IGMS Issue 40

by IGMS

  "You're going to talk about Ingrid?"

  "Yes." Maybe that would keep my mind absent enough for Rob to get us out.

  I rambled about her bread, her stew, and the dainties she made for holidays. Pebbles ground under my feet, sometimes pitching, sometimes still. I rambled about her hair, her laugh, and the way she teased me about my not-a-beard.

  Was Rob actually leading us somewhere, or was the Chaos just waiting to devour us?

  "You're making the trees fold themselves into buckets again," Rob said.

  I swallowed. "Have . . . have I mentioned her bread?"

  "No."

  Rob was either encouraging me, or -- like usual -- he wasn't listening to begin with.

  I'd moved on to her laugh again when snow crunched under my feet and icy air whipped my face. I opened my eyes. Below me spread real dirt, rocks, and snow. In the distance, moonlight silhouetted the village and the tendrils of hearth smoke.

  "Do you see twenty through twenty-three?" Rob pointed, his voice shimmering with excitement. A quartet of blackberries rested on the border. "I think it's discrete. They always stay blackberries until I've rolled them all the way to the Chaos side. Before you went in, I was starting them on the chaos side to see if they stayed chaotic until they crossed entirely back over the border, but . . ."

  Rob stepped into the Chaos.

  "Get back over here!" I lunged for him. But Rob just set down the blackberry from his pocket. As soon as it left his fingers, it turned into a chipmunk and burrowed into the orange sand.

  "I can't catch the chipmunks." Rob calmly walked back onto the snow. "So I don't know if they'll turn back to blackberries on this side of the border. I need a net."

  "Rob. It's the Chaos. You shouldn't play with this one." My pulse still pounded in my throat. He could have died for that stupid blackberry.

  He blinked at me. "Why?"

  "Well . . . it's Chaos. Anything could happen."

  "Not anything."

  I shook my head.

  "In a way, Chaos is predictable," Rob said. "I know nothing's going to behave like it does here. Blackberries won't stay blackberries. But I also know that whatever I'm touching is safe. There are rules, just different kinds of rules."

  I stared at Rob. I'd never heard anyone describe Chaos that way . . . but he was right.

  "So. Do you know where a net is? Do you think Ingrid has one?"

  Ingrid. The wedding. "Icestorms. Rob, I'm alive, but I . . . I still can't pay Elof."

  My stomach turned to slush. Tomorrow, I'd still be exiled. And Ingrid would be married off to the Confederate dolt to line Elof's pockets.

  "Oh. That's right. Don't worry. There's plenty of gold in the Chaos." He strolled right back in.

  "Rob!" I hovered at the border. If I ran after him, I'd probably get myself killed. "Rob!"

  "You don't have to keep shouting. I know which way the border is." Rob calmly scanned the ground. Then he dug. The orange sand turned to purple clay, but he didn't seem to care. "I swore I saw some over here."

  A tree tried to eat him, but it broke its strange teeth-branches on Rob's back and scurried away. Meanwhile, my brother turned the dirt over in his hands. The stuff he was touching stayed purple, even while the earth shifted to a loamy red.

  "Isn't this fascinating?" he asked. He shook the clay off. The lumps turned into rain droplets and shot skyward.

  I ran for help. I might not have been particularly quiet in our tiny house, shouting about Rob being in the Chaos, or maybe walls of mud, sticks, and snow don't do much to muffle noise. I woke the neighbors, and the general commotion woke their neighbors.

  It wasn't until I reached the border with Mother, Father, and Grandmother that I realized that half the village trailed behind us, bundled up in their well-worn coats and mittens and boots. Elof's lackeys had brought him a chair and a blazing brazier. He lounged, chatting and laughing with them.

  Did anyone besides my family care about Rob, or had they come to watch the peculiar young man get himself killed?

  "Rob!" Mother called, frantic. "Rob, please, come to us. Can you see us? Can you hear us?"

  He ignored her and kept digging.

  "I tried that," I said.

  But it didn't stop Father from shouting, too. He cupped his hand around his mouth. "Rob! Look at me! Rob, listen -- come back!"

