The Curiosities (Carolrhoda Ya)

by Maggie Stiefvater, Tessa Gratton, Brenna Yovanoff

  “Hell, man,” said Kell, the drummer. “You’ve got to get a locket.”

  Martin rammed a fist into my chest, pushing me up against the wall. My guitar crashed to the ground behind me, the strings ringing dully. “Even York-rich-as-God-St. James doesn’t have the money for a locket. So you gonna come after one of us? We gonna have to sleep with one eye open?”

  “You don’t take your hands off me, slick,” I said, “You won’t live long enough to worry about sleeping.”

  Either Martin remembered my police record or he thought that Jude, coming closer with his guitar case held at a warning angle, might come to my defense. We were all of us dangerous these days. In any case, he let me go and flashed me a smile that wasn’t one. “You’re too good at what you do to die, asshole. So find a heart, just not one of ours.”

  Jude looked at me as Martin left, saying more with that look than Martin had with all his words. I dropped my eyes to the pale white lines in my fingernails. Innocent-looking half-moons, like the one that hung in the New York sky above the club. But nothing was innocent in this world.

  . . .

  No one knew where the disease had come from. Well, scientists said birds, later, but they always say birds when they don’t know what they’re talking about. In a month, a hundred thousand people were dead before we even knew they were sick. Fingernails lined with faint moons. Fingertips fading to blue, hands going white.

  I’d watched Eva throw up in between gigs, vomiting away her singing voice, and then her smile, and then her guts. I hadn’t kissed her in months, but I knew I’d been exposed, because everyone had been exposed. Everyone had been exposed, and we were all waiting to die.

  I drew lines in my skin with my razor, watching my blood escape, wondering if the disease escaped with it.

  No one knew who first found out about the hearts. There were cultures that believed to eat your enemy was to conquer him completely and to take on his strength. We were that culture now. They’d found the fountain of youth, and it was a human heart.

  Suddenly the survival rate looked better.

  I wrote a song. “Fifty Percent.”

  . . .

  It took weeks for me to realize that I wasn’t the only one throwing up between sets. I walked in on Jude leaning on the toilet after one of our gigs, his eyelids flickering like the fluorescent lights above us.

  “Weakling,” I scoffed.

  Jude didn’t raise his cheek from the seat, but he smiled at me. “You should know.”

  “How long?” I asked.

  He shook his head, just a little bit. “I don’t know. York, get a locket.”

  I just stared at him. Jude, who couldn’t even look at them. “You said once there were children in those boxes.”

  Jude closed his eyes. “I know I did. But they’re already dead. You’re not.”

  “I couldn’t afford one even if I wanted to.” I slid down the wall and leaned back against the tile, watching the pulse in my wrist. “And if I could, you’d deserve it more than me.”

  He opened his eyes. “Don’t stop being an asshole now, York.”

  . . .

  I knew this was my last gig. Club Metallic again, which seemed fitting. My guitar was heavy on my back, sharp against my shoulder blades. In the dirty brown room behind the stage, I leaned it against a wall and drank a bottle of water. Drowning the nausea was the only thing that worked.

  The guys who were there already were looking at me, eyes darting to me and away. I was the razor now, cutting them.

  “Where’s Jude?” I asked.

  Martin knelt to get something from his bass case, and then he turned to me. His voice was strung tight, savage and bitter. “He wanted me to give this to you.”

  He held up a silver case, condensation on the outside, and Jude within.

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  STORIES AS NOVEL PLAYGROUNDS

  One of the great things about writing a whole (whole, whole) bunch of stories for Merry Fates is that it occasionally gives a short piece the chance to develop into something bigger. Over the years, the blog has been a place to try out some of my stranger, more complicated ideas, and by actually writing them out I can understand them better and then decide if they have the potential to sustain themselves for the long haul.

