I’m getting soft. The hag’s going to get me for this, if her animals don’t. Pluck me, bone me, toss me in a stew and gobble me down. Throw the rest to the worms.
He looks to the silent path ahead and turns back to me. “Why should I trust you?”
“Don’t then.”
He has a think about that.
I turn and flutter heavenward. I’ve said far too much already.
I enter the old hut through the window and she’s polishing her eye again. She pokes it back in the socket and hisses, “Give it to me.” She looks feverish now, like a rabid fox in the winter. Maybe she doesn’t know, maybe she does.
She snatches the leaf and catches its scent. “Love again . . . longing too. Something else . . . loss.”
She grinds the mixture with rasps of hungry breath. The moment the flames catch my eyes, I’m sinking again, down, down into the depths of Edward’s past.
Dappled light cuts through the trees that line one side of a majestic pasture. The gradual shifting of the earth has set the fences angled, and their edges lay untamed. Wildflowers give refuge to rabbits and frogs. All this seems quite perfect to the memory’s architect, and to Charlotte too, who stands beside him and warms his hand in hers.
The far side of the property slopes down to a stream, where silver fish frolic. She rests her chin on his shoulder, and the scent of cherries plays on her hair.
“We’ll herd goats here,” he announces. “Keep hens too. We’ll have all the fresh milk, cheese and eggs we need, and the hills will give us plenty of fowl and small critters to hunt.”
“Berries and pine nuts too, when the season’s right,” she adds.
He draws a breath of air that smells of fresh linen on the line. “Some years from now, the first trees of the orchard will be tall as you are.” He casts his hand through the air as a magician does, and evokes a forest of quinces and persimmons and a hammock strung between the tallest twins. And a house too, with its smoking chimney and windows that carry the bustle of a kitchen where his trestle table stands. They’ll have it all, he promises, just as soon as they can afford the lumber.
“Have you decided, then?”
There’s a tightness in his voice when he says it. “I’m taking the post in Penbrook.”
“You are?”
“In one year we’ll have more than enough money. You’ll stay with your father. It’ll be rough. But one rough year and we can live our dream, that’s all I ask.”
Next, she stands in the empty plot with one hand rested on a sunken fence, a slight lean in her hips as a breeze ruffles her hair and the hem of her dress. She waves to him. Every detail suggests the deliberate arrangement of a painting. Every stroke is precise, from the pink daubs of her cheeks to the blue specks in her eyes.
Edward shrugs the strap of his pack higher on his shoulder, and starts along the gravel road. His boots tread the morning away.
The path soon winds to a fork. The left ascends to the hills through sparse conifers, and the right slopes into a low-lying wood. He recalls fireside stories from long ago, and his imagination conjures wicked things that a man less honest would deny to fear.
He takes the high road.
And that’s it. The memory is done. I sink back into the cold, miserable hut with the hag. I’m still hungry. She is too. She rubs her bony hands together and licks her lips with a lurid tongue. “Bring more, little crow.”
I lower my beak. The fire crackles and makes of us deranged shadows on the walls. I wonder what’d happen if she fell on those flames. Wouldn’t be an accident; someone’d have to push her. But I cast such thoughts aside. Who knows what she sees with that glass eye of hers—if she can see into me. Best to take no chances.
I descend near a pond so still its surface lies smooth as a mirror. The few oaks that line its edge stand tall and solemn and bare. One of these is moving, and I realize at once that it’s Edward. All but a few leaves have abandoned him. Only those thin and withered remain atop his crown and the branches that rise from his back. Roots have grown through the toes of his shoes. With each arduous step, they cling in the mire and he must tug them free. The woods want to keep him.
I land upon a limb on his shoulder. “Can you move any slower, kid?”
He stops and his wooden neck groans as he turns to face me. His voice has become a torpid drone, like the wind through a hollow trunk. “I’m not . . . him . . . anymore . . . . ”
“Sure you are,” I tell him. “You’re looking for Charlotte, remember? You met her in Clearbell, and the moment you saw that blue-eyed doll you were smitten.”
His eyes lay beneath a wooden mask, all glazed over. The name comes no more than a whisper from his sagging mouth. “Char-lotte . . . ?”
“That’s it. Charlotte.”
He heaves one stump from the muck and lumbers on.
I spy the first green leaves that emerge from the mist ahead.
She still holds vestiges of a woman’s form. Curved hips and breasts and shapely shoulders. And a saint’s smile—the same smile that prickled my wings when I saw her in the fire, a smile for which men would march into the darkest darkness with only the faint glow of love to guide their steps.
But her roots run deep and her leaves are few.
“Charlotte?” Edward clasps her trunk with arms all stiff and wooden.
His touch stirs something in her, and her eyelids lift. A gentle sigh escapes her altered lips. He scrambles and tugs with all his might, with grunts and groans that echo through the woods. She’s dug in tight, won’t budge. Or so I think.
The soil begins to give. Edward stumbles back as he lifts her free from the tangled network of roots.
“Charlotte . . . ” he murmurs. “I can’t remember what I did . . . but I . . . I’m sorry . . . . ”
He holds her with both arms and begins to slog through the mud. The end of the woods is close. Don’t think anyone’s made it out before. Don’t know what happens to them, but I’d bet the sunshine does a world of good. Washes away the moon’s curse, I’d bet.
