Writers of the Future: 29

by L. Ron Hubbard

  An image of a dead cat and a weeping, disheveled girl came to her mind, unbidden. It frightened her, and she vehemently shooed it away.

  Back at the inn, Melanie didn’t want to wake her mother, so they went to Leiwood’s room instead. “Mortar, pestle,” she demanded, snapping her fingers at him. Obediently, he drew the tools from one of the bags. While she worked, he set out the rest of the gear: a small burner, some test tubes, a beaker, and the syringe.

  Into the crucible went sulfur, calcium, and dried reishi mushrooms. She topped it off with a liquid catalyst that glowed an eerie, subtle green. “It has to rest for a day,” she declared after thoroughly mixing the substances. “This cure demands time.”

  Leiwood sat on his bed, giving her a sideways look. He’d been staring at her strangely since they’d gone out to get the ingredients. It worried her. Annoyed her. Disturbed her.

  Just like his father, she thought harshly. Brutal man…killed my daughter’s cat.

  But that couldn’t be right. She wasn’t a mother.

  Confused, she wandered over to the fireplace, and looked deep into the red coals. “They say I’m a great healer.”

  Leiwood’s answer came tentatively. “Master Belladino was, yes.”

  “I could cure any ailment. Save the dead from dying.”

  “Melanie?”

  My unfinished work. The thoughts didn’t seem her own. I died before I could finish my work. “But there was one thing I couldn’t figure out how to balance. One illness I couldn’t find a cure for.” Cat. Dead cat.

  “You mean August Belladino. There was something he couldn’t cure?”

  The cat. Then he… Then he… She…

  “Cruelty.” She picked up the iron poker and thrust it into the hearth. “It resides deep, somewhere most medicine can’t reach. And I never could figure it out.” She whirled around. Leiwood’s eyes were wide, and sad. His expression made her angry. “Did you know that a lot of sickness stays in the family? That it passes from parent to child?”

  “Melanie…” There was a warning in his voice.

  She raised the poker, pointing it at him. There he was; she could see Victor Leiwood hiding under that shocked expression. Sick man. “Do you know what he did to her?” she screeched.

  Leiwood was on his feet, arms out, imploring. “What? Who?”

  “My daughter!” Melanie ran at him, swinging and thrusting the iron. Claw-like fingers sought to curl around his collar and draw him in. She wanted to impale him, to open him up. “Let me see it!” she shouted. “Where is it? Where does the abuse live? Down in your belly? In your spine? Show me, Victor!”

  “Melanie!” he said. “It’s not you. Fight the mask. Fight it! I didn’t do it.” He launched pillows and oil lamps and a table in her path—anything to stop her. “I’m not my father. I’m not.”

  Wrath blurring her vision, she plunged the poker forward, barely missed Leiwood, and embedded the point in a plush chair.

  This isn’t right, she realized backing away. Leiwood has done nothing but help me. He’s a good man. But an image of his father flashed before her eyes, and the hatred returned with a vengeance. She fought it, trying to keep separate from the feelings. “Leiwood,” she said, distress pervading her voice.

  “Melanie? Take off the mask!”

  She curled her fingers around the edges and pulled with all her strength. The mask wouldn’t budge. It had fused to her face, holding on like a leech. “It won’t— It—”

  ILLUSTRATION BY TIFFANY ENGLAND

  In the next instant she was flying after him again. Deep, rumbling accusations spewed from her mouth. She didn’t even sound like herself.

  But now there was a duality within her. There was Master Belladino, enraged, hell-bent on tearing Leiwood apart—and Melanie, who wouldn’t hurt a thing. Especially not someone who had been so good to her.

  “Help me!” she cried. And in her next breath, “You filth.”

  Melanie wrestled with herself, desperate to escape the essence that possessed her body. “The fire!” she yelled, and moved in its direction. But she tripped on her own feet and fell short.

  “What are you doing?” He didn’t flee, but he kept away.

