by Anthology
Mai-li kicked Voider two off the stage. She wanted the stage clear before she engaged number three and there was a chance that the act might infuriate him enough to make his attack sloppy.
No such luck. He merely took it as an invitation to draw his bokken and circle her. Not to be intimidated, she mirrored his movements and gave his weapon a couple firm taps with the tip of hers. The tap, while not a real strike, served two purposes. One was to test his grip. If her opponent’s bokken bounced too far away from hers then their grip was weak and they could be easily defeated. If it held firm, which his did, then she needed to proceed with caution.
The other purpose was to rid her mind of fear and nervousness. Breaching the void around the sword’s edge always scared her. It felt like sacred space. That’s why she always began a fight with a couple taps. It forced her to get over it before she got hurt.
She hadn’t held one of these in years. While it felt good to have the smooth weight in her hands again, she worried that she was too long out of practice. Pole dancing kept her body fit but it did nothing for her technique. If Voider three was as well practiced as his grip suggested, he could easily defeat her. There’s only one way to find out.
Voider Three struck a downward blow. Mai-li quickly countered but didn’t try to stop the blade. She only applied enough resistance to deflect the blade. A loud crack split the air, silencing the onlookers.
Using the backward momentum from her strike, Mai-li dropped into a crouch and swung her blade to strike Three in the gut. Three tried to bring his weapon down for a counter strike but his position was too high. His sword couldn’t cross the distance in time. The force of Mai-li’s strike doubled him over. She rose and sidestepped around him, letting her blade slide off his robe. When the tip cleared his body she brought her bokken up and slammed the butt of the handle down on the back of his head.
Mai-li felt a warning tingle between her shoulder blades. On instinct she dropped to one knee, spinning in the process. It wasn’t a comfortable position but it did put her bokken in the right place to prevent Four’s from cracking her skull. She had to brace her sword with both hands to stop the force of his strike and even then her arms almost gave way.
Four strode forward to keep pace with her and struck again. Mai-li ducked and rolled further back, barely managing to avoid it. Unfortunately that also meant that his blow struck the pole. The resounding ring made her teeth hurt.
The adrenaline rush that fueled her first two bouts began to fade. Her triceps burned from the exertion. She didn’t know how long she could keep this up—certainly not as long as they could but there was no backing out at this point. The moment she stepped up on that table she became committed to this fight and she had to see it through. Every Voider she took down was recompense for the years of torment their training inflicted upon her and increased the survival odds for their captive audience. She needed to give this everything she had.
Mai-li rolled onto her back and kicked out with both legs, using her core muscles to catapult to a standing position. She thrust her blade straight at four. He tapped it aside. Mai-li took one step forward and channeled the ricochet into a spiraling circuit around his blade. It was an unorthodox strike. Hell, it should have been impossible to execute. It was a move better suited to a thin blade such as a rapier. A bokken was simply too bulky and heavy for that kind of wrist work. Which of course, was the only reason why it worked. Four never saw it coming and had no clue how to counter it.
When the tip of her bokken passed the hand guard of Four’s she pulled up sharply with all her might. It didn’t force Four to relinquish his blade, but it did force him to switch momentarily to a one handed grip because the strike smashed a couple of his fingers. Mai-li didn’t bother to contain her smile when she hit his other hand, dislodging the weapon.
“Enough!” The Warden shouted. He walked up to the stage, the crowd parting around him. “I will kill you myself.”
She couldn’t understand why he stopped the fight. It wasn’t because she beat three monks. That was pure luck. No, the warden definitely had another reason to intervene other than spite or impatience. She looked again at Voider four. No, it couldn’t be.
“Hyun-ki?” Mai-li whispered.
Voider Four gave a barely perceptible nod. Tears beaded at the corners of her eyes. She hadn’t seen her younger brother since she left. Mai-li had to bite her lip to keep all of the sorrow and joy from showing on her face. Father couldn’t find out that she knew.
“Please help me save them,” she quietly begged. “You know this is wrong.”
Hyun-ki took a few steps back to allow their father to approach. Warden Sung drew his bokken and leaped up on stage with the vigor of a man half his age. She still couldn’t believe that he wanted to fight her himself, he never sparred with her when he visited the training grounds in her youth, and he took full advantage of that. Before she could raise her sword he struck her high on her left arm with enough force to crack bone.
Mai-li screamed. It took all her will to keep both hands on the bokken. She tried to raise it for a strike and found she couldn’t. The pain was too much.
Father struck again and again. Each successive blow drove her further back until her heel reached the edge of the stage. She managed to feebly block two out of three strikes. Each time his sword struck hers the shock sent another sharp pain through her injury. That added to the pain from the blows that did meet flesh made it almost impossible to focus. So much pain radiated through her body that she couldn’t tell if any more bones broke during the fight.
Father swung his blade down in an arc, knocking her blade from her hands. It landed somewhere in the crowd. Mai-li didn’t try to ascertain its whereabouts. She was finished. She knew it and so did he.
He raised his bokken high for the killing blow. Mai-li closed her eyes and waited for the deathblow to come.
Only it didn’t.
