Strange Dominion

by Lyons, Amanda M.

  What I had heard was the web ringing with movement, the individual strands moving and shifting to rub against each other and create a sort of natural music, like harp strings. I might have appreciated the beauty of it if it weren’t loud enough to drift along my bones, reverberating in the hollows of my ears. This was a woven hollow in the gaping space, thick like a blanket with a great hole in its center. I’d seen a few spiders’ nests in the desert like it, hidden away in holes in the dirt. I stopped, watching the web and knowing that something was coming, almost certainly the spider that had made it.

  You can know something in your head long before it ever truly registers to your mind, observation and intuition account for a lot of what I know, but the sight itself was what made that inkling a truth. These were not normal spiders, or at least not the sort one would expect to see no matter the size. Instead I saw something far beyond that. They had spiders’ legs, long and thick with gray and black tufts of fur like a tarantula’s. That was true to their nature, and large fangs to match, though those were low on them, near the pelvis. There were also spider’s eyes on their chests, clustered up on the breastbone, and a few others up on their faces with bright red markings near them. After that the resemblance drifted far closer to that of man. I was looking at adolescent spiders now, four of them, their pale torsos arched back to better suit the movement of their legs. The arms nimbly splayed to clutch at the walls of their home as they looked for whatever it was they knew was here, undoubtedly me. They were all male, their genitalia far more complex than either man or spider, a blending of the two, but I knew what I was looking at nonetheless. I knew they were their mother’s on seeing their eyes, their eyes and their rich black hair.

  “Now you know why those men had to die, and why I needed to have a safe haven.” She spoke from just to my right, her mouth close to my ear and the weight of one her legs curled around my shoulder, ever so lightly pressing against my throat. “If they had only let me get here safely, if they had only let me be, there would never have needed to be any bloodshed, no need for anyone to be hurt. The change only comes on when a female is pregnant with her first, I could at least pretend to be like them then, completely and not only in part. I can blend in. I can retract my legs and hide what I am. My sons, they cannot.”

  There was a great sadness in her voice, a weight that explained everything. I knew what it was to never be one with the rest, to stand out and be driven to solitude, but I also knew that sometimes what was expected was right, that the foreign and strange had to go for the better good of the whole.

  With that in mind. I took a deep breath, and as I exhaled I began to change.

  I never explained it to you before; I kept it for myself until now because I didn’t think you would understand that moment if I had. Aggy had her secrets for a reason, and so did I. Changing like that was as much about telling her I understood as it was slipping free of her grasp. I changed quickly, too quickly for her to catch me as I leapt free of her arms.

  Bent Wing Crow was the name my mother gave me. You know that part. What you don’t know is that my father came to her as a great crow, or that he took her in the shadow of night because she was there for the taking, a bright beautiful woman unlucky enough to be alone when the Skinwalker came to call. He took her away in his claws; her screams a terrible sound in the night, like a hawk stolen from her nest. No one knows why he let her live, why he brought her back to her village when he was done. Skinwalkers, dark shamans, are not known for their kindness, but for their cruelty, after all. Her story, then, was not all that different than Aggy’s, her maidenhood stolen from her, her belly caused to swell with life, and then the responsibility left to her.

  Grandfather did not blame his beloved daughter, he could not, but he did fear her son and the path he would take. It did not help that when I was nearly grown, at 13, I changed. Perhaps that was always the Skinwalker’s intent, to damage her, to leave me broken. If so, he did not succeed. Instead I learned to be something in between, part of both worlds and yet utterly separate.

  I am Bent Wing Crow and I am Old Ben. I had thought that I would never be able to be a part of man’s world, forever both man and animal, more at home in the desert. I thought that would never change, I thought that I could remain in that place where I had lived my whole life, where I had been taught to exist. Even the most perceptive of us rarely sees the moment of change until it is upon us, swallowing our old self up in its wake.

  I saw it; I knew it as it came.

  I soared up toward the ceiling of the cave, wanting to be both out of her reach and to get a better view on it all. I was still bent on meeting my bounty, still focused on trying to be separate and neutral, just in the way nature is and man rarely ever considers being, culling those that did not meet the needs of the whole to benefit all. It was as my great black wings curved to shift my body, my tail and my claws now facing her and then my face, the moment my own dark eyes touched on hers, that I knew. I saw it in her own eyes, the moment she understood that we were one and the same- if not in body, then in spirit. I watched her high in the cave, her sons’ eyes on me, waiting to see what their mother wanted them to do, what she would do. Their voices tittering in hushed spidery whispers.

  She was right; she wasn’t as strange as her children. While they were given over to spider more than man, she was an equal member of both species, a curving woman’s body with legs and arms, a fair face with eyes that only matched to a spider’s if you had seen her sons’, with legs that sprouted out of that body instead of making up its appendages. She could move between races, retract those limbs and suit man, or release them and be whole. It was the same battle I fought, the same challenges. I also knew well enough that she could do what many of her race often did, there are several species of tarantula that eat birds and other small beasts, such is the way of nature. I could do much the same, I had done it many times before, in the open desert where no man would believe the story that a great bird came down and devoured his companions.

