Pinocchio knows all about the dimwitted bookie named Wagner who stiffed the wrong client and got his head caved in with a tire iron. Examples must be made, order maintained. Shit happens. The event took place below Canal, behind a boarded-up deli where no one else should have been. Blue, on her way to a party, drunk and slightly lost, saw the whole thing.
He searches a pocket for cigarettes.
Pretend you've changed your mind. Send me home. In the morning, pack a suitcase and get the hell out of the city.
“Guess I can come up for a drink,” he says, lighting up, hands shaking.
Blue beams. “My hero."
* * * *
In the morning, the fog has grown even denser. You could build castles in the mist. Blue gives Pinocchio a quick kiss on the cheek as they walk to the street. She's happy. Slept like an innocent. Pinocchio had his dreams for company all night.
Blue smiles, as beautiful as the moment he met her back in the Old World.
He loves her. They're both paying for that.
A fragment of his last dream still hovers in his thoughts. Two days from now. He holds a bloody knife. Something lies at his feet, but he Won't Look Down.
Forgive me, he thinks at Blue. I can't change the future. Maybe that's part of my damnation.
“See you later,” she says, still half asleep.
Some storybook tales have terribly unhappy endings.
“Not if I see you first,” Pinocchio whispers to himself, fading into the fog like a ghost.
Copyright © 2002 Joel Best
* * * *
Joel Best lives in upstate New York with his wife and son. His fiction has been published in Writers of the Future, Electric Wine, Deep Outside, and Chiaroscuro.
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Lion's Blood
By Steven Barnes
7/29/02
This excerpt comprises pages 14 through 22 of Lion's Blood by Steven Barnes. The date at the book's start is 15 Shawwal 1279 Higira according to the Islamic calendar, and April 4, 1863, by the Christian calendar. The book opens with Aidan, a Celtic boy of 10 or 11 years, finding a strange, beautifully jeweled knife in the river near his home town, or crannog. Aidan lives in the village with his mother Deirdre, father Mahon, and sister Nessa. The night before, the town had a festival celebrating the founding of their crannog, and no one expected anything worse the next morning than a hangover. But morning brought change for everyone.
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Chapter Three
From the fury of the Northmen, deliver us.
—Ninth Century Irish prayer
Four hours before dawn.
The O'Dere Crannog was utterly silent now. Even the dogs had curled up into a knot in the shadow of the central fire.
The children sprawled on the dock were still asleep. There was no one to see the arrival of the raiders. Out of an enfolding bank of mist glided twin dragons. Rearing back like sea horses, stub-winged and fanged, each dragon was perched on the prow of a ship, each ship about fifty hands in length. The ships’ oars scooped water and sculled ahead silently, every motion practiced and perfect. They were flat-bottomed, designed for swift forays along smooth, shallow rivers like the Lute.
Aidan was the first to wake. He peered out across the lake, seeing the silent shapes, but certain that this was a dream following him even after he had opened his eyes. As he watched, the head of the lead ship began to glow with a strange light. Without warning, flame gushed from the dragon's mouth, directly onto the row of coracles.
Aidan's eyes widened. What a dream this was! Then he felt the rush of heat against his skin, and sat up screaming.
“Northmen!"
Nessa and the Boru boys bolted to their feet, grasping their peril in a single glance. For a moment they stood frozen, but as the ships smoldered and the flames licked at the docks, their paralysis broke and they fled back into the village.
Aidan walked backwards, watching, eyes wide. Since infancy he had heard tales of the dragons and of the village heroes who waged righteous war against them. Had been warned away from mischief with images of terrible beasts that tore and swallowed and carried away forever.
So even though he realized that these were ships, that what he watched was the work of men, not monsters, something inside him held him transfixed by primordial, nameless dread. The dragon vomited flame again, and another boat seethed with fire.
Now alien, vaguely human shapes stirred upon the decks. They drew closer to the dock and a grapneled rope flew down, anchoring itself to the weathered pier. Barely discernible in the mist, two-legged shadows emerged from the ships.
