Beneath Ceaseless Skies #107

by M. Bennardo

  “Perhaps.” I do not think this is what happened, but in some ways it is more comfortable to believe it might be so. “Perhaps not. Dom Christophe believed the whole community should suffer when any individual erred. We suffered often, even when Dom Christophe could not say why.”

  “That is true.”

  “We may have suffered for his sins. His hardness to us may have been a penance for himself—for his own great failings in matters of the flesh.”

  “That may be.”

  I see the question still lingering in Frère Michel’s eyes, and I try to answer it as gently as I can. “Dom Christophe was no cannibal, but he appointed to himself the care of Célestin for eight days. Despite the chicken we killed to feed Célestin, he still died with less flesh on his bones than he arrived with.”

  None of the brothers speak at this. They are all thinking—remembering perhaps the empty bowls, once brimming with broth, that were collected from the guest house each day. No one expected the chicken to bring Célestin back to life. Such a miracle was beyond mortal means. But if Célestin really took all that nourishment during his last week, then his body would have shown some evidence of it.

  The conclusion was simple. For eight days, Dom Christophe guiltily ate the food of a starving man in addition to his own fair portion of our meals. For eight days, he watched that man grow thinner and closer to death. Dom Christophe had never tasted human flesh, but he was cannibal enough in the end.

  Whether he planned it or whether he simply succumbed to weakness when the opportunity presented itself, I prefer not to speculate upon. Likewise, I leave the question of whether he sent me to the guest house specifically to get me alone at night unexamined. But, try as I might, I cannot shake the terrible image of the witiko as he stood outside the guest house, his warped brain calculating the relative dangers and rewards of killing and eating me.

  “I have something to say,” says Frère Bruno. I am glad to be interrupted from my glum thoughts, but then I notice that Frère Bruno is shivering in fear. “My brothers, I too have eaten more than my portion. On nights when I served dinner, I ate dried fish from the pantry.” Frère Bruno looks down at Dom Christophe, and then up at the rest of us. “Will I too become like this?”

  There is a murmur among the brothers, and I grow cold as I realize they are all confessing to their own sins of secret gluttony. There is not one among us who did not have his moment of weakness, not one who did not eat from the store that was to feed his brothers.

  “What will happen to us?” asks Frère Bruno again. “Will this be the fate of all of us?”

  Somehow, all the brothers look to me, as though I can answer them. I look back at them incredulously. For the moment, I cannot move beyond my own selfishness and I cannot think of anything except their silent hypocrisy in allowing me to be publicly admonished for sins they were just as guilty of in private. I feel a hardness grow in me. “I don’t know,” I say. Then I leave them with Dom Christophe.

  * * *

  I do not speak with any of the brothers again until the next day. Frère Bruno does not join me in the brewhouse, and I pray the minor hours by myself over my work. But habit and duty compel me to return to the chapel for vespers. Afterwards, we eat dinner together—the draconian edicts of Dom Christophe dissolved now with his death. But we continue to follow the Rule of Benedict, and conversation is set aside so that Frère Michel may read to us throughout dinner. Then comes compline, and the sacred silence of the night.

  The day and the night give me a chance to think, and after we bury Dom Christophe the next morning, I am ready to address the brothers again.

  “We have all committed our own secret sins,” I say. “Myself, all of you—especially, it seems, Dom Christophe. So great was his shame that it changed him and led him to his destruction. It is these secrets, if they continue, that may destroy the rest of us as well.”

  Here, I pass out seven chits, one to each of the brothers, including myself.

  “I have spent the morning calculating the property of the abbey,” I say. “The stores, the buildings, the land, the money. I have divided that value by seven, and have given each of you a token for your share of the abbey and everything in it.”

  “No,” says Frère Bruno, attempting to thrust his chit back into my hand.

  “Wait,” I say. “Somehow, we have forgotten that we are brothers. We have come to believe that if we are hungry, we must sneak food from the common stores. Or if we stray, we must hide our sins or be shamed and excommunicated. But who among us, if we knew our brother were hungry, would not give him our own full portion in addition to his own? Who among us, if we knew our brother sinned, would not give everything to lead him on a better path?”

  I take my chit and rip it in half. “I want to live with my brothers,” I say. “If I am hungry, I trust them to feed me. If I stumble, I trust them to catch me. Therefore, I give up my individual title to the property of the abbey, and return it to the community as a whole.”

  Holding open my arms, I look around at the six other faces around me. “If any of you would have it differently, you may withdraw your share of the property and leave. Otherwise....”

  But I never finish, for the torn chits are already blowing away in the wind, and my six brothers are once again at my side.

  Copyright © 2012 M. Bennardo

  Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

  M. Bennardo’s short stories can be found in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Daily Science Fiction, and Shimmer. He is also editor of the Machine of Death series of anthologies. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio, but people anywhere can find him online at http://www.mbennardo.com.

  Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

  THEY MAKE OF YOU A MONSTER

  by Damien Walters Grintalis

  When the footsteps approach, Isabel scrambles to her feet. She staggers; spots of light dance in front of her eyes. Two days without food. Two days without water. She backs up until her spine presses against the stone wall. Tucks her hands behind her. She knows it won’t make a difference.