  Crows are excellent hunters and I knew how to strike. I circled over several times, gauging the value of my life versus hers. What she was to my land, and what I was, but also building up to the strike with the knowledge that if I chose to take her I must strike quickly, before her sons came for me as well.

  I looked down at her, my eyes locked, gauging, her eyes following me with the same predator’s gaze, and then I dove down to attack. She met my attack with her own, her many limbs thrown wide to catch me as I plowed into her with my claws and flapping wings, the two of us a tangled ball of struggling fury.

  Fangs lunged deep to seek out my throat, my wings. My hard claws plucking at her limbs and seeking her own neck. Furrows were gouged in her flesh, feathers torn from me in turns, the two of us vying for supremacy for several minutes without success. We were equals in many ways, meeting over and over as we saw the move the other would make before it came to follow through. I had never before encountered a true equal, another being that could fight with the same strength and cunning, the fire of it burning through my veins. How could I have? I only knew one that might, and he had never come to claim his son.

  The end of it all came with a flurry of my wings and her body on top of mine, pining my claws as well as my wings now that she had the use of so many limbs. She remembered how I had bested her before and she would not make that mistake again. I waited beneath her, our eyes locked and our breathing fast. She had earned the right if she wanted to take my life, she had bested me in a fair fight, had me dead to rights. Though I struggled under her, she knew it too, her eyes reading it all in my face, the confusion and frustration mixed up in the knowledge that the choice was hers.

  That gave her pause. She pressed down harder on me, took a quick glance at her sons, and then looked back into my eyes. She’d wanted to survive, that had never been a question, but did she want to kill this creature in her grasp? Would she slay the only other being like herself she had ever known in all her lonely years? I had my an
swer when she withdrew her spider’s legs, and the mandibles, reaching out her hand to offer me help in getting to my feet. I willed away my wings and claws, the beak and feathers. I was Old Ben again and I took her offered hand. There was no hidden move in it, she pulled me to my feet as much as I took my own weight on and stood myself.

  “So, we’re the same, different creatures, but the same nonetheless.” She said it with a certain wonder, truly accepting what she’d seen and letting it sink in after a life’s worth of being alone. She’d let my hand go by then, but her eyes were still on me, like she was trying to decide if she wanted to let me go. “Are there others like you? Other bird men?”

  “No.” I didn’t want to tell her about my father, he wasn’t like me in any case. He was another animal altogether.

  “I lost my parents a long time ago. I had given up on ever finding another and I didn’t want to have children, didn’t know if I could manage it without others of my kind. I had chosen isolation, to forget, to be limited and guarded so that I could survive if not truly live. It would seem that life will do with us what it wants. I won’t kill you; I can’t, not unless you posed a threat to me. I am not without my own sense of justice, I can see that this is the same thing you have lived your life with, a need to justify your own survival by using it to mete out the needs of your world. I am ruthless in my need to survive and raise my sons, but what is it that keeps you going? What could you offer these men who hire you to kill, who would send you to destroy a woman whether she is a monster or not?”

  I looked back at her with sharp eyes, trying to understand why I was letting her go though she had proven herself to be the monster Volkov said she was, though she had taken lives and had no qualms about doing it again. Then I understood, like my Grandfather before me I chose to look beyond the face of things, to see who she was despite the fury and the horror she wielded to exist. She was like my mother, a woman on whom the world had thrust a host of responsibility she had never asked for, which had given her children she had never sought to bare and left her no choice but to use the weapons at her disposal, the path of most resistance by which to raise her offspring. I’d spent many years destroying monsters, both men and women, who had done nothing but take from our world, sought to choke out its life in order to have its spoils.

  She was right, justice was my virtue, the thing around which I molded my needs, the thing I put above all else and by which I decided I proved myself worthy. I could not take her life and see it as just, not even with the fact that she took life to do so. She was like me, she was like my mother, and she had every right to be here. I didn’t tell her any of that though, only stood there looking back at her, waiting for it to come forward in her thoughts.

  “I think you know,” she said it with great deliberation in her voice, her eyes still locked on mine, but a glint of warmth touching the light there. “And in this moment I think we’ve both chosen to see more in common between us than any differences.”

  I nodded; there really wasn’t anything else that needed to be said. She was surviving the only way she knew how, raising her boys like any mother, taking only what they needed to survive. I couldn’t kill her for that, not without violating my own codes, my spirit. I would never be like my father, always living in the grey space between everything, but never sinking into the coal black night he’d embraced so willingly. That was where Aggy lived too, and I could accept that.

  I turned to go, taking a few steps toward the tunnels I’d used to make my way here after her, but her hand was touched to my back and I had turned to face her, waiting.

