by Dawn Metcalf
Now call Filly, she figured and opened her purse.
There was a tremor under her toes.
At first, she thought it might be something rumbling in the distance, but she realized it was something trembling under her skin. It rippled up her arches, electricity zinging along the fine hairs on her skin. She was hyperaware of her body. Her skin crackled, her nose twitched. She fought back a sneeze. Her lungs felt like they were filling up with light. Her eyes widened. Her ears popped. A rising feeling, like panic, tickled like the early stages of hypoglycemia or heatstroke. Joy stood, light-headed, heavy-lidded, drunk on something like Inq’s armored glyphs. Everything was yawning, spinning, reeling.
Where’s it coming from? What’s happening?
The prickling feeling slid up her limbs, percolating just below her ribs. She swiped at her arms, feeling the tickle of legs and wings, a thousand imaginary butterflies or bees, but there was nothing there; just the growing feeling that something was happening, something was wrong—or, not wrong—different. Joy pressed a clenched fist to her stomach, swallowing against the threat that she might throw up or faint or explode.
It was happening again. The building-pressure-light, power leaking through the cracks, the almost-pleasure-pain...
Too much. Too much!
She bent forward. The wash of feeling built quickly and broke, erupting in her chest, through her limbs, down her arms, out her toes, diving underground, deep into the dirt. It flowed into the earth, disappearing, absorbed by the bottomless world.
She felt a sudden emptiness, a punched-gut moment.
She coughed, her mouth dry, and looked up.
No door.
She glanced at her body.
No fins. No scales. No spots.
But she stood in the center of a thin crater, a layer of grass and topsoil blown away, leaving a smooth, perfect circle like a trowel through the mud. A fading line of red fire licked along its edge.
A slow, ominous shudder passed over her. Sweat trickled down her neck. She stared at the deep, dark wells of her footsteps, ringed in hairline cracks—she was the middle of it. She’d been the source. It had been her. Joy blinked to clear her eyes. The red fire winked out like a trick of the light. Slowly she pulled up one foot, caked in mud, and stepped on the smooth, moist surface, pulling her other foot free. Her toes sank slightly in the soft, wet clay. Her shoes had been blown somewhere downhill.
She backed carefully out of the circle, leaving a trail of bare footprints. She stopped on the torn edge of the lawn and wiped her feet in the grass. The perfect hole seemed impossible, surreal, like a crop circle with no crops. Joy’s brain struggled to make sense of it, debating whether it could be real, what it meant, what she should do now.
She had no idea. She stomped her foot in frustration, eyes teary and tired.
There was an answering thump. She felt it kick under her feet.
Beneath the hill, Joy could feel something approaching—many somethings—like heavy feet running along the underside of the earth. There was a pip-pip-pip sound behind her, loud enough to make her turn. Tiny gaseous bubbles were rising out of the smooth surface of the mud, simmering and popping like rain in reverse. As she watched, the bubbles grew larger, pushing fat dollops of mud into the air, spitting brown water and caving in gaping holes as the earth continued to churn.
Her body shut down. Her limbs went slack. Joy watched the ground boil like a thick soup, chunks of earth swelling and breaking through the thin smear of soil. Dim lights appeared in pairs, glowing an angry, ruby red.
“Ink,” Joy whispered without moving her lips.
Cracks formed in the upturned earth. Dribbles of water ran down like drool. The glowing orbs slid sideways and upright, mounds breaking off and lurching forward, shedding clumps of grass and clay. Buried roots became bones, twigs coiled into ribs, thick, heavy limbs hauled up grubby midriffs, stony knees, muddy hands, rocky feet. There was a rough glyph gouged into each dirty forehead, and their inhuman eyes burned like coals.
Joy stood stock-still in front of a mob of mudmen.
The squat creatures glared at her, slammed their fists together and screamed.
THIRTEEN
JOY HAD NEVER realized that it was possible to run upward.
She launched vertically, clawing at the chain-link fence, not registering the futility of it until she felt gravity’s hand yank her down. Hard.
The clay men clambered after her, eyes burning, mouths gaping, surrounding her with slow, deliberate steps. Their feet sank into the ground, sucking and drinking the earth up their bodies in great gulps of sludge, adding mass and muscle, growing larger as they came.
