Steel Sirens

by Maxx Whittaker

There is a place with everything I need…

  The last place I want to go right now.

  Light from a half-moon illuminates bare hints of the village and obscures the worst damage. It’s enough that if I ignore debris in the lanes and thick smoke, I can almost imagine it’s a normal night. I’m walking back from a late kill. Someone just forgot to light the lamps.

  Feeling in the past and all the while weighed down by loss, I can’t help but meet ghosts on my way through the village.

  Hul and Sila’s cottage. The most complicated dwelling in Braemar, for me, anyway. I resented Hul for being one of the last people to see my parents’ bodies, and for not letting me come when their remains were found.

  I resented Sila for mothering us. She’d changed my bandages and cleaned the infection and brought me dinner every evening. I hardly looked at her. Did I even say thank you?

  And I loved them both for their patience and kindness. How many nights did Sila sit up until birdsong, holding a sobbing Keldan? Did Hul ever grow sick of my sullen lagging behind him in the Wood, pretending he had nothing to teach me about being a ranger?

  Foolish teenage pride, anger with the gods. And myself.

  Briet was the only one of us who welcomed the Fletchers’ care and look how she turned out...capable and confident.

  I was a jackass.

  Guilt coils in my chest. I never apologized, but if I find them again, I damn well will.

  High Street rolls down a slope, embracing the first long copse beyond the village proper. This line of trees marks Church lands.

  Slate glints under my torch, the cloister garden arch. I run my hand up the cold, soot-covered stones. Tanna kissed me here in the evening shadows while her mother called supper, and I stood stiff and sure Tanna’s father would appear any second, pitchfork in hand. She kissed me. Hands on my face like she was holding a melon, her face thrust out like a goose’s. She was my first kiss, so all of that was splendid in my book.

  My friend Hamish used to sneer that Tanna wasn’t the prettiest girl in Braemar. Probably why, up until the day his family moved to the Midlands, Hamish had never kissed a girl.

  I press against the gate, surprised to find it unlocked. I could go in.

  Hamish was right, maybe. Tanna bore a strong resemblance to her thin-bodied, oval-faced, twin brother. But she had the most beautiful long-fingered hands, and a pair of striking blue eyes. She walked the way I imagined back then that a fine lady or a courtesan might walk, a graceful strut. Completely unaware of her blossoming figure. To me she was the prettiest girl in Braemar.

  There’s no reason to go inside the cloister yard. I step away from the arch. The gate screams slowly on a gust of night wind and I grab it shut.

  Tanna’s grave lies in a part of the churchyard beyond the garden. We burned the bodies of everyone who caught the fever that spring, so she isn’t really buried here. I’ve never visited the grave.

  High Road narrows beyond the church. I follow its ruts to a Y and take the eastern branch before it rises again into the foothills.

  Saplings bend out from the Fortingall in a low canopy over the lane. Or they form a barricade. Tonight, they drag at my clothes and split my torchlight into dim fragments.

  This is the forgotten end of Braemar, left behind when life and the village moved south a decade ago toward the river and better trade. I think the only reason this road is still passable is my slipping through on rough nights.

  The first clearing east of the lane is a tangle of deadfall and ivy. I couldn’t see the cottage if it was daylight and there’s no chance of catching a glimpse tonight, not even under the half-moon. But I know exactly how the cottage looks, each detail of the interior. Each knot in the wood.

  I helped build the cottage with Blánaid.

  Once, she’d shared a house in the village with her hard-faced husband Varn, a sea fisher. He’d fished the harbors a hundred miles west. He rarely came home to Braemar between the seasons, and Blánaid never troubled herself to move west. That said everything to me about their wedded state.

  It’s too dark but I look up the drive anyway and remember a lavender bush and white lilacs at the garden gate. My feet ache to turn and follow the memory.

  My blood heats, fueled by a bellows in my chest.

  Blánaid hired me for my knowledge of the forest, to help her choose the best trees, fell them and drag them back to her stead.