  She tells herself she won’t scream.

  The Healers, three women draped in robes of red, enter her cell. They don’t say a word. She keeps silent when they grab her. Twists away from their grasp. Fights against them with all the strength she can summon.

  It’s not nearly enough.

  Then they snap the first finger, the pinkie on her right hand. The pain is white. Blinding. Below the pain, a sensation of leaking. Emptying.

  Her cries echo off the stone. From another cell, she hears shouting. One of the Healers laughs.

  By the fifth finger, she doesn’t have the strength to struggle anymore.

  By the eighth, she can’t even scream. Wavery moans slip from her lips. The greedy stone walls gobble them up and wait for more.

  By the tenth, the world is grey, flickering in her vision like candleflame.

  After the last snap fills the air, the Healers weave a spell to fuse her bones back together. To fill her up with something new. When they let her go, she crawls to the corner of her cell, holds her ruined hands to her chest, and sobs into the filthy straw.

  * * *

  Midday, a guard shoves a bowl of porridge through the bars of her cell. Her stomach rumbles, but she makes no move for the food. If she does not eat, will they force it down her throat or will they allow her to starve?

  She knows the answer.

  The porridge is bland, with neither milk nor honey to give it flavor, but she eats it all. She does not want to die.

  Not yet.

  * * *

  At night, a guard walks the passageway between the cells. His feet tap a steady rhythm on the stone. He stops outside the bars of Isabel’s cell, his face all sharp planes and angles, his clothing tainted with sorrow.

  She pulls her knees up to her chin. What does he see? A young woman in a dirty dress or a monster in the making?

  He runs his fingers along one of the metal bars, his
skin safe behind leather gloves. All the guards wear them. For their protection.

  “You knew it was forbidden,” he says, his voice a blade.

  She holds her tongue.

  “You knew the risk, the penalty, yet you still did it. Does that make you brave or a fool?”

  He walks away before she can take another breath. It is not her fault. What she is. She holds up her hands. What she was.

  They’ve made her something else now.

  * * *

  They came for her two days after Ayleth fell. She doesn’t know how they knew what she’d done. Perhaps someone was hiding nearby. Watching.

  She pushes the thoughts away and thinks of Ayleth’s dark hair, her green eyes, the way she laughed into the wind.

  * * *

  She feels it growing inside her, a darkness where before there was a spark of light. Their corruption.

  If she had a knife, she would cut it out and leave it bleeding on the floor.

  * * *

  The guards bring in a girl whose face still holds tight to childhood. Her fingertips leak thin grey trails of smoke. Her fire is spent. She does not fight against the guards’ grip. She does not cry. She is already broken.

  They put her in the cell across from Isabel’s.

  The girl screams when the Healers come. Isabel covers her ears. Had her own screams sounded so loud? So long? If her gift was fire, she would’ve set the straw in her own cell ablaze and burned herself alive.

  * * *

  Moonlight peeks between the bars of her cell’s window, a window too high to reach, even if she stands on her toes. It does not matter, though. The only thing beyond her window is a rocky cliff facing the sea.

  She closes her eyes, breathing in the stink of her own waste. The hopelessness of the stone walls. How many were in this cell before her? How many listened to the waves crashing against the rocks?

  How long before they gave in?

  * * *

  She paces in her cell. The sun has turned the air thick and sticky. The straw rustles with each step of her bare feet, scratching against her skin. They took away her shoes when they brought her here.

  The guard in the passageway does not look in her direction. He does not look at any of them. He smells of roasted meat; her mouth waters.

  The girl in the cell across from Isabel trembles, her teeth chatter, and ice crystals form on the straw beneath her. Is there even enough left of her inside to miss the warmth of her flames?

  She is too young, far too young, to be so defiled.

  * * *

  “Let me see your hands, little fool,” the night guard says.

  She turns away so he cannot see them. Her heart races. Will he kill her? It would be a kindness.

  Instead, he walks away.

  She doesn’t know why he wants to see. Nothing shows on the outside. She feels it inside, ugly and wrong.

  * * *

  They bring in an old woman. Her back is bent; her eyes, clouded with white. She cries for her children to save her. No one will come, except the Healers and the guards. Everyone knows that.

  Isabel doesn’t think it will take long for the old woman to give them what they want.

  * * *

  She dreams of drops of blood falling from the sky. She dreams of a field of knives littered with bones. She wakes drenched in sweat with a strange taste in her mouth, like sour milk laced with ashes.

  Her old magic, her real magic, tasted of ripe raspberries.

  * * *

  The guards take away a woman with long dark hair. She walks with her back straight and her mouth set in a thin line. Her eyes flash with defiance.

  A door slams. After a time, muffled screams creep into the air and hang there for hours. When the guards bring the woman back, she smells of urine, vomit, the acrid tang of fear. She leaves a trail of blood on the stones.

  The sight makes Isabel’s stomach twist into knots.

  * * *

  The new king took the crown the year of her sixth summer. “You must never,” her mother said, time and again. Even at six, Isabel understood why.

  “Never, ever.”