She gave a wordless shriek and flipped the scalpel over in her hand as the creatures drew closer. She held it up in front of her.
“Stop!” Joy shouted. “Stop! Duei nis da Counsallierai—” she gasped “—en dictie uellaris emonim oun!” The Old Tongue passcode evaporated in her mouth. Nothing registered. These things didn’t think. Their eyes were empty of everything except a clear, single-minded purpose: their hands outstretched, coming for Joy.
She was an interloper, uninvited, human enough. These were automatons, animated sentries. They wouldn’t—or couldn’t—recognize Joy.
“Crap.”
She hooked her toes between the chain links, climbing higher, faster. Clamping the scalpel in her teeth, she tasted metal and dirt. Threading her fingers through the wire, she grabbed desperate handholds, scrambling up and over the top. Joy wrenched herself sideways, dropped and landed softly on the other side, knees absorbing the impact. She glanced back at the horde.
The mud creatures pressed themselves against the fence, pushing their faces through the square chain link, their glyphs and eyes and limbs slowly passing through the open spaces, their clay flesh yielding and re-forming around the wires as they continued to advance. Joy didn’t stick around to watch; she ran inside the Carousel, looking for the beacon door.
It was dark. There was nothing. No purple light. No portal out. The bubble had faded somehow, disappeared.
Mudmen filled the exit, pressing forward into the club.
Joy jumped on to the rotating floor with a loud creak and scrambled up the decorative supports, hooking her fingers on the bases of lightbulbs that framed the outer hull. Grabbing the metal crossbeams on the undercarriage, Joy curled herself with a gymnast’s control, up and onto the roof. She braced her feet against the scalloped edging and steadied herself between the slats. Legs split wide over the painted panel, she grabbed her scalpel and wrapped her purse across her back.
Something solid hit the carousel. The entire thing shuddered. Joy flattened herself along the circus tent topside and tucked her legs under her body. There was another jarring thud! This would be the perfect time for a rescue. This was not the perfect time to be trapped on the roof of a refurbished six-row carousel surrounded by rampaging mud golems. Joy tried to think as another heavy slam rattled her teeth.
The old machinery buckled, its parts splintering on impact. Once. Twice. Joy clenched her teeth and her knees. She heard mirrors shatter. Glass bulbs popped against the ground. Wooden beams broke with a bone-jarring snap. Needing both hands to hold on, she spat the scalpel into her purse and looked down. The clay creatures slammed themselves into the sides of the Carousel, one after another, trying to knock her down.
Joy held her breath as she stretched one foot forward, crawling higher up the peaked roof, timing her movements in between assaults. She corkscrewed her body around the metal flag mount and pressed herself against the cap, farthest from the sides, likely directly over the hollowed-out central pillar where the calliope used to be. The painted wood scratched her stomach and scraped her chin. She willed herself tighter as another blow struck.
The creatures hadn’t attempted to climb after her, but they’d shrunk, becomin
g stouter, larger, heavier, like solid blocks on legs. Three of them were slamming into the carousel in turns while two more leveraged themselves on one side, pushing down against the floor with each jarring thud. The old metal gears whined and broke, panging and clanging in loud fits and bursts. It was as if the mud golems were trying to capsize the carousel. Joy was pretty sure that it was mounted into a concrete base. If that was their strategy, then maybe she had time to escape.
Joy uncurled from the top and scanned the catwalks and the ceiling fans, calculating whether she could safely jump onto the office trailer or the bar. Then what? As she looked for likely exits, she saw that the rest of the muddy mob had crouched together like a halftime football huddle by the door. She watched four creatures stuff themselves into a bunch, pressing tightly together, melding into a massive, shifting mound of clay flesh and broken limbs, their coal-bright eyes swimming aimlessly through the malformed body, rolling slowly toward a broad, flat head that split lengthwise, forming a wide, fractured mouth.
The hulking glom-monster took a drunken, lopsided step. The whole club shook.
“Oh God...” Joy breathed and clenched tighter around the flag mount, dearly wishing she had something like the Red Knight’s flaming ax instead of a blade the size of a thumbnail.
