Vermilion Dreams

by M. U. Riyadad

  “It is a…” the man with the long arm began, glancing at me.

  I cut him off, clearing my throat to shout as loud as I could. “Creature! Who are you! What are you?! And why are you in my forest?” I asked. “I should have your head for intruding into my home. I should make furniture with your legs and clay plates with your face.”

  “My head?” it asked, turning upward like it was looking for its own head. “My head, my head, my head!” It repeated the words with joy, teetering on its four legs like it was trying to jump away from something on the floor. Rain and soil splashed all over, some of it hitting my face.

  “I am the oldest spirit in this forest,” I said. I took another step forward. “This place belongs to me. I own it, and all the creatures and daemons that live in it serve me. I demand that you leave or I’ll eat your insides out and wash the blood down with rainwater. I’ll carve you up along with your servants and decorate the trees with the most gruesome parts. I will end you!” My voice cracked at the end, and I suddenly realized I was a thirteen-year-old girl speaking to a massive daemon summoned from the pits of the nether.

  The other half-men shifted nervously in their positions.

  The creature lifted one of its totem legs and pointed to itself as though it were ashamed or guilt-stricken.

  “Oh my, my!” it shouted. “What a clever, CLEVER ploy!” It wavered on its feet again, swinging to the left on one leg, then to the right on the other. “I find myself so… so taken by your performance. So lost and entranced in your words. So utterly bewildered by your courage and gusto.” Tears swelled up in its eyes, glistening in the dark as brightly as the moon. Its cheeks bulged into dimples.

  I took an unconscious step back, wincing as soon as I did. I could see the expressions on the other daemons already starting to change. The arm that had been afraid of me swung to the side of its half-man now, curious and attentive. The fingers opened and closed, opened and closed, like it was picking flies out of the air. The half-men turned to me, and then to Elsa and the others, no longer in disbelief or awe, but in understanding and realization, like they were coming out of a stupor.

  “What an act!” the totem daemon continued. “Five children run into the forest and pretend to be daemons. Written by Sahgore the Great himself. The gods would be proud! What a brilliant girl!” It slid one leg toward me. It came so close I could see the face of the totem carved into it. Eyes that were curved sharply downward into an expression of grief. Tiny grooves and lumps in the center formed tears. “Blue moon bless you, child. Blue moon look after you and your talents! Blue moon cry with the brilliance in your head!”

  It laughed, it danced on its feet, and then it turned to me with a smile. It was the widest one yet, with an unfamiliar yearning and impatience. Its teeth clattered together loudly. Its tongue flung low to the ground. “Can I… can I… see… what’s in its head?” it asked slowly. “Can I cut it and see all the smart inside of it?” Two eyes watched me with intense curiosity, sparkling with amusement and pure delight.

  I said nothing. I couldn’t tell if it was smart, or if it somehow just knew. I wiped the sweat from my palms on my shirt and felt my toes curl inside my boots. The hair on my neck prickled in discomfort, and my fingertips turned cold. Taa had taught me how to recognize this feeling the way physikers could recognize a poison working its way through a body. I could spot fear in myself in a fraction of a second, the very moment when it planted its seed, but that did no good. I would need a miracle to keep fear out of my mind now, and so, against all of Taa’s advice, I let my thoughts get swept by it. All the details of the world, all the hundreds of solutions and scenarios I was running through in my head came to a screeching halt. I disappeared from the moment, thinking only of the totem creature’s tongue and teeth, the half-men with mutilated bodies and bloodied masks.

  The five of us were going to get eaten alive. We’d feel the warmth and wetness of their mouths as they crunched on our bones and organs, turning it all to dust.

  The totem creature leaned its head back, and then rushed toward me again. This time, I fell back several feet. It glanced at Elsa and the others. They weren’t whimpering anymore, but they were all pale and trembling. True fright, the kind that you felt in nightmares. Even Nikhil had lost his color.

  The creature’s tongue flicked up and down, stretching to at least four feet in front of its face. It snaked its way toward me.

