by Jared Shurin
Anyway, thanks for the drink. Should be heading back. I’ll call an Uber, thanks. It’s pretty close. Yeah, we all have apartments in a gated community. No it’s not fuckin’ Cocoon. I don’t need to be mentalist to know you were going to say that. You all do. It’s nice, a pool, tropical planting. Wi-Fi, gym, store. Golf buggies to get around when we want to visit. No, not a beachfront location; who can afford that? But you can smell the ocean in the morning, and on a quiet night, you can sometimes hear the waves.
You see, it’s the things you notice and the things you miss. Did you notice that I never explain why Jack was called Maltese Jack? Nor will I. Just recall what I said about the best tricks having a turn at the end. You see, I called this story “The Guile,” not “The Panache.” And I also said that the smart wizard makes it a long walk from the guile to the panache. The effect. The magic.
You see, Thulsa Doom may be the first black wizard, but he isn’t the only one.
Maybe check your watch, your ring, and your wallet, my friend.
The Moss Child
Lisa Fransson
And the stream spoke to Alva in gurgles and murmurs of the ice on the mountainside that melted in the morning sun: “Have a drink, child, and taste for yourself.”
Alva crouched by the stream, cupped her hands and bent her head to drink. As she did so, the ends of her hair dipped into the water and flowed with the current, in play with the iridescent fish hiding in her tresses.
“I wish, fish, that I could sit here and let you nestle in my hair always, away from prey,” said Alva.
“Rise,” said the stream, “and do not worry. They are a part of me, as I am a part of you.”
“As you are a part of me,” whispered Alva and rose, her hair dripping dark stripes down her white night-dress.
Moss cushioned each step with damp springiness, and the tufts of grass brushed her legs as she danced along the forest path towards the rising sun. Around her ankles a mist swirled in ever thickening and thinning veils, whispering of being teased from the soft earth and sliding up the golden rays of dawn, towards the sky: “Root your feet in the earth. Touch your fingers to the sky, child, and feel for yourself.”
Alva dug her feet deep into the moss and stretched her hands upwards until the sun’s rays warmed her fingertips. As she did so, earthworms took to curling up under the soles of her feet.
“I wish, worms, that I could stand here and let you burrow tunnels under my feet always, away from prey.”
“Dance,” said the mist “and do not worry. They are a part of me, as I am a part of you.”
“As you are a part of me,” whispered Alva and curtsied in front of a fir branch. She took the needled proposal in her hand and pirouetted beneath it, causing a fine rain of dew to fall upon her face.
Up there, on the top branch, perched the tree pipit. The bird raised its wings and took off in song flight, singing his proud poetry to the softening sky and the forest below: “Keep out, keep out. Don’t come near. My wife and I have built our home here.”
After some circuits, the tree pipit landed back on his branch: “Try it yourself, child. Take flight and sing through your heart.”
Alva stuck her toes in a crack on the lichen-covered rock and hauled herself up. At the very top of the rock she spread her arms wide and filled her lungs to sing.
“Child, child,” sang the pipit. “The old woman is afoot.”
“The old woman? Is she good or is she bad?”
“She’s of the forest, child. Nothing more, nothing less.”
Alva slid down from the rock and ran in amongst the trees, but her dress caught on the brambles, her hair tangled in a low-slung branch and a sharp stone cut the sole of her foot. She tugged at her dress until it ripped. She pulled at the strands of hair until they snapped. She limped on her foot until she reached the hollow tree – once lightning-struck, and deep enough to swallow her whole: hair, night dress and all.
For a while she heard only her own breath inside the trunk, but there came a rustle of feet wading through dead leaves. And next the smell of fungus and the mutterings of a voice like branches knocking together: “Why does she run so from me? She with the gift of eyes and ears. Why does she hide so, like the fish and the worms?”
Alva pressed her back against the crumbling shell of the tree, and worm-eaten wood pattered to the ground. Quiet, she thought. Be quiet tree. Be quiet heart. Be quiet breath.
