The corner of Maren’s mouth twisted with a grim satisfaction.
Leaves swirled as though alive, moving like so many thousands of discovered things scurrying and taking wing at the overturning of a rotted stump.
The wind pulled at Maren’s hair with the cold hands of dead children, chilling her large ears and numbing her hands.
The dirt devil bent and tightened around her, electric, a woolen sweater in winter, straightening only to bend in another place, coating her with freezing sweat.
Maren shouted, delighting in the strength of the response as the whirlwind unraveled. It seemed to vomit invisible thread, leaves flying as the dervish winked out of being as quickly as it had formed.
Undeniable.
She had been heard, evaluated, and accepted.
Few among the ranks of sisterhood willingly asked for a review—not after their initiation—but Maren was not an average witch, nor was she one to assume her place as permanent.
She had been commanded to present herself to the panel ages ago, and she’d been found worthy then. Maren considered it her duty to remain in shape.
And so she had. She’d been tested, granted permission, and given strenuous encouragement to continue—to feed. To take the gift.
The wind, now a steady and less localized force, pushed at her back, shoving hard enough that Maren was glad for the weight of her bag. She bit the insides of her cheeks and pulled at her earlobes, overcome. She’d not fully recognized the depth of her concerns, her skittishness, her fear of being refused.
A knot between her shoulder blades loosened as though cleaved by a blade; several ribs popped with renewed freedom as if a whalebone corset had jumped its laces.
Not since the eve of her first ritual had she felt more welcome in the assembly… though there was an undercurrent, sharp as a dollop of hot mustard, chastising her for the extended delay.
The words were not said—no words were—but Maren could see their shapes spilling from the berry-stained lips of a veiled elder. Long had it been the way to follow established procedure. Maren could read the words that passed the juice-sweet mouth: to refuse the gift is to invite ruin.
Maren had ample proof to support that hypothesis—not that she planned to admit it to anyone living, dead, or in-between.
Still, it was nice to have confirmation from an irrefutable source.
While her mind could overcome common sense, Maren’s body was aware of her depleted condition. She glanced along the path, pinching at a tendon-thick string of drool hanging from her chin.
“Foul,” she said. “The acts of a common animal.”
Maren wrinkled her nose—the only feature of her face that was not wrinkled while at rest. She slicked the spittle into the folds of the luxurious fur scarf wrapped about her neck.
“Good grief,” she said, her stomach bunching and rolling, contracting above her navel as if she’d consumed a sack of bad mushrooms. Mouth flooding with fresh saliva, Maren tested the integrity of her orange teeth, clicking and clacking… wondering yet again how long the stone might be offset.
With fresh confirmation and the gift near, primal impulses broke their prisons and challenged her mind. The pulpy beds of her fingernails throbbed as chipped nails thickened and her body prepared to feed—to receive.
Maren’s jaw thrust low and wide, popping with the sound of a child tearing-away the plastic buttons of an unwanted windbreaker.
Furious that her self-command was compromised, Maren growled deep in her throat. “I will not be a beast. I will not shed reason—not for the gift; not for anyone; not for anything.”
Her body arched and bent. Maren sat, gritting her tangerine teeth and clutching the bench with both hands, wisps of silver hair in her face, the sweat on her forehead adhesive.
Locked in combat with herself, her jaw dislocated with the crunch of celery stalks. Maren keened, her mouth askew. Though she howled, she deliberately snapped the creeping tips of her fingernails on the metal frame of the bench; several bent to the quick. Dark blood seeped; agony shot through her hands.
“Like that? Does it hurt?” she asked, saliva pooling in her mouth. As both sides of the conversation, she could answer without words.
The threat of uncontrollable seizures—of possession so complete she would be relegated to a passenger trapped in her own body—turned away, circling physically, foxlike, swift and light-footed as it sought weakness.
Maren showed none. Her jaw lurched on its hinges and sucked into its more usual position. She bore down with her eyeteeth, crunching away another fingernail. Maren swallowed blood and a piece of silver braid—choking, she pulled hair from her throat like fishing line.