  “Wait, stay. You must be tired and I-” but her words were broken in the moment, tears filling her eyes and the hardness slipping from her body right in front of me, the weight of it all coming down on her, survival and the heavy cost of being alone most of all. I understood it, I lived it myself, but I did it alone, with no children to care for too. The enormity of that cut through whatever remained of what separated us and I filled that gap by embracing her, her body falling into the lines that made up my own and her mouth closing mine with a kiss.

  I’m sure it’ll sound foolishly simple to you, but that was when I knew I was where I was meant to be, that I would join her in whatever life was for a spider woman and her brood, for a Bent Wing Crow who’d finally found the path that was in front of him, a strange dominion that nourished his soul.

  Sundown

  Michael Noe

  Hazel stared down the dusty street hoping that someone would show up. It was always like this when the seasons shifted. There was always the anxiety, and the feeling that this time no one would come, but they always did. She was pretty sure it wasn't God that brought the strangers there. It was something darker, something far more sinister. It was the same deity that had made their small town so prosperous. When the gold rush hit many had come seeking their fortune and, of course, many had died. It was the way things always worked in Barker.

  Every Spring she was filled with the same anxiety, and sometimes she often wondered if maybe she should just pack up and leave. The problem was the saloon. When you were the owner of the most prosperous business in town, it's hard to start over somewhere else. It was the one place in Barker that truly thrived. There were a lot of business deals made in her establishment, and a lot of bar fights too. The saloon was the hub of the community. It had made her wealthy. Of course everyone in Barker was wealthy. It was part of the mystique of the town. Something that pulled you in like a magnet to steel. Hazel was infected just like everyone else and there was no way to leave.

  She had watched as others tried, but they never made it far. The hunting parties always found them and brought them back. The last thing you wanted was a hunting party looking for you. Odds were if they found you, you were dead or at least wished you were. No, she would stay in Barker and every Spring she would feel the same anxiety and think about leaving. You could think about leaving all you wanted, but the smart ones stayed. They accepted that Barker was different. They accepted that in order for the town to survive there had to be a sacrifice. That was how it had always been and always would be.

  Hazel turned around and headed back into the saloon and breathed in the stale odor of beer and sweat. It was already noon and the place was packed. At the back table a game of poker was already underway. Dan Greene was at the bar talking to Kitty, her most popular prostitute. Kitty was the kind of girl you would sell your soul to sleep with and she knew it. The problem was Dan was a married man and a father of three precocious kids. Soon, they would be in charge of the family farm and then the secret of Barker would be theirs to keep. They were the town's future and she wondered if they could keep the town growing and safe.

  Outside, she could hear wagons clattering down the main street and familiar clickety clack of horses’ hooves. Barker was a small town but one that was growing larger day by day. They had settled here and hadn't given any thought to what the town asked for in return. Not many towns had the same protection, which made them vulnerable to attacks from the Indians and wayward thieves looking to steal whatever they could. It was refreshing to live in a place void of fear. Hazel sighed and walked behind the polished wood of the bar. There was fear though. As she looked at her patrons she could see it just behind the eyes. She could hear it in their nervous laughter. The coming Spring filled them all with fear. Soon, it'll all be over, she thought with a shudder.

  “You okay, Miss Hazel?” Kitty had sat down in front of her and Hazel hadn't even noticed.

  She nodded slightly and forced herself to smile. “Of course. I'm just hoping those fools over there don't get it in their heads that someone's cheating. The last thing we need is another bar fight or a shooting. Have you seen the sheriff?”

  “He's at the general store. I know you. You always get this way this time of year. Everything will be just fine. Someone will come. They always do and we will all play our parts and it'll be over soon.” Kitty patted her hand and scanned the bar for someone new. Someone that was
lonely and in need of her womanly charms.

  “You're okay with this?” Hazel didn't mean to speak out loud, but now that she had there was no way to take it back. No one ever doubted out loud or thought about life outside of Barker. They all had it too good. They should be thankful to have the protection that they did.

  “Why wouldn't I be? We're protected. That's all that matters to me.”

  Hazel thought of a reply but gave up. There was nothing she could say that would change her mind. Hazel doubted that anyone felt the way she did. No one cared as long they were protected. That protection, of course, came at a cost, but didn't everything? It had never bothered her until now. Why did she suddenly have a conscience? She didn't know. It seemed to happen overnight. The question now was what was she going to do about it? There was nothing she could do. Just thinking of interfering filled her with horror. There was no way to interfere. She had a part to play just like everyone else in Barker.

  When she had first been invited to Barker she was just a young widow who had lost her husband Isaac in the Bellevue war. She was only twenty three. Much too young to lose a husband, but she had and that loss had affected her deeply. There were so many questions that she had no answers to. When her brother Cyrus came to pay his condolences he had an offer for her to join a new settlement. That was the interesting thing about Barker. You had to be invited. It made the town special, exclusive. Once you heard about the cost of membership there was no way out. You were stuck.

  “Where is it?” she had asked indifferently. There was nothing keeping her in Iowa. Their parents had both died when she was young and her aunt and uncle were a distant memory. She hadn't seen them in years and doubted that she ever would again.