Mai-li opened her eyes. The warden stood frozen, mid strike. Blood trickled down his face. When his lifeless body fell to the stage, Hyun-ki stood behind with a bokken covered in their father’s blood. Her jaw dropped. For a brief moment the shock of what he did chased away the pain—but only for a moment.
Hyun-ki lowered his hood. The chubby teen she remembered had grown into a handsome man.
“By right of combat,” he said to the remaining Voiders, “I now command this force. I declare this station to be a holy sanctuary in memory of Warden Sung. There will be no more cleansing of the population here. Everyone will return to the ship at once to say prayers in his honored memory.”
He turned to her. “I’m sorry I can’t do more.” He said it softly enough that his subordinates wouldn’t hear.
“Don’t be. This is more than I expected. Thanks, baby bro.”
“I’ll alert the medics on the way out.”
And with that he and his subjugates gathered up the bodies of their fallen brethren and left. The crowd didn’t applaud or cheer as they departed. They probably didn’t fully understand what happened. Or perhaps they didn’t believe that through an unbelievable chance humanity was given one precious refuge. Hell, she still couldn’t believe it. Whatever the reason, she was grateful for the silence. It seemed appropriate for a newly founded sanctuary.
Mai-li sat down carefully. While she waited for the medics she composed in her mind her resignation speech to both of her bosses—if they still lived. This place was going to get a lot busier and a good mechanic would be in a lot higher demand than a grease monkey/stripper.
Alison McBain
http://www.alisonmcbain.com/
Grandmother Winter(Short story)
by Alison McBain
Second place in Contest # 22 by On the Premises Magazine.
"In the forest lives an old woman," said Ellie's mother. "She will eat you if you are bad. Mind me or else."
It was hard for Ellie to take her mother seriously. She was old enough to know the difference between the village superstitions and her mother's tales.
But still, she said yes. She would watch her brother.
Once she agreed, her mother tied on a scarf and left Ellie standing in the doorway holding baby Jackson. The girl watched her mother walk out through the front gate without a backward glance at the two she left behind.
Jackson was especially fussy today. He cried as Ellie fed him sloppy porridge; he stole the spoon and threw it on the floor. Then he spit his meal up all over Ellie.
"Shh," she tried to soothe him. "Shh." His face brightened and swelled like a birthday balloon. She wanted to pop him, to deflate his puffed-out cheeks and screwed-up fists that batted at her. She wanted to leave him crying by himself and go off to play. He would cry whether she was there or not—she couldn't soothe him.
The sky darkened outside. Mother could take hours, wherever she went to. Ellie had asked several times if she could come along, but had been told no. "It's grown-up stuff," she was told the first time. "When you're older," the next time. Finally her mother screamed, "No! Stop asking!"
So she stopped.
Jackson wailed as she bounced him up and down in her arms. She pleaded with him, but he ignored her. She changed his diaper, but he peed on her. She sang a song while he hit her in the nose.
Her mother's words boiled up inside of her and she shouted, "No! Stop crying!"
This only made him squeeze more tears out and scream harder.
Finally, she put him in his crib and covered him in a blanket that he immediately kicked off. That was it—she couldn't take it anymore. She walked through the door and shut it behind her.
The air outside was still and heavy with electricity. The wooly clouds were dirty with potential, low and grey and grimy. Guilt filled her throat as she walked away, but she did not turn around. The back of her head crawled with the wrongness of Jackson left behind, alone and crying in his crib.
Ellie slunk into the trees, but didn't go far. Of course, she promised to some nameless entity inside her head, she would return in a minute and obey the summons of her brother's cries. Of course, she wouldn't leave him alone for long.
But she lingered at the edge of the woods. The trees leered at her with twig teeth, and she idled beneath them in a tortured mix of freedom and shame. Another minute and she would return to the house, rescue Jackson from his crib and hold him until their mother returned. She would be good, after this next minute.
Or maybe this one.
Perhaps a couple more.
She watched the clouds swing over their house in the small clearing as she leaned her head back against the base of a large and knobby tree. The sky roiled like boiling soup and she huddled in her coat against the growing winds of the storm. Her coat was old and warm, too large for her by far. It had been her father's, her mother once told her, but would say no more about it.
Ellie closed her eyes against the wind and snuggled down inside the coat. She felt comforted by it, sheltered in a cocoon of her father's long-ago protection.
When she next opened her eyes, it was to darkness and wailing. She jumped to her feet. A confusion of thoughts tumbled through her head, until she remembered Jackson left alone in the house. Her mother would be livid at her for abandoning him, no matter that she had never left sight of their home.
Except…how could she have gotten so turned around? She looked left and right, but there was nothing but forest and more forest. There was no clearing, no small and familiar cottage. The branches of the trees loomed out of the darkness like the tales she had heard about sinister creatures of the woods, and Ellie remembered her mother threatening her before she left with the idea of the old woman of the forest.
The wailing was louder now, and Ellie was frightened until she realized it was the wind moaning through the branches. A rumble echoed through the sky, and the first cold drops fell down, white as the trees were black, the stark colors of nighttime.