  In the earliest stages of a novel, my ideas almost never arrive in the form of plot. For me, it’s often just the narrow slice of a world or a set of characters that keeps coming back in various ways. While not directly connected, “The Bone Tender,” “Girls Raised by Wolves,” and “Power of Intent” all take place in a common world, with recurring themes that play out in different ways. This doesn’t mean that every shared character or the storyline is destined to make it into a novel, but it’s a way of figuring out what belongs in the larger story and what’s expendable. —Brenna

  I think that’s pretty true of me as well—that idea that my novels never arrive with a plot. Really, I come up with my next novel the same way I decide what to watch at a movie theater. I never say “Oh, you know what I want to watch? A story about a man facing his childhood fears by dressing up in the guise of a bat and fighting crime in an urban area.” I just think, “I’d like to watch a character-driven action adventure movie!” My novels are the same way—I get this idea that I’d like to toy with a certain theme or mood or world, rather than a distinct plot or agenda. I don’t want to say that I play with these things in a short story to see if I can sustain them in a novel, because I have a theory you can sustain just about anything in a novel if you really try hard enough, but I will say that trying it out in short form ensures that something about the concept is asking questions that I actually want to answer. Both Shiver and The Scorpio Races began life as short stories; in the first I was playing with mood, and in the second I was playing with the world. —Maggie

  In the beginning I assumed I couldn’t write short stories, and so all of the stories I posted on Merry Fates were somehow connected to some novel idea I had. They were vignettes or character studies or fairy tale retellings. Sometimes they worked as stories on their own and sometime...didn’t. As we wrote more and more stories, I had to figure out where to find ideas that could bloom on their own, divorced from novel thoughts and from the way I develop novels (an entirely character-based process). Because of that, I tried very hard not to let my stories have anything at all to do with novels I was writing or novels I knew I wanted to write. I didn’t give myself this playground, I gave myself boundaries! Of course, my subconscious didn’t pay attention to that order, and many of the stories I wrote I can see now are part of a pattern of exploring all the thematic issues I write novels about. Not to mention the world-building. Lately, I’ve stopped pretending I don’t use Merry Fates to openly play inside a world so that I can investigate all its edges and figure out what works and what doesn’t, and what aspect I should focus a novel on. It’s impossible to separate my stories and novels these days, even if that isn’t apparent from the outside. Stories and novels come from the same place and use basically the same skill set, just with different framing. —Tessa

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  BERSERK

  by Tessa Gratton

  I might be obsessed with berserker warriors. (Might be = definitely am.) The idea that the hand of God can send you into a killing frenzy is so terrible and awesome that I’ve written entire novels about it. I have control issues that make me feel crazy in crowds and dislike airplanes, so to me, going berserk is The Worst Thing Ever. Not only aren’t you in control, but you, like, kill everything in sight. This short story happened because I was wondering about a random footnote character in one of my novels and because I’ve wondered what might make somebody choose to be a berserk. What might make it a GOOD thing? When is that loss of self and sense and control maybe the BEST possible thing?

  I don’t know if there’s really an answer for that, but writing this story was a way fo
r me to try and figure it out.

  And also: trolls and motorcycles and gore. —Tessa

  LISTEN!

  They say the stars spread so bright that night on the mountain that the young berserk looked to the west and saw a narrow road cutting between the tall pine trees. Fate whispered in his ears, and he chose at the last moment to steer his motorcycle along a new, twisting route through the Rock Mountains toward that new band of bear warriors awaiting him in Washington State. For he was in no hurry to arrive, to swear his allegiance to a new captain when his first band had so lately been destroyed. The threeday battle against ice giants entrenched at the edge of Lake Eerie had stripped his commit-brothers to bones until he alone stood. For the month since he’d been home with his mother in Dodge City, Kansas, to make proper sacrifices and come to terms with survival.

  It was a column of silvery smoke carved against those bright stars that drew him off the road. His tires crushed the beds of pine needles to fill the air with sharp evergreen, and there appeared a clearing where a girl was busy flinging items into a burning house.