A small, squat head peered over the edge, red eyes burning.
Joy screamed, opened her palm, exposing Inq’s sigil and pushed. The creature’s head spattered like wet clay under a hair dryer. It grunted, and she gave it another full blast in the face, obliterating the glyph in its forehead and punching one of its eyes deep into its socket. The gaping mouth hissed a thin, airy wail, and its remaining eye winked out. The body collapsed backward and disappeared over the edge of the roof. There was a heavy, wet thump.
Joy coughed a quick exhale. Their glyphs keep them alive.
There wasn’t time to savor her victory as the resounding thuds below came faster, pushed along with heaving cracks, splintering something deep inside the building that Joy could feel under her stomach. The peak tipped dangerously as the roof began to tilt. The semiautomatic snap-snap-snap of pylons breaking joined a deep, grinding groan, the last sigh of defeat. She had to jump!
Something reckless and wild flared inside her, bringing a flush of heat to her surface, like sunburn from the inside. Joy bunched her knees, cracked her toes and pounced.
The rooftop tumbled, smashing on impact, thundering behind her as she landed on two of her foes, their muddy bodies absorbing the impact. Joy felt the buried branches snap. Knee-deep in ruined torsos, she drove her hands into their foreheads, grabbing fistfuls of sticky earth and raking gouges between their eyes, obliterating the glyphs, watching the red orbs dim and die. Joy sank, settling deeper as their skeletons went slack, stick figures collapsing under her weight and loose earth.
It fed something inside her, like fuel, like fire.
A golem slammed into her back, a sudden weight that threw her forward, but she shot back an elbow and buried her arm deep into the soft and yielding flesh. Another creature charged, mouth opened in a scream. She lifted her palm and pushed, but its mouth clamped over her hand up to the elbow, and she screamed as shattered branches pierced her skin like teeth. Pain and outrage condensed into a white-hot stab, feeding the flame. Joy stopped pulling and drove forward instead, drawing strength out of the clay corpses, from the earth, up her shins and into her pelvis, lighting her spine and spraying out her arms like cannon fire.
The head around her forearm exploded. The golem gripping her shoulder blasted in half. She stood clean and clear; the surrounding mudmen spattered against the black-painted walls in a ring. Joy gasped, hunched over, heaving for breath, her arms scratched and bleeding, still unspeakably angry, surging with a burning, driving need to fight, to destroy.
It was as if, alone in the chaos, she had permission to let go.
There was a hollow howl, and Joy turned, arms outthrust, slicing through another pair of mouths and arms, raking her fingers through their faces and blasting great gouts of air through her palm. She waded forward, pushing through the mud that dried, baked and cracked against her skin, pressing through the line of golems, clawing her way out. Toward the exit. Toward the light. Joy gritted her teeth, grunting with effort, breathing through her nose. Her eyes watered as she squinted into the mirrored shadows, sharp-edged and broken, swarming with fiery eyes and lipless mouths. She punched weakly through another block of heavy, animate clay and ripped out a handful of solid forehead, then dropped it in the dirt. Eyes blackened and fell, lifeless. Joy stumbled onward. Her arms were growing tired. Inq’s push was growing weaker. Her adrenaline surge was starting to flag.
She’d forgotten about the glom-monster.
The fused-golem creature screamed as it lurched toward her, mandibles dripping, multiple eyes burning, its crablike arms raised to hammer her flat. Joy crouched low, digging her arms into the earth, feeling broken splinters spike under her fingernails and buried rocks scrape against her wrists. The heat was boiling up inside her again—the anger, the rage. She could feel it. She pushed deeper into the mud, instinctively seeking coolness, seeking heat, seeking escape, seeking vengeance—she didn’t know which. The grotesque mass stalked forward on its thick, stomping legs. Glass shook. Part of the ceiling collapsed. She glared up at it, face full of dirt, body half buried in clay. She couldn’t let go. She couldn’t call for help. She couldn’t lift her arms. She was too tired, too heavy. There wasn’t enough.
