Fantasy & Science Fiction - JanFeb 2017

by Spilogale Inc.

  It had taken him three days to make the drum, following an instruction video he'd found on a Facebook shaman group. He'd gotten the wooden frame, deerskin, and antler stick from a shop on East Ninth Street. They sold ready-made drums, of course, but he'd wanted to do it himself, and without any Traveler shortcuts. Briefly, he'd considered going out and hunting a deer, skinning it, drying the hide, the whole deal. But besides the time it would take he remembered how much Genie had loved seeing deer, and how upset she'd gotten when she found out there were men who waited all year for the chance to kill one.

  Now he squatted by the double grave with the simple headstone. "Jerome Acker," the left side said, and "Marjorie Acker" on the right, with "Beloved Husband/Wife, Father/Mother" as the only epitaphs. So they had kids , Jack thought. He wondered how old the children were. Full grown, he hoped. Like Carol Acker's children.

  There were no religious symbols on the stone, no five-pointed star, no lunar crescent on its side to resemble cow's horns. Maybe not all urban shamans were Pagans, he thought. What the hell did he know?

  With as much reverence as he could muster, he laid the drum on the grassy grave, with the antler stick on top of it. "I'm sorry, Jerry," he said. "You didn't deserve what happened to you, you and Marjorie. I was an asshole and you suffered for it. Like Carol." He sighed and stood up. He took a moment to set a long-standing glamour on the drum so that no one would notice it and take it away. And then he walked back to his car.

  * * *

  Vinegar and Cinnamon

  By Nina Kiriki Hoffman | 7357 words

  Nina Kiriki Hoffman first appeared in the pages of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1993 with "God Rest Ye, Merry Gentle Ghosts" and in the years since, we've been fortunate to share many of her stories with you. We welcome her back this month with a new tale of magic and family.

  THE SUMMER MY LITTLE sister Maura was twelve and I was fourteen, she got fed up with me sniping at her for getting all the attention because she was a wizard and I wasn't. She added Master of Transformation to her list of skills.

  It was market day, so Ma and Pa took the flatbed truck loaded with our farm's wizard supplies into town. I finished my regular morning chores in the wereweed field and the dragon-brain barn and decided to head for an irrigation ditch. It had filled with the roots of an especially pernicious stingweed that had spread into a field of spellstarter. If I trimmed the roots in the ditch, it might kill the whole stingweed plant, and if it didn't, I'd at least have cleared the ditch so water could get to the curse mustard downstream. I grabbed the thickest leather gloves I had, a pickax, a shovel, and a machete.

  Maura was sitting in a chair on the front porch drinking lemonade and reading a magazine.

  "Come on, Squirt. Want to be useful?"

  "No," she said. "It's too hot." She flicked a page of her magazine.

  I was tired of her attitude. "Do it anyway, or I'll tell Ma you're using farseeing to cheat on your written tests in chem class."

  She stared at me with narrowed eyes. "I'll cast silence on you, Sam."

  "Try it. I've been eating bounceback for weeks."

  She whined and waffled, but finally came, bringing her magazine with her.

  It was a hot day. Sun beat down on my bare arms and head. I had the pickax and the shovel over my right shoulder, with the machete in a sheath on my belt. The big tools felt like they were wearing grooves into my shoulder. The fields baked and sweated in shimmers. The dragon-brain barn looked tall, dark, cool, and inviting.

  Maura dragged her feet, held her magazine over her blond head, and muttered. She opened and closed her free hand, moving her thumb along her index finger in what looked like a pattern. Building some kind of spell, I thought, and wiped sweat off my forehead with a bandanna. I tried not to worry what she was going to do with the spell.

  It was worse than I remembered at the ditch. The pale white roots stuck out of the sidewall like masses of plump fingers, sucking water, and the stingweed had grown to juicy green shrubs all along the ditch and far into the spellstarters. Most of it was new growth since I spotted the problem yesterday.

  "Can you curse those bright green plants dead?" I asked my little sister.

  She crinkled her nose. "Pa says I'm not allowed to use magic to kill things."