“I will eat when I say. How I say,” she informed herself, squeezing her left wrist in the powerful grip of her right.
“When I see the gift, I will decide. If I feast, I will be civilized. Elbows off; tines down. One must suck soup from the side. White’s held by the stem; red by the bowl. I will cross my silver at the end. There will be no hats.”
Maren disliked suggestions of how she should comport herself, and the ravenous portion of her was equally shocked at being served points of etiquette. The sensation of self-conflict lessened.
“Behave. Your day will come,” she consoled, her fingers dripping. She moved her chin in circles until her jaw clicked in a familiar way. Maren opened her mouth as if testing new dentures.
“Let’s not do that again,” she said, pounding the joints of her mandible like wooden pegs. She waited for several minutes in silence, old hurts and trick joints reverting, the accursed hunger losing immediacy and its influence over her mind.
Mostly.
She allowed herself to count for a distraction, and counting suggested she think of time.
Say the stone had slipped… how much?
Her mind wheeled like the leaves, every thought circling her need for the gift, a core of her being examining the barriers erected between itself and sustenance.
How long?
Aside from waiting, which Maren could abide no longer, there was only one way to find out. Sputtering obscenities, she pulled the prism from its lined pocket in the oversized purse.
“Where is this warmth from you on a winter’s night?” she demanded. The stone radiated visible heat, warping the air for several inches around its center. Maren closed her hands around it, breathing noisily through her teeth, testing its balance as it burned her flesh.
Kicking like a headless chicken pinned to a clothesline, feet-up, bleeding-out for soup stock—her iridescent, high-topped sneakers flashed in the sunlight—Maren inhaled at the pain, her palms searing until what little water and fat her hands contained popped like a campfire in a drizzle.
The prism smoked and steamed for a few more seconds, lost its will to fight, and, subdued, looked like a solitary cube of ice dumped from a freezer tray, though it remained hot, or she thought it must be, based on its color and the smell.
Maren’s scorched hands were nonfunctional, the nerves dead and unfeeling. She sent her fists blindly into the bowling purse, using her arms like chopsticks until a grape leaf was pinched between them.
The leaf was rolled tightly around a dab of Pappenheimer salve. Maren spoke, the leaf unfurled, and at the moment of contact, her scalded palms and broken nails liquefied, fusing like quicksilver.
Maren blew on her nails as though examining a fresh manicure. Tissue and keratin solidified in a rebuilt glaze, the finish trout-pink and smooth. The deeper injuries rose like muffins, but these, too, were healing nicely by the time she replaced the balm resin into her purse, the heels of her hands functioning as tongs.
The warding necklace remained inert and cool against her shapeless breasts, but the sweet smoke of flesh would carry, and the smell of her blood could bring—well, anything. Especially today.
She looked sharply at the larger stands of brush, focusing at the area downwind, attent to the slightest of movements.
A minute passed. Another.
The park fell away in a steep decline on the far side. It would be loose rock underfoot, and scant of vegetation—the seeing stone had showed her an avian view in its efforts to provide her with situational awareness. Maren would see or hear anything foolish enough to stalk directly at her.
Of course, there were beings that would do just that—some from stupidity, others from the understanding that they were nigh unstoppable, and, as such, would not take the long way around for an ambush when a simple charge would do.
Maren pulled a spoon as old as civilization to her lips and kissed its pitted bowl. Cool, if not cold. This did not entirely surprise her. It was unlikely that one of her few potential predators would just so happen to be nearby.
“Now then. Let’s get you looked at, you slippery rock.” Maren began to inspect the seeing stone. She concentrated on the likelihood that her prism had been knocked about until it became confused. It might have lost its grasp on the current time zone or been bonked onto a different culture’s calendar.
And then there was Daylight Savings, which neither she nor the prism acknowledged as real.
Humming softly as she reviewed the chunk of cloudy rock, leaving no fingerprints on its housing (her skin had solidified with the consistency of a candle spill), Maren interrupted her take on a track from the British invasion to spit a mouthful of saliva into the leaves at her feet.