But the witch won’t be having that. I count three last leaves atop Edward’s outstretched branches and I help myself to the greenest one, the most recent. Maybe this will distract her long enough, before she lets her beasts on him.
Maybe.
My wings burn as I break the fog and sprint for the hut. This leaf brings the taste of rotten fruit. I want to spit it out, but I don’t.
“You took long,” she wheezes when I swoop onto the table. I surrender the leaf as the one thought pounds in my head over and over. She knows. Get out.
I don’t.
“He’s soon to join my garden, is he? Along with the girl?”
I nod. The hag will find out soon enough, either way. The end won’t be pretty for me, but I’m lost in other thoughts.
She accepts my lie with a grin and repeats the ritual—a gentle caress and a greedy whiff to catch the memory’s odour. Then she adds the powder and grinds it all together. The fire erupts and one last time we fall into the dream-world of the past . . . .
Edward follows a hillock down into the valley where Penbrook lies. The city dwarfs quiet, little Clearbell. Horse-driven carriages clop through cobblestone streets and smoke billows in plumes from rows of neat chimneys. The people look like ants from his vantage, as they bustle through the streets in vests, coats and hats. Bowlers for the men, pillboxes for the women.
He lodges with an old couple and sleeps in their loft, and must stoop unless he stands beneath the highest point of the pitched ceiling. Rain trickles through the tiles and smatters his forehead as he lies and tries to recall the image he holds of Charlotte standing wistful by the battered fence in Clearbell. But she stands further away each time, as if at the end of an ever-lengthening corridor. Her voice drowns in the constant patter, and soon he sees only the patched, dimly-lit ceiling of the loft once more.
He works from dawn till dusk with a crew of carpenters and masons, knocking together frames for new buildings. Saws rip
through wood as hammers clang and trowels scrape. It’s artless work, but he’s grateful all the same. On the first day, the men break for lunch. They slump amongst the skeleton of a new clock tower with boisterous chatter as their wives and daughters arrive in a small parade. The women bring trays of scones with jam.
Edward’s limbs hang heavy once the sun spills its yolk on the horizon, and heavier on the following day and the day after that. On the third day, a young woman hands him a cup of water and his eyes lock on hers as he raises its rim to his parched lips.
She tilts her head with a smile and throws back a curtain of red hair to reveal eyes bright and green. “You work too hard,” she says. “Like the horse that is always tugging and huffing along while the other ones stroll.”
He gulps the water down and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
“You’re from the country, aren’t you?” she asks. “Must be nice there, with all the trees and animals.”
“It is.” He matches her smile. Maybe, he thinks—just maybe—the year won’t be so rough after all.
She says her name is Lona.
Winter descends. Rain suspends work on the clock tower for days that coast by in vague flashes. The uncle of the red-haired girl also works on the site, and he invites Edward to his workshop, where they craft fine doors, mantles, cabinets and balusters. Lona cooks the meals, cleans and washes, and he helps whenever he’s not occupied with his work. He mentions Charlotte, of course, but talks more of Clearbell than her.
The money he makes fills a sock beneath his pillow, and now and then he sends some back to his fiancée.
Yet each day, the house by the orchard sinks farther into the recesses of his mind, until it stands no more than an indistinguishable speck on a distant horizon.
Winter thaws. Spring heralds the first green shoots that sprout from awakened soil. The breeze carries the scent of freshly turned earth and new seeds.
He walks with Lona as they thread the streets to the fringe of town where the hills rise up into the wilderness. To admire the flowers, he assures himself. She tucks his arm around hers and he doesn’t stop her. Her hands are soft and warm and she smells of cherries. Lady Fate is a wicked mistress, they say, and to tempt her is to invite the most unfortunate of circumstances. Or perhaps it is simply poor luck that the figure in a blue shawl and long dress bobbing down the road toward them with a basket under one arm is Charlotte. Perhaps it’s a lesson.
The sight of Edward sends the basket toppling to the ground. Quinces, lemons and sweet rolls spill out and bounce along the path as she turns and runs.
He calls Charlotte’s name. He frees himself from Lona’s grip and hurries after her.
Her lithe step beats upon the mire as she takes the low road at the fork, down into the woods where it is no more spring than winter and the day turns to dark. The calls of beasts rise from the mist that hangs heavy on the muddy soil.
“Charlotte,” he cries. “Don’t go into the woods!”
The last fragment of Edward reaches its conclusion, and I’m consigned to the cold hut once more. The final page is turned, the book closed, sealed and stored away. I hope my distraction has lasted long enough. I fancy that Edward and Charlotte will find the edge of the woods and make their way back to Clearbell with blank minds, untarnished by these sour events. Perhaps to discover each other as strangers and fall in love all over again.
I hope and hope, naïve as the fools who lose their way here.
The witch exhales and sinks back into her chair to catch her breath, sated, exhausted. Soon she fiddles with her glass eye and leans over the crystal ball. With a turn of her spindly fingers, she summons a mist swirling inside of it. She scries with her false eye that which I cannot discern, but I know what she has seen once her face wrinkles to a scowl.