  Right. After what she had done to a skunk two years earlier, there had been New Rules, in spite of Maura's ability to change our parents' minds. "He means animals, Squirt. Some plants have to be killed."

  "It's not my job, Sam. That's for you to do."

  "That's for you to help me do."

  She stuck out her lower lip.

  I lowered the shovel and the pickax to the ground and watched her thumb slide over her index finger as her hand pumped open and closed. "What are you doing? Is that going to help?"

  "Maybe," she said.

  "Meantime, could you try cutting one of those plants down?" I unsheathed the machete and handed it to her.

  Her hand sagged under its weight. She dropped her magazine and gripped the machete in two hands, then swung it. Sun flashed from the sharpened blade. I jumped back before she could slice off my head.

  She was smiling.

  "That's the idea," I said, "but aim at that bush." I pointed to the nearest stingweed. Grinning, she turned and swung the knife at the main trunk of the plant. She put a good notch in it, too. The plant whipped its leaves at her, slapping her bare arms and face with sting juice. She screamed, dropped the machete, and stumbled toward me, away from the plant's reach.

  "Oh, heckfire, oh, stumpers, Maura, I'm sorry—I didn't—" Blisters were rising on her arms and face, and her skin had turned bright red, as though she'd been boiled. I grabbed her, rushed her to the ditch, and dunked her in the water, away from the waving white finger roots of the stingweed. I hoped the water would wash off the poison.

  She struggled and flailed. I let go of her and stepped up onto the bank. She rose up shrieking.

  I had no power of my own, but I could sense it in other people if it was strong enough. Just then, Maura burned bright as a falling star with power. She shaped it and spoke it and spat it at me. The bounceback I'd been eating didn't stand a chance of turning it aside.

  I had never been transformed before. It hurt to dwindle down and crunch inward, but the intensification of hair sprouting over my skin was exciting. A tail shot out of me, extending my spine, shifting my balance. As I shrank, my clothes collapsed to the ground around me. I ended up perched on my shoe, then nosed out from under the cuff of my jeans. Sunlight blinded me. I ducked back into my clothes cave.

  My upper lip twitched with whiskers that quivered and brushed against the clothes crumpled around me. A three-dimensional image formed in my mind of the woven texture of the cloth, the folds it had fallen into as I shrank, the scuffed leather of my shoe. I knew the geography of the features around me.

  I smelled leather and denim, and the body odor of my old self pressed into both. The stink of my former feet was especially strong, but my new self liked it.

  My new self. Small enough to perch on my own shoe. I looked back, whiskers twitching, at the nearly naked tail that snaked out behind me like a blind worm.

  Only possums and rats had tails like that. I was too small to be a possum.

  My bratty sister had turned me into a rat.

  A rat .

  I so wanted to bite her!

  The ground was full of scents that warned and invited and informed. Delectable insect scents, juicy plant stems and roots; the faint scent of the cat (the cat! whose value was partly in her powers as a vermin-catcher!); and the much louder scent of the human I had been and the wet human Maura still was, charged with the burn of stingweed venom and distress. Magic had a smell, too, vinegar and cinnamon.

  The air cracked with Maura's shrieks. My ears swiveled away from the big, pushy sounds. Maura was jumping up and down on the bank, and I felt the impacts of her jumps in the ground against my palms, the soles of my feet, the underside of my tail, and my furry belly.


  I poked my head out under my pants cuff again and stared at my jumping, furious sister. She was much blurrier than before, and much grayer, though she had a purple and blue aura. She had finished the curse she cast on me, and now she was just screaming at the sky.

  I still wanted to bite her. But more, I wanted to get as far from her as I could.

  Air-current information came to me, and the tingle and stink of the great glot of nearby magic that surrounded Maura, and the inbred magic signatures of the plants, weeds and crops alike. The hair on my back rose as my skin tightened. My heart hammered. I peered around and saw, dimly, sheltering shade under plants. I darted out, then ran toward safety on hands and feet. My body knew how to do it, though my arms and legs worked differently, with the added tool of my tail.