  My chest still ached where the triangle had struck. "Do we have a rope long enough to, I don't know, snare him with?" The plan sounded even more pathetic out loud than it had in my head. I'd gotten half the village out of bed, but no one here could help.

  Then I heard Ingrid's voice. "Rob, I have some bread for you!" She held out the perfect round in her hands, her fingers poking out of the frayed end of her mittens.

  Rob looked up. "Oh. Could you keep that safe for me? I'm busy."

  Ingrid swore under her breath. But maybe she had the right idea.

  "I have berries, Rob. Don't you want to come test the border?" Once he came close enough, I could grab him. We could drag him into safety.

  "Later." The moons behind Rob melted into rabbits and raced over the horizon.

  I shouldn't have bothered waking anyone up. I took a breath, and stepped toward the Chaos to get my brother.

  But Grandma laid a hand on my shoulder. "Does it look like he's in danger?"

  "He's in the Chaos!"

  "Sometimes," Grandma said, "you can be as oblivious as Rob."

  That stunned me. I wanted to protest, but I looked at Rob instead. He looked happy.

  I stood there for what felt like eons in the cold, watching Rob dig and laugh and play in the ever-changing Chaos. At dawn he finally walked toward us, with a palmful of gold nuggets shaped like elderberries. My brother was oblivious to all the things that mattered to me because his eyes were wide open somewhere else.

  Elof grinned like he'd arranged this town outing for everyone's amusement. "Well, well, the boy isn't useless after all. Pulling gold from the Chaos . . . how curious." He strode up to Rob. "I take it you'll be paying for your brother's bride-price now."

  Rob nearly dumped all of it into Elof's outstretched hand, but I intervened and counted out five berries. If anything, they were heavier than the coins I owed him. Rob had three left over.

  I thought Elof would demand we pay for the berries Rob had "stolen" earlier, but, unnervingly, he kept grinning like spring had come early.

  "I've got to be going now," Elof said, voice smooth and sickly-sweet. "A wedding to prepare for and all."

  We didn't smell the smoke until after the ceremony, when we were celebrating with the meager "feast" of thin soup and old bread that Arbiter Elof hosted in his role as Ingrid's guardian.

  "That's not the hearth." It reeked of dried mud and old straw.

  Ingrid, my wife, stood and started out of the hall. She glanced back at me. "Aren't you coming?"

  I hurried after her.

  Gray smoke swirled into a gray sky, thick and acrid. My stomach froze. But my feet didn't. Ingrid and I sprinted around the houses until the view lay clear before us.

  Our home was ashes. Slushy, muddy ashes. I stared at it, as if the ruin was some weird trick of the Chaos that would melt away and change into something else. Something better.

  "Aw, what misfortune." Elof draped a casual arm around my shoulder. His smile was as white and biting as frost. "So sorry to see that. But we're practically family now. I'll let you lodge in my home. For a modest rent, of course. I'll make sure no accidents happen to you or anyone you care about while you live with me."

  I dug my nails into my palm. We couldn't sleep out in the cold, even if I wanted to brave his threats. "How much?"

  "A gold berry a night sounds reasonable."

  We used the snow to put out the rest of the fire, but it was far too late to salvage anything. Neighbors stared silently at our misfortune. Some gave us pitying looks, but none so much as spared a consolatory word. None of them wanted to be Elof's next target.

  "I didn't know he could be
this cruel," I kicked at the ash.

  Ingrid's arms hung resigned at her sides. "I also didn't know a man could walk out of the Chaos unharmed with a small fortune. Elof's as vicious as he needs to be to make the most of any situation."

  My parents hugged each other and stared blankly at the wreckage. Grandma shivered. Rob stood with his head cocked to the side.

  "Elof did this, didn't he?" Rob asked.

  "Yes," I said softly. "He did."

  I thought paying the bride-price would free Ingrid and myself from him once and for all. I was so tired of snow, of ice, of leaders and gods who cared nothing for those under them. I didn't want to live here anymore.

  And then I realized that we didn't have to.

  "Rob. Would you like to go on a walk with me through the Chaos?"

  We stopped long enough to buy back the notebook and pencil from Nea, then headed to the Chaos. Three thumb-shaped, green moons burned over the undulating horizon.

  "Can you find more gold for us?" I asked Rob.

