Mayfly

by Rei Fletcher

  Lay off the pot.

  Her laugh was a little hysterical. She cut the other rope free and grabbed Ash's hand.

  The doppelgänger screamed in rage. Marianne slashed at it. It looked down, and the wound vanished like it had never existed.

  "You gotta be shitting me."

  Marianne pulled Ash away. The lights flickered and flared. The warmth from them reached her even from a distance. Other screams began to answer the doppelgänger. She ducked, feeling a razor-sharp wind streak by, howling. Dragging Ash along behind her she raced as quickly as she dared along the road.

  The sky began to fill with blurry forms. One stopped just ahead of them. She stumbled to a halt, keeping Ash behind her. The blurs settled into sharper lines. Like an old man, but distorted with rage. It blurred again when it moved forward and she slashed out with the knife. It howled.

  One of the farmers barrelled around the corner. The thing turned, hissing. He had time to scream before the thing ripped out his throat, then dove into him. He jittered like he was being electrocuted. The lantern fell from his hand and went out. Marianne began to edge around it. Ash was clutching her hand now with a death grip. The man's head turned to follow them, blood still pumping out of the slash in his throat. The thing's own features pulled at the flesh in his face, warping it out of shape, and it hissed, lunging at them.

  Marianne stabbed at it. She didn't wait to see if it fell. More of the things were flying overhead, passing them by.

  "Is it your town?"

  Ash stared blankly at her.

  "Do you understand me?"

  She nodded, but her expression didn't exactly change. It might have been shock. It probably was. Anyway, it didn't really matter if it was Ash's town or not; the screaming had started, so whoever was there was dying. Marianne cut the dangling ropes from her wrists. Ash flinched as a shrieking shade flew overhead, then took Marianne's hand again.

  They approached with as much caution as they could manage, considering that they were stumbling through the dark. It was like a town out of a movie: old buildings and wood and wells, mud and animals. People were fleeing their houses, pursued by the blurry shadows. She watched a burly man with a pitchfork stab at one. It swirled around him, toying with him, before darting behind him. It raked its claws down his back, then plunged into him. A roof came alight, setting off another round of screams and howling.

  What am I supposed to do?

  Ash was looking at her, face fixed in a mask of terror. She was waiting. Was she supposed to have been given to the gate? To him? Marianne didn't know much about Ireland but she was pretty sure there was no plague of hag monsters in its history.

  Ash screamed. A man, maybe the shouting one from the gate, was charging toward them.

  "Hey, leave her alone!"

  He barely paused, backhanding Marianne so hard she fell, sparks of light dancing in front of her eyes. Blood filled her mouth. He grabbed Ash by the shoulders, shaking her like a doll. His accent and his panic made it hard to understand, but she eventually caught the gist.

  For the good of the town. Good crops. Wealth.

  He pushed her toward the town, shouting and waving his arms to draw the attention of the flying things. Marianne got to her feet, spitting blood. One of the hags hovered overhead, shifting and blurring. Below it, Ash's doppelgänger strode through the carnage toward them.

  She looked down at her knife. Killing a monster, an Unformed Beast, that was one thing. The man who was holding Ash was just a man. A person.

  Ash sobbed and twisted, trying to break his grip. His voice only grew louder, holding her out in front of him like a shield. The sound of Ash, of all people, full of terror…

  She plunged the knife into his back, low, where she thought it wouldn't hit bone. She felt blood, hot and sticky, on her fingers.

  There ought to be more.

  He grunted, reaching blindly behind him. She pulled the knife free and dragged Ash away. He stumbled back, holding up his hands, pleading as the hovering hag thing moved down.

  Everywhere in the town, terrible things were happening. Her knife worked. It was probably the same rules with iron and everything, but the people who could fight were being replaced with the monsters she needed to kill.

  Ash was looking at her again, waiting for direction. Marianne was suddenly, excruciatingly aware of how short a time she'd had to learn.

  "We have to run away."

  They left the town behind. Marianne had visions of their miserable bodies dead of exposure in some Irish field, so she stuck to the road until it started to get light. She was fuzzy from exhaustion by then, stumbling and cold.