  Shadows swallowed me. The shift from hot to cool was amazing. I ran deeper in among the plants, away from the sap-oozing, wounded stingweed Maura had hacked, and into the spellstarter thicket, which smelled like gingerbread and oranges. I found a dip in the ground filled with dead leaves and dug myself in, the cool earth soothing against my chest and belly and tail.

  Maura stopped shrieking after a while and switched to muttering. I heard her, even from a distance. She was speaking more spell words. I didn't understand them—I'd had no magical training—but I heard a shift of intention in her voice, or felt it, or smelled it. She wasn't cursing anymore. She was healing herself.

  Birds called. A breeze whispered through the leaves above me. Little lives made small movements in the soil. I heard sounds higher than I had as a human, an overlay of noises I had never known, information on what insects and other small animals were talking about and doing. Birds in the air, moles in the ground, bees and butterflies and beetles and ants. Even the dragon brains in their barn sang small, high songs I had never heard before.

  I blinked. My eyelids felt different sliding across my eyes. I tasted the inside of my mouth, with its changed shape and strange, curved teeth. My whiskers moved, brushing against everything nearby, and fed new details to the map in my mind. I glanced around. The world looked unfamiliar, even taking my new ground-level viewpoint into account. Everything more than a foot away disappeared into a blurred chaos of light and dark. Colors were duller, and there were some cold, radiant ones I'd never seen before. I shifted my shoulders. My new shrug moved more skin across my back.

  The world was huge. Lots of it smelled delicious. Many things I would never have considered eating as a human tantalized my rat nose. I gnawed on the juicy stem of a nearby spellstarter plant. The sap was thick and sweet and satisfying. There was a flavor in it I'd never tasted before, warm and spicy.

  "Sam!"

  Maura's voice. I cocked my head and swiveled my ears.

  "Where are you? Sam? I'm sorry."

  She was often sorry when her magic made messes. I usually had to clean up after her. This time, I didn't know how.

  "Sam? Sam, come back. Where'd you go? Sam?" She walked along the path toward the house. I felt her feet stepping on the earth, vibration coupled with sound. Nowhere near my little nest. I licked sap from the wound I'd bitten in the plant stem. I wanted a nap.

  "Sam? Come here so I can change you back."

  I closed my eyes. The sun's heat was muted by the leaves above me, but strong enough to feel like an embrace. I was tired. I had worked all morning cleaning out the dragon-brain vats, then come out to tackle the stingweed. Well, I couldn't work on that in this shape.

  I slept.

  * * *

  WHEN I WOKE, night had fallen, but it was so bright with scents and sounds it didn't feel dark. I ran through the spellstarter field toward the house, adjusting to being four-footed and very short, and enjoying my new senses. I ate fallen seeds and withered flower petals and a worm that squirmed even after I bit it in half. It tasted so good.

  I wondered what my family thought about my disappearance. Had Maura told Ma and Pa what she'd done? I wanted to creep into the house and hear what they were saying.

  I smelled a new scent that made my hair bristle and my heart race.

  I'd temporarily forgotten Slaughter, our cat. An excellent mouser, long-bodied and wiry with short tortoiseshell fur, she was the best pest control we had. Rats were a bit big for her, and she'd been bitten by them before, but she had managed to kill a few the traps didn't catch.

  I noticed the motion of her tail and turned to discover her stalking me, only two feet away. An array of scents described her in ways I'd never thought of her before—fishy breath, laundry scent from the blanket where she liked to sleep, cat fur and cat body, heat and hunger.

  "Slaughter," I tried to say. It came out as a high-pitched chirp.

  She crept closer, crouching low to the ground, her eyes as big as basketballs, ears perked forward, hips quivering, tail-tip twitching. She was making that ticking sound she used when she was about to pounce on something tasty.

  Standing still didn't seem like a good idea. Running would be worse. She chased anything that fled. I ground my teeth and remembered I could use them as a weapon, but they wouldn't be enough to stop Slaughter if she really wanted to kill me. I would hate to hurt her.

  I would hate even more to die.