  In those days a carpenter would’ve had a better idea about timber than I did. For that matter, a tree-climbing child probably would. Any village man could have done the hauling. But not many village men were newly eighteen. How many of them were as naive? My laugh hangs where I stand under the sapling canopy.

  Blánaid must have been near forty, but I didn’t know to care about a woman’s age then. In charge of myself from thirteen, I didn’t know to fret over childbearing or henpecking. Blánaid was world-wise and she knew bawdy jokes. She didn’t play games or put on the snotty airs of a younger girl. She was so beautiful, but it took me years to realize that what attracted me most was her confidence.

  Her hazel eyes danced in the sunlight as we sweated and strained to drag a log back that afternoon. I couldn’t take my eyes from the swell of her breasts as she lifted and heaved. Did she know? Of course. She watched me watching, and that’s why she chose that day: our thoughts were the same.

  She brought a canteen and we sat on a blanket in the shade of her half-finished cottage.

  It’s almost too hot for anything. I remember these words because of the way Blánaid turned almost into a low, husky drawl, and because she was raising her shirt when she said it.

  I didn’t have to do anything. She ruined me, but I didn’t know it for a long time. It took a few tongue lashings from disappointed village girls.

  Blánaid loved that a bumpy cart ride or a suggestive crease in a tree trunk got me hard.

  We spent the summer on her blanket and, come autumn, in her bed in the cottage we’d built together. Winter, shut up inside naked before the hearth, felt in my mind like being married.

  But it wasn’t a marriage. Blánaid had enough husband and she didn’t want to belong to him, let alone a second man. Hul and Sila Fletcher were tired of raising my family without my help. It was time to grow up.

  Blánaid agreed, and that hurt more than any insult. I saw her in the village, after, and we smiled and spoke but nothing more. In the summer she suddenly asked Goodwife Ailis to tend her garden and watch the cottage. How long? A month or two at least.

  And that was it. Blánaid never came back.

  In the winter Thom held a meeting of the aldermen to decide what should be done with the cottage and land. Who would tell Varn of her death? Who would tell Varn about the–

  Goodwife Lissum shushed him down.

  Death, my mind shouted. Death? And should Varn know about the what?

  My question was answered in an exchange of uneasy glances between goodwives and aldermen, and nothing more.

  I swear to the gods, I really didn’t know. It took me years to understand and more years to understand I was responsible, at least a little.

  My torch sputters, impatient like a clearing throat.

  I shouldn’t have stopped here. I never stop here anymore, and tonight the loss is magnified – by five-hundred and eight souls to be exact.

  Maybe I should remember. I ponder this as I pick my way deeper into the old village lands. That village and that life exist only in memory now, the good and the awful together.

  Wind whispers through the boughs and it sounds exactly like Briet warning me the outside world will flood Braemar eventually.

  I pick up my pace, determined to fortify against it.

  ***

  Unlike the village cottages, this one doesn’t smolder. No smoke rises from its charred timbers. But I see it and smell it just the same.

  This house burned long ago, but for me, it’s always burning.

  Our front step is all that stands unscathed. It’s solid as ever un
der my boot, three wide stone slabs my father claimed came from temple ruins deep in the Wood. No one else in the village has ever heard this. I think it’s just a story he told to explain eroded shapes on the stones, some fun for us children.

  A few timbers, weathered but without char, tower upward. Our door frame, crowned by a beautiful carving of a stag, its head raised in patient vigilance.

  My mother spent a month on it, with the carving knife my father had given her on their anniversary. She persisted in her design even when Father Jorn criticized it as pagan.

  The stag was the soul my parents gave to the house where they’d bear children and spend what remained of their lives. Somewhere along the way, it had become tradition for us to reach up and rest fingers on his face, polishing it over years.

  I caress his face and offer a prayer to Ora and duck inside. For years, I couldn’t come here, couldn’t even of it. Somewhere it got easier. I could sit inside the tumbled walls and be alone, unlooked for. I didn’t intend to form a stash here. It started so I would have things when I came to read, a bite to eat or a canteen. Arrowheads and bow string came in handy when I hunted the northern Wood. A spare shirt and socks, and a blanket for rain or snowstorms.