  Ash tugged on her hand and pointed to what looked like an overgrown bike path. Only they wouldn't have bikes, right? Marianne followed her along until they came to a shed. Or barn. Whatever it was, all that was inside was a pile of hay or straw or...fuck if she knew, and some old bits of tools. She helped Ash lower a heavy bar across the doors.

  There was a moment of awkward silence. Marianne looked at the pile.

  "Still better than Bobby's sleeping bag."

  They made a kind of nest, shivering alone. After awhile Ash rolled over and cuddled up. Marianne put her arms around her. She was warm with life, and she was so soft. She slept like a person did, snoring softly. Marianne smiled and hugged her closer. She drifted off when not even the memory of hag monsters and blood could keep sleep away.

  It was bright when she woke. Beams of milky light worked their way between the cracks in the barn wall. Ash was sitting up, hugging her knees, turning to look as soon as Marianne stirred.

  "You saved me. Thank you."

  It was really hard to understand her accent, but she was pretty sure that was what she meant.

  "It's important. You're important. To me. To...to everything."

  Very smooth.

  Ash reached out, fingers rubbing the cloth of Marianne's hoodie.

  "It's fuzzy inside."

  She unzipped it, which caused wide eyes and a lot of zipping and unzipping, and a bright, fascinated smile.

  "I guess this is pre-zipper."

  Ash's smile fell away, and she looked at the barn doors.

  "You met him?"

  "The fairy lord."

  "They wanted to send you to him."

  "I was to be his bride."

  She wouldn't have been. It was a lie. She would have been the fifth light.

  "To make your town wealthy?"

  "It's what he promised. Now...now it's all gone. I didn't want to be his bride."

  She thought it would be awkward to comfort her, but it wasn't, really. It felt natural. Ash had done the same for her plenty of times. She hugged her gently.

  "They'll keep coming."

  "The gate is closed now. What's out needs to be killed but nothing else will come through there. The gate might move. I think it does. But it won't be here. It won't be you."

  She looked up. "You'll kill them?"

  Relief. Hope. Marianne looked around the barn with a sense of dawning horror. She hadn't spent nearly this long in her own past. Was she stuck here? Oh god, she couldn't be stuck here. For a million reasons she couldn't be stuck here.

  But Ash was looking at her, and she was already terrified. The Ash from her time had to have come somehow from this one, and scaring her probably wasn't the way to make that happen.

  "I'll fight however I can. And you will, too. Iron, that's what you need. Good iron."

  Ash shook her head, shrinking back.

  "You're going to become incredible. I know it."

  "Are you a witch, then, to see the future?"

  "No. No witch. I just know what kind of person you are. You've shown me...You've shown me that there's more in the world than I know and that I can have some part of it." She pushed thoughts of the pregnancy out of her mind. "You fought in front of that gate. You fought those men. That's who you are: a fighter. Because that thing in the gate won't stop. It wants our world and it will keep trying, and you'll keep st
opping it."

  "I'm meant to give myself. So all can prosper."

  "Why? Why does it have to be you? Better to fight as yourself. Better to be yourself. You're worth so much more alive and strong. They're just throwing you away. Someone so strong that she could defy him."

  "I only ran."

  "It was still defiance." She took her hand briefly, surprised when Ash clung to it. It felt good.

  "When it happened to me I was too stupid to realise his game. I wanted to be special, and he said I was." Would telling her the truth fuck things up? "But you are. We are. Not because of him, but because of what's inside us. And we gotta keep fighting him. We've gotta keep fighting everyone in our way, otherwise, the world will just get messed up and not even know it."

  Even with bits of straw clinging to her dress and tangled hair, Ash was pretty. Not the flawlessness of her Ash, but full of colour: pink flooding her cheeks, an adorable smattering of freckles, and rich, chocolate brown eyes. They looked at her first with some skepticism, and Marianne wasn't sure if Ash believed her in the end, but they were warm to her, and Marianne felt her face heat.