  I stood on my hind legs and realized how ridiculously small my pink forefeet were for fighting, almost T. rex ridiculous. I tried to speak again. Noises came out, a rat's clicks, squeaks, and chitters; I felt unknown words flow up my throat and out of my mouth, a smooth stream of sound freighted with intention and the sharp taste of ginger fire.

  Warmth bloomed in my stomach and spread through me. My whiskers quivered. My tail vibrated. I opened and closed my hand-feet. I squeaked, and warmth flowed from my hands. Pale purple fire shot at Slaughter, surrounded her head with a helmet of lavender light, then faded.

  She sneezed and shook her head, then stared at me, her pupils flaring even wider. She had stopped emitting her hunting chirp. "Mrrow?" she said.

  What had I done?

  Was it magic? That would be strange. I'd wished all my life for magic, and here it was. I'd been munching on spellstarter plants, sucking the sap.… I'd eaten spellstarter before, when I was younger and yearning for magic, and it had had no effect on me, but maybe, with this smaller body—

  Magic! It had the color of magic, and it tasted gingery and salty. I had cast a spell! I wasn't sure what it was supposed to do, but sure as shootin', magic had come out of me and entered my cat.

  Joy and terror made me wavery, or maybe it was just the tired that came from spell-casting, or the exhaustion of overwhelming fear.

  Slaughter's ears twitched. She started toward me and paused. Her whiskers frilled and her nose worked. "Mrrp?" she said.

  I froze. Maybe this was the end. A stupid end, killed by a cat who often shared my bed and purred me to sleep.

  She came closer and sniffed me, then knocked me over by rubbing her cheek on me. She laid her scent on my fur, a familiar, spicy, fishy scent that comforted me. Then she licked my stomach. Her tongue was rough. I wondered if this was the prequel to making a meal of me.

  Maybe this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

  Good spell.

  I tried to pet Slaughter. My hands sank into her fur. I stroked her. Tiny rat-hand strokes.

  She purred. Then she picked me up by the scruff of the neck. I went limp as soon as her teeth pinched my skin. It was a strange sensation. It didn't hurt, but it paralyzed me. It was weirdly relaxing.

  She carried me into the house through the cat door, then through the kitchen, right past the big kitchen table where my parents and my sister were having dinner. Ma had made pork chops and sweet potatoes. The mix of spices and ingredients smelled intense and tantalizing, sparking rich red and golden colors in my imagination. My stomach gave a tiny grumble, though I had eaten all sorts of things that afternoon.

  "I'm asking you again. Don't spell at me this time. Where is your brother, Maura?" Ma said, an unusual edge of anger in her voice.

  "I haven
't seen Sam since this afternoon," said Maura.

  "He missed our teatime music jam," said Pa, sounding grumpy. "I got two new tunes from Bert this afternoon. S'posed to make the dragon brains smarter. I need to teach them to Sam."

  "I wonder if he has a girlfriend," Ma said. "Maybe he's distracted. He always calls if he's going to miss a meal, though."

  "It's not like him to skip work, and he didn't do his afternoon chores," said Pa. "Maura, you sure you don't know where he is?"

  "I don't. I really don't," said my sister, with a little choke in her voice.

  Slaughter carried me into the hallway and up the stairs. She nudged open the door to my room, jumped up on my bed, and dropped me. She curled around me and purred us both to sleep.

  * * *

  "Sam?"

  I blinked awake, whisked my whiskers to rebuild my mental map—cloth beneath me, air above me, warm, purring presence at my back—and stretched against a large, furry wall, then noticed my hands, which were more properly fingery feet. And my new snaky tail.

  Whoosha. I was a rat. Oh, yeah.

  "There you are!" Maura said. "Holy hidden! At least the cat didn't eat you! Holy hidden!" She grabbed me around the middle. Slaughter huffed, then meowed as my sister lifted me away from her island of warmth. I struggled, tempted to try my teeth on Maura, but she had me in a grip I couldn't get out of, her fingers safely out of reach.

  "I haven't worked out the counter-spell yet," Maura muttered as she carried me down the hall and into her room. "I was so mad I don't remember what I said when I changed you. I'm sorry, Sam. I need to keep you safe until I can reverse this."