  A brown box splayed torn and open next to her feet, and she kept bending to dig inside, pulling out a Stoneball cap, a trophy, an old book, and worn shoes. With a grunt she heaved them, one after the other, in a high arc toward the bonfire.

  Swiftly he cut the bike’s engine and ran to her, thinking first that she was trollkin, with her bared teeth and dark skin and roaring. But she was just a girl throwing family heirlooms onto a funeral pyre.

  LUTA:

  Here’s what happens:

  We’re watching reruns of Star Trek. My brother Horn keeps adjusting the antennas to get a better signal. Captain Kirk’s face flickers constantly until Mom throws up her hands and says, “This is ridiculous. We should play Shield instead.”

  As if Fate agrees, the mountain trembles beneath us.

  Dad is instantly on his feet, braids swinging as he turns toward the front of the cabin.

  My sister Alecia grips my hand. I pull away and follow Dad, leaving Alecia and Mom and Horn in the den. In the entryway, Dad pushes aside his All-Warm fleece jacket to grab his battle hammer off the hook drilled into the wall. He presses his ear to our thick wooden door.

  “Dad?” I whisper, hands clenching. I wish I had weapon to push all my fear into.

  “Go back to your mother, Luta. Send your brother to me.”

  “What is it?”

  “Luta, listen—”

  The earth shakes again, and this time the rumble doesn’t stop. Dad slams the bar down over the door. I’ve only ever seen it lowered once before, when I was five and the Fenris Wolf was rumored to be loose on our mountain.

  Hammer in hand, Dad backs up, pushing me along with him away from the door. Guttural howls echo outside. “All the lights,” Dad snaps, and we split up. He heads around toward the kitchen, flipping off switches and shuttering windows.

  Eventually I return to the den, where Mom’s already closed everything. Horn now stands in the middle of the room with his hammer in hand and Alecia with a hatchet pressing her back into his. The skin around my sister’s lips is tight and gray with fear. I run past, into the back of the house where the bedrooms are, flipping off more lights and tugging the blinds closed. If they don’t see us, they may flow past the house like a flooding river around deep-rooted trees. But I can still hear them coming, louder now—their bellowing shakes the window glass. There are screams like metal tearing into metal and the crash of pine trees ripped up and slammed into the ground. The herd rolls closer like a storm, tearing down the mountain.

  I am back in the entryway, almost all the way around to my family in the den, when the front door explodes inward. A heavy silhouette crams into the doorway. I smell his rancid breath from the foot of the loft stairs. I freeze. Sometimes trolls have poor eyesight, and maybe he doesn’t see me.

  His mouth smacks as he stomps in, spiked club dragging over the welcome mat. Behind him are more. One calls in their language. It sounds like rocks crunching together.

  The troll before me chuckles. “Little girl,” he says as more of his fellows shove inside.

  My father yells from the den, and I clamber up the stairs to the little loft where I sleep. The troll tries to follow me, but the rickety old wood gives beneath his weight and the entire staircase collapses. He crashes back to the floor. Thin blue carpeting holds the shattered steps together, and they dangle for a moment before the troll rips it all free in frustration. There is more trollish laughter—in the dark I can’t tell how many press behind him. I huddle at the top step, my knees pulled tight to my chest, desperate to remember if there are weapons in my loft.

  Wood splinters as they break open the den wall into a troll-sized arch.

  My sister screams.

  “Alecia!” I scream back. But I’m trapped. The stairs are broken, and my troll waits at the bottom, thick hands grasping at me as though he imagines what it will be like to pull my body apart.

  Dad yells something, and Horn roars. Mom cries, and a horrible crunching sound cuts her off. Trolls laugh. I stare my troll, every piece of me shaking. His thick teeth gleam in the stray moonlight spilling down from behind me.

  I close my eyes, but it makes things worse because I can hear my family fighting; I can hear the crash of the entertainment center and imagine Alecia’s body crumpled and broken and sliding to the floor. I imagine their breaking bones and splatters of blood, because I’ve seen old black-and-white pictures of the Montreal Troll Wars.