First she saw the creeping of a shadow, darkening the ground outside her hiding place. Then the old woman herself shuffled into view and stopped just by the hollow. A scream began to form inside Alva’s belly, swelled in size as it rose. She covered her mouth with her hand, before it could leave her throat.
The woman’s nose was long and crooked and the skin on her face brown and craggy. On her head she wore a cap stitched from sycamore leaves in the autumn blooms of oranges and yellows. A carpet of green moss grew in waves from her scalp over her shoulders, down her back, all the way to the ground where it knitted together with the moss on the forest floor. Her coat was earthy brown and buttoned up with toadstools and in her skirt hundreds of fern fronds hooked their leaves together, furled and unfurled. On her feet she wore boots carved from solid rock. But when her eyes turned towards Alva inside the hollow, they were the colour of the sky reflected in the mountain stream. Alva even thought she could see the tiny fish swimming in the old woman’s irises, off to hide in Alva’s own hair.
“Why does she run so from me? She who was cradled by the moss. Why does she hide so? She who was fed on dew and raised by the rays of dawn,” muttered the old woman.
Alva closed her eyes and tried to merge with the tree trunk, while she waited for those gnarled wooden fingers to reach inside and curl around the top of her arm, to pull her out and bind her with cobweb-sticky spells, commanding her to follow, to follow, to follow the old woman home to her large oven, which Alva herself would be forced to fire up and feed. Until…
The woman knocked hard against the tree trunk, making Alva jump. “Why does she hide so? From me?”
“Old woman, if you’re going to take me, then take me.” Alva’s voice ripped out of her like a storm gust.
“Why would I take you? You are already a part of me,” said the old woman and she turned to leave.
“As you are a part of me,” whispered Alva and stepped out of the tree. The woman’s rock-clad feet dragged through the leaves, her hair grew from her head in an even stream, leaving a trail of moss through the forest. As Alva watched, the wind, for just a brief moment, shifted the old woman’s coat to the side to reveal a hollow back.
“As hollow as the tree,” whispered Alva, and for a moment she thought she saw her own face peeping out from inside the hollow of the woman’s back.
But the sun was fully above the horizon now and Alva knew she had dawdled. She ran along the forest path, past pipit’s fir tree, past the rock, past the fish in the stream, through the whispers of the forest coaxing her to stay. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” she promised them. Through the field and down the lane to her cottage.
“Alva? Look at you. Where have you been?” said her father as he turned from the pot of stew bubbling on the stove, the wooden spoon like kindling in his broad hands.
“To greet the morning. Here, let me do that, father,” said Alva and took the spoon off him.
“In the forest again.”
“It calls me, Father. I have to go,” said Alva as she stirred the pot.
“It calls you, does it?” He nodded to himself as he lifted the leather apron off its hook and muttered. “We shall see you married yet.”
“I’m fifteen.”
“Your mother was sixteen.”
“And where is my mother now?” said Alva as she threw the spoon into the stew and turned to her father.
Her father pulled the leather apron over his head and turned his back to Alva. She sighed and fastened the strings for him.
“The fire needs tending. We have horse shoes to beat,” he
said.
Alva left the stew to simmer while she ran upstairs, pulled her nightdress over her head and stepped into a shirt and a pair of breeches. She tied her hair up in a bun, high on her head, and pulled one of her father’s caps over her ears. Through her window in the gable, she saw the tree-tops swaying in the distance. She waved back. He would not see her married yet.
All day they beat metal. Alva fed the fire, fetched buckets of water from the well and tools from the stand. When her father needed a break, she wielded the tongs and the hammers. In the evening they sat in front of the hearth and shared a pot of stew that tasted of molten metal sprinkled with soot.
“Father,” she said over the stew, “I saw somebody in the forest this morning.”
He lowered his spoon to his bowl and raised his head to look at her. “Who?”
“A woman. Or perhaps she was more of a creature. Her back was hollow.”