  “Burn it,” she urged. “Burn!” Inch by wavering inch, she crawled across the floor toward the fireplace. Melanie urged him to hurry, and Belladino damned him the whole way. She felt sick, insane. She wasn’t worried about the flames—about burning skin. She just wanted to be alone again.

  Leiwood rushed forward, grasped the mask, and pulled. It didn’t come loose. Melanie grabbed his wrists and growled.

  “I can’t get it off,” he said, defeated, searching her eyes—half hidden behind the wood—for another idea.

  Melanie pleaded, “Put it in the fire anyway.”

  Melanie’s words said do it, but her body writhed, desperate to escape. “No,” Leiwood said, “you’ll— There’s got to be something else.” But the memory of his father’s mask—then the hatchet, which Leiwood had swung toward his own face—his own brush with death… Perhaps fire was the only answer.

  But then he thought of plunging her face into the coals. It made him sick, and he knew he couldn’t do it.

  Leiwood backed away, leaving Melanie to grapple with herself. She clawed at the neck of her blouse, tore at her hair. At one moment she looked like she was strung out on an invisible rack, her spine pulled taut, then it snapped loose again like a band of rubber.

  Trying to think fast, he spun toward the heap of apothecary items. With shaking hands, he picked up each substance and read label after label. At a loss, he thumbed the syringe, then the burner. None of the items provided an answer.

  He heard a scraping of wood on wood and looked up. Melanie was dragging herself toward the fire once more, face down, mask grating against the floor. She didn’t look as if she could stand much more.

  “Wait!” he shouted, bounding over to her. Heart pounding, he grasped one ankle, stopping her progress toward ruin. “Fight it. Give me a little time, I’ll think of a better way.”

  “Son of grime,” she raged, reaching forward and grasping the hearth’s hot grate. The rancid scent of charring human skin wafted into Leiwood’s face.

  With a hefty yank he hauled her in reverse, simultaneously scanning the room for something to restrain her. The only things that seemed reasonable were the drape cords.

  The cords were tied neatly around wrought-iron window hooks. He struggled with the knots—distress made him clumsy. He bumped the nightstand that held a lamp and his pocketbook and they tumbled to the ground.

  His purse burst open, and bottles of time went bouncing across the room.

  Stunned, he watched one roll to the foot of the table. His gaze went back to the apothecary items. An idea struck him.

  Scooping up one of the time vials—a fiver—he leapt over Melanie’s twisted form, then skidded to a halt next to the medicines. In the next instant the syringe was in his hand, poised above the cork that kept the time contained.

  It was illegal—and nearly impossible—to release time without a Tax Collector present. The time was kept in by enchantment, and only things designed to contain enchantment could break the magic seal.

  He should have flashed on the needle before—he’d only seen one other like it. Leiwood remembered the needle from when he was young. From when they’d made him pay the tax.

  It was special, and rare, something you had to have a license to obtain. Probably Belladino had such a license, so Melanie hadn’t thought twice about taking it from the apothecary.

  What would happen when the time was let go? He’d never heard of anyone setting it free before. All he knew was that he needed some—more than what he had. Time to think before Melanie threw herself into the flames.

  He jammed the needle deep into the spongy cork and pulled back on the plunger. As the ba
rrel filled with a swirling pink and turquoise essence, the bottle cracked. Once empty, it turned to dust.

  Without another thought Leiwood pointed the needle in Melanie’s direction and shot time into the air.

  Everything stopped. There was a stillness to the room, like on a winter’s morning after a heavy snow. When he noticed even his breathing had stopped, he started to panic, but quickly focused.

  He was seeing double—as if two stained-glass images were superimposed. But not quite, because the images weren’t identical.

  There were new things in the room—wispy, ethereal things, the same color as the essence of time. There was a new plant in one corner, a handprint on the windowpane, and smoke—as from a pipe—over the bed.

  Melanie was frozen, her rigid, burnt fingers outstretched for the grate once more. He was grateful that the mask hid her expression, because surrounding her head was a creature. It was something between an amorphous blob and a tentacled sea monster. The bulbous body grew out of the center of the mask, and the translucent arms reached out behind her, like streamers caught in a high wind.