  There’s nothing I can do.

  I hold myself in a tight ball, and I open my eyes to stare down at the troll because a face like his will be the last face my family sees before they die. I have to give them that much, to see what they see. And I tell myself over and over again: At least they are together. At least they die in action, fighting and brave. At least.

  The troll wiggles his fingers at me, beckoning. I only stare through the darkness. Another troll suddenly appears from the den and punches my troll in the shoulder. Clenched in that heavy fist is Alecia’s torn sweater. A trail of blood squeezes through his fingers. My stomach rolls over.

  “Little girl!” my troll coaxes, “come down, come down. I’ll catch you.” He makes his voice tender, like he’s speaking to a little lamb or a trollkin. His companions drag him out. They’re leaving.

  The loft shudders as the herd of them hurtles away, making the mountain tremble.

  I am left in silence.

  LISTEN!

  They say that Rein Konrsson had to pin her arms down and drag her away from the fire, dodging her teeth and the harsh jabs of her heels against his shins. “Calm down, kid!” he yelled into her ear.

  She froze when she heard his voice, his New Asgardian tongue. Rein was just able to settle her on a boulder and step back out of her reach. In the cold starry night, she wore only jeans and a long, tattered sweater. She had no shoes, but only thick wool socks, and the rows of braids on her head ended in beads red and bright as blood. Her eyes were pink and teary—from smoke or fury or grief he had no way to know.

  They say he asked what a kid like her was doing alone at a burning house, and that second time he called her a child she growled, “I am almost fourteen. Not a kid.”

  And so, swallowing the wish that he’d ignored the ribbon of smoke and stuck to his lonely path, Rein gritted his own teeth to say, “I am Rein, son of Konr. I was riding past when I saw the fire beckon.”

  Her chin lifted bravely as she declared, “I am Luta, and my family is dead.” Her eyes slid toward the fire, and its red glare reflected in her dark pupils.

  It was then that Rein Konrsson noticed the shattered glass twinkling across the yard. The old Veedub van with its doors torn off the frame and windshield smashed. Giant footsteps through crushed herbs in a box garden. And he smelled it under the acrid smoke: the sweet, cloying smell of mud and shit that signaled trolls had passed this way.

  LUTA:

  I watch the older boy stand up slowly and walk toward m
y house. He bends down over the box I dragged from the shed. One of Alecia’s old stuffed wolves is on top, and he lifts it out. With a graceful flick of his arm, Rein tosses it into the fire.

  I run back, and together we throw every memory away. It’s the middle of the night, but the burning house keeps away mountain cold and most of all the darkness. It flickers over his face, obscuring his features and making his eyes black. I hope mine are that fierce.

  When the box is empty, we tear it in two and creep as close to the heat as we can. My skin tightens and my eyes burn. I step in again. And again. The fire reaches for me, and I feed it the cardboard. I keep my eyes wide open, feeling them burn, feeling tears stream out onto my cheeks and dry there.

  Rein says something, and I stumble back, landing on my butt. He stands behind me and lifts my up by my armpits. “Let the Aesir welcome them. They are summoned home.”

  “And fire lights the way,” I whisper.

  As dawn beings to fight against the orange glow, I wrap my arms around myself and remember the troll that reached for me. I want to tear the beast into a million pieces.

  “Rein,” I say, glancing up at him, to tell him I want blood-price for my family.

  He looms nearer, and when he tilts his head to reply, for the first time I see the black spear tattoo slashing down his cheek.

  “Berserk!” I spit it out before I think.

  His grin is swift and full of teeth. “I promise not to eat you.”

  The ground is spinning. He’s one of the Alfather’s—a wild, dangerous berserker warrior who can kill a dozen men in a minute, with all his braids intact. Now I notice the scuffed leather armor holding to his body like it was painted on. The steel-toed boots. The bracers. The heads of the battle-axes peeking at me from over his shoulders. But he’s young. Only as old as Horn is.