She had no choice but to walk or freeze. Choosing a direction at random, she shuffled her feet forward, huddling inside her coat. The snow fell down, an endless kaleidoscope of sky demons dancing over her head. Her toes hurt, then numbed, and her feet lost feeling next. Still, she walked and the snow fell.
Her head was tucked down below the collar of her coat for warmth, and she was not sure what made her look up, but when she did, she saw a light flickering in the distance. The clearing! she thought gratefully. Home.
The idea filled her with longing, a visceral tug that sped her numb feet and spurred her to a careless speed. She tripped and sprawled on the ground, knocking away her breath. She lay flat on a bed of snow and struggled to take air in and out. The cold of the hard earth seeped up her arms and into her chest so that she coughed convulsively when she had recovered from the shock of the fall. Can't lie here, she thought, and pushed to her feet. There was the light, her only hope of safety, and she walked forward again to follow it.
The light led her deeper into the woods. The trees were thicker, and the ephemeral brightness receded before her so she never got closer. In despair, she thought of will-o-the-wisps and what it would mean to be lost in the forest during a winter storm.
As if sensing her ragged emotions, the light flickered again and coalesced into a stable image. Ellie stumbled, fighting with the entwined branches that blocked her way. It seemed there was a clearing on the other side, but the trees were rooted fast and held firm against her numb fingers. She beat at them with her useless hands and shrieked wordlessly into the night.
At her cry, the branches suddenly gave way and she fell forward into a small, open area where the trees curved like a roof and bent around the sides of the space as tightly as a thicket. In the heart of the opening was a small cottage, just about the size of her home. Lights shone from all the windows but, oddly, the house looked like it was perched on a nest of dried sticks that elevated it up from the ground.
The wind howled and the snow blew against her back, urging her forward. Fear beat through her skull as hard as the fingers of the wind, yet she still hesitated despite the impetus of cold. Finally, she walked forward until she reached the door and knocked. It was a timid rap, but she could hear the echoes inside as if she had smote upon the door with all of her force.
Quite clearly, she heard a voice say, "Enter." The tone of the voice was as cold as the wind and chilled her through, much as the winter storm had. But she had come here and had no other choice, so she pulled the latch and stepped inside.
The warmth of the fire inside was overwhelming after the cold, and she felt the sting of heat on her face like a slap. She quietly closed the door behind her, her eyes drinking in the simple room. A trundle bed sat in the far corner by the fireplace and, in between the two was a scarred table and chairs. An old woman sat in one of the chairs and she had a knife in her hand. It was as long as the woman's arm and she held it pointed at the door. No, pointed at Ellie.
"It's a cold night for a cold heart," said the woman. Then she laughed, splinters of ice edging through it. "What are you doing wandering the woods on such a night?"
"Please, ma'am, I got lost," Ellie said. She waited next to the door, dripping with melting snow, afraid to venture further. The woman put down the knife and smiled, but the smile brought no comfort. Her face was a nest of wrinkles and her mouth had few teeth. Around her neck was a string of long, off-white beads that tinkled strangely as she moved. "I beg of you, please let me stay here until the storm ends, and then I can be on my way."
"You beg for my care? You must have a kind heart to expect favors from a stranger. Do you care for others when they need you?"
Ellie's mind flashed back to her brother and her eyes pricked with guilty tears. "No, ma'am, I do not. My brother needed me, and I left him behind."
"Aha," said the old woman. "Well, I am not you. For the truth of your words and the regret in your heart, you are welcome to my fire and to share my meal."
Stunned by the generosity, Ellie blinked her eyes and the tears fell down. "Thank you." She swiped the back of her hand across her cheeks. "I will do whateve
r I can to repay you."
"Not a wise promise to give to a stranger in the woods," said the old woman. She stood, and Ellie could see that the old woman was small, no taller than herself. Perhaps the woman had once been larger, but her back was bent with age and her fingers gnarled with it. Still, she moved lightly across the floor to the fire and dished stew into two bowls from a pot suspended over the flames. She thunked them onto the worn surface of the table, and Ellie sat down across from her, feeling as if she were floating in a dream. Her fingers tingled with returning life.
"What is your name, girl?" asked the woman, giving her a spoon. Ellie told her and took a mouthful of the stew. It was so hot it seared her tongue. "Where is your family?"
After a hesitation while she took a bite and chewed it, Ellie told her this also. "So your mother left you alone? Where does she go when she is gone all day?"
"I don't know," said the girl. "She will not tell me."
"Hmm," said the old woman. By this time, Ellie had eaten her fill and she felt warm and drowsy. Her eyelids began to droop and she had problems listening to the woman, despite trying to be polite.
"Come," said the voice. "I have blankets in that chest, there. You may sleep before the fire."
Ellie went where she was directed and curled herself into the blankets. Now warmed through, she fell asleep.
***
When she woke, Ellie was in her own bed at home. She blinked sleep-furred eyes and glanced around. There, in his crib, was her sleeping brother. Her mother was in the bed next to her, also fast asleep.
Had it just been a dream? She sat up as gently as possible so as to not wake the baby, but was startled by the loud thud of something dropping to the floor. She froze. A rustle of cloth was followed the next minute by a thin wail as Jackson woke.