  He wanted to lunge at it, but wasn’t sure if that was the right thing to do.

  What were they, these newly revealed things? They couldn’t be physical objects; he’d stood right where the new plant sat.

  Perhaps they were things that existed in time only, separate from space.

  A faint pulsing drew his attention to the ceiling. Splayed across it were symbols, constantly shifting. They weren’t words, or astrological signs. The speed at which they changed reminded him of a countdown.

  There had been five minutes in the bottle—that was all the time he had to decide what to do.

  He moved to put the syringe down, but caught sight of what it had become. The superimposed version of the needle was bigger—almost like a dagger. And the two metal circles of the finger grip now extended up and over his hand to his wrist in a partial gauntlet. Things that looked like spiny vines wound up his arm from there, all the way to his shoulder, where a protective plate with moving—living?—parts rested.

  The syringe let him interact with time without being caught in it, like Melanie was. It was the key.

  And the cure.

  Leiwood ran at her. Diving forward he plunged the dagger-needle between the frog’s eyes—Melanie’s eyes—and pulled on the plunger. A small drop of blood entered the barrel with a faint fog of time. He’d pushed too deep, failing to consider the softness of the balsa. Lightly, he scaled back, pulling the needle out just a tad.

  When he pulled on the plunger again, the creature on the mask suddenly moved. Its tentacles clamped down around Melanie and its body quivered. The bulbous portion shimmered and resolved into an ugly caricature of a human face—Belladino’s face, tainted and twisted with hate. It bit and howled at Leiwood.

  “I’m sorry, I—” But there was no use in Leiwood apologizing to a half-formed time-specter of a man for things that he had never done.

  He struggled with the creature, sucking at it, more desperate to separate it from Melanie than before. His arm shook as he applied force to the plunger. Soon the thing began to shrink, absorbed into the mask and then drawn up the needle and into the barrel.

  The last airy bit of the creature caught, Leiwood withdrew the needle and backed away, examining the syringe. The mass inside swirled like an angry, bottled storm.

  One moment Melanie had been fighting the torturous rift in her mind, struggling to plunge herself into the fire. And the next she was in Leiwood’s lap, his arms wrapped tightly around her, holding her close. The mask no longer covered her face.

  “It’s gone,” she said, amazed. Leiwood smiled a sad, scared smile, and her heart dropped out of her stomach. “I’m sorry.” She felt like slime. What had she done? “I couldn’t—I—”

  He rocked her back and forth. “Shh. It’s all right.”

  With his thumb he wiped away a drop of blood from her forehead. How had that gotten there? She stared at the smear for a long moment. Did I black out?

  There was a quick, sharp tap on her forehead, and then another. He was crying. “I didn’t know,” he said. “My mother took me away when I was ten. I didn’t come back until he was gone. He hurt a lot of people, but Master Belladino’s daughter… I didn’t know.” His arms suddenly tensed around Melanie. “And your mother. Your poor mother.”

  Melanie began to cry herself, and the tears burned as though they were molten. The idea that something had happened and she couldn’t remember it was frightening, but the thought of her mother sent her over the edge. The solution in the crucible had to cure, but then what? The next steps had been lost with the—

  But no. She thought hard, and found she knew the process. And it was not fading; it was strong and clear in her mind.

  How—?

  Yes, there were more formulas in her memory, more healing potions and techniques. She was almost sure she knew them all. But the anger and hatred had fluttered away. All that was left was knowledge.

  “I can still save her,” she whispered. “But, why do I still know how?”

  “Perhaps when I pricked you…” he started, then took a shaky breath. “I took the poison out, but maybe I locked some things in, too.”

  She didn’t understand, but the joy at realizing her mother could be saved shoved the curiosity aside. “She’ll be all right. Leiwood—” He looked into her eyes. “I’m sorry I didn’t resist hard enough. I should have kept him back. There was more I should have done.”

  “No,” he smiled. “It’s not your fault. It was Belladino’s mask.”

  They sat locked in silence for a long while. Melanie let relief, and sadness, and terror, and calm, and happiness flood through her freely.