The first thing Aidan saw was that the invaders were giants. He had always considered his father and the men of the tuath impossibly huge, but these creatures were so broad and thick through chest and shoulders that Aidan's father looked almost childlike in comparison. These were not human beings at all. They were ogres, sidhe from hell, who would break their bones and suck their marrow, down to the last screaming child.
He stumbled backwards as the first of the invaders stepped onto the dock. Aidan was hidden behind a low wall now, but he swore that the sidhe looked directly at him. The dock was aflame, and the invaders walked toward the village as if treading through deep mud, had all the time in the world to breathe between each massive step. One raised a knife. To his horror Aidan realized it was brother to the one he had found in the river just that afternoon.
The fire's flare illuminated a Northman's face. It was a thing of tusks and snout, more boar than man.
Suspended dizzyingly between dream and reality, Aidan wheeled and ran.
His feet pounded the earth. He registered distantly that the village alarm bell was ringing. A few of the men and women tottered out into the street shaking drink-muddled heads.
Half naked, Mahon himself had emerged, sun-burned chest broad and bare in the dark. “Drown me! What mischief is this?” Cuaran, their left-hand neighbor, seemed more awake: perhaps he had quaffed less deeply.
“Northmen!” screamed Cuaran. “Burning the boats!” He carried a halberd, an evil mating of spear and boathook, equally suitable for splitting a sapling or gutting an enemy. Aidan flattened against the wall as Cuaran ran past, bellowing his challenge. Aidan had seen Cuaran hurl that weapon half a hundred paces to behead a rabbit. Behind Cuaran was Willig, and then Angus, the great bear. Aidan felt a swell of pride and hope: These were the men of the tuath, mighty fishermen, fierce warriors. They would send the Northmen howling back to hell!
Cuaran's arm drew back hard, and in another moment Aidan knew that he would loose the thunderbolt—
Then Cuaran's head snapped back, and Aidan heard a sound like a whip cracking. Red splashed between the fisherman's eyes, and he flew backward to land in the dirt. The back of his head burst like rotted fruit, spattering the ground with seeds and pulp.
Aidan felt more awed confusion than fear. From his shadowed place he saw the burly, animal figures leveling long sticks, heard cracks, saw fire flash like lightning in the sky. A man behind him groaned and tumbled to the ground.
Were these gods? Or demons, emerged from the mist to hurl bolts of lightning? Hadn't the Druids made sacrifice, sung songs, danced and prayed and sown sacred seeds to the Tuatha de Dannan? Why, then, this day of destruction?
The crannog was fully awake now, and several villagers ran to those few boats still unconsumed by flames. Cennidi, the stout fisherman who tied his coracle next to Mahon's, tumbled to the ground, dead.
Cennidi's son Tirechan tried to save one of the boats, and a gout of fire erupted from the yawning mouth of a dragon ship; the youth became an instant ball of flames, screaming before he twisted jumping into the water.
Women and children scrambled from the huts now, fleeing away from the lake, toward the forest's shadowed depths.
His mother managed to make her voice heard above the frenzy. “Save the children!” she shrieked. “Quickly! Into the woods!"
Mahon had h
er by the shoulders, and Aidan ran to them. He grabbed Aidan's arm and pulled him close. Mahon's face was riven with strain. “Find my daughter,” he said to Deirdre. “Care for our children. Pray for me.” He clung to them both for a fierce, brief hug, and then was gone.
Aidan twisted and turned in his mother's grasp, trying to join his father, to fight, to die if necessary. He was old enough. He was!
But the straw roofs and wooden walls of the village were aflame, and there was another part of him that wouldn't let him tear free from his mother's side, something so completely overcome with terror that he could barely think.
Around him, men who had taught him to walk, to fish and to dance, fought and died in the dirt, their precious blood flowing in the mist-throttled moonlight.
“Nessa!” Deirdre called, voice cracking in the early-morning frost. “To me, girl!"
Deirdre called out again and again as she fled toward the rear of the village, toward the wooden bridge linking the crannog to forest and field.