The wind had dissipated. The air was close and unmoving, the harvest sun was red and radiating, and—to an old woman nestled in a thick fur scarf—the afternoon was deliciously warm with anticipation.
An image shuddered in her mind, the stone pulled, and Maren smiled—she could just hear the vehicle’s chugging motor.
“There’s a good rock,” she said, and placed the seeing stone back into its pouch, her wait at an end.
7
Abby drove the grumbling, rattling Power Wagon five residential blocks, dodged a trio of yellow bollard pipes that prevented ingress by vehicles wider than a mountain bike or electric wheelchair, braked, killed the engine with the clutch and a bound—one knobby tire draped casually over the curb’s edge—pulled the key, clung to the open door like a first-time skydiver, measured the uneven shadow of the truck’s bed in relation to the yellow stripe of the parking spot, jumped to the ground without rolling an ankle, breathed a prayer of thanks as she jogged to the passenger side, climbed halfway back into the cabin, fought the lap-belt, took Kenna down (will come baby, cradle and…), tightened her grip on the handle, and lugged the child-carrier to the gazebo, half-dragging a diaper bag behind her for ballast and balance; she counted seventy-three lunges with increasing breathlessness, Kenna blubbering as the seat swung between Abby’s knees, the whole affair bordering parody: later, she would accept this as her substitute for color-coded kettle bells and fifteen minutes of hot yoga… again.
Panting, Abby barely registered the loudly-dressed old woman on the bench. As a matter of fact, she didn’t notice the woman whatsoever—not until it was too late to do anything but continue the final swing of the child-carrier, Abby’s shoulder popping with a reminder that she had exited her teens.
Kenna squawked, enjoying the ride, particularly the thump at the end. Abby’s lungs burned as though she had a pressure cuff around her neck; her quads and calves bulged with lactic acid.
The car seat combo clumped over the rugged bench, tough plastic screeching across lacquered wood fitted to a skeletal metal frame.
Abby collapsed beside her daughter gracelessly, sweat beading her top lip. She leaned over the twisted, wrought-iron of the bench-end as though she’d developed a cramp… which, come to think of it, she might: a chronic stitch, low in her right side, teased like hayfever but did not come to full fruition.
Yet.
She focused on her breathing, her head slung over the hard arms of the bench. Abby swiftly engaged with the mysterious motives of a black-bodied wasp that was sparring a hill of red ants.
Abby’s allegiance was to the hill, for she had watched it for most of the year—beginning when it was reestablished in a flurry of activity, resurrected from a patch of dirt lopped-off by a riding lawnmower.
The hill had risen over the course of days and weeks, slow as Rome. The mound had expanded with tenacity, its ruddy foragers coming and going every ten to twenty seconds, some clutching seeds, others calling for reinforcements, having encountered a large insect brimming with useful ichor.
Abby felt an invisible bond to the occupants of the hill, and she took inspiration from the colony.
Like her, the ants’ sluggish excursions had begun in the hectic springtime; like her, they’d rested in the hottest hours of summer afternoons—and they, too, now faced the crisp finality of fall, their faces stiff as frost.
The ants would soon be gone, hibernating through winter, the door to their home barricaded against the cold—closed until warmer weather came again.
This brought an unexpected lump to Abby’s throat—she, too, hated the cold, the slate skies and slick roads; she dreaded frigid and chapping winds, the requisite layers of clothing, the outfits that were suffocating and tiresome—dreaded the ravenous consumption spent donning and wearing and washing a winter’s worth of clothing for herself and—worse—an infant.
Winter was when she stayed inside, when the nights were long, and when her husband’s absence hurt more.
Did she think she was winded now?
Give her a long winter inside, exercise reduced to walking the hallways; give her a frozen season peppered with holiday feasts and… she’d gain ten pounds, easy. Fifteen. Rubbery flesh would slide over her hips like the groping hands of a too-familiar boss. Weight would slosh from her triceps.