  And she listened. Until Ayleth.

  She thinks of Ayleth’s broken body, the blood dripping from the corner of her mouth. What would happen if she touched her now? Would she be able to hold it in?

  * * *

  Finally, the guards come for her.

  They bind her arms behind her back. Even with their gloves, they do not touch her hands. They lead her into a windowless room; the door shuts with a bang that vibrates in her teeth. The room smells of pain and sorrow. Of giving up. Giving in.

  The man in the room smiles. A lie.

  There is a table covered with a stained cloth, the fabric full of bumps and bulges. She does not want to see what the cloth is hiding.

  “Will you serve your king?” the man asks.

  She takes a deep breath. Doesn’t answer.

  She will not.

  He does not remove the cloth from the table, he does not ask his question again, and the guards take her back to her cell.

  * * *

  Magic was not always forbidden.

  When she was a small child, there were no Healers, and only criminals were locked away. The old king was loved by the people, not feared. He loved balls, grandeur, music. The new king does not care for music, save that born of screams. Only those sworn to his service are allowed to wield magic; even then, they are only allowed a magic that has been perverted. Inverted. Fire to ice. Healing to—

  No. She will not think of that now. She cannot.

  Rumors say the king acts in cruelty because he secretly wishes he was born female. If so, he might’ve held magic. Instead, he has only his cock and the kingdom to grip.

  But the why doesn’t matter. Not here.

  * * *

  She dreams of Ayleth running toward her. Though Isabel runs as fast as she can to get away, to keep her safe, Ayleth won’t stop.

  She wakes just before Ayleth touches her hand.

  * * *

  They take the young girl out and do not bring her back. When the night wind blows cold through the window, Isabel thinks perhaps it is the girl, making ice for the king’s wine.

  * * *

  The new magic inside her hungers. For what, she doesn’t know.

  She doesn’t want to know.

  * * *

  The guards take her to the stone room again. The table is uncovered, revealing knives, hooks, spikes, and something shaped like a metal pear that screams malevolence. Anguish.

  She feels the blood run from her face. Her fingers tremble.

  “Will you serve your king?”

  She swallows before answering. “No, I will not.”

  They laugh when they take her back. They know she will give in, eventually.

  Or she will die.

  * * *

  She and Ayleth grew up in the same village, casting shy smiles at each other until finally, Ayleth kissed her behind the baker’s shop. Their love was not as forbidden as magic; people pretended not to see.

  The day Isabel broke her promise of never, they were foraging for berries atop a wooded hill. In the distance, the spires of the castle gleamed in the sunlight. Ayleth paused with a handful of berries and whispered, “I would like to burn it down with the king inside.”

  “Do not say such a thing,” Isabel said, casting a glance over her shoulder.

  Ayleth shrugged. “There is no one to hear. Only us.” She took a step forward. A twig snapped. Leaves crackled. Her mouth dropped open as her legs slipped out from under, and she tumbled down the side of the hill, her shouts punctuated with thuds and thumps all the way.

  Isabel raced down as fast as she could without falling herself. At the bottom, she found Ayleth holding her belly, blood dripping from the corner of her mouth. She tried to help her stand, but Ayleth shrieked and begged her to stop.

  The village herbwoman would not be able to help. Not with this. In spite of Ayleth’s pr
otests, Isabel grasped her hands and let the magic out.

  And the sensation... Her mouth flooded with the sweetness of berries, her fingertips tingled, and inside, it was as if butterflies were dancing soft beneath her skin. She felt it leave her body like a breeze through a window; as it flowed into her lover’s, Ayleth’s eyes brightened, her mouth formed a circle of surprise, then laughter bubbled up and out. They danced together like children, forgetting for a moment that, as proscribed by the king, the magic was wrong.

  * * *

  The guards carry out a body, laughing all the while. Isabel sees long dark hair. Pale limbs streaked with the telltale lines of blood poisoning. A face with blank eyes where defiance once lived.

  * * *

  The night guard watches her through the bars. She meets his stare, hiding her hands in the folds of her dress. She fears what they’ve done to her. She fears who they’ve made her become. But she is not her hands. She is not their monster. She will not let it change her.

  Yet she fears it already has.

  * * *

  She stumbles as they push her into the room with the table. A skinny man with a ragged beard stands in the corner. His clothes are tattered. Shackles bind his bloodied ankles.

  “Will you serve?” the man with the false smile asks.

  “Never.”

  He nods at the guards. They hold her arms tight as they guide her toward the shackled man. The smell of his unwashed body makes her eyes sting.

  “No, I will not do this. I will not.”

  But inside, the twisted magic says yes.

  She struggles to break free. The guards shove her toward the man. She lifts her hands. A reflex. Not on purpose. When she realizes what she’s done, it’s too late.

  Her skin touches his.

  Pain radiates through her belly like claws and fangs tearing free. Her fingers clench, digging into the man’s flesh. She tries to hold it in, but it will not stay. She cannot make it stay. It rips free, an animal in search of prey, and leaves the taste of rage in its wake. A vile brew filled with bitterness.

  The man’s eyes widen. His mouth opens. His face contorts in pain. His body spasms.