by Aidan Moher
What god comes to my rescue? Am I saved from their wrath?
He loses sight of them, but the sick sound of a slit throat is clear as Valhöll's silver bells ringing on a chill winter morning.
One voice grunts and gurgles, a final cry of defiance as death descends to claim a soul. A smaller voice weeps.
Eyvindur's grip on the world of the living is almost gone, the sounds and smells mere shadows of reality now.
A figure stands above him, ready to judge his sins. Its face is hidden until it crouches lower. Tears trickle from frightened eyes.
Not a god, but the boy.
4
The Northman with the jewelled-sword was the second soul I ever stole, the second I cheaply sold to hot slavery in hell. Or, rather, to whatever realm these barbarians pass onto when they die. Surely, our gods do not accept them alongside our people in heaven. Or do they?
We have no forests back home, not like this—small copses of spindly trees gathered like thirsty animals around oases, yes, but nothing like this endless labyrinth of towering behemoths. Alone amidst their greatness, I learned what solid companions they could be if one just listened for the wisdom they whispered.
Having buried both friends and former enemies, I wondered at the sense of the world, the backward logic of our cultures and our laws. What justice was there in a world where the lowly soldiers and greedy mercenaries should face death so the rich can grow richer? Is there pride and honour, as the barbarians claimed, in risking your life or taking the breath from others? Or is it just about being pragmatic, about living one more day, gambling for coin with your life? Is war the realm of the noble or the ignoble?
In war, the only currency is the blood of the innocent and the tears of their kin.
The smell of the forest, once so alien to me, was now a comfort, a reminder that places remain where war is inconceivable.
Several days (or weeks?) before, we fought a battle to the north. Afterward, we survivors began to refer to it simply as the Massacre. My people and the barbarian Northmen were torn apart without discrimination—only the souls of the blessed or damned were spared. Most of those who escaped were now dead in this clearing.
Memories of the Massacre are seared into my mind.
My band of mercenaries, several dozen strong, were tipped off by locals to the movements of the Northmen. Gold can buy you much, even in the land of your enemies. Gold or cold steel. The ambush was supposed to be easy. We outnumbered them nearly two to one. Our leaders, those with the most gold bursting the seams of their pockets, spoke with brash confidence. We would rout them and show them that even in their homeland with their gods watching over their shoulders, they were nothing.
Of course, the priests failed to mention that we'd left our gods behind on the hot plains of our home—weeks and worlds removed from the cold forests of the north.
We did outnumber them; that much was true. But one of their warriors was worth easily two of ours. They had experience and they knew the land. The north is a land rife with brutal tribal warfare; they slaughter one another to seek favour from their gods. We are not like that.
Our ambush gave little advantage, and soon the battle was heated and wild. The bloody wind of the gods swept through the battlefield, killing without prejudice. Slowly, the number of dead increased, and the number of living dwindled.
Then it was over.
The Northam found me hiding under a fallen tree. I refused to leave my cradle at first, thinking he meant to kill me as he'd killed so many of my brothers. Even when he handed me food, a filthy piece of jerky, I snarled at him and cowered deeper into my hole. Eventually, he left. I ran after him. My senses were scattered, but I understood that being alone in this defiled land meant death. He accepted my companionship without a word. Though we could not speak to one another, we both just wanted to put death at our backs. The rest we could decide upon later.
We weren't yet clear of the corpses when a voice called out. Dandelion and Tahir rose from their hiding place in the wreckage. Still alive. The gods are good! I thought. I was overjoyed at the sight of them. It was stupid, but I was young.
My two brothers leapt at the Northman with weapons drawn. He raised an axe in one giant fist, pushed me behind him with another. Only my voice—shrill, crazed—stopped them from killing each other.
I was done with killing. No more on that day. Or ever.
I don't know why they heeded me or why he protected me. We were all sick of killing, I guess. When the world ends, what use is there in fighting those few who are left? The Northman joined as a companion, if not a loved one. The battleground surrounding us was not of his choosing any more than it was ours. We left the Massacre behind—no destination in mind. We found the others along the way, weary warriors and defiers of fate.
A motley crew, certainly, but one joined by fate and circumstance. We told ourselves that killing was behind us. We would find a ship, go back home. Never kill again.
The gods have a ripe sense of irony.
The final body took the longest to bury. I was exhausted. Physically. Mentally. My sword was dull, the tales of these four men told in its scrapes, scratches, and chips. I placed it on Wormwood’s chest and wrapped his hands around the pommel.
I filled the grave by hand.
Wormwood is dead, or nearly so.
It no longer burns, at least—no longer feels much like anything.
His arm is barely attached at the shoulder after a vicious blow from the Northman’s axe. How is he still alive? His other hand is wrapped around the wound in a vice-like grip. Can you hold your life in if you squeeze hard enough?
He can't see much, just the white stars falling endlessly from the sky, wafting slowly down on the gentle whisper of the wind. He has regrets, sins on his shoulders. He doesn't deserve to die amongst the stars; he deserves to die among the devils and the dust of home, torn apart by those he has wronged. A beautiful death is not right.
