by Frank Tuttle
Up and up we flew, until the sky turned coal-dust black and stars began to shine and I could see the great gray curve of the world as it turned far below me.
I tried to wake, but could not. I railed and cussed, but Dasher turned her bow toward the silver coin of the moon and Rannit and the Brown and everything I’d ever known shrank with distance and then disappeared.
When Dasher touched down, her flat-bottomed hull came to rest on the peculiar grey soil of the moon.
I leaped easily down, increasing my stature so that I might better see my surroundings. I had no idea where Stitches and her vault of magic wonders might be, and unlike before, I found I couldn’t simply will myself into her presence.
“You’ll have to give me a hint,” I shouted. “My knowledge of lunar cartography stops at ‘it’s round.’”
A plain wooden door appeared in the face of a nearby peak. I stomped toward it, adjusting my size as I went.
The door wasn’t locked. I entered. Inside was a tall, brightly lit circular chamber which housed a winding spiral staircase. Each stair tread was decorated with an arrow pointing down and the words THIS WAY PLEASE.
“Nobody likes a smart-ass,” I observed. Then I set about descending the stairs.
Down and down and down I went. The echoes of my bare feet rang up and down the stairwell. I willed boots to appear, but none did.
“This isn’t my dream,” I said. My words echoed with my footsteps, making the stairwell sound suddenly crowded. “You brought me here.”
I got no reply. A glance down revealed a floor, though, so I hurried down the last few turns of stairs and found myself faced with a pair of identical white doors.
A placard between them read CHOOSE WISELY. Below that was written a lot of nonsense about one door always lying and one always telling the truth and I stopped reading.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Stitches, if you dragged me all the way to the moon to play some damned silly game of wands and cups I’ll just pinch myself and wake up.” I grabbed a fold of skin between my thumb and forefinger and started to squeeze. “I mean it. Open up or I’m taking my boat and flying home.”
Laughter rang up and down the stairs. The right-hand door opened, and Stitches stepped out, smiling.
“I believe I have summoned the true Markhat,” she said. “A simulacrum would have at least attempted to solve the riddle of the doors.”
She was dressed in a flowing white robe that had the sheen of finely-woven silk. Her hair was combed and decorated with a simple silver band. Her eyes were bright and cheerful.
“You’re wearing make-up,” I said, and damned if she wasn’t.
“And you are wearing a Captain’s hat,” she said, snickering. I was, although I’d forgotten I’d worn it to bed as a joke for Darla. Stitches smiled. “Really?” she said. “A boat? It seems we both have stories to tell. Pray accompany me to the parlor, Captain Markhat. I have beer.”
“Dream beer?”
“The very best,” she replied, before turning and marching back through her door.
I straightened my Captain’s hat, tightened my nightgown’s belt, and followed with as much dignity as my bare feet could muster.
Dream or not, the beer wasn’t bad.
What Stitches called her parlor was a domed cavern that stretched off so far away I couldn’t see the back of it.
Which was for the best. The few things I could see were sufficiently unnerving.
I didn’t know what they were, and I didn’t ask. Most were shrouded in covers of some kind, but below them shapes reminiscent of folded insect legs protruded. Each time my gaze wandered from our table and our icebox of beers, I became aware I was dwarfed in the presence of monstrous walking engines, built on the scale of giants.
I kept my eyes on Stitches, the table, or my dream-beer.
“So you opened the vault,” I said when she paused for a drink. “You found a way in.”
She drank. “I did,” she said, after a time. “The guardian is mine now. As are all the contents of the vault.”
“Making you, what? The most powerful sorcerer in Rannit?”
“My access to the vault’s contents renders me the most powerful being in the world,” said Stitches. Her face remained somber. “I literally have no equal.”
“Thus the good beer.”
She almost grinned.
“You don’t seem celebratory,” I said. “This is what you came for, is it not? The vault, all the summer goodies the bad guys hid away?”