  “Stupid creature… I… I…” It was over. I knew. My voice was shaking. My palms were slippery with cold sweat. I was stumbling over my words. I’d run out of things to say. That’s how I knew it was over. Although she was only thirteen, Dina Anasahara never ran out of things to say. Not until the very end. Courtiers all the way to the old continent knew that the daughter of Rphat Anasahara had a silver tongue, as quick as a cat and twice as proud.

  The totem creature swung a leg toward me. I stood there, unable to bring myself to brace for the impact.

  I heard a deafening thud, and winced, but nothing hit me.

  Nikhil had moved in front of the creature, crashing into its leg with an elbow and then throwing the pillar-sized totem down on the floor in front of me. He bent over, and then clutched his elbow in pain.

  Jahlil ran to me and pulled me back. Elsa and Mawlik huddled around me.

  “Are you okay?” Elsa asked. Her eyes were wet, scared, and struck with panic. I wished I hadn’t brought her here. I should have gone after my sisters myself. It was all I could think of.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “I’m sorry, Elsa, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  She shook her head silently, wiping at her eyes and turning to the half-men. She stood up, hands at her side and eyes narrowed in concentration. She was going to try using alchemy of the earth, just like Nikhil. It was all we had left. For all that Elsa was worth, she was brave. Far more than I think she got credit for. Still, it would do nothing. Five children could not fight thirteen daemons, no matter how talented any of us were at alchemy.

  “Thissss one,” the daemon hummed, in a tone all euphoria. He looked at Nikhil. “This one is strong. It uses alchemy of the earth for strength. Good magic. Strong magic.” He turned toward the other half-men. They were beginning to draw closer to us now, taking small steps underneath the totem-pole creature’s body to walk over. “Use thisssss one’s body to make another one of you. Eat the others. Eat the others!”

  “Nikhil, are you okay?” Jahlil asked.

  He groaned, still clutching his arm. “I broke my elbow, I think,” he said. “That thing is big.” He tucked his broken arm into a pocket and grabbed his sword with the other. He was still kneeling, but he held his sword upright.

  Mawlik sat next to me, trembling quietly. I expected him to yell, but he was beyond biting remarks now.

  The half-man with the arm pointed at me. “But the girl…”

  “A girl, you idiot,” the daemon sung. “Just a girl, she is. Cut it to pieces and bring the pieces to me. Then put the pieces back together and lets see what happens! We can sew some of them back! We can eat what doesn’t sew well!”

  The half-men turned to me, then to the totem-pole creature, then back to me. Slowly, their expressions changed from shocked, to confused, to angry, and then finally, to something of satisfaction.

  Taa had always said my gifts were equal to magic and strength and wealth and power, but what could they do for me now? There were so many things I could tell about the world, even in the panicked state I was in, yet none of it helped. I knew how many more degrees the moon had to move to reach its peak; I could list all the different weathers the soil had gone through in the past week; I could guess what memories Jahlil or Elsa were recalling at this very moment, close to death. But still I couldn’t think of a single detail that might actually help us.

  Nikhil and Elsa lit their banefire. Their torches erupted in bright pink flames, lashing toward the daemons as the two of them stepped forward and swung in wide arcs. The rain did nothing more than make the fire flic
ker a bit faster around the edges.

  The totem creature shot its tongue out and slapped the torches out of both of their hands, then smothered the flames against the wet soil.

  “Wow! Look at Nikhil—he brought so many useful things!” Mawlik said.

  The half-men gathered into a circle around us. Discolored organs, loose pins, heaps of skin, and oversized jaws all flashed uncannily under the fire and the moon, the alchemical lights, and the glow of the totem creature’s eyes. The half-men moaned and sighed, still eyeing me suspiciously, but growing more confident every passing second. I had nothing left to give, nothing more to think about, nothing to pull out of my sleeves. If these were men, at the very least, I could offer something to trade. Money or goods, or the promise of land or a castle from my father. But these weren’t men; they were daemons that walked under the blue moon, and they hissed, and seethed, and howled like possessed animals.

  CHAPTER 10

  I couldn’t understand why Avisynth came down. I’d prayed for Taa or Father’s army, and instead, Yuweh sent me a thirteen year old boy with odd eyes. It was the kind of irony that a priest could be thankful for, but not the kind of irony that would do us any good right now.