The only sound comes from far away—a sobbing man. Who has survived? One of his companions? Or the bloody Northland ghosts?
He had tried to kill as many as he could. It was all he knew: how to kill and how to spend his coin. Both are over now.
The sobbing continues for what seems like years. Wormwood tries to call out for help or farewell, but the only sound he can make is a wet cough. It sounds like a bucket of rocks poured into a harbour, sinking to the seabed in a roil of bubbling water.
The sobbing fades away, caught on the south wind—the beginning of an endless journey to find the ears it is meant for. With it go the stars, still falling, until they fade to black.
And nothingness.
5
I was once asked how a soul buried in the earth was supposed to find its way to heaven, suspended as it is far above in the skies. I didn't have an answer; I was a child still, and the foreigner’s tone was mocking. The Old Knight answered the man instead. "A soul knows the way, for the earth and sky are connected, all part of the greater gods."
The foreigner smirked and made an offhand remark about delusions and heathen stupidity. He wasn't laughing so hard when his teeth shattered, his nose crunched. The Old Knight was a pious man and took no liberties with those who derided our beliefs. The man was lucky to be alive and not sinking to the bottom of the sea, where his people claim the gods rest.
I still don't have an answer to that question. I'm not even sure I believe what the Old Knight had to teach, that his beliefs weren't formed of desperate yearnings for answers rather than holy truth. I used to laugh with the others when the Old Knight's back was turned. If heaven existed, it was the concern of the dead, not the living.
Now, with four friends buried in the ground, ready to find their way to the skies above, I pondered that man's words again. To what end does this life lead? Are my friends basking in the glory of the gods? Or are they gone, ether on the wind and food for worms? Does my father walk the earth as a spirit? Or is he just a pile of white bones and sad memories?
At l
east my companions here would not be food for the wolves. That was one small gift I could bestow.
I once laughed at heaven—at the idea of gods watching over us all from some luxurious, inconceivable realm—but now that was the only comfort I had in the lonely night. Was I wrong before? Or desperate now? Would the gods keep me safe in this land, or was I left to my own devices? I am a man now, no longer a boy.
What awaited me? With bodies to bury, my purpose was clear. But now? Now I must save myself, find a path from this hell back to the living world.
I ate one of the Northmen. A slice off his leg, raw. It was a sacrifice, an acknowledgement that to be human is to be weak, to die. To live, I must be ruthless.
For reasons incomprehensible to me, I was still alive. I had survived a battles that had killed others—seasoned, brutal men. I lived through this skirmish, watched each man killed and buried the good ones. Could I survive again? Win a battle against a foe I could not fight?
The gods—ours, theirs, or someone else's—wanted me alive. It was an easy conceit to grasp in the wilderness, alone and friendless. Would the gods have kept me safe through so much destruction only to serve me a slower death by freezing or hunger?
I left the clearing. I don't know how much time had passed since we had first entered—the days and nights were a messy blur. I couldn't even remember sleeping. I left their bodies behind but not my memories of those men. The harsh truths I'd learned at their sides came with me, too—those I kept, tucked safely away within me, along with a promise that I would not meet those men again until I was an old man who died happily in bed surrounded by grandchildren. I would live. I would laugh in the face of the gods who had stolen away so many others.
I left my father with them—a piece of his spirit in each grave—his regrets and mine laid to rest beside my friends. Perhaps we could find our own peace.
Like a ghost, haunted by my memories and fears, I disappeared into the dark forest.
Snow fell, and soon the fresh-turned dirt was covered. Years would pass, and eventually that clearing would stop whispering the secrets of its death-steeped soil. Life would reclaim it, and all would be forgotten.
“A Night for Spirits and Snowflakes” (2010)
Story Notes
In 2011, having recently finished the first draft of a novel, Through Bended Grass, I decided to turn my hand to short fiction. It was both a palate-cleanser before jumping into novel revisions and a self-directed exercise in correcting some of the mechanical/structural weaknesses that I discovered in my craft while working on Through Bended Grass. My novel was a single-point-of-view narrative, so I wanted to explore the intricacies of telling a story through multiple sets of eyes—to discover how the different ethnic, religious, and professional backgrounds of the characters would affect their perceptions of such a devastating encounter. I wanted to understand how to better use language to dictate rhythm and pace in a story.
I’d recently finished Guy Gavriel Kay’s Under Heaven, which provided inspiration for both the gravedigging aspect of the story and the approach to its prose, and Joe Abercrombie’s Best Served Cold, which served up the story’s ensemble cast and its dark tone. Without a doubt, “A Night for Spirits and Snowflakes” wears its inspirations on its sleeve. In intervening years, I’ve tried to be more subtle in the ways that I allow other books and stories to inspire and mould my own, but I’d be remiss not to tip my hat to those two authors and the impact they had on this story.
I didn’t know it then, but I was also writing my first “grimdark” story, a label and a set of themes that I have a conflicted relationship with1!