  I stab my torch into rubble studded dirt and lift a curtain of ivy that tumbles from our old barn wall. The tool chest is weathered enough to be mistaken for old slats.

  There are a few surprises inside, healing herbs and a wax pouch of walnuts. I toss them into a wadded canvas pack with the other necessities. Ancient biscuits, old cheese and other ‘last resorts’ I leave behind; there’s better food in Briet’s kitchen.

  I squeeze the pack and consider my blanket. I’m so bloody tired suddenly. Weary, not in my body but in my heart.

  First day, I hear Hull say on our sheep hunt years ago. If you’re tired now, you’ll be dead by day three.

  Time to head back.

  Boards creak under my boots. The boards always creak; this place is burned out and weather worn. This is exactly why I should worry about the sound, but I don’t – not until I’m momentarily weightless.

  Jagged planks scrape my hips and arms. My pack lands above and the torch clubs my head before it lands beside me in the undercroft.

  Debris slams the dirt at my feet, a hair from breaking ankles and pinning legs. Its impact knocks a plume of dust and grit into my eyes.

  I roll my wrists. There’s a twinge in my right thumb but nothing more. Well, some bloody frustration and humiliation. This could be worse, but I swear, getting to my knees, to stop saying so.

  Where’s my torch? Raking it close, I wipe my eyes and struggle to a crouch.

  “No…” A small thing, but the day has gotten worse and without my help. The debris that nearly got my legs is one of our front steps. It lays in the undercroft, our door beam skewered through the hole it’s made.

  I guess it was bound to happen someday, but today? Of all days?

  I get to my feet. The angle of my torch changes. I can’t say what it is that catches my eye; maybe the simplest detail of all: Our steps make a box. They’re not just treads arranged one above the other. The ones closest to the house form a kind of stone casket. A space someone could easily access from here in the undercroft. It’s the facing stone that’s fallen free, one side revealing a low compartment not much longer than my arm.

  What was the point? Even my mother the artist was careful about excess. We had enough but we weren’t exactly wealthy. My mind flies to ridiculous explanations; hidden coins, hidden bones.

  I lean close, breath checked.

  The cask is empty.

  “Strange.” I lower my torch to turn away. A mystery to keep my mind busy in the days ahead.

  Light glints on something, a dull flash through dust and grit.

  I lean close and laugh. It comes from deep inside, from my gut and my mind which isn’t quite on four legs anymore.

  A sword. Black blade cut by a channel of silver. It weighs nothing in my palm, though it should. I don’t really think about any of this, or why it’s here in my burned-out house.

  I laugh again. What the hell am I supposed to do with a sword?

  “Couldn’t send me a divine bow or even a godsdamn spear?” Maybe now isn’t the time to mock the All-Father, or any gods for that matter.

  “Come on, sword. Come with me back to the smoldering ruins of my village! Then Braemar will be populated by two useless things.”

  ***

  I promise myself I won’t think about the sword on my walk back, a kind of spite to whoever set it in my path. And then find I can hardly think of anything else. Its blade feels warm through the fabric at my back, like the hand of someone come up behind me, waiting to be acknowledged.

  Why was it in our home? I know who put it there; my father built those steps. My parents made that house with their own hands.

  It’s moonset. The last of its light filters through bony autumn boughs. I’ve walked the High Road in silver darkness and even this makes me think of the sword. It also makes me think of the glove tucked into my pack. Neither of them feel like part of these lands.

  Neither were my parents, according to the parish register.

  Tanna’s brother Til discovered this at some point and spent a summer harassing me about it. Our skin was a little darker, and when my father drank or my mother sang there was hints of low, strong vowels. But I didn’t care where we were from; in all the ways that mattered to a nine-year-old we belonged to Braemar. My parents had lived here almost a decade before I was born. If I ever had wondered, Til’s jackassery made me less inclined than ever to ask about our origins.

  “Dammit.”

