

  The roof’s windward side was clear of snow, so cold her damp gloves stuck to the copper sheeting, helping with the ascent. One moment on the peak, in the heart of the gale, snow for flesh and ice for bones and a black heart borrowed from the storm—and then down, sliding through the snow on the leeward roof until her boots jarred on the gutter. She unwound the rope from her waist and tied it over the bird-shaped rainspout on the corner. Suddenly, morbidly, she was afraid of falling. She tested the knots three, four times, but security was an illusion at best. Her body began to shudder. She took the doubled rope in hands so cold she could not feel how tight her grip was, and stepped over the edge.

  ~ ~ ~

  Patience was a virtue in a thief, but it wasn’t caution that made Zel wait so long in the small room underneath the eaves. It was pain. Pain in her feet, her face, her ears. Pain in her hands so fiery she curled in a ball on the floor and bit her lips to keep from making a sound. The snow in her hair melted, cooler on her cheeks than her scalding tears. She and Gannet had come up from the south in the early autumn and she had not known how terrible that wind off the frozen sea would be. She did not see how she could go back out in that cold and survive.

  A clock chimed. Midnight. She sat up and tugged her gloves off with her teeth. Her hands felt as if bees swarmed under the skin, but when she bent her fingers they closed against her palm. She stood, feeling every bruise, and let the gloves fall where they would. These northerners hanged thieves. . . but she could choose between that and the cold later. Right now she was thirsty. Wrapped in a fatalistic calm, she headed for the door, and the stairs.

  Gannet—the thought of her was bittersweet—Gannet had an ear for gossip, and a mind for money. When she had first considered Bodil, she had rambled on about shipping interests and mines, and Zel had forgotten almost everything except the fact of his wealth. Now, walking through his house, she learned something else: the Bodils were not just a rich family, but an old one. Just from the look of the place she knew there would be jewels so famous they had names left lying on the cold daughters’ dressing tables, golden goblets gathering dust in a cupboard, a portrait by a great master tucked in a back bedroom because it was only someone’s unmarried aunt. There was a strange kind of bliss to strolling through such a treasure house, a thief who might or might not choose to steal something before she left, or died.

  Zel had an image in her mind. A figure, not quite herself but small and wiry and black-haired like her, lying asleep in a drift of snow, hoarfrost like feathers across her cheek, a blood-red jewel cupped in the palm of her hand. She smiled, and trailed her hot and throbbing fingers down the banister as she descended the stairs to the entrance hall.

  There was a fire burning beneath a marble mantelpiece so masterfully carved that the veins of gray were incorporated into the feathers of the owl that spread vast wings over the flames. Zel looked at it with regret (beautiful, expensive, impossible to steal) but did not linger. Her snow thirst was urgent now. She found the hidden door to the servants’ side of the house and followed the dark passage to the kitchen stairs.

  There was a pump in the scullery. She drank from a tin cup, the icy water reviving her chill. Despite the heat from the slumbering kitchen stove, she shivered and thought about hot tea, chocolate frothing with cream. But the kettle steaming on the range was huge, her hands hurt at the thought of lifting it to pour, and then the idea came. The cellars. Wasn’t that the best way of all for a thief to combat the cold? A sup of clear northern brandy, then the red jewel she had seen in her mind, and the snow.

  She grinned, chapped lips bleeding, and found the cellar door. The stairs were dark. When she reached the bottom, a warm hand slipped over her mouth and a knife blade touched her throat with an edge of frost.

  ~ ~ ~

  “I have her,” said a woman’s voice.

  “It’s too late,” another woman said. “We’ve begun.”

  Zel whimpered against the palm. The shock of steel had broken her out of her calm, and now that calm seemed impossible, insane. She remembered she hated brandy. She remembered she did not want to die. The hand tightened at the sound of her voice, but the blade still did not break her skin.

  “Hush.” Her captor’s whisper stirred the fine hair above her ear.

  Surprise had made her blind; now she began to see what was in front of her. The cellar, its vaulted ceiling deep in shadow, was older than the house above. In this first room, small hollows had been chiseled in the stone of the floor and filled with oil that burned with red and fragrant flames. The women that moved within the ring of flames wore nothing but their shifts, silk and lace that freed long white limbs Zel could not help but admire. Three women among the flames, a fourth who held the knife: the old man’s ice maiden daughters.

  Northerners only hanged thieves. They saved far worse for witches. Zel could not understand why she wasn’t already dead.

  One of the sisters sang, the other two danced, blonde hair loose on their shoulders and tinted red by the flames. They danced for so long that the sister with the knife looped her arms around Zel’s shoulders to ease the strain on her muscles. She was taller than Zel, they all were. The family resemblance was strong.

  One of the dancers said, strain in her voice, “Audey, we need you now.”

  “Yes,” Zel’s captor said, “but what do I do with this one?”

  “Kill her,” the other dancer said.

  The singer, still singing, shook her head, and Audey, the woman with the knife, said, “Her blood will taint the work. We will have to deal with her after. But she will wait until then. Won’t you?” A warm murmur in Zel’s ear. “You can wait for me a little while, and then you can rest. Won’t that be nice? A soft white bed for a tired thief, and a pretty necklace for your reward.”

  The image in Zel’s mind was of the girl in the snow, the red jewel now a chain of rubies across her throat. Beautiful. Magical. She sighed against Audey’s hand.

  “Good.” Audey withdrew the knife. Zel swayed, but did not otherwise move as the witch joined her sisters.

&n
bsp; The song became a chant, slow and rhythmic as a sleeping heart. The dance wove together three women, then four, then one alone with steel in her hand. Zel dreamed on her feet, free of pain, comfortable with the prospect of death. The white bed, the rubied throat. Two of the sisters went away into the darkness beyond the ring of fire. When they returned, they bore a white ghost between them. A white-feathered ghost with yellow eyes that burned brighter than the flames.

  ~ ~ ~

  The owl’s perch was set so the bird faced the singer, but the great white head swiveled on its shoulders to keep Zel in the beam of those blazing eyes. She could not look away. In her befuddled mind, feathers replaced snow, amber took the rubies’ place, and then even that vision was burned away by the owl’s glare. Her sluggish heart picked up pace, outraced the numbing chant. She gulped the air, felt the pain in her hands. Audey with the knife danced up to the perch, and stopped. The chant stopped. The world stopped. Only the owl carried on through time, leaving them behind.

  All of them but Zel. That yellow stare blinded her like the desert sun, left her with nothing but the snow-owl’s sight. Audey raised her empty hand—and Zel could see the fine bones in the wrist, a tear in one nail, a smear of blood from Zel’s chapped lips on the palm. Audey raised the knife—and Zel saw the room reflected in the polished steel, blonde witches, white owl, dark Zel frozen by the stairs.

  Audey clasped the owl’s snowy breast, plunged the dagger into the owl’s throat, put out the owl’s eyes—and Zel was blind. Blind. The bright flames shrank to ghostly pearls, the witches faded into shadows, the magic drowned in the dark.

  Terror overcame even the blindness, and Zel ran. Up the stairs, through the kitchen, down the corridor, across the hall. Still blind, how did she manage the bolts of the door? A question she would ask when she had a mind again. Now there was only the night, the snow, the cold.

  The bird’s heart stolen from the storm.