  Avisynth slid down the hill, feet mucked in soil and rain. Thin strands of grass were strung around his bare feet. You couldn’t see his toes through all the mud. He carried a small branch in his left hand. Was he going to whip the totem creature with it? Perhaps it was a peace offering. He would barter the branch in exchange for our lives. It would be a tough sell; there were thousands of branches littered around the clearing. Or maybe the branch was a hidden weapon, and he was a disguised prince. That happened often in the stories Father would tell me, but knowing my luck, he was just a boy and the stick was just a branch. Knowing my luck, even that was too much to ask for—he was coming to help the other daemons beat us to death.

  “Another child?” the totem creature asked. He watched the Vannadray boy with beady eyes. His lips curled into an O, intrigued and curious. The other half-men came in between us five and Avisynth, but he continued to walk toward us, zigzagging through the twelve daemons and around a totem leg. They grazed his shirt with razor-thin nails. They grinded their molars in shrill screeches, the sound of rusted iron against a chalkboard.

  “Avisynth, run!” Elsa yelled. She gripped the back of my shirt tightly. “Get out of here! Get back on the hill!”

  “Or fly, or dig,” I said. “Skip and hop even. Do anything but walk here.”

  The boy strode to where we were huddled. His steps were slow, but he didn’t walk with profound confidence or the kind of gait that told me he had a plan—the kind of steps I would have taken to tell everyone it was going to be okay even if it wasn’t. He kept his shoulders low and his hands pressed together, like he was walking in a cold dark, unsure of his surroundings. One of the daemons made a sudden jerking motion toward him. He didn’t flinch, but looked at the half-man with startled eyes. The branch slipped from his hands and the little hope the weapon had given me vanished. Shit, I thought. It really was just a branch. The boy had lost his marbles.

  “Is this to eat, too?” the totem daemon asked, his voice as high as a tenor. “Another one to eaaaaatttt? Another one to poke and squeeze and crunch and gulp?” His tongue sprang out toward Avisynth, landing on the floor in front of the boy, and then circling around him in stiff strokes like a tight piece of string.

  Avisynth continued walking, eyeing the tongue with caution. He raised an unsteady hand at it, as if to shoo it away.

  The totem creature pulled it back in a slurping sound, then raised a giant brow and batted his long lashes. Clumps of snow dropped down to the floor, one of them falling right on top of a half-man.

  Avisynth kneeled down next us. He squeezed his hands together like he was in deep thought, and then stood there silently for several seconds. He got the grass and mud off his feet by rubbing them together and shaking his toes. For all the absurdity of the moment, it was perhaps the most sensible thing to do.

  “What are you doing?” Jahlil asked in a hiss. “You’re only going to get yourself killed like the rest of us.”

  “Too late now,” Nikhil said, shaking his head. “He’s already as good as dead.” He stood on his sword, then raised it in front of him. His other arm hung dead at his side. “We may as well try fighting them off. Elsa, can you do alchemy of any sort? We can use the holy water.” He glanced at Mawlik and Jahlil. “Come on, you two are strong. Show these daemons what the children of Chaya can do. Maybe your sisters will be okay Dina, even if we don’t make it. Maybe we can fight to give them a chance to escape.”

  “No one is going to die,” Avisynth said calmly. He spoke without doubt, but not in a reassuring way. It was more like a physiker telling you this isn’t going to hurt.

  “When you see the fluttering, close your eyes,” he continued. “Make sure to close your eyes—don’t look no matter what. And umm… don’t touch anything in there. And hold each other.”

  “Close our eyes?” Mawlik asked. “Hold each other? We’re about to get eaten by thirteen daemonic stitched-up beasts and the best advice you can give us is to close our eyes?”

  “I mean, he has a point,” I muttered. “If I did get eaten I wouldn’t want to—”

  “Fluttering?” Nikhil asked. “From the daemons? I don’t hear any fluttering.”

  “He’s in trauma, I don’t think he’s thinking straight,” Jahlil said, more nonchalantly than with any real concern.