She nodded. “It is,” she replied. “A thousand years of scheming and research and planning. All for this moment.”
“What’s wrong, then?”
“I underestimated the potency of many of the artifacts,” she said. “I knew them to be powerful. I did not understand they conferred what amounts to actual deification.”
“Whoah. Deification? As in—” I waved my hands about. “Godhood? Bossing angels around, pitching devils into lakes of fire, demanding prayers but ignoring them, that kind of thing?”
“Yes.” She drained her beer. “For all practical purposes, yes. As soon as the conditions of the arcane summer commence, it will be possible for me to achieve a state of omnipotence.”
“So why the long face? Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“I wanted a means to combat the capricious, merciless beings who emerge in the time of summer,” she said. “Now I fear I shall simply join their ranks.”
“You’re afraid so much power will corrupt you?”
“I’m afraid it will change me,” she said. “You have walked with the huldra. Do you remember how Rannit appeared, then? How tiny and insignificant all those lives below you seemed?”
I just nodded. Wasn’t any point in trying to lie.
“That state is what I fear,” she said. “Ten thousand times ten thousand times that. Who will I be, after seeing such sights? What will I be?”
“You’ll still be Stitches,” I said.
“Just as you are still just Markhat,” she replied.
We nursed our beers.
“So why a boat?” she said after a while.
I told her the whole thing. Carnivals and Trolls and dead girls and fires. And Shango, of course, and my new sword Toadsticker.
She nodded and drank.
I finished my tale. She conjured up more dream beers.
“The girl in the pool,” I said. “The girl who taught you how to see behind shadows. Did you ever figure out who she was?”
“No. I gave up trying. But the phenomena is by no means unusual. Most sorcerers are introduced to the art by a stranger.”
“So is Shango my stranger, Stitches, or are you?”
“Oh no. This Shango is no sending of mine. I swear it, Markhat. I would not put that burden upon you. You are far too amusing as a mortal.”
“You gave Mama the huldra. Damned nearly relieved me of my mortality that night.”
“So you say.”
“You deny it?”
She looked me in the eye, and damned if she didn’t blink first.
“You didn’t give Mama the huldra?”
“It became expedient for you to believe I did so,” she said. “But I did not.”
It was my turn to suffer a loss for words.
If not Stitches, while she was the Corpsemaster, then who?
“I wasted decades searching for the girl in the pool,” she said after a time. “I suggest you avoid such a futile expenditure of energies.”
“I’m not a damned wand-waver,” I said.
She raised her right eyebrow. “You flew to the moon on a winged boat,” she said. “I think perhaps you need to be more flexible in your thinking.”
“I didn’t fly here on purpose,” I said. “You brought me here. I’ve enjoyed the dream-beers and the conversation, an
d your hair looks nice, by the way. But you didn’t bring me here to celebrate. So what is it you want?”
“I trust you,” she said. “You, of all men.”
“You don’t need me,” I said. “You’re soon to be a goddess. You’ll have clouds full of Angels and pews full of priests, all at your beck and call.”
“You’re wrong. The moment I stop being Stitches, I’ll need you more than ever. I won’t become the thing I hate. I won’t become a monster. Because you’ll kill me first.”
“Kill you?” I stood. “Is that what all this has been about? You set me up to be your assassin, if you get too big for your britches on a cosmic scale?”
“I set nothing up. I ask this as a friend.”
“Was the girl in the pool your friend?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Were it not for her, I would have lived and died in that valley, twenty centuries ago. I would be dust now. Forgotten. Insignificant. Vanished.”
“I don’t want to live twenty centuries,” I said. “I don’t want any of this.”
“Neither did I,” she replied. “Dammit. Neither did I.”
I stood there like a fool, in my Captain’s cap with its gold-braid embroidered trim and my dark blue nightgown with its mismatched red belt.
Finally, I sat.
