Mommy Issues of the Dead (Marla Mason)

by Pratt, T. A.

  The noise of Watt crashing around behind her was still audible, but getting quieter. She was about to cast a look-away spell to make herself less noticeable – it probably wouldn’t fool Watt, but it might work for his meth monkeys – when she jumped over a big log and found a steep drop-off on the other side. Her mom always said “Look before you leap,” which invariably pissed Marla off, both because it was a stupid cliché and because her mother liked having one-night-stands with abusive rednecks and was thus hardly qualified to counsel caution, but this was a situation where the advice could have helped.

  Marla managed to snag the stem of a bush as she fell instead of rolling down the hill. As far as upsides went, she’d had better. And to make matters worse, as Marla clung halfway down a muddy hillside in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina, she couldn’t stop thinking about her mother. She hadn’t seen the woman in almost seven years, since running away at fifteen, and she didn’t miss her much at all, but she had to admit, life with her was better than waiting for a junkyard robot to come kill you. Marla’s mom had been most tolerable during her occasional forays into 12-step programs, though she usually hit a wall right around step 4: making a searching and fearless moral inventory. Marla’s mom wasn’t much for introspection. In that respect, mother and daughter had something in common.

  Marla decided to do a fearless personal inventory of her own, though – not of her morals, but of her resources.

  In the hand not clutching the bush, she held a battered leather knapsack, which had slid off her shoulder and nearly tumbled down the hill – it seemed a lot more like a mountainside than a hillside to her, but she was from Felport by way of Indiana, so what did she know from mountains? – which would have been bad, since the bag contained various valuable things, fragile and otherwise, including:

  A pair of knives, one an antique dagger her mentor had given her, another balanced for throwing that she’d purchased herself;

  A coil of thin strong line fifty feet long, attached to a clever collapsible grappling hook;

  A pair of brass knuckles with a wicked inertial enchantment worked into the metal, perfect for face-punching;

  Spare socks;

  A rain poncho;

  A slightly-rusty Altoids tin that contained a survival kit in miniature, consisting of a small signal mirror, waterproof matches, flint and a little hacksaw blade, cotton balls, a tiny (non-magical) compass, a brass wire small animal snare, a twist of nylon fishing line with fishhooks, a bit of candle, a flashlight the size of a lipstick, a plastic bag for carrying water, and iodine tablets;

  And, of course, a cursed snow globe. Everything else would be more or less useful if she had to hide out in the woods overnight – hideous thought – but she wasn’t sure what good the snow globe could possibly do her.

  For now, if she could get the grappling hook out and snag it on the bush she was clinging to, then she could lower herself down this slope, hoping it didn’t end in a river or leg-breaking deadfall or something, and from there maybe hike to high ground, climb a tree, figure out which way the road was, hike that way, and maybe possibly get to her extraction point before –

  “She’s down there!” shouted a voice up on the ridgeline. Sounded like the uglier of the two meth-lab-monkeys.

  “So go down and get her,” Watt said, his voice weirdly high and fluting and artificial, but his annoyance and impatience still coming through loud and clear.

  Oh well, Marla thought. Let’s go, gravity. She relinquished her grip on the bush. Marla bumped and slid and rolled along, collecting a full suite of bruises. Damn I wish I had my cloak, she thought, and then she rolled over an especially big rock and went airborne.

  Marla sailed through the air, though not far, since falling human bodies are not especially aerodynamic. She landed in a mound of damp leaves at the base of the hill and sat up groaning, but nothing was broken, just generally battered. Marla tore open her knapsack, slipped on her brass knuckles, considered her knives, and finally just lifted out the snow globe. Running away hadn’t worked so well, and from the sound of things Watt and his imps were coming down the hill in a more controlled way than she had, so it was time to make some kind of stand.

  The scatterguns came sliding down the hill first, no doubt lost in transit, and Marla grinned. That was a bit of luck. She snatched one gun up and chucked the other behind her into the trees. The meth monkeys landed a moment later, covered in mud and not too happy about it, and they looked less happy when Marla pointed the gun at them, low, and fired. They both collapsed, their legs riddled with shot, howling. They’d live, but their injuries probably hurt bad enough they wished they wouldn’t.

  Marla tossed the gun away with the other one. Shooting the junkyard golem where Savery Watt’s spirit resided wouldn’t even piss him off. It’d be like tossing snowballs at the sun.