  The half-man with the long arm wobbled over to us. Two other daemons followed just behind him. He bent his back over so the arm could reach us first. The bruised and cut limb twisted to the side, cracked backward, and twitched in a mix of sudden motions. Blood and dirt were stuck together under its fingernails. Loose veins and splintered bones stuck out from the front side of its wrist. I didn’t realize how big it was until it came close. It could have swallowed my head in a fist. A soupy smell, like mold and stale bread, filled the air.

  Nikhil turned his sword to the side, stepping to the side of the arm in a careful stance. Balanced on his right leg, he crouched low to the ground then started to back away. “Dina, stay behind me,” he said. “Elsa, be ready to fight.”

  The other daemons came closer. Avisynth stood in place.

  “Just do it,” Avisynth said. “When you hear the fluttering or see it, close your eyes. Or look away. Just don’t stare directly into it.” He pulled a dagger from a strap in his right ankle, hidden underneath the bottom of his pants. It wasn’t a particularly large weapon, but in his hands, it looked like a small sword. It was white, but discolored and brindled with dark spots. The handle was a simple, dark red wood, with the blade tied to its top by a piece of leather rope. It looked like a stone that had been carved into the shape of a tooth. The weapon was crudely made, but there was a venerable sense to its design, the kind of appeal you would find in objects from antiquity.

  “Give me your hand,” he said to no one in particular.

  We watched him quietly for several seconds, not understanding what he meant.

  “One of you, give me your hands,” he repeated, this time more urgently. “Quick!”

  I stuck my hand out. If Yuweh was going to send me a miracle right now, I wasn’t going to question how it was done. Avisynth took the dagger and grazed my palm. Blood leaked out when it touched barely the hairs of my skin. I felt no pain, only the cold touch of the blade and a pinching sensation. It was only a few drops of blood, but it was enough to make Elsa gasp.

  “What are you doing?!” she screamed, reaching over to slap the blade from Avisynth’s hand. He pulled the dagger back, and then flipped it over his palm and back into the strap on his ankle in one motion.

  The daemons sniffed the air, licking their lips at the smell of blood. They approached with their hands out, desperate to touch flesh. Two of the half-men were inches away from Avisynth. I could smell their breaths now, sour and musty like old animal corpses. Their bodies were cove
red in sweat and grime, sticky with rainwater and animal blood. Their teeth were an array of different shapes. Some were jagged and uneven, sticking out irregularly like the edges of a serrated mouthpiece. Others were even and perfectly sharp, tapering out to points that could fit through a thimble.

  Avisynth took the blood from my palm with his fingertips, then held it up to the creatures. They stared at it, starving and greedy, and unable to hold their hunger any longer. The first half-man reached out his hands as delicately as he could, as though we might have been too fragile to risk breaking before we were eaten. A mottled green hand with sores and cuts, rotten flesh and peeling scabs, stuck out from the dark like a cat’s paw stretching under a dim moon.

  ***

  The sky changed color. It didn’t happen immediately, but it felt quick, like day changing to night in a dream. The moon and the stars had disappeared. It was still dark. Even darker now, with no moon. There were clouds of different colors that floated through the air like clusters of fog under a passing rainbow. Dim hues spread from their bodies along with strands of ash that were falling to the floor, then going back up toward the sky. They weren’t bits and pieces of ash like dust or sand, but long and broad ones, like feathers the color of coal and cinder.

  It still looked like we were in the Dwah Forest, but several things had changed in the landscape. Most of the trees had disappeared, except for a few, and the ones that stayed looked different. They had faces like the totem creature. Wooden and splintered faces, as old as the earth, and with teeth like bone daggers. Their branches, no longer tangled with those of other trees, extended to the sky in long spirals and twisted helixes. Their roots were frozen and covered in ash and leaves, sticking out from the soil below like claws made of autumn ice.

  I turned to Elsa. Everyone was still here. Our skin glowed lightly in the dark, reflecting the colors of the clouds and the glint of the ash. The campfire had turned a light grey. The flames looked bigger, but they barely lit anything around them. They were dim and colorless—no brighter than moonlight and no warmer than a sunray.