“I guess maybe I can believe that,” I said. “So what do we do now? How do we go on living, knowing what we know?”
“I will remain here, for a time,” she replied. “Each artifact must be studied. Cataloged. Prepared for transport to a safe location.”
“Evis will have a conniption fit,” I said.
“Inform him of the situation. Tell him I have obtained entry to the vault. Tell him I am preparing to move the contents.”
“Evis knows all this?”
“He knows I have located and mastered a repository of powerful implements, nothing more.”
“I’ll keep it that way.”
She nodded.
“The carnival,” I said. “A toy nearly killed me. It killed dozens, maybe hundreds. Maybe more.”
“Sadly, such contrivances as the toy circus were common, in the summer. The shade of the child—you freed it, you know. You committed no murder. What you did was a mercy.”
“Bullshit.”
“A mercy,” she replied. “Necessary. Long overdue. But a mercy nonetheless.”
“Is that how emerging goddesses define murder, these days?”
“Truth is truth,” she said. She reached across the table, and put her hand on mine. “I have chosen wisely.”
“You’re as crazy as I am,” I said. “Maybe I truly am just dreaming. Boats don’t sprout wings.”
“Tonight they did,” she replied. “Go home, Markhat. Forget all this, for now. Take your boat. Take your wife. Live. There will be time enough for gods and terrors.” She squeezed my hand. “You remind me of Fjalfi. He had your eyes. Oh, and Mama’s black tea? It’s fatal, after long-term ingestion. I’d dump it in the river. Mama means well, but her grasp of herbal pharmacology is lacking. Be well, my friend. And thank you.”
“I’m leaving?”
She nodded. “You are. The best restaurant in Bel Loit is called Granny Mambo’s Feasting Table. Order the Everyday Gumbo. You’ll never have a better meal.”
I squeezed her hand back.
“Whatever happens, Stitches, you’re not a monster.”
“Not yet,” she said. She managed a smile. “Nice hat.”
I fell. I fell all the way from the moon to the sky to my boat and to my body, and when I landed I woke myself up.
A little light showed in the windows. Darla snored. Cornbread yawned and turned, regarding me with sleepy doggy eyes.
I rolled out of bed, quick as a vampire, quiet as a ghost. Darla didn’t stir. Cornbread followed, tail wagging. I rubbed his shaggy head and together we snuck out of the bedroom.
I dressed, then roused Slim. The sun was creeping up. The sky was clear and blue. We rented a wagon and set forth in search of year-old split pine.
Darla will be thrilled. She won’t care where we’re going. Bel Loit or the Sea, it’s all the same to her. We’ll point Dasher south and we’ll order Everyday Gumbo at Granny Mambo’s Feasting House and damn the Angels, damn the devils, damn the Heavens, damn the hells.
We’ll be alive. We’ll be in love.
If ever there was a more potent sorcery, it’s not any magic I know.
About the Author
Raised by carnival folk, Frank Tuttle embarked upon his writing career when the bottom dropped out of the freelance weight-guessing market. Despite the dismal failure of his first book series (a trilogy of hat-centered erotica aimed squarely at Romanian trapeze artists), Frank persevered, finally settling atop an abandoned Sears retail store to churn out Markhat books on a restored Underwood typewriter named Mr. Benny.
Frank invites you to visit his website, www.franktuttle.com. From there you may visit his weekly blog, view his latest Lafayette County Sheriff’s Department booking photos, or even communicate with him via the wonder of Internet e-mail ([email protected]).
Frank welcomes your comments, and will wave to you from his rooftop if you toss up a bag of candy and a fresh pair of socks.
Look for these titles by Frank Tuttle
Now Available:
Markhat Files
The Mister Trophy
The Cadaver Client
Dead Man’s Rain
The Markhat Files
Hold the Dark
The Banshee’s Walk
The Broken Bell
Brown River Queen
The Five Faces
When Death writes your name, there is no erasing it.