  Body aching, I stop and sit on a grassy knob above the church. I pull the blade and squint.

  It must be old, but it’s razor sharp. The hilt is smooth and long, the grain so intricate I can’t imagine it being created by hand. And the metal; is it metal or onyx? It seems too delicate to be either. Its silver channel drinks up waning moonlight, so bright I have to shade my eyes.

  I could almost believe it’s a living thing.

  I am.

  I toss the sword.

  It’s faint, an echo of an echo. More in my head than in my ears.

  What in the hells?

  I’m not crazy, not yet. I know what I heard...

  Magic. It must be magic.

  I hold a breath and wait...for more words, for something to happen.

  “Dolibix vinaquirem suh moipar tangus!” I read this in a Church book once, a book on witches.

  Nothing.

  “Maldifidii shirak?” I add hopefully, although I’m fairly sure this was the scribe’s name and not part of the alleged incantation.

  Nothing.

  “Ah, sod it all.” I have to get the reins on my imagination. There’s no magic and no conspiracy. I tuck the sword away again.

  As I stow it, a wave of something like emotion radiates against my back. Frustration? Annoyance?

  “Oh no,” I mutter into the fading night. “I’m done. All done.” This is crazy.

  I have real things to worry about...Like how many mercs it took to round up five hundred people. And how they did it and why. Why? My temples pound. I need the governor and I need his men.

  Falling back into crisp bronze grass, I stare up at receding stars. I wonder if Briet and Keldan are watching them, and if they’re all right. Varin, tell them...Tell them I’m coming.

  Cold seeps into my clothes, making the sword’s warm band more distinct. I could take out my blanket, but the sky has lightened from midnight to pewter.

  Better to get up and get moving. I want to find everything I can before MacTallum gets here. Right now, I don’t have any answers, not how they rounded everyone up and disappeared so fast.

  I pass through the orchards. Outside the west gate sits a basket of apples, forgotten, ladder overturned across it. It’s probably the last bushel of the season; after wassail we stop picking and focus on winter preparations.

  Wassail. />
  I stop, shrouded in an odor of smoke. Whidby ciderers came for the apples yesterday. Usually a man and his two boys, a mill hand; just enough help to load and drive the wagons. Someone from Whidby would have come if he didn’t return. I need to ask him what he saw. If anything was off.

  Whidby is fifty miles. More than half a day by foot, because I don’t have any damn horses.

  Frustrated, I kick a discarded tankard as I pass inside the gates. It sloshes.

  I have no idea what makes me pick it up. I raise it to my nose.

  Apple, and wild strawberry from a grove at the Upper Swell, the only place they grow for miles and miles. It’s Thom’s secret ingredient, his scheme to make Braemar a wealthy village. Last year’s cider and ale was supposed to be delivered yesterday.

  Jorgan brings a caravan. Long-league merchants with guards. They load up a hundred miles south with goods for a whole list of towns and villages.

  A white film clings to the tankard’s sides. I don’t have to taste it to know.

  Mountain poppy.

  Any midwife or traveling surgeon worth their salt carries the tincture. Not as mind-numbing as red poppy saved for bone-setting, but for a tooth extraction or some stitches mountain poppy takes off the edge. I recognize the oily skim from a mishap sharpening arrowheads.

  “Wassail,” I spit, throwing down the tankard. Everyone was in the market square or within one lane of the High Street. It was wassail; everyone except me was in one place. And they all had a celebratory sip of the wild strawberry.

  “How would anyone know...” I look across the broken square for any sign of the barrels. The mercs couldn’t know which cask we’d open first; mountain poppy was in all of them.

  Thom would have wanted to do the honors from his place under the marquee. I pick my way through the rubble, shooing up crows and clouds of ash. Yesterday this was awful, garish; today the ruin seems sinister.

  Barrel staves and warped bands litter cobblestones near the bakery. One butt lays almost where I found Thom. Its top half is mostly burned away but there’s standing ale in the bottom.

  Flakes of ash and white film.

  Those sons of bitches.