  I guess it isn't just the vampire thing.

  She wondered if the doppelgänger was right. Had she always felt this way? She'd been sure she liked Bobby, at first, but even in the beginning, when things had been good, it'd never felt like it did with Ash.

  Or maybe Ash was just better at fucking.

  And this wasn't a good time to think about it anyway because she might not ever see her Ash again.

  The door boomed. Ash covered her mouth, muffling a scream. Marianne looked at her, in her rumpled, grimy dress, cowering back in the hay.

  I'm not ready for this.

  The doors boomed again, this time accompanied by a sick, cracking sound. A pale line appeared in the crossbeam.

  "I'll try to hold them off. It. Whatever. Hide under the hay if you can."

  She burrowed under like a mouse. Marianne flinched, hearing the tearing of wood. The knife felt as awkward as though she'd never held it before. And how much had she, really? But more than this Ash, probably.

  The doors gave way. A hag beast flew in, circling the low ceiling like a hornet caught in a car. Ash's doppelgänger stood for a moment, silhouetted against the bright day. Marianne's eyes watered.

  "Aisling!" It smiled.

  She licked her lips. "Nobody here but us chickens." She winced when the hag screamed. "Not into jokes. Okay."

  The doppelgänger cocked its head. She could see how it was unfinished. Its features were flat, somehow. The ruddiness of Ash's cheeks was blotchy, like crayon. Its nose and chin were wrong, too, and when its hair fell back she saw that its ears were blunt lumps.

  "You're not supposed to be here. You're out of time. Out of place."

  "If I wasn't supposed to be here, I wouldn't be." Marianne didn't sound as cocky as she would've liked to.

  "You're touched."

  The hag screamed. She watched nervously as it swooped over the hay where Ash was hiding.

  "You won't ruin what we began here. Wherever you're from, the girl is ours."

  It ran forward. Marianne tried to step aside but its arm caught her around her waist. She fell back on the hard-packed earth and it pinned her down. She gasped for air, blindly striking at the doppelgänger. She felt the knife sink into something. The doppelgänger reached back and grabbed her wrist, slamming it against the floor until she had to let go, her knife falling into the dirt.

  "You can't hurt me, little creature."

  Its hands locked around Marianne's throat. She clawed at them desperately. It ignored her struggles, fingers digging in, smiling broadly.

  "She's the fifth light. We've been waiting too long to let you interfere."

  Her vision began to fuzz over. It leaned down.

  "We were forced out of this world. We will take it back. And you and all of your people will pay for our years in exile."

  She swatted ineffectually at it.

  Mom…Ash...Charlene...Bobby...

  She saw her arm flop down on the floor.

  Stupid.

  The fingers released their grip abruptly. She gagged for air, rolling onto her side. The doppelgänger stood, staggering back. Overhead the hag shrieked and dove down. Ash slashed clumsily at it.

  "You promised. Aisling. You belong to him."

  "It was never me, changeling."

  She ran at the doppelgänger. Marianne looked around the barn. She saw a rusty thing half-hidden in a corner and crawled toward it.

  It was a scythe, abandoned when its tip had snapped off. She picked it up and turned, swinging it at the hag when it dropped in behind Ash. It screamed, one of its arms flaking away, a cloud of powdery brown smoke bursting from it, like the mushroom poofs that she'd stepped on as a child. She slashed at it again, through its middle, then heaved the awkward tool up one more time, letting its own weight drag the blade down through the hag's head. The grey flakes of it dropped to the floor, brown smoke drifting away, its dying screams fading with it.

  Ash was sobbing, stabbing at the doppelgänger. It was sinking down, making garbled noises as its form began to crack and melt, bone shifting under its skin. Its features distorted and bubbled. Whatever damage Ash was doing to it was happening inside.

  "Ash…"

  Abruptly it began to expand. Marianne caught Ash's arm and pulled her away.

  "Bitch! We remember. We will always remember."

  Its voice burbled.

  "We need to go."