The Five Faces
© 2013 Frank Tuttle
The Markhat Files, Book 8
It starts as a typical day in the park, with Markhat tracking a bully the law won’t touch, and promising a little girl he’ll find her missing dog, name of Cornbread.
But as the sun sets over Rannit, a new menace creeps out with the dark. There’s a killer on the loose, and Markhat the finder suspects magic behind the murders. Each victim receives a grisly drawing depicting the place, time, and manner of death. Not a single victim has escaped the brutal fate drawn for them—and now Markhat’s own death-drawing has arrived.
The mighty Dark Houses are also falling, one by one, as terror grips Rannit’s streets. Even sorcerers are dying, their magic failing, their blood spilled as easily as that of any other.
With time and hope running out, Markhat races to outwit a creature that can see outside Time itself. Before the picture of his own death becomes stained with real blood
Warning: The dance moves described herein are not intended for novice trolley operators, and the Publisher assumes no responsibility for any loss of ornamental waterfowl, carrot-enhanced undergarments, or wheeled bathing contrivances. The preceding sentence should be read in the voice of Morgan Freeman and to the accompaniment of a competent string ensemble.
Enjoy the following excerpt for The Five Faces:
Some sixth sense woke me just before the scrap of paper came sliding under my door.
I found my gun and kept it in hand for the count of ten. But no one knocked. No one tried the latch. Traffic was heavy on Cambrit, both horsedrawn and pedestrian, so I didn’t hear my note-slider leave.
I got up and peeked through my fancy glass anyway. Ogres rushed past, hauling their carts of night soil west toward the tanneries. People walked the streets, squinting in the sun. Mr. Bull pushed his ancient broom across his smooth-worn stoop and maintained an animated conversation with his tireless, silent shadow.
I used the toe of my shoe to push the scrap of paper into the patch of light my door-glass let through. The note had been folded, which meant it might bear hex signs, a
nd the last thing I needed for lunch was a generous portion of killing magic.
I have learned a few things from Mama over the years. I filled a copper pan with moon-shone salt, and lit four white candles, one at each corner of the pan. I spat in the salt three times, and then I used my Army knife to put the note down centered in the salt. I threw three pinches of salt on the paper, turned around three times while holding my breath, and then I used my knife to unfold the note.
I KNOE THE DOG FIGHT MAN, it read. METE TONITE ALLEY BY LONGSWAITE AND COOPERS. COME ALONE HOUR PAST CURFEW BRING CROWN I GIVE YOU NAME.
I turned the paper over. It was half of one of the nuisance waybills the Regent outlawed right after he outlawed the newspapers. This one advertised a stage play from last summer.
I cussed some. Odds are a weedhead or a street kid was paid to slip the note under my door. They probably didn’t know much, but they could have given me a place to start looking, and since I’d been napping I didn’t even have that.
But I had enough to find my hat and check my revolver and head out my door. The address on the note could wait. I had Mr. Penny’s warehouse to visit.
The sun was bright and cheery. I pulled my hat down against the glare and waved at Mr. Bull’s muttered greeting.
Mama was right. I spotted four Watchmen before I had time to blink twice. Courtesy demanded I just stroll up to the closest one and give him my agenda for the day, but I recalled Captain Holder’s beet-red face and decided to put his shiny new Watch to the test.
Three blocks. Three blocks, two cabs, an alley, and a hat store. That’s all it took to elude the Watch and emerge from the alley by Cape and Sons Shoe Repair unencumbered by the vigilant gaze of law and order.
I walked another two blocks, just to be sporting. The Watch never showed. I watched a street mime get slapped in the face by a black-clad nanny wearing an enormous birdcage hat and then I hailed a cab and headed for the docks, whistling all the way.
It was a still day. The docks reeked, and the press of sweaty, working bodies only added to the palpable aroma of the place. I wasn’t sure even Mama’s homemade lye soap would ever get the stink out of my new white shirt.