With a despairing cry, Nessa crawled from beneath a hut and ran to them. As she did, another of those sharp, strange cracking sounds rang out, and Molloy the net mender fell, humping along the ground like a crushed river eel.
The night was chaos and red ruin. The men and childless women were fighting, while mothers and grandmothers attempted to flee.
“Ma!” Nessa cried.
“Come,” Deirdre said, voice both soothing and firm. Framed by the wild light, her crimson hair wreathed her head in flame. “Quickly now..."
They were at the bridge now. On its far side lay the fields, and a hope of safety. But they were no more than halfway across when six net-wielding beast-men emerged from the shadows. Another boar, a stag, and one with an eagle's beak. Women and children were ensnared as they ran for the imagined safety of the forest.
Deirdre screamed and tried to turn back, but the masked men entangled the three of them. They fell into the dirt, the bestial eyes and mouths of their captors leering down at them. The captors’ scent was a nauseating meld of rancid animal fat and caked sweat, thick enough to choke.
The net's rough strands bound Aidan's arms and legs tight enough to cut his skin. Aidan struggled until he was bested by fatigue and a gnawing, crippling fear beyond anything ever experienced in his young life.
His mother and sister strained against the tangled strands. “Mahon!” Deirdre screamed.
Nessa wormed a thin arm through the net, trying to claw her way free. “Help, Da!"
Suddenly, as if in answer to their prayer, Mahon O'Dere appeared. His shirt was red-streaked and torn, and he held a bloody axe aloft like a firebrand. His mighty arms were stained crimson, his eyes were wild. He seemed not completely the man Aidan called father; this enveloping night of horror seemed to have ripped away a facade to reveal something more primal than mere humanity. Aidan felt a strange and unaccustomed twining of fear, pride, and excitation.
One of the beast-men turned and charged just in time for Mahon's axe to cleave a diagonal chunk from his skull. A second raised his fire-stick. Mahon's arm whipped up and down. The axe flew from his hand end-over-end, blurred through the air, and struck the sidhe's chest with a satisfying wet, hollow sound. Blood flowed, and the monster sank to his knees with an oddly human groan.
Then, thrillingly, Mahon pulled the golden knife from his belt, turning just in time to twist away from a descending sword, answering with a vicious upward stroke. The misery he wrought with the invaders’ own weapon made Aidan's heart pound and sing in the same glorious instant.
“Yes! Father!"
Mahon's eyes met his for one golden moment. The boy was proud, hopeful. In that instant, it seemed that Aidan was on the verge of some terrific, overarching understanding of all the world's myriad things. Then another of those sharp, odd, cracking sounds rang out, and Mahon staggered. He froze in midmotion; his lips parted and crimson dribbled down over his beard. It seemed almost comical, as if he had brayed laughter with a mouthful of half-chewed berries. Then, still in that terrible slowness, he crumpled to the earth.
Aidan watched in disbelief as his father gasped like a beached fish, great hands clasping and unclasping, grabbing at the air as if he might be able to claw life from it. Their eyes met again, and this time there were no great answers there, only questions that would never be satisfied.
A giant strode into view, this one a man-bear. The beast looked down at the mortally wounded man, head tilted to one side. Thick hands rose to his own face, and peeled it away.
The face beneath was ruddy and unremarkable, windburned and bland. He had small, bright blue eyes and unruly red hair that stirred but little in the early morning breeze.
Aidan felt dizzy and sick. The bear-face was but a mask. Only a mask. The Northern demons were merely men, after all.
Almost tenderly, the invader bent down. He lifted Aidan's father's head with his left hand, and plucked the golden knife from the ground with the other.
As the Northman made the death stroke, Mahon's dazed eyes locked with his son's, blinked once, then rolled upward. And as darkness came to the father he loved, in the midst of his mother's and sister's pitiful screams, Aidan mercifully fell into a deeper, dreamless night.
And was gone.