  Eventually Leiwood helped her stand. “We need to get you to a healer.” He gazed mournfully at her ruined hand. She hadn’t even noticed it.

  “I can do it myself,” she said firmly. “I know how.” She smiled, and curled the blackened fingers despite the pain. “I know how.” She had a gift now—a master healer’s knowledge and all the long years of life to improve upon it. She’d always been a helper, devoting her life to her ailing parents. But they hadn’t sucked away her time—they’d enriched it. “And I know what to do with my life. I can share Master Belladino’s genius with the world. Just the brilliance. Hopefully his loathing is gone forever.”

  Leiwood glanced over to the syringe on the floor, but didn’t say anything.

  She hugged him close. “I’ll make sure people don’t have to waste their lives being sick.”

  He nodded. “Because real time is worth more than bottled time.”

  Melanie’s heart fluttered. “Life is always worth more when it’s lived.”

  Read

  L. Ron Hubbard Presents

  Writers of the Future Volume 31

  Get your copy here.

  The Year in the Contests

  Each year, our past writers, illustrators and judges make major accomplishments. In 2012, this trend continued. We had three Writers of the Future alumni nominated for World Fantasy Awards: Ken Liu (WotF 19), Tim Powers (WotF judge), and Karen Joy Fowler (WotF 1). Ken Liu won the short story category with “The Paper Menagerie,” while Tim Powers won the collection category with his The Bible Repairman and Other Stories.

  For the Hugo Awards, Ken Liu won Best Short Story with “The Paper Menagerie,” and Jim C. Hines (WotF 15) won the award of Best Fan Writer. Ken Liu and Carolyn Ives Gilman (WotF 3) were also nominated for Best Novella, Brad R. Torgersen (WotF 26) was nominated for Best Novelette and Mike Resnick (WotF judge) was nominated for Best Short Story. Bob Eggleton and Stephan Martiniere (IotF judges) were both nominated for Best Professional Artist.

  With the Nebula Awards, we had five nominees: Carolyn Ives Gilman and Ken Liu for Best Novella; Brad R. Torgersen for Best Novelette; and for Best Short Story, Tom
Crosshill (WotF 26) and Aliette de Bodard (WotF 23). Ken Liu won in his category with “The Paper Menagerie.”

  Brad R. Torgersen was nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and Nnedi Okorafor (WotF 18 and Contest judge) was nominated for the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy Book.

  David Farland (WotF 3 and Coordinating Judge) won seven awards this past year for his novel Nightingale, including the International Book Award for Best Young Adult Novel of the Year, and the Hollywood Book Festival Award for Best Book of the Year.

  Omar Rayyan (IotF 8) won the Chesley Award for Best Color Work and Shaun Tan (IotF 8 and Contest judge) won the Locus Best Artist Award.

  Also this past year, several past illustrator winners were featured in Spectrum, the Year’s Best Fantasy Illustrations. These included Fiona Meng (WotF 28), Omar Rayyan, Shaun Tan and IotF judges Bob Eggleton, Stephen Hickman and Stephan Martiniere.

  In 2012, 193 short stories and over a dozen novels were published by Writers of the Future winners. Heather McDougal (WotF 25) released her first published novel Songs for a Machine Age in November.

  Tom Doyle (WotF 28) sold his novel American Craftsmen, the first in a series featuring ancient American magic and espionage, to Tor in a major auction. A collection of his short fiction, The Wizard of Macatawa and Other Stories, also sold.

  Each year, the contest administration undergoes changes and growth. In 2012, Leo Dillon, one of our dear illustrator judges, passed away. Leo had been illustrating for over fifty years, with his work gracing many children’s books and publications, and had served as a judge for fourteen of them, inspiring countless new artists.

  K.D. Wentworth, who acted as Coordinating Judge for the writing contest and editor of the anthology, also passed away. K.D. had won the contest in 1988, and she served as a judge since 2000. She was a prolific short story writer, novelist and educator, and was beloved by all of the writers whom she taught during her twelve years with the Contest.