  Watt trundled down the hill on a combination of tanklike treads and spidery articulated multi-jointed legs. “College girl. Give me the snow globe, and I’ll kill you fast.”

  “How about you let me go, or I smash the globe?”

  “It’s magical, fool. You can’t just crack the glass.”

  Marla lifted her metal-wrapped hand. “Not even with brass knuckles enchanted for extra smashy-ness? I can punch through a bank vault with these.”

  “Try it.”

  Uh oh. Marla smashed her fist into the top of the snow globe, and, predictably, nothing happened except the tink of metal tapping glass. “Huh.” So that was no good. But now that she looked closer, this was clearly not a mass-produced snow globe, with the glass top glued on – it was more homemade looking, and the base appeared to just be a jar lid painted black, which meant maybe...

  Marla twisted the glass top one way, and the base the other way, and at first it didn’t want to give, but she was a champion opener of pickle jars, so she strained, and then –

  “No!” Watt screamed, and the woods filled with swirling whiteness, deadening sound and reducing visibility to no more than a foot or two at most.

  “You rescued me.” A woman dressed in ragged black furs stood before Marla, who still held both pieces of the now-empty snowglobe in her hands. She was tall, black-haired, black-eyed, still strikingly beautiful despite being at least twice Marla’s age, and when she spoke, arctic puffs of air emerged from her mouth. She shivered. “I’ve been walking in that snowstorm for... how long? Time is strange in there. What year is it?”

  Marla told her. The woman’s lips quirked in a half-smile. “That means I missed the 1936 World Series then. I don’t suppose you know who won?”

  “Uh. I don’t really follow sports.”

  “No matter. I can look it up.” She waved a hand in front of her face, and the snow that filled the air sizzled and turned to steam, replacing the opaque whiteness with merely misty vapor, and allowing them to see Savery Watt, who was trying without much success to trundle his way back up the hill.

  “Son,” the woman said, and Watt stopped, then slowly rolled backwards and rotated on his treads to face her.

  “Mother,” he fluted.

  “Oh hell,” Marla said. “Did I step into a family thing?”

  The woman approached her son and touched his robot face. “Oh, Savery, you naughty boy. What have you done with your body?”

  “I... it was destroyed in a fire, mother. An explosion in a, uh, factory I owned.”

  “That breaks my heart, baby. I carried that body in my own body, I gave birth to it, and you let it be destroyed? In a fire, no less? I take that as a personal insult.”

  “It was an accident.”

  “How about trapping me in a jar for all those decades? Was that an accident?”

  “I didn’t do that! It was Leland! I just held onto –”

  “Do you remember the Robert Frost poem I read to you when you were a boy?” she said. “The one that starts ‘Some say the world will end in fire / Some say in ice’? Do you recall how it ends?”

  “No, mother.”

  “It end
s, ‘I think I know enough of hate / To know that for destruction ice / Is also great / And would suffice.”

  “Please, mother,” Watt said.

  She shook her head, sadly. “You had your fire already, my darling. And now...” Ice flowed from her fingers, covering him in a frosty shell, and his amber lights dimmed. She glanced at the two terrified meth monkeys, waved her hand casually, and they froze in place, transformed into ice sculptures of themselves.

  She turned to look at Marla, smiling. “Now, dear, what’s your name?”

  “Uh. Marla Mason. And you are...?”

  “I call myself Regina Queen.”

  Marla blinked. “Doesn’t that mean, like, ‘Queen Queen’?”

  She smiled indulgently. “Some people need to be told things twice before they understand them, dear. I’ve been married to two men – bore them both sons – but I didn’t want to keep either of their last names, so I made up my own, suitable to my station. Some called me the Snow Queen, though I’m not from a fairy tale.” She stretched her arms overhead, turning her face up to the sun. “Oh, it’s so nice to be out and about. I love the winter, but that was too much of a good thing. Now. Why did you set me free?”

  Marla considered lying, but who knew which lie would keep her from being turned into an icicle? “I was sent to, ah, blow that guy up. Your son. No offense.”

  “Of course, of course.”

  “And to steal the snow globe, though I didn’t know there was anybody in it.”

  “Mmm.” Regina sat cross-legged on the dirt, produced a hairbrush from somewhere not entirely obvious, and began brushing out her long black hair. “Who hired you?”