  "Probably. But I doubt in the same way. If this place was predictable, it wouldn't be Chaos."

  We held hands in a long chain -- Rob, me, Ingrid, Grandma, Mother, and Father. I glanced over my shoulder, at the thread of smoke marking where our home -- our lives -- had been. We were leaving behind our cellars, our profession, and our neighbors . . . but everything I really cared about was standing next to me.

  "You should probably close your eyes," Rob said. All of us but Rob did so. And then he led us into the Chaos.

  We tried to keep our minds empty and elsewhere. Ingrid recited recipes for a while, then Mother talked about stitches and Father about wood chopping. Grandma talked about Grandpa. The ground still shifted underfoot -- from sharp, hard scree to some kind of bouncy surface that made it difficult to walk.

  In a way, Rob was like the Chaos. I didn't understand how he thought. I couldn't predict it. But that didn't mean there wasn't a certain kind of logic to it -- and a kind of beauty.

  After hours of walking, Rob deposited us safely onto the flower-studded autumn grass of the Confederate Ithena. A small town sprawled over the hills in the distance.

  "I know this place. That's Leksand." Grandma beamed at Rob. "Thirty miles from Ogynan's Land."

  Apparently travel didn't work normally inside the Chaos either, but I wasn't complaining. Elof couldn't hurt or exploit us here.

  I stayed to watch Rob hunt for gold while the others headed in to Leksand to find a hostel and a hot meal. I promised to come into town at dusk with Rob. Then the two of us would return to the Chaos tomorrow. Finding enough gold for six citizens' contracts might take some time.

  I sat in the grass, soaking up the warmth of the earth under me and the scent of those tiny, yellow flowers. No more frozen lands. No more Elof.

  A mere half-hour later, Rob stepped out of the Chaos with a lump of gold the size of a baby's fist. I gaped as he handed it to me.

  "Is this enough for five citizen's contracts? And maybe a new home?"

  "It's amazing!" And much heavier than it looked. Then I noticed Rob's pinched face. His awkward fidgeting. "You only said five contracts."

  "If I stay, someone else will find out about me. Someone else like Elof. We wouldn't ever be safe. And I've always wanted to travel."

  Apprehension tightened his mouth, like he feared I'd drag him into town. He glanced longingly back at the Chaos. "So many nations border the Chaos. I can visit them all, now. And if I need to buy food, I can always look for more gold."

  My stomach dropped. I'd never imagined a future without Rob in it, day after day. "Do you have to go now?"

  "Why not now?" Rob rubbed the back of his neck. "I can just slip away. I don't know how to say goodbye."

  I wanted to argue with him. Given his squirming, I could probably convince him to come.

  Instead, I pulled out the notebook and the pencil from my coat and handed them to him.

  Rob frowned and tried to give back the notebook. "That's yours."

  "I'm giving it to you. If you're going to travel and test all of your ideas, you should write down the results." Pressing it into his hands felt like ripping my own fingernails off. I'd miss him. But he could finally travel. He should travel. I wondered if Grandma had intended both gifts for him all along.

  Rob's eyes widened with delight. He ran his hands over the soft blue leather of the book.

  "Remember to come back and share what you learn, okay?" I asked, throat tight. Maybe he'd learn something that would make thousands of lives better. Maybe he wouldn't. But either way, he was my brother, and I wanted to see him again.

  "I promise." Rob promptly opened the book and wrote down Remember to visit Trygve in Leksand on the first page. He smiled at me. "This is the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me."

  Sadly, I think that was true. I hugged him tightly, on the border between my new life and his.

  "Tell Grandma and Mother and Father and Ingrid . . ." Rob trailed off. "I don't know. Come up with something good."

  "I'll figure it out."

  And then I watched my little brother, notebook and pencil in hand, walk away into the Chaos, three green moons growing into valleys around him.

  Excerpt from Drift

  by M. K. Hutchins

  * * *

  (Chapter 8)

  I followed the Tender through the corridors, trying to think of anything but Eflet's words. I am the treason. I know everything. Oceans, why hadn't she told me? I'd fled Island Ita, just like her. Left Father and Ven behind. Watched Mother die. I didn't deserve to know why?

  What could Eflet have even done to earn the ire of Ita's Handlers? We were only children then.