She’d be a full-on butterball to celebrate the end of the year. John would be so pleased with his husky bride. Abby would bend her face into a grimace and wear hairy sweaters over turtlenecks for Christmas photos, pretending she’d just then thought of the ensemble, pretending she wasn’t a hog ready for slaughter…
The wasp was the instigator. The battle was eerie, for it was fought in silence. It raged unaccompanied by roars or screams—no flags flew—but the ants were clearly on the defensive. They were playing at home; this was considered an advantage in some walks of life, though Abby had found it very much against her own experiences.
Still, she wished the ants well, and began to think of ways she might help. Her left hand reaching protectively for Kenna’s chubby arm, Abby rooted for the much smaller ants. If they could marshal their forces, they could face their enemy with cohesion: the workers had swarmed, but they were disarrayed, unprepared, and in the way of the soldiers in heavier mail.
She wondered if the silent ants felt fear; if they knew what they were up against. The soldiers might comprehend the wasp was exactly—and only—what it was. The workers, however, would be panicked; Abby imagined herself among them, helpless against a chimerical opponent.
Or she could be misinterpreting the chemical dance of the hill: the wasp might have been identified in the first seconds by a calm commander who determined the threat of a wasp no worse than that of soft rains.
Specialized workers and big-jawed warriors exited the hill in a resolute trickle: performing chores, stashing seeds.
Life goes on, Abby thought, though she could not see how. A handful of fighters joined the fray, such as it was. Whatever the black wasp was doing, straight-up war was not the game-plan: the wasp sidestepped constantly, its wings accelerating so quickly they sizzled with momentary bursts of sound: rinsed okra hitting a hot pan of bacon grease.
The wasp was female, Abby decided, though she had no proof past her opinion… female for the Victorian waist; for the immaculate, enamel-glossy body; for the alien shape of the sheening, rounded triangle of its head; for the appearance of high cheekbones beneath smoky, oversized sunglasses Abby associated with celebrities from the 1960s.
There were casualties: ants mangled, dismembered. Abby had seen no violent activity. The wasp was adder-quick, however, and Abb
y’s mind, she knew, was critically dull.
Further combat might be impending, to be later followed by an armistice and terms, but Abby struggled to internalize the action.
Easier was to quit trying to understand: to witness without passion, without analysis. Stick-figure limbs rolled bloodlessly, combining with the silence to undercut any meaningful drama.
The wildebeest pounding through Abby’s temples faded to distant hooves, reverberating, pushing against her inner ear. Her chest drubbed with the syncopation of a muffled jazz cymbal, and she was deafened by the pressure between the two regions, a ragtime beat to match her ragged breathing.
Hanging her head below her heart caused motes of light to explode behind her eyes, and, realizing her eyes were closed, Abby launched herself backwards, clanging the base of her skull on the curving support of the high-backed bench.
“Sugar Ray climbs back in the ring!” the old woman croaked—or Abby might have imagined it.
Breaking her head open on the bench did not help her headache, and Abby rubbed in circles to discourage a knob from forming.
The view overhead was less exciting.
No ants, no wasps.
Lifeless.
The most notable part of her view that was not the brilliant blue sky, crossed with contrails and the occasional cloud, but the interference with that view—the gazebo’s inner roof and supporting beams were in the way.
A roll of holiday toilet paper, dunked in water and flung prematurely aloft, was splattered and stuck in a high corner. The wad had dried to the color of dirty pollen along the edges.
Abby could see some mischievous child unwinding the roll, tossing aside the cardboard sleeve, wetting the mess in the water fountain, throwing it…
He has such long arms now. Would you like to see, Abby?
She’d known the voice would come. It had been chasing her for days, and it knew she was tired.
Dead tired.
She refused to respond. A response invited a reply.
Lightweight oil spread from the bolts that held the false sky together. Abby wished the city had sprung for the extra dollars to finish the underside of the roof. The contractor work petered-out, dark green overspray fading into flat, gray primer.
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