  “A sorcerer in Felport, named Viscarro.”

  “I see. I mentioned I was married twice. My second husband was the Reverend Reginald Watt, poor Savery’s father. My first husband, father of my firstborn, was Captain Antonio Viscarro. So I assume your employer is my son Leland? And that my boys had some sort of falling out?”

  Viscarro’s name was Leland? He didn’t look like a Leland, but then, he didn’t look like anything except maybe Methusaleh. “He didn’t tell me his family history. Ma’am. Just sent me with a dud bomb and orders to steal a snow globe.”

  She finished brushing her hair and stood up. “All right. I have no intention of being imprisoned again, which means, as much as it pains me, I’ll have to go kill my son Leland.”

  “Is that totally necessary?”

  “I’m afraid so. You’ll take me to him, of course.”

  “That’s maybe not such a good idea.”

  “If you aren’t with me, Miss Mason, then you are by definition against me.” She walked over to one of the meth monkeys and kicked his arm, the limb snapping off and shattering into chunks of ice. “Which is it?”

  “Right.” Marla had no great love for Viscarro, but he was a ranking sorcerer on Felport’s council, and if some outsider came into the city and murdered him there would be consequences. Chaos, retaliation, all-out magical warfare, and other disruptive, city-wrecking unpleasantness, and if Marla was on either side of the conflict, it would be bad for her. Plus, Marla wouldn’t be able to get paid if Regina killed Viscarro. “So, you want revenge against your son, or...?”

  “Of course not. I love my boys. They had their reasons for imprisoning me. But once Leland realizes I’m no longer in the snow globe, he’ll come after me, to kill me, or trap me again, and... I can’t abide that. I don’t know for sure if I’ll win a fight against my son, but with the element of surprise on my side, and your help getting in to see him, it’s possible. I’d prefer to go somewhere up north and avoid the whole ordeal, but what choice do I have?”

  Marla thought furiously. “What if Viscarro didn’t know you’d escaped?”

  “The snow globe is empty, dear. That will be readily apparent when you deliver it. And while we could, I suppose, kidnap some hill person and trap them in the globe, they would soon perish in the snow there, and the ruse would be revealed. Only someone with certain... immortal qualities... can survive inside that sphere.”

  “Yeah, okay, but what if we put him in the globe?” She pointed to the frozen junk sculpture that was Savery Watt. “Getting your other son out of the way too?”

  Regina shook her head. “That’s not my son. That’s just a pile of junk. His soul isn’t in that body, he was just using it. His soul resides in some object – probably an egg, or stone, or jewel, but a lich’s phylactery can be almost anything. I grant you, your plan works in theory, but without the phylactery, we can’t trap him. No, I’m afraid war is the only solution.”

  “Come on,” Marla said. “I know where Savery lives. You’re his mother. Are you saying you don’t know your son well enough to guess where he might have hidden his soul?”

  #

  Regina shook her head as she surveyed the interior of the cavern. “Savery, you hoarder. You’re almost as bad as your brother. I got them started collecting baseball cards – I love baseball, it’s funny, you’d think I’d prefer winter sports, but I don’t – and from there they both started collecting everything.” She walked along the shelves, peering at porcelain dogs, ceramic unicorns, and, of course, the profusion of snow globes.

  Marla, meanwhile, found a metal safe, punched it open with her brass knuckles, and scooped out several banded bundles of crumpled cash. She traded her services to sorcerers for knowledge, not money – so she had to make money where she could.

  “Oh,” Regina said softly. “I can’t believe he kept this.” Marla walked over as she lifted a metal toy monkey from the shelf. “It’s a tin toy from England. I bought him this, for his collection, the same Christmas he and his brother... Well. They gave me a snow globe that year.” She cocked her head. “This. This is his phylactery.”

  “You sure?”

  She shrugged. “If I’m wrong, we can just try sticking everything else in this house into the snow globe, until I grow too bored, and decide to go to war instead.”

  “Gotcha.” Marla took the two halves of the snow globe from her bag. Regina set the toy monkey on the globe’s base and started screwing on the top. It didn’t look like it should fit – the monkey was too big – but the glass sphere fit over it easily, and when Regina screwed it down, the globe filled with whiteness... and there, in the center, a black shape ran in wild circles.