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Chapter Four
The stench of burnt wood and flesh wafted with the uncaring breeze as women, children, and a few miserable, broken men were herded toward the ships, arms bound at their sides. One at a time the captives were shackled at the ankles with stout metal bands tight enough to numb limbs. Jarring hammer strokes locked them into place. Each bore a loop through which thumb-thick chain links were passed, connecting each miserable soul to another.
Aidan looked into the faces of the captive men and saw shock, disbelief, horror, and bleak resignation. Riley, the tuath's massive blacksmith, was one such. Aidan understood why: the shambling, shamefaced Riley had preferred captivity to death. Aidan hated him. He should have died! Died as had Mahon O'Dere, fighting to be free, fighting for his family. Better a swift and endless sleep than this disgrace. Had not Aidan a sister and a mother to protect, he would have chosen the first good moment to jump overboard and drown himself.
He would, yes.
A brawny Northman locked the chains into place with thunderous hammer strokes. Nessa tried to kick him, and he casually backhanded her across the face so hard that at first Aidan thought her neck was snapped. She fell limply back, but the giant simply grabbed one of her ankles and dragged her forward. For Aidan, it was like watching events in a nightmare, submerging him in an ocean of rage so deep it blackened thought.
Now it was his mother's turn. Never had he seen her like this, wild-eyed, and almost like a drunkard. Her eyes were rolled up exposing the whites, and she pulled against the pig-eyed Northman's brawny arms. “Mary! Oh please, Mother of God,” she screamed over and over again in a voice not entirely her own. “Do not forsake us!” Her thrashing was without aim, without real thought, almost as if she were some kind of dangle-toy twisting in the wind. After the chain was hammered on she was shoved aside and Aidan hauled into position.
He struggled without effect, and the Northman slapped him across the face. Stars exploded, the white sparks extinguished in an ocean of red, and then black. When he came to his senses, the first strokes had already fallen, linking him to the wall. His mouth felt swollen and nerveless. The boy's eyes narrowed as he ran his tongue around his mouth, tasting blood. He longed for a knife, a boat hook, a sword. Something to grasp in his hand as he leapt and died gloriously.
Like his father.
Pig-Eyes watched him, and something in the big man's face smiled, almost as if he approved of what he saw in Aidan. “Careful, boy,” Pig-Eyes said, his voice guttural and unpracticed, as if he had never spoken a true language before.
Deirdre twisted about, her face pale, momentarily lifted from her own madness by the threat to her children. “Aidan!” she screamed. “Nessa! Don't fight—"
>
She was pushed brutally, but managed to reach back to take Aidan's hand. His sister's face, so like his own, was wide-eyed and slack. “Mother?” she asked.
His mother struggled to mask her terror with calm. “It's all right,” she said. “All right. We're together."
With swift, ringing strokes the chains were hammered into place. They were walked up a plank and onto the dragon ship's deck, where they huddled on the deck in fear, guarded by armed, silent men.
Aidan put his face down. He would not let these monsters see him cry.
* * * *
Like a great predator returning to its lair after a prodigious feeding, the dragon ships wallowed toward the river, swollen with their burden of living meat.
Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't—
Nessa gripped at his hand with hers, her small, sharp nails digging into his wrist. Her eyes were wide and almost unblinking, and she trembled like a trapped squirrel.
The journey from the lake to the sea was dreadfully peaceful, a silent slide between riverbanks lined with moss-hung trees and corded vines. He had fished these waters, played on those rocks, swum and run and speared frogs amid these shadowed corridors. And with every passing moment, every renewed moan from those chained beside him, the realization grew that he might never see this river again. That the village of his birth was gone. That he was in the hands of creatures whose motivations he could not begin to comprehend. That for the first time his mother and sister really needed him, and he was powerless to aid them.
The Northmen seemed to need no sleep or rest or food, remained on the alert at all times. They began to relax only after the sun began to dip toward the west and they began to smell salt in the air.
The ocean.
Its steady roar rose gradually, building to a churning rhythm. Despite his chains and sorrows Aidan's curiosity sharpened. The ocean! Ever he had hoped to see it. Never had he imagined his first sight would be in such a state.
Strange Horizons, July 2002 Page 12