  I brushed my fingers against the wall, feeling its grain, trying to think of anything but Eflet. I wouldn't fail because I was too frustrated to focus. For five years I'd lived without knowing. In three years, when I could leave the Tree, I'd convince Eflet to tell me everything.

  The walls looked hewed from the Tree's living wood -- pale, honey-colored, with a few knots. The wood gave me no splinters, but it wasn't polished hard, either. It was . . . vaguely warm.

  When the hall forked, the Tender took a sharp right. A Handler stood in front of an arched door. His bare feet were freshly scrubbed and his uniform immaculate: loose breeches that cinched around the knee and a darkly gleaming fishskin-tight shirt like the Tender's that left his stomach bare. I self-consciously brushed my tattered cotton tunic. He wore the simple markings of a man of power. I wore the garb of peasants who only existed because of the Handlers' protection.

  "You will take the test now." The Handler opened the door. Awe and dread bubbled in my gut. Gyr came out of these tests with forty-three gashes. Forty-three gashes and a pinched face whenever anyone talked about the tests. Eflet had prevented the wounds from festering. Eflet, who kept secrets.

  I pushed her from my mind and stepped into the room.

  I'd expected darkness, or a monster, or a torture chamber full of cunningly flintknapped daggers. Instead, light filled the room. The wood here glowed softly, the color grayer than the corridor. The opposite wall held twisted gold veins that reminded me of the copper work on the door of the Tree. These veins reached, spiderweb thin, over the ceiling as well, but on one wall they gathered together in spots as thick as my hand, coiling around each other in a mesmerizing spiral pattern. I stepped closer.

  The veins were more than gold -- they were liquid light with floating flakes of burnished gold and dark yellow gold drifting up and down, as if caught in a gentle breeze. Light washed through the flakes, casting watery patterns on the wall.

  I gingerly touched the golden vein. My mind spun.

  I was in the vein, spiraling upward toward the Heavens, up past the island, up into the brightest part of the sky. Suddenly, as if I had broken through a ceiling or plunged in the wrong direction, I hung in a world of black smoke. I must have turned the wrong way. I floated weightless in a never-ending mist.

  I swallowed and looked aroun
d. An impish monster, only twenty feet away, dived at me. Not a naga -- this creature had four limbs, each with claws as long as its forearms. Right behind him, a glowing Handler drifted, calmly watching us.

  "Help!" I screamed, feebly flailing my arms. I didn't know how to swim, let alone swim through mists. "Help!" The imp swiped at my head. I managed to duck. I felt slow, like I was suspended in honey. The imp curled back its lips and hissed at me, dark smoke trickling from its mouth. It coiled its body to spring.

  The Handler smiled and dived forward with a superhuman grace. The outline was a young woman's, with a chert-tipped javelin in her glowing arm. She looked like a plunging arrow. I feared she'd run me through as well, but she stopped as smoothly as she'd dived. The remains of the imp slid off her javelin and dispersed into the mists.

  "Is it dead?"

  She laughed -- a shimmering sound like rain falling on a brook. "They can't die. But he'll take many days to recover from that."

  "Where are we?"

  She was young, about my age, and she kept glowing -- like polished palm wood under a noon sun.

  "You're used to seeing the surface of Hell, the ocean, where the nagas live. We're far below that, in Deephell. Here we rob the gods of the underworld to outfit ourselves for fighting the nagas and protecting the Turtle and Tree."

  So I had turned the wrong way -- I hadn't been flying up to the Heavens after all. I felt the fool: I should have waited in the room for whatever the Handlers were sending.

  "Th-thank you," I stammered at last, remembering my manners. "For saving me. I'm lucky you were here."

  She raised an eyebrow. "Luck? Luck had nothing to do with it. That, my friend, was the test. You passed."

  Roundabout

  by Nathaniel Lee

  * * *

  I kneel by the highway and touch the asphalt. It slides under my fingers like sun-warmed scales. I am close.

  "Tonight," I tell the demon. It says nothing. The demon is a headless dog - not decapitated; simply headless - with unbroken brindled fur running from chest to back. It eats my nightmares and keeps me on my path. It is useful. I would not keep it near me if it were not useful.