  “That’s it, then,” Regina said. “Seems a shame to trap my son this way, but it’s more merciful than destroying his soul.”

  “Just think of it as putting your kid in time out,” Marla said, and Regina looked at her blankly. Right. She came from a time when disciplining your child meant sending him out to cut the switch you intended to beat him with. “Never mind. Can you help me get that frozen junkpile body up here? I need to cover my tracks.”

  #

  Marla checked her watch, figured the timing was right, and said, “Let’s do it.” She and Regina stood well back and watched as the meth lab exploded, a simple fire spell combining with the chemicals inside to make a big ugly boom that engulfed Savery Watt’s robot body in fire too. Regina whispered down a ring of ice to contain the fire and keep the woods from burning, which was considerate of her, Marla thought.

  If Viscarro sent someone to check up on her story, he’d find a smoking ruin and a bunch of scrap metal to support Marla’s version of events. Sure, he might start wondering when he never heard from his brother again, but with luck he’d just assume Savery was in hiding. Viscarro was arrogant. He’d be fine believing he’d utterly overpowered his brother.

  “So where are you going now?” Marla asked.

  “Better you don’t know, Marla. Thank you for saving me, even if it was unintentional. I’ll find a peaceful place and catch up on everything that’s happened since I was trapped.”

  “Wait’ll you hear about global warming,” Marla said. “You’re going to hate it.” She waved goodbye and went down the hill, and the car pulled up soon after she reached the bottom. The driver was a full two minutes late, which spoiled
the perfectly-timed arrival she’d envisioned, but she was feeling magnanimous, so she didn’t even threaten him, just said, “Home, Jaws.”

  They passed a fire engine and two cop cars on the way, and the scream of sirens made Marla homesick.

  #

  “Fine, fine,” Viscarro said when Marla finished her tale, in which things went much as planned, unlike in real life. He held up the snow globe to the light, grunted, and placed it on a shelf behind his desk. “You did well. I suppose you’d like to be paid. What trick did you want me to teach you?”

  “I thought it would be cool to learn to summon an incubus,” she said.

  Viscarro shuddered. “Youth is repulsive. The young and their urges and fluids repulse me. Fine. Return to me on the next new moon and I’ll show you the ritual. Are we done?”

  “Ah, ah.” Marla waved her forefinger at him. “You still owe me a secret.”

  “Yes, fine. Do you want to know the true identity of Kaspar Hauser? Where Ambrose Bierce ended up? What happened to the Lost Colony?”

  “I was thinking more, I want you to tell me who’s trapped inside that snow globe, and why.”

  Viscarro’s hands curled into configurations even more clawlike than usual. “Those are secrets that touch on me, Marla.”

  She shrugged. “You didn’t say no personal questions. I like to know about the people I work for.” She knew Viscarro would keep his promise. Sorcerers would twist, lie, and deceive all day and all night, but if they said they’d do something, they did it – a sorcerer’s word was one of his most valuable currencies.

  “Fine.” He spun in his desk chair, looking at the snow globe, which stood between a blue glass bottle and a Faberge egg, on a shelf full of similarly dissimilar bric-a-brac. “If you must know, my mother, Regina Viscarro Watt, is trapped inside the snow globe. As for why? Because she’s incredibly dangerous.”

  “How so?”

  “I’m sure your sense of history is as stunted as those of every other person in their twenties, but perhaps you’ve heard of the Blizzard of 1899? No? Well. It snowed in the South, that year. It snowed in Florida – the only time in recorded history Florida has ever experienced sub-zero weather. It snowed in Louisiana. There were ice floes in the gulf of Mexico. Where we lived, in Erasmus Tennessee, the temperature dropped to 30 below zero. And do you know what caused that cold? My mother did. She was a weather witch with ice water in her veins. And do you know why she froze the South? Because my stepfather wouldn’t take her on vacation. She was angry, and she threw a fit, and the world paid the price. It was not the first time she did something like that, nor the last.” He shook his head, and swiveled his chair back to her. “The man you took the snow globe from is my half-brother, and he has been... unreliable since his body was destroyed. The ordeal drove him a bit mad. I felt I would be a better choice for custodianship of our mother. He disagreed. So I sent you to press the issue. I am a dangerous person, Marla, as you well know, but I am nothing – nothing – compared to my mother. The world is a better place with her on this shelf. “