Darkness dropped over her shoulder and rose like a cape, shielding her unprotected head as the thing’s arms smashed down. There was an oof as two bodies sank deeper into the inanimate muck. Joy’s arms were trapped in the dense soil up to her shoulders, the sizzling energy skittered hot quicksilver along her limbs. She didn’t know who was there. She couldn’t see—couldn’t think clearly.
“Filly?” she whispered, but it wasn’t. Her heart leaped. “Ink?”
There was a grunt as the next barrage slam-slam-slammed! down, beating loudly against the shield. There was a resigned sigh near her ear.
“No.”
Before she could react, the glom-monster shrieked and swept its arm sideways, knocking whomever it was prone. Exposed, Joy blinked up at the shifting, globular thing as it advanced; her arms were stuck like steel girders sunk deep into the earth. She should be panicking. She should be screaming. Instead, she felt something building beneath her, drawing closer, light squeezing sound, tense and pressed, feeling both heavy and huge.
“What are you doing?” The voice behind her was familiar even if the anger wasn’t. Joy couldn’t turn to see who it was.
“I don’t know,” Joy shouted.
“Stay down!” There was a flip and flicker of movement, a quick series of spins behind her head that Joy could barely see, the broken mirrors playing tricks. There was a bellow of rage, crashing wood and the crackle of glass. Something heavy spun past and smashed into the ticket booth. Joy tried to turn to see what it was, but couldn’t move. Her arms trembled. Steam eked out of the muddy cracks.
There was another sharp sound that crumbled into a shower of heavy dust. Something that felt like fur whipped across her back. She could feel the dead eyes of the ex-golems swimming through the earth, the coarse clay, the cool sandstone, the fissures forming far below...or was it something else, something inside her? Something cracking, breaking, trying to get out? She shuddered with more than fear. Her signatura burned between her shoulders. Her hands felt like they were spreading, pushing wider, her bones elastic, her fingers thin. Her elbows bucked, vibrating madly; her arms locked.
Joy didn’t know where she was or who she was or what she was anymore—she only knew one thing:
“Get off of the ground!” she shouted. “Get up! Get clear!”
The diving, driving energy between her fingers squeezed into her chest, shot through the earth, fanning out like a deep sea net a
nd...
The ground erupted, fountaining in great gushes of earth. The gouts flowered open, thick fingers punching through the ceiling, clawing against gravity, slow-motion plumes, then—after a still-motion moment—wilting, collapsing, swallowing the monster beneath a tide of dirt. A sinkhole opened. The geyser crashed. A belch of earth thrust upward and broke in the sudden, gasping silence.
Great clods of dirt rolled down the sloppy volcano-shaped mound and bounced quietly off the bar stools.
Joy fell onto her back, her body singing, white-hot ash wisping off her limbs; the mud on her skin had baked into dust. She kicked her feet blindly against the rocklike clay. The turbulent dirt had hardened instantly, transformed into a solid, misshapen mass, a great geologic scab that scored the earth. She stumbled to her feet and backed up against the bar. It was solid and real.
“Nice work” came the voice overhead. Joy looked up and saw a great owl perched above the curtained-off shelves. Only when the sun shone through the veil of dust did Joy make out the crown of white hair among the feathers.
“Avery,” Joy said, both disappointed and confused. She stumbled over what looked like a stumpy leg, hardened at an angle, crooked and crude. “What are you doing here?” Her head ached, and her arms felt like overcooked noodles. Her stomach growled. How could she be hungry at a time like this?
“I told you. I’ve been following you, which is no easy task,” he said, dropping from the great height and twirling his cloak into place. “And you keep such interesting company—” He stepped closer, his boot heels scraping against baked clay. His eyes reflected the broken mirrors like a cat’s. “Who are you, Joy Malone?”
She swallowed, still trying to get her bearings and collect her scattered thoughts as she stumbled through the wreck, not quite seeing where she was going, not quite knowing what to think. She wiped her fingers uselessly against her shirt. “I’ve been asking myself the same thing.”
Avery kicked at the solid mound in the middle of the Carousel, testing it with his foot. A few cracks leaked wisps of steam. “Interesting,” he said. “Any reason these homunculi were after you?”