Since 2011, I’ve gained a better understanding of fantasy’s (and all fiction’s) need for diverse voices, characters, cultures, and genders. When I look back at “A Night for Spirits and Snowflakes”, I see some first attempts at playing with a world that’s larger than just boundaries of the popularized perception of faux-medieval England. There are characters of colour, several different cultures and religions represented, but it’s also a story packed to the brim with straight males. Kameron Hurley taught us in her Hugo Award–winning essay, “We Have Always Fought: Challenging the ‘Women, Cattle, and Slaves’ Narrative”2, that war is no excuse to forget women in wartime narratives. I wonder what this “A Night for Spirits and Snowflakes” would look like if I were to revisit it—to find a truer telling in which the women were not written out by the historians?
“A Night for Spirits and Snowflakes” was originally published in the Sword & Laser Anthology (2014), edited by Tom Merritt and Veronica Belmont.
The Girl with Wings
of Iron and Down
I woke in a white room. The gentle hum of electricity enveloped me, and a blinding white light shone down from a single point in the ceiling. I felt like I had just crawled out from the pits of death. Hell. A shadow moved into the light, then resolved into a head, then a face, and then a man. He reminded me of my father.
"Don't worry, girl," said the man. “I’m fixing you."
The light faded, the man drifted into shadows. I fell back into sleep.
Or death. It was difficult to tell which.
The next time I woke, I was still in the white room, but the light was now a dim orange. I was free to move my head, but leather straps held me tight against the table. I looked around my prison as best I could. Two walls were bare, one had outline of what looked like a door, and the third was dominated by a lifeless screen built into the wall above a small desk. On the desk sat a simple table lamp, much like the one in my bedroom. This was my bedroom now.
I didn’t know where I was. The easy answer was that I was dead—but was Heaven really just a white room with an orange lamp? My grandmama had always said it would be wonderful, and this room was anything but. It was boring. Small.
The ceiling held several lights settled into shallow depressions. They looked like the watchful eyes of angels. I thought again of my grandmama and her silly stories. Father hadn’t liked it when she told me those stories.
They were just stories, though. So where's the harm, Father?
The hiss of a door broke the room's silence; the light shifted from orange to white and back to orange as new light invaded from whatever lay beyond the door, then was shut away again. Slippered footsteps whispered across the floor.
A large hand touched my shoulder, tender and delicate. It belonged to a stern-faced man in horn-rimmed glasses. The same man as before. The datapad in his hand glowed; its colours danced across the pale skin of his palm as he used the device one-handed, manipulating the screen with his thumb.
"You're not supposed to be awake," he said. His voice was also like my father's but sadder.
He turned and walked to the desk. He put down his datapad and fiddled with the wallscreen. It jumped to life, adding its own erratic light to the room. A soft hiss, then a light kiss against the nape of my neck.
Blackness.
My eyelids strained to open, but remained closed as if stuck by glue. Voices filled the void.
"Would you come to bed, John?" said a woman.
"In a moment. Just another moment," said the familiar voice of the man with the glasses.
The woman sighed. "Yes, yes. Another moment."
"Sarah," the man whispered. It wasn’t my name, but somehow I knew he was talking about me.
"John." Ice entered the woman's voice. She sounded weary and lonely. "Think of who she is, of what you're doing."
"Sarah."
"Please, John! Don't call her that. She’s broken beyond repair. You've broken her! She should be dead."
Something crashed against the wall. The man huffed. My grandmama once read me a story about old warriors who fought bulls—pricking them with their metal weapons, taunting and enraging them, then killing the poor beasts for sport. The man's next word had all the power and anger of one of those bulls. "Out."
"John…" said the woman. "Come here. Please." I couldn’t see her, but I pictured her holding her arms out before h
er, inviting the man into her embrace, into a place where whatever sins he carried could be momentarily forgotten.
He didn’t move—didn't even speak.
"John," she said more firmly. "She’s awake. Look at her eyes flutter. Can she hear us?"
The man stomped through the room; he slapped his hand on the screen above the desk. I fell back into dreamless sleep.
They tried to fix me.
"The drugs are too much. You'll kill her."
When next I awoke, I lay on my stomach. I was free to move, but now metal wings sprouted from my back. My first thought was not that they were absurd but that metal seemed a poor choice for tools meant for flight. My second was a wave of revulsion.
"Do you like them?"
I hadn’t noticed the man with the horn-rimmed glasses sitting in the chair. Startled, the disgust and panic washed away from me in a wave of curiosity.
"I…" I did not know what to say.
"You are special, Sarah. You are my little angel."
That name again.
He smiled, the first I'd seen from him. I was caught off guard by the kindness in his dark eyes. The smile just barely touched his lips, a small turn at one corner, but his eyes danced.
Try as I might, I could not flap the wings and they would not fold; I could not stretch them to their full length nor draw them tight against my bare back. They were dead to me.
"They don't work” was all I could think to say.
"Not yet," he said. Some of the happiness left his eyes. "But soon. I will fix them. You will be the little angel of Tao Hua Yuan."