  They ran for the broken door. She heard a ripping sound. Something like a wet rag slapped her back. She would have fallen if Ash wasn't there to steady her. She stopped, unwilling to move for fear of feeling what she thought was there.

  "Tell me it isn't."

  Ash was pale, but bravely removed what she told herself determinedly was only wet cloth. That's all, nothing more.

  Chapter 16

  They ventured back to the town. Marianne was alert for traps and ambushes, as much as she could be given that she could barely keep her feet. Whether it was because they were nocturnal or because they, like the beasts of her own time, scattered once they were out of the gate, the town was empty. Some animals were loose, and others slaughtered, but there weren't any people left.

  Ash let out a soft cry and ran into a house. Marianne stood in the muddy lane and listened to her screaming for her family.

  Her cries were replaced by birdsong. Marianne entered cautiously. Ash was sitting on the floor, hugging a worn blanket. Marianne knelt beside her. Ash turned and buried her face against her shoulder, weeping quietly.

  "I'm really sorry. I mean, there's nothing I can say to make it better. I know it. But I really am."

  She realised—belatedly—that this Ash must only have been her age, or maybe even a year or so younger, and so innocent. It filled her with a terrifying feeling. She hugged her closer, stroking her back the way she remembered her mom doing. How much life must be ahead of this Ash, before she got to be her Ash? All of that time that she'd have to pass alone, and Marianne wanted to protect her from it. She didn't want to let go.

  "I should have stayed. They'd all be alive if I became his bride."

  Marianne bit her lip. It was kind of true. It was just that there was so much more than she could explain. More than she even knew yet.

  "They lie. Those things from the gate. I was told that you can't ever trust what they say. And if you'd gone off he would have turned you into a nothing, and that doppelgänger would have taken your place here. That thing would be free in the world. It's evil. It would have been free to do evil to your family. That's all it does."

  She was listening. Her eyes were earnest when they met Marianne's. Red and full of grief. Fragile, clinging to all that she said. Marianne felt like she was holding something expensive, like an antique teapot.

  "You were told."

  "By someone who knows."

  "Someone who knows things like magic."

  "She knows all k
inds of things. She's so strong. She's a fighter. She hunts evil things. If I know anything at all it's just what she taught me."

  Ash wiped her nose with her sleeve and looked around the house. "It's my fault."

  "No."

  "It is. I could still…"

  "You can't bring them back," she said softly. Ash's shoulders slumped.

  "You'll stay with me?"

  "I...I can't. I have to go back to where I came from. I have to. I'm really sorry. I need you to help me."

  "What good am I, then?" Her words twisted bitterly.

  "It's just...I think that my Ash is here. And I need you to tell her that it isn't her fault, the same way she told me it wasn't mine. Like maybe we have a responsibility, in the end, because we know. But it isn't our fault. And she needs to know that. And she—you—know that you don't have to be afraid. We all need to know that."

  Ash covered her face with her hands, shuddering. Marianne looked around at what she suspected was quite a nice house for the place and time.

  "You're going to be fine, I know it. But you have to let go. We need to go back."

  She pulled Ash's hands away from her face. "You have to be okay, because you're going to save me."

  She kissed her lightly, Ash's eyes were wide after, but not unhappy, and she blushed.

  "Oh."

  Marianne smiled. "Yeah, I think so, too."

  The light flickered. She grabbed her knife. Her hand was shaking. Whatever was coming, she wasn't ready for it. She squeezed the blade until her knuckles were white.

  It was only the door, though. The muddy village was gone, replaced by the beige hallway.

  "Marianne."

  Ash looked down at herself, fingers exploring her hair and skin and clothes, touching it all like you'd touch an outfit you were trying on.

  "Are you...my Ash?"

  "Oh, it's been so long." She held out her hand. "Human."

  "It must feel really weird."

  Ash closed her eyes. "Yes. Yes, it does."

  "Better?"

  She was still, for a moment. "Just very different." Her warm brown eyes met Marianne's.

  "You saw. You know."

  "Sure." She shrugged. "At least...at least you were forced. You didn't just stupidly buy a line. None of it was your fault."