Eyes alight with hatred, she locks on me. “You!” she spits, “What have you done!”
I skip back onto the window sill as she hurls a bowl in my direction. It clatters to the floor. All the lives I’ve seen wither and decay flash before me, all the minds cannibalised by the hungry old hag. The anger in me boils up and I can’t just flutter out the window. I swoop on her and take my beak to her good eye. She lets out a terrible howl, bumps the crystal ball from the table. It explodes into shards on the floor. She thrashes and flails and stumbles around the hut, knocking down shelves and cabinets with a great clamour.
And there’s Lady Fate again, ready to spin her wicked magic with a gentle nudge that sends the witch toppling onto the hearth. The flames are hungry, and they take up her rags and her leathery hide like dry tinder. The walls alight with an orange glow. Never heard a sound so wretched as those screams.
Her beasts will be after me now. The whole woods will be clawing for me with gnarled limbs and savage jaws, but something else is happening.
My feathers start to fall out. First the ones on my tail and the tips of my wings. The witch is dead and so is her curse. And now I’m dying too.
People come from all round the land to see the Woods of Wistman’s Grove, and the stories they bring with them are as strange as the places they hail from. They come to taste the air so pure it can clean the rust from dying lungs, or to catch a vial of the dew that drips from golden leaves, sweet as honey. They say also that if a butterfly lands on your head in those woods, it’ll bring ten years of luck, but the strangest story is the one the locals tell.
The one about the two largest, most grandest oaks that stand by the entrance to the woods, their branches entwined like lovers embracing, sheathed in leaves green as the Garden of Eden. Back in their day, the old-timers will tell you, the grove was haunted by a witch who stole the memories of those who got lost there. It’s always at this part of the story that they go all tearful and watch the fire like they were hypnotised. You can steal a memory, they’ll tell you, but you cannot kill it. Just look at them two trees and you’ll know it’s true—that just as leaves fall and are replaced with new ones, the love those two shared lives on in the stories told about them.
Forever and ever after.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tyson Young is an aspiring author of science fiction and fantasy. He resides in Melbourne, Australia. When he's not writing, he's mastering the art of pizza-making or wrestling with his English Mastiff, Rocket.
Two Poems
Alicia Cole
Counting Stones
My husband, for my hand,
paid my father in stones.
One stone for sorrow, the
flagstone of joy: a boulder,
the many years of want.
One stone for supper, the
bread of his hands.
One stone for struggle, the
mildew and mushroom of
dank-damp flower beds.
One stone for winter.
One stone for spring.
One stone for silver, a
hard, bright ring.
One stone for the passing.
*
For our quarried home,
the hammer’s blow:
I, a diamond doll, polished
to perfection; our children,
gleaming like mica.
For the boy: one stone for
the strength of scalds.
For the girl: one stone for
the finer halls.
For my mouth: one stone for
my husband’s hold.
For my heart: one stone for
my lord’s abode.
For my love?
Hands like pick axes, hands
like chisels, hands on the
arc of my body:
well formed, well fashioned,
well paid.
The Magician Makes a Phoenix
At the onset, I burned like rich,
fatty oil. The core of my heart
inviolate, black diamond, my
skin weary as dry leaves. His
cloak dark and cowled to cover
his eyes, he mouthed songs
> ruptured with loss: how pure
to burn on the pyre,
become salt, leave nothing
save white, hot bones. When
the flames licked at my fingers
like honest friends, who
was the more surprised?
My ugliness burned white-hot.
My new beauty, flame born,
seared like a brand. Terrible
howls tore his throat; I wept
embers. While he stumbled,
my hands, knotted flames,
hissed. Now he wanders,
scarred yet kinder. My
own hands lap at the ocean,
nap and wait. Of my death,
my next devouring:
even the water steams silent.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alicia Cole, a writer and educator, lives in Lawrenceville, GA, with a photographer, their cat, and two schools of fish. Her poetry is forthcoming in Asimov's, Strange Horizons, The Martian Wave, and Futurdaze: An Anthology of YA Science Fiction. Her musings on writing and life can be found at three-magpies.livejournal.com.
The Master Shoemaker
Katya Oliva-Llego
Falco was a shoemaker in Orosa—the master shoemaker. He was the master, not because he made the best shoes, but because he was the only shoemaker in the town and its neighboring cities. He made ordinary, everyday shoes that were both sturdy and reliable, which was all that the people needed.
He hammered away in his workshop for years, unchallenged in his expertise, until a small group of nomad shoemakers, the L’apictuans, arrived in town. They came in horse-drawn caravans, accompanied by hundreds of blue-bottomed fireflies. They had been travelling endlessly—apart from the other L’apictuans—since the ruin of their coastal city, L’apictu. The arrival of the nomad shoemakers did not excite the people of Orosa one bit. So what if gypsies had come to their town to sell shoes? They already had Falco to make shoes for them.
When the nomad shoe shop finally opened, it became a different story. One by one, Orosans entered the shop, touching the shoes on display, and then looking at each other with furrowed brows.
Electric Velocipede Issue 25 Page 4