Her father filled the spoon with stew and held it still above his bowl. “Was...” His eyes strayed to the flickering flames in the hearth. “…she very beautiful?”
“She was old, Father.”
He lowered the spoon back in his bowl without eating and let his arms hang by his side. “Yes, she said she would be.” A mere whisper in the quiet of the night.
“Do you know her, then?” asked Alva.
But her father did not reply. Instead he scraped his stool backwards and went to the aumbry that stood pushed up against the back wall, so dark and heavy that the cottage seemed to have sprouted up around it. He pulled open a top drawer, reached inside and rummaged, until Alva heard a click and the knock of something falling. Back by the hearth, he pulled his stool up close and held out a box covered in soft leather. “For you,” he said.
Alva took the box and opened it. Inside, on a bed of dry moss, lay a silver braid with a pendant shaped like a drop of dew. Her father lifted the silver braid out of the box and placed it over Alva’s hair. The pendant he arranged to drop over the middle of her forehead.
“From now on you will wear this, always,” he said
“Even in the forest?” asked Alva
“Even in the forest,” replied her father.
“What if I lose it?” asked Alva
“You will not lose it,” replied her father.
“It weighs heavy on my brow, Father, for such a small thing.”
“You will get used to carrying it.”
But the pendant felt as cold as the meltwater in the mountain stream against her skin, and the weight of the chain pressed her head towards the earth. “Why must I wear it?”
“It belonged to your mother.” And with those words her father rose and walked up the stairs. His footsteps, thudding heavily on each step, continued to creak on the ceiling as he shifted and shuffled around in his room.
Once he’d settled upstairs Alva tried to remove the braid, to put it back on the moss inside the box, slide it back in the drawer and tell her father tomorrow that it was not meant for her. But the braid would not budge. No matter how hard she pulled – the gem had set into the skull beneath her skin.
Alva awoke to the sound of the pre-dawn hour pulsing inside her veins, telling her the birds would wake, the flowers would open and the dew would form on the spiders’ webs as the sun would rise. She swung her legs over the side of her cot, stood up in her nightdress and nearly lost her footing. Only when the throbbing inside her head grew so strong that she had to sit back down on the bed, did she remember the weight that her father had placed upon her. She pressed her hands hard against her temples where the braid dipped into a V-shape, so that the drop sat encased in the bone between her eyebrows. Like some horn. As she touched the drop, a frost spread through her bones and she sat frozen on the edge of her cot, breathing clouds of mist into the silence. The mist quickly gathered into snow clouds above her hair, and the tears she shed formed icicles on the tips of her eyelashes. “Father, what have you done to me?” she whispered through lips too stiff to shape the words. She closed her eyes and saw herself, yesterday, dancing through the trees in the sunlight. She thought of the old woman that had frightened her so. Help me! she thought.
A fox’s smile that she did not recognise played for an instant on her father’s lips when he came in to fetch her. “Come, let us seat you in front of the hearth, child.” He gathered her shirt, breeches and cap and carried her downstairs to the fire where he fed her porridge from a spoon. The porridge dribbled through her icy lips, but he scraped the spillage up and fed it to her again. “Poor child,” he said. “But you will see that it is for the best.”
The porridge did not thaw her limbs enough to dress without help, but when leaning heavily on her father’s arm she was able to hobble out to the forge. This morning, he stoked the fire while she watched. Closer and closer she moved, until the snow-flakes crowning her hair thawed and the icicles on her eye-lashes dripped out of existence. She furled and unfurled her fingers, like the fern fronds of the forest, like the fern fronds on the old woman’s skirt.
“Who was she, Father?”
“Don’t let Metsa worry you. You’re safe with me.”
“I don’t feel safe with you, Father,” she whispered letting the bellow-burn of the fire swallow her words.
“You just stay in the forge. We’ll make a blacksmith out of you yet.”
“But I shall have to sleep by the forge in order not to freeze.”
“So you shall, child. So you shall.”
Alva looked to her hands: to never stroke moss, to never cup the water in the stream, to never spread her arms wide to fly from the rock, to never be invited to dance with the fir tree, to always freeze, even under the rays of the sun.
“But I might as well die.” This time her father heard the words she spoke. He put his tools aside, squatted down beside her and gently stroked her cheek.
“You are my heart, child. I could not think to lose you.”
“Look at me, Father. Have you not already lost me?”
Her father frowned, stood up and began to hammer the blade of a scythe glowing orange in the fire, with clang after clang after clang, swinging his arm in a wide circle behind him and up and over. Sweat dripped from his forehead and he bit his lips until they bled. Only after he’d finished the blade did he turn to her again. “You spoke to her.”
“Not much, Father. I was frightened of her.”
“But then why do you speak such words?”
“What words, Father?”
“Asking if you are not already lost to me.”
“Because I am.”
“Enough!” He turned, with the hammer held high as if to strike her, his teeth bared in his soot-blackened face; wild orange flames played in his eyes. But as Alva crawled backwards away from him, the fear of death in her eyes, he dropped the hammer, crouched next to her again and took her hand gently into his, stroking her fingers. “Beautiful child. Have I not been kind to you?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Have I not let you roam free as the wind in the trees?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Then why did you wish yourself away from me?”
“I didn’t, Father.”
“You didn’t?” He frowned and slowly placed his finger on the crystal drop fused onto her bone and traced the braid to the place on her temple where it emerged into her hair.
“No, I didn’t.”
“You didn’t.” Her father gave the braid a gentle tug, causing a shiver to run through her. “Perhaps, I acted rashly?” he said.
“Perhaps you did, Father.”
“At least I’ll see you married now.”
“But how can I marry if I can’t leave the forge?”
“Ice forged with fire,” he said as he picked the hammer off the floor and stuck another blade into the flames.
Alva, shivered and huddled closer, closer, closer to the fire. When the flames licked her skin, she did not burn. This forge, her prison. “Help me!” she whispered into the flames.
The next mor
ning she awoke on her mat by the fire only when the first rays of sunlight stroked her cheek. The brightness around her, the world outside wide awake before her. I have lost, she thought, the darkness before dawn. She took a step towards the forest outside and felt her heart freeze and shatter like glass inside her chest. On the bench next to her, on a bed of brown leather, glinted the blades of the finished tools. She picked up the deer hunter’s skinning knife.
By the time her father brought the tub of heated water for her to wash in, she could no longer see for the blood gushing into her eyes, yet she kept hacking the point of the knife against the skin and bone surrounding the pendant. He grabbed her wrist and twisted it until the knife dropped out of her hand. He tied her hands behind her back with leather string from his pocket, so that he could clean the wound without her clawing at his eyes. She spat in his face. He flinched, but left the saliva to drip from his chin rather than let go of her. She screamed. He said nothing. From the leather bag on the wall he took a handful of moss, which he placed around the clean wound. Soothing, calming, warming moss, moss, moss. She fell asleep to the rhythmic clank of her father beating the blade of the skinning knife into a formless lump.
In her dream the moss on the wound knitted with her skin and grew until she was shielded inside a soft blanket. The moss held her, cradled her and lulled her with the gurgles of the stream, the whispers of the wind and the song of the tree pipit. Soothing, calming, warming moss, moss, moss told her stories of all the dawns since the birth of the sun, of being and not being, of growing old and growing young and growing old again, from moss to earth, to earth to moss, to moss to earth... “Help me!” she whispered from inside her blanket of lullabies. But, the moss receded, taking its stories with it, and all that remained was the flight song of the tree pipit. Alva opened her eyes, and there in the sky, just visible through the door of the forge, the little bird circled and dipped, rose and circled, chirping, just like a bird.
“I no longer understand you, pipit,” she said as she raised herself up on her elbows. A steel cuff fettered her foot now. Attached to the cuff was a chain long enough for her to walk between the fire and the open door, but the bench of tools had been moved out of reach. She ought to